not indeed by wrestling, for barbarians do not wrestle, but by the habit of struggling for mastery with wild bulls.[35] Some of the women of Homeric story, Helen for example, and Iphigenia, received divine honors, together with suitable artistic personification. But women were not closely connected with the genealogical and gentile foundations of the Greek cultus; only a few, therefore, were thus distinguished. What has here been said about the superstition that gave form and distinctness to the creatures of Homeric fancy may be taken as applying in general to the attitude assumed by ancient art. The persons of a poem or a mythus were not subjected to critical analysis as we dissect the characters of _Hamlet_ or of _Faust_. But they were not on that account the less vividly apprehended. They tended more and more to become external realities--beings with a definite form and a fixed character. In a word, through sculpture, painting, and superstition, they underwent the same personifying process as the saints of mediæval Italy. To what extent the Attic drama exercised a disturbing influence and interrupted this process has been touched upon with reference to the Euripidean Helen. FOOTNOTES: [17] I take this occasion of calling attention to the essay on Helen considered as an allegory of Greek Beauty, by Paul de St. Victor in his _Hommes et Dieux_. [18] "Not true is that tale; nor didst thou journey in benched ships, or come to towers of Troy." [19] She, shrinking from the Trojans' hate, Made frantic by their city's fate, Nor dreading less the Danaan sword, The vengeance of her injured lord: She, Troy's and Argos' common fiend, Sat cowering, by the altar screened.--_Conington._ [20] Worsley's _Iliad_, iii. 17. The other quotations are from the same version. [21] "Thy own soul, gazing at him, became Kupris; for Aphrodite, as her name denotes, is all the folly of mortals." [22] Quite another view of Helen's character is developed in the _Helena_, where Euripides has followed the Stesichorean version of her legend with singular disregard for consistency. Much might be said on this point about the license in handling mythical material the Attic dramatists allowed themselves. [23] Eastward was my glance directed, Watching for the sun's first rays; In the south--oh, sight of wonder! Rose the bright orb's sudden blaze. Thither was my eye attracted; Vanished bay and mountain height, Earth and heaven unseen and all things, All but that enchanted light.--_Anster._ [24] "The home of my wedded years, exceeding fair, filled with all the goods of life, which even in dreams methinks I shall remember." [25] "I know well that Penelope is inferior to thee in form and stature, to the eyes of men." [26] "Of a truth my goodliness and beauty of person the gods destroyed what time the Argives went up into Troy town."