Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/122

 104 .ESCHYLUS. Then ivill that smooth and cUligenl tongue, the touchstone of verses, Twisting and twirling about, and moving the snaffle of envy, Scatter his words, and demolish, with subtle r^nement, Doughty labours of the lungs. In addition to the many other allusions to nautical matters in ^schylus, the importance which he attaches to Zeus Soter, the god of mariners, is of itself a sufficient indication of his sea- faring life^. Though JEschylus does not seem to have had much relish for the Dionysian rites or for an elementary worship of Bacchus, he was a highly religious man, and strongly attached to the Dorian idolatry, on which Pythagoras founded his more spiritual and philosophical system of religion 2. It is an established fact, that ^schylus borrowed, in his later days, the third actor, and the other improvements of Sophocles. The time at which he adopted the modifications introduced by his younger contemporary is of importance with reference to the chronological arrangement of his extant plays, which it is our next business to consider. Although it is certain that ^schylus exhibited his Tragedies in tetralogies or connected sets of three with a satyrical after-piece, we have only one of his trilogies, the latest of them, and the satyrical dramas are altogether lost. The other four plays which have come down to us seem to have been the center-pieces of the Trilogies to which they belonged. No one of them can be referred to the first twelve years of his dramatic career. But three of the four exhibit his Tragedy in its original form, with only two speak- ing persons on the stage ; one of them, in the opinion of some critics, leaves it doubtful whether he had as yet adopted the Sophoclean extension of the stage-business; and the three con- stituting his Trilogy of the Orestea give us the Greek Tragedy in the fullest development to which it ever attained. 1 See Mliller, Eumeniden, § 94 foil. It appears to us, from the fact mentioned by Strabo (ix. p. 396), that there was a temple of Zeus Soter on the shore of the Peiraeus, and from the words of Diphilus (Athen. p. -229 b) : VTTo TovTov VTrefMV^' (we would read vir^vv^') evSvs eK^e^7}K6Ta, TT]v de^Lav ev4^aov ifipr]a6'r]v Aids I1 WTTJpOS. that this Zeus Soter was the god of mariners, to whom they offered up their vows immediately on landing. Comp. Agamemn. v. 650 : tvxv 5^ aoorrjp vavv diXova' i<p4' ^€T0, and see our note on Pindar, Olymp. viii. 20 sqq. p. 54. 2 See Miiller, Eumeniden, u, s. and elsewhere ; and Klausen's Theologumena jEschyli. — And in connexion with the remarks on ^schylus' love of sculpture, see above, p. 24, note i.