Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (1908) Morshead.djvu/21

Rh the Chorus, as is natural, are divided in their sentiments.

It is interesting to note that, in combination with the Laius and the Oedipus, this play won the dramatic crown in 467 B.C. On the other hand, so excellent a judge as Mr. Gilbert Murray thinks that it is "perhaps among Aeschylus' plays the one that bears least the stamp of commanding genius." Perhaps the daring, practically atheistic, character of Eteocles; the battle-fever that burns and thrills through the play; the pathetic terror of the Chorus—may have given it favour, in Athenian eyes, as the work of a poet who—though recently (468 B.C.) defeated in the dramatic contest by the young Sophocles—was yet present to tell, not by mere report, the tale of Marathon and Salamis. Or the preceding plays, the Laius and the Oedipus, may have been of such high merit as to make up for defects observable in the one that still survives. In any case, we can hardly err in accepting Dr. Verrall's judgment that "the story of Aeschylus may be, and in the outlines probably is, the genuine epic legend of the Cadmean war."

There remains one Aeschylean play, the most famous—unless we except the Agamemnon— in extant Greek literature, the Prometheus Bound. That it was the first of a Trilogy, and that the second and third parts were called the Prometheus Freed, and Prometheus the Fire-Bearer, respectively, is accepted: but the date of its performance is unknown.