CHAPTER IV.
THE SUPPLIANTS; OR, THE CHILDREN OF IO.
This play takes its name, as many do, from the persons who form its chorus. In this case these are the principal characters in the drama; they are the "Suppliants" whose supplication is the subject of the piece.
We have seen in the "Prometheus" the unhappy Io wandering through the world, and we have heard there the prophecy of the end which was to be set to her troubles; how she should come at last to Egypt, and there bear a son, Epaphus—"the Touch-born"—begotten by the touch of Zeus, whose descendants should form a colony at Canopus. In the fourth generation arose Belus, king of this race of exiles, and to him were born two sons, Danaus and Ægyptus. Danaus had fifty daughters, and his brother had fifty sons; and these desired to take their cousins for their wives. The maidens, horrified at the proposal, but unable, even with their aged father's help, to resist the determination of fifty men, took flight, with Danaus himself to lead them, to Argos, the cradle of their race, the home of Io. Argos was the chief city of the
