Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/402

332 quality of justice which was bestowed upon mortals by Zeus that Æschylus extols with peculiar emphasis. "Riches," be says, "afford no bulwark to him who spurns the mighty altar of justice" (Ag. 381); firm based is justice (Cho, 635); "all must perish who withstand her mandates" (Cho. 630). Justice is styled the daughter of Zeus (Cho. 934); reverence for her altar is characterized as the sum of wisdom (Eum. 510).

It was, moreover, an idea familiar to the Æschylean age that all excellence was the gift of the gods, more especially of Zeus, and that it could not be obtained without their intervention. "God alone is good," sang Simonides; "no one wins virtue without the aid of the gods, neither a state nor an individual." "Zeus, the great virtues attend upon mortals from thee," sang Pindar; "and," he adds, "prosperity lives longer with those who revere thee, but with perverse minds it does not equally abide, thriving for all time" (Isthm. Ode iii.) "Through the favour of God man blooms with a wise heart." "An untainted mind," according to Æschylus, is "heaven's first gift." The Chorus remind Prometheus of "the dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals" (Pro. 556); an expression which recalls Pindar's description of men as "the dream of a shadow;" "yet," he adds, "when splendour given by the god comes to them, a brilliant light falls upon men and a sweet life" (Pyth. Ode viii. Epode 5). Not only was Prometheus unable to endow mortals