Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/39

Rh her high position in the Olympian theogony: among a warlike people, who abandoned agriculture to their dependants, the physical attributes of the goddess were gradually obscured, and accordingly we find her in the Iliad as the peculiar patroness of Achilles, chief of the battle-loving myrmidons (i. 208; ix. 254). Though the physical attributes of Hera are almost entirely suppressed in the Iliad, we trace a curious lingering of the nature element in the Theogamia, described with such luxuriance of imagery in the 14th book (345–351): "As the story of the Olympian Father descending as golden rain into the prison of Danaï was meant for the bright sky, delivering earth from the bonds of winter;" so the union of Zeus and Hera, shrouded in golden mist, doubtless typified the same natural phenomenon, followed as it was by a new outgrowth of tender herbage, "the lotus, the crocus, and the hyacinth." A similar remnant of natural symbolism might probably be detected in other Homeric legends, which in their human aspect are puerile and revolting: as when the refractory spouse of Zeus hangs suspended by a golden chain, a pair of anvils attached to her ankles (xv. 19). How far Homer recognized the original significance of these legends is an interesting but still unsettled question.—Müller (Prol. 279).

If from the thundering, cloud-compelling Zeus of the Iliad, we turn to the Zeus of the Oresteia, the contrast is so remarkable, that it would almost appear as if the great dramatist, by the very emphasis with which he brings out the providential character of the Supreme Ruler, desired, like his contemporary, Pindar,