Tore it, and showed her breasts and bosom fair As in a statue. Bending then with knee On earth, she spake a speech most piteous: "See you this breast, oh! youth, if breast you will, Strike it; take heart: or if beneath my neck, Lo! here my throat is ready for your sword!" He willing not, yet willing, pity-stirred In sorrow for the maiden, with his blade Severed the channels of her breath: blood flowed; And she, though dying, still had thought to fall In seemly wise hiding what eyes should see not. But when she breathed her life out from the blow, Then was the Argive host in divers way Of service parted; for some bringing leaves, Strewed them upon the corpse; some piled a pyre, Dragging pine trunks and boughs; and he who bore none, Heard from the bearers many a bitter word: "Standest thou, villain? Hast thou then no robe, No funeral honors for the maid to bring? Wilt thou not go and get for her who died Most nobly, bravest-souled, some gift?" Thus they Spake of thy child in death: "O thou most blessed Of women in thy daughter, most undone!" The quality of #eupsychia# which we have seen in Menoikeus and Polyxena is displayed by Macaria in the _Heracleidæ_ and by Iphigenia in the last scene of her tragedy at Aulis. Iphigenia in this play ranks justly as the most beautiful of Euripidean characters, and as the most truly feminine among the heroines of the Greek drama. Her first appearance on the stage enlists our sympathy, when she seems to welcome her father--the father whom we know to be ignobly and deceitfully planning her death--with the tenderest words of girlish greeting. Landor, in his celebrated dialogue between Agamemnon and his daughter, on the shores of Lethe, was mindful of this passage. But in that masterly study of Greek style he added a new element of pathos. Iphigenia has already drunk the waters of oblivion, and all the anguish of the past, her father's treachery, and the bending of his will in base compliance with a barbarous superstition, has been forgotten. Meanwhile Agamemnon has not only his daughter's wrongs upon his conscience, but Clytemnestra's adultery and vengeance, the price he paid for his old crime, are still hot in his memory. Therefore the situation is more complex in the modern poem. At Aulis, Iphigenia is but the loved child of a weak man, who has to return her pretty speeches and caresses with constrained phrases hiding a hideous meaning. When the truth is at last made known to her she pleads passionately for life. "Had I the tongue of Orpheus," she cries in her agony, "I would melt your heart to pity, father, with my words. But now my only eloquence is tears. I was the first who called you father, the first you called your child; the first who sat upon your knees and took and gave a daughter's kisses." She reminds him of his promises, the happy life she was to lead, the comfort she meant to bring to his old age.