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164 ever from his late kingdom. His sons unrighteously deposed him; he rashly cursed them in his ire: the curse has been fatal to his whole house, and now falls on his own head. He who, by baffling the Sphinx, won a kingdom, goes forth from it a beggar to eat the bitter bread of exile. With him goes his daughter, the one steadfast star left to guide him on his dark way. The shade of Laïus is at length appeased: the sceptre has for ever departed from the house of Labdacus.

"The Suppliants" is, as regards the time of action, a sequel to "The Phœnicians" and "The Seven against Thebes" of Æschylus. Creon persists in denying the rites of sepulture to the fallen Argive chieftains. The commander of that disastrous expedition, Adrastus, now the sole survivor of the seven, hurries to Eleusis on the Athenian border, accompanied by the widows and sons of the slain, and takes refuge at the altar of Demeter. A passage from "The Two Noble Kinsmen" of Fletcher explains far better than the prologue of the Greek tragedy does the errand of the Suppliants:—

We are six queens, whose sovereigns fell before

The wrath of cruel Creon: who endure

The beaks of ravens, talons of the kites,

And pecks of crows, in the foul fields of Thebes:

He will not suffer us to burn their bones,

To urn their ashes, nor to take th' offence

Of mortal loathsomeness from the blest eye

Of holy Phœbus, but infects the winds

With stench of our slain lords. Oh, pity, Duke!

Thou purger of the earth, draw thy feared sword

That does good turns to the world: give us the bones