"By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap

To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon;
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drownèd honour by the locks;
So he, that doth redeem her thence, might wear
Without co-rival all her dignities."

By the voluntary death of Menaceus victory is on the Theban side. The description of the battle is among the most striking of dramatic war-scenes. A messenger then enters with further tidings. He tells Jocasta that her sons have agreed to spare further shedding of blood, and to decide their quarrel by single combat. Here is a new woe added to the many calamities of the house of Laïus. Jocasta hurries to prevent this unnatural duel, but arrives too late. A second messenger then describes the deadly strife in which the brothers have fallen, and also Jocasta's death by her own hands. The bodies of the two fratricides are brought on the stage, and a funeral wail is sung by Antigone and the Chorus. For her a new tragedy is commencing. Reft of her mother, her betrothed Menaceus, and her brothers, she is forbidden by Creon, now become regent of Thebes, to perform the last functions for her dear Polynices. The tragedy concludes with her declaration that man may make cruel laws, and forbid the rites of sepulture, but she will obey a higher law, that of nature, and do meet honour to the dead. That no circumstance of sorrow may be wanting to Antigone's lot, blind, old, discrowned Edipus is sentenced to banishment for

ever from his late kingdom. His sons unrighteously deposed him; he rashly cursed them in his ire: the curse has been fatal to his whole house, and now falls on his own head. He who, by baffling the Sphinx, won a kingdom, goes forth from it a beggar to eat the bitter bread of exile. With him goes his daughter, the one steadfast star left to guide him on his dark way. The shade of Laïus is at length appeased: the sceptre has for ever departed from the house of Labdacus.

"The Suppliants" is, as regards the time of action, a sequel to "The Phoenicians" and "The Seven against Thebes" of Eschylus. Creon persists in denying the rites of sepulture to the fallen Argive chieftains. The commander of that disastrous expedition, Adrastus, now the sole survivor of the seven, hurries to Eleusis on the Athenian border, accompanied by the widows and sons of the slain, and takes refuge at the altar of Demeter. A passage from "The Two Noble Kinsmen" of Fletcher explains far better than the prologue of the Greek tragedy does the errand of the Suppliants :

"We are six queens, whose sovereigns fell before The wrath of cruel Creon: who endure

The beaks of ravens, talons of the kites,

And pecks of crows, in the foul fields of Thebes :
He will not suffer us to burn their bones,
To urn their ashes, nor to take th' offence
Of mortal loathsomeness from the blest eye
Of holy Phoebus, but infects the winds
With stench of our slain lords. Oh, pity, Duke!
Thou purger of the earth, draw thy feared sword
That does good turns to the world: give us the bones

Of our dead kings, that we may chapel them,
And of thy boundless goodness take some note
That for our crowned heads we have no roof
Save this, which is the lion's and the bear's,
And vault for everything."

"heseus,

Through the mediation of Æthra, mother king of Athens, the Suppliants are enabled to bring their wrongs before him. Theseus at first is unwilling to espouse their cause: to do so will embroil Athens in a war with Thebes. He is by no means a cheerful giver of aid revolving in his soul "the various turns of chance below," he expatiates on the uncertainty of human greatness, and hints that Adrastus himself is an instance of the folly of interfering with other people's business. But Æthra, whose woman's nature is deeply moved by the tears of the widowed queens, will hear of no denial; and Theseus at last, though reluctantly, promises to take up their cause. Just as he is despatching a herald to Creon to demand the bodies of the slain, a Theban messenger comes with a peremptory mandate from Creon that Adrastus and his companions be delivered up. It must be owned that, at this juncture, Theseus is rather a proser. Forgetting the urgency of the case- -that dogs and vultures may already be preying on the dead-he discourses on the comparative merits of aristocratic and popular government, and on the sin of refusing burial even to enemies. Theseus in the end consents to do what, to be done well, ought to be done quickly. He sends back the Theban herald, after rating him soundly, with a stern response to his master. He follows at

the herald's heels, defeats Creon, and brings back to Eleusis the bodies of the Argive princes. The Chorus enters in procession, chanting a dirge. Adrastus speaks the funeral oration. The dead are then placed on a pyre, and when it is kindled, Evadne, wife of the boaster Capaneus, leaps on his pile. Finally, a deity appears as mediator. Minerva ratifies a treaty between Argos and Athens, and predicts that, at no distant day, the now worsted Argos will, in its turn, humble the pride of Thebes.

In this tragedy there is a monotony of woe, not relieved, as in the case of "The Trojan Women" of Euripides, by a series of beautiful choral odes and picturesque situations. The red flames of the six funeral pyres, indeed, must have been effective; and a second Chorus of youths, the orphaned sons of the chieftains, have deepened the pathos excited by the suppliant queens. By it the dramatist employed two of his favourite modes of touching the spectators-the aid of women and the introduction of children. Perhaps he had witnessed that sad and solemn spectacle at which Pericles pronounced the encomium over the firstlings of the slain in the Peloponnesian war, and so transferred to a mimic scene the reality of a people's mourning.

"The Children of Hercules " need not detain us long, its drift being very similar to that of the tragedy of "The Suppliants." Apparently it was written at a time when Argos was recovering some of her earlier importance among Dorian states, owing to the strain put upon the resources of Sparta by the length of her

war with Athens. The Argives, it might be feared, were inclined to throw their weight into the scale of Thebes and Lacedæmon, and stood in need of some timely advice. The children of Hercules, hunted by their enemies, and driven to take sanctuary at Marathon, where the scene of action is laid, were sheltered by Athens, and from these fugitives the Argives of the time of Euripides were supposed to descend. Let Argos now bear in mind this good service: let her remember also the many and grievous wrongs done to her by the cruel and faithless Spartans. If Thebes and the Argive government enabled Sparta to enfeeble Athens, and so disturb the balance of power in Greece, who would be the gainer by such league? Who the loser would be it was not difficult to foresee. When was Sparta, in her prosperity, ever faithful to her allies, or even commonly just? What had Thebes ever done for Argos to make alliance with her desirable? Who had been the real benefactors of the Argive people, their kinsfolk in blood, or the Ionians of Attica? With Athens to aid her, she might regain the position she once held among the Dorian race: but if Athens fell she would be as the Messenians were now, little more than an appanage of the kings or ephors of her powerful neighbour.

Passing over this play as historically rather than dramatically interesting to modern readers, we come now to "The Phrenzy of Hercules," which for some fine scenes in it, and some very curious Euripidean theology, deserves attention. It presents no tokens of having