Page:Aeschylus.djvu/114

102 that he had died with them. The rest of the play is but one long wail. "I have no voice," the Chorus says,—

They ask after all the chiefs,—after Pharnaces and Dotamas,—

And in every gloomy pause Xerxes replies that they are dead—drowned, or killed in the shock of battle.

The climax of disaster and disgrace is reached in the condition of the king himself.

And the irony of the whole, and its bearing on Athenian prowess, is summed up:—