Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/54

xliv as we picture her "like an orator on the ," organizing the court of the Areopagus, she recalls the grand vision of Divine Wisdom recorded in the book of Proverbs (viii.). She, too, standeth in the top of high places, and her voice is heard, unfolding the great truth that human laws and institutions are entitled to reverence only in so far as they are based upon the strong foundations of eternal justice and morality.

Most emphatically does the Grecian poet proclaim through the lips of Athena, that righteousness must be based upon reverence and holy fear, thus coinciding with the highest utterance of Hebrew wisdom; "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil" (Prov. viii. 13), (Eum. 661, 669). Thus, too, wisdom is represented by the Grecian as by the Hebrew bard, as presiding over the phenomena of external nature (Prov. viii. 27), (Eum. 792). Yet while Athena alone unlocks the sealed thunder-halls of Zeus, she, like her Hebrew prototype, "rejoiceth in the habitable parts of the earth," and as a gardener cherishes his saplings, so "she loves the race of righteous men, exempt from suffering" (Eum. 872). This recognition of moral distinctions as the ground of divine favour forms, perhaps, the most striking point of divergence between Homer and Æschylus, and forcibly recalls the high moral tone of the religion of Ahura-Mazda.