we have hitherto not spoken, or had occasion to speak, since the play proper stands independent of it in plot, persons, and otherwise, pursuing its course exactly as if no such conversation as the prologue presents had taken place, nor any such personages as the two 'deities', between whom that conversation is held, had ever existed. The speakers are Apollo and Death. Apollo in the opening speech informs us that he has been revisiting the house of Admetus; Death in his closing speech, informs us that he is about to cut from the head of Alcestis, with the sword which he holds, the 'hair of consecration', and thus devote her to the underworld. But when in the sequel we are reintroduced to the familiar world, when the departed 'gods' are replaced by men and women such as we know, these human beings are found not to be aware either that Apollo has just been among them, or that Death, in the shape at least of a gentleman with a sword, is among them now, nor are the deities any longer visible to us. The supernatural personages are neither mixed with the others on the same plane of action, nor indicated as moving on a line of their own which intersects, as it were, the line of humanity at certain points, so that perception is then mutual between the two classes of being. The divine action of the prologue and the human action of the play take place in spheres mutually exclusive; so that, if instead of the existing preface, we were supplied with a paper stating that such and such is 'the legend of Alcestis, as taught at Delphi and in places of religion generally', we should be placed, so far as the sequel is concerned, precisely where the dramatic introduction does actually leave us. To the purpose of Euripides as an 'atheist' this separation is of course not universally necessary. It was open to him, and he has taken this line elsewhere, as in the Hippolytus and the Madness of Heracles, to exhibit scenes in which, for the sake of argument, he supposes and presents interaction between man and the creatures of anthropomorphic fancy, saying the while to his audience, by all sorts of signs and whispers, 'Such are the creatures which they would have us believe in, which they would have us adore. What kind of a figure do you think they make?' But when the object of the dramatist is to present a 'sacred' story in a version from which the gods are left out, it is desirable to draw the line more sharply between what is proposed for belief and what is
