with daring all his own, brought home to the Athenians
the characteristics of their rejected hero even more directly
than when he was among them at the height of popularity
and power. Sagacity, versatility, daring, unrivaled and
combined, have conducted the Titan, as the Athenian, to
the highest power and alliances in a career which never-
theless is suddenly arrested by a terrible reverse; but the
reverse, though in either case unforeseen in its severity and
unprepared for, is endured by the victims, if not without in-
dignation and impatience, yet in abiding self-confidence that
sooner or later reaction must come round, and their quali-
fications be again indispensable, and the exacted reparation
be at their own discretion.

Prometheus is addressed at the very commencement of the
¹ play in, terms that seem to indicate Themistocles almost by
name; the phrase and epithet of the line,
τη + ̑Eƍ Ǵ0ρθοßούλου
Θέμιδοƍαπυμη + ̑τα πα Ɩ + ̑,
ascribe the faculty of sagacious divination for which he was
most renowned, recall his vaunt of it in his dedication to
Artemis Aristoboule, and though another goddess is named,
it is Themis--an equivalent, as said distinctly by Prometheus,
of Gaia, the ² Earth, and 'known by many another name,'--
the goddess of the Lycomidae, to whom Themistocles most
probably owed his own. There is a pertinence here which
confirms my rejection of a criticism that condemns the line as
spurious chiefly because too significant.

I am even inclined to recover from the story of Prome-
theus a hint for history, that as the Titan deserted his ori-
ginal and natural party, alarmed and disgusted by their
inability to recognise the new tactics--of craft not vio-
lence--required in a new contest against younger ³ powers,
so Themistocles may have entered politics like many a new man

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