dropped a tortoise upon his head which he mistook for a stone. He has
left to the world seven plays in which the rapid development of drama
is conspicuous.

One of the earliest of his plays is the _Suppliants_, little read
owing to the uncertainty of the text and the meagreness of the
dramatic interest. The plot is simple enough. Danaus, sprung from Io
of Argos, flees from Egypt with his fifty daughters who avoid wedlock
with the fifty sons of Aegyptus. He sails to Argos and lays suppliant
boughs on the altars of the gods, imploring protection. The King of
Argos after consultation with his people decides to admit the
fugitives and to secure them from Aegyptus' violence. A herald from
the latter threatens to take the Danaids back with him, but the King
intervenes and saves them. There is little in this play but long
choral odes; yet one or two Aeschylean features are evident. The King
dreads offending the god of suppliants

"lest he should make him to haunt his house, a dread visitor who
quits not sinners even in the world to come."

The Egyptian herald reverences no gods of Greece "who reared him not
nor brought him to old age". The Chorus declare that "what is fated
will come to pass, for Zeus' mighty boundless will cannot be
thwarted". Here we have the three leading ideas in the system of
Aeschylus--the doctrine of the inherited curse, of human pride and
impiety, and the might of Destiny.

The _Persians_ is unique as being the only surviving historical play
in Greek literature. It is a poem rather than a drama, as there is
little truly dramatic action. The piece is a succession of very vivid