it was natural that Horace's view about Euripides's god should be uncritically accepted. But as a matter of fact it is a mere mistake. It never in any single case holds good—not even in the Orestes. And there are some plays, like the Iphigenîa in Tauris, in which, so far from the god coming to clear up a tangled plot, the plot has to be diverted at the last moment so as to provide an excuse for the god's arrival. Euripides evidently liked a supernatural ending, and when he had to do without a real god—as in the Medea and the Hecuba—he was apt to end with winged chariots and prophecies. Can we in the least understand what he gained by it?
We must remember one or two things. The epiphany was in the ritual. It was no new invention in itself; the only new thing, apparently, was an improved piece of stage machinery enabling the god to appear more effectively. Further, if we try to put ourselves into the minds of fifth century Greeks, there was probably nothing absurd, nothing even unlikely, in supposing the visible appearance of a god in such an atmosphere as that of tragedy. The heroes and heroines of tragedy were themselves almost divine; they were all figures in the great heroic saga and almost all
