We shall have occasion, farther on, to compare this event with other great national catastrophes as to the magnitude of the suffering; but it may also challenge a comparison with similar events under another relation, viz. as to its dramatic capabilities. Few cases, perhaps, in romance or history, can sustain a close collation with this as to the complexity of its separate interests. The great outline of the enterprise, taken in connection with the operative motives, hidden or avowed, and the religious sanctions under which it was pursued, give to the case a triple character: 1st. That of a conspiracy, with as close a unity in the incidents, and as much of a personal interest in the moving characters, with fine dramatic contrasts, as belongs to Venice Preserved or to the Fiesco of Schiller. 2dly. That of a great military expedition, offering the same romantic features of vast distances to be traversed, vast reverses to be sustained, untried routes, enemies obscurely ascertained, and hardships too vaguely prefigured, which mark the Egyptian expedition of Cambyses; the anabasis of the younger Cyrus, and the subsequent retreat of the ten thousand to the Black Sea; the Parthian expeditions of the Romans, especially those of Crassus and Julian; or (as more disastrous than any of them, and in point of space, as well as in amount of forces, more extensive) the Russian anabasis and katabasis of Napoleon. 3dly. That of a religious exodus, authorized by an oracle venerated throughout many nations of Asia,--an exodus therefore, in so far resembling the great scriptural exodus of the Israelites under Moses and Joshua, as well as in the very peculiar distinction of carrying along with them their entire families, women, children, slaves, their herds of cattle and of sheep, their horses and their camels.