Page:Euripides (Donne).djvu/179

Rh war with Athens. The Argives, it might be feared, were inclined to throw their weight into the scale of Thebes and Lacedæmon, and stood in need of some timely advice. The children of Hercules, hunted by their enemies, and driven to take sanctuary at Marathon, where the scene of action is laid, were sheltered by Athens, and from these fugitives the Argives of the time of Euripides were supposed to descend. Let Argos now bear in mind this good service: let her remember also the many and grievous wrongs done to her by the cruel and faithless Spartans. If Thebes and the Argive government enabled Sparta to enfeeble Athens, and so disturb the balance of power in Greece, who would be the gainer by such league? Who the loser would be it was not difficult to foresee. When was Sparta, in her prosperity, ever faithful to her allies, or even commonly just? What had Thebes ever done for Argos to make alliance with her desirable? Who had been the real benefactors of the Argive people, their kinsfolk in blood, or the Ionians of Attica? With Athens to aid her, she might regain the position she once held among the Dorian race: but if Athens fell she would be as the Messenians were now, little more than an appanage of the kings or ephors of her powerful neighbour.

Passing over this play as historically rather than dramatically interesting to modern readers, we come now to "The Phrenzy of Hercules," which for some fine scenes in it, and some very curious Euripidean theology, deserves attention. It presents no tokens of having