thwarting winds and stormy seas will keep for many years from their kingdoms Ulysses and Menelaus; the greater Ajax has been struck by mania, and falls by his own hand; and Ajax Teucer will soon be transfixed by a thunderbolt launched by the outraged Minerva. As in several Euripidean tragedies, women play an important part in this one. The daughters of Priam and their attendants are distributed among the black-bearded Achaean captains—Cassandra is allotted to the "king of men;" Andromache to Pyrrhus, the son of him who slew her husband; her son Astyanax, lest he prove a second Hector, and avenge his father's death on Argos or Sparta, is hurled from a tower; and Hecuba is assigned to Ulysses, whose wiles, quite as much as his compeers' weapons, have caused the taking of Troy. As in the "Suppliant Women," fire is employed to render the final scene effective. All of Troy that escaped on the night when it was stormed is now given over to the flames. The tragedy closes with the fall of column and roof, of temple and palace, into a fiery abyss, and by the red light of the conflagration the Trojan women are led off to the Grecian galleys.
Passing over the "Electra," that the Tale of Troy may not weary English readers, and also because what is good and what is bad in it[1] would require comment for which there is not room, the "Orestes" comes next in order in this batch of Euripidean tragedies. "The scenes of this drama," says one who had good right to
- ↑ "Magnæ virtutes nec minora vitia" would be an appropriate motto for the "Electra" of Euripides.
