πρὸς γὰρ Διός ἐισιν ἅπαντες
Ξεῖνοί τε πτωχόι τε.
Homer.
PERSONS
Chorus of Danaides.
Danaus.
Pelasgus, King of Argos, and Attendants.
Herald.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Danaus, according to the received Greek story, was an Egyptian, who founded a colony in Argos, at some date between the age of the oldest Argive king Inachus, and the Trojan war. In the reality of this sea-faring adventurer, modern historians, following the faith of the ancient Greeks, have generally acquiesced, till, latterly, the Germans, with that instinctive hostility to external tradition which characterises them, have boldly ventured to explain both the Egyptian and his colony away into a symbol, or an inanity. Of our most recent writers, however, Thirlwall, after considering all the German speculations on the subject, is not ashamed to say a word in favour of the possibility or probability of an Egyptian colony in Argos;[f1] while Clinton[f2] (Introd. pp. 6, 7), boldly announces the principle that “we may acknowledge as real persons all those whom there is no reason for rejecting. The presumption is in favour of the early tradition. . . . Cadmus and Danaus appear to be real persons; for it is conformable to the state of mankind, and perfectly credible that Phœnician and Egyptian adventurers, in the ages to which these persons are ascribed, should have found their way to the coasts of Greece.” Grote, however, seems to have acted most wisely in refusing to decide whether any particular legend of the earliest times is mythical or historical, on the ground that, though many of the legends doubtless contain truth, they contain it only “in a sort of chemical combination with fiction, which we have no means of decomposing”—(II. p. 50). This play of Æschylus, therefore, cannot boast of any accessory historical superadded to the principal poetic interest.