We shall find that the heroines have a system of ethics which is different from that of our own day; and strange moral contradictions may present themselves to our astonished eyes. Electra, with the tenderest love for her dead father, will not rest until the death of her guilty mother has been compassed. Antigone, infinitely gentle to the blind Œdipus, is capable of resolute opposition to the law as it is embodied in Creon. But though the lines of moral demarcation are differently placed, they are not blurred. Revenge is a duty in this primitive saga upon which the poets drew for their material; and in which there is much that is savage and terrible. Greek drama was a religious ritual closely bound to ancient myth and heroic legend, from which the poets could not escape. Hence, if these stories are approached in an analytical mood, they will be found barbarous and wildly improbable. If we give the rein to humour, we shall be overcome by frequent absurdities. The best way is to come to them quite simply, leaving the comic and the critical spirits a little way behind. * * * * * Grateful thanks are due to the translators and publishers who have kindly given permission to quote the passages used herein; and the author wishes humbly to acknowledge the debt she owes to critical work in this field. She is especially conscious of help from Professor Gilbert Murray in interpreting some of the Women of Tragedy. A note of the sources of the quotations will be found at the end of each chapter. _Homer: Helen_ In the twilight of early Greek history, one event and one name blaze like beacons. They are the siege of Troy and the name of Helen. They have not come down to us as cold fact, but burning through a mist of legend and poetry. The historian cannot name the date of the Trojan war; and the archæologist, whose labours have been so fruitful at Mycenæ and in Crete, can only point doubtfully to the ancient site of Troy. Yet that event, and its cause, fair Helen of Sparta, may be said to mark the beginning of national life for the Greeks. Perhaps it was more than two thousand years before Christ when all the little peoples of Greece first joined themselves against barbarian Asia. Troy fell; and although the victory brought little material reward to the Greeks; though they sailed back to their island homes poorer and sadder than when they left, they had in fact achieved momentous gains. For the struggle had first taught them the strength of unity: it had launched them on their long and triumphant feud against barbarism; and it had laid the base from which they might go on to build, through the long, slow centuries, the civilization that we inherit.