Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/344

322 events constantly increasing in magnitude, was one of the prevailing ideas of that time. It is probable that Æschylus took this idea as the basis of the prophecies of Phineus, and that he represented the expedition of the Argonauts as a type of the greater conflicts between Asia and Europe which succeeded it. We will not follow out the mythical combinations which the poet might have employed, inasmuch as what we have said is sufficient to explain the connexion and subject of the entire trilogy.

The same purpose is likewise perceptible in the third piece, the Glaucus-Pontius. The extant fragments show that this marine demigod (of whose wanderings and appearances on various coasts strange tales were told in Greece) described in this tragedy a voyage which he had made from Anthedon through the Eubœan and Ægean seas to Italy and Sicily. In this narrative a prominent place was filled by Himera, the city in which the power of the Sicilian Greeks had crushed the attempts of the Carthaginian invaders, at the time of the battle of Salamis. In this manner Æschylus had an opportunity of bringing this event (which was considered as the second great exploit by which Greece was saved from the yoke of the barbarians) into close connexion with the battle of Platæa; since the scene of the drama was Anthedon in Bœotia, where Glaucus was supposed to have lived as a fisherman. It may likewise be conjectured that in the tragedy of Phineus, the Phœnicians, as well as the Persians, may have been introduced into the predictions respecting the conflicts between Asia and Greece.

§ 5. Accordingly, in this trilogy, Æschylus shows himself a friend of the Sicilian Greeks, as well as of his countrymen at Athens. His connexion with the princes and republics of Sicily must be here considered, since it exercised some influence upon his poetry. The later grammarians (who have filled the history of literature with numerous stories founded upon mere conjecture) have assigned the most various