ABSTRACT
The Danaides were daughters of Danaus, a mythical Greek king. Forced to marry their cousins, these brides, with one exception, stabbed their husbands to death on their wedding night, with daggers their father had provided; the murderers were punished in the Underworld by having to fill leaky jars with water. The social problem thus created in our time as an unwanted dividend of the state's gamble has prompted an attempted assuagement of the guilt so central to the phenomenon of gambling. In a redirection of some of the profits from gambling the state now sponsors an agency where those who identify themselves as gamblers can speak. Freud supported his contention that masturbation is the primary addiction at play in gambling with his interpretation of Zweig's aforementioned novel which centres on the attempt by a older woman to rescue a young man from gambling.
