Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/411

Rh Though the Eumenides, from which this last extract is taken, had a narrower and more local object, namely, to support the prestige and authority of the Areopagus, it contains, like the other plays of the Trilogy, reiterated statements of a lofty faith in the justice of providence, in the punishment of sin and presumptuous pride, and in the eternal laws of right and wrong. It is the Prometheus that shows us the poet touched by the philosophic or rationalistic movement. Prometheus represents humanity struggling with the inequalities and injustice of the divine rule of the world. He suffers because he endowed men with “the knowledge of good and evil,” and with the resources which tended to make them more equal to the gods, or, at any rate, less dependent upon them. The gift of fire which he brought them was the origin of all the arts and sciences which ameliorate life and make man self-sufficing, and the superiority of Zeus less marked. He is the martyr of humanity, and suffers because he defied a tyrannical and jealous power. He looks for consolation in converse with all the powers of nature, and claims fellowship with all those who had experienced the injustice of the gods. How can a man serve humanity nobly and unselfishly and yet be offensive to Heaven? That is the problem which Aeschylus has suggested, but has not solved. Prometheus is left in the full horror of his punishment, amidst the loud artillery of Heaven's wrath, still defying it and protesting against its injustice.

As a specimen of the narrative style of Aeschylus, the following extract from the account of the battle