Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/129

 ^SCHYLUS. Ill would enable two actors to perform the introductory scene of the Prometheus. Even in the Supplices the Protagonist had only to play Danaus and the Egyptian herald, and the Deuteragonist had no character to sustain except Pelasgus. And yet in the complete Trilogy, the Orestea^ which is known to have been acted in B.C. 458 and which has many dramatic features in common with the Trilogy to which the Supplices belonged, we have the three actors in every play. We do not of course know whether this extended machinery was employed in any earlier play, which is now lost. But it seems reasonable to conclude, from the specimens which we have, that ^schylus did not borrow this most characteristic im- provement of his rival Sophocles till quite the close of his own dramatic career. And it is just possible that the Orestea may have been the first and last example of this condescension to the esta- blished fashion at Athens. In a subsequent chapter we will fully analyze the sti-ucture of this great effort of the genius of ^schylus, and will endeavour to indicate all the details of the stage business^. Here it will be sufficient to call attention to the connexion of the Trilogy with the political principles of iEschylus. The four sepa- rate plays are, as we have seen, the middle pieces in the Trilogies to which they belonged. But the extant Trilogy makes every tiling work up to the final Tragedy. Clyt^mnestra kills her husband on the plea that he had slain Iphigenia, but really because she had conspired with jiEgisthus to usurp his throne. She is Lady Mac- beth and Queen Gertrude of Denmark both in one. Having been guilty of this homicide, she ought, according to Greek usage, to have gone into exile, and this is the doom pronounced upon her by the senators of Argos^. This sentence she sets at nought, and reigns at Argos in spite of the laws of God and man. Outraged religion, then, speaking by the voice of Apollo, orders the son of Agamemnon, as the proper avenger of blood, to put her and ^Egis- thus to death. It is clear that this command, rather than any vin- dictive feeling, is the influencing motive with Orestes ; and there- fore when the Erinyes, as the avenging goddesses, who alone could prosecute Orestes, he being legally justified, demand his punish- ment, Apollo, with the sanction of Zeus, pleads his cause before the Areopagus at Athens; and while his human judges, by an ^ Argum. : ididdxdv to dpafia iirl dpxovros 4>to/cXeoi;s (5Xi'//7rtd5t tt' ^t€i ^'' irpCoTOS AiaX' 'Ayo-fi. XoTj^. Evfieu. Ilpwret aaTvpiKU}' exop'O'yei ScwkXt^s ' A(pi.bve{)S. 2 Book III. chapter li. ■* Choeph. 900 sqq.