point of pathos ever reached by this most pathetic of poets.
The play was brought out in 415 B.C., as the third play with the Alexander (Paris) and Palamedes; it was followed by the Sisyphus, as a satyric piece. But it only obtained second prize, the first being awarded to a tetralogy of Xenocles on the Theban legends of Œdipus and Pentheus. While varying the incidents of the Hecuba, the poet here introduces a larger number of characters, both Cassandra and Andromache appearing. There is, however, far less plot than there is in the Hecuba, and except for the curious anticipation in the opening dialogue of Athene and Poseidon, we miss even the satisfaction of revenge taken by the Trojan queen in the earlier play. It is indeed nothing but "a voice in Pamah, and lamentation—Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not." It is like the prophet's roll, which is written within and without with mourning, and lamentation, and woe. Nevertheless there are passages in the wild and poetic fervour of Cassandra which remind us of her great scene in the Agamemnon of Æschylus. There is, moreover, a litigious scene, in which Hecuba and Helen argue before Menelaus. This, together with the repeated appearances of the herald Talthybius, are to us no agreeable diversions. The chief indication of Euripides' later style in this play is the prominence of monodies, or soliloquies of complaint with musical accompaniments. In these our poet excels, and in spite of the ridicule of Aristophanes, they are the finest passages in this and other plays.
Most of the imitations of this play have combined with it scenes from the Hecuba, by the process called contaminatio, which was so common in Latin borrowings from the Greek stage. Two passages in Virgil's Æneid, the appeal of Juno to Aeolus, and the awful picture of the fall of Troy, are borrowed from the opening and the close of the Troades. Among the plays of Seneca, the Troades is un-
