Yet it is a foregone conclusion that as soon as he leaves the stage they will be at it once more. How can this difficulty be glossed over? The poet makes two suggestions. Odysseus wishes the satyrs to pass in and help gouge out the Cyclops’ eye, but that, of course, was theatrically impossible; they prefer to sing an incantation which will plunge the firebrand, of its own accord, into their victim’s brain (vss. 648 ff.). We have just seen that magic as a motive passed muster with Aeschylus, but it was different with Euripides. Odysseus indignantly ignores their offer, and after a few words of reproach he actually requests them to cheer on himself and his comrades at their dangerous task (vs. 653). A choral song in this tenor immediately follows (vss. 655-62). Thus, within the space of thirty lines, with no essential change in the situation, Odysseus first commands the chorus to be quiet and then urges them to sing! The history and traditions of the Greek theater, the necessity of delivering songs at frequent intervals, and the difficulty of motivating the withdrawal of the chorus and its later return to the scene almost demanded the uninterrupted presence of the chorus upon the stage. The some half-dozen exceptions that are known to us outside of New Comedy will be discussed later (see pp. 250 f., below). How unnatural this convention would be can be realized from Euripides’ _Bacchanals_, in which Pentheus arrested Dionysus and took active measures against the Bacchantes upon Mt. Cithaeron and yet allowed a chorus of the new god’s devotees (and foreigners at that) to remain practically unmolested before his palace throughout the play. What a baneful effect so rigid and arbitrary a rule had upon any complication of plot can readily be imagined. The situation was racily described by Gray:[266] “How could Macbeth and his wife have laid the design for Duncan’s murder? What could they have said to each other in the hall at midnight, not only if a chorus, but if a single mouse, had been stirring there? Could Hamlet have met the ghost, or taken his mother to task in their company? If Othello had said a harsh word to his wife before them, would they not have danced to the window and called the watch?” In the _Agamemnon_, Clytemnestra had to address to her returning lord words of loyal greeting the falsity of which she knew the chorus was well aware of. Aeschylus strove to surmount the difficulty by having the queen turn first to the choreutae: “Reverend citizens of Argos, I feel no shame to mention my husband-loving ways before you, for as we mortals grow older we lose such blushing fear” (vss. 855 ff.) We are to suppose that her effrontery in this and other respects intimidated the meticulous elders and prevented their denouncing her to Agamemnon. In Sophocles’ _Oedipus the King_, Creon is bringing an oracular response from Delphi and meets the king before the Theban palace. In reply to Oedipus’ eager question he lets his eyes rest on