Æschylus wrote his plays in trilogies, or three successive dramas connected. Of the eighty tragedies that he wrote, only seven have been preserved. From three of these, The Persians, Prome'theus, and Agamemnon, we have given extracts descriptive of historical and mythological events. The latter is the first of three plays on the fortunes of the house of A'treus, of Myce'næ; and these three, of which the Choëph'oroe and Eumenides are the other two, are the only extant specimen of a trilogy. The Agamemnon is the longest, and by some considered the grandest, play left us by Æschylus. "In the Agamemnon," says VON SCHLEGEL, "it was the intention of Æschylus to exhibit to us a sudden fall from the highest pinnacle of prosperity and renown into the abyss of ruin. The prince, the hero, the general of the combined forces of the Greeks, in the very moment of success and the glorious achievement of the destruction of Troy, the fame of which is to be re-echoed from the mouths of the greatest poets of all ages, in the very act of crossing the threshold of his home, after which he had so long sighed, and amidst the fearless security of preparations for a festival, is butchered, according to the expression of Homer, 'like an ox in the stall,' slain by his faithless wife, his throne usurped by her worthless seducer, and his children consigned to banishment or to hopeless servitude." [Footnote: "Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature," by Augustus William on Schlegel. Black's translation.] Among the fine passages of this play, the death of Agamemnon, at the hand of Clytemnes'tra, is a scene that the poet paints with terrible effect. Says MR. EUGENE LAWRENCE, [Footnote: "A Primer of Greek Literature," by Eugene Lawrence, p.55.] "Mr. E. C. Stedman's version of the death of Agamemnon is an excellent one. A horror rests upon the palace at Mycenæ; there is a scent of blood, the exhalations of the tomb. The queen, Clytemnestra, enters the inner room, terrible as Lady Macbeth. A cry is heard: "'Agam. Woe's me! I'm stricken a deadly blow within!' "'Chor. Hark! who is't cries "a blow?" Who meets his death?' "'Agam. Woe's me! Again! again! a second time I'm stricken!' "'Chor. The deed, methinks, from the king's cry, is done.' At length the queen appears, standing at her full height, terrible, holding her bloody weapon in her hand. She seeks no concealment. She proclaims her guilt: "'I smote him! nor deny that thus I did it; So that he could not flee or ward off doom. A seamless net, as round a fish, I cast About him, yea, a deadly wealth of robe, Then smote him twice; and with a double cry He loosed his limbs; and to him fallen I gave Yet a third thrust, a grace to Hades, lord Of the under-world and guardian of the dead.'"