Antistrophe III.

Come, then, O come,

Cr.
Shine forth, thou last and lightest of my woes,
Bringing the final and most welcome hour
Of suffering! Come, O come,

That I may view the light of heaven no more.

Ch. These cares respect the future-first befits
To weigh with prudent thought the present crisis.
Let those direct on whom such charge devolves.
Cr. What most my soul desires, I did but make
My first and warmest prayer.
Ch.

Pray now for nothing-
There is no refuge for devoted man,
When fate consigns him to a doom of woe.

Antistrophe IV.

Cr. Lead hence this lifeless shade, far, far away.

Who, though unwilling all,

Slew thee, my son! thee too, O wife beloved!
Ah! wretch! I know not where to look,
Or whither fly. All are against me now-
Fate is itself my foe.

Ch. There is no guide to happiness on earth,
Save wisdom; nor behoves it us to fail

In reverence to the gods! High-sounding vaunts
Inflict due vengeance on the haughty head,
And teach late wisdom to its dark old age.

FROM THE ELECTRA.

A CHARIOT RACE.

THEY took their stand, where the appointed
judges

Had cast their lots and ranged the rival,cars.—
Rang out the brazen trump! Away they bound,
Cheer the hot steeds and shake the slackened
reins;

Unscathed and skilful, in the midmost space,
Left the wild tumult of that tossing storm.
Behind, Orestes, hitherto the last,
Had yet kept back his coursers for the close;
Now one sole rival left-on, on he flew,
And the sharp sound of the impelling scourge
Rang in the keen ears of the flying steeds.-
He nears-he reaches-they are side by side;
Now one-now th' other-by a length the victor.
The courses all are past-the wheels erect-
All safe-when, as the hurrying coursers round
The fatal pillar dash'd, the wretched boy
Slackened the left rein:-On the column's edge
Crash'd the frail axle-headlong from the car,
Caught and all meshed within the reins he fell;
And, masterless, the mad steeds raged along!

Loud from that mighty multitude arose

A shriek-a shout! But yesterday such deedsTo-day such doom!-Now whirled upon the earth;

Now his limbs dash'd aloft, they dragged him—
those

Wild horses-till, all gory, from the wheels
Released, and no man, not his nearest friends,
Could in that mangled corpse have traced Orestes.

FROM THE AJAX.
AJAX'S DYING SPEECH.

AND thou that makst high heaven thy chariot
course,

O Sun-when gazing on my fatherland,
Draw back thy golden rein, and tell my woes
To the old man, my father-and to her
Who nursed me at her bosom-my poor mother!
There will be wailing through the echoing walls
When-but away with thoughts like these!-the
hour

on me!

Did I say Death? It was a waste of words.
We shall be friends hereafter.-Tis the Day,
Present and breathing round me, and the car
Of the sweet sun, that never shall again
Receive my greeting!-Henceforth Time is sun-
less,

As with a body, the large space is filled
With the huge clangour of the rattling cars:
· High whirl aloft the dust-clouds ;-blent together Brings on the ripening deed.—Death, Death, look
Each presses each-and the lash rings-and loud
Snort the wild steeds, and from their fiery breath,
Along their manes, and down the circling wheels,
Scatter the flaking foam. Orestes still,
Aye, as he swept around the perilous pillar
Last in the course, wheel'd in the rushing axle;
The left rein curbed,—that on the dexter hand
Flung loose. So on erect the chariots rolled!
Sudden the Enian's fierce and headlong steeds
Broke from the bit—and, as the seventh time now
The course was circled, on the Lybian car
Dash'd their wild fronts :-then order changed
to ruin:

Car crashed on car-the wide Crissæan plain
Was, sea-like, strewn with wrecks; the Athenian

saw,

And Day, a thing that is not!-Beautiful Light,
My Salamis-my country-and the floor
Of my dear household hearth-and thou, bright
Athens,

Thou,-for thy sons and I were boys together-
Fountains and rivers, and ye Trojan plains,
I loved you as my fosterers,-fare ye well!
Take in these words, the last Earth hears from
Ajax-

Slacken'd his speed, and, wheeling round the All else unspoken, in a spectre land,

marge,

15

I'll whisper to the dead.

K2

CRATES.

[About 450 B. C.]

AN Athenian actor and writer of Comedies, | Aristotle, who departed from the satirical form whereof the titles of twenty-six have come of Comedy, and framed his plots from gendown to us. He was the first, according to eral stories.

Late in life Euripides took up his abode at the court of King Archelaus, in Macedonia, where, in the society of Agathon, the tragic poet, Timotheus, the famous musician, Zeuxis, the celebrated painter, and other eminent men, whom the liberality and taste of the monarch had attracted to Pella, he closed his life in the seventy

* We also learn from the same authority, that, in after years, when the Lacedemonian general, Lysander, took Athens, it was proposed in a council of war to raze the city and convert its site into a desert; but that, during

AMONGST the Athenians who sought refuge in | reciting and teaching such passages of his poems Salamis from the invading army of Xerxes, was as they chanced to remember.* Clito, the wife of Mnesarchus, and mother of Euripides; and in that island, and on the very day of the great victory obtained by the Greeks over the Persians near its shores, was the poet born. His name, which is formed like a patronymic, from "Euripus," the scene of the first successful resistance to the Persian navy, shows how alive were the minds of his parents to the stirring events of that momentous crisis. By his father, a man of family and fortune, Euripides was supplied with all the means of education. He studied under Anaxagoras, Prodicus, Protagoras, and the best masters of the age; and was so well versed even in the gymnastic exercises of the day, that he carried off two prizes in the Eleusinian and Thesean games, when only seventeen years old. To his other accomplishments, he added a taste for painting, and some of his pictures were preserved for many years at Megara. His first tragedy, the Peliades, was brought out in 455 B. C., and obtained for him the third prize; but on two subsequent occasions (in 441 and 428, B. C.,) he bore away the first honours. His reputation had now spread far and wide, and we are told by Plutarch, that some of the Athenians who had survived the Syracusan expedition, obtained their liberty or a livelihood by

the debate, at the banquet of the chief officers, a certain
Electra" of Euripides; which so affected the hearers
Phocian sung some fine anastrophics from a chorus of the
that they declared it an unworthy act to reduce a place,
so celebrated for the production of illustrious men, to
total ruin and desolation. The lines are at verse 168.
Milton has celebrated the circumstance in his VIIIth.
Sonnet.

Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bower:
The great Emathian conqueror bade spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground: and the repeated air
Of sad Electra's poet had the power

To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.

By the epithet "sad," Milton denominates the pathetic character of Euripides.-See T. Wharton's notes on Milton.

fifth year of his age and the 406th B. C., the same | of his two wives, Melito and Cherila, and a desire day on which Dionysius assumed the tyranny of Syracuse. Euripides was entombed among the kings of Macedonia, at Pella, but the Athenians, though unable to obtain his ashes, erected a cenotaph to his memory.

The cause of his quitting Athens is unknown. Possibly it might have been the same as had occasioned his misogynism, namely, the infidelity

of escaping from the scene of such domestic discomfort, especially as his misfortunes were continually recalled to his remembrance by the taunts and jeers of his merciless and unscrupulous enemy, Aristophanes.

Of his many compositions, sixteen tragedies, two tragi-comedies, and a satirical drama, with several fragments of lost plays, have come down to us.

FROM THE ALCESTIS.

ADMETUS, king of Pheræ, in Thessaly, on his first accession to the regal power, had kindly received Apollo, who was banished from heaven, and compelled, for a certain space, to serve a mortal. The god was not ungrateful, and when Admetus lay ill of a disease, from which there was no recovery, prevailed on the Fates to spare his life, on condition that some near relation would consent to die for him; but neither his father nor mother, nor any of his friends, were willing to pay the ransom. His wife Alcestis, on hearing this, generously devotes her own life to save that of her husband; but while the whole family are plunged in grief for her loss, and are occupied in celebrating her funeral obsequies, Hercules arrives at Pheræ, and being hospitably entertained there, and informed of his host's distress, goes in pursuit of Orcus, who is conveying his prey to the infernal regions, overtakes him, and recovers Alcestis, whom he restores to the arms of her husband.

THE CHORUS IN TWO DIVISIONS.

1st Semich. Why this silence so profound, In the house, and all around?

2d Semich. Why is there none to let us know If for the dead our tears should flow;

Or if the queen, so dear to sight,
Yet lives and looks upon the light,
The wife that is, by common fame,
The best that ever had the name?

1st Semich. The silence, of itself alone, Is token plain she is not gone.

[A female servant is seen coming from the palace. Ch. But from the house a weeping woman

comes.

Serv. Who will deny it? Oh! what must
she be

That can outparagon her excellence?
How can a wife show greater proof of love
Than giving her own life to save her lord's?
But this the country round already knows;
Ye'll be astonished more at what I'll tell you.
When she perceived the appointed day was

come,

She bathed in water from the running stream,
And from the cedar chest took rich attire,
Her lovely person carefully arraying,
And, standing at the sacred hearth, exclaimed:-
"Queen Vesta! I am going now below,
And kneel and pray to thee the latest time,
To guard the children I leave motherless;
A loving consort for the boy provide,
And for the girl a brave and noble spouse;
Nor let them die untimely as I do,
But with all blessings in their fatherland
Bring to completion a life full of joy."
And then she wept, and every altar crowned,
Stripping the foliage from the myrtle boughs,
And prayed without a tear, without a groan;
Nor did the coming woe change in the least
Her bright complexion. To the bridal room,
And bed, she next advanced, but there she wept,
And said; "Oh bed, where virgin to his arms

I came, for whom I die to-day, farewell!

I hate thee not, though thou hast brought me

death;

Loth was I to betray my lord and thee.
Thee will another after me possess,
Not chaster, but perchance more fortunate."
Then on the bed she flung herself, and kissed it,
And from her eyes let fall a flood of tears,
At last she rose and turned to leave the room,
Oft made the attempt, and often she returned,

What shall we hear? when our lords suffer aught, And cast herself again upon the bed.
Our mournful sympathy is justified;

We fain would learn if she be dead or not.
Serv. She's as it were laid out, near her last
gasp.

Ch. Ah, wretched husband, losing what a wife!
Serv. He knows not yet, but soon will feel the
loss.

Ch. Is there no longer hope of saving her?
Serv. It is the day appointed her to die.
Ch. Are not the fitting preparations made?
Serv. The pomp is ready for her burial.

Her children, clinging to her garments, wept;
She took them in her arms, and kissed them both,
First one, then the other, as about to die:
The servants, pitying her, were all in tears;
She gave her hand to all, was spoken to,
And for the meanest had a parting word
Such woe is working in our master's house!
But had he died, 'twould have been o'er with

him;

Escaping death he has a lifelong grief.

Ch. Surely Admetus groans, with grief opprest,

Ch. Let her then know she dies with best If he must lose so excellent a wife.

renown,

As noblest wife of all beneath the sun.

Serv. He weeps indeed, sustains her in his arms,

ALCESTIS enters, supported by ADMETUs, and ac- Amid thy groans of childbirth comfort thee!

Would that it did on me depend
That thou should'st to the light ascend!
From the realm of Dis supreme,
Where Cocytus rolls his stream,
From the land of shadows black
Would that I could waft thee back,
Bring thee up to earth again
By the river Subterrane!
Thou, of women thou alone,
For thy husband's life thine own
Didst to Hades freely give,

Dying that thy spouse might live.
Lightly lie the earth o'er thee!
If with other ever he

Link in love, his children's hate
And our scorn upon him wait.

His mother was not willing found
To hide her body under ground,
Was not willing, though she bore him,
To the grave to go before him;
Nor did his old father dare,
When they both had hoary hair,
Neither of them dared to go,

As his substitute, below.

But thou didst-and in the hour

Of thy youth's fresh-breathing flower,
Ere life's loveliest hues had fled,
Dying in thy husband's stead.

Enter HERCULES.

Her. Phereans, is Admetus now at home?
Ch. He is within; but tell us, Hercules,
What brings you to this part of Thessaly?
Her. Eurystheus has appointed me a task.
Ch. Where must you travel, and for what
exploit ?

Her. To Thrace, and for the steeds of Diomede.
Ch. How can you do this? do you know the
man?

Her. No! I was ne'er in the Bistonian land.
Ch. Those steeds cannot be won without a

battle.

Her. Whom does their trainer boast of as his sire?

Ch. The king of Thracian shields, enrich'd with gold,

Calls Mars his sire.

Adm. To-day I have to bury somebody.
Her. 'Tis not one of your children? Heaven
forbid !

Adm. My children are within, alive and well.
Her. If 'tis thy father, he went full of years.
Adm. My father and my mother are alive.
Her. It cannot be Alcestis that is dead?
Adm. Of her I have to speak a twofold tale.
Her. Speak you of her as living, or as dead?
Adm. She is and is not! but she is my grief.
Her. I am no wiser, for you speak in riddles.
Adm. Do you not know the doom imposed on
her?

Her. I know she undertook to die for you.
Adm. How is she living then, if bound to this?
Her. Weep not beforehand; wait until the

event.

Adm. One just about to die is dead already,
And one that's dead no longer is in being.

Her. To be, and not to be, are different things.
Adm. You judge in one way-in another I.
Her. But wherefore are you weeping? Who
is dead?

Adm. A woman:-we were speaking of a

woman.

Her. One of thy blood, or of no kin to thee?
Adm. Not of my blood, but to my house most

dear.

Her. And did she in thy house depart this life?
Adm. Her father being dead, she lived with us.
Her. Oh, that you were not mourning!
Adm.
With what aim
Do you say this?
Her.
To seek another host.
Adm. That must not be; let not such ill occur.
Her. A guest is grievous to a house in grief.
Adm. The dead are dead: come, go within at

once.

Her. To feast with mourners is a shameful
thing.

Adm. The guest-rooms are apart.
Her.

I'll owe you thousand thanks.

Nay! let me go,

It must not be;

Adm.
Elsewhere you must not go: lead on, and throw
(to an attendant)
The guest-rooms open; bid the purveyor
Provide fit entertainment for my guest;

Her.
Still tasking me with arduous enterprise;
If I must with the sons of Mars contend,
First with Lycaon, and with Cycnus next,
Now with a third, this king and his fierce steeds.
But none shall ever see Alcmena's son
Shrink from encounter with a hostile hand.

Thus does fate deal with me, Shut close the doors of the mid-hall, lest groans

Ch. And, lo! Admetus from the palace comes.
Enter ADMETUS.

(It were not well) should reach the feaster's ears, And with unwelcome grief mar his content.

[HERCULES goes into the palace. Ch. What means this? When so great mischance has fallen,

Is it a season for receiving guests

Adm. Had I driven from my house a new-come guest,

Would you have praised me? No! I had not lost Adm. Hail, son of Jove, prince of the blood My grief, but rather hospitality; of Perseus!

Her. Admetus, prince of the Thessalians, hail! Adm. Would that your "hail" was suited to my state,

For your good will toward me well I know.

Her. Why are your locks in sign of mourning shorn?

And such impeachment of my house had been
Another added to my present ills.
Besides, when I to thirsty Argos go,
Then this my guest is my most worthy host.
Ch. Why did you then from such a friend
conceal
Your present trouble?