Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/268

198 still greater proportions in the popular imagination, produced an impression of dim and indefinite greatness, not unlike that in which the midst of time veiled the heroes of mythology."

Another feature of the Æschylean age is the importance attached to prophecy, which, as we learn from Herodotus, not unfrequently determined the judgments of men, both Greeks and Asiatics; which also we find employed by our poet as the most convenient link for connecting the separate members of his trilogies. Thus, in the Oresteia, the Agamemnon is connected with the Choephori through Cassandra's prophecy of the vengeance which was speedily to fall upon the guilty pair. If we turn now to the drama of 'The Persians,' we find the Ghost of Darius referring in the most emphatic manner to certain ancient oracles (v. 739), of which the calamities which had befallen the Persians were the recognised fulfilment. It has been remarked by Welcker that in this passage allusion is obviously made to something which had been brought before the minds of the spectators in the previous drama, and this hypothesis is confirmed by the prophetic character of Phineus, from whom the first member of the trilogy derives its name.

Phineus is represented in mythological story as one of the sons of Agēnor, the father of the beautiful Europa; and it is related of Agēnor by Ovid, and other classical writers, that he sent forth his sons in quest of