Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/130

 112 iESCHYLUS. equality of votes, neither acquit nor condemn him, Athena, or divine wisdom, who was also the divine patroness of Athens, gives a casting vote in his favour, and at the same time appeases the Eumenides by promising them a perpetual seat in the Areopagus, where every one who owned himself guilty of homicide would be ipso facto condemned, without any liberty of pleading, as Orestes had done, excuse or justification. This seems to have been in ac- cordance with the practice of that venerable tribunal ; whereas the Ephet£e, when they sat at the Delphinium, or temple of Apollo, the justifying advocate of Orestes, took cognizance of those cases of ad- mitted homicide, which were defended on some valid plea of justifi- cation ; and when they sat at the Palladium, or temple of Athena, — the presiding judge who acquitted Orestes, — they took cogni- zance of those cases of homicide, in which an accident or absence of malicious intention was pleaded by the culprit ^ Now at the time when the Orestea was acted, the Areopagus, which, besides its judicial functions, was an oligarchical tribunal exercising an autho- rity not unlike that of the censors at Bome, and which especially claimed the right of passing sentence on charges of impiety [aae- ^€La), had just been reduced to its jurisdiction in homicide by Pericles and his partizan Ephialtes^, who not only objected gene- rally to its senatorial power, but had reason to fear its becoming an instrument of the Lacedeemonian party in mooting that charge of inherited sacrilege which was always hanging over the head of the great democratic leader^. Whether ^schylus, both by his favour- able reference to the Argive alliance, which was formed at this time'', and by his prediction of the perpetuity of the remaining privileges of the Areopagus, endeavoured to conciliate the hatred of the contending factions^, or whether he was engaged with Cimon in an attempt to rescind the measures of Pericles and Ephialtes, which led to the ostracism of Cimon ^ and to the retirement of ^schylus from Athens, can perhaps hardly be determined with any certainty*^. There can be no doubt, however, of the reference of the Eumenides to these contemporary incidents in the history of Athens. 1 Grote, Hist. Gr. lli, pp. 103 sqq. 2 Thirlwall, Vol. IV. pp. 12 sqq, ^ Id. p. 24. 4 I ^ jjj ^YiQ year before the Orestes was acted. ^ Grote, Hist. Gr. v, p, 499, note. ^ Plutarch, Cimon, c. 17. '' Miiller's opinion, Eumenid. § 35 sqq,, that the criminal jurisdiction of the Areo- pagus was taken away by Ephialtes, is controverted by Thii'lwall and Grote.