e, as it were,
against the other's counter claim. One can only say that it was, after
all, what they expected of each other; and I believe the same convention
exists in most places where keening or wailing is an actual practice.

[32] Even as the sound of a song.]--I have filled in some words which
seem to be missing in the Greek here.

[33]Andromache.]--This character is wonderfully studied. She seems to me
to be a woman who has not yet shown much character or perhaps had very
intense experience, but is only waiting for sufficiently great trials to
become a heroine and a saint. There is still a marked element of
conventionality in her description of her life with Hector; but one
feels, as she speaks, that she is already past it. Her character is
built up of "_Sophrosyne_," of self-restraint and the love of
goodness--qualities which often seem second-rate or even tiresome until
they have a sufficiently great field in which to act. Very
characteristic is her resolution to make the best, and not the worst, of
her life in Pyrrhus' house, with all its horror of suffering and
apparent degradation. So is the self-conquest by which she deliberately
refrains from cursing her child's murderers, for the sake of the last
poor remnant of good she can still do to him, in getting him buried. The
nobility of such a character depends largely, of course, on the
intensity of the feelings conquered.

It is worth noting, in this connection, that Euripides is contradicting
a wide-spread tradition (Robert, _Bild und Lied_, pp. 63 ff.).
Andromache, in the pictures of the Sack of Troy, is represented with a
great pestle or some such instrument fighting with the Soldiers to
rescue Astyanax ([Greek:'Andro-machae]= "Man-fighting").

Observe, too, what a climax of drama is reached by means of the very
fact that Andromache, to the utmost of her power, tries to do nothing
"dramatic," but only what will be best. Her character in Euripides'
play, _Andromache_, is, on the whole, similar to this, but less
developed.

[34] In Salamis, filled with the foaming, &c.]--A striking instance of
the artistic value of the Greek chorus in relieving an intolerable
strain. The relief provided is something much higher than what we
ordinarily call "relief"; it is a stream of pure poetry and music in key
with the sadness of the surrounding scene, yet, in a way, happy just
because it is beautiful. (Cf. note on _Hippolytus_, 1. 732.)

The argument of the rather di