given to him in commemoration of the victory at Artemisium-the Greek fleet before that battle having been stationed at Chalcis in Euboea. The few traces of his life-history which have been preserved to us are suggestive, as Professor Jebb has well observed, of restlessness from within and from without. He does not seem to have held public offices as Sophocles did, but to have contented himself with the exercise of his profession as a tragic poet. That he associated more or less with Anaxagoras and with Socrates is probable enough, and he certainly partook largely of the intellectual influences of his time. Rumours of his unhappiness in married life are just substantial enough to warrant a hesitating belief, although the comic poets were capable of inventing everything. Like Aeschylus, he withdrew from Athens in his later years, and accepted protection from the "tyrant" Archelaus in Macedonia. It is fabled that like Actaeon he was torn in pieces by hounds; but no allusion to so strange a death occurs amongst the many gibes with which Aristophanes has aspersed his memory. The Bacchae, produced at Athens after his death, is said to have been written in Macedonia. The great period of tragedy is concluded with the death of Sophocles; and it is needless for our purpose to enumerate the lesser lights which for a time continued to shine on the Attic stage, of whose works Aristophanes speaks contemptuously as swallow-like twitterings heard for a little while once for all in spring. But this chapter would close too abruptly without any mention of Agathon, the beloved of Socrates, whose first tragic victory is celebrated in the Symposium of Plato, and whose Flower, already more than once referred to, was a late experiment of the declining art; or of Chaeremon, a poet of the "fleshly school," of whose sensuous descriptions some fragments of striking beauty are preserved; or of Carcinus and Theodectes, whom Aristotle employs to illustrate what is to be avoided. Yet Xenocles, the son of Carcinus, gained the tragic prize against Euripides.1 Tragedy after this became a rhetorical exercise, and the only true arena for dramatic genius was the middle and newer comedy. 1 Müller, Lit. of Greece, p. 383 of Eng. Trans. CHAPTER XI AESCHYLUS THE SEVEN EXTANT PLAYS1 WITH the exception of the Oresteia, which is fairly complete, each of the remaining plays of Aeschylus is, in all probability, a fragment from a greater whole. In judging of the Prometheus or the Seven, not to speak now of the two earlier dramas, it is important to reflect that we are in the same position with regard to them as we might have been with regard to the Choëphoroe or the Eumenides if one of these had alone been left to indicate the grandeur of the entire trilogy. But in every Greek work of art, the spirit of the whole is traceable in every part. The considerate student may gradually come to apprehend the full bearings of what time has spared; and, as the Latin proverb has it, to know the figure of Hercules by the foot,-ex pede Herculem. 1 Books to consult: Miss Swanwick's Aeschylus; Aeschylus in "Blackwood's Classics"; Morshead's House of Atreus, and Supplices; Aeschylus in English Verse (Kegan Paul & Co.), and other translations. It was in Aeschylus, as we have seen, that the art of tragedy grew up by rapid stages, from the choral drama, or cantata, to true dramatic completeness, and it is therefore specially useful in studying him to take note of the chronological order of composition. And it so happens that we have a trustworthy record of the dates at which five out of the seven plays were produced. The Persae was brought out in 472 B.C., the Seven against Thebes in 467 B.C., the Agamemnon, Choëphoroe, and Eumenides, in 458 B.C. For the dates of the Supplices and the Prometheus Bound there is no external evidence. But there are strong internal grounds for placing both of them. The subject of the former play, the daughters of Danaüs, belonged to a cycle of legend which had been treated by Aeschylus' predecessor, Phrynichus; the Chorus is protagonist; the choral numbers are full and perfect, while the dialogue is meagre ; there is very little employment in it for a second actor. It is obvious from what has been previously said, that for all these reasons the play is rightly assigned to the earlier period, and that, on the whole, it may with probability be assumed to have preceded even the Persae. The exact place of the Prometheus is by no means equally clear. But there are strong grounds for thinking that it is not an early play. This is sufficiently proved by the prologos (or initial dialogue) preceding the entrance of the Chorus, by the comparative subordination of the choral element generally, and by the scheme of versification, both lyric and iambic. Mention of Sicily points to a time not far removed from the poet's sojourn at the court of Hiero. (Was it written there ?) The third actor would at least be convenient in the opening scene. But it is uncertain whether the Promethean trilogy came before or after the Oresteia, which in any case registers the high-water mark of Aeschylus' achievement as a dramatic poet. The uncertainty is increased by the fact that the Orestean and Promethean trilogies are different in kind. The Prometheus, then, is to be referred to the decade 466-456, and within these limits a later date is somewhat more probable than an earlier one. Thus we obtain the scheme— The Seven holds a central or intermediate position between the choral play and the fully-developed drama. The first thing which strikes the reader of any one of these works is the presence of the Great Manner," as it has been called, the boldness of |