perhaps, the "romantic love on the higher side" which Professor
Murray found in this story? But there is more to come.

Of the symptoms of love in Medea's heart described in the foregoing
paragraph not one rises above that egotistic gloating over the pangs
and joys of sensual infatuation which constitute one phase of
sentimentality; while the further progress of the story shows that
Medea had no idea whatever of sacrificing herself for Jason, but that
the one motive of her actions was the eager desire to possess him.
When the fugitives are being pursued closely, and the chivalrous
Argonauts, afraid to battle with a superior number, propose to retain
the Golden Fleece, but to give up Medea and let some other king decide
whether she is to be returned to her parents, it never occurs to her
that she might save her beloved by going back home. She wants to have
him at any cost, or to perish with him; so she reproaches him bitterly
for his ingratitude, and meditates the plan of setting fire to the
ships and burning him up with all the crew, as well as herself. He
tries to pacify her by protesting that he had not quite liked the plan
proposed himself, but had indorsed it only to gain time; whereupon she
suggests a way out of the dilemma pleasanter to herself, by advising
the Argonauts to inveigle her brother, who leads the pursuers, into
their power and assassinate him; which they promptly proceed to do,
while she stands by with averted eyes. It is with unconscious sarcasm
that Apollonius exclaims on the same page where all these details of
"romantic love on the higher side" are being unfolded: "Accursed Eros,
the world's most direful plague."

POETS AND HETAIRAI.

The one commendable feature which the stories of Acontius and Cydippe
and of Medea and Jason have in common is that the heroine in each case
is a respectable and pure maiden (see _Argon._, IV., 1018-1025). But,
although the later romance writers followed this example, it would be
a great mistake to suppose, with Mahaffy (272), that this touch of
virgin purity was felt by the Alexandrians to be "the necessary
starting-point of the love-romance in a refined society." Alexandrian
society was anything but refined in matters of love, and the trait
referred to stands out by reason of its novelty and isolation in a
literature devoted chiefly to the hetairai. We see this especially
also in the epigrams of the period. It is astonishing, writes Couat
(173), how many of th