‘Such are the pair, father and son: behold your ordinary sensual man,’ he seems to say. Dr. Verrall spends some time and pains in showing that Admetus is not a hero, and, doubtless, he is not heroic either to us or to Euripides. But it does not follow that an Athenian audience would share our or the master’s private views. We are unconsciously influenced by centuries of romantic literature in which the relations of the sexes have been idealised. The Athenians treated women much as the baser sort still treat animals. To us Admetus seems almost inconceivably selfish and callous: probably many an Athenian never realised that his conduct was reprehensible. Even so to-day a vegetarian has considerable difficulty in proving to the ordinary man that it is unjustifiable selfishness to take life for the gratification of appetite. ‘I always have eaten meat,’ such an one will say; ‘I always shall: and so did my father. Animals were created for use.’ The Athenian might have used the same language about his wife. But in the play itself no one is under any sort of delusion as to Admetus. The servant woman, the attendant, the chorus, Alcestis herself: all know him for what he is, a selfish coward. Very religious certainly he is and very hospitable: in other words, very full of absurd superstitions and very fond of having strangers in the house to divert him from himself. Heracles the ravisher, and Apollo the seducer, appreciate him as an excellent boon companion: his own household do not share their views. They know too well—and there is constant reference to this in the play—that he is ‘foolish’ in the Euripidean sense of the word, the slave of passions which he is unable to control. And so we may leave him: in his character Euripides explodes the fallacy that in all cases and in all circumstances man is the superior animal. But the wonder of the Alcestis is this: in spite of the irony and cruel satire, in spite of the bitter criticism of the two doctrines, the existence of the supernatural and the superiority of man, there remain so many other threads of interest—realism and romance, pathos and humour—that a well-disposed reader can shut his eyes to the unpleasant, and usually does. What is wanted to bring out the full meaning of Euripides’ plays is a double translation; one version written in prose by a realist with a taste for irony, the other composed by a lyric poet. Neither version will be satisfactory apart, for the spirit of Euripides is a compound of the two: neither will be final, for translations quickly age and Euripides is ever young. IX.—THE SOCRATIC CIRCLE