46 Ernest Heinrich Klotsche 



IT. 118 fif.: 



... oil yap TO Tov d^eov y'alriov yevrjaerai. 

 ireaelv aKpavrov ^eatparov ToXjJLriTkov k. t. X. 



" Best withdraw ourselves 

 Unto a place where we shall lurk unseen. 

 For, if his oracle fall unto the ground, 

 The God's fault shall it not be. We must dare. 

 Since for young men toil knoweth no excuse." 



Orestes seems to mean that if we do not all we can, it will be our 

 own fault if the oracle prove vain. But Orestes invariably comes 

 around to his sceptical grievances and inveighs against the in- 

 justice of the oracle-god : 



I.T. 711-15: 



Tinas 5' 6 $ot/3os fxavTLS &v hpevaaTO- 

 Texvriv bt ^kfievos k. t. X. 



" Me Phoebus, prophet though he be deceived, 

 And by a cunning shift from Argos drave 

 Afar, for shame of those his prophecies. 

 I gave up all to him, obeyed his words. 

 My mother slew — and perish now myself ! " 



Orestes calls Apollo " prophet "= juai'rts' which had come to be 

 an unpopular title at the time our play was written. Then he 

 charges the God with a stratagem {Texvrjv 5' ^e/xevos) to put him 

 out of the way that the falseness of his oracle might not be 

 known, the first oracle commanding matricide having proved a 

 mistake, cf. 77 f^. Again Orestes declares openly his judgment of 

 the God : 



I. T. 723 : 



TO, $ot/3oi» d' ovdev dxpeKel yu' eirr]. 

 " Phoebus' words avail me nothing now." 



But despite all the bitter attacks Orestes has made upon the 

 justice of the oracle-god, towards the end of the play the oracle 

 is proved right. This is nothing unusual in Euripides. In those 

 of his tragedies where the Olympians appear in the most unfa- 

 vorable light, their conduct is generally vindicated in the end. It 

 seems that in the " Iphigenia in Tauris " the poet intended to 

 make the spectators feel that 'the oracle of Apollo, ordaining the 



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