But Euripides is especially successful with his pictures of young girls, virgin martyrs—the type is not extinct—anxious and willing to sacrifice themselves for their male relatives. Iphigenia, Polyxena and Macaria are subtle variations of one character, and upon the figure of the first the poet spends all his skill. At the time of the sacrifice at Aulis she is a sentimental girl, so full of timid modesty that the very thought of marriage fills her with shame. ‘I hid my face,’ she says, ‘in the soft wrappings of my veil and would not take my baby brother in my arms nor kiss my sister on the lips—I felt ashamed before them. No, I laid up for myself many a fond embrace which I would give them when I should come back, a married woman.’ The arguments she uses to her mother to justify her sacrifice are poor enough: vague talk of honour, patriotism and the insignificance of women—’Tis better that one man should live than ten thousand women’; but her heart is right. For Iphigenia both marriage and sacrifice prove a delusion. She never returns home; she is defrauded of the joy of motherhood, and spends many years of lonely virginity among strangers and in a strange land. When we see her again she is a bitter woman, more sensible, indeed, than the simple girl, but infinitely less lovable. Her thoughts are all of vengeance: against Menelaus, against Helen, against mankind. She performs her horrible task of human sacrifice with no very great reluctance; ‘Parcelling out a tear in sympathy for kindred blood’ when any Greek victims fall into her hands; but killing them all the same. For one person alone she still cherishes some affection, her brother Orestes, whom she had left a baby at home, and on him she concentrates her frustrated motherhood. The final stage of this rancour against life is seen in the character of Iphigenia’s sister Electra—‘the unwed’—as we have her in the Orestes and the play that bears her name. Electra’s loneliness and suffering, her long brooding, her craving for revenge have turned her mad: she again has only one sound sentiment, her love for her brother. She is a dreadful figure, but a real one. Fire and the knife: murder, treachery, arson: she is ready for all. Her character is the logical outcome of many years of injuries and insults: of denial of rights and of subjection. She is a proud spirit and will not submit, but her pride cannot alter the situation. At last the strain of hopeless rebellion is too great, and she becomes mad. They make, indeed, a gloomy picture, these unmarried women, for Euripides does not shrink from the darker side of a woman’s revolt. As Medea bitterly says ‘Even a bad husband is better than none,’ and for the unwedded girl there are only two alternatives, a voluntary sacrifice, such as that whereby Macaria escapes from life, or a hopeless struggle against the powers that be, such as Electra tries to wage.