possible, in her own body the deadly shaft? Pride and defiance dissolve in
the depths of maternal love. The more than earthly dignity of the features
are the less marred by the agony, as under the rapid accumulation of blow
upon blow she seems, as in the deeply significant fable, already
petrifying into the stony torpor. But before this figure, thus
_twice_ struck into stone, and yet so full of life and soul,--before
this stony terminus of the limits of human endurance, the spectator melts
into tears.

Amid all the agitating emotions which these groups give rise to, there is
still a something in their aspect which attracts the mind and gives rise
to manifold contemplation; so the ancient tragedy leads us forward to the
highest reflections involved in the very sphere of things it sets before
us--reflections on the nature and the inexplicable mystery of man's being.




LECTURE VI.

Progress of the Tragic Art among the Greeks--Various styles of Tragic Art
--Aeschylus--Connexion in a Trilogy of Aeschylus--His remaining Works.


Of the inexhaustible stores possessed by the Greeks in the department of
tragedy, which the public competition at the Athenian festivals called
into being (as the rival poets always contended for a prize), very little
indeed has come down to us. We only possess works of three of their
numerous tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and of these but
a few in proportion to the whole number of their compositions. The extant