Suddenly he checks the impulse, sensible of the presence of the chorus.

He passes on to reason with himself, through a process of thought which Shakspeare could not have surpassed.

He conjures up the image of that brother, hateful and unjust from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood up to youth-- he assures himself that justice would be forsworn if this foe should triumph--and rushes on to his dread resolve.
"'Tis I will face this warrior; who can boast A right to equal mine?
Chief against chief-- Foe against foe!--and brother against brother.
What, ho! my greaves, my spear, my armour proof Against this storm of stones! My stand is chosen." Eteocles and his brother both perish in the unnatural strife, and the tragedy ends with the decree of the senators to bury Eteocles with due honours, and the bold resolution of Antigone (the sister of the dead) to defy the ordinance which forbids a burial to Polynices-- "For mighty is the memory of the womb From which alike we sprung--a wretched mother!" The same spirit which glows through the "Seven against Thebes" is also visible in the "Persians," which, rather picturesque than dramatic, is tragedy brought back to the dithyrambic ode.

It portrays the defeat of Xerxes, and contains one of the most valuable of historical descriptions, in the lines devoted to the battle of Salamis.

The speech of Atossa (the mother of Xerxes), in which she enumerates the offerings to the shade of Darius, is exquisitely beautiful.
"The charms that sooth the dead: White milk, and lucid honey, pure-distill'd By the wild bee--that craftsman of the flowers; The limpid droppings of the virgin fount, And this bright liquid from its mountain mother Born fresh--the joy of the time--hallowed vine; The pale-green olive's odorous fruit, whose leaves Live everlastingly--and these wreathed flowers, The smiling infants o' the prodigal earth." Nor is there less poetry in the invocation of the chorus to the shade of Darius, which slowly rises as they conclude.