For I am but the sport of jealous gods, Who, envious of Athenian gloriousness, Have crushed the city of the Violet Crown Beneath the force of overwhelming hordes; Thus blotting out my heaven-aspiring sons, Who, burning with a new Promethean fire, Would fain have scaled god-crowned Olympus high To match themselves ’gainst gods in equal strife. Then, with the sudden energy of despair, she calls upon the heroes of Salamis, of Thermopylæ, of Marathon, to aid their mother in the time of need. Alas! no voice answers to her cry of anguish, and, overcome with a sense of hopelessness, Hellas, discrowned and chained, sinks weeping on the broken column of her fallen shrine. Now enters the chorus proper of young Greek maidens, dressed in black stoles, to denote the sorrowful condition of their country. They sweep into the orchestra, and, having sprinkled the altar with incense, begin to question their fallen queen, as though they were ignorant of the cause of her grief. CHORUS. What madness drives thee, queen, to rend thine hair? HELLAS. Curst Ate bides upon the threshold stone. CHORUS. Now see I plainly thou art bound with chains. HELLAS. In this no fatal blindness dims thine eyes. CHORUS. Say whence these chains which check free-moving limbs? HELLAS. The Eastern hordes have bound me helpless thus. Question and answer thus goes on for some time, and then the chorus break out into a wailing song, in which they remind Hellas that, having forsaken the old gods who helped her in her need, she is now reaping the reward of such folly. “The curse of Ate is on thee,” they cry pitifully, “nor will the goddess be satisfied until she has exacted her due penalty for neglect of the Olympians.” They relate the former woes of Hellas, how she first was slave to the Macedonians, then to the Roman power; how the Latins set their mailed feet on her neck; and now the Moslems have again reduced her to the position of bondswoman. Ever a slave, ever desired, she is thrown from the one to the other, as it pleases them, unable to free herself from such degradation. When this chorus of reproach is ended, Hellas calls upon the tutelar genius of Greece to help her ere she perish. In answer to her cry, Apollo (represented by Caliphronas) appears, and blames her for foolishly forsaking the old gods for the new, and thus falling into the hands of Nemesis. His power, which was engendered and kept alive solely by belief, has departed, and he cannot help her, much as he desires to do so. “I myself,” he says—