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VIII.] showing, I think, that this once popular measure was not considered appropriate in dramatic poetry.

95. I will notice in conclusion yet another use of lyric metres which is peculiarly effective in Euripides—the combination of staid iambics with the most agitated lyrics, in dialogues where the emotions of the speakers are widely different. Several signal instances occur to me. In the Alcestis, Admetus appears leading out and supporting his dying wife. He expresses his calmer grief in iambics, while her visions of the kingdom of the dead, of the gloomy boat and impatient Charon, interrupt him in agitated lyric verse. Similarly, in the Raging Heracles, when Theseus enters (v. 1163) as a dignified stranger, and marvels at the confusion of the house and the bodies of the dead, the aged Amphitryon answers his iambic questioning in extraordinarily hurried and agitated metre (resolved dochmiacs), which give a peculiarly dramatic effect to a splendid scene. I have already cited above (§ 49) similar passages from the Hippolytus.