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268 sympathy and admiration: had she stood alone, her heroism and sisterly affection would have offered a refreshing relief to the deadly hatred of the brothers. The action of the Chorus gives, however, a deeper significance to the episode. The Chorus, it must be remembered, represents in the Greek theatre the moral conscience of the age, in its most elevated form; a character strikingly exemplified in the drama before us. At the commencement, indeed, they are timid Theban women, who, vividly realizing the brutal outrages offered to women after the capture of a beleaguered city, are possessed by overwhelming fear. As the drama develops, however, they gradually assume a loftier tone; the words of expostulation addressed by them to Eteocles are full of piety and wisdom: when, therefore, one half of the Chorus follow, with Antigone, the body of Polyneikes, and the other half, with Ismene, that of Eteocles, we may understand that the poet intended thus to recognise the equal sacredness of the principles respectively represented by the sisters, namely, allegiance to the holy tie of kindred-blood, and fealty to the State—the object, in Greek civilization, of the most ardent patriotism.

The great Theban trilogy, as remarked by Bunsen, begins and ends with deeds of horror; but as the last and heaviest judgment is executed, gracious images of the future surround the bodies of the slain; the devoted heroism displayed by the Theban women "is a living pledge for the moral order of the world," and offers a