CHAPTER VI.
THE MAIDENS OF TRACHIS.
This play, like many of the Greek tragedies, takes its name not from the plot or the hero, but from the personages of the Chorus—that very important element in the Greek drama. The vague title tells nothing to an English reader, but every Athenian knew, at least by name, the little Thessalian town of Trachis, nestling at the foot of Mount Œta, not far from the famous pass of Thermopylæ; and many, like Plutarch, had visited the spot, and seen for themselves what tradition had consecrated as the tomb of Dejanira. But what, after all, mattered to them the title of the play, even if Trachis had been as distant as Babylon, when its subject was perhaps the best-known story in all mythology?
Hercules in his wanderings had come to Pleuron in Ætolia. There he saw and fell in love with Dejanira, the king's daughter, whose hand was sought by a suitor of a strange sort—the river-god Achelous. This potent rival had, as she tells us, wooed her in various shapes (none of them, it must be confessed, attractive),
