THE GREEKS AND BROWNING 
399 
made in the treatment of the same situation. In Goethe’s 
drama Iphigenia could not be false to her own ideals or un¬ 
truthful to Thoas, her king and preserver. Also in Goethe’s 
version Orestes cannot deceive by uttering a false word. He 
exclaims to Iphigenia, “Between us let there be Truth!” 
The proposal of Electra to the two friends Orestes and 
Pylades, to entrap Hermione by falsehood, murder Helen, 
and hold the virgin for hostage as a means of saving their own 
lives, is not only considered a laudable stratagem worthy of 
applause, but it brings down upon Electra the weighty mantle 
of Orestes’ words, “O thou that hast indeed the mind of a 
man, but a form among women beautiful, to what a degree art 
thou more worthy of life and death?” 
Stratagem was the keynote of the situation, and a moral 
standard where cunning and lying were tolerated was also 
accompanied by a lower estimate of woman. The chorus 
laments, “Women were born always to be in the way of what 
may happen to men to the. making of things unfortunate.” 
That woman was made to feel this of herself, is mentioned 
more than once by the old tragedians. In Ion, Creusa laments, 
“For women’s condition is a difficult one among men, and the 
good being mixed up with the evil, we are objects of hatred. 
So unhappy are we by nature.” 
Inasmuch as the Greek notion of Truth up to this point 
includes belief in the ethical necessity of true speaking and the 
binding qualities of an oath and true living where the con¬ 
ditions of life-motives are not complex, it also includes the set¬ 
ting aside of Truth when circumstances according to the Greek 
method of justice demand vengeance or revenge, in warfare, 
and for other reasons, where Truth is not considered expedient. 
Also hospitality, so strong a Greek characteristic, would take 
precedence to Truth, as illustrated in the situation between 
Admetus and Hercules in Euripides’ “Alkestis.” 
Browning nowhere approvingly considers setting Truth aside 
for expediency. As a seeker after Truth he starts on the quest 
with the clear understanding that he will carefully and con¬ 
scientiously give to the world the details of his search and his 
conclusions on the problems concerning life and death, and 
