Aeschylus

“ AESCHYLUS. Shame on your Cretan monologues! [466] Shame on the infamous nuptials [467] that you introduce into the tragic art!
DIONYSUS. Curb yourself, noble Aeschylus, and as for you, my poor Euripides, be prudent, protect yourself from this hailstorm, or he may easily in his rage hit you full in the temple with some terrible word, that would let out your Telephus. [468] Come, Aeschylus, no flying into a temper! discuss the question coolly; poets must not revile each other like market wenches. Why, you shout at the very outset and burst out like a pine that catches fire in the forest. ”

“ Was girded straightway with my swathing-clothes,
And, gaping round the breast that nourished me,
Sucked with my nurture-milk the clotted blood,
While she in terror, at the portent shrieked;—
Clear is it, as she reared the ghastly pest,
So forceful must she die. I, dragon-like, ⁠540
Myself shall slay her, as this dream declares.—
As augur of these portents thee I choose.
Chorus.
So let it be! But now direct thy friends,
These how to act, or those aloof to bide.
Orestes. ”

“ We have hitherto spoken of Aeschylus as a poet only; but it must not be forgotten that he was also highly renowned as a warrior. His first achievements as a soldier were in the battle of Marathon, in which his brother Cynaegeirus and himself so highly distinguished themselves, that their exploits were commemorated with a descriptive painting in the theatre of Athens, which was thought to be much older than the statue there erected in honour of Aeschylus. ”

“ The alterations made by Aeschylus in the composition and dramatic representation of Tragedy were so great, that he was considered by the Athenians as the father of it, just as Homer was of Epic poetry and Herodotus of History. (Philostr. Vit. Apoll. vi. 11.) As the ancients themselves remarked, it was a greater advance from the elementary productions of Thespis, Choerilus, and Phrynichus, to the stately tragedy of Aeschylus, than from the latter to the perfect and refined forms of Sophocles. It was the advance from infancy if not to maturity, at least to a youthful and vigorous manhood. ”

“ The original inhabitants of New Holland, and the wild African bushmen described by Moffat, the missionary, are among the lowest specimens of human nature with which we are acquainted. As for Æschylus, it is evident he follows in this whole piece the notion of primitive humanity given in his introductory chapters by Diodorus, and generally received amongst the ancients, viz., that the fathers of our race were the most weak and helpless creatures imaginable, like the famous Egyptian frogs, as it were, only half developed from the primeval slime. ”

“ In the same or the following year (B. C. 457) , Aeschylus again visited Sicily for the last time, and the reason assigned for this his second or as others conceive his fourth visit to this island, is both probable and sufficient. The fact is, that in his play of the Eumenides, the third and last of the three plays which made up the Orestean trilogy, Aeschylus proved himself a decided supporter of the ancient dignities and power of that "watchful guardian" of Athens, the aristocratical court of the Areiopagus, in opposition to Pericles and his democratical coadjutors. ”

“ It is at this point in our story that we must look at the evidence of Aeschylus. Small as is that portion of his works which has come down to us, it is of high value, both as a record of current knowledge, and as an indication of the contemporary phases of theory. Already we have the elements of the later threefold division of the anthropological horizon corresponding essentially with the tri-continental scheme of the geographers, with which we know from a fragment of Prometheus Solutus that Aeschylus was acquainted at a stage of its development, which the quotation fixes for us precisely. ”

“ Æschylus at moments sees Nature with simplifications stamped with a mysterious disdain. Here the Pythagorician disappears, and the magian shows himself. All beasts are the beast. Æschylus seems to see in the animal kingdom only a dog. The griffin is a "dumb dog;" the eagle is a "winged dog,"—"The winged dog of Jupiter," says Prometheus.
We have just pronounced the word magian. In fact, Æschylus officiates at times like Job. One would suppose that he exercises over Nature, over human creatures, and even over gods, a kind of magianism. He upbraids animals for their voracity. ”

“ Sublimity and magnificence characterize the style of his tragedies, in which the action and plot, with an unparalleled simplicity of structure, move on, in commanding and stern strength, to their catastrophe; supported by grand imagery, with diction wrested to the height of energy and solemn passion. The characters drawn by Æschylus are as lofty as the language which they speak. We almost yearn for the simple voice of Nature as we listen to the sustained thunder-tone of this great master. His mind seems ever attuned for discourse with the Gods ”

“ He advises the Chorus to depart from the rebel, lest they too should share in the vengeance. They remain faithful to Prometheus, ready to suffer with him; then descend the thunderings and lightnings, the mountains rock, the winds roar, and the sky is confounded with sea; the dread agony has begun.
Once more the bold originality of Aeschylus displays itself. Here is a theme unique in Greek literature. The strife between the two races of gods opens out a vista of the world ages before man was created. ”

“ Shared by the three; them Phœbus beamy-bright
Beholds not, nor the nightly Moon. Near them
Their winged sisters dwell, the Gorgons dire,
Man-hating monsters, snaky-locked, whom eye
Of mortal ne’er might look upon and live.
This for thy warning. One more sight remains,
That fills the eye with horror: mark me well;
The sharp-beaked Griffins, hounds of Jove, avoid.
Fell dogs that bark not; and the one-eyed host
Of Arimaspian horsemen with swift hoofs
Beating the banks of golden-rolling Pluto. ”

“ And Æschylus, as a leader in the development of the artistic spirit, could not but be rightly indignant at the arrogance of newly-gotten wealth. To him, as to all true Greeks, such arrogance was a sin against the gods. A man exulting in his great prosperity, and presuming on it, was a sight at which the gods were angry: they would impel such a man to violent deeds, and make his pride the instrument of his destruction. The moderate wealth and well-founded dignity of an ancient family had all charms for Æschylus ”

“ This drama is a sublime enigma. Aeschylus was conservative and deeply religious. How could he write a play the hero of which is a benefactor of man struggling against the tyranny of the king of the gods, and the sequel of which found a fit and congenial composer in Shelley, whose sentiment and manner the "Prometheus Bound" wonderfully anticipates and perhaps helped to form? Again, how could the Athenians, in an age when their piety had not yet given way to scepticism, have endured such dramatic treatment of the chief of the gods? ”

“ Speak, Aeschylus, and don't display so much haughty swagger.
AESCHYLUS. By composing a drama full of the spirit of Ares.
DIONYSUS. Which one?
AESCHYLUS. The Seven Chiefs before Thebes. Every man who had once seen it longed to be marching to battle.
DIONYSUS. And you did very wrongly; through you the Thebans have become more warlike; for this misdeed you deserve to be well beaten.
AESCHYLUS. You too might have trained yourself, but you were not willing. Then, by producing 'The Persae,' I have taught you to conquer all your enemies; 'twas my greatest work. ”

“ Viewed in this character, he was the natural ally, not of the serpent-footed Giants and the flame-breathing Typhon, but of the All-wise Olympian; and such, indeed, Æschylus, in the present piece (v. 219, p. 189 below) , represents as having been his original position: but, as “before honor is humility, and before pride comes a fall,” so the son of Iapetus, like Tantalus, and so many others in the profoundly moral mythology of the Hellenes, found himself exalted into the fellowship of the blissful gods, only that he might be precipitated into a more terrible depth of misery. ”

“ In the time of Aeschylus, Thebes was, of course, a notable city; his great contemporary Pindar was a citizen of it. But the Thebes of Aeschylus' date is one thing: the fortress represented in Aeschylus' play is quite another, and is never, by him, called Thebes. That the play received, and retains, the name, The Seven against Thebes, is believed to be due to two lines of Aristophanes in his Frogs (406 B.C.) , where he describes Aeschylus' play as "the Seven against Thebes, a drama instinct with War, which any one who beheld must have yearned to be a warrior." ”

“ Of the early part of the career of Æschylus we do not possess a single work. All his extant dramas are of a later date than the battle of Salamis. Probably his early works contained little to attract the taste of the later Greeks.
The earliest of the extant works of Æschylus is probably the Persians, which was performed in Olymp. 76. 4. B. C. 472; a piece unique in its kind, which appears, at a first glance, more like a lament over the misfortunes of the Persians than a tragic drama. ”

“ The elder tragedian, Aeschylus, was born at Eleusis about the year 525 b.c. Tradition told that he fought in the Persian wars and was wounded at Marathon. He began to present tragedies about the year 500, and continued to produce them until about three years before his death in 456. Aeschylus was a man of mighty concepts and massive thought, to which his condensed and pregnant style corresponds; a man of a profound and religious nature, strongly influenced by the Mysteries, he thought deeply upon the problems of men and of gods. ”

“ AEschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only an enlarged common sense. He adverts with chaste severity to all natural facts. His sublimity is Greek sincerity and simpleness, naked wonder which mythology had not helped to explain. ”

“ The partiality of Æschylus for sea-phrases has been often observed. Here, however, Paley for the ἐρεσσομένα, of the vulgate has proposed ἐρεθομένα, aptly for the sense and the metre; but Lin. (Class. Mus. No. VII. 30) seems right in allowing the text to remain. I have taken up both readings into my rendering.
Note 38 (p. 236) .
“Nor dared to approach this thing of human face.”
It is difficult to know what δυσχερὲς in the text refers. Pot. refers it to the mind of the maid—
“Disdaining to be touched.” ”

“ And still the murderess "keeps her fixed unaltered mood."
This is in the true spirit of Athenian tragedy. Lady Macbeth, before her crime, is a very Clytemnestra; she welcomes Duncan with the same exaggerated courtesy, and is as resolute in her purpose; but afterwards she trembles and turns pale. Shakespeare is painting human nature, weak and fickle even in the strongest; Æschylus is showing us the wrath of gods, which is simple, direct, and unrepenting.
At length, in the end of the play, Ægisthus himself appears, and he exhibits the character of a violent and cowardly tyrant. ”

“ They had the Eleusinian Mysteries at Athens, and Most of the prominent Athenians must have been initiated into them—since that was the State Religion; but Aeschylus alone in Athens went through life clothed in the living power of Theosophy.
Go to the life of such a man, if you want big clues as to the inner history of his age;—the life of Aeschylus, I think, can interpret for us that of Athens. There are times when the movement of the cycles is accelerated, and you can see the great wheel turning; this was one. Aeschylus had proudly distinguished himself at Marathon ”

“ Aeschylus drew largely from the more primitive and wild strata of Greek legend, as in the Prometheus and Suppliants. The titles and fragments of the lost plays show the same tendency even more strongly. ”

“ Orestes.
Did she the deed or not? To me this robe
Attests that she Ægisthos' sword imbrued;
Behold the death-stain tallies with the time ⁠1000
Marring the broidered garment's varied dyes.
One while I praise my slaughtered sire, anon,
As present at the scene I wail his death.
This robe invoking that achieved his doom,
Deeds I lament, and woes, and all my race,
Pollution reaping from this victory.
Chorus. Antistrophe.
Alas! alas! no son of mortal race,
Unscathed life's pathway to the end may trace. ”

“ Not only is Xerxes greater in his fall than even Miltiades in his triumph,—as a despot, if great at all, is greater than one leader among many can be in a free people,—but the familiar event is set in a new light, as a Persian calamity instead of a Greek success, and in a light even more flattering to the national pride of Athens.
We have spoken at length on this point, lest it should be thought that Æschylus makes Xerxes his hero simply because tragedy requires a calamity. A sad ending is not essential to tragedy; greatness and "removedness" are. ”

“ Æschylus is above all things the poet of righteousness. 'But in any wise, I say unto thee, revere thou the altar of righteousness': this is the crowning admonition of his doctrine, as its crowning prospect is the reconciliation or atonement of the principle of retribution with the principle of redemption, of the powers of the mystery of darkness with the coeternal forces of the spirit of wisdom, of the lord of inspiration and of light. ”

“ AEGISTHUS
How thy word and act shall issue, thou shalt shortly understand.
CHORUS
Up to action, O my comrades! for the fight is hard at hand. Swift, your right hands to the sword hilt! bare the weapon as for strife—
AEGISTHUS
Lo! I too am standing ready, hand on hilt for death or life.
CHORUS
’Twas thy word and we accept it: onward to the chance of war!
CLYTEMNESTRA
Nay, enough, enough, my champion! we will smite and slay no more.
Already have we reaped enough the harvest-field of guilt:
Enough of wrong and murder, let no other blood be spilt. ”