CHAPTER V.
THE PERSIANS.
"The Persians" was not produced until six or seven years after the events which it celebrates; and this was perhaps an advantage. For no great event can easily be regarded as an entire whole until some time after its occurrence. Details are at first too prominent; personal or local interests have not yet sunk down into their proper relative importance: it is not fully seen, until later, what was the true beginning and source of the main action, nor when it can be rightly said to have ended—in short, the spectator is too close to the object to see it as a whole, and to grasp the principle of its structure. Now it is the very essence of all tragedy that it should present a great action as a whole—in its greatness, not in its complexity; and in Greek tragedy, through its shortness and simplicity, this character is especially marked. Further, we have seen that the Greek dramatist contemplates an action as part of a course of divine providence; sets it, that is, in its true light as a moral result, and traces throughout it the retributive agency of heaven. Clearly this
