Page:Suppliant Maidens (Morshead) 1883.djvu/75

Rh (Poet. Scen. Dind. ed. v., fr. 40–42, 72. Hermann, Æsch., vol. v. i. pp. 313, 320, 329–334). From these we learn with certainty that a play of Æschylus called "Danaides" existed. An interesting fragment of this play, part of a speech by Aphrodite, has been preserved by Athenaeus (xiii. p. 600 A.). Its resemblance to passages of Lucretius is striking, and suggests a common origin. Unfortunately, there is too little of it to enable us to judge whether Aphrodite is speaking to persuade the maidens to marriage, to arraign them for the murder of their lords, or to exculpate Hypermnestra for yielding to love and pity, as against her father's command. All that can be said with certainty is, that Aphrodite is urging her power and universal prerogative.

Very faint traces (Herm. fr. 5) remain of a play called "Ægyptii," or perhaps "Ægyptiadæ;" a fainter trace still (fr. 70) of one called "Thalamopoioi" = "The preparers of the chamber." The latter, Hermann, with laborious ingenuity, strives to identify, partly from its title, as the middle play of this trilogy.

Learned scholars may well be able to draw, from these fragments and other collateral sources, more certain knowledge, with respect to the two lost plays of the trilogy, than any which is at present accessible to me. I venture, however, not without misgiving, on some general reflections which may throw a faint light on the problem.

The wanderings of Io, the Argive ancestress of the suppliant maidens, are fully told or foretold in the "Prometheus;" they are recounted also in the second chorus (ll. 524–599) of the present play. The intermediate ancestry is also recorded (ll. 310–321): the cause and circumstances of the maidens' flight are also fully explained in the introductory chant. It is difficult, so far as the legend is known to us, to imagine a subject-matter, at once fresh and adequate, for a drama preceding the "Suppliant Maidens." It is, perhaps, harder still, as I have said above, to fancy a single subsequent play containing all the sequel of the story, from the granting of protection by the King of Argos to the acquittal of the heroines after their husbands' murder. The close packing of such a drama would render it curiously unlike any surviving play of Æschylus.

On these grounds, and from a general impression, which it would be useless to attempt to define, that the "Suppliant Maidens" reads like the commencement of a dramatic story, I incline to accept Hermann's view, that the trilogy began with the "Suppliant Maidens," and closed with the "Danaides." What the middle play was called, whether "Ægyptii," "Ægyptiadæ," or "Thalamopoioi," I cannot, even