Pelasgians who then dwelt in Greece, and from their king Pelasgus the maidens sought protection. Their prayer and its success constitute the simple plot of the drama.
The legend may possibly strike us as absurd, and in particular the obvious improbability of the numbers of the cousins may seem to indicate a childish credulity in those who could receive it. It is something like the story of St Ursula and her eleven thousand companions, whose bones are still shown at Cologne; one of the most improbable of medieval legends, and the offspring of a time when there was neither power nor inclination to distinguish between what was proved and what was incapable of proof. But the Danaids are not to be classed with the martyrs of Cologne, nor the keen, travelled Athenian with the credulous medieval. Rather the obvious improbability in the Greek story is entirely in keeping with the spirit of Attic tragedy, which did not, as modern dramas do, aim at imitating the actual life of men, at being probable or like the truth, but set forth an ideal picture of a life apart from and above the real, whose impressiveness was due in great measure to its being far removed from reality.[1] In a colossal statue, to repeat the old comparison, it is right to represent hair and dress only conventionally, to make the locks of hair and the folds of dress all large and regular—regularity giving grandeur, and literal truth not being here desirable; so, in the tragedy before us, the large and
- ↑ See, on this subject, De Quincey's admirable essays on the Greek tragedy.
