Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/126

 108 iESCHYLIIS. Prometlieus, who does not speak during the dialogue between Vul- can and his coadjutor, Strength, was represented by a lay figure attached to the rock scenery, behind whose mask the protagonist spoke during the rest of the play. The reasons, which induce us to take a middle course between these conflicting opinions and to place the Prometheus third among the extant plays of ^schylus, are briefly as follows. The references to Sicily, the Sicelisms of the language, and the covert allusions to Sicilian afl'airs, especially the description of the great eruption of ^tna^, seem to point to an epoch subsequent to the poet's first visit to Sicily in b. c. 468. On the other hand, the sarcastic allusions to tyrants and courtiers^ are not likely to have appeared in a play acted in Sicily, or indeed during the life-time of Hiero, and this consideration wdll induce us to place the Tragedy after B.C. 467. But it seems reasonable to conclude that the elaborate description of the subject of another Trilogy ^ would hardly have been put into the mouth of Prometheus, if that series of plays had been already acted. And as we shall see that the Sujy^pUces^ the center play of the Trilogy about the daugh- ters of Danaus, must have been performed about B.C. 461, we must place the Prometheus at some time between that date and the poet's return from Sicily. If we must fix a particular date, we can sug- gest none better than the year B.C. 464, when the news would reach Athens that Themistocles had entered the service of the Per- sian king^. The warrior of Marathon and Salamis, and the friend of Aristeides, would at such a time with peculiar force utter that abomination of treason, which the poet puts into the mouth of his chorus^. This noble Tragedy, the Prometheus hound^ which ex- pp. 85 sqq.). Such a parachoregema cannot be imagined in the very earliest days of the Greek Drama. 1 vv. 367 sqq. : evOev €Kpayr](rovTai irore TTora/iOi TTvpos ddiTTouTes dypiaLS ypdOoLS TTJs KaWtKapwou St/ceX/as eupovs yvas. ■It is true that this eruption took place B. C. 478, but the description points to a recent view of the effects, rather than to a recent hearsay of the fact. For the Sicelisms in the Prometheus see Blomfield's Gloss. 277. And for allusions to Hiero 's affairs see Droysen's Translation, p. 568. ^ See e. g. 917: cre^ou, irpocrevxov, dunrre tov Kparovvr^ del. 3 Cf. vv. 830 sqq., with the Sujjplices as it stands. ^ Themistocles arrived in Persia soon after the death of Xerxes in B.C. 465, during the influence of Artabanes. See Clinton, F. H. ii. p. 40. ^ 1048 sqq. : toi>s irpodoTas yap /xiaelu '^fiadov, KOVK iart vbaos TTJad^ rjvTi.v' dTTewTvaa /xdWoi^.