play we have the narrative of the sacrifice complete, and this concludes the former part. The passage into the later part, which is not really connected as to plot, is well devised by the circumstance that a slave going to fetch water for the funeral rites of Polyxena, finds the body of Polydorus tossing on the beach—an event announced in the prologue by the ghost of Polydorus. This brings out the fierce element in the heartbroken queen. She debates, in an aside not common on the Greek stage, whether she will appeal to Agamemnon, who is present, to aid her in her vengeance, and she ultimately does so with great art, if not with dignity. She then carries out her plot of slaying the Thracian king's children, and putting out his eyes, with great fierceness. The wild lamentations of the barbarian, Agamemnon's cool refusal to support him, and his gloomy prophecies, conclude the play. The change in Hecuba, when there is nothing more to plead for, from despair to savage fury, is finely conceived. She has been compared to the Margaret of Shakspere's Richard III. The play became a favourite at Rome, Ennius translated it, and it is cited by Cicero and Horace, not to speak of the many suggestions derived from it by Virgil. It was done into French and into Italian early in the sixteenth century, and was brought on the English stage in 1726.
54. The Troades.—This "heroine of situation" occupies a leading part in another play, the Troades, which is nothing but a picture of the miseries of the captives during their last day within sight of their ruined city. The episode of Polyxena, which is mentioned as already past, is here compensated by the more tragic fate of Cassandra (whose prophetic wildness supplies a splendid scene), and that of Andromache. Indeed the misfortunes of the latter—the murder of her child Astyanax while she is hurried away, so that the aged queen Hecuba is left alone to lament and bury him—are almost too heartrending to be truly tragic, and may be regarded as the highest
