doubtedly the finest, but its merits are attained not only by borrowing beauties from the Hecuba, but by the introduction of a splendid scene, which we cannot identify in any Greek model. It is the scene in which Odysseus comes to seek Astyanax, whom his mother has concealed in Hector's tomb. When she protests that he is "among the dead," Odysseus orders the tomb to be desecrated, and the bones of Hector scattered to the winds. This leads to a great tragic conflict in Andromache's mind and the ultimate surrender of the child. It is probably the general cioncidence of subject with the great epics of Homer and Virgil, which has made these two plays so popular among all the imitators of the classical tragedy.
55. The Phœnissæ.—The drama most crowded in this loose way with characters and with incidents is the Phœnissæ, where all the tragic events of the great war against the Seven, and the family disasters of the house of Laius, pass before us like the visions of Macbeth—a great procession rather than the connected scenes of a single plot. We cannot even say, as in the Hecuba, that the play divides itself into two; and so, as it were, ends to begin again.
The exact date and the companion plays are uncertain, and variously stated, but it seems, according to the best evidence, to have obtained second prize at some time during the ninety-third Olympiad. It is really a tragedy on the wars of the house of Labdacus, but is called after its chorus, which is composed of Phœnician maidens on their way to Delphi, who stopped on their way through Thebes, and were thus accidentally detained in the siege by the seven chiefs. Nevertheless there would be some difficulty in giving the play any other name, for like the Troades it is strictly an episodic play, a series of pictures, all connected with the miseries of Œdipus' family, but without one central figure among the nine characters which successively appear. The name Thebais, given to it in modern imitations
