Aristophanes Author:Collins Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IX. THE TALE OF TKOY : HECUBA—THE TROJAN WOMEN. " High barrows, without marble, or a name, A vast untilled and mountain-skirted plain, And Ida i... more »n the distance, still the same, And old Scamander (if 'tis he) remain ; The situation seems still formed for fame— A hundred thousand men might fight again With ease ; but where I sought for Iliou's walls, The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls." —"Don Juan," Cant. iv. On subjects connected with the Tale of Troy, ten dramas by Euripides, if the " Bhesus " be counted among them, are extant, and these represent a small portion only of the themes he drew from the perennial supply of the Homeric poems. The ancient epic, like the modern novel, although widely differing from tragedy in its form and substance, abounds in dramatic material. Many plays, indeed, by Euripides and other dramatic poets of the time, were derived from the Cyclic poets, who either continued the Iliad, and brought the story down to the fall of Troy, or took episodes in it as the groundwork of their dramas. Whether coming from the main stream or from its branches, the result was the same; and the heroes who espoused the cause of Menelaus were most of them suited for transplantation to the theatre. Two of the ten plays which have Troy for their subject, directly or indirectly, have been noticed in a previous chapter; another, the " Cyclops," will be examined presently. The " Khesus," being of uncertain authorship, will be passed over. Of the seven that remain, only a brief sketch can be given. The Two Iphigenias, indeed, might alone suffice to show how well fitted for the genius of their poet was the Lay of Achilles or the Wanderings of Ulysses. The fire that consumed Priam's capital is still smouldering when the action of the...« less