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 Philoctetes are not less human; but no such glare of lightning flashes in the depths of their natures. At the opening of the play how perfect an embodiment of assured greatness is Œdipus the King, bending with stately tenderness to the trouble of the Theban folk:—

"O my children, latest-born to Cadmus who was of old, why bow ye to me thus beseeching knees, with the wreathed bough of the suppliant in your hands, while the city reeks with incense, rings with prayers for health and cries of woe? I deemed it unmeet, my children, to learn of these things from the mouth of others, and am come here myself, I, whom all men call Œdipus the famous."

And how thoroughly answering to this is the tone in which the priest, the leader of the suppliants, tells the trouble and the faith of Thebes:—

"A blight is on it in the fruit-guarding blossoms of the land, in the herds among the pastures, in the barren pangs of women; and withal that fiery god, the dreadful Plague, has swooped on us, and ravages the town; by whom the house of Cadmus is made waste, but dark Hades rich in groans and tears.

"It is not that we deem thee ranked with gods that I and these children are suppliants at thy hearth; but as deeming thee first of men, not only in life's common chances, but when men have to do with the immortals; thou who earnest to the town of Cadmus and didst rid us of the tax that we paid to the hard songstress,—and this, though thou knewest nothing from us that could help thee, nor hadst been schooled;