speak on the subject of Greek Plays,[1] "afford one of the most beautiful exhibitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas of Euripides can furnish. To the English reader it may be necessary to say, that the situation at the opening of the drama is that of a brother attended only by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, haunted by Furies), and in circumstances of immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard from nominal friends." As to the Furies, Longinus says that "the poet himself sees them, and what his imagination conceives, he almost compels his audience to see also." We do not know how the spectators welcomed this tragedy when it was performed; but in later times no one of all the Attic tragedies was so much approved as this one. It is more frequently cited than all the plays of Æschylus and Sophocles put together. The depth of its domestic pathos touched the Grecian world, however it may have affected a Dionysiac audience.
As in the "Libation Bearers" of Æschylus, Orestes has no sooner avenged the most foul and unnatural murder of his father than mania seizes him. When the first scene opens, he is lying haggard, blood-besprent, unshorn, unkempt, and in sordid garments, on a couch, beside which, for six days and six nights, his sister Electra has kept watch. During all that time he has not tasted food: in his lucid intervals he is feeble and fever-stricken; at others he sees in pursuit of him his mother's vengeful Furies. Menelaus, his uncle,
- ↑ De Quincey.
