Agamemnon returns and takes leave of Clytæmnestra. The text of this drama presents curious features.[756] There are two prologues, and the last fifty or sixty lines of the whole are corrupt. It seems that Euripides died before the work was finished; the gaps were filled by his son Euripides who produced the trilogy (_Iphigenia_, _Alcmæon_, _Bacchæ_) soon after 406 B.C. The original prologue, of the ordinary narrative kind, delivered by Agamemnon in iambic metre, is embedded in the later prologue, which takes the form of a dialogue in anapæsts between the king and his aged retainer. This later work is extremely charming, filled with the quiet beauty of night overhanging the feverish ambition and misery of men. But though the younger Euripides probably wrote an ending also, this has been displaced by extremely bad[757] work of a much later time. It is not easy to understand why such inferior matter was allowed to eject the composition of the younger Euripides. Perhaps the explanation is that the concluding lines were known from the first not to be by the master, that the play was often produced, and that for these two reasons rival endings were very early before the public. They would destroy one another’s prestige, so that in later centuries none survived, and some scribe filled up the gap as best he could. A noteworthy contrast exists between the _Iphigenia_ and the _Bacchæ_, though they were no doubt composed at almost the same time. In this play the chorus has practically no concern with the action, whereas the Asiatic women form the soul of the _Bacchæ_. Instead of the wild loveliness or serene spirituality which thrill us in the lyrics of that drama, we find here nothing more profound than graceful complications of phrase and facile emotion. In compensation, while the _Bacchæ_ is primitive in psychology, its companion is superior to many Greek tragedies in the masterly freedom and subtlety of its character-drawing.