not obey? To us it is a simple case of a common tragedy,
that an individual is the victim of a great social movement. In the
_Herakleidae_, Alcmena urges that a war captive be slain. The king of
Athens forbids that any one be slain who was taken alive. The former
prevailed. The Athenian doctrine was new and high and not yet current.
In the _Ion_ Ion tells Zeus and Poseidon that if they paid the penalties
of all their adulteries they would empty their temple treasuries. They
act wrongly when they do not observe due measure in their pursuit of
pleasure. It is not fair to call men wicked when they imitate the gods.
Let the evil examples be blamed. In the _Andromache_ horror is expressed
of the folkways of the barbarians, in which incest is not prevented. In
the _Medea_ Jason, who is a scoundrel and a cur, prates to Medea about
her gain in coming to Greece: "Thou hast learned what justice means, and
how to live by law, not by the dictates of brute force." She had not
learned it at all--quite the contrary. In the _Hekuba_ it is said to be
a disgrace to murder guests in Greece, and in _Iphigenia amongst the
Taurians_ the same doctrine is stated when Greeks are to be the victims
of the contrary rule. "Barbarian" was a cultural category. To be Greek
was to have city life with market place, gymnastic training, and a share
in the games.[1645] These were arbitrary marks of superiority such as
the members of an esoteric corporation always love, but the time came
when the Greek history contained so many shameful things that the Greeks
ceased to talk of the contrast with barbarians. It was proposed to
Pausanias that he should repay on the corpse of Mardonius the insults
inflicted by Xerxes on the body of Leonidas. He indignantly
refused.[1646] The old laws of war put the life and property of the
vanquished, and their wives and children, at the mercy of the
conquerors, but the Greeks, when the Peloponnesian war began, felt the
shame of this law as between Greeks. Therefore they sinned against their
own better feeling when in that war they enslaved and slaughtered the
vanquished. That they knew better is shown by the conduct of the
Athenians towards Mytilene, in 427. At first all adult males were
sentenced to death, and the women and children to slavery, but later
this sentence was revoked. Cases also occurred in which the law of war
was not followed, but the conquered were spared. By retaliation they
inflamed their own passions and went