Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/351

Rh The contest, with all its attendant miseries, appears even beneficial in its results. This is the course of the tragedies of Æschylus, and indeed of Greek tragedy in general, so far as it remains true to its object. The tragedies of Æschylus uniformly require faith in a divine power, which, with steady eye and firm hand, guides the course of events to the best issue, though the paths through which it leads may be dark and difficult, and fraught with distress and suffering. The poetry of Æschylus is full of profound and enthusiastic glorifications of Zeus as this power. How then could Zeus be depicted in this drama as a tyrant, how could the governor of the world be represented as arbitrary and unjust? It is true that the Greek divinities are always described as beings who are not what they were, (above p. 88,) and hence it is difficult to separate from them the ideas of strife and contention. This also accounts for the severity with which Zeus, at the time described by Æschylus, proceeds against every attempt to limit and circumscribe his newly established sovereignty. But Æschylus, in his own mind, must have felt how this severity, a necessary accompaniment of the transition from the Titanian period to the government of the gods of Olympus, was to be reconciled with the mild wisdom which he makes an attribute of Zeus in the subsequent ages of the world. Consequently the deviation from right, the in the tragic action, which, according to Aristotle, should not be considered as depravity, but as the error of a noble nature, would all lie on the side of Prometheus; and even the poet has clearly shown this in the piece itself, when he makes the chorus of Oceanides, who are friendly to Prometheus, and even to the sacrifice of themselves, perpetually recur to the same thoughts. "Those only are wise who humbly reverence Adrastea," (the inexorable goddess of Fate).

§ 10. In these remarks upon the Prometheus Bound we have passed over one act of the play, which, however, is of the highest importance for an understanding of the whole trilogy, namely, the appearance of Io, who, having won the love of Zeus, has brought upon herself the hatred of Hera. Persecuted by horrid phantoms, she comes in her wanderings to Prometheus, and learns from him the further miseries, all of which she has still to endure. The misfortunes of Io very much resemble those of Prometheus, since Io also might be considered as a victim to the selfish severity of Zeus, and she is so considered by Prometheus. At the same time, however, as Prometheus does not conceal from Io that the thirteenth in descent from her is to release him from all his sufferings; the love of Zeus for her appears in a higher light, and we obtain for the fate of Prometheus also that sort of