Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/328

 810 HISTORY OF GREi'CK. recalled to them their own misfortunes." 1 The piece was forbid- den to be afterwards acted, and has not come down to us. Some critics have supposed that Herodotus has not correctly assigned the real motive which determined the Athenians to impose this fine. 2 For it is certain that the subjects usually selected for trag- edy were portions of heroic legend, and not matters of recent history ; so that the Athenians might complain of Phrynichus on the double ground, for having violated an established canon of propriety, as well as for touching their sensibilities too deeply. Still, I see no reason for doubting that the cause assigned by He- rodotus is substantially the true one ; but it is very possible that Phrynichus, at an age when tragic poetry had not yet reached its full development, might touch this very tender subject with a rough and offensive hand, before a people who had fair reason to dread the like cruel fate for themselves. 2Eschylus, in his Persas, would naturally carry with him the full tide of Athenian sympa- thy, while dwelling on the victories of Salamis and Plataaa. But to interest the audience in Persian success and Grecian suffer- ing, was a task in which much greater poets than Phrynichus would have failed, and which no judicious poet would have undertaken. The sack of Magdeburg, by Count Tilly, in the Thirty Years' war, was not likely to be endured as the subject of dramatic representation in any Protestant town of Germany. 1 Herodot. v, 21, if uvap^Tiaavra oiKijta KOKU: comnare vii, i52; *lso, Kallisthenes ap. Strabo, xiv, p. 635, and Plutarch. Pne^a. RtipubL Go- rend. p. 814. 9 See Welcker Griechische Trefodien- voL i- n. X&.