Such a close evidently implies that the story was continued in another work, and it has been conjectured that the _Egyptians_ and the _Danaides_ (“Daughters of Danaus”) formed the second and third parts of the trilogy. Scarcely anything of these two plays has been preserved, but there is good reason to suppose that the Egyptians were victorious, that the daughters of Danaus were compelled to marry their ferocious suitors, and that on the command of their father each slew her husband on the wedding-night. Hypermnestra alone spared her lover, by name Lynceus. It seems that she was put on her trial for this disobedience and was saved by the advocacy of Aphrodite, who thus foreshadows the Apollo of the _Eumenides_. The satyric play was perhaps the _Amymone_; this was the name of one of the Danaides, who was delivered from a satyr by Poseidon. Viewed not historically, but æsthetically, especially by a reader already familiar with the _Oresteia_, the play must be confessed bald and monotonous. Many of Æschylus’ most splendid attributes, it is true, are to be discerned, but their fire too often sinks into smouldering grimness. The only really fine passages are those portions of the lyrics which bear the impress of the poet’s masculine and profound theology. Such strictures, however, are merely one way of saying that the _Supplices_ is an early work. It would be fairer (were it only possible) to compare it with the drama of Phrynichus rather than with the _Agamemnon_. Here, perhaps for the first time, we have a genuinely dramatic situation—the collision between the king and the herald. There is little characterization. The chorus are simply distressed damsels (save for their vivid and strong religious faith), the king is simply a magnanimous and wary monarch, the herald simply a “myrmidon”. Danaus, however, shows some interesting traits. He is extremely sententious and rejoices in the fact: “Inscribe this on your hearts beside the many other precepts of your father written there”.[210] His exhortation[211] to chaste behaviour, though long and (as his daughters assure him) unnecessary, is, albeit corrupt textually, one of the most striking passages in the play. But one feels that characterization is perhaps less needed in a work which, literally from the first word, is filled with the name of God, Zeus,[212] the ancestor of the Danaids, the lord of the universe, the guardian of right. “And whensoever it is decreed by nod of Zeus that a thing be brought to fullness, it falls not prostrate, but on its feet. Yea, through thicket and shadow stretch the paths of his decrees, that no thoughts can spy them out.”[213] Equally majestic is the language concerning that other Zeus[214] who judges the sins of men in Hades. Finally, though the thought and diction are in the main stark if dignified, a change comes over the play before the end: we get a little “atmosphere”. Danaus already fears personal enemies (v. 1008), and the