So we find that the tragic poets (except perhaps Euripides occasionally) treat these strange old stories in what is called ‘the grand manner.’ Do not be disturbed by something stiff and formal in the expression. Like all definitions, it is smaller and harder than the thing it tries to define. For the poet has not the least intention of being ‘grand,’ and is as far as possible removed from any conscious ‘manner.’ On the contrary, it is true as a rule that the greater he is, the simpler his thought and expression are. He comes to these old themes with the eye and the heart of a child as well as the brain of a great genius; and the spirit of poetry, with all the knowledge of all the ages, utters its message through his lips in limpid song. Matters of probability and questions of logic, which seem so important to the mere intellect, bow their chastened heads before him. The whole scheme of values is changed, and that which appeared to the arrogant intellect as wild and ludicrous is perceived by the poet full of strange beauty and significance. In this way Sophocles approached the Theban legend, as we shall see when we come to Jocasta and Antigone, presently. In this way, too, Æschylus gave us the story of Io in his _Prometheus Bound_. Just when Io is supposed to have lived we do not know. She is said to have been the daughter of Inachus; and she was a priestess of Hera in Argos. But Æchylus has made her coeval with the Titans. In this poem, therefore, she is a denizen of that early world which saw the overthrow of Cronos from the throne of heaven, and the rise of his son Zeus. All the Titans save one had opposed the new god when he rose in rebellion against the primeval powers. But Prometheus, far-seeing from the first, and knowing that Zeus must conquer, lent him aid. It was a long and bitter struggle in the youth of the world. But at last Cronos and the Titans who had opposed him were hurled by Zeus into Tartarus—“under the misty darkness ... in a dank place, at the verge of the earth.” Typhon was buried under Etna; and Atlas, far in the West, was bowed beneath the pillar of the heavens, “where night and day meet and greet one another, as they pass the great threshold of bronze.” All now seemed calm and fair for the establishment of the new Hierarchy. Too calm and fair; for Zeus, with all his enemies subdued and possessing absolute power, soon grew tyrannical. With leisure now from Olympian warfare, he looked down upon the earth and the feeble race of men. It seemed to him a contemptible thing, struggling weakly against pitiless forces and groping its way, by minute degrees that were imperceptible from his lofty height, toward a larger and a better state. It was a mean and futile and impotent race, he pondered. Surely it would be better to wipe it out of existence altogether, than let it continue to blot the face of the fair world.