Page:Eumenides (Murray 1925).djvu/74

 not mean that to an ancient poet the Ghost was unreal, but that a Dream was real. In the Iliad (Book II, 6 ff.) the Dream behaves like any other messenger of Zeus.

P. 6, l. 140. . Homer speaks indifferently of "the Erînys" (singular) and "the Erînyes" (plural). Greek theology felt the difference between singular and plural far less than we do.

The Furies argue that Apollo has (1) broken the Law by stealing his favourite away from justice, and (2) defiled his own altar by bringing thither a man polluted with. blood.

P. 8, l. 179. Apollo speaks here, not as "forth-shower of Zeus," but in his own person as a Hellenic God, hating this lust for punishment which the Furies show: if torture is what they want, let them go to Persia and the lands of the barbarians, where they can get it, but keep away from Hellas and Delphi.

P, 10, l. 206. "And revilest us who guide his feet?" A quibble, which Apollo answers by another.

P. 10, l. 212. Twas not one blood": It is the Furies who first raise this sophism about the "common blood." In reality such a plea on behalf of a wife who had murdered her husband would no more be admitted in ancient law than in modern. But the Erînyes are supposed by the poet to represent (1) the primitive "matriarchal" society which preceded the introduction of marriage and civic life, and (2) a blind law based on purely physical considerations: hence Apollo's answer: "Your insistence on the physical blood-tie destroys all moral values. It is love and trust, not mere blood, that matter." He has also a