Another popular play was the ANTIOPE. It dealt with the persecution of Antiope by Lycus, King of Thebes, and his wife Dirce. She was rescued from death by her two sons, Amphion and Zethus, whom she had been compelled to abandon at birth, and who discovered the relationship in the critical hour. The chief interest of the play was the contrast between the brothers—Zethus a man of muscle, devoted to farming; Amphion, a musician and lover of the arts. Euripides developed this contrast in a long debate wherein culture was upheld against the “Philistine”. We still read one criticism of myth which recalls a blunt passage of the _Ion_.[791] Story said that Antiope’s sons were the offspring of Zeus, but Amphion has the hardihood to express doubt to his mother herself. With the _Helen_ (B.C. 412) was produced a work of the first importance—the ANDROMEDA, a charming love-story full of romance and poetical loveliness. It was immensely popular; Aristophanes gives in his _Thesmophoriazusæ_ a parody as elaborate as that of _Telephus_ in the _Acharnians_, and it was a perusal of this drama which excited Dionysus in the _Frogs_ to descend to Hades for the purpose of fetching back the dead playwright. Lucian[792] tells how Archelaus, the tragic actor, came to Abdera and performed the _Andromeda_. The whole town grew crazy over it. “They used to sing the solo from the _Andromeda_ and recite Perseus’ speech from beginning to end. The town swarmed with these actors of a week’s standing, pale and lean, shouting with all the strength of their lungs O Love, of gods and men tyrannic Lord, and all the rest of it. This went on for a long time, in fact till winter, when a severe frost cured them of their nonsense.” The _Andromeda_ points forward to the novel, and it is interesting to note that in the best Greek novel—the _Æthiopica_ of Heliodorus, who wrote about eight hundred years after Euripides’ death—the heroine’s father, like Andromeda’s, was an Æthiopian king. Scanty as are the remnants of this drama, we can still form some idea of its structure.[793] “It is the crowning virtue of all great art that, however little is left of it by the injuries of time, that little will be lovely.”[794] The country of Cepheus, the Ethiope king, was ravaged by a sea-monster, and the only help lay in sacrificing to the creature Andromeda, the king’s daughter, who was bound to a rock and left as his prey. At this point the action begins. It is still night and from the cliff rises the lament of the captive:— O solemn night, How slow thy coursers trace, Amid the holy Heaven star-bedight, Their pathway through the deeps of space!