"Ah, ah, she'll slay me! whither shall I fly?"[3]
The poet when he wrote like this saw the Erinyes with his own eyes, and
he almost compels his readers to see them too.
[Footnote 2: Eur. _Orest._ 255.]
[Footnote 3: _Iph. Taur._ 291.]
3
Euripides found his chief delight in the labour of giving tragic
expression to these two passions of madness and love, showing here a
real mastery which I cannot think he exhibited elsewhere. Still, he is
by no means diffident in venturing on other fields of the imagination.
His genius was far from being of the highest order, but by taking pains
he often raises himself to a tragic elevation. In his sublimer moments
he generally reminds us of Homer's description of the lion--
"With tail he lashes both his flanks and sides,
And spurs himself to battle."[4]
[Footnote 4: _Il._ xx. 170.]
4
Take, for instance, that passage in which Helios, in handing the reins
to his son, says--
"Drive on, but shun the burning Libyan tract;
The hot dry air will let thine axle down:
Toward the seven Pleiades keep thy steadfast way."