Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/36

xxvi

Yet never shall ye down to earth, drag from the lofty heaven

Zeus the supreme deviser."

It is as the god of compassion that the diviner aspect of his character is the most conspicuous (ix. 502): when we consider the savagery of an age in which human victims were sacrificed to appease the Manes of the dead, and where tendencies to cannibalism may perhaps be detected (iv. 35), (xxii. 345), (xxiv. 212), the prominence given to compassion as an attribute of the supreme Deity is very remarkable.

Notwithstanding these high attributes, no exercise of providential power is ever assigned to the Homeric Zeus; he is beguiled by Hera, yet swayed by her counsel (xvi. 460), and though desirous to save Ilium, yet, at her entreaty, he surrenders it to destruction (iv. 43). Like the heavens, now bright with sunshine, and anon dark with storm, he exhibits all the capricious fluctuations of an elemental power, being alternately malignant and benign, without any apparent motive beyond his own caprice, uninfluenced by moral considerations. Then, again, with regard to his supremacy, not only is it questioned by Poseidon (xv. 185), it is actually imperilled by that deity, in conjunction with Hera and Athena (i. 396–400), and is only rescued from their machinations by the intervention of Briareus.