the benefactor is expelled from heaven, chained on Caucasus, and tormented by command of the divine ruler Zeus. True it is, a hope is held out of better things (521 &c.), but a very distant, a very indefinite one. Art, says Prometheus, is weaker than Necessity. Who, asks the Chorus, guides the rudder of Necessity?—The Fates and the Furies.-Is Zeus then weaker than these?—He cannot escape Destiny.-What is destined for him, but to reign for ever? To this question Prometheus refuses a reply the season is not come. The Пpoμneùs Xvóμevos is lost, and we cannot take the answer from the modern voice of Shelley. 2. The supreme power then, according to Aeschylus, in human affairs, is Μοίρα, τὸ πεπρωμένον, Fate or Destiny. In the Prometheus he expands this power into that mythic trinity (Moîpai тpíμoppo, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos) which Rome adopted with the title of Parcae, but also with that of Fata, afterwards Fatae, from whom we get our Fays or Fairies. Again, he recognises them in the Choephoroe, ❀ μeyáλaι Moîpaι (304); and thrice in the Eumenides, where he calls them half-sisters of the Furies: and makes the latter reproach Apollo with having ruined or destroyed (40íoas) the antique Fates by receiving Orestes at Delphi (1165), and again with having persuaded the Fates to make mortals immortal by the restoration to life of Alcestis (694). But, in the Agamemnon, Fate (Μοῖρα or τὸ πεπρωμένον) is spoken of only in the singular, except perhaps, in one remarkable passage (947), which will be considered when we reach it. In short, Aeschylus believes in predestination as strongly as the author of the Koran or the great Genevese interpreter of the Bible. 3. But, as the Furies, avengers of Crime, are so near akin to the Fates, and co-operate with these, Aeschylus has a theory too on this subject, which acts an important part in this play, being often brought forward, especially in the choral ode which begins 640, and again in the scenes with Cassandra, and in the conclusion of the drama. The most pregnant word in Aeschylus on the subject is "ATη. We can cite no place in which ǎTη simply means a crime (this is rather dμapría) or even wickedness in the abstract (this is rather Svoσéßeia or Bpis): but it often means the madness attending crime, as in Homer ('Aλe§ávdpov évek' тŋs) and, oftener, the woe and the curse consequent on crime, and propagating it. This sense we repeatedly see in the Agamemnon. Again, "ATη is deified as being, along with the Furies, an avenger of crime: that is, while the Erinyes torment the criminal by the horrors of conscience, Ate drives him on to add crime to crime, thus intensifying his guilt and his punishment. And so his πράτарxos aтη (1117) entails upon him a vστepóπowos "Aτη (Choeph. 377). See Ag. 1495. 4. And this "ATŋ attaches herself not only to the individual, but also to a family, to a house, which by the guilt of one progenitor may contract a clinging Woe, a Familiar Curse, pursuing it from generation to generation. Such is the Woe of Oedipus and his race, shown in the three plays of Sophocles, and finding its climax in the Antigone. Such, in the Oresteia of Aeschylus, is the Curse attaching to the Atreidan house, whether we are to derive it from the earliest sinner Tantalus (which may fairly be argued from Agam. 1398 &c.) or refer it only to the later deeds of Atreus and Thyestes, as Aegisthus does in his speech, 1507 &c.1 See 1435 &c., where we read also of that demon or evil genius, the aλáoτop (unforgetting one), who dogs the guilty house as the abettor and agent of "ATη. To him corresponds the Lemur of Roman mythology. 5. But neither does Aeschylus represent Agamemnon as free from personal guilt. He too has inherited the Family Curse of criminal conduct, though in a less heinous degree. He has led a great host of Achaeans to Troy, there to whiten with their bones the coast of Asia, or leave them beneath the waters of Scamander and Simois. Nor was he permitted to sail on that great expedition until he had expiated an affront to Artemis by shedding at Aulis the blood of his daughter Iphigeneia. Thus had he contracted the guilt of kindred bloodshed: and this deed is made by Clytaemnestra the apology for her own crime, as it might be, in part at least, the motive. See the choral ode, 640, and the anapaests following: also 1342 &c. III. We may here observe that the murder of Agamemnon is several times introduced in the Odyssey, and in each place ascribed to the treachery of Aegisthus. In I. 33 &c. Zeus mentions it to Athene, and declares that men impute their evils to the gods, but incur them really by their own fault, as Aegisthus, whom he had warned by the mouth of Hermes not to consort with Clytaemnestra and kill Agamemnon: yet he committed these crimes and was slain in consequence by Orestes. Again, III. 253 &c., Nestor gives Telemachus a detailed account of the murder, which Aegisthus accomplished by an am 1 The revolting legends on this subject vary considerably in their details. See Schliemann's Mycenae and Tiryns, ch. iii. bush. And in IV. 512 &c. Proteus tells a similar story to Menelaus. Neither of these narratives ascribes to Clytaemnestra a direct share in the deed, but her guilt is implied in the fact that she marries Aegisthus, and so conveys to him the throne of Argos. But in IV. 92, Menelaus imputes the crime to her treachery: τείως μοι ἀδελφεὸν ἄλλος ἔπεφνεν λάθρη, ἀνωιστί, δόλῳ οὐλομένης αλόχοιο. Virgil, a careful student of Greek dramatic poetry, adopts the Aeschylean story: Ipse Mycenaeus magnorum ductor Achivom Aen. XI. 266. This version of the legend Aeschylus must have drawn from post-Homeric poetry, probably from Stesichorus. IV. I. In the earliest age of the Greek drama, the Chorus was all in all. Thespis is said to have added. a monologue by a single actor; which was improved. and dignified by Phrynichus. To Aeschylus is ascribed. the introduction of dialogue. But in his plays, as might be expected, the Chorus continues to occupy a more important place than in those of Sophocles and Euripides. In the Supplices and Eumenides it consists of persons directly and prominently concerned in the story. In the Prometheus and the Septem contra Thebas, as in the Choephoroe, the choral maidens have the position of sympathizers only, but the action of the two former plays is so slight as hardly to deserve the name of a dramatic plot. This is true of the Persae also: but in that play the members of the Chorus hold the important rank described by themselves in the opening lines and they have, consequently, a prominent interest in the events that follow. Analogous to their position is that of the aged men (πρέσβος ̓Αργείων) who form the Chorus of the Agamemnon. K. Ottfried Müller justly saw that they (twelve in number) represent a council of state appointed to cooperate with Clytaemnestra during the absence of Agamemnon. Hence the patriotic solicitude which they exhibit throughout; hence the anxious doubts they hint to the herald and to Agamemnon; hence their brief and hurried consultation at the moment when they realize the assassination of the king (a passage which almost seems meant to caricature the 'strenuous inertness' of political assemblies): hence the menacing indignation with which in the close of the play they reproach the guilty queen, and defy the regicide Aegisthus. 2. Outlines of the choral songs, and of the successive dialogues in which the plot is developed, will be found in the Notes accompanying the English Translation, 3. As to the characters introduced : (1) The Watchman (Þúλağ), who speaks the Prologue and then disappears, is a servant of the royal household, a somewhat grumbling spruchsprecher, but staunchly loyal to his absent lord. (2) The herald Talthybius, in the second Epeisodion, after saluting his country and its deities, announces in a pompous tone the approaching arrival of Agamemnon, then details with doleful emphasis the sufferings of the army on its outward voyage, and at Troy; and afterwards describes the violent tempest |