by Aeschylus
by his side and both have fared as they deserved. He died as ye see;
but she sang her swan-song of death and lies beside him she loved,
bringing me a sweet relish for the luxury of my own love.”
A little later she denies her very humanity.
“Call me not his spouse; rather the ancient dread haunting evil
genius of this house has taken a woman’s shape and punished him,
a full-grown man in vengeance for little children.”
Burial he should have, but without any dirges from his people.
“Let Iphigeneia, his daughter, as is most fitting, meet her father
at the swift-conveying passage of woe, throw her arms about him and
kiss him welcome.”
The last scene of this splendid drama brings forward the poltroon Aegisthus who had skulked behind in the background till the deed was done. He enters to air his ancient grievance, reminding the Chorus how his father was outraged by Atreus, how he himself was a banished man, yet found his arm long enough to smite the King from far away. In contempt for the coward the Elders prepare to offer him battle; they appeal to Orestes to avenge the murder. The quarrel was stopped by Clytemnestra, who had had enough of bloodshed and was content to leave things as they were, if the gods consented thereto.
Before the sustained power of this masterpiece criticism is nearly dumb. The conception of the inherited curse is by now familiar to us; familiar too is the teaching that sacrilege brings its own punishment, that human pride may be flattered into assuming the privilege of a deity. These were enough to cause Agamemnon’s undoing. But it is the part played by Clytemnestra which fixes the dramatic interest. She is inspired by a lust for vengeance, yet, had she known the truth that her daughter was not dead but a priestess, she would have had no pretext for the murder. This ignorance of essentials which originates some human action is called Irony; it was put to dramatic uses for the first time in European literature by Aeschylus. The horrible tragedy it may cause is clear enough in the Agamemnon; its power is terrible and its value as a dramatic source is inestimable. There is another and a far more subtle form of Irony, in which a character uses riddling speech interpreted by another actor in a sense different from the truth as it is known to the spectators; this too can be used in such a manner as to charge human speech with a sinister double meaning which bodes ruin under the mask of words of innocence. Few dramatic personages have used this device so effectively as Clytemnestra, certainly none with a more fiendish intent. Again, in this play the Chorus is employed with amazing skill; their vague uneasiness takes more and more definitely the shape of actual terror in every ode; this terror is raised to its height in the masterly Cassandra scene — it is then abated a little, perhaps it is just beginning to disappear, for nobody believed Cassandra, when the blow falls. This integral connection between the Chorus and the main action is difficult to maintain; that it exists in the Agamemnon is evidence of a constructive genius of the highest order.
The Choephori (Libation-bearers), the second play of the trilogy, opens with the entry of Orestes. He has just laid a lock of hair on his father’s tomb and sees a band of maidens approaching, among them Electra, his sister. He retires with Pylades his faithful friend to listen to their conversation. The Chorus tell how in consequence of a dream of Clytemnestra they have been sent to offer libations to the dead, to appease their anger and resentment against the murderers. They give utterance to a wild hopeless song, full of a presentiment of disaster coming on successful wickedness enthroned in power. They are captives from Troy, obliged to look on the deeds of Aegisthus, whether just or unjust, yet they weep for the purposeless agonies of Agamemnon’s house. When asked by Electra what prayers she should offer to her dead father, they bid her pray for some avenging god or mortal to requite the murderers. Returning to them from the tomb, she tells them of a strange occurrence; a lock of hair has been laid on the grave, and there are two sets of footprints on the ground, one of which corresponds with her own. Orestes then comes forward to reveal himself; as a proof of his identity, he bids her consider the garments which she wove with her own hands; urging her to restrain her joy lest she betray his arrival, he tells how Apollo has commanded him to avenge his father’s death, threatening him with sickness, frenzy, nightly terrors, excommunication and a dishonoured death if he refuses.
In a long choral dialogue the actors tell of Clytemnestra’s insolent treatment of the dead King; she had buried him without funeral rites or mourning, with no subjects to follow the corpse; she even mangled his body and thrust Electra out of the palace; thus she filled the cup of her iniquity. The Chorus remind Orestes of his duty to act, but first he inquires why oblations have been offered; on learning that they are the result of Clytemnestra’s dreaming that she suckled a serpent that stung her, and that she hopes to appease the angry dead, he interprets the dream of himself. He then unfolds his plot. He and Pylades will imitate a Phocian dialect and will seek out and slay Aegisthus. An ode which succeeds recounts the legends of evil women, closing with the declaration that Justice is firmly seated in the world, that Fate prepares a sword for a murderer and a Fury punishes him with it.
Approaching the palace Orestes summons the Queen and tells her that a stranger called Strophius bade him bring to Argos the news that Orestes is dead. Clytemnestra commands her servants within the house to welcome him and sends out her son’s old nurse Cilissa to take the news to Aegisthus. The nurse stops to speak to the Chorus in the very language of grief for the boy she had reared, like Constance in King John. The Chorus advise her to summon Aegisthus alone without his bodyguard, for Orestes is not yet dead; when she departs they pray that the end may be speedily accomplished and the royal house cleansed of its curse. Aegisthus crosses the stage into the palace to meet a hasty end; seeing the deed, a servant rushes out to call Clytemnestra, while Orestes bursts out from the house and faces his mother. For a moment his resolution wavers; Pylades reminds him of Apollo’s anger if he fails. To his mother’s plea that Destiny abetted her deed he replies that Destiny intends her death likewise; before he thrusts her into the palace she warns him of the avenging Furies she will send to persecute him. She then passes to her doom.
After the Chorus have sung an ode of triumph Orestes shows the bodies of the two who loved in sin while alive and were not separated in death. He then displays the net which Clytemnestra threw around her husband’s body and the robe in which she caught his feet; he holds up the garment through which Aegisthus’ dagger ran. But in that very moment the cloud of more agonies to come descends upon the hapless family. In obedience to Apollo’s command he takes the suppliant’s branch and chaplet, and prepares to hasten to Delphi, a wanderer cut off from his native land. The dreadful shapes of the avenging Furies close in upon him: the fancies of incipient madness thicken on his mind: he is hounded out, his only hope of rest being Apollo’s sacred shrine. The play ends with a note of hopelessness, of calamity without end.
After the Agamemnon this play reads weak indeed. Yet it displays two marked characteristics. It is full of vigorous action; the plot is quickly conceived and quickly consummated; the business is soon over. Further, Aeschylus has discovered yet another source of tragic power, the conflict of duties. Orestes has to choose between obedience to Apollo and reverence for his mother. That these duties are incompatible is clear; whichever he performed, punishment was bound to follow. It is in this enforced choice between two evils that the pathos of life is often to be found; that Aeschylus should have so faithfully depicted it is a great contribution to the growth of drama.
The concluding play, the Eumenides, calls for a briefer description. It opens with one of the most awe-inspiring scenes which the imagination of man has conceived. The priestess of Delphi finds a man sitting as a suppliant at the central point of the earth, his hands dripping with blood, a sword and an olive branch in his hand. Round him is slumbering a troop of dreadful forms, beings from darkness, the avengers. When the scene is
disclosed, Apollo himself is seen standing at Orestes’ side. He urges Hermes to convey the youth with all speed to Athens where he is to clasp the ancient image of Athena. Immediately the ghost of Clytemnestra arises; waking the sleeping forms, she bids them fly after their victim. They arise and confront Apollo, a younger deity, whom they reproach for protecting one who should be abandoned to them. Apollo replies with a charge that they are prejudiced in favour of Clytemnestra, whom, though a murderess, they had never tormented.
The scene rapidly changes to Athens, where Orestes calls upon Athena; confident in the privilege of their ancient office the Chorus awaits the issue. The goddess appears and consents to try the case, the Council of the Areopagus acting as a jury. Apollo first defends his action in saving Orestes, asserting that he obeys the will of Zeus. The main question is, which of the two parents is more to be had in honour?
Athena herself had no mother; the female is merely the nurse of the child, the father being the true generative source. The Chorus points out that the sin of slaying a husband is not the same as that of murdering a mother, for the one implies kinship, while the other does not. Athena advises the Court to judge without fear or favour. When the votes are counted, it is found that they are exactly even. The goddess casts her vote for Orestes, who is thus saved and restored.
The Chorus threaten that ruin and sterility shall visit Athena’s city; they are elder gods, daughters of night, and are overridden by younger deities. But Athena by the power of her persuasion offers them a full share in all the honours and wealth of Attica if they will consent to take up their abode in it. They shall be revered by countless generations and will gain new dignities such as they could not have otherwise obtained. Little by little their resentment is overcome; they are conducted to their new home to change their name and become the kindly goddesses of the land.
The boldness of Aeschylus is most evident in this play. Not content with raising a ghost as he had done in the Persae, he actually shows upon a public stage the two gods whom the Athenians regarded as the special objects of their worship. More than this, he has brought to the light the dark powers of the underworld in all their terrors; it is said that at the sight of them some of the women in the audience were taken with the pangs of premature birth. The introduction of these supernatural figures was the most vivid means at Aeschylus’ disposal for bringing home to the minds of his contemporaries the seriousness of the dramatic issue. It will be remembered that the Prometheus was the last echo of the contest between two races of gods. The same strain of thought has made the poet represent the struggle in the mind of Orestes as a trial between the primeval gods and the newer stock; the result was the same, the older and perhaps more terrifying deities are beaten, being compelled to change their names and their character to suit the gentler spirit which a religion takes to itself as it develops. At any rate, such is Aeschylus’ solution of the eternal question, “What atonement can be made for bloodshed and how can it be secured?” The problem is of the greatest interest; it may be that there is no real answer for it, but it is at least worth while to examine the attempts which have been made to solve it.
Before we begin to attempt an estimate of Aeschylus it is well to face the reasons which make Greek drama seem a thing foreign to us. We are at times aware that it is great, but we cannot help asking, “Is it real?” Modern it certainly is not. In the first place, the Chorus was all-important to the Greeks, but is non-existent with us. To them drama was something more than action, it was music and dancing as well. Yet as time went on, the Greeks themselves found the Chorus more and more difficult to manage and it was discarded as a feature of the main plot. Only in a very few instances could a play be constructed in such a manner as to allow the Chorus any real influence on the story. Aeschylus’ skill in this branch of his art is really extraordinary; the Chorus does take a part, and a vital part too, in the play. Again, the number of Greek actors was limited, whereas in a modern play their number is just as great as suits playwright’s convenience or his capacity. The impression then of a Greek play is that it is a somewhat thin performance compared with the vivacity and complexity of the great Elizabethans. The plot, where it exists, seems very narrow in Attic drama; it could hardly be otherwise in a society which was content with a repeated discussion of a rather close cycle of heroic legends. Yet here, too, we might note how Aeschylus trod out of the narrow circumscribed round, notably in the Prometheus and the Persoe. Lastly, the Greek play is short when compared with a full-bodied five-act tragedy. It must be remembered, however, that very often these plays are only a third part of the real subject dealt with by the playwright.
All Greek tragedy is liable to these criticisms; it is not fair to judge a process just beginning by the standards of an art which thinks itself full-blown after many centuries of history. Considering the meagre resources available for Aeschylus — the masks used by Greek actors made it impossible for any of them to win a reputation or to add to the fame of a play — we ought to admire the marvellous success he achieved. His defects are clear enough; his teaching is a little archaic, his plots are sometimes weak or not fully worked out, his tendency is to description instead of vigorous action, he has a superabundance of choric matter. Sometimes it is said that the doctrine of an inherited curse on which much of his work is written is false; let it be remembered that week by week a commandment is read in our churches which speaks of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the third and fourth generation of them that hate God; all that is needed to make Aeschylus’ doctrine “real” in the sense of “modern” is to substitute the nineteenth-century equivalent Heredity. That he has touched on a genuine source of drama will be evident to readers of Ibsen’s Ghosts. More serious is the objection that his work is not dramatic at all; the actors are not really human beings acting as such, for their wills and their deeds are under the control of Destiny. What then shall we say of this from Hamlet: —
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them as we will?”
In this matter we are on the threshold of one of our insoluble problems — the freedom of the will. An answer to this real fault in Aeschylus will be found in the subsequent history of the Attic drama attempted in the next two chapters. Suffice it to say that, whether the will is free or not, we act as if it were, and that is enough to represent (as Aeschylus has done) human beings acting on a stage as we ourselves would do in similar circumstances, for the discussions about Destiny are very often to be found in the mouths not of the characters, but of the Chorus, who are onlookers.
The positive excellences of Aeschylus are numerous enough to make us thankful that he has survived. His style is that of the great sublime creators in art, Dante, Michaelangelo, Marlowe; it has many a “mighty line”. His subjects are the Earth, the Heavens, the things under the Earth; more, he reveals a period of unsuspected antiquity, the present order of gods being young and somewhat inexperienced. He carries us back to Creation and shows us the primeval deities, Earth, Night, Necessity, Fate, powers simply beyond the knowledge of ordinary thoughtless men. His characters are cast in a mighty mould; he taps the deepest tragic springs; he teaches that all is not well when we prosper. The thoughtless, light-hearted, somewhat shallow mind which thinks it can speak, think, and act without having to render an account needs the somewhat stern tonic of these seven dramas; it may be chastened into some sobriety and learn to be a little less flippant and irreverent.
Aeschylus’ influence is rather of the unseen kind. His genius is of a lofty type which is not often imitated. Demanding righteousness, justice, piety, and humility, he belongs to the class of Hebrew prophets who saw God and did not die.
Gela, a town in the province of Caltanissetta in the south of Sicily. In 458 BC, Aeschylus returned to Sicily for the last time, visiting Gela where he died in 456 or 455 BC.
‘The Death of Aeschylus’ — a 17th Century engraving. A legend tells that he was killed by a tortoise falling out of the sky, dropped by an eagle, mistak
ing his bald head for a rock.
