"In heaps the unhappy dead lie on the strand
Of Salamis, and all the neighbouring shores."
Under the first crushing force of this announcement Atossa is silent. The Chorus are loud in their cries, but the queen speaks no word; and when at last she finds a voice, she dares not utter the question that is nearest to her heart, but asks, Who is not fallen?
"What leader must we wail ? What sceptred chief
Dying hath left his troops without a lord?"
The messenger answers her meaning,—
"Xerxes himself lives, and beholds the light."
Then comes a list of the fallen; a list as long as, and even more beautiful than, that which the Chorus gave of the chiefs in their hour of pride. It is doubtless imitated from Homer, and has some of those touches of pathos in which Virgil delights on a similar occasion.
"Amestris, and Amphistreus there
Grasps his war-wearied spear; there prostrate lies
The illustrious Arimardus, long his loss
Shall Sardis weep: the Mysian Sisames,
And Tharybis that o'er the burdened deep
Led five times fifty vessels; Lerna gave
The hero birth, and manly grace adorned
His pleasing form, but low in death he lies,
Unhappy in his fate."
Our sympathy is roused for the hero of Lerna, just as in the Æneid for Rhipeus, or Panthus,—
