Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/241

Rh moment of his life, and that his poetry had failed to satisfy him. It often leaves that impression, even at its most splendid heights.

Of the ninety plays Æschylus wrote, we possess seven. The earliest, on internal grounds, is the Suppliant-Women—a most quaint and beautiful work, like one of those archaic statues which stand with limbs stiff and countenance smiling and stony. The subject, too, is of the primitive type, more suited for a cantata than for a play. The suppliants are the fifty daughters of Danaus, who have fled to Argos to avoid marrying their cousins, the fifty sons of Ægyptus. Their horror is evidence of a time when the marriage of first cousins was counted incestuous. They appeal for protection to Pelasgus, king of Argos, who refers the question to the Demos. The Demos accepts the suppliants, and the proud Egyptian herald is defied. The other plays of the trilogy had more action. In the Makers of the Bride-Bed* the sons of Ægyptus follow the Danaids, conquer Danaus in battle, and insist on the marriage. Danaus, preferring murder to incest, commands his daughters to stab their husbands on their bridal night; all do so except Hypermêstra, who is put on trial in the Danaides* for marriage with a cousin and for filial disobedience, and is acquitted by the help of Aphrodite. Our play seems to have been acted on the old round dancing-floor, with a platform in the middle, and images round it. There is no palace front; and the permanent number of fifty in the chorus throughout the trilogy suggests the idea that the old round choir may have been still undivided.

The Persæ (472) was the second piece of a trilogy. The first had the name of Phîneus,* the blind prophet