From all these causes, we shall find that the women of Attic Tragedy are possessed of a stronger and more vivid personality than their Homeric forerunners. They are resolute, purposeful, passionate—women of action as well as of feeling. Physical beauty they do possess, as well as grace and charm. Neither do they lack the gentler qualities which are usually supposed to be peculiarly feminine. Indeed, we could probably find an eminent example of every so-called feminine virtue if we went through the range of the heroines. But the stress is not now laid merely on beauty and the gentler graces. It is laid rather on a combination of these qualities with strength of intellect and will, generous emotions, and a soaring spirit. Such a change would appear to be right and natural—in fact, almost inevitable. We should expect that the passage of the centuries in an advancing civilization would give the woman time and space ‘to bourgeon out of all within her’; and that with a more harmonious development she would definitely gain in mental height. We should expect, too, that the dramatic genius would create a more clear-cut individuality than that given by the epic poet in a long narrative chiefly concerned with the doings of menfolk. So that we are not surprised to find the women of tragedy possessed of great vitality, and occupying a very large share of the dramatists’ attention. What does surprise us, however, is to discover that many of these newer heroines are the very women whom we have already met in the Homeric poems: that they have been taken straight over from the heroic age, out of the ancient heroic themes, and made to live over again, a new and vastly different life. This brings us to a point which it is well to keep in mind. Sometimes the heroines of Greek Tragedy do very terrible things and are placed in situations of appalling horror. Those acts, and the circumstances out of which they spring, not only repel us but seem to be at variance even with the spirit of the poet himself. Sometimes the heroine is the victim of tyrannic physical force, and frequently again there is the clash of motive, for which death seems to be the only solution. Strange crimes, unheard of and almost unthinkable, sometimes darken the atmosphere around them. Age-old curses and hereditary feuds pursue them: the terrible gift of beauty weighs them down; and over all broods fate, a lurking, indefinable power against which, in the last resort, they are powerless to stand.