There is a faint trace, among the Fragments of Aeschylus, of a play
called _Thalamopoioi_,--i.e. _The Preparers of the Chamber_,--which
may well have referred to this tragic scene. Its grim title will
recall to all classical readers the magnificent, though terrible,
version of the legend, in the final stanzas of the eleventh poem in
the third book of Horace's _Odes_. The final play was probably
called _The Danaides_, and described the acquittal of the brides
through some intervention of Aphrodite: a fragment of it survives,
in which the goddess appears to be pleading her special prerogative.
The legends which commit the daughters of Danaus to an eternal
penalty in Hades are, apparently, of later origin. Homer is silent
on any such penalty; and Pindar, Aeschylus' contemporary, actually
describes the once suppliant maidens as honourably enthroned
(_Pyth_. ix. 112: _Nem_. x. ll. 1-10). The Tartarean part of the
story is, in fact, post-Aeschylean.

_The Suppliant Maidens_ is full of charm, though the text of the
part which describes the arrival of the pursuers at Argos is full of
uncertainties. It remains a fine, though archaic, poem, with this
special claim on our interest, that it is, probably, the earliest
extant poetic drama. We see in it the _tendency_ to grandiose
language, not yet fully developed as in the _Prometheus_: the
inclination of youth to simplicity, and even platitude, in religious
and general speculation: and yet we recognize, as in the germ, the
profound theology of the _Agamemnon_, and a touch of the political
vein which appears more fully in the _Furies_. If the precedence in
time here ascribed to it is correct, the play is perhaps worth more
recognition than it has received from the countrymen of Shakespeare.

_The Persians_ has been placed second in this volume, as the