From Professor Gilbert Murray’s translation of the _Œdipus Tyrannus_ (George Allen & Co., Ltd.). Footnote 24: From Professor Lewis Campbell’s translation of the _Antigone_ (Clarendon Press). Footnote 25: From Professor Lewis Campbell’s translation of the _Œdipus at Colonus_ (Clarendon Press). Footnote 26: From Professor Gilbert Murray’s translation of a fragment of the _Œdipus Coloneus_ in his _History of Ancient Greek Literature_ (William Heinemann). Footnote 27: From Professor Lewis Campbell’s translation of the _Seven against Thebes_ (Clarendon Press). _Euripides: Alcestis_ In the story of Alcestis, we step at once into light and sweet air. Here is no taint of an hereditary curse; no excess of passion to offend the sight of gods and men; no foul crime to be avenged by other crime, and expiated in its turn by bitter remorse. The Trojan Cycle and the Theban Cycle, with all the tragic grandeur with which Æschylus and Sophocles have invested them, are left behind. We come to a new theme, fair as a garden and clean as a morning breeze. It is the tale of a wife’s supreme love: of the friendship of a god for a mortal man: of an unique act of hospitality and its magnificent requital. The oppressive sense of destiny, of something almost malign in the heart of things, has lifted. Human error and wrongdoing and impotence, which have hitherto made such a sombre background for heroic figures, are lost in a glow of human love. And instead of a brooding menace, there is the presence of a benign divinity, seeking to protect and recompense virtue. But while we turn to the _Alcestis_ of Euripides with a refreshing sense of contrast, we are soon reminded that the elements of the story itself are unfavourable to the work as dramatic art. We could not expect from such a theme a tragedy so intense and powerful as the works of the two elder dramatists. The spectacle of virtue rewarded may satisfy a primary moral sense; but for that very reason it will not evoke the strong emotions which are the life of drama. While perfect accord with the divine power, and harmony amongst the human agents of the story, utterly preclude the sense of conflict without which tragedy can hardly be. For that reason, it would seem, Euripides did not treat the legend as pure tragedy. In any case, the happy ending of the legend upon which he worked would forbid it; and he has further departed from convention by introducing two scenes which, by their flavour of satire and their stinging realism, partake of the nature of comedy.