INTRODUCTION
The surviving dramas of Aeschylus
are seven in number, though he is believed to have written nearly a
hundred during his life of sixty-nine years, from 525 B.C. to 456
B.C. That he fought at Marathon in 490, and at Salamis in 480 B.C.
is
a strongly accredited tradition, rendered almost certain by the
vivid
references to both battles in his play of The Persians, which was
produced in 472. But his earliest extant play was, probably, not
The
Persians but The Suppliant Maidens—a mythical drama, the fame of
which has been largely eclipsed by the historic interest of The
Persians, and is undoubtedly the least known and least regarded of
the seven. Its topic—the flight of the daughters of Danaus from
Egypt to Argos, in order to escape from a forced bridal with their
first-cousins, the sons of Aegyptus—is legendary, and the lyric
element predominates in the play as a whole. We must keep ourselves
reminded that the ancient Athenian custom of presenting dramas in
Trilogies —that is, in three consecutive plays dealing with
different stages of one legend—was probably not uniform: it
survives, for us, in one instance only, viz. the Orestean Trilogy,
comprising the Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers, and the Eumenides,
or
Furies. This Trilogy is the masterpiece of the Aeschylean Drama:
the
four remaining plays of the poet, which are translated in this
volume, are all fragments of lost Trilogies—that is to say, the
plays are complete as poems, but in regard to the poet's larger
design they are fragments; they once had predecessors, or sequels,
of
which only a few words, or lines, or short paragraphs, survive. It
is
not certain, but seems probable, that the earliest of these single
completed plays is The Suppliant Maidens, and on that supposition
it
has been placed first in the present volume. The maidens,
accompanied
by their father Danaes, have fled from Egypt and arrived at Argos,
to
take sanctuary there and to avoid capture by their pursuing kinsmen
and suitors. In the course of the play, the pursuers' ship arrives
to
reclaim the maidens for a forced wedlock in Egypt. The action of
the
drama turns on the attitude of the king and people of Argos, in
view
of this intended abduction. The king puts the question to the
popular
vote, and the demand of the suitors is unanimously rejected: the
play
closes with thanks and gratitude on the part of the fugitives, who,
in lyrical strains of quiet beauty, seem to refer the whole
question
of their marriage to the subsequent decision of the gods, and, in
particular, of Aphrodite.
Of the second portion of the Trilogy
we can only speak conjecturally. There is a passage in the
Prometheus
Bound (ll. 860-69), in which we learn that the maidens were somehow
reclaimed by the suitors, and that all, except one, slew their
bridegrooms on the wedding night. There is a faint trace, among the
Fragments of Aeschylus, of a play called Thalamopoioi,—i.e. The
Preparers of the Chamber,—which may well have referred to this
tragic scene. Its grim title will recall to all classical readers
the
magnificent, though terrible, version of the legend, in the final
stanzas of the eleventh poem in the third book of Horace's Odes.
The
final play was probably called The Danaides, and described the
acquittal of the brides through some intervention of Aphrodite: a
fragment of it survives, in which the goddess appears to be
pleading
her special prerogative. The legends which commit the daughters of
Danaus to an eternal penalty in Hades are, apparently, of later
origin. Homer is silent on any such penalty; and Pindar, Aeschylus'
contemporary, actually describes the once suppliant maidens as
honourably enthroned (Pyth. ix. 112: Nem. x. ll. 1-10). The
Tartarean
part of the story is, in fact, post-Aeschylean.
The Suppliant Maidens is full of
charm, though the text of the part which describes the arrival of
the
pursuers at Argos is full of uncertainties. It remains a fine,
though
archaic, poem, with this special claim on our interest, that it is,
probably, the earliest extant poetic drama. We see in it the
tendency
to grandiose language, not yet fully developed as in the
Prometheus:
the inclination of youth to simplicity, and even platitude, in
religious and general speculation: and yet we recognize, as in the
germ, the profound theology of the Agamemnon, and a touch of the
political vein which appears more fully in the Furies. If the
precedence in time here ascribed to it is correct, the play is
perhaps worth more recognition than it has received from the
countrymen of Shakespeare.
The Persians has been placed second
in this volume, as the oldest play whose date is certainly known.
It
was brought out in 472 B.C., eight years after the sea-fight of
Salamis which it commemorates, and five years before the Seven
against Thebes (467 B.C.). It is thought to be the second play of a
Trilogy, standing between the Phineus and the Glaucus. Phineus was
a
legendary seer, of the Argonautic era—"Tiresias and Phineus,
prophets old"—and the play named after him may have contained
a prophecy of the great conflict which is actually described in The
Persae: the plot of the Glaucus is unknown. In any case, The
Persians
was produced before the eyes of a generation which had seen the
struggles, West against East, at Marathon and Thermopylæ, Salamis
and Plataea. It is as though Shakespeare had commemorated, through
the lips of a Spanish survivor, in the ears of old councillors of
Philip the Second, the dispersal of the Armada.
Against the piteous want of
manliness on the part of the returning Xerxes, we may well set the
grave and dignified patriotism of Atossa, the Queen-mother of the
Persian kingdom; the loyalty, in spite of their bewilderment, of
the
aged men who form the Chorus; and, above all, the royal phantom of
Darius, evoked from the shadowland by the libations of Atossa and
by
the appealing cries of the Chorus. The latter, indeed, hardly dare
to
address the kingly ghost: but Atossa bravely narrates to him the
catastrophe, of which, in the lower world, Darius has known
nothing,
though he realizes that disaster, soon or late, is the lot of
mortal
power. As the tale is unrolled, a spirit of prophecy possesses him,
and he foretells the coming slaughter of Plataea; then, with a last
royal admonition that the defeated Xerxes shall, on his return, be
received with all ceremony and observance, and with a
characteristic
warning to the aged men, that they must take such pleasures as they
may, in their waning years, he returns to the shades. The play ends
with the undignified reappearance of Xerxes, and a melancholy
procession into the palace of Susa. It was, perhaps, inevitable
that
this close of the great drama should verge on the farcical, and
that
the poltroonery of Xerxes should, in a measure, obscure Aeschylus'
generous portraiture of Atossa and Darius. But his magnificent
picture of the battle of Salamis is unequalled in the poetic annals
of naval war. No account of the flight of the Armada, no record of
Lepanto or Trafalgar, can be justly set beside it. The Messenger
might well, like Prospero, announce a tragedy by one line—
Sit still, and hear the last
of our sea-sorrow.
Five years after The Persians, in
467 B. C., the play which we call the Seven against Thebes was
presented at Athens. It bears now a title which Aeschylus can
hardly
have given to it for, though the scene of the drama overlooks the
region where the city of Thebes afterwards came into being, yet, in
the play itself, Thebes is never mentioned. The scene of action is
the Cadmea, or Citadel of Cadmus, and we know that, in Aeschylus'
lifetime, that citadel was no longer a mere fastness, but had so
grown outwards and enlarged itself that a new name, Thebes, was
applied to the collective city. (All this has been made abundantly
clear by Dr. Verrall in his Introduction to the Seven against
Thebes,
to which every reader of the play itself will naturally and most
profitably refer.) In the time of Aeschylus, Thebes was, of course,
a
notable city, his great contemporary Pindar was a citizen of it.
But
the Thebes of Aeschylus' date is one thing, the fortress
represented
in Aeschylus' play is quite another, and is never, by him, called
Thebes. That the play received, and retains, the name, The Seven
against Thebes, is believed to be due to two lines of Aristophanes
in
his Frogs (406 B.C.), where he describes Aeschylus' play as "the
Seven against Thebes, a drama instinct with War, which any one who
beheld must have yearned to be a warrior." This is rather an
excellent description of the play than the title of it, and could
not
be its Aeschylean name, for the very sufficient reason that Thebes
is
not mentioned in the play at all. Aeschylus, in fact, was poetizing
an earlier legend of the fortress of Cadmus. This being premised,
we
may adopt, under protest as it were, the Aristophanic name which
has
accrued to the play. It is the third part of a Trilogy which might
have been called, collectively, The House of Laius. Sophocles and
Euripides give us their versions of the legend, which we may
epitomize, without, however, affirming that they followed exactly
the
lines of Aeschylus Trilogy—they, for instance, speak freely of
Thebes. Laius, King of Thebes, married Iokaste; he was warned by
Apollo that if he had any children ruin would befall his house. But
a
child was born, and, to avoid the threatened catastrophe, without
actually killing the child he exposed it on Mount Cithaeron, that
it
should die. Some herdsmen saved it and gave it over to the care of
a
neighbouring king and queen, who reared it. Later on, learning that
there was a doubt of his parentage, this child, grown now to
maturity, left his foster parents and went to Delphi to consult the
oracle, and received a mysterious and terrible warning, that he was
fated to slay his father and wed his mother. To avoid this horror,
he
resolved never to approach the home of his supposed parents.
Meantime
his real father, Laius, on his way to consult the god at Delphi,
met
his unknown son returning from that shrine—a quarrel fell out, and
the younger man slew the elder. Followed by his evil destiny, he
wandered on, and found the now kingless Thebes in the grasp of the
Sphinx monster, over whom he triumphed, and was rewarded by the
hand
of Iokaste, his own mother! Not till four children—two sons and two
daughters—had been born to them, was the secret of the lineage
revealed. Iokaste slew herself in horror, and the wretched king
tore
out his eyes, that he might never again see the children of his
awful
union. The two sons quarrelled over the succession, then agreed on
a
compromise; then fell at variance again, and finally slew each
other
in single combat. These two sons, according to one tradition, were
twins: but the more usual view is that the elder was called
Eteocles,
the younger, Polynices.
To the point at which the
internecine enmity between Eteocles and Polynices arose, we have
had
to follow Sophocles and Euripides, the first two parts of
Aeschylus'
Trilogy being lost. But the third part, as we have said, survives
under the name given to it by Aristophanes, the Seven against
Thebes:
it opens with an exhortation by Eteocles to his Cadmeans that they
should "quit them like men" against the onslaught of
Polynices and his Argive allies: the Chorus is a bevy of scared
Cadmean maidens, to whom the very sound of war and tramp of
horsemen
are new and terrific. It ends with the news of the death of the two
princes, and the lamentations of their two sisters, Antigone and
Ismene. The onslaught from without has been repulsed, but the male
line of the house of Laius is extinct. The Cadmeans resolve that
Eteocles shall be buried in honour, and Polynices flung to the dogs
and birds. Against the latter sentence Antigone protests, and
defies
the decree: the Chorus, as is natural, are divided in their
sentiments.
It is interesting to note that, in
combination with the Laius and the Oedipus, this play won the
dramatic crown in 467 B.C. On the other hand, so excellent a judge
as
Mr. Gilbert Murray thinks that it is "perhaps among Aeschylus'
plays the one that bears least the stamp of commanding genius."
Perhaps the daring, practically atheistic, character of Eteocles;
the
battle-fever that burns and thrills through the play; the pathetic
terror of the Chorus—may have given it favour, in Athenian eyes, as
the work of a poet who—though recently (468 B.C.) defeated in the
dramatic contest by the young Sophocles—was yet present to tell,
not by mere report, the tale of Marathon and Salamis. Or the
preceding plays, the Laius and the Oedipus, may have been of such
high merit as to make up for defects observable in the one that
still
survives. In any case, we can hardly err in accepting Dr. Verral's
judgment that "the story of Aeschylus may be, and in the
outlines probably is, the genuine epic legend of the Cadmean war."
There remains one Aeschylean play,
the most famous—unless we except the Agamemnon—in extant Greek
literature, the Prometheus Bound. That it was the first of a
Trilogy,
and that the second and third parts were called the Prometheus
Freed,
and Prometheus the Fire-Bearer, respectively, is accepted: but the
date of its performance is unknown.
The Prometheus Bound is conspicuous
for its gigantic and strictly superhuman plot. The Agamemnon is
human, though legendary the Prometheus presents to us the gods of
Olympus in the days when mankind crept like emmets upon the earth
or
dwelt in caves, scorned by Zeus and the other powers of heaven,
and—still aided by Prometheus the Titan—wholly without art or
science, letters or handicrafts. For his benevolence towards
oppressed mankind, Prometheus is condemned by Zeus to uncounted
ages
of pain and torment, shackled and impaled in a lonely cleft of a
Scythian precipice. The play opens with this act of divine
resentment
enforced by the will of Zeus and by the handicraft of Hephaestus,
who
is aided by two demons, impersonating Strength and Violence. These
agents if the ire of Zeus disappear after the first scene, the rest
of the play represents Prometheus in the mighty solitude, but
visited
after a while by a Chorus of sea nymphs who, from the distant
depths
of ocean, have heard the clang of the demons' hammers, and arrive,
in
a winged car, from the submarine palace of their father Oceanus. To
them Prometheus relates his penalty and its cause: viz., his over
tenderness to the luckless race of mankind. Oceanus himself follows
on a hippogriff, and counsels Prometheus to submit to Zeus. But the
Titan who has handled the sea nymphs with all gentleness, receives
the advice with scorn and contempt, and Oceanus retires. But the
courage which he lacks his daughters possess to the full; they
remain
by Prometheus to the end, and share his fate, literally in the
crack
of doom. But before the end, the strange half human figure of Io,
victim of the lust of Zeus and the jealousy of Hera, comes
wandering
by, and tells Prometheus of her wrongs. He, by his divine power,
recounts to her not only the past but also the future of her
wanderings. Then, in a fresh access of frenzy, she drifts away into
the unknown world. Then Prometheus partly reveals to the sea
maidens
his secret, and the mysterious cause of Zeus' hatred against him—a
cause which would avail to hurl the tyrant from his power. So
deadly
is this secret, that Zeus will, in the lapse of ages, be forced to
reconcile himself with Prometheus, to escape dethronement. Finally,
Hermes, the messenger of Zeus, appears with fresh threats, that he
may extort the mystery from the Titan. But Prometheus is firm,
defying both the tyrant and his envoy, though already the lightning
is flashing, the thunder rolling, and sky and sea are mingling
their
fury. Hermes can say no more; the sea nymphs resolutely refuse to
retire, and wait their doom. In this crash of the world, Prometheus
flings his final defiance against Zeus, and amid the lightnings and
shattered rocks that are overwhelming him and his companions,
speaks
his last word, "It is unjust!"
Any spectacular representation of
this finale must, it is clear, have roused intense sympathy with
the
Titan and the nymphs alike. If, however, the sequel-plays had
survived to us, we might conceivably have found and realized
another
and less intolerable solution. The name Zeus, in Greek, like that
of
God, in English, comprises very diverse views of divine
personality.
The Zeus in the Prometheus has little but the name in common with
the
Zeus in the first chorus of the Agamemnon, or in The Suppliant
Maidens (ll. 86-103): and parallel reflections will give us much
food
for thought. But, in any case, let us realize that the Prometheus
is
not a human play: with the possible exception of Io, every
character
in it is an immortal being. It is not as a vaunt, but as a fact,
that
Prometheus declares, as against Zeus (l. 1053), that "Me at
least He shall never give to death."
A stupendous theological drama of
which two-thirds has been lost has left an aching void, which now
can
never be filled, in our minds. No reader of poetry needs to be
reminded of the glorious attempt of Shelley to work out a possible
and worthy sequel to the Prometheus. Who will not echo the words of
Mr. Gilbert Murray, when he says that "no piece of lost
literature has been more ardently longed for than the Prometheus
Freed"?
But, at the end of a rather
prolonged attempt to understand and translate the surviving
tragedies
of Aeschylus, one feels inclined to repeat the words used by a
powerful critic about one of the greatest of modern poets—"For
man, it is a weary way to God, but a wearier far to any demigod."
We shall not discover the full sequel of Aeschylus' mighty dramatic
conception: we "know in part, and we prophesy in part." The
Introduction (pp. xvi.-xviii.) prefixed by Mr. A. O. Prickard to
his
edition of the Prometheus is full of persuasive grace, on this
topic:
to him, and to Dr. Verrall of Cambridge—lucida sidera of help and
encouragement in the study of Aeschylus—the translator's thanks are
due, and are gratefully and affectionately rendered.
E. D. A. M.
THE SUPPLIANT MAIDENS
DEDICATION
Take thou this gift from out the grave of Time.
The urns of Greece lie shattered, and the cup
That for Athenian lips the Muses filled,
And flowery crowns that on Athenian hair
Hid the cicala, freedom's golden sign,
Dust in the dust have fallen. Calmly sad,
The marble dead upon Athenian tombs
Speak from their eyes "Farewell": and well have fared
They and the saddened friends, whose clasping hands
Win from the solemn stone eternity.
Yea, well they fared unto the evening god,
Passing beyond the limit of the world,
Where face to face the son his mother saw,
A living man a shadow, while she spake
Words that Odysseus and that Homer heard,—
I too, O child, I reached the common doom,
The grave, the goal of fate, and passed away.
—Such, Anticleia, as thy voice to him,
Across the dim gray gulf of death and time
Is that of Greece, a mother's to a child,—
Mother of each whose dreams are grave and fair—
Who sees the Naiad where the streams are bright
And in the sunny ripple of the sea
Cymodoce with floating golden hair:
And in the whisper of the waving oak
Hears still the Dryad's plaint, and, in the wind
That sighs through moonlit woodlands, knows the horn
Of Artemis, and silver shafts and bow.
Therefore if still around this broken vase,
Borne by rough hands, unworthy of their load,
Far from Cephisus and the wandering rills,
There cling a fragrance as of things once sweet,
Of honey from Hymettus' desert hill,
Take thou the gift and hold it close and dear;
For gifts that die have living memories—
Voices of unreturning days, that breathe
The spirit of a day that never dies.
ARGUMENT
Io, the daughter of Inachus, King of Argos, was beloved of Zeus.
But Hera was jealous of that love, and by her ill will was Io given
over to frenzy, and her body took the semblance of a heifer: and
Argus, a many-eyed herdsman, was set by Hera to watch Io
whithersoever she strayed. Yet, in despite of Argus, did Zeus draw
nigh unto her in the shape of a bull. And by the will of Zeus and
the craft of Hermes was Argus slain. Then Io was driven over far
lands and seas by her madness, and came at length to the land of
Egypt. There was she restored to herself by a touch of the hand of
Zeus, and bare a child called Epaphus. And from Epaphus sprang
Libya, and from Libya, Belus; and from Belus, Aegyptus and Danaus.
And the sons of Aegyptus willed to take the daughters of Danaus in
marriage. But the maidens held such wedlock in horror, and fled
with their father over the sea to Argos; and the king and citizens
of Argos gave them shelter and protection from their pursuers.
THE SUPPLIANT MAIDENS
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
DANAUS, THE KING OF ARGOS, HERALD OF AEGYPTUS.
Chorus of the Daughters of Danaus. Attendants.
Scene. —A sacred precinct near the gates of Argos: statue and
shrines of Zeus and other deities stand around.
CHORUS
ZEUS! Lord and guard of suppliant hands!
Look down benign on us who crave
Thine aid—whom winds and waters drave
From where, through drifting shifting sands,
Pours Nilus to the wave.
From where the green land, god-possest,
Closes and fronts the Syrian waste,
We flee as exiles, yet unbanned
By murder's sentence from our land;
But—since Aegyptus had decreed
His sons should wed his brother's seed,—
Ourselves we tore from bonds abhorred,
From wedlock not of heart but hand,
Nor brooked to call a kinsman lord!
And Danaus, our sire and guide,
The king of counsel, pond'ring well
The dice of fortune as they fell,
Out of two griefs the kindlier chose,
And bade us fly, with him beside,
Heedless what winds or waves arose,
And o'er the wide sea waters haste,
Until to Argos' shore at last
Our wandering pinnace came—
Argos, the immemorial home
Of her from whom we boast to come—
Io, the ox-horned maiden, whom,
After long wandering, woe, and scathe,
Zeus with a touch, a mystic breath,
Made mother of our name.
Therefore, of all the lands of earth,
On this most gladly step we forth,
And in our hands aloft we bear—
Sole weapon for a suppliant's wear—
The olive-shoot, with wool enwound!
City, and land, and waters wan
Of Inachus, and gods most high,
And ye who, deep beneath the ground,
Bring vengeance weird on mortal man,
Powers of the grave, on you we cry!
And unto Zeus the Saviour, guard
Of mortals' holy purity!
Receive ye us—keep watch and ward
Above the suppliant maiden band!
Chaste be the heart of this your land
Towards the weak! but, ere the throng,
The wanton swarm, from Egypt sprung,
Leap forth upon the silted shore,
Thrust back their swift-rowed bark again,
Repel them, urge them to the main!
And there, 'mid storm and lightning's shine,
And scudding drift and thunder's roar,
Deep death be theirs, in stormy brine!
Before they foully grasp and win
Us, maiden-children of their kin,
And climb the couch by law denied,
And wrong each weak reluctant bride.
And now on her I call,
Mine ancestress, who far on Egypt's shore
A young cow's semblance wore,—
A maiden once, by Hera's malice changed!
And then on him withal,
Who, as amid the flowers the grazing creature
ranged,
Was in her by a breath of Zeus conceived;
And, as the hour of birth drew nigh,
By fate fulfilled, unto the light he came;
And Epaphus for name,
Born from the touch of Zeus, the child received.
On him, on him I cry,
And him for patron hold—
While in this grassy vale I stand,
Where lo roamed of old!
And here, recounting all her toil and pain,
Signs will I show to those who rule the land
That I am child of hers; and all shall understand,
Hearing the doubtful tale of the dim past made plain.
And, ere the end shall be,
Each man the truth of what I tell shall see.
And if there dwell hard by
One skilled to read from bird-notes augury,
That man, when through his ears shall thrill our
tearful wail,
Shall deem he hears the voice, the plaintive tale
Of her, the piteous spouse of Tereus, lord of guile—
Whom the hawk harries yet, the mourning nightingale.
She, from her happy home and fair streams scared
away,
Wails wild and sad for haunts beloved erewhile.
Yea, and for Itylus—ah, well-a-day!
Slain by her own, his mother's hand,
Maddened by lustful wrong, the deed by Tereus
planned.
Like her I wail and wail, in soft Ionian tones,
And as she wastes, even so
Wastes my soft cheek, once ripe with Nilus' suns
And all my heart dissolves in utter woe
Sad flowers of grief I cull,
Fleeing from kinsmen's love unmerciful—
Yea, from the clutching hands, the wanton crowd,
I sped across the waves, from Egypt's land of cloud{1}
{Footnote: 1: AeRas apogas This epithet may appear strange to
modern readers accustomed to think of Egypt as a land of cloudless
skies and pellucid atmosphere. Nevertheless both Pindar (Pyth iv
93) and Apollonius Rhodius (iv 267) speak of it in the same way as
Aeschylus. It has been conjectured that they allude to the fog
banks that often obscure the low coasts—a phenomenon likely to
impress the early navigators and to be reported by them.}
Gods of the ancient cradle of my race,
Hear me, just gods! With righteous grace
On me, on me look down!
Grant not to youth its heart's unchaste desire,
But, swiftly spurning lust's unholy fire,
Bless only love and willing wedlock's crown
The war-worn fliers from the battle's wrack
Find refuge at the hallowed altar-side,
The sanctuary divine,—
Ye gods! such refuge unto me provide—
Such sanctuary be mine!
Though the deep will of Zeus be hard to track,
Yet doth it flame and glance,
A beacon in [...]