INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION. I. 1. The Agamemnon is the first play in the Trilogy called 'Operтeía, acted B.C. 458, Ol. 80, 2, in the archonship of Philocles, three years before the death of Aeschylus. The other two tragedies which follow it are the Choephoroe and Eumenides: with them was acted the Satyric drama Proteus, probably at the great Dionysia (Tà κar' äσTv); and the prize was awarded to our poet. He had a patriotic motive, arising from his strong conservative opinions, for the constitution of the plot of the third play. The authority of the ancient court of Areopagus was menaced with diminution, if not extinction, by a law which Ephialtes brought forward, on the instigation of Pericles, who led the democratic party in opposition to Kimon, the son of Miltiades. Aeschylus, a stern aristocrat, desired by his Eumenides to support the dignity and power of this venerable institution, which he there represents as holding a solemn trial of Orestes under the presidency of Pallas Athene, the tutelar of Athens. 2. These three tragedies must be regarded as constituting one great whole; three acts, as it were, of one plot. In the first play, the Agamemnon, is 'the Crime.' The victorious king, returning from Troy, is murdered by his wicked wife Clytaemnestra with the help of her paramour Aegisthus. In the second, the Choephoroe, is 'the Vengeance.' Orestes returns from his retreat in Phokis, circumvents Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus, and puts both to death: but, having thus contracted the guilt of matricide, he becomes a victim to the haunting torture of the Furies (Erinyes or Eumenides). In the third-the Eumenides-we have the Avenger's Trial.' Orestes flies to Delphi, there obtains the protection of Apollo, who procures for him a trial before the ancient court of Areopagus, under the presidency of Pallas. The Furies plead against him, Apollo speaks for the defence : at the close Orestes is acquitted by the casting vote of the goddess, restored to his civil rights, and freed from the persecuting power of the Furies, whom Pallas consoles with the promise of a grove and sacred rites at Colonus near Athens. II. 1. Aeschylus, like his contemporary Pindar, is a strictly religious pagan. But his religion is of a sterner and gloomier cast than Pindar's; probably chequered by his philosophic studies in the schools of Sicily and Italy. He may well be called a pessimist, nay, the very patriarch and first preacher of pessimism. Look at his Prometheus. In that drama, man born to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards (450 &c., τἂν βροτοῖς δὲ πήματα K.T.λ.), has gained through Prometheus all that is to raise him from his low estate; natural science, letters, numbers, medicine, arts, with their ministers, fire and metals: βραχεῖ δὲ μύθῳ πάντα συλλήβδην μάθε, And with what issue? For these benefactions to men |