Agamemnon not to set his conquering foot upon the common earth but to pass from his chariot into the palace over a purple tapestry. The king shrinks from an act which would be more becoming to a god than a mortal, but finally yields to his wife’s insistence. The result is that to a Greek audience he would seem to invite and almost to deserve the doom which his unfaithful spouse quickly brings upon him. These instances from the many available suffice to indicate Greek feeling on the subject. The poets of New Comedy leaned heavily upon the “long arm of coincidence.” The young women who are the recipients of the gilded youths’ favors are frequently found in the outcome to be free-born, the children of respectable parents, and acceptable wives. In several instances the victim of violence at some nocturnal festival has unwittingly become the spouse of her ravisher. The situation is aggravated by the unity of time. Men who have been absent from their homes for months or years must some day return to their households, pregnant women must at last be delivered of their offspring, long-standing debts must finally fall due, and the escapades of spoiled sons must at some time be brought to light and receive the attention of “hard-hearted” parents. Coming singly, such occurrences occasion no surprise. But when several of that sort are crowded into a period of twenty-four hours or less in play after play, to our minds the coincidence becomes well-nigh intolerable. It seems likely, however, that the ancients regarded such concatenations of events with more kindly eyes, for the reason that Chance or Fortune (Τύχη) was commonly accepted as exercising supreme authority over the lives and fortunes of men. This conception also helps to explain the curious immunity from punishment which was usually enjoyed by the scheming slaves in comedy. Of course to a race whose national characteristics were embodied in the wily Odysseus, cleverness, however unscrupulous, always seemed to elevate its practitioners above the rules of ordinary morality. But more. Just as “in the days of the _Odyssey_ a man merely required to be skilful at deceiving his fellows to become a favorite of Athena’s, so in the days of New Comedy this quality gave him a claim to the favor of the queen of the world—omnipotent Tyche.”[350]