Æschylos Tragedies and Fragments. Aeschylus

130

The lyrical, operative character of Greek tragedies has to be borne in mind as we read passages like that which follows. They were not meant to be read. Uttered in a passionate recitative, accompanied by expressive action, they probably formed a very effective element in the actual representation of the tragedy. We may look on it as the only extant specimen of the kind of wailing which was characteristic of Eastern burials, and which was slowly passing away in Greece under the influence of a higher culture. The early fondness of Æschylos for a finale of this nature is seen also in The Persians, and in a more solemn and subdued form, in the Eumenides. The feeling that there was something barbaric in these untoward displays of grief, showed itself alike in the legislation of Solon, and the eloquence of Pericles.

131

Here, and perhaps throughout, we must think of Antigone as addressing and looking on the corpse of Polyneikes, Ismene on that of Eteocles.

132

Perhaps

133

The speech of the Antigone becomes the starting-point, in the hands of Sophocles, of the noblest of his tragedies. The denial of burial, it will be remembered, was looked on as not merely an indignity and outrage against the feelings of the living, but as depriving the souls of the dead of all rest and peace. As such it was the punishment of parricides and traitors.

134

The words are obscure enough, the point lying, it may be, in their ambiguity. Antigone here, as in the tragedy of Sophocles, pleads that the Gods have pardoned; they still command and love the reverence for the dead, which she is about to show. The herald catches up her words and takes them in another sense, as though all the honour he had met with from the Gods had been defeat, and death, and shame, as the reward of his sacrilege. Another rendering, however, gives —

135

The words are probably a protest against the changeableness of the Athenian demos, as seen especially in their treatment of Aristeides.

136

The scene seems at first an exception to the early conventional rule, which forbade the introduction of a third actor on the Greek stage. But it has been noticed that (1) Force does not speak, and (2) Prometheus does not speak till Strength and Force have retired, and that it is therefore probable that the whole work of nailing is done on a lay figure or effigy of some kind, and that one of the two who had before taken part in the dialogue then speaks behind it in the character of Prometheus. So the same actor must have appeared in succession as Okeanos, Io, and Hermes.

137

Prometheus (Forethought) is the son of Themis (Right) the second occupant of the Pythian Oracle (Eumen. v. 2). His sympathy with man leads him to impart the gift which raised them out of savage animal life, and for this Zeus, who appears throughout the play as a hard taskmaster, sentences him to fetters. Hephæstos, from whom this fire had been stolen, has a touch of pity for him. Strength, who comes as the servant, not of Hephæstos, but of Zeus himself, acts, as such, with merciless cruelty.

138

The generalised statement refers to Zeus, as having but recently expelled Cronos from his throne in Heaven.

139

Hephæstos, as the great fire-worker, had taught Prometheus to use the fire which he afterwards bestowed on men.

140

Perhaps, “All might is ours except o'er Gods to rule.”

141

The words indicate that the effigy of Prometheus, now nailed to the rock, was, as being that of a Titan, of colossal size.

142

The touch is characteristic as showing that here, as in the Eumenides, Æschylos relied on the horribleness of the masks, as part of the machinery of his plays.

143

The silence of Prometheus up to this point was partly, as has been said, consequent on the conventional laws of the Greek drama, but it is also a touch of supreme insight into the heroic temper. In the presence of his torturers, the Titan will not utter even a groan. When they are gone, he appeals to the sympathy of Nature.

144

The legend is from Hesiod (Theogon., v. 567). The fennel, or narthex, seems to have been a large umbelliferous plant, with a large stem filled with a sort of pith, which was used when dry as tinder. Stalks were carried as wands (the thyrsi) by the men and women who joined in Bacchanalian processions. In modern botany, the name is given to the plant which produces Asafœtida, and the stem of which, from its resinous character, would burn freely, and so connect itself with the Promethean myth. On the other hand, the Narthex Asafœtida is found at present only in Persia, Afghanistan, and the Punjaub.

145

The ocean nymphs, like other divine ones, would be anointed with ambrosial unguents, and the odour would be wafted before them by the rustling of their wings. This too we may think of as part of the “stage effects” of the play.

146

The words are not those of a vague terror only. The sufferer knows that his tormentor is to come to him before long on wings, and therefore the sound as of the flight of birds is full of terrors.

147

By the same stage mechanism the Chorus remains in the air till verse 280, when, at the request of Prometheus, they alight.

148

Here, as throughout the play, the poet puts into the mouth of his dramatis personæ words which must have seemed to the devouter Athenians sacrilegious enough to call for an indictment before the Areiopagos. But the final play of the Trilogy came, we may believe, as the Eumenides did in its turn, as a reconciliation of the conflicting thoughts that rise in men's minds out of the seeming anomalies of the world.

149

The words leave it uncertain whether Themis is identified with Earth, or, as in the Eumenides (v. 2) distinguished from her. The Titans as a class, then, children of Okeanos and Chthôn (another name for Land or Earth), are the kindred rather than the brothers of Prometheus.

150

The generalising words here, as in v. 35, appeal to the Athenian hatred of all that was represented by the words tyrant and tyranny.

151

The state described is that of men who “through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage.” That state, the parent of all superstition, fostered the slavish awe in which Zeus delighted. Prometheus, representing the active intellect of man, bestows new powers, new interests, new hopes, which at last divert them from that fear.

152

The home of Okeanos was in the far west, at the boundary of the great stream surrounding the whole world, from which he took his name.

153

One of the sayings of the Seven Sages, already recognised and quoted as a familiar proverb.

154

See note on Agam. 1602.

155

In the mythos, Okeanos had given his daughter Hesione in marriage to Prometheus after the theft of fire, and thus had identified himself with his transgression.

156

In the Theogony of Hesiod (v. 509), Prometheus and Atlas appear as the sons of two sisters. As other Titans were thought of as buried under volcanoes, so this one was identified with the mountain which had been seen by travellers to Western Africa, or in the seas beyond it, rising like a column to support the vault of heaven. In Herodotos (iv. 174) and all later writers, the name is given to the chain of mountains in Lybia, as being the “pillar of the firmament;” but Humboldt and others identify it with the lonely peak of Teneriffe, as seen by Phœnikian or Hellenic voyagers. Teneriffe, too, like most of the other Titan mountains, was at one time volcanic. Homer (Odyss. i. 53) represents him as holding the pillars

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