20 Olivia Pound 
sources’? of the plots of Atalanta in Calydon and of Erechtheus, 
nor is this topic essential to the main theme of the paper. 
In the foregoing discussion an attempt has been made to show 
Swinburne’s close adherence to the principles of the classical 
Greek Drama. As said earlier, he was not a mere imitator. He 
not only made his dramas conform in nearly every respect to the 
severe type of Greek drama, but when he composed them, he 
seemed almost to be able to put aside the personality of the 
modern poet, and to experience the sensations of a Greek poet. 
Yet with this remarkable ability to revive the life and the spirit of 
another age, he seems to have missed that cardinal virtue of the 
Greeks, their self restraint. He seemed never to have learned 
their maxim, “nothing to excess.” His plays contain too much 
poetry. There is too much of fire, wind, sea, the gods, and 
fate. Beautiful as both plays are in parts, the whole impres- 
sion is blurred. The reader is given the sensation of viewing a 
scene through some opaque or opalescent substance. On the 
whole, however, the plays seem remarkably faithful reproduc- 
tions of the Greek lyric tragedy. 
70 For the myth of Meleager see: Homer, /liad, IX, 527; Apollodorus, I, 
8; Hyginus, Fabulae, 171; Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII, 260-545. Diodorus 
Siculus, IV, 34. 
For the myth of Erechtheus see: Apollodorus, III, 14, 15; Euripides, 
Ion; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 11, 553; Hyginus, Poetica Astronomica, II, 
13; Pausanias,l,.2, 5,3. 
360 
