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 division, or the constituents whom they represent. An Athenian dramatist had for his hearers, in the theatre of Dionysus, many thousands of the men who, the next day, might be called upon to decide a question of policy in the assembly, or to try, in a law-court, one of those cases in which the properly legal issues were often involved with considerations of a social or moral kind. Even Tragedy, in its loftiest and severest form, might be the instrument, in a skilful hand, of inculcating views or tendencies which the poet advocated—nay, even of urging or opposing a particular measure. Thus, in his Furies, Aeschylus finds occasion to encourage his fellow-citizens in their claim to a disputed possession in the Troad, and utters a powerful protest against the proposal to curtail the powers of the Areopagus. He becomes, for the moment, the mouthpiece of a party opposed to such reform. In verses like the following, every one can recognise a ring as directly political as that of any leading article or pamphlet. "In this place"—says the Athene of Aeschylus—that is, on the hill of Ares, the seat of the Court menaced with reform—

"Awe kin to dread shall stay the citizens         From sinning in the darkness or the light,          While their own voices do not change the laws...          Between unruliness and rule by one          I bid my people reverence a mean,          Not banish all things fearful from the State.          For, with no fear before him, who is just?          In such a righteous dread, in such an awe,          Ye shall possess a bulwark of the land,