The Greek theater suffered no scene of bloodshed to be enacted before its audience. When the plot of the play, as was not infrequently the case, required such an incident, the harrowing details were narrated by a messenger who had witnessed the event. In Aeschylus’ _Persians_ the combats between Greeks and Asiatics are all narrated. In Aeschylus’ _Seven against Thebes_ and Euripides’ _Phoenician Maids_ the fatal duel between the brothers occurs off-stage. Similarly, in Euripides’ _Bacchanals_ the report is brought to Thebes that Pentheus has been torn to pieces on Mt. Cithaeron. In these and numerous other cases the incidents related took place at some distance from the imaginary scene. When it is remembered that the action of Greek plays is usually laid before a palace or temple, it will at once occur to everyone how conveniently located such a structure was for violence nearer the scene of action. Thus, in Aeschylus’ _Libation-Bearers_ (vs. 904) Orestes drives his mother indoors to dispatch her, and in Sophocles’ _Electra_ he is lucky enough to enter the palace and find her there alone and off her guard. This situation recurred again and again, and a further refinement lay close at hand. The hearts of the spectators were often thrilled with tragic fear or pity by hearing from behind the scenes the screams of the dying, their cries for help, even their death rattle. So Agamemnon dies in Aeschylus’ play of that name (vss. 1343-45); so Clytemnestra in Sophocles’ _Electra_ (vss. 1404 ff.) and Euripides’ play of the same title (vss. 1165-67); so Lycus in Euripides’ _Madness of Heracles_ (vss. 749 and 754); and so many another. The murder of Duncan in _Macbeth_ shows that such scenes must have been far more effective than any attempt at a realistic representation could possibly have been. An additional effect is sometimes secured by flinging open the back scene and disclosing the dead forms within; cf. the slaughtered children of Heracles (Euripides’ _Madness of Heracles_, vss. 1029 ff.), Eurydice (Sophocles’ _Antigone_, vs. 1293), etc. Sometimes death-cries and the opened scene are combined, as in Aeschylus’ _Agamemnon_, vss. 1343-45, 1372 ff. Still another artifice for avoiding seen violence is found in Euripides’ _Children of Heracles_, which ends by Alcmene and her attendants dragging Eurystheus off to his doom.