y face and serpent hair:
See, see, they come, they're here, they spring upon me!"[2]

And again--

"Ah, ah, she'll slay me! whither shall I fly?"[3]

The poet when he wrote like this saw the Erinyes with his own eyes, and
he almost compels his readers to see them too.

[Footnote 2: Eur. _Orest._ 255.]

[Footnote 3: _Iph. Taur._ 291.]

3
Euripides found his chief delight in the labour of giving tragic
expression to these two passions of madness and love, showing here a
real mastery which I cannot think he exhibited elsewhere. Still, he is
by no means diffident in venturing on other fields of the imagination.
His genius was far from being of the highest order, but by taking pains
he often raises himself to a tragic elevation. In his sublimer moments
he generally reminds us of Homer's description of the lion--

"With tail he lashes both his flanks and sides,
And spurs himself to battle."[4]

[Footnote 4: _Il._ xx. 170.]

4
Take, for instance, that passage in which Helios, in handing the reins
to his son, says--

"Drive on, but shun the burning Libyan tract;
The hot dry air will let thine axle down:
Toward the seven Pleiades keep thy steadfast way."

And then--

"This said, his son undaunted snatched the reins,
Then smote the winged coursers' sides: they bound
Forth on the void and cavernous vault of air.
His father mounts another steed, and rides
With warning voice guiding his son. 'Drive there!
Turn, turn thy car this way.'"[5]

May we not say that the spirit of the poet mounts the chariot with his
hero, and accompanies the winged steeds in their perilous flight? Were
it not so,--had not his imagination soared side by side with them in
that celestial passage,--he would never have conceived so vivid an
image. Similar is that passage in his "Cassandra," beginning

"Ye Trojans, lovers of the steed."[6]

[Footnote 5: Eur. _Phaet._]

[Footnote 6: Perhaps from the lost "Alexander" (Jahn).]

5
Aeschylus is especially bold in forming images suited to his heroic
themes: as when he says of his "Seven against Thebes"--

"Seven mighty men, and valiant captains, slew
Over an iron-bound shield a bull, then dipped
Their fingers in the blood, and all invoked
Ares, Enyo, and death-dealing Flight
In witness of their oaths,"[7]

and describes how they all mutually pledged themselves without flinching
to die. Sometimes, however, his thoughts are unshapen