can scarcely recognize the Odysseus of Homer in the Odysseus of

Sophocles. The kings are regarded by the tragedians with some of the

distrust and hatred which the unconstitutional tyrants of Athens had

aroused. Just as the later chansons de geste of France, the poems

written in an age of feudal opposition to central authority, degraded

heroes like Charles, so rhetorical, republican, and sophistical

Greece put its quibbles into the lips of Agamemnon and Helen, and

slandered the stainless and fearless Patroclus and Achilles.