Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/466

396 descendants, moreover, the Herakleids, associated with the Dorians in the conquest of the Peloponnesus, were glorified in the popular imagination as the founders of the great Dorian cities of Argos, Sparta, and Messenia, and as the introducers in those localities of a new social order. Peculiar interest thus attaches to Io, the progenitrix of Herakles, and to the birth of her offspring, Epaphos, an event celebrated in such glowing strains by the chorus of Suppliants (v. 580).

In thus veiling the grosser features of the Io legend, as popularly conceived, while, at the same time, investing it with a more spiritual meaning, Æschylus appears not only as the great creative poet, but also as the true prophet of his generation. The numerous legends of which the story of Io may be regarded as a typical example embodied, in a vulgar form, the idea that it was only through association with the divine principle that man could rise to his true ideal as man. The poet seizes upon this idea, separates it from the grosser elements of the popular symbol, and extols the benignity of Zeus in thus seeking fellowship with mortals—giving prominence to the idea that through this agency alone the human race was raised to a higher level, physical and moral, than it could otherwise have attained.

The introductory character of "The Suppliants" has been inferred from the extreme simplicity of the plot, and from other considerations; accordingly, it is