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90 interesting variations both of nature and of circumstances.

64. Polyxena.—I will commence with Polyxena, the virgin daughter of Hecuba, who is summoned hastily from within by her distracted mother, and informed that the Greeks have determined to sacrifice her on Achilles' tomb. Her first thought (v. 198) is pity and grief for her mother's bereavement, whom she may no longer console as her fellow-slave. As for her own life she does not give it a thought. And after Hecuba's long pleading with Odysseus, she interferes to cut short the discussion; she consoles herself by enumerating the ills of slavery, in comparison with her former royal life, and departs with an affectionate farewell to her mother, and the inevitable Greek appeal to the sun, which she beholds for the last time. At the tomb she calmly prays the Greeks not to bind her, as she is ashamed, having lived a princess, to die a slave, and she offers herself without flinching to the executioner. (Hecuba vv. 174–584.)

There is here the greatest nobility and purity of character, but the sacrifice is softened to the victim by her family misfortunes, and but for her tender and devoted affection for her bereaved mother, she seems more ready to die than to live. But she dies at the hands of enemies, and to lay the troubled spirit of the destroyer of her house. Thus she passes from the stage, a splendid episode in the sorrows of the Trojan queen.

65. Macaria.—Very similar is the poet's conception of Macaria in the Heracleidæ, but with many variations of great interest. The harried children of Heracles, with their grandmother Alcmene, and family friend and tutor Iolaus, both decrepit with age, have at last found an apparent refuge with Demophon, king of Athens, when an oracle announces that only by the death of a noble virgin can victory be secured against the advancing host of Eurystheus. Macaria, one of the children, comes out to learn the cause of Iolaus' excitement, and apologises for her boldness in so