Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/61

Rh In order to appreciate the fundamental idea which underlies the drama of the Choephori we must take into consideration the sacred duty of avenging blood, "recognized by the earliest customs and national laws of the East as well as of the West." On the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, it was the bounden duty of his son Orestes to avenge his death; the ghost of his murdered father and the Delphic god demand it of him. The collision, therefore, which forms the groundwork of the drama is between the duty of Orestes as the avenger of his father, and his instinctive recognition of the reverence due to his mother, which tends to withhold him from the commission of the deed. With admirable skill the poet makes us feel the terrible nature of the struggle, and the religious motives which decide the issue. When Orestes, almost overcome by his mother's agonizing entreaties, hesitates to commit the bloody act, Pylades, who has accompanied him as a representative of the god, admonishes him of his duty, exclaiming—

A profound thought underlies the greater heinousness attached to the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, than to the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes. The bond which unites the mother and the son, which Orestes is required to violate, is instinctive, resting upon a law of nature; the tie which unites the