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V.] human sorrow or awful pictures of the tyranny of fate. The line of demarcation between these and the dramas of plot is of course not very clear, and opinions may vary as to the classing of particular plays. But as no fair critic would claim for the Supplices of Æschylus any proper plot, so it is certain that this oldest and simplest form of "" in which nothing was done, was revived by Euripides for the purpose of stringing together pathetic scenes and musical effects, without elaborating an ingenious and complicated story.

51. His Supplices, mainly intended as an encomium of Athens in the person of Theseus, turns on the rescuing of the bodies of the "Seven against Thebes" who had fallen before its gates, and were lying unburied. The woes of the bereaved suppliants, and the despair and suicide of Evadne, Capaneus' widow, alternate with political discussions between the Theban herald and Theseus in affording the matter for the play. The date is uncertain, probably about 420 B.C., shortly after the battle of Delium, and it was probably not far removed in production from the Heracleidæ, of which the plan is very similar, though the polities are widely different—the one supporting Argos, and the other very hostile to it. Nay, in the Supplices alliance and eternal friendship with Argos are solemnly inculcated. Now if it indeed be true that these two plays were produced within a short interval of time, during the shifting interests and alliances in the later part of the Peloponnesian war, it will prove how completely Euripides regarded those pieces as temporary political advices, varying with the situation, and of which the inconsistences were not more important than those in a volume of any statesman's political speeches. I think moreover that in the general discussion (between Theseus and the Theban herald) on monarchy, democracy, and general statecraft, which stops the action of the play, we may clearly perceive a growing tendency in tragedy to become a written record, and to appeal to a reading public, beyond the listening crowd in the theatre. Euripides is in this play so