the time were decidedly democratical. The question must
no doubt at last remain a question, but still it may be
stated as a personal impression, which has gained strength
after renewed perusal of the drama, that the drift of it
harmonises most remarkably with this precise epoch, and
challenges the assumption that it was produced when Argive
interests were involved in the convulsions in the Delta, and
when Athens was under influence to give protection there to
her allies.

It seems not impossible to recover from hints in curt
fragments of the associated plays, some probable conclusions
as to the further treatment by which the poet at least
endeavoured to engage the sympathies of Athenians at this
time for an Argive mythus.

The story of the fifty Danaids in its most familiar form
tells how they slew their bridegroom cousins, the sons of
Aegyptus, on the marriage night, and found place in Hades
in consequence among other typical examples of endless
punishment, engaged in hopelessly drawing water in broken
vessels or pouring it into a perforated cask. Polygnotus, the
friend of Cimon, by the inscription on his picture at Delphi,
made them representatives moreover of the despisers of the
mysteries of Thasian Demeter. But the merits of the Danaids
and their relation to the mysteries, were understood very
differently at Argos. We learn from Herodotus that they
were actually regarded as having first introduced the Thes-
mophorian τελετή, or initiation of Demeter, from Egypt into
Peloponnesus, where it was adopted by the Pelasgic females
and still survived in his time in Arcadia, undisturbed by the
Dorian invasion that abolished it elsewhere. As favourable
an aspect of their mythus is presented to us by a ¹ vase-paint-
ing, on which they appear as a dancing train, each bearing a
vase, before the palace of the god of the underworld, thus

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