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V.] intentionally assigned them to a body of foreign maidens who could only feel a general interest in the fortunes of the actors. The crowding of incident was doubtless intended as a contrast to Æschylus' Seven against Thebes, which with all its unity of purpose and martial fire, is wanting in dramatic interest. Indeed, the long description of the seven chiefs in that play is directly criticised by Euripides (vv. 751–752) as undramatic. Racine's Thébaïde ou les Frères Ennemis is the most famous modern version, but was an early play, with defects for which the poet himself apologises. But both Racine, and Alfieri (in his Polinice), make divers changes in the character drawing, which are not improvements on the great original. Schiller has not only given an excellent literal version of part of the play, but has copied several scenes in his Braut von Messina.

56. The Andromache.—We find a combination of two distinct subjects in two other plays; one perhaps the poorest, and the other among the best of the poet's works. The former, the Andromache, is, like the Supplices, occasional in its political complexion, being a bitter attack on Spartan honour and morals in the persons of Hermione and Menelaus. But Andromache is the bond uniting the two parts of the play, which re-opens with the appearance of Orestes and the flight of Hermione.

The date of the play is uncertain, as we are told it was not brought out at Athens, perhaps only after the poet's death. The bitter allusions to Sparta would suit any time in the Peloponnesian war. It has, indeed, quite the complexion of a political pamphlet written under the guise of a tragedy. Andromache, who is now the slave and concubine of Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, appears as a suppliant, telling her tale and mourning her woes in elegiac lament. Her protector is absent, and she is being persecuted by Hermione, the lawful wife of Neoptolemus, and her father Menelaus, who wish to slay her child. She is persuaded to leave the altar to which she had fled, by