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Under the first crushing force of this announcement Atossa is silent. The Chorus are loud in their cries, but the queen speaks no word; and when at last she finds a voice, she dares not utter the question that is nearest to her heart, but asks, Who is not fallen?

The messenger answers her meaning,—

Then comes a list of the fallen; a list as long as, and even more beautiful than, that which the Chorus gave of the chiefs in their hour of pride. It is doubtless imitated from Homer, and has some of those touches of pathos in which Virgil delights on a similar occasion.

Our sympathy is roused for the hero of Lerna, just as in the Æneid for Rhipeus, or Panthus,—