Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/64

liv of deep offence, of bitter displeasure, when sacred rights belonging to us are impiously violated by persons who ought most to have respected them." These vengeance-prompting feelings, personified as active, ever-wakeful spirits, became associated with the great nature-power, Demeter, under her more malignant aspect, and hence arose the worship of the dread goddess, Demeter Erinys. Both these names have been traced back to the Sanscrit; the Greek Demeter being identified with Dyâvâ Mâtar, the Mother, corresponding to Dyaus Pitar, the Father, and the Erinyes being identified with the Sanscrit Saranyû. Thus it appears that the venerable goddesses, like Zeus and Athena, have their root in the Vedas, "In early Greek mythology they were attributed more especially to the Father, the Mother, and the Elder Brother, whenever their sacred rights had been impiously violated." They are thus introduced in the Iliad (ix. 449; ix. 572; xv. 204), where they are represented as avenging any violation of the natural order.

In this character they also appear at the conclusion of the Choephori, and in the opening scenes of the Eumenides, where, like blood-thirsty hounds, they pursue Orestes for the murder of his mother: they take cognizance only of the outward act, and exercise their functions with the inflexibility of natural law. They would not the less have claimed him as their prey had he left unavenged the murder of his father (Choeph. 283, 911). In this fatal collision Athena appears as umpire: by establishing the court of