IF we are to make anything of this bewildering play,we must resort to a humdrum catalogue and explore its oddities one by one.

THE CHORUS

Who are these Suppliant Women? That is the question King Theseus asks of his mother when he first enters and sees them grouped round her in tears, with shorn heads and dressed as mourners. She replies (100 ff.): “My son, these women are the mothers of the seven chieftains who were slain at the gates of Thebes.” She has said as much in theprologue (11 ff.) and the Chorus sings (963 ff.): “Seven mothers, seven sons we bore to our sorrow, men high-famed among the Argives.” That seems a most simple, natural, and effective idea: the poet has made the sorrowing mothers into a chorus begging the aid of Athens, just as Aeschylus formed the chorus of his own Supplices from the Danaids who seek the protection of Argos.

But a difficulty at once appears. Aeschylus' chorus numbered fifty, exactly the number of the Danaids; in Euripides' day the tragic chorus had only fifteen members: how can that number represent a group formed of seven persons only? If there was any numerical datum familiar to everyone in the theatre it was this, that the chieftains who led.the assault on Thebes numbered seven. It is unnecessary to adduce other passages from Greek literature, such as the parodos of Antigone and the very title of Aeschylus' play: the drama before us mentions that number repeatedly. Modern popular knowledge contains perhaps only one analogous and equally familiar number—that of the Disciples. Conceive a dramatist of today who should stage a tragedy based upon the Gospels and introducing that well-known company. Every eye in the audience would instinctively count them as they filed in. Imagine the universal stupefaction when Iscariot with his red hair and money-bag was followed by a thirteenth man, by a fourteenth, and so on, up to (let us say) a twenty-fifth!

Of this folly, however, the author himself was, it seems, not unaware. He has made an attempt to reinforce the seven mothers by a bevy of attendants. They are called upon once (1115 ff.) by the mothers to assist their aged steps, but are otherwise not heard of, save that they add two stanzas to the first song (71-87).