delegation of industry to the slave. That audience was probably the
liveliest, most quick-witted, most appreciative, and most critical
that the world ever saw. Prizes were given to the authors of the best
pieces. Each tragedian exhibited three pieces, which at first formed a
connected series, though afterwards this rule was disregarded. After
the three tragic pieces was performed a satyric drama, to relieve the
mind from the strain of tragedy, and perhaps also as a conventional
tribute to the jollity of the god of wine. In the Elizabethan Drama
the tragic and comic are blended as they are in life.

The subjects were taken usually from mythology, especially from the
circle of legends relating to the siege of Troy, to the tragic history
of the house of Atreus, the equally tragic history of the house of
Laius, and the adventures of Hercules. The subject of "The Persae" of
Aeschylus is a contemporary event, but this, as Grote says, was an
exception. Heroic action and suffering, the awful force of destiny and
of the will of heaven, are the general themes of Aeschylus and
Sophocles; passion, especially feminine passion, is more frequently
the theme of Euripides. Romantic love, the staple of the modern drama
and novel, was hardly known to the Greeks, whose romantic affection
was friendship, such as that of Orestes and Pylades, or Achilles and
Patroclus. The only approach to romantic love in the extant drama is
the love of Haemon and Antigone in the "Antigone" of Sophocles; and
even here it is subordinate to the conflict between state law and law
divine, which is the key-note of the piece; while the lovers do not
meet upon the scene. The sterner and fiercer passions, on the whole,
predominate, though Euripides has given us touching pictures of
conjugal, fraternal, and sisterly love. In the "Oedipus Coloneus" of
Sophocles also, filial love and the gentler feelings play a part in
harmony with the closing scene of the old man's unhappy life. In the