Diana. And at the end he makes Phaedra,
before committing suicide, write an infamous letter which, to save her
reputation, dooms to a cruel death the innocent victim of her
infatuation.

To us, this last touch alone would demonstrate the worldwide
difference between lust and love. But Euripides knows no such
difference. To him there is only one kind of love, and it varies only
in being moderate in some cases, excessive in others. Love is "at once
the sweetest and the bitterest thing," according as it is one or the
other of the two. Phaedra's nurse deplores her passion, chiefly
because of its violence. The chorus in _Medea_ (627 _seqq_.) sings:

"When in excess and past all limits Love doth come, he
brings not glory or repute to man; but if the Cyprian
queen in moderate might approach, no goddess is so full
of charm as she."

And in _Iphigenia at Aulis_ the chorus declares:

"Happy they who find the goddess come in moderate might,
sharing with self-restraint in Aphrodite's gift of marriage
and enjoying calm and rest from frenzied passions.... Be
mine delight in moderate and hallowed [Greek: hosioi]
desires, and may I have a share in love, but shun excess
therein."

To Euripides, as to all the Greeks, there is no difference in the
loves of gods and goddesses or kings and queens on the one hand, and
the lowest animals on the other. As the chorus sings in _Hippolytus_:

"O'er the land and booming deep, on golden pinion
borne, flits the god of love, maddening the heart and
beguiling the senses of all whom he attacks, savage
whelps on mountains bred, ocean's monsters, creatures
of this sun-warmed earth, and man; thine, O Cypris,
thine alone, the sovereign power to rule them
all."[304]

ROMANTIC LOVE, GREEK STYLE

The Greeks, instead of confuting my theory that romantic love is the
last product of civilization, afford the most striking confirmation of
it. While considering the love-affairs of Africans, Australians, and
other uncivilized peoples, we were dealing with races whose lack of
intelligence and delicacy in general made it natural to expect that
their love, too, must be wanting in psychic qualities and refinement.
But the Greeks were of a different calibre. Not only their men of
affairs--generals and statesmen--but their men of thought and
feeling--philosophers and poets--were among the greatest the world has
ever seen;