[6] For this curious taunt, strongly illustrative of what Browning calls “nationality in drinks,” see Herodotus, ii. 77. A similar feeling may perhaps be traced in Tacitus’ description of the national beverage of the Germans: “Potui humor ex hordeo aut frumento, _in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus_” (_Germania_, chap, xxiii). [7] The ambiguity of these two lines is reproduced from the original. The Semi-Chorus appear to pray, in one aspiration, that the threatened wedlock may never take place, and, _if_ it does take place, may be for weal, not woe. THE PERSIANS ARGUMENT Xerxes, son of Darius and of his wife Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, went forth against Hellas, to take vengeance upon those who had defeated his father at Marathon. But ill fortune befell the king and his army both by land and sea; neither did it avail him that he cast a bridge over the Hellespont and made a canal across the promontory of Mount Athos, and brought myriads of men, by land and sea, to subdue the Greeks. For in the strait between Athens and the island of Salamis the Persian ships were shattered and sunk or put to flight by those of Athens and Lacedaemon and Aegina and Corinth, and Xerxes went homewards on the way by which he had come, leaving his general Mardonius with three hundred thousand men to strive with the Greeks by land: but in the next year they were destroyed near Plataea in Boeotia, by the Lacedaemonians and Athenians and Tegeans. Such was the end of the army which Xerxes left behind him. But the king himself had reached the bridge over the Hellespont, and late and hardly and in sorry plight and with few companions came home unto the Palace of Susa. DRAMATIS PERSONAE CHORUS OF PERSIAN ELDERS. ATOSSA, WIDOW OF DARIUS AND MOTHER OF XERXES. A MESSENGER. THE GHOST OF DARIUS. XERXES. _The Scene is laid at the Palace of Susa_. CHORUS. Away unto the Grecian land Hath passed the Persian armament: We, by the monarch’s high command, We are the warders true who stand, Chosen, for honour and descent, To watch the wealth of him who went— Guards of the gold, and faithful styled By Xerxes, great Darius’ child!