Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/136

132 insulted the altars of the gods and defiled virgins in holy places. Athena herself is now turned against her people. Their great fleet, flushed with conquest and stained with sin, is just about to set sail: Athena has asked Zeus the Father for vengeance against it, and Zeus has given it into her hand. She and Poseidon swear alliance; the storm shall break as soon as the fleet sets sail, and the hungry rocks of the Aegean be glutted with wrecked ships and dying men (95 ff.).

How are ye blind Ye treaders down of Cities; ye that cast Temples to desolation and lay waste Tombs, the untrodden sanctuaries where lie The ancient dead, yourselves so soon to die!

And the angry presences vanish into the night. Were the consciences of the sackers of Melos quite easy during that prologue?

Then the day dawns and the play begins, and we see what, in plain words, the great glory has amounted to. We see the shattered walls and some poor temporary huts where once was a city; and presently we see a human figure rising wearily from sleep. It is an old woman, very tired, her head and her back aching from the night on the hard ground. The old woman is Hecuba, lately the queen of