Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/52

xlii Thus, in girding herself for battle, she lets fall upon the starry pavement of her father the brilliant robe—

her Ægis is the terrible storm-cloud; her casque, all golden, measured to contain a hundred cities' footmen, recalls the vaulted sky. She descends from heaven like a meteor (iv. 70), or like a rainbow wrapped in purple cloud (xvii. 551). Thus, too, she is described as blowing with gentle breath the spear of Hector (xx. 440), and as becoming invisible by assuming the casque of Aïdes (v. 845).

The flaming chariot, with its golden-trapped steeds, in which she descends with Hera to the assistance of the Greeks (v. 720, 748), while suggesting to the imagination the bright rays of light, which spring with the speed of lightning through the portals of the east, recalls also the Vedic invocation to Ushas (the dawn) to come in her ample and beautiful chariot, dispersing the darkness; or we think of the Golden chariot of Savitri, or of Indra, decorated with golden ornaments, his white-footed coursers harnessed to his car with a golden yoke.

The function assigned to birds in the Iliad seems also like an echo of the Vedas, Thus, when Athena is despatched by Zeus to distil nectar and ambrosia into Achilles—