Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (76 page)

“There was
war in Heaven” between the new gods and the old. The
Prometheus Bound
contains the story of the proud tyranny of Zeus, the latest ruler of the gods.
Hephaestus, the god of fire, opens a conversation with Force and Violence who
are pinning Prometheus with chains of adamant to the rocks of Caucasus.
Hephaestus performs his task with reluctance and in pity for the victim, the
deep-counselling son of right-minded Law. Yet the command of Zeus his master is
urgent, overriding the claims of kindred blood. Force and Violence, full of
hatred, hold down the god who has stolen fire, Hephaestus’ right, and given it
to men. They bid the Fire-God make the chains fast and drive the wedge through
Prometheus’ body. When the work is done they leave him with the taunt:

  
“Now steal the rights of the gods and give
them to the creatures

  
of the day; what can mortals do to relieve
thy agonies? The gods

  
wrongly call thee a far-seeing counsellor,
who thyself lackest a

 
 
counsellor to save thee from thy present lot.”

Abandoned of
all, Prometheus breaks out into a wild appeal to earth, air, the myriad
laughter of the sea, the founts and streams to witness his humiliation; but
soon he reflects that he had foreseen his agony and must bear it as best he
can, for the might of Necessity is not to be fought against. A sound of lightly
moving pinions strikes his ears; sympathisers have come to visit him; they are
the Chorus, the daughters of Ocean, who have heard the sound of the riveted
chains and hurried forth in their winged car Awestruck, they come to see how
Zeus is smiting down the mighty gods of old. It would be difficult to imagine a
more natural and touching motive for the entry of a Chorus.

In the
dialogue that follows the tragic appeal to pity is quickly blended with a
different interest. By a superb stroke of art Aeschylus excites the audience to
an intense curiosity. Though apparently subdued, Prometheus has the certainty
of ultimate triumph over his foe; he alone has secret knowledge of something
which will one day hurl Zeus from his throne; the time will come when the new
president of Heaven will hurry to him in anxious desire for reconciliation;
when ruin threatens him he will forsake his pride and beg Prometheus to save
him. But no words will prevail on the sufferer till he is released from his
bonds and receives ample satisfaction for his maltreatment. The Chorus bids him
tell the whole history of the quarrel. To them he unfolds the story of Zeus’
ingratitude. There was a discord among the older gods, some wishing to depose
Cronos and make Zeus their King. Warned by his mother, Prometheus knew that
only counsel could avail in the struggle, not violence. When he failed to
persuade the Titans to use cunning, he joined Zeus who with his aid hurled his
foes down to Tartarus. Securing the sovereignty, Zeus distributed honours to
his supporters, but was anxious to wipe out the human race and create a new
stock. Prometheus resisted him, giving mortals fire the creator of many arts
and ridding them of the dread of death. This act brought him into conflict with
Zeus. He invites the Chorus to step down from their car and hear the rest of
his story. At this point Ocean enters, one of the older gods. He offers to act
as a mediator with Zeus, but Prometheus warns him to keep out of the conflict;
he has witnessed the sorrows of Atlas, his own brother, and of Typhos, pinned
down under Etna, and desires to bring trouble upon no other god; he must bear
his agonies alone till the time of deliverance is ripe. Ocean departing,
Prometheus continues his story. He gave men writing and knowledge of astronomy,
taught them to tame the wild beasts, invented the ship, created medicine,
divination and metallurgy. Yet for all this, his art is weaker far than
Necessity, whereof the controllers are Fate and the unforgetting Furies.
Terror-struck at his sufferings, the Chorus point out how utterly his goodness
has been wasted in helping the race of mortals who cannot save him. He warns
them that a time would come when Zeus should be no longer King; when they ask
for more knowledge, he turns them to other thoughts, bidding them hide the
secret as much as possible. Their interest is drawn away to another of Zeus’
victims, who at this moment rushes on the scene; it is lo, cajoled and
abandoned by Zeus, plagued and tormented by the dread unsleeping gadfly sent by
Zeus’ consort Hera. She relates her story to the wondering Chorus, and then
Prometheus tells her the long tale of misery and wandering that await her as
she passes from the Caucasus to Egypt, where she is promised deliverance from
her tormentor.

The play now
moves to its awful climax. The sight of Io stirs Prometheus to prophesy more
clearly the end in store for Zeus. There would be born one to discover a terror
far greater than the thunderbolt, and smite Zeus and his brother Poseidon into
utter slavery. On hearing this Zeus sends from heaven his messenger Hermes to
demand fuller knowledge of this new monarch. Disdaining his threats, Prometheus
mocks the new gods and defies their ruler to do his worst. Hermes then delivers
his warning. Prometheus would be overwhelmed with the terrors of thunder and
lightning, while the red eagle would tear out his heart unceasingly till one
should arise to inherit his agonies, descending to the depths of Tartarus. He
advises the Chorus to depart from the rebel, lest they too should share in the
vengeance. They remain faithful to Prometheus, ready to suffer with him; then
descend the thunderings and lightnings, the mountains rock, the winds roar, and
the sky is confounded with sea; the dread agony has begun.

Once more the
bold originality of Aeschylus displays itself. Here is a theme unique in Greek
literature. The strife between the two races of gods opens out a vista of the
world ages before man was created. It will provide a solution to a very
difficult problem which will confront us in a later play. The conflict between
two stubborn wills is the source of a sublime tragedy in which our sympathies
are with the sufferer; Zeus, who punishes Prometheus for “unjustly” helping
mortals, himself falls below the level of human morality; he is tyrannous,
ungrateful and revengeful — in short, he displays all the wrong-headedness of a
new ruler. No doubt in the sequel these defects would have disappeared;
experience would have induced a kindlier temper and the sense of an impending
doom would have made it essential for him to relent in order to learn the great
secret about his successor.

Pathos is
repeatedly appealed to in the play. Hephaestus is one of the kindliest figures
in Greek tragedy; the noble-hearted young goddesses cannot fail to hold our
affection. They are the most human Chorus in all drama; their entry is
admirable; in the sequel we should have found them still near Prometheus after
his cycle of tortures. But the subject-matter is calculated to win the
admiration of all humanity; it is the persecution of him to whom on Greek
principles mankind owes all that it is of value in its civilisation. We cannot
help thinking of another God, racked and tormented and nailed to a cross of
shame to save the race He loved. The very power and majesty of Aeschylus’ work
has made it difficult for successors to imitate him; few can hope to equal his
sublime grandeur; Shelley attempted it in his
Prometheus Unbound
, but
his Prometheus becomes abstract Humanity, ceasing to be a character, while his
play is really a mere poem celebrating the inevitable victory of man over the
evils of his environment and picturing the return of an age of happiness.

Nearly all
the characters in Greek tragedy were the heroes of well-known popular legends.
In abandoning the well-trodden circle Aeschylus has here ensured an undying
freshness for his work — it is novel, free and unconventional; more than that,
it is dignified.

The slightest
error of taste would have degraded if to the level of a comedy; throughout it
maintains a uniform tone of loftiness and sincerity. The language is easy but
powerful, the art with which the story is told is consummate. Finally, it is one
of the few pieces in the literature of the world which are truly sublime; it
ranks with Job and Dante. The great purpose of creation, the struggles of
beings of terrific power, the majesty of gods, the whole universe sighing and
lamenting for the agonies of a deity of wondrous foresight, saving others but
not himself — such is the theme of this mighty and affecting play.

In 458
Aeschylus wrote the one trilogy which is extant. It describes the murder of
Agamemnon, the revenge of Orestes and his purification from blood-guiltiness.
It will be necessary to trace the history of Agamemnon’s family before we can
understand these plays. His great-grandfather was Tantalus, who betrayed the
secrets of the gods and was subjected to unending torture in Hades. Pelops, his
son, begat two sons, Atreus and Thyestes. The former killed Thyestes’ son,
invited the father to a banquet and served up his own son’s body for him to
eat. The sons of Atreus were Agamemnon and Menelaus, who married respectively
Clytemnestra and Helen, daughters of Zeus and Leda, both evil women; the son of
Thyestes was Aegisthus, a deadly foe of his cousins who had banished him. The “inherited
curse” then had developed itself in this unhappy stock and it did not fail to
ruin it.

When Helen
abandoned Menelaus and went to Troy with Paris, Agamemnon led a great armament
to recover the adulteress. The fleet was wind-bound at Aulis, because the
Greeks had offended Artemis. Chalcas the seer informed Agamemnon that it would
be impossible for him to reach Troy unless he offered his eldest daughter
Iphigeneia to Artemis. Torn by patriotism and fatherly affection, Agamemnon
resorted to a strategem to bring his daughter to the sacrifice. He sent a
messenger to Clytemnestra saying he wished to marry their child to Achilles.
When the mother and daughter arrived at Aulis they learned the bitter truth.
Iphigeneia was indeed sacrificed, but Artemis spirited her away to the country
now called Crimea, there to serve as her priestess. Believing that her daughter
was dead, Clytemnestra returned to Argos to plot destruction for her husband,
forming an illicit union with his foe Aegisthus, nursing her revenge during the
ten years of the siege.

The
Agamemnon
,
the first play of the trilogy, opens in a romantic setting. It is night. A
watchman is on the wall of Argos, stationed there by the Queen. For ten years
he had waited for the signal of the beacon-fire to be lit at Nauplia, the port
of Argos, to announce the fall of Troy. At last the expected signal is given.
He hurries to tell the news to the Queen, a woman with the resolution of a man;
in his absence the Chorus of Argive Elders enter the stage, singing one of the
finest odes to be found in any language. It likens Agamemnon and his brother to
two avenging spirits sent to punish the sinner. The Chorus are past military
age, and are come to learn from Clytemnestra why there is sacrifice throughout
all Argos. They remember the woes at the beginning of the campaign, how Chalcas
prophesied that in time Troy would be taken, yet hinted darkly of some blinding
curse of Heaven hanging over the Greeks, his burden being

  
“Sing woe, sing woe, but let the good
prevail.”

  
“Yea, the law of Zeus is, wisdom by
suffering, for thus soberness of

  
thought comes to those who wish not for it.
First men are emboldened

  
by ill-counselling foolish frenzy which
begins their troubles; even

  
as Agamemnon, through sin against Artemis,
was compelled to slay his

  
daughter to save his armament. Her cries for
a father’s mercy, her

  
unuttered appeals to her slayers — these he
disregarded. What is to

  
come of it, no man knows; yet it is useless
to lament the issue before

  
it comes, as come it will, clear as the
light of day.”

Clytemnestra
enters, the sternest woman figure in all literature. She reminds the Chorus
that she is no child and is not known to have a slumbering wit. When they
enquire how she has learned so quickly of the capture of Troy, she describes
with great brilliance the long chain of beacon fires she has caused to be made,
stretching from Ida in Troyland to Argos. She imagines the wretched fate of the
conquered and the joy of the victors, rid for ever of their watchings beneath
the open sky. Striking the same ominous note as Chalcas did, she continues:

  
“If they reverence the Gods of Troy and
their shrines, they shall not

  
be caught even as they have taken the city.
May no lust of plundering

  
fall upon the army, for it needs a safe
return home. Yet even if the

  
army sins not against the gods, the anger of
the slain may awake,

  
though no new ills arise. But let the right
prevail, for all to see

  
it clearly.”

This speech
inspires the Chorus to sing another solemn ode. Too much prosperity leads to
godlessness; Paris carried away Helen in pride and infatuation, stealing the light
of Menelaus’ eyes, leaving him only the torturing memories of her beauty which
visited him in his dreams. But there is a spirit of discontent in every city of
Greece; all had sent their young men to Troy in the glory of life, and in
return they had a handful of ashes, asking why their sons should fall in
murderous strife for another man’s wife. At night the dark dread haunts Argos
that the gods care not for men who shed much blood, who succeed by injustice,
who are well spoken of overmuch. Often these are smitten full in the face by
the thunderbolt; and perhaps this beacon message is mere imagining or a lie
sent from heaven.