Few lost works are so sorely to be regretted as those of Phrynichus. The collection of fragments merely hints at a genius who commanded the affection of an age which knew his great successors, a master whose dignity was not utterly overborne by Æschylus, and whose tenderness could still charm hearts which had thrilled to the agonies of Medea and the romance of Andromeda. The chief witness to his popularity is Aristophanes, who paints for us a delightful picture[18] of the old men in the dark before the dawn, trudging by lantern-light through the mud to the law-court, and humming as they go the “charming old-world honeyed ditties” from the _Phœnissæ_. In another play[19] the birds assert that it is from their song that “Phrynichus, like his own bee, took his feast, food of the gods, the fruit of song, and found unfailingly a song full sweet”. One or two snatches survive from these lyrics, lines from the _Phœnissæ_ in the “greater Asclepiad” metre which is the form of some of Sappho’s loveliest work, and a verse[20] from the _Troilus_ which Sophocles himself quoted: “the light of love on rosy cheeks is beaming”. It is clear that for most Athenians the spell of Phrynichus lay in his songs; succeeding poets he impressed almost equally as a playwright. It has already been mentioned that Euripides seems to have borrowed from the _Alcestis_. Æschylus, especially, was influenced by his style, and in the _Persæ_ followed the older poet closely. Indeed the relation between the _Persæ_ and the _Phœnissæ_ is puzzling, but ancient authority did not hesitate to say that the later work was “modelled on” the earlier.[21] It is no question of a _réchauffé_ to suit the taste of a later age, like the revisions of Shakespeare by Davenant and Cibber, for the two tragedies are separated at the utmost by only seven years; rather we appear to have a problem like the connexion between _Macbeth_ and Middleton’s _Witch_. Perhaps the soundest opinion is that the younger playwright wished to demonstrate his own method of writing and his theory of dramatic composition in the most striking way possible—by choosing a famous drama of the more rudimentary type and rewriting it as it ought to be written. Two features in the _Phœnissæ_ seem to lend support to this view. Firstly, the prologue was delivered by a slave who was preparing the seats of the Persian counsellors. The _Persæ_ expunges the man and his speech, presenting us at once with the elders in deliberation. Nothing is more characteristic of the architectonic power in literature than the instinct to sweep away everything but the minimum of mere machinery; at the first instant we are in the midst of the plot. Secondly, the prologue at once announced the disaster. Nothing was left but the amplification of sorrow, a quasi-operatic presentation by the Phœnician women who formed the chorus. Here again the _Persæ_ provides a most instructive contrast.