I the while, in bridal glee Lift the glowing, glittering fire. Flames the torch and rings the lyre. My father Priam's blissful fate. To my virgin bridal bed."* In another choral song, the rejoicing of Troy, at the very moment when the Greeks, coming out from their ambush in the wooden horse, were stealthily creeping to unbar the gates and admit the host from without, is described :— "Shouted all the people loud On the rock-built height that stood- O'er the toil, the triumph, spread And many a Phrygian air they sang, * Dean Milman-"Fragments from the Greek Tragedians," from which volume the following translations are taken. And maidens danced with lightsome feet And every home was blazing bright, As the glowing festal light Its rich and ruddy splendour streamed, Where high and full the mantling wine-cup beamed. All at once the cry of slaughter, The cowering infants on their mother's breasts Forth stalked the ambushed Mars, and his fell work began." "Sad," said the aged Manoah in 'Samson Agonistes,' "Sad, but thou knowest to Israelites not saddest, and probably Athenians, who had laid waste many cities, were not displeased by a representation of the destruction of Troy. With great skill, indeed, Euripides has shown that the victors are scarcely less deserving of pity than the vanquished. In every Grecian state during the ten years' siege—and what was true of the Trojan was true also of the Peloponnesian warmany had been made widows and orphans. While the Achæan kings and heroes were encamped on the Trojan strand, their wives have been false to them, usurpers have occupied their thrones, or suitors to their queens have been faring sumptuously at their cost. The prophecies of Cassandra point to further calamities. A bloody bath awaits Agamemnon; some, like Idomeneus and Diomedes, must take refuge on alien shores;. thwarting winds and stormy seas will keep for many years from their kingdoms Ulysses and Menelaus; the greater Ajax has been struck by mania, and falls by his own hand; and Ajax Teucer will soon be transfixed by a thunderbolt launched by the outraged Minerva. As in several Euripidean tragedies, women play an important part in this one. The daughters of Priam and their attendants are distributed among the black-bearded Achæan captains-Cassandra is allotted to the "king of men;" Andromache to Pyrrhus, the son of him who slew her husband; her son Astyanax, lest he prove a second Hector, and avenge his father's death on Argos or Sparta, is hurled from a tower; and Hecuba is assigned to Ulysses, whose wiles, quite as much as his compeers' weapons, have caused the taking of Troy. As in the "Suppliant Women," fire is employed to render the final scene effective. All of Troy that escaped on the night when it was stormed is now given over to the flames. The tragedy closes with the fall of column and roof, of temple and palace, into a fiery abyss, and by the red light of the conflagration the Trojan women are led off to the Grecian galleys. Passing over the "Electra," that the Tale of Troy may not weary English readers, and also because what is good and what is bad in it* would require comment for which there is not room, the "Orestes" comes next in order in this batch of Euripidean tragedies. "The scenes of this drama," says one who had good right to * "Magnæ virtutes nec minora vitia " would be an appropriate motto for the "Electra " of Euripides. speak on the subject of Greek Plays,* "afford one of the most beautiful exhibitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas of Euripides can furnish. To the English reader it may be necessary to say, that the situation at the opening of the drama is that of a brother attended only by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, haunted by Furies), and in circumstances of immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard from nominal friends." As to the Furies, Longinus says that "the poet himself sees them, and what his imagination conceives, he almost compels his audience to see also." We do not know how the spectators welcomed this tragedy when it was performed; but in later times no one of all the Attic tragedies was so much approved as this one. It is more frequently ⚫cited than all the plays of Eschylus and Sophocles put together. The depth of its domestic pathos touched the Grecian world, however it may have affected a Dionysiac audience. As in the "Libation Bearers" of Eschylus, Orestes has no sooner avenged the most foul and unnatural murder of his father than mania seizes him. When the first scene opens, he is lying haggard, blood-besprent, unshorn, unkempt, and in sordid garments, on a couch, beside which, for six days and six nights, his sister Electra has kept watch. During all that time he has not tasted food: in his lucid intervals he is feeble and fever-stricken; at others he sees in pursuit of him his mother's vengeful Furies. Menelaus, his uncle, * De Quincey. has recently returned from Troy, accompanied by his wife, Helen, and their daughter, Hermione. Here for the wretched maniac appears to be a gleam of hope: for surely one so near of kin cannot fail to aid him against the citizens of Argos who are calling for his death, or at least perpetual banishment as a matricide, taken red-handed. Helen and Electra, after some difference on the subject, agree that Hermione shall go with offerings to Clytemnestra's grave. The Chorus, composed of Argive women, sing round the sick man's bed. Their theme is the alternate ravings and rational moods of Orestes, nor do they omit to celebrate the awful power of the Furies. And now Menelaus enters, but it soon appears that his nephew will have little help from him. He discovers that Orestes and Electra are to be tried on the capital charge of murder on that very day, by the assembled Argive people. The unhappy culprit pleads strongly for his sister and himself, and their just claim for the aid and protection of the Spartan king. A new enemy now appears. Old Tyndareus, the father of Helen and Clytemnestra, arrives, and by his arguments against Orestes, decides his wavering son-in-law to remain neuter in the controversy. By craft and shifts alone will Menelaus take the part of the brother and sister. On his part the enraged Tyndareus will do all he can to procure their condemnation. Pylades, their only friend, urges Orestes to present himself to the assembly, plead his own cause, and if possible, by his eloquence, work on the feelings of his judges. He attends, but fails in obtaining a milder sentence than death-the only concession is, that Elec |