Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/60

l has its counterpart in the most touching narrative of Jewish, history. Agamemnon, as king and army chief, receives what he believes to be a divine command to propitiate Artemis by the sacrifice of his daughter; an ordeal, the terrible reality of which can only be appreciated when we consider the proneness to human sacrifice which characterized the early ages of society. Abraham, when subjected to a like trial or temptation, after manifesting his perfect submission to what appeared to him to be a divine monition, was led to recognize the true voice of God as harmonizing with the most sacred intuitions of the human heart, and accordingly forbore to slay his child. Agamemnon, on the contrary, yields to the suggestion of Calchas, and by the sacrifice of Iphigenia violates his obligations to his daughter and his wife. Clytemnestra appears as the avenger of her child, and in vindication of nature's violated rights, prepares for her husband an ignominious death. The stern reprobation of Agamemnon expressed by the Chorus may be compared to the sublime protest of Micah, and other Hebrew prophets, against such deeds of blood. Thus the cruel perversion of religion which found expression in human sacrifice was condemned by the Grecian poet no less than by the Hebrew sage, a consideration which invests the Æschylean drama with profound significance.