Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/128

98 Nemesis to which even the Olympian gods are subject. In this respect the "Prometheus Bound," deathless as the Titan himself, is the first and highest type of them all. The chorus, the major and minor personages, the prophetic demigod, and even the ruthless Zeus, take for granted the power of a righteous Destiny. The wrong-doer, whether guilty by chance or by will, as in the case of the "Œdipus Tyrannus" of Sophocles, even pronounces and justifies his own doom. I will not now consider the grandeur of these wonderful productions. Through the supremer endurance of poetry they have come down to us, while the pictures of Zeuxis and Apelles, and the "Zeus" and "Athene" of Pheidias, are but traditions of "the glory that was Greece." The point I make is that Their absolute quality. these are absolute dramas. They are richly freighted, like Shakespeare's, with oracles and expositions; but their inspired wisdom never diverts us from the high inexorable progress of the action. It is but a relief and an adjuvant. You may learn the bent of the dramatist's genius from his work, but little of his own emotions and experiences. Nor is the wisdom so much his wisdom, as it is something residual from the history and evolution of his people. The high gods of Æschylus and Sophocles. Æschylus and Sophocles for the most part sit above the thunder: but the human element pervades these dramas; the legendary demigods, heroes, gentes, that serve as the