forth to destroy the hero's newly-recovered happiness. Then follows the dreadful narrative of his massacre of his wife and children, and his attempted wrecking of the house. His re-appearance, lying in deathlike sleep and in bonds under the watch of his heartbroken father, his gradual awakening to sanity and his despair, are the subjects of the magnificent scenes which follow. But instead of ending his sorrows and hiding his shame by voluntary death, like the Ajax of Sophocles, he is saved from himself and carried away to Athens by his trusty friend Theseus, a noble and natural substitute for the somewhat vulgar deus ex machinâ of other dramas. I shall speak again, in a future chapter, of the treatment of Heracles' character in this noble play. But with all its merits it is, after all, a mere series of scenes showing rapid reverses of fortune, of which the latter are not the natural or necessary product of the former. Heracles is afflicted with his madness through the hate of Hera, not (as some would have it) on account of his vengeance upon Lycus being planned with treachery, for this was to the Greeks no crime, no meanness, but a lawful and laudable act.
58. The Bacchæ.—I have left for the last the famous Bacchæ, which is indeed constructed on a proper plan, and admits no disturbing episodes, but in which the main interest lies nevertheless not in the plot, not in the character of Pentheus, but in the striking situations brought before us, the contrast of the angry powerless king and the smiling almighty Dionysus, the wild delights of the Mænad women in the mountains, the grotesque figure of the disguised Pentheus in the lofty pine-top, then the horror of their bloody triumph as they display his mangled limbs, and lastly the awakening and despair of Agave. All these subjects are well and thoroughly connected, yet more splendid in themselves than in their connection.
The play was composed for the court of Archelaus. Instead of dealing with mere human passion or human character, the poet passes for once into the
