wailings which express the keenness of his grief: and again the sight of the Chorus draws from him a strain of piteous exclamations on the cruelty of his fate. After this transient burst of passion indeed he recovers his firmness and composure, gives directions for the fulfilment of his last wishes with calmness, and though inflexibly adhering to his purpose, repels all the attempts made to divert him from it without heat or violence. But so far is he from having retired into the stronghold of a selfish pride, and shut himself up from all human sympathy, that in the midst of his unalterable resolution his thoughts are more occupied with care for others than with his own fate. His parental affection rushes in a full stream into his heart, as he contemplates his approaching separation from its object, and expresses itself in that tender address, in which, while he provides for the security of his child, and rejoices in the prospect of leaving behind him an heir worthy of his shield and of his fame, who shall avenge his wrongs, he dwells with delight on the image of its early years, when the young plant, sheltered from every rude blast,[1] shall enjoy its careless existence, and gladden the heart of the widowed mother, and on the consolation and support it will afford to the declining age of his own parents, so soon to be bereft of their natural stay. Throughout the whole of this speech, though two occasions occur which lead him to mention his enemies, all angry and revengeful feelings are absorbed by the softer emotions of the parent and the son:[2] and even the appearance of harshness with which at the close of this scene he cuts short the importunity of Tecmessa, is a sign of anything rather than coldness and insensibility. Again, when the fatal sword is already fixed in the ground, his last thoughts are turned to Salamis, to the grief of his father and mother, which alone he bewails, to the beloved
- ↑ An image ludicrously disguised in Francklin's translation: "May the breath of life meantime nourish thy tender frame," as if Eurysaces could grow up to manhood unless it did.
- ↑ Even the lines (556) ὅταν δ᾽ ἵκῃ πρὸς τοῦτο, δεῖ σ᾽ ὅπως πατρὸς Δείξεις ἐν ἐχθροῖς, οἷος ἐξ οἵου ᾽τράφης, on which the Scholiast remarks, ἀντὶ τοῦ δεῖ σε ἐκδικῆσαι τὸν πατέρα, do not seem to imply any definite prospect of revenge, so much as a hope that the glory of Eurysaces might in time silence and confound his father's enemies.
