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embark immediately in their ship with them. The complaints and prayers of the Chorus are now mingled with the haughty orders of the herald. They refuse; he threatens force; they cry, and call upon the gods, and imprecate bitter curses upon their ravishers, but all in vain; the herald seizes their leader to drag her by her hair towards the ship. At this point the king with his train appears, and indignantly demands an account of this outrage. The herald protests that he is only asserting a legal claim, and is prepared to justify it by war. The king replies, that if he can persuade the maidens to accompany him, he may take them, but that no constraint shall be put upon them. 'Here," he says, "the nail is fixed." The decree is unchangeable, and the herald is peremptorily dismissed. "The Greeks," says the king, "will be more than a match for the Nile; wine and bread are better than barley-beer and byblus-fruit, the food of the Egyptians." Then, turning to the maidens, he offers them safe dwellings in the city-whether they prefer to live among others in the public palaces, or to dwell apart with their attendants; and they refer the choice to their father, who is now returned with a force of soldiers. His answer is wise and fatherly, but a little reminds us of the somewhat tedious wisdom of Polonius. "Men are apt," he says, "to find fault in foreigners, and young girls especially must beware of the least breath of scandal; the safer course must be theirs, to dwell apart in maidenly modesty."

And now all the action of the play is ended, and nothing remains but the final ode. Divided into two

bands, the Danaids sing good wishes for their new country. No longer is the Nile to claim their praise,—

"Nay, but the rivers here, that pour calm streams through our country,

Parents of many a son, making glad the soil of our meadows,

With wide flood rolling on in full and abounding riches."

Then they are somewhat divided in their words: the one band can only repeat its fears of their hateful pursuers, and finds all love and marriage henceforth odious; while the other half of the Chorus is anxious rather not to disparage the divinity of the Cyprian goddess, and looks forward yet to happy wedlock. Yet both unite in speaking well of Aphrodite :

Semichorus A.

"Not that our kindly strain does slight to Cypris immortal, For she, together with Hera, as nearest to Zeus is mighty, A goddess of subtle thoughts she is honoured in mysteries solemn."

Semichorus B.

"Yea, as associates too with that their mother beloved Are fair Desire and Suasion, whose pleading no man can gainsay; Yea, to sweet Concord too Aphrodite's power is intrusted, And the whispering paths of the Loves."

And so, with good hopes for the issue of the trial which yet remains finally to decide their case, the play concludes. This trial probably formed the subject of a succeeding piece.

The motive which predominates in this play is one with which moderns, at least in civilised countries, are not familiar. The claim which any fugitive was supposed to possess on the protection of those to whom he might address himself, naturally ceases to be acknowledged when the improvement and extension of law guarantee safety to all who deserve it, and take out of the hands of private individuals the punishment of those who do not. A suppliant in England nowadays would be at once referred to the law to be protected from wrong or punished for fault. But when law could not do these things, but left the inflicting of punishment in great measure to the offended person, or, in the case of murder, to the relatives of the dead, it was obviously the interest of every man, as well as his duty, to accord to others that protection which he might some day need for himself. Especially in the case of accidental or justifiable homicide the protection of private men was necessary to the slayer, and took the place occupied among the Jews by their cities of refuge. And when the case was such as could be tried at law, it was only by private protection that the accused was preserved from his accuser until the matter could be legally decided. It is clear, then, that in such times the acknowledgment of the suppliant's claim was necessary to society. Being so, it was invested with a religious sanction. The temples of the gods were the natural refuges, since in so holy a spot a man could not be killed without defilement; and hence the gods themselves were believed to befriend the suppliant. And then to fulfil this special function a

special person or a special form of the supreme God was believed to exist, and "Zeus of Supplication" was added to the list of deities. In just the same way "Zeus of Hospitality" enforced the duty, then so important, of receiving those who, in the absence of inns, could find no other resting-place. And how tremendous was the authority of these deities the play before us shows.

But both these duties lose their relative importance as civilisation advances. They were losing it even when Eschylus wrote; and here, as well as elsewhere, we may see him lingering affectionately about the traces of past times and creeds, and investing with picturesque solemnity ruins which he could not restore.

A. C. vol. vii.

F

CHAPTER V.

THE PERSIANS.

"THE PERSIANS” was not produced until six or seven years after the events which it celebrates; and this was perhaps an advantage. For no great event can easily be regarded as an entire whole until some time after its occurrence. Details are at first too prominent; personal or local interests have not yet sunk down into their proper relative importance: it is not fully seen, until later, what was the true beginning and source of the main action, nor when it can be rightly said to have ended-in short, the spectator is too close to the object to see it as a whole, and to grasp the principle of its structure. Now it is the very essence of all tragedy that it should present a great action as a whole-in its greatness, not in its complexity; and in Greek tragedy, through its shortness and simplicity, this character is especially marked. Further, we have seen that the Greek dramatist contemplates an action as part of a course of divine providence; sets it, that is, in its true light as a moral result, and traces throughout it the retributive agency of heaven. Clearly this