conveys.  For what reason was the Greek tragic poet confined to so limited a range of subjects?  Because there are so few actions which unite in themselves, in the highest degree, the conditions of excellence; and it was not thought that on any but an excellent subject could an excellent poem be constructed.  A few actions, therefore, eminently adapted for tragedy, maintained almost exclusive possession of the Greek tragic stage.  Their significance appeared inexhaustible; they were as permanent problems, perpetually offered to the genius of every fresh poet.  This too is the reason of what appears to us moderns a certain baldness of expression in Greek tragedy; of the triviality with which we often reproach the remarks of the chorus, where it takes part in the dialogue:  that the action itself, the situation of Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmaeon,[11] was to stand the central point of interest, unforgotten, absorbing, principal; that no accessories were for a moment to distract the spectator’s attention from this, that the tone of the parts was to be perpetually kept down, in order not to impair the grandiose effect of the whole.  The terrible old mythic story on which the drama was founded stood, before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator’s mind; it stood in his memory, as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end of a long and dark vista:  then came the poet, embodying outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in:  stroke upon stroke, the drama proceeded:  the light deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to the riveted gaze of the spectator:  until at last, when the final words were spoken, it stood before him in broad sunlight, a model of immortal beauty.  This was what a Greek critic demanded; this was what a Greek poet endeavored to effect.  It signified nothing to what time an action belonged.  We do not find that the Persae occupied a particularly high rank among the dramas of AEschylus because it represented a matter of contemporary interest:  this was not what a cultivated Athenian required.  He required that the permanent elements of his nature should be moved; and dramas of which the action, though taken from a long-distant mythic time, yet was calculated to accomplish this in a higher degree than that of the Persae, stood higher in his estimation accordingly.  The Greeks felt, no doubt, with their exquisite sagacity of taste, that an action of present times was too near them, too much mixed up with what was accidental and passing, to form a sufficiently grand, detached, and self-subsistent object for a tragic poem.  Such objects belonged to the domain of the comic poet, and of the lighter kinds of poetry.  For the more serious kinds, for pragmatic poetry, to use an excellent expression of Polybius,[12] they were more difficult and severe in the range of subjects which they permitted.  Their theory and practice alike, the admirable treatise of Aristotle, and the unrivalled works of their poets, exclaim with a thousand tongues—­“All depends upon the subject; choose a fitting action, penetrate yourself with the feeling of its situations; this done, everything else will follow.”