CHAPTER III

THE WORKS OF ÆSCHYLUS

The place of Æschylus in dramatic history has been discussed in the first chapter. We have still to give some account of his seven extant plays and of the fragments.

The SUPPLICES[207] (Ἱκετίδες, “Suppliant Women”) is no doubt the earliest of these. The scene is laid near the sea-coast, not far from Argos. The chorus, consisting of the fifty daughters of Danaus, enter, and in their opening song tell how they have fled from Egypt to escape marriage with their cousins, the fifty sons of Ægyptus. These suitors have pursued them overseas, but they call upon Zeus, who through Io is their ancestor, to defend them. Danaus, their father, urges them to take refuge upon the steps of the altar.[208] This they do, becoming suppliants of the State-deities and acquiring a claim upon the citizens. The King of Argos enters; to him the women make their appeal. He replies that he must consult the national assembly before facing the possibility of war with the Egyptians; meanwhile he sends Danaus into the city to engage the compassion of the Argives. After another song by the chorus, in which they relate the wanderings of Io and her final peace, Danaus returns with the news that the Argive assembly is unanimous in championing the Suppliants; the women burst forth into lyrical blessings upon the land. Danaus, who has been upon the watch, announces the approach of the hostile ships; he comforts his shrinking daughters, goes to fetch help, and does not return until the danger is over.[209] After a terrified lyric, the Egyptian herald appears, accompanied no doubt by warriors; he harshly bids them go to the ship and submit to their masters. They refuse. He is on the point of dragging them away when the King enters, rebukes the herald, and defies the power of Egypt. The intruder departs with threats of war. Danaus returns, and with his daughters is given lodging within the city-walls. The chorus end the drama with an ode voicing their fear of war and oppression.

Such a close evidently implies that the story was continued in another work, and it has been conjectured that the _Egyptians_ and the _Danaides_ (“Daughters of Danaus”) formed the second and third parts of the trilogy. Scarcely anything of these two plays has been preserved, but there is good reason to suppose that the Egyptians were victorious, that the daughters of Danaus were compelled to marry their ferocious suitors, and that on the command of their father each slew her husband on the wedding-night. Hypermnestra alone spared her lover, by name Lynceus. It seems that she was put on her trial for this disobedience and was saved by the advocacy of Aphrodite, who thus foreshadows the Apollo of the _Eumenides_. The satyric play was perhaps the _Amymone_; this was the name of one of the Danaides, who was delivered from a satyr by Poseidon. Viewed not historically, but æsthetically, especially by a reader already familiar with the _Oresteia_, the play must be confessed bald and monotonous. Many of Æschylus’ most splendid attributes, it is true, are to be discerned, but their fire too often sinks into smouldering grimness. The only really fine passages are those portions of the lyrics which bear the impress of the poet’s masculine and profound theology. Such strictures, however, are merely one way of saying that the _Supplices_ is an early work. It would be fairer (were it only possible) to compare it with the drama of Phrynichus rather than with the _Agamemnon_. Here, perhaps for the first time, we have a genuinely dramatic situation—the collision between the king and the herald. There is little characterization. The chorus are simply distressed damsels (save for their vivid and strong religious faith), the king is simply a magnanimous and wary monarch, the herald simply a “myrmidon”. Danaus, however, shows some interesting traits. He is extremely sententious and rejoices in the fact: “Inscribe this on your hearts beside the many other precepts of your father written there”.[210] His exhortation[211] to chaste behaviour, though long and (as his daughters assure him) unnecessary, is, albeit corrupt textually, one of the most striking passages in the play. But one feels that characterization is perhaps less needed in a work which, literally from the first word, is filled with the name of God, Zeus,[212] the ancestor of the Danaids, the lord of the universe, the guardian of right. “And whensoever it is decreed by nod of Zeus that a thing be brought to fullness, it falls not prostrate, but on its feet. Yea, through thicket and shadow stretch the paths of his decrees, that no thoughts can spy them out.”[213] Equally majestic is the language concerning that other Zeus[214] who judges the sins of men in Hades. Finally, though the thought and diction are in the main stark if dignified, a change comes over the play before the end: we get a little “atmosphere”. Danaus already fears personal enemies (v. 1008), and the arrangements for lodging the suppliants show a tinge of domesticity.

The PERSÆ[215] (Πέρσαι, “Men of Persia”), though perhaps twenty years later, comes next among the surviving plays. The action takes place before the palace of Xerxes. It opens with a song from the chorus, who represent aged councillors of the Persian Empire. They describe the departure of the host which is to conquer Greece, and their own anxiety for news. Atossa, widow of Darius and mother of Xerxes, enters, distressed by an ill-omened dream. The councillors discuss this portent and the prospects of victory. A messenger arrives who announces the complete overthrow of the “barbarians”. The queen speedily rallies from her grief, learns that her son himself is safe, and hears the narrative of Salamis and the flight of the Persians back to Asia. She determines to offer supplications to Heaven and retires to fetch the materials of sacrifice; the chorus pour forth a lyric lament and deplore the loss of Darius the conqueror. Atossa returns bearing the libation which she offers to the shade of Darius, while the chorus invoke the dead king, praying him to appear and give counsel. In answer, the ghost of Darius rises from his tomb. He learns the evil tidings, laments the impious folly of his son, and foretells the coming disaster of Platæa. After the shade has sunk back into the tomb, and Atossa has gone to meet Xerxes,[216] the elders sing of Persia’s greatness under Darius. Finally, Xerxes appears, plunged in despair. Amid the antiphonal wailings of the king and his councillors the tragedy ends.

The scholiast says that “Æschylus won the prize in the archonship of Menon, with _Phineus_, _Persæ_, _Glaucus of Potniæ_ and _Prometheus_”.[217] This tetralogy seems (to judge from the titles and the fragments) to have been a collection of plays which had no relation of subject-matter. Interesting to the historian as the only extant tragedy dealing with a contemporary subject, the _Persæ_ also wins the highest admiration as a piece of literature not unworthy of its theme. The muscular and majestic diction of the speeches, the noble sweep of the lyrics, the colossal dignity of the characters, the picturesqueness and vigour which make the story of Salamis one of the greatest passages even in Æschylus—these are characteristics of the poet which the _Supplices_ presents only in germ. But the noblest feature of the whole is the manner in which Æschylus has faced his chief obstacle. To dramatize the heroic spirit and overwhelming success of Athens in the presence of Athenians—was this an easy task? Nothing could be more cloying at the moment, more thin and unsatisfying to the after-reflection. Æschylus rises clear above all this. First, he places the scene not in Athens, but before the gates of the palace at Susa; that dignity which elsewhere in Greek tragedy is secured by remoteness in time, is here obtained by remoteness in space.[218] The whole incident is held at arm’s length that it may be viewed with soberness, and as a whole in perspective. Next, it has often been observed that on the one hand he chronicles a host of Asiatic nobles while on the other not a single Greek—not even Themistocles—is named. Both these facts spring from the same source. Æschylus, it cannot be repeated too often, was a deeply religious man. When he takes it in hand to dramatize an event of recent history his instinct impels him, just as infallibly as if he were writing of Heracles or Prometheus, to describe occurrences not in the language of politics or of tactics, but of theology. Athens has been but the instrument of Heaven; Persia has fallen, not through the brawn of oarsmen or the skill of captains, but through the blasphemous infatuation of her prince and the wrath of God following thereupon.

O God, thy arm was here; And not to us, but to thy arm alone, Ascribe we all! When, without stratagem, But in plain shock and even play of battle, Was ever known so great and little loss On one part and on th’ other? Take it, God, For it is none but thine![219]

He is little concerned with that play of human psychology on the Greek side, which forms so brilliant a page of Herodotus. Even when he narrates that trick by which the conflict was precipitated, the false message from Themistocles to Xerxes, nothing is said of the reasons for sending it. Though the antecedent “facts” are known, yet he chooses to tell what he does indeed regard as the truth, that the whole error of the king came from “a fiend or evil spirit,” and that he fell into the trap because “he perceived not the guile of the Greek nor _the spite of Heaven_”.[220] On the Greek side, then, “the creatures of a day” are lost in the vision of eternal righteousness. But the poet has no such reason to obliterate the mighty names of Persia. Almost the whole effect of them is for us lost; but to an Athenian ear these barbaric polysyllables must have sounded with all the pomp of an ancient chivalry, the waves of the boundless and terrible Orient descending in deluge upon the tiny states of Hellas. But the billows at their highest had been stayed and had sunk; the appalling roll of warlike titles was changed into a proclamation of glory—but not the glory of Greece. No Greek name is immortalized in this play, which resounds at every moment with the name of God.

The SEVEN AGAINST THEBES[221] (Οἱ Ἑπτὰ ἐπὶ Θήβας) was produced in 467 B.C. and deals with the fratricidal quarrel of the sons of Œdipus. Eteocles, the elder, had become King of Thebes and expelled his brother Polynices. The latter with six comrades-in-arms and an host led by Adrastus, King of Argos, attacked the city. The seven invading champions were met at the seven gates by as many Theban warriors. The scene is laid in an open space in the town. A messenger brings to Eteocles the news that the enemy are on the point of assaulting the walls. The chorus, consisting of Theban maidens, enter, and in a vivid lyric express their frantic terror. Eteocles attempts to calm them, urging that their outcries will demoralize the citizens; but soon they burst forth again into wild forebodings. Then follows a long scene in which the messenger describes the seven heroes who are to attack at the seven gates. As each is described Eteocles allots one of his comrades for defence. The seventh enemy is Polynices, the king’s own brother; Eteocles, spurred on by the curse of his house, declares that he will himself confront Polynices. He rushes away and the maidens lament the frightful story of Œdipus’ curse. The messenger returns with the news that the invaders have been routed and that the brothers have fallen by each other’s hand. After the chorus have lamented this crime, the corpses are brought forward, accompanied by Antigone and Ismene, sisters of the dead, who utter an antiphonal dirge. They are interrupted by a herald who proclaims the decree of the “people’s councillors”. Eteocles is to be honourably buried; his brother is to be left to the dogs and birds of prey. Antigone defies the decree and declares that she will bury Polynices. The chorus divide into two

## parties, one supporting Antigone, the other giving obedience to the State.

This tragedy won the prize. The trilogy consisted of _Laius_, _Œdipus_, the _Seven_, with the _Sphinx_ as satyric play. Aristeas and Polyphradmon, the sons of Pratinas and Phrynichus respectively, were second and third. Very little is known about the companion plays. The _Laius_ contained a reference to the exposure of the infant Œdipus; the _Œdipus_ described the death of Laius.

The _Seven_ is a magnificently vigorous and graphic presentment of war in one of its aspects. As such it is eulogized by Aristophanes, who puts into the mouth of Æschylus the boast that he “composed a drama full of the War-God—my _Seven against Thebes_”.[222] The chief excellences are the first chorus and the celebrated Choosing of the Champions. This latter contained the best-known passage in the play, where the messenger says of Amphiaraus:—[223]

σῆμα δ’ οὐκ ἐπῆν κύκλῳ οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖν ἄριστος, ἀλλ’ εἶναι θέλει, βαθεῖαν ἄλοκα διὰ φρενὸς καρπούμενος, ἐξ ἧς τὰ κεδνὰ βλαστάνει βουλεύματα.

His buckler bore no blazon; for he seeks Not to seem great, but to be great indeed, Reaping the deep-ploughed furrow of his soul Wherefrom the harvest of good counsel springs.

As these lines were declaimed in the theatre, Plutarch[224] tells us, every one turned and gazed at Aristides the Just. The first half of the play is in strictness not dramatic[225] at all—a merely static presentment of the situation: a city in a state of siege, panic among the women, resolution in the mind of the general. The later portion gives us decisive action. The King rushes to his fratricidal duel, spurred on by the invisible curse; but even here there is no dramatic conflict of personalities like the altercation between the brothers in the _Phœnissæ_ of Euripides. Such a collision is, however, provided at the very end, where Antigone defies the State.

As regards the PROMETHEUS VINCTUS (Προμηθεὺς δεσμώτης, “Prometheus Bound”) we are in doubt as to the date, the arrangement of the cast, and the other parts of the trilogy.

Concerning the date, we know that the play was written after 475 B.C., the year in which occurred that eruption of Etna described by Prometheus (vv. 363-72). Further, it is usually regarded as later than the _Seven_ owing to the increased preponderance of dialogue over lyrics. Also, the supposition that three actors are required has led some scholars to believe that the _Prometheus_ belongs to the period when Sophocles had introduced a third actor, and so to place it in the last part of the poet’s life.[226] The static nature of the drama might seem to forbid such a view, but possibly it formed the centre of the trilogy, the most likely place for an equilibrium of the tragic forces. And the theological basis of the whole series is so profound, that an approximation in date to the _Oresteia_ is not unreasonable. On the whole, then, the _Prometheus_ may be conjecturally assigned to about the year 465 B.C.

As for the division of the parts among the actors, we find in the opening scene three[227] persons engaged, Prometheus, Hephæstus, and Cratos (“Strength”). Prometheus, however, does not utter a word until his tormentors have retired, and it has been held that only two actors are needed here (as in the rest of the work). On this view, Prometheus would be represented by a lay-figure, either Hephæstus or Cratos would return unseen, delivering the later speeches of Prometheus from behind the figure, through a mouth-piece in the head. But as there was no curtain in the theatre, it would be necessary for the executioners to carry the lay-figure forth in view of the audience before the action began. The true objection to this is not its absurdity; an audience will tolerate much awkwardness in stage-management, if only it is accustomed to such conventions. But it would scarcely have harmed the play if the poet had dispensed with Cratos; the actor thus disengaged could have impersonated Prometheus from the beginning. That Æschylus saw this possibility cannot be doubted; therefore he did not feel bound to use a lay-figure; therefore he did not, and we must assume that he employed three actors.

Two other tragedies were associated with this, _Prometheus the Fire-bringer_ (Προμηθεὺς πυρφόρος) and _Prometheus Unbound_ (Προμηθεὺς λυόμενος). That the latter followed the extant play is of course certain, but the position of the _Fire-bringer_ is doubtful. One would naturally place it first in the trilogy: the offence, the punishment, the reconciliation. But, say some, in that case one can hardly imagine how Æschylus wrote the first tragedy without anticipating a great part of the second—the noble account which Prometheus gives of the victory of Zeus, his own offence, and the blessings it conferred upon men. Hence arises a theory that the _Fire-bringer_ was the last play of the trilogy in which the Titan, reconciled to Zeus, became a local deity of Athens, the giver of fire. But this view has been discredited by evidence[228] that there is not enough matter remaining for the _Fire-bringer_ after the close of the _Prometheus Unbound_. These two difficulties about the position of the _Fire-bringer_ have induced some to identify it with that _Prometheus_ which we know as the satyric play appended to the _Persæ_ trilogy, and to suppose that Æschylus told the story in two plays only, the present trilogy being completed by a tragedy unconnected with the subject. The best view is that the _Fire-bringer_ was the first play; the title suggests that it dealt with the transgression which led to the punishment portrayed in the extant drama; and the objection as to overlapping of the _Fire-bringer_ and the _Prometheus Vinctus_ is illusory.

The scene is a desolate gorge in Scythia. Hephæstus, the God of Fire, with Cratos and Bia, Strength and Violence, servants of Zeus, appear, dragging with them the Titan Prometheus. Hephæstus nails the prisoner to the rocks under the superintendence of Cratos; he has little liking for his task, but Cratos rebukes his tenderness for the malefactor who has braved Heaven in order to succour mankind. At length Prometheus is left to his lonely agony. Hitherto he has been silent, but now he voices his pain and indignation to the sea and sky and earth around him. His soliloquy breaks off as he catches the sound of wings, and the chorus enter—a band of sea-nymphs who have been startled from their cave by the clatter of iron. They strive to comfort him, and he tells how by his counsel Zeus was enabled to defeat the Titans. Then, consolidating his empire, the god determined to destroy mankind and create a new race. Prometheus, in love of men, saved them from destruction and bestowed upon them the gift of fire, which he stole from Heaven and which has been the beginning of civilization. At this point Oceanus enters, riding upon a four-legged bird; he is a Titan who stood aloof from the conflict with Zeus. An amiable but obsolete person, he wishes to release Prometheus (without running into danger himself) and urges submission. The prisoner listens with disdainful courtesy, refuses the advice, and hints to Oceanus that he had better not associate with a malefactor. His visitor soon bustles away, and the chorus sing how all the nations of the earth mourn over the torments of their deliverer. Prometheus then tells of the arts by which he has taught man to alleviate his misery. The Nymphs ask if he has no hope of release himself; he hints at the possible downfall of Zeus. Another lyrical passage hymns the power of that god and expresses surprise at the contumacy of the Titan. Then appears Io, the heifer-maiden, who at the request of the chorus describes her strange ill-fortune. Beloved of Zeus, she has incurred the wrath of his queen, Hera, who has changed her into a heifer and sent her roaming wildly over the earth pursued by a gadfly. Prometheus prophesies her future wanderings, which shall end in Egypt. He speaks more clearly of the fall of Zeus, who is preparing to wed one who shall bear a child greater than his father. Then he narrates the story of Io’s course up to the present hour, ending with the prophecy that in Egypt she shall bear to Zeus a son named Epaphus. He speaks of the history of this man’s line,

## particularly of one “courageous, famed for archery” who shall release

Prometheus. Io, in a sudden paroxysm, rushes from the scene. The chorus sing of the dangers which lie in union with the Gods. Prometheus again foretells the overthrow of Zeus by his own son. Hermes, the messenger of Zeus, enters demanding that the prisoner reveal the fatal secret. Prometheus treats his message with defiance. Hermes warns him of still more fell tortures: the “winged hound of Zeus” will come each day to tear his liver; a convulsion of the earth will hurl him into Hades. The nymphs again urge submission, but when the messenger declares that unless they leave Prometheus they will perchance suffer too, they haughtily refuse to listen. Amid an upheaval of the whole of Nature, the Titan, still defiant, sinks from sight.

The _Prometheus Vinctus_ has impressed all generations of readers with wonder and delight; in particular it has inspired poetry only less magnificent than itself. Shelley’s _Prometheus Unbound_ is a gorgeous amplification of its spiritual and material features. The sinister and terrific figure which dominates the early part of _Paradise Lost_ is but Prometheus strayed at an untoward hour into Christian mythology. Again, this play is the noblest surviving example of the purely Æschylean manner. The _Oresteia_ is greater, perhaps, certainly more interesting to us; but there Æschylus has reacted to the spirit of Sophocles. Here, the stark hauteur of the _Supplices_ has developed into a desolate magnificence. The lyrics which, since the _Seven_, have again dwindled in size, have yet grown in beauty, variety, and characterization. On the other side, there is a development of the dialogue which is amazing. Long speeches are still the rule, but line-by-line conversations are frequent. Characters in the _Supplices_ and the _Seven_ talk as if blank-verse dialogue were a strange and difficult art—as indeed it was till Æschylus forged it into shape. Throughout, whether in lengthy speeches or in conversation, the iambic metre has found a grace and suppleness which is too often ignored by those who come to the _Prometheus_ fresh from the _Medea_ or the _Œdipus Tyrannus_. Above all, the maturity of Æschylus’ poetic strength is to be seen in the terrific perspectives which he brings before us—perspectives of time, as the voice of the tortured prophet carries us down a vista of centuries through the whole history of Io’s race to the man of destiny; perspectives of scenery, as the eye of the Ocean-Nymphs from the summit of earth gazes down upon the tribes of men, horde behind horde fading into the distance, all raising lament for the sorrows of their saviour; perspectives of thought, as the exultant history of civilization leaps from the lips of him who dies hourly through untold years to found and uphold it, telling how that creeping victim of his own helplessness and the disdain of Heaven goes from weakness to strength and from strength to triumph.

No less wonderful is the strictly dramatic economy of the play. The

## action is slight. Prometheus works no more; it is his part to endure.

All the secondary characters act as a foil to bring the central figure into massive relief. Each has some touch of Prometheus: Hephæstus, pity without self-sacrifice; Cratos, strength without reflection; the Nymphs, tenderness without force; Oceanus, common-sense without dignity; Io, sensibility to suffering without the vision which learns the lesson of pain; Hermes, the power to serve without perception of the secret of sovereignty. Most essential of all these is Io. The only human

## participant in the action, she reminds us that the hand of Zeus has been

heavy upon innocent mortals as well as rebel gods, and thus gives fresh justification to the wrath of Prometheus. Still more, she is vital to the whole trilogy. As Hephæstus links the _Fire-bringer_ to the second play, so does she join the second play to the _Prometheus Unbound_. It is her descendant Heracles who after thirteen generations will free Prometheus and reconcile him to Zeus; the hero of the last drama is brought in a sense upon the scene in the person of his ancestress. Prometheus himself suggests to us the thought of Christ; and yet (as has been said) the Satan of Milton is like him too. This double kinship is made possible by the conception of Zeus which here obtains. Under the sceptre of a god who hates mankind it is possible for the saviour of men to be a rebel and an outcast. Right or wrong, the Titan is godlike in his goodness, his wisdom, his courage. At one point only does his deity show a flaw; he endures his pangs not as a god, but as a man; he agonizes, he laments his pains, he utters exclamations of fear. Rightly, for if the actors in this world-drama are immortal, the spectators are not. To have portrayed Prometheus as facing his punishment without a quiver would have been perhaps sounder theology, but worse drama; the human audience must be made to understand something at least of these pangs, or the greatness of the sacrifice will elude them. A parallel on which we must not dilate cannot escape the reader. One strange outcome of his rebellion is generally overlooked. Zeus had wished to destroy mankind and create a new race. That is, he meant to treat men as he treated the Titans—or would have treated them had they been mortal. Prometheus thwarted this plan, so that we men are a survival of that pre-moral world which the new ruler supersedes. We are the younger brothers of the Titans and (so to put it) have all survived the Flood. Our pettiness and futility condemned us in the eyes of Zeus, who wished for progress; but Prometheus loved us in spite of our miserable failings, and so insisted on carrying us over into the new and nobler world at the cost of his own age-long agony.

The basic question must be briefly discussed—the relation of Prometheus to the new King of Heaven. Zeus is here described as a youthful tyrant, blind to all rights and interests save the security of his recent conquest. This cannot have been the picture presented by the whole trilogy. Not only is enough known of Æschylus’ religious views to make such a theory impossible; though the _Prometheus Unbound_ is lost we know the story in outline. Heracles in his wanderings came upon Prometheus, now released from Hades, but still chained to his rock and gnawed by the vulture. The hero slew the bird with an arrow, and procured the release of Prometheus by inducing the wounded Centaur Chiron to go down to death in his place, and by reconciling the Titan to Zeus, who promised to free him on hearing the secret of the fatal marriage.[229] Prometheus, to commemorate his captivity, assumed a ring of iron. The authority of the King of Gods was thus for ever established. It is only in a different atmosphere that any inconsistency can be felt. For Æschylus there was a progress in the history of Heaven as in the civilization of earth. Even Zeus in the early days of his dominion seeks to rule by might divorced from wisdom, a severance typified by his feud with Prometheus. He has his lesson to learn like all others; if he will not govern with the help of law, bowing to Fate, then the hope of the Universe is vain and the blind forces of unguided Nature, the half-quelled Titans, will bring chaos back. But youthful and harsh as he is, his will has a moral foundation, unlike theirs; and so perhaps it is that Prometheus cannot but exclaim “I sinned” in opposing that will. Upon the reconciliation between Zeus and his antagonist, Prometheus became a local Attic deity and no more. That eternal wisdom which he embodied is mysteriously assimilated into the soul of Zeus. This is the consummation; omnipotence and omniscience are at one.

We arrive finally at the trilogy which bears the name ORESTEIA and which obtained the prize in 458 B.C. This is the only instance in which the whole series has survived; the satyric play, _Proteus_,[230] has perished. The name _Oresteia_ was applied to the whole tetralogy.

The background of the AGAMEMNON[231] is the palace of King Agamemnon at Argos. A sentinel is discovered upon the roof; he is watching for the beacon which shall signify that Troy has at length fallen. While waiting he broods, dropping hints that all is not well at home. Then the beacon flashes forth, and he shouts the news to the Queen Clytæmnestra within the house. On his departure the chorus enter, aged councillors of Argos, who have not yet heard the tidings. They sing of the quarrel between Greece and Troy and describe the sacrifice of Iphigenia, Agamemnon’s daughter, who was offered up to Artemis in order to obtain a favourable wind for the fleet. All the altars are blazing with incense; Clytæmnestra enters, and they ask her the reason. Troy, she replies, was taken last night; a system of beacons has been arranged; the signal has spread over sea and land before dawn. She ponders over the state of the captured city and hopes that the victors have not sinned against the gods of Troy. The old men sing praise to Heaven and moralize on the downfall of human pride. A herald appears, announcing that Agamemnon has landed and will soon reach the city; he dilates on the miseries of the campaign, till the queen sends him away with her welcome to Agamemnon. The chorus call him back and ask news of Menelaus, the king’s brother; Menelaus, he replies, is missing: as the Greeks were sailing home a tempest arose which scattered the fleet. Agamemnon’s ship has returned alone. The elders, after he has gone, sing of Helen and the deadly power of her beauty. Agamemnon arrives, accompanied by the daughter of the Trojan King Priam, Cassandra the prophetess, who has become his unwilling concubine. Clytæmnestra greets him with effusiveness, to which he responds haughtily. She persuades him against his will to walk into the palace over rich carpets like an Oriental conqueror, and accompanies him within doors. The chorus express forebodings which they cannot understand. The queen comes forth and orders Cassandra within, to be present at the sacrifice of thanksgiving, but the captive pays no heed and Clytæmnestra in anger retires. The elders attempt to encourage the silent girl, who at last breaks forth into incoherent cries, not of fear but of horror, and utters vague but frightful prophecies of bloodshed and sin, punctuated by the bewildered questions of her hearers. She tells them that they will see the death of Agamemnon, bewails her own wretchedness, greets her death, and prophesies the coming of an avenger. She passes into the house. After a lyric on wicked prosperity, the voice of the king is heard crying within that he has been mortally wounded. Another shriek follows, and then silence. The chorus are in a tumult, when the doors are flung open and Clytæmnestra is seen standing over the corpses of Agamemnon and Cassandra. She has slain the king with an axe, entrapping him in the folds of a robe while in his bath. In reply to the furious accusations of the elders she glories in her act—she is the personification of the ancestral curse; and she has avenged the murder of Iphigenia. The altercation has for the moment reached something like calm, when Ægisthus appears. He is the cousin of Agamemnon, but between the two families there is a murderous and adulterous feud; Ægisthus himself is the lover of Clytæmnestra and has shared in the plot. The Argives turn on him in hatred and contempt, which he answers with tyrannical threats. They remind him that Orestes, the king’s young son, is alive and safe abroad. Swords are drawn, but Clytæmnestra insists that the quarrel shall cease; she and Ægisthus must rule with dignity.

A novel theory of the plot has been put forward by the late Dr. A. W. Verrall in his edition of the play.[232] He finds the following difficulties in the usual acceptation: (i) Agamemnon lands in Argos on the morning after the night in which Troy was captured, though as a matter of course and a matter of “history” several days (at the very least) must have elapsed before the Greek host so much as embarked; and though a storm has befallen the fleet on its way. (ii) The story given by Clytæmnestra about the beacons is absurd. Why has the arrangement existed for only one year of the ten? Why make an arrangement which would depend so entirely on the weather? How could the beacon on Mount Athos have been seen from Eubœa (a hundred miles away) when a tempest was raging on the intervening sea? (iii) This mystery, that Agamemnon reaches home only two or three hours after his signal, is never cleared up: neither he nor the queen mentions it when they meet. (iv) Thus the whole affair of the beacons is gratuitous as well as incredible. (v) We are not told how Agamemnon was slain. That is, though the poet is precise enough about the details of the actual murder, we are not enlightened as to how a great and victorious prince could be killed with impunity by his wife and her lover, who thereupon, with no difficulty, usurp the government. (vi) What does Ægisthus mean by claiming to have contrived the whole plot? On the face of it he has done nothing but skulk in the background. Dr. Verrall’s explanation, set forth with splendid lucidity, skill, and brilliance, may be briefly summarized thus. For a year Clytæmnestra and Ægisthus have been joined in a treasonable and adulterous league, Ægisthus knows what is happening at Troy and has the first news of Agamemnon’s landing (at night). He lights upon Mount Arachnæus a beacon which tells Clytæmnestra that all is ready. (Her story of the fire-chain is a lie to deceive the watchman and the elders.) Agamemnon thus naturally arrives only an hour or two after the news that Troy has fallen. The assassination-plot succeeds for various reasons. During the ten years’ war many citizens of Argos have been alienated from the king by the enormous loss of Greek lives. Hence the usurpers have a strong body of potential adherents. In fact, several passages which our texts attribute to the chorus really belong to conspirators. Next, Agamemnon by the accident of the storm has with him, not the great host, but a single ship’s company. Finally, though he has heard much ill of his wife—this only can account for the brutality wherewith he greets her—he does not suspect her resourcefulness, wickedness, and courage. Verrall’s theory should probably be accepted.

This tragedy is beyond compare the greatest work of Æschylus. The lyrics surpass those of any other drama. To the majesty and scope familiar everywhere in Æschylean choric writing, and to the tenderness which diffuses a gentle gleam through the _Prometheus_, are now added matchless pathos and the authentic thrill of drama. The picture of Iphigenia (vv. 184-249) is not merely lovely and tearful beyond words; it is a marvel that this gloomy colossus of the stage should for a moment have excelled Euripides on Euripides’ strongest ground; it is as if Michelangelo had painted Raffaelle’s “Madonna of the Grand Duke” amid the prophets and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel. Even more poignant, because more simple, are the brief lines (vv. 436-47) which tell how the War-God, the money-changer of men’s bodies, sends back from Troy a handful of charred dust, the pitiful return for a man who has departed into the market-place of Death. Best known of all perhaps is the passage (vv. 402-26) which portrays the numb anguish of a deserted husband. Further, these lyrics are dramatic. The choric songs do not suspend the action by their sublime elucidations; the comments enable us to understand the march of events, giving us the keynote of the scene which follows each lyric. For instance, when the first stasimon dilates, not upon the glory of conquest, but upon the fall of pride and the sorrows of war, we are prepared for the herald and his tale in which triumph is overborne by the memory of hardship and tempest. The misgivings which brood over the third stasimon, in spite of the victorious entry of the king which has just been witnessed, is a fit prelude to the terrible outbreaks of Cassandra.

The characterization shows a marked advance on the _Prometheus_ in variety and colour. This is not so much because three actors are needed as against two in the earlier play; for though they are necessary, comparatively little use is made of the increased facilities. But, while Clytæmnestra is technically as great a creation as Prometheus, the secondary persons are much more interesting in themselves than in the earlier drama. They do of course form a series of admirable foils to the queen, but they are worthy of careful study for their own sakes, which cannot be said very heartily for the lesser personages of the _Prometheus_. The sentinel is excellent, sketched in a few lines with a sureness of touch which is a new thing in this poet’s minor characters. The sense of impending trouble mixed with expected joy, the flavour of rich colloquialism about his speech, and the hearty dance upon the palace-roof wherewith he hails the beacon, make him live. Even more commonplace, theoretically, is the part given to the herald, but him again Æschylus has created a real man. The passionate joy with which he greets his native soil, and the lugubrious relish wherewith he details the hardships of the army before Troy, make him our friend at once, and present us with that sense of atmosphere which is often lacking in Greek tragedy. Agamemnon may seem a disappointing figure; very naturally, for it is the poet’s purpose to disappoint us. To depict a great and noble king would have spoiled the splendid effect of Clytæmnestra. Agamemnon’s murder must be made for the moment as intelligible as may be, therefore the dramatist shows us a conceited, heavy-witted, pompous person who none the less reveals certain qualities which have made it possible for such a man to overthrow Troy.

Clytæmnestra is Æschylus’ masterpiece—not indeed a masterly picture of female character; such work was left to others—but a superb presentment of a woman dowered with an imperial soul, pressed into sin by the memory of her murdered child, the blind ambition of her husband, and the consciousness of an accursed ancestry. Here, as elsewhere in these three tragedies, the architectural skill with which Æschylus plans his trilogy invite the closest study. In this first part, all the justification which Clytæmnestra can claim is held steadily before the eyes. The slaughter of Iphigenia, which killed her love for Agamemnon, is dwelt upon early in the play and recalled by her once and again during her horrible conversation with the chorus after the king’s death. Another wrong to her is brought visibly upon the scene in the person of Cassandra. The sordid side of her vengeance, her amour with Ægisthus, remains hardly hinted at until the very end, where it springs into overwhelming prominence—but at the very moment when we are preparing to pass over to the _Choephorœ_, the second great stage of the action, in which the mission of Orestes is to be exalted. Clytæmnestra has been often compared to Lady Macbeth. But Shakespeare’s creation is more feminine than that of the Athenian. She evinces inhuman heartlessness and cynicism till the task is accomplished; before the play ends she is broken for ever. Clytæmnestra never falters in her resolution, hardly a quiver reveals the strain of danger and excitement upon her nerves while success is still unsure. When the deed is accomplished and the strain relaxed, then, instead of yielding to hysterical collapse, she is superbly collected.[233] Years after, she re-appears in the _Choephorœ_, but time, security, and power have, to all seeming, left little mark upon this soul of iron. At the last frightful moment when she realizes that vengeance is knocking at the gate, her courage blazes up more gloriously than ever: “Give me the axe, this instant, wherewith that man was slain”.[234] It is a superb defiance; for thrilling audacity this passage stands perhaps alone until we come to the splendid “Stand neuter, Gods, this once, I do invoke you,” with which Vanbrugh[235] rises, for his moment, into the heights where Æschylus abode. Yet next moment the knowledge that her lover is dead brings her to her knees.

Cassandra and Ægisthus have not yet been considered, for they belong also to the next topic—the method in which the unity of the play is so handled that it does not interfere with, but helps to effect, the unity of the whole trilogy. The indescribable power and thrill of Cassandra’s scene may easily blind us to the slightness of the character-drawing. Simply as a character, the princess is no more subtly or carefully studied than the herald; the extraordinary interest which surrounds her arises not from what she is or does but from what happens to her. She is the analogue of Io in the _Prometheus_. The mere structure of both plays allots to Io and Cassandra precisely the same functions. Passive victims of misfortune, they are the symbol and articulation of the background in the particular drama; further, they are vital to the economy of the whole series, in that they sum up in themselves the future happenings which the later portions of it are to expound. So far, they are the same; but when we go beyond theoretical structure and look to the finished composition, Cassandra far outshines Io. The Argive maiden suffers, shrinks, and laments in utter perplexity. The Trojan suffers, but she does not quail; her lamentations are hardly lamentations at all, so charged are they with lofty indignation, and the sense of pathos in human things. Io is broken by her calamity; Cassandra is purified and schooled. The poet who in this very play sings that suffering is the path to wisdom has not made us wait long for an example. There is, too, a definite technical advance in this, that Io merely hears the prophecy of justification and the possibility of revenge, while Cassandra in her own person foretells the return of Orestes.

Ægisthus also, but less obviously, is important to the progress of the trilogy. His appearance and his speeches are no anti-climax to the splendid scene of Clytæmnestra’s triumph. The queen and Cassandra have talked of the Pelopid curse; Ægisthus is the curse personified. It is through ancient wickedness that he has passed a half-savage life of brooding exile; the sins of his fathers have turned him into a man fit to better their instruction. Again, this last scene brings before us in full power that aspect of Clytæmnestra which has been almost ignored—her baser reason for the murder of her husband. This is done precisely at the right place. To dwell on the queen’s intrigue earlier would have deprived her of that measure of sympathy which throughout this first play she needs. Not to have depicted it at all would have left that sympathy unimpaired, and we should have entered upon the _Choephorœ_ fatally unable to side with Orestes in his horrible mission.

The story of the CHOEPHORŒ[236] (Χοηφόροι, “Libation-Bearers”) is as follows. The back-scene throughout probably represents the palace of Argos; in the orchestra[237] is the tomb of Agamemnon. Something like ten years have elapsed since the usurpation of Ægisthus. Orestes, son of the murdered king, accompanied by his friend Pylades, enters and greets his father’s grave, laying thereon a lock of his hair in sign of mourning; they withdraw. The chorus (led by Electra) enter—attendants of Electra carrying libations, to be poured in prayer upon Agamemnon’s tomb. Their song expresses their grief, hints at revenge, and explains that they have been sent by Clytæmnestra herself, who is terrified by a dream interpreted to signify the wrath of Agamemnon’s spirit. Electra discusses the situation with her friends, and pours the libations over the mound in her own name, not on behalf of her mother, calling upon the gods and Agamemnon’s spirit to bring Orestes home and punish the murderess. Electra discovers the tress of hair left by Orestes. That it has come from him she knows, as it resembles her own;[238] he must have sent it. In the midst of her excitement, she perceives footprints; these, too, she recognizes as like her own. Suddenly Orestes appears and reveals himself. She still doubts, but he exhibits a piece of embroidery which she herself worked long ago. Electra falls into his arms; Orestes explains to his friends that Apollo has sent him home as an avenger. In a long lyrical scene (κομμός), the chorus, Electra, and Orestes invoke Agamemnon to assume life and activity in aid of his avenger.[239] The chorus leader tells Orestes of Clytæmnestra’s vision. She dreamed that she gave birth to a snake, which drew blood from her breast. He expounds this as foretelling the death of the queen at his hands. Explaining that he and his followers will gain admission to the palace as travellers, he departs. The maidens raise a song of astonishment at the crimes of which mortals are capable, dwelling especially upon the treachery of an evil woman. Orestes comes back accompanied by his followers, and tells the porter that he brings news for the head of the house. Clytæmnestra appears, and receives the feigned message that Orestes is dead. The queen is apparently overwhelmed, but bids the visitors become her guests. While the chorus utter a brief prayer for success, the aged nurse of Orestes comes forth, in grief for the loss of her foster-son. She tells the chorus she has been despatched by Clytæmnestra to summon Ægisthus and his bodyguard, that he may question the strangers. They persuade her to alter the message; let Ægisthus come unattended. When she has gone, they raise another lyric in passionate encouragement of Orestes. Ægisthus enters and goes into the guest-wing of the house; in a moment his scream is heard; the chorus retire.[240] A servant of Ægisthus bursts forth, proclaiming the death of his master. He flings himself upon the main door, desperately shouting for Clytæmnestra, who in a moment appears. His message, “The dead are slaying them that live,” is clear to her: doom is at hand, but she calls for her murderous axe. Orestes rushes out upon her with drawn sword. His first words announce the death of Ægisthus, and she beseeches him piteously for mercy. Orestes, unnerved, asks the counsel of Pylades, who for the first and last time speaks, reminding the prince of his oath and the command of Heaven. Clytæmnestra is driven within to be slain beside her lover. After a song of triumph from the chorus, the two corpses are displayed to the people; beside them stands Orestes who brings forth the blood-stained robe wherein Agamemnon was entangled. The sight of it brings upon the speaker a perturbation strange even in such circumstances. It is the coming of madness. He sees in fancy the Furies sent by his mother’s spirit, and rushes away to seek at Delphi the protection which Apollo has promised. The play ends with a few lines from the chorus lamenting the sinful history of the house.

The _Choephorœ_ is less popular with modern readers than either of its companions. This is owing partly to the difficulty of perusal, for the text of the lyrics is often corrupt; it is still more due to no accident, but to technique. The second play of a trilogy was usually more statuesque than the other two. There is, of course, a progress of events, not merely a Phrynichean treatment of a static theme; but the poet carefully retards his speed. Thus the _Choephorœ_ should be compared rather with the _Prometheus_ than with the _Agamemnon_. We then observe an improvement—if we wish to call it so—in construction. The great Commos keeps the play almost[241] at a standstill; but the rest of the work is full of dramatic vigour.

It is true that none of the characters has the arresting quality of those in the _Agamemnon_. The nurse is a worthy companion to the watchman—her quaint and explicit references to the trouble caused her by Orestes when a baby are the most remarkable among the few comic touches found in our poet; and the part of the slave who gives the alarm, minute indeed, is yet the finest of its kind in Greek tragedy. But the persons of greater import—Electra, Ægisthus, and Pylades—would not have taxed the skill of a moderate playwright. Clytæmnestra is magnificent, but less through her present part than through the superb continuation of her rôle in the _Agamemnon_; her scenes are brief, like the glimpse of a fierce sunset after a lowering day. She is the only person characterized, except, indeed, Orestes, and even he through most of the drama is not a character, but a purpose and a few emotions speaking appropriate sentences. This is true even of the scene where he condemns his mother. The only touch of genuine drama is the instant where he quails before her entreaty; but though this is real enough, it is not great. The undoubted power of the scene is due not to dramatic skill, but to the intrinsic horror of the situation, Æschylus has given us almost as little as we could expect. But turn the page and study Orestes’ address to the Argive state—the increase in dramatic force is appalling. He begins by stately, vigorous, and impassioned eloquence equal to almost anything in the _Agamemnon_. The blood-stained robe is displayed, and the hideous sight seems to eat into his brain. His grip on what he means to say slips; he struggles to recapture it; one can see his failing mind stagger from the mother of whom he strives to speak to the garment of death before him. A word rises to the surface of his thoughts, he snatches at it, but it brings up with it the wrong phrase. The horror passes into us; this half-madness is not lunatic incoherence but the morbidly subtle coherence of a masterful mind struggling against insanity. The deadly net entangles his brain as it entangled his fathers body. By a final effort he collects himself and declares that he goes to Delphi to claim the protection and countenance of Heaven. Then his doom settles upon him; the Furies arise before him and he flees distraught.

That such immense force should be manifested only at the end of the play, that until and during the crisis Æschylus exerts only sufficient dramatic energy to present his situations intelligibly, is the most significant fact in the _Choephorœ_. This is deliberate in an artist who has composed the _Agamemnon_ and the _Eumenides_. In the opening stage it is human sin and courage which provide the rising interest; in the third the righteousness and wisdom of the Most High unloose the knot and save mankind; at both periods personality is the basis of action. But in the middle stage the master is not personality, but the impersonal Fury demanding blood in vengeance for blood, a law of life and of the universe, named by a name but possessing no attributes. This law may be called by a feminine title Erinys; it is called also by a phrase: “Do and Suffer”;[242] it is the shade of Agamemnon, thirsting—is it for blood as a bodily drink or for death as expiation?—and sending the dark progeny of his soul up from Hades. This fact, then, and no person, it is which dominates the play, and that is why the persons concerned are for the time no magnificent figures of will or valour or wisdom, but the panting driven thralls of something unseen which directs their movements and decides their immediate destiny.

The plot of the third play, the EUMENIDES[243] (Εὐμενίδες, “the Kindly Ones,” an euphemistic name of the Furies) is as follows. Outside the shrine at Delphi, the Pythian priestess utters a prayer to all the deities connected with the spot, after which she enters the sanctuary. Almost instantly she returns in horror, and tells how she has seen a blood-stained man seated upon the _Omphalos_ and round him a band of sleeping females, loathly to the sight. She departs. From the temple the god appears[244] with his suppliant Orestes, whom he encourages and sends forth (led by the god Hermes) on his wanderings, which are to end in peace at Athens. When the two have disappeared, the ghost of Clytæmnestra rises and awakens the sleeping Furies. They burst forth from the temple in frenzy at the escape of their victim. In the midst of the clamour Apollo, with words of contemptuous hatred, bids them begone. The scene now changes to Athens, where Orestes throws himself upon the protection of the goddess Athena, whose statue he clasps. In a moment the chorus of Furies enter in pursuit; they discover Orestes and describe the horrible doom which he must suffer. He defies them and calls upon the absent Athena. But they circle about him chanting their fearful “binding-song”—the proclamation of their office and rights as the implacable avengers of bloodshed and every other sin. As their strains die away Athena enters. She hears the dispute in outline, the Furies insisting that for matricide there can be no pardon, Orestes declaring that he has been purified ritually by Apollo who urged him to his deed. The goddess determines that the suit shall be tried by a court of her own citizens. Meanwhile the Furies sing of the danger to righteousness which must result if their prerogatives are withdrawn: “terror _has_ a rightful place and must sit for ever watching over the soul”.[245] The court of justice is now assembled on the Areopagus. Athena presides; with her are the jurymen (generally supposed to number twelve); before her are the Furies and Orestes; behind is a great crowd of Athenian citizens. A trumpet blast announces the opening of the session, and Apollo enters to aid Orestes. The trial begins with a cross-examination of Orestes by the Furies, in which he is by no means triumphant. Apollo takes his place and gives justification for the matricide, under three heads: (i) it was the command of Zeus; (ii) Agamemnon was a great king; (iii) the real parent of a child is the father, the mother being only the nurse. To prove this last point Apollo instances the president herself, Athena, born of no mother but from the head of Zeus. He ends by promising that Orestes, if acquitted, will be a firm and useful ally to Athens. The goddess now declares the pleading at an end, but before the vote is taken she delivers a speech to the jury, proclaiming that she now and hereby founds the Areopagite Court which shall for ever keep watch over the welfare of Athens by the repression of crime. The judges advance one by one and vote secretly; but before the votes are counted Athena gives her ruling that if an equal number are cast on either side Orestes shall be acquitted, for she gives her casting vote in his favour.[246] The votes are counted and found equal, and the goddess proclaims that Orestes is free. Apollo departs, and Orestes breaks forth into thanksgiving and promises that Argos shall ever be the friend of Athens. He leaves Athena and her citizens confronted by the Furies, who raise cries of frantic indignation, turning their rage upon Athens and threatening to blight the soil, the flocks, and the people. Athena seeks to placate them by offering a habitation and worship in Attica. For a time they refuse to listen, but after their fourth song of vengeance they relent. Athena promises that they are to become kindly earth-deities[247] domiciled in Attica, blessing the increase of crops, of herds, and of the family. The citizens, with torches in their hands, form a procession led by Athena, and conduct the new divinities to their dwelling in a cave beneath the Acropolis.

It remains to deal with the literary and religious aspects of the play. The poet sketches Orestes in but a rudimentary style. There is, indeed, hardly any character-drawing in him; he is simply any brave, sensitive, religious man. The “human interest” is almost confined to the gods, without our forgetting that they are surrounded by human auditors. Athena and the Furies are made to live by a few noble sweeping strokes; Athena, the majestic presentment of Olympian wisdom and the visible head of her favoured city; the Furies majestic in their rage, unanswerable in their claim that punishment of crime cannot be done away if the world is to endure. Apollo is a curious study, less sublime than we expected. His manner under cross-examination by the Furies is a little too human; indeed he loses his temper. The fact is that, though Æschylus has no desire to treat Apollo irreverently, he is by no means concerned to depict a perfect being; and for two reasons. Firstly, he insists on reminding us that Apollo is but the minister of Zeus; it is Zeus only whom he is bent on exalting. Secondly, he knows well that his audience, as between the Furies and Apollo, have a strong bias in favour of the latter. The poet does acquit Orestes, but it is of the deepest importance in his eyes that we should not complacently regard the Furies as mere malicious fiends, routed by a gloriously contemptuous Olympian; the Furies may be wrong, perhaps, but _prima facie_ they have a terribly strong case. Therefore in the scene of the pleadings they at least hold their own. Apollo may be more right than they; he is emphatically not their superior, his personal fiat is not a spiritual sanction profounder than theirs. Neither party has got to the root of things. The Furies say: “This man shed the blood of a kinswoman; he must be for ever damned”. Apollo says: “He has not sinned, for Zeus bade him act thus”. The acquittal of Orestes is not the solution of this disagreement, it is but the beginning; we can hardly understand the dispute as yet.

We thus come to the religious aspect of the _Eumenides_. Æschylus is of course too sincere to be satisfied, or to allow us to be satisfied, with the fact that Orestes actually escapes. His pursuers attack not the Argive prince only; much of their language is an indictment of Apollo, and ultimately of Zeus. It is very well for Apollo to revile them as “beasts detested by the gods,”[248] but the gods are themselves arraigned. The earth-powers stand for the principle that sin, especially bloodshed, must be punished; this demand is recognized as just by Athena,[249] and is not repudiated by Apollo. Yet Zeus, the Sovereign of all things, extends his hand over the man who has fallen under their sway by his act. How shall these claims be reconciled?

The solution of Æschylus is not unlike that which (it appears) he offered at the end of the Prometheus-trilogy. We are to imagine that we witness the events of a time when Zeus himself has not attained to full stature. His face is set towards the perfection of righteousness, but development awaits even him. In the instance of Orestes, the jar between Furies and Apollo, or more ultimately between the earth-powers and Zeus, shows that neither party is perfectly right. None the less, it is essential that there should be but one master of the universe, and the Furies are compelled to submit. But Æschylus does not lay down his pen at this point; nothing does he avoid more carefully than an ending which might appear as desirable as obvious to a vulgar playwright, some showy tableau of grovelling fiends and triumphant goddess. The Furies themselves look for nothing less than moral annihilation[250] as the result of defeat. But something of which they have never dreamed—of which, probably, no Greek in the theatre has dreamed—is in store for them; neither victory nor defeat, but recognition by the power to which they have been forced to bow, assimilation to that religion from which they have kept themselves so jealously sundered. They are still to be mighty powers of earth, yet their function is to be cursing no more, but blessing only.

But is this a solution at all? Is it enough to hint at the thunderbolt, to offer a bribe of power and worship that the Furies may forget their rage against Attica?[251] What is to become of their function as inflexible champions of righteousness, which has been the moral safeguard of men? This duty the goddesses leave as a legacy to the newly-formed court of chosen Athenians:—[252]

τὸ μήτ’ ἄναρχον μήτε δεσποτούμενον ἀστοῖς περιστέλλουσι βουλεύω σέβειν καὶ μὴ τὸ δεινὸν πᾶν πόλεως ἔξω βαλεῖν.[253]

“Loyalty and worship do I urge upon my citizens for a polity neither anarchic nor tyrannical; fear must not be banished utterly from the State.” These are the words of Athena; they are also the words of Æschylus—a solemn warning to his fellow-citizens; finally, they are the words of the Furies themselves—the very phrases which they have used are here borrowed—and go far to explain why they consent to relinquish their prerogative. First they have regarded the Areopagus with misgiving as a possibly hostile tribunal; then with hatred as an enemy; at the last they look upon it with benevolence as their heir to those stern duties which must not be suffered, under whatever ruler of the world, to fall into oblivion. It is true at the same time that the poet wished, for reasons of contemporary politics, to impress upon his countrymen the sacredness of this ancient court, then threatened with curtailment of its powers and prestige at the hands of the popular party led by Pericles and Ephialtes; and the manner in which he weaves this consideration of temporal interests into the fabric of a vast religious poem is magnificently conceived. What in a smaller man would have been merely a vulgar dexterity is sanctified by religious genius. It is not the degradation of religion, but the apotheosis of politics. The close of the _Eumenides_ is anything but an anti-climax. It is closely knit to the body of the whole trilogy, showing the manner in which the playwright supposes the necessary reconciliation between Zeus and the Furies to be made possible and acceptable. The King of Heaven is mystically identified now and for ever with Fate.[254] The joyful procession of προπομποί is the sign not only that the moral government of the world has been set at last upon a sure basis, but also that this government is already in operation and sanctifying human institutions.

* * * * *

These seven plays are all that survive complete of the eighty[255] tragedies and satyric dramas written by Æschylus. Our knowledge of the lost works rests upon some hundreds of fragments and scattered mention or comment in ancient writers.

Most interesting and important are those plays which were associated with the extant dramas; these have been already discussed. Next in attractiveness is the _Lycurgea_ (Λυκουργεία, or trilogy of Lycurgus), to which the _Bacchæ_ of Euripides had close affinity in subject. Lycurgus was a king of the Edoni, a Thracian people, who opposed the religion of Dionysus when it entered his realm, and was punished with death. The first play, the _Edoni_ (Ἠδωνοί), depicted the collision between Dionysus and his enemy. There was an interview in which Lycurgus taunted the god with his effeminate looks,[256] and which apparently closed with the overthrow of his palace by the might of the god.[257] The longest fragment gives an interesting account of the instruments of music used in the bacchic orgies. The name of the second play is not certain; it was either _Bassarides_ (Βασσαρίδες) or _Bassaræ_ (Βασσάραι)—the _Women of the Fawn-Skin_. Here the anger of Dionysus fell upon Orpheus the musician, who neglected the new deity and devoted himself to Apollo. He was torn to pieces by the Bacchantes and the Muses gathered his remains, to which they gave sepulture in Lesbos. The _Youths_ (Νεανίσκοι) formed the last piece of the trilogy; practically nothing is known of it. It was the chorus which gave its name to the play in all three cases. The satyric drama was called _Lycurgus_; if we may judge from one of the three fragments the tragic treatment of wine was transformed into a comic discussion of beer.[258]

Another celebrated trilogy had for its theme the tale of Troy. The _Myrmidons_ (Μυρμιδόνες), named from the followers of Achilles who formed the chorus, dealt with the death of Patroclus. Achilles, withdrawn from battle because of his quarrel with Agamemnon, is adjured by the chorus to pity the defeat of the Greeks. He allows Patroclus, his friend, to go forth against the Trojans. After doing valiantly, Patroclus is slain by Hector. The news is brought by Antilochus to Achilles, who gives himself up to passionate lament. This play was a favourite of Aristophanes, who quotes from it repeatedly. In this drama occurred the celebrated simile of the eagle struck to death with an arrow winged by his own feathers, which was cited throughout antiquity and which Byron paraphrased in one of his most majestic passages.[259] The story was apparently continued in the _Nereides_ (Νηρηίδες). Achilles determined to revenge Patroclus. The magic armour made for him by Hephæstus was brought by his mother Thetis, accompanied by her sisters, the sea-nymphs, daughters of Nereus, who formed the chorus. The last play was the _Phrygians_ (Φρύγες) or _Ransom of Hector_ (Ἕκτορος Λύτρα) in which Priam prevailed upon Achilles to give up the corpse of Hector for burial. It appears likely that in the two preceding plays Æschylus followed Homer somewhat closely. But in the _Ransom_ he did not. Besides the detail to which Aristophanes[260] makes allusion, that Achilles sat for a long time in complete silence, no doubt while the chorus and Priam offered piteous and lengthy appeals, there are differences of conception. In Homer, one of the most moving features of the story is that Priam goes to the Trojan camp practically alone. He is met by the God Hermes who conducts him to the tent of Achilles. Then, solitary among his foes, he throws himself upon the mercy of his son’s destroyer. No such effect was to be found in Æschylus. The chorus of Phrygians accompanied their king, and we find in a fragment of Aristophanes[261] a hint of much posturing and stage-managed supplication.

The _Women of Etna_ (Αἰτναῖαι) was produced in Sicily at the foundation of Hiero’s new city. In the _Men of Eleusis_ (Ἐλευσίνιοι) Æschylus dealt with the earliest struggle of Athens—the war with Eleusis, his own birth-place. More ambitious in its topic was the _Daughters of the Sun_ (Ἡλιάδες) which dealt with the fall of Phaethon. A pretty fragment alludes to that “bowl of the Sun” so brilliantly described by Mimnermus, in which the god travels back by night from West to East. It seems that the geographical enumerations prominent in the Prometheus-trilogy were found here also, tinged less with grimness and more with romance. In the _Thracian Women_ (Θρῇσσαι) Æschylus treated the same theme as Sophocles in the _Ajax_. It is significant that the death of the hero was announced by a messenger. Possibly, then, it was a desire for novelty which caused the younger playwright to diverge so strikingly from custom as to depict the actual suicide. The _Cabiri_ (Κάβειροι) was the first tragedy to portray men intoxicated. In the _Niobe_ (Νιόβη) occurred splendid lines quoted with approbation by Plato:—

Close kin of heavenly powers, Men near to Zeus, who upon Ida’s peak Beneath the sky their Father’s altar serve, Their veins yet quickened with the blood of gods.[262]

The _Philoctetes_ is the subject of an interesting essay by Dio Chrysostom.[263] All the three great tragedians wrote plays[264] of this name, and Dio offers a comparison. Naturally, but for us unfortunately, he assumes a knowledge of these works in his readers; still, certain facts emerge about the Æschylean work. Men of Lemnos—the island on which Philoctetes had been marooned—constituted the chorus. To them the hero narrated the story of his desertion by the Greeks, and his wretched life afterwards. Odysseus persuaded him to come and help the Greeks at Troy by a long recital of Hector’s victory and false reports of the death of Agamemnon and Odysseus. Neither Neoptolemus nor Heracles (important characters in Sophocles) seems to have been introduced by Æschylus. Dio comments on the style and characterization. The primitive grandeur of Æschylus, he remarks, the austerity of his thought and diction, appear appropriate to the spirit of tragedy and to the manners of the heroic age. Odysseus is indeed clever and crafty, but “far removed from present-day rascality”; in fact he seems “absolutely patriarchal when compared with the modern school”. That the play is named after one of the persons and not the chorus, leads one to attribute it to a comparatively late period in the poet’s life. Finally, the _Weighing of the Souls_ (Ψυχοστασία) is remarkable for the scene in Heaven, modelled upon a passage in the _Iliad_, where Zeus, with Thetis, mother of Achilles, on one hand, and Eos, mother of Memnon, on the other, weighed in a balance the souls or lives of the two heroes about to engage in fight before Troy.

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In attempting a general appreciation of this poet one should avoid making the error of judging him practically by the _Agamemnon_ alone. Otherwise we cannot hope to understand the feeling of fifth century Athens towards him. Most of his work has vanished, but the collection we possess seems fairly representative of his development; if we give weight to his comparatively inferior plays we may understand the feeling of two such different men as Aristophanes and Euripides. Incredible as it may seem, by the end of that century Æschylus was looked on as half-obsolete. Euripides thought of him much as Mr. Bernard Shaw now thinks of Shakespeare; Aristophanes, lover of the old order as he was, seems to have felt for the man who wrote the _Agamemnon_ a breezy half-patronizing affection; while putting him forward in the _Frogs_ to discomfit Euripides, he handles the older poet only less severely than he handles the younger. He and his contemporaries viewed Æschylus as a whole, not fixing their eyes exclusively on his final trilogy.

Let us consider him first as a purely literary artist, a master of language, leaving his strictly dramatic qualities on one side. We find that his three great notes are grandeur, simplicity, and picturesqueness. To describe the grandeur of Æschylus is a hopeless task; some notion of it may be drawn from the account of his individual works just given, but the only true method is of course direct study of his writings. The lyrics, from the _Supplices_ to the _Eumenides_, touch the very height of solemn inspiration and moral dignity; as it has been often said, his only peers are the prophets of Israel. The non-lyrical portions of his work, stiff with gorgeous embroidery, are less like the conversations of men and women than the august communings of gods; that majestic poem which has for auditors the Sun himself, the rivers, the mountains, and the sea, and for background the whole race of man, is not merely written about Prometheus: it might have been written by Prometheus. But such magnificence has its perils. The mere bombast for which Kyd and even Marlowe are celebrated, and which has given us such things as

The golden sun salutes the morn And, having gilt the ocean with his beams, Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach,[265]

was not unknown to Æschylus, as his wayward supporter Aristophanes with much relish demonstrates. It seems that such extravagances, “the beefy words, all frowns and crests, the frightful bogey-language,”[266] occurred entirely in the lost plays. But in those which survive we have much bombast of phrase, if not of words; the “thirsty dust, sister and neighbour of mud,”[267] Zeus, “chairman of the immortals,”[268]

Typhos, who belcheth from fire-reeking mouth Black fume, the eddying sister of the flame,[269]

“drill these words through thine ears with the quiet pace of thy mind,”[270] “breathe upon him the gale of blood and wither him with the reeking fire of thine entrails”.[271] Æschylus, indeed, like all poets, understood the majesty of sounding words, apart from their meaning. As Milton gloried in the use of magnificent proper names, so does the Athenian delight in thunderous elaboration. Therefore, not possessing the chastity of Sophocles, he is occasionally barbarous and noisy; Aristophanes[272] jests at his lyrics for their frequent exhibition of sound without sense.

Oddly combined with this occasional savagery of phrase is the second quality of simplicity. Æschylus, so far as we know, was the creator of tragic diction. However greatly his successors improved upon him in flexibility, grace, and subtlety, it was he who first worked the mine of spoken language, strove to purify the ore, and forged the metal into an instrument of terror and delight. But even the creator needed practice in its use. He has a giant’s strength, and at times uses it like a giant, not like a gymnast. In his earlier work he seems muscle-bound, clumsy in the use of his new-found powers. He wields the pen as one more familiar with the spear; the warrior of Marathon does fierce battle with

## particles and phrases; he strains ideas to his breast and wrestles with

elusive perfection; we seem to hear his panting when at last he erects as trophy some noble speech or miraculous lyric. This stiffness of execution persists faintly even in the _Oresteia_. The earlier tragedies, both in the characters and in the language, are rough-hewn, for all their glory. In the _Supplices_ this stark simplicity is actually the chief note. Here, more than elsewhere, the poet has a strange way of writing Greek at times as if it were some other language. The opening words of the Egyptian herald—σοῦσθε σοῦσθ’ ἐπὶ βᾶριν ὅπως ποδῶν[273]—can only be described as barbaric mouthing. Throughout this play the complete absence of lightness and speed, the crude beginnings of greatness, a certain bleak amplitude, are all typical of a new art-form not yet completely evolved. The poet, himself the beginner of a new epoch, fills us with an uncanny impression of persons standing on the threshold of history with little behind them but the Deluge. In the _Persæ_ and the _Septem_ there is the same instinct for spaciousness, but the canvas shows more colour and less of the bare sky, for we are now more conscious of background, the overthrow of Persia and the operations of human sin.

The third characteristic, picturesqueness, is the most obvious of all. The few instances of bombastic diction noted above are but the necessary failures of a supreme craftsman. Homer does not stay to embroider his language with metaphor, which belongs to a more reflective age; Pindar’s tropes are splendid and elaborate, a calculated jog to the attention. For Æschylus, metaphor seems the natural speech, unmetaphorical language a subtlety which requires practice. Danaus in his perplexity ponders “at the chess-board”;[274] when the assembly votes, “heaven bristles with right hands”;[275] an anxious heart “wears a black tunic”;[276] heaven “loads the scales”[277] to the detriment of Persia; the trumpet “blazes”;[278] misfortune “wells forth”;[279] Amphiaraus “reaps the deep furrow of his soul”;[280] “the sea laughs in ripples without number”;[281] the snow descends “with snowy wings”;[282] for an intrepid woman “hope treads not the halls of fear”;[283] “Fate the maker of swords is sharpening her weapon”;[284] Anarchy in the State is the “mixing of mud with water”.[285] The best example of all is the celebrated beacon-speech in the _Agamemnon_: “The flame is conceived as some mighty spirit.... It ‘vaults over the back of the sea with joy’; it ‘hands its message’ to the heights of Macistus; it ‘leaps across’ the plain of Asopus, and ‘urges on’ the watchmen; its ‘mighty beard of fire’ streams across the Saronic gulf, as it rushes along from peak to peak, until finally it ‘swoops down’ upon the palace of the Atreidæ.”[286]

Allied to this picturesqueness of phrase is a picturesqueness of characterization: Æschylus loves to give life and colour even to his subordinate persons. Attic literature is so frugal of ornament that the richness of this writer gains a double effect. The watchman of the _Agamemnon_ has the effect of a Teniers peasant; Orestes’ nurse in the _Choephorœ_ is a promise of the nurse of Juliet; the Egyptian herald conveys with amazing skill the harem-atmosphere—one seems to see that he is a negro; Hermes in the _Prometheus_ is the father of all stage courtiers. Again, direct appeals to the eye were made by various quaint devices—the winged car of the Ocean Nymphs, their father’s four-legged bird, and the “tawny horse-cock” (whatever it was) which so puzzled Dionysus.[287] Such curiosities were meant merely as a feast for the idle gaze, at first; but the serious mind of the poet turned even these to deeper issues. The red carpets of the _Agamemnon_, and the king treading upon them in triumph, provided a handsome spectacle to the eye; but the mind at the same instant fell into grimmer bodements as the doomed man seemed to walk in blood. So, too, the word-pictures which please the ear are raised by genius to an infinitely higher power, as in that same scene, when Agamemnon complains of the waste of purple stuffs, and the queen seems but to say that there is dye enough left in the sea: “There is a sea, and who shall drain it dry?” The meaning of the words is as inexhaustible as the ocean they tell of, revealing abysses of hatred and love hellishly intertwined, courage to bear any strain, an hereditary curse whose thirst for blood is never sated, a bottomless well of life.

If we now consider Æschylus on his purely dramatic side, as a builder of plays, we find again the three distinctive notes, grandeur, simplicity, and picturesqueness. The grandeur of his architecture is an authentic sign of his massive genius—it by no means depends on his selection of divine or terrific figures; the _Persæ_ and the _Septem_ are witnesses. It is the outcome of his conception of life as the will of God impinging upon human character. Æschylus knows nothing about “puppets of fate.” Around and above men is a divine government about which many things may be obscure, but of which we surely know that it is righteous and the guardian of righteousness. Man by sin enters into collision with the law. The drama of Æschylus is his study of the will and moral consciousness of man in its efforts to understand, to justify to itself, and to obey that law. Supreme justice working itself out in terms of human will—such is his theme. Another source of grandeur lies in the perspectives which his works reveal. This, perhaps most evident in the _Prometheus_, runs through the other plays; and a technical result of this power is the skill with which the whole trilogies are wrought. To compose trilogies rather than simple tragedies shows indeed the instinct for perspective working at the very heart of his method. Again, if this instinct likens his work to painting, still more are we led by historical considerations to make a comparison with sculpture. It has been said[288] that the earliest play is “like one of those archaic statues which stand with limbs stiff and countenance smiling and stony.” This brilliant simile is full of enlightenment. Just as those early Greek statues which seem to the casual observer merely distressing are to be contrasted, not with the achievement of Praxiteles but with non-Hellenic art, the winged bulls of Assyria and the graven hummocks which present the kings of Egypt, whereupon we perceive the stirrings of life and beauty; so should the _Supplices_, were it only in our power, be compared to the rigid declamations from which, to all seeming, tragedy was born. In the _Supplices_ tragedy came alive like the marble Galatea. Dædalus was reputed to have made figures that walked and ran; it is no fable of Æschylus, but the history of his art.

Simplicity, the second note of Æschylus, needs little demonstration after the detailed account of his plots. The four earlier works contain each the very minimum of action. The characterization is noble, but far from subtle. All the persons are simply drawn, deriving their effect from one informing concept and from the circumstances to which they react. Euripides in the _Frogs_[289] fastens upon this, remarking, “You took over from Phrynichus an audience who were mere fools”. A later generation demanded smartness and subtlety; Æschylus was anything but artful, and so the same critic accuses him of obscurity in his prologues.[290] The _Oresteia_ exhibits a marked advance in construction. Leaving on one side the vexed question of the plot in the _Agamemnon_,[291] we observe in the _Choephorœ_ what we may call intrigue. Orestes has a device for securing admission to the palace; the libations by which Clytæmnestra intends to secure herself are turned into a weapon against her; the chorus intercept the nurse and alter her message so as to aid the conspiracy. This ingenuity is perhaps due to the influence of Sophocles.

Thirdly, what may be termed picturesqueness in structure is a matter of vital import for Æschylus. To write dramatically is to portray life by exhibiting persons, the vehicles of principles, in contact and collision. For an artist of the right bent, it is not difficult to select a scene of history or an imagined piece of contemporary life which under manipulation and polishing will show the hues of drama. But the earliest of dramatists turns aside in the main from such topics. His favourite themes are the deepest issues, not of individual life, but the life of the race, or the structure of the universe. What is the relation between Justice and Mercy? Why is the omnipotent omniscient? May a man of free will and noble instincts escape a hereditary curse sanctioned by heaven? Such musings demand surely a quiet unhurried philosophic poem, not the decisive shock of drama. Æschylus devoted himself, nevertheless, not to literature in the fashion of Wordsworth, but to tragedy. How was he to write a play about Justice and Mercy, to discuss a compromise between the rigidity of safe government and the flexibility of wise government? Justice and Mercy are both essential to the moral universe, says the theologian—but they are incompatible. Friendship and strife are both essential to the physical universe, says Empedocles—but how can they be wedded? This impossibility is everywhere, and everywhere by miracle it is achieved. This union of opposites pervades the world, from the primitive protoplasm which must be rigid to resist external shock but flexible to grow and reproduce itself, to the august constitution of the eternal kingdom in which “righteousness and peace have kissed each other”. Where, then, is the playwright to find foothold? His innumerable instances merge into one another. Æschylus, with noble audacity, lifts us out of the current of time and imagines a special instance, an instance which presents the problem in dual form—for example the human tangle of the Atridean house and the superhuman conflict between Zeus and the powers of earth. It is assumed that there has been no earlier, less decisive, jar. In the future, there will be no more. The great question is raised once for all in its completest, most difficult form. The gradual processes of time are abolished. Thus Atlas[292] is punished by condemnation to the task of upholding heaven for ever; how it was sustained before his offence is a question we must not raise. Hypermnestra[293] is put on trial for disobeying her father that her husband may live. She is saved by Aphrodite; and the innumerable cases of conflicts of duty which have broken hearts in days past are summed up (rather than disregarded) by this ultimate example. In the _Oresteia_ a man is hunted well-nigh to death by fiends because he has obeyed the will of God. Why? It can only be said that until the judgment in the _Eumenides_ all is nebulous, the world is being governed desperately as by some committee of public safety; morals, justice, and equity are still upon the anvil. After this one case no man will ever again be tortured like Orestes; nor indeed, we may conjecture, will the oracles of Zeus issue behests so merciless as that which he received.

Finally, something should be said about Æschylus’ views on religion. Other subjects had an interest for him, geography, history, and politics,[294] but his never-failing and profound interest in religion overshadows these. Not only was he interested in the local cults of Athens, as were his great successors; he is at home in the deepest regions of theology. Even more than this, he brings back strange messages from the eternal world, he seeks to purify the beliefs of his fellows by his deep sense of spiritual fact; he writes the chronicles of Heaven and bears witness to the conquests of the Most High. Among Greek writers he is the most religious, and, with Plato and Euripides, most alive to the importance of belief to the national health. He is not ashamed of the traditional gospel when he thinks it true: “the act comes back upon him that did it; so runs the thrice-old saw”.[295] Still less is he ashamed to denounce false maxims: “From of old hath this hoary tale been spread abroad among men, that when prosperity hath grown to its full stature it brings forth offspring and dies not childless; yea, that from good hap a man’s posterity shall reap unendingly a harvest of woe. But I stand apart from others, nor is my mind like theirs.”[296] This originality and sincere mood is shown everywhere. Already we have noted how earnestly just he is towards the claims of the Furies. The case was no foregone conclusion for him. To realize how terrible the quarrel was in his eyes we have only to imagine our feelings had Apollo been defeated. And defeated he nearly is; the human judges vote equally.

The poet’s clear thinking and ethical soundness are shown in his treatment of the hereditary Curse or Até (ἄτη). Some great sin brings this curse into being, and it oppresses the sinner’s family with an abnormal tendency to further crime. But the descendants are not forced to sin. The action of the curse, according to Æschylus, is upon their imagination. When some temptation to wrong-doing occurs to them, as to all men, they may suddenly remember the curse and exclaim in effect: “Why struggle against this temptation? our house is ridden by an Até which drives us to sin”. Thus they rush upon evil with a desperate gusto and abandon. So Eteocles[297] cries:—

Since Heav’n thus strongly urges on th’ event, Let Laius’ race, by Phœbus loathed, all, all Before the wind sweep down the stream of Hell!

But the curse can be resisted. The house of Atreus fed its curse from generation to generation by criminal bloodshed. But Orestes shed blood only at the behest of Heaven, and so combined necessary vengeance with innocence. Thus the curse was laid to rest.[298]

The revision to which he subjected the myths of popular religion is therefore characteristic. There were four leading phenomena which it was necessary somehow to co-ordinate if a consistent faith was to be possible. First, there was the Olympian hierarchy, the object of the State-religion at Athens as elsewhere. Secondly, there was Chthonian religion or the worship of earth-powers. Thirdly, there was the vague, less personal, power called Fate. And lastly, there was conscience, the feeling that sin polluted the soul, not merely the hands of the wrong-doer.[299] None of these four conceptions was by itself adequate in the eyes of Æschylus. The Olympians, though the rulers of men and on the whole their friends, were according to universal report stained with all the crimes of humanity. The earth-deities ruled only by fear; they punished but they did not inspire; nor was it clear that their power was not somehow subordinate to that of Heaven. Fate was impersonal and had no moral aspect on which men could base their understanding of its law. The conception of personal righteousness had no visible basis in the scheme of things; there was no power outside man who guaranteed the authenticity of his thirst for holiness. When once Æschylus set out on his self-appointed path, he brooked no obstacle. First, as to the Olympian gods, he explains away the difficulties. Most of them are frankly ignored,[300] edifying accounts being substituted for them; some few are accepted with a shrug.[301] Zeus is no longer the head of a turbulent confederacy; he has become the father and lord of powers who obey him implicitly and derive their prerogatives from his will. The earth-deities, as has been shown, surrender their moral functions and become mere spirits of fertility, localized, in the case of the Furies, upon Attic soil. Nothing, even in this writer, is more audacious than the monotheistic fervour which transforms these terrific beings into a species of fairy. Fate, again, is mysteriously assimilated to Zeus; the unvarying laws of the universe are invested with a moral tendency and a personal will. And lastly, the conception of human holiness finds its sanction in that will. Zeus bids us be righteous, and our faith affirms that he will punish the guilty and reward the good.

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