lo and endowed by him with the power of
prophecy; then in some way she rejected or betrayed him, and he set upon
her the curse that though seeing the truth she should never be believed.
The figure of Cassandra in this play is not inconsistent with that
version, but it makes a different impression. She is here a dedicated
virgin, and her mystic love for Apollo does not seem to have suffered
any breach.

[7] Pallas.]--(See above.) The historical explanation of the Trojan
Pallas and the Greek Pallas is simple enough; but as soon as the two are
mythologically personified and made one, there emerges just such a
bitter and ruthless goddess as Euripides, in his revolt against the
current mythology, loved to depict. But it is not only the mythology
that he is attacking. He seems really to feel that if there are
conscious gods ruling the world, they are cruel or "inhuman" beings.

[8]--Ajax the Less, son of Oileus, either ravished or attempted to
ravish Cassandra (the story occurs in both forms) while she was clinging
to the Palladium or image of Pallas. It is one of the great typical sins
of the Sack of Troy, often depicted on vases.

[9] Faces of ships.]--Homeric ships had prows shaped and painted to look
like birds' or beasts' heads. A ship was always a wonderfully live and
vivid thing to the Greek poets. (Cf. p. 64.)

[10] Castor.]--Helen's brother: the Eurotas, the river of her home,
Sparta.

[11] Fifty seeds.]--Priam had fifty children, nineteen of them children
of Hecuba (_Il_. vi. 451, &c.).

[12] Pirene.]--The celebrated spring on the hill of Corinth. Drawing
water was a typical employment of slaves.

[13] ff., Theseus' land, &c.]--Theseus' land is Attica. The poet, in the
midst of his bitterness over the present conduct of his city, clings the
more to its old fame for humanity. The "land high-born" where the Peneues
flows round the base of Mount Olympus in northern Thessaly is one of the
haunts of Euripides' dreams in many plays. Cf. _Bacchae_, 410 (p. 97 in
my translation). Mount Aetna fronts the "Tyrians' citadel," _i.e._.,
Carthage, built by the Phoenicians. The "sister land" is the district of
Sybaris in South Italy, where the river Crathis has, or had, a red-gold
colour, which makes golden the hair of men and the fleeces of sheep; and
the water never lost its freshness.

[14] Talthybius is a loyal soldier with every wish to be kind. But he is
naturally in good spirits over the satisfactory end of the war,