who has not yet fully dissevered the large from the fine, the grandiose from the grand. Neither are the thoughts in these plays always free from the same charge, though the occurrence of such metaphors as we regard as Oriental, seems to me to demonstrate capacity rather than extravagance in the Greek poet. It is surprising, for instance, to hear in the celebrated description of the battle of Salamis (The Persians, l. 577), and of the floating corpses of the drowned Persians, and "death gnawing upon them:"
σκύλλονται πρὸς ἀναύδων
παίδων τᾶς ἀμιάντου.
"They are scattered and peeled by the voiceless children of the Pure," i.e., the sea—it is surprising, I say, to find such a phrase treated as fantastic and Oriental. The same thought has been touched by Shakespeare (The Tempest, Act ii, sc. 1):
"O thou mine heir
Of Naples and of Milan, what strange fish
Hath made his meal on thee!"
and by Shelley (Similes):
"As a shark and dog-fish wait
Under an Atlantic isle,
For the negro-ship whose freight
Is the theme of their debate,
Wrinkling their red gills the while."
But how inferior each expression is to that of Æschylus, need hardly be pointed out. Shakespeare's is simple almost to baldness: Shelley's, powerfully, almost horribly, descriptive; but Æschylus, retaining the physical word (σκύλλονται), paints the rest of the scene with a rich imagination. The children of earth, but now so clamorous, are at the mercy of the still children of that sea whose translucent purity they have harassed and distracted in vain.
