sons who die by each other's hands in the fight for the Theban
sovereignty. This family fate, where one evil deed leads to
another after many years, is a larger conception, strikingly
suited to Aeschylus' genius, and constitutes a notable stage
in the development of the Aeschylean drama. And just as
here we have the tragedy of the Theban house, so in the last
extant work, the Oresteia, the poet traces the tragedy of
the Pelopid family, from Agamemnon's first sin to Orestes'
vengeance and purification. And the names of several lost
plays point to similar handling of the tragic trilogy.
The Seven against Thebes is the last play of its series; and
again the plot is severely simple, not only in outline, but in
detail. Father and grandfather have both perished miserably;
and the two princes have quarrelled, both claiming the
kingdom. Eteocles has driven out Polynices, who fled to
Argos, gathered a host under seven leaders (himself being
one), and when the play opens has begun the siege of his own
city. The king appears, warns the people, chides the clamour of
women, appoints seven Thebans, including himself, to defend the
seven gates, departs to his post, meets his brother in battle
and both are killed. The other six chieftains are all slain,
and the enemy beaten off. The two dead princes are buried
by their two sisters, who alone are left of the royal house.
Various signs of the early drama are here manifest. Half the
play is lyric; there is no complication of plot; the whole
action is recited by messengers; and the fatality whereby the
predicted mutual slaughter of the princes is brought about
is no accidental stroke of destiny, but the choice of the
king Eteocles himself. On the other hand, the opening is no
longer lyric (like the two earlier plays) but dramatic; the
main scene, where the messenger reports at length the names
of the seven assailants, and the king appoints the seven
defenders, each man going off in silence to his post, must
have been an impressive spectacle. One novelty should not be
overlooked. There is here the first passage of dianoia
or general reflexion of life, which later became a regular
feature of tragedy. Eteocles muses on the fate which involves
an innocent man in the company of the wicked so that he shares
unjustly their deserved fate. The passage (Theb. 597-608)
is interesting; and the whole part of Eteocles shows a new
effort of the poet to draw character, which may have something
to do with the rise of Sophocles, who in the year before
(468) won with his first play, now lost, the prize of tragedy.
There remain only the Prometheus and the Oresteia, which
show such marked advance that (it may almost be said) when
we think of Aeschylus it is these four plays we have in mind.
Prometheus.---The Prometheus-trilogy consisted of three plays:
Prometheus the Fire-bringer, Prometheus Bound, Prometheus
Unbound. The two last necessarily came in that order; the
Fire-bringer is probably the first, though recently it has
been held by some scholars to be the last, of the trilogy.
That Prometheus sinned against Zeus, by stealing fire from
heaven; that he was punished by fearful tortures for ages;
that he finally was reconciled to Zeus and set free,--all
this was the ancient tale indisoutably. Those who hold the
Fire-bringer (Purforos) to be the final play, conjecture
that it dealt with the establishment of the worship of
Prometheus under that title, which is known to have. existed at
Athens. But the other order is on all grounds more probable; it
keeps the natural sequence---crime, punishment, reconciliation,
which is also the sequence in the Oresteia. And if the
reconciliation was achieved in the second play, no scheme of
action sufficing for the third drama seems even plausible.1
However that may be, the play that survives is a poem of
unsurpassed force and impressiveness. Nevertheless, from the
point of view of the development of drama, there seems at first
sight little scope in the story for the normal human interest
of a tragedy, since the actors are all divine, except Io, who
is a distracted wanderer, victim of Zeus' cruelty; and between
the opening where Prometheus is nailed to the Scythian rock,
and the close where the earthquake engulfs the rock, the hero
and the chorus, action in the ordinary sense is ipso facto
impossible. This is just the opportunity for the poet's bold
inventiveness and fine imagination. The tortured sufferer
is visited by the Oceanic Nymphs, who float in, borne by an
(imaginary) winged car, to console; Oceanus (riding a griffin,
doubtless also imaginary) follows, kind but timid, to advise
submission; then appears Io, victim of Zeus' love and Hera's
jealousy, to whom Prometheus prophesies her future wanderings
and his own fate; lastly Hermes, insolent messenger of the
gods, who tries in vain to extort Prometheus' secret knowledge
of the future. Oceanus, the well-meaning palavering old
mentor, and Hermes, the blustering and futile jack-in-office,
gods though they be, are vigorous, audacious and very human
character-sketches; the soft entrance of the consoling nymphs
is unspeakably beautiful; and the prophecy of Io's wanderings
is a striking example of that new keen interest in the world
outside which was felt by the Greeks of the 5th century,
as it was felt by the Elizabethan English in a very similar
epoch of national spirit and enterprise two thousand years
later. Thus, though dramatic action is by the nature of the
case impossible for the hero, the visitors provide real drama.
Another important point in the development of tragedy
is what we may call the ``balanced issue.'' The question
in Suppliants is the protection of the threatened
fugitives; in Persae the humiliation of overweening
pride. So far the sympathy of the audience is not doubtful or
divided. In the Septein there is an approach to conflict
of feeling; the banished brother has a personal grievance,
though guilty of the impious crime of attacking his own
country. The sympathy must be for the defender Eteocles;
but it is at least somewhat qualified by his injustice to his
brother. In Prometheus the issue is more nearly balanced.
The hero is both a victim and a rebel. He is punished for his
benefits to man; but though Zeus is tyrannous and ungrateful,
the hero's reckless defiance is shocking to Greek feeling.
As the play goes on, this is subtly and delicately indicated
by the attitude of the chorus. They enter overflowing with
pity. They are slowly chilled and alienated by the hero's
violence and impiety; but they nobly decline, at the last
crisis, the mean advice of Hermes to desert Prometheus and
save themselves; and in the final crash they share his fate.
Oresteia.---The last and greatest work of Aeschylus is the
Oresteia, which also has the interest of being the only complete
trilogy preserved to us. It is a three-act drama of family
fate, like the Oedipus-trilogy; and the acts are the sin, the
revenge, the reconciliation, as in the Prometheus-trilogy.
Again, as in Prometheus, the plot, at first sight, is such
that the conditions of drama seem to exclude much development in
character-drawing. The gods are everywhere at the root of the
action. The inspired prophet, Calchas, has demanded the sacrifice
of the king's daughter Iphigenia, to appease the offended
Artemis. The inspired Cassandra, brought in as a spear-won
slave from conquered Troy, reveals the murderous past of the
Pelopid house, and the imminent slaughter of the king by his
wife. Apollo orders the son, Orestes, to avenge his father by
killing the murderess, and protects him when after the deed he
takes sanctuary at Delphi. The Erinnyes (``Furies'') pursue
him over land and sea; and at last Athena gives him shelter at
Athens, summons an Athenian council to judge his guilt, and
when the court is equally divided gives her casting vote for
mercy. The last act ends with the reconciliation of Athena
and the Furies; and the latter receive a shrine and worship
at Athens, and promise favour and prosperity to the great
city. The scope for human drama seems deliberately restricted,
if not closed, by such a story so handled. Nevertheless,
as a fact, the growth of characterization is, in spite of
all, not only visible but remarkable. Clytemnestra is one
of the most powerfully presented characters of the Greek
drama. Her manly courage, her vindictive and unshaken purpose,
her hardly hidden contempt for her tool and accomplice,
Aegisthus, her cold scorn for the feebly vacillating elders, and
her unflinching acceptance (in the second play) of inevitable
fate, when she faces at last the avowed avenger, are all
portrayed with matchless force--her very craft being scornfully
assumed, as needful to her purpose, and contemptuously dropped
when the purpose is served. And there is one other noticeable
point. In this trilogy Aeschylus, for the first time, has
attempted some touches of character in two of the humbler
parts, the Watchman in Agameninoni, and the Nurse in the
Choephoroe. The Watchman opens the play, and the vivid and
almost humorous sententiousness of his language, his dark
hints, his pregnant metaphors drawn from common speech, at
once give a striking touch of realism, and form a pointed
contrast to the terrible drama that impends. A very similar
effect is produced at the crisis of the Choephoroe by the
speech of the Nurse, who coming on a message to Aegisthus pours
out to the chorus her sorrow at the reported death of Orestes
and her fond memories of his babyhood---with the most homely
details; and the most striking realistic touch is perhaps
the broken structure and almost inconsequent utterance of the
old faithful slave's speech. These two are veritable figures
drawn from contemporary life; and though both appear only
once, and are quite unimportant in the drama, the innovation
is most significant, and especially as adopted by Aeschylus.
It remains to say a word on two more points, the religious ideas
of Aeschylus and some of the main characteristics of his poetry.
The religious aspect of the drama in one sense was prominent
from the first, owing to its evolution from the choral
celebration of the god Dionysus. But the new spirit imported
by the genius of Aeschylus into the early drama was religious
in a profounder meaning of the term. The sadness of human lot,
the power and mysterious dealings of the gods, their terrible
and inscrutable wrath and jealousy (aga and pthonos),
their certain vengeance upon sinners, all the more fearful
it delayed.---Such are the poet's constant themes, delivered
with strange solemnity and impressiveness in the the songs,
especially in the Oresteia. And at times, particularly in
the Trilogy, in his reference to the divine power of Zeus,
he almost approaches a stern and sombre monotheism. ``One God
above all, who directs all, who is the cause of all'' (Ag.
163, 1485); the watchfulness of this Power over human action
(363-367), especially over the punishment of their sins; and
the mysterious law whereby sin always begets new sin (Ag.
758-760):---these are ideas on which Aeschylus dwells in the
Agamemnon with peculiar force, in a strain at once lofty and
sombre. One specially noteworthy point in that play is his
explicit repudiation of the common Hellenic view that prosperity
brings ruin. In other places he seems to share the feeling;
but here (Ag. 730) he goes deeper, and declares that it is
not olbos but always wickedness that brings about men's
fall. All through there is a recurring note of fear in his
