Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (78 page)

Approaching
the palace Orestes summons the Queen and tells her that a stranger called
Strophius bade him bring to Argos the news that Orestes is dead. Clytemnestra
commands her servants within the house to welcome him and sends out her son’s
old nurse Cilissa to take the news to Aegisthus. The nurse stops to speak to
the Chorus in the very language of grief for the boy she had reared, like
Constance in
King John
. The Chorus advise her to summon Aegisthus alone
without his bodyguard, for Orestes is not yet dead; when she departs they pray
that the end may be speedily accomplished and the royal house cleansed of its
curse. Aegisthus crosses the stage into the palace to meet a hasty end; seeing
the deed, a servant rushes out to call Clytemnestra, while Orestes bursts out
from the house and faces his mother. For a moment his resolution wavers;
Pylades reminds him of Apollo’s anger if he fails. To his mother’s plea that
Destiny abetted her deed he replies that Destiny intends her death likewise;
before he thrusts her into the palace she warns him of the avenging Furies she
will send to persecute him. She then passes to her doom.

After the
Chorus have sung an ode of triumph Orestes shows the bodies of the two who
loved in sin while alive and were not separated in death. He then displays the
net which Clytemnestra threw around her husband’s body and the robe in which
she caught his feet; he holds up the garment through which Aegisthus’ dagger
ran. But in that very moment the cloud of more agonies to come descends upon
the hapless family. In obedience to Apollo’s command he takes the suppliant’s
branch and chaplet, and prepares to hasten to Delphi,
a wanderer cut off from his native land. The dreadful shapes of the avenging
Furies close in upon him: the fancies of incipient madness thicken on his mind:
he is hounded out, his only hope of rest being Apollo’s sacred shrine. The play
ends with a note of hopelessness, of calamity without end.

After the
Agamemnon
this play reads weak indeed. Yet it displays two marked characteristics. It is
full of vigorous action; the plot is quickly conceived and quickly consummated;
the business is soon over. Further, Aeschylus has discovered yet another source
of tragic power, the conflict of duties. Orestes has to choose between obedience
to Apollo and reverence for his mother. That these duties are incompatible is
clear; whichever he performed, punishment was bound to follow. It is in this
enforced choice between two evils that the pathos of life is often to be found;
that Aeschylus should have so faithfully depicted it is a great contribution to
the growth of drama.

The
concluding play, the
Eumenides
, calls for a briefer description. It
opens with one of the most awe-inspiring scenes which the imagination of man
has conceived. The priestess of Delphi finds a
man sitting as a suppliant at the central point of the earth, his hands
dripping with blood, a sword and an olive branch in his hand. Round him is
slumbering a troop of dreadful forms, beings from darkness, the avengers. When
the scene is disclosed, Apollo himself is seen standing at Orestes’ side. He
urges Hermes to convey the youth with all speed to Athens where he is to clasp the ancient image
of Athena. Immediately the ghost of Clytemnestra arises; waking the sleeping
forms, she bids them fly after their victim. They arise and confront Apollo, a
younger deity, whom they reproach for protecting one who should be abandoned to
them. Apollo replies with a charge that they are prejudiced in favour of
Clytemnestra, whom, though a murderess, they had never tormented.

The scene
rapidly changes to Athens,
where Orestes calls upon Athena; confident in the privilege of their ancient
office the Chorus awaits the issue. The goddess appears and consents to try the
case, the Council of the Areopagus acting as a jury. Apollo first defends his
action in saving Orestes, asserting that he obeys the will of Zeus. The main
question is, which of the two parents is more to be had in honour?

Athena
herself had no mother; the female is merely the nurse of the child, the father
being the true generative source. The Chorus points out that the sin of slaying
a husband is not the same as that of murdering a mother, for the one implies
kinship, while the other does not. Athena advises the Court to judge without
fear or favour. When the votes are counted, it is found that they are exactly
even. The goddess casts her vote for Orestes, who is thus saved and restored.

The Chorus
threaten that ruin and sterility shall visit Athena’s city; they are elder
gods, daughters of night, and are overridden by younger deities. But Athena by
the power of her persuasion offers them a full share in all the honours and
wealth of Attica if they will consent to take
up their abode in it. They shall be revered by countless generations and will
gain new dignities such as they could not have otherwise obtained. Little by
little their resentment is overcome; they are conducted to their new home to
change their name and become the kindly goddesses of the land.

The boldness
of Aeschylus is most evident in this play. Not content with raising a ghost as
he had done in the
Persae
, he actually shows upon a public stage the two
gods whom the Athenians regarded as the special objects of their worship. More
than this, he has brought to the light the dark powers of the underworld in all
their terrors; it is said that at the sight of them some of the women in the
audience were taken with the pangs of premature birth. The introduction of
these supernatural figures was the most vivid means at Aeschylus’ disposal for
bringing home to the minds of his contemporaries the seriousness of the
dramatic issue. It will be remembered that the
Prometheus
was the last
echo of the contest between two races of gods. The same strain of thought has
made the poet represent the struggle in the mind of Orestes as a trial between
the primeval gods and the newer stock; the result was the same, the older and
perhaps more terrifying deities are beaten, being compelled to change their
names and their character to suit the gentler spirit which a religion takes to
itself as it develops. At any rate, such is Aeschylus’ solution of the eternal
question, “What atonement can be made for bloodshed and how can it be secured?”
The problem is of the greatest interest; it may be that there is no real answer
for it, but it is at least worth while to examine the attempts which have been
made to solve it.

Before we
begin to attempt an estimate of Aeschylus it is well to face the reasons which
make Greek drama seem a thing foreign to us. We are at times aware that it is
great, but we cannot help asking, “Is it real?” Modern it certainly is not. In
the first place, the Chorus was all-important to the Greeks, but is
non-existent with us. To them drama was something more than action, it was
music and dancing as well. Yet as time went on, the Greeks themselves found the
Chorus more and more difficult to manage and it was discarded as a feature of
the main plot. Only in a very few instances could a play be constructed in such
a manner as to allow the Chorus any real influence on the story. Aeschylus’
skill in this branch of his art is really extraordinary; the Chorus does take a
part, and a vital part too, in the play. Again, the number of Greek actors was
limited, whereas in a modern play their number is just as great as suits
playwright’s convenience or his capacity. The impression then of a Greek play
is that it is a somewhat thin performance compared with the vivacity and
complexity of the great Elizabethans. The plot, where it exists, seems very narrow
in Attic drama; it could hardly be otherwise in a society which was content
with a repeated discussion of a rather close cycle of heroic legends. Yet here,
too, we might note how Aeschylus trod out of the narrow circumscribed round,
notably in the
Prometheus
and the
Persoe
. Lastly, the Greek play
is short when compared with a full-bodied five-act tragedy. It must be
remembered, however, that very often these plays are only a third part of the
real subject dealt with by the playwright.

All Greek
tragedy is liable to these criticisms; it is not fair to judge a process just
beginning by the standards of an art which thinks itself full-blown after many
centuries of history. Considering the meagre resources available for Aeschylus
— the masks used by Greek actors made it impossible for any of them to win a
reputation or to add to the fame of a play — we ought to admire the marvellous
success he achieved. His defects are clear enough; his teaching is a little
archaic, his plots are sometimes weak or not fully worked out, his tendency is
to description instead of vigorous action, he has a superabundance of choric
matter. Sometimes it is said that the doctrine of an inherited curse on which
much of his work is written is false; let it be remembered that week by week a
commandment is read in our churches which speaks of visiting the sins of the
fathers upon the third and fourth generation of them that hate God; all that is
needed to make Aeschylus’ doctrine “real” in the sense of “modern” is to
substitute the nineteenth-century equivalent Heredity. That he has touched on a
genuine source of drama will be evident to readers of Ibsen’s
Ghosts
.
More serious is the objection that his work is not dramatic at all; the actors
are not really human beings acting as such, for their wills and their deeds are
under the control of Destiny. What then shall we say of this from Hamlet: —

  
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

  
Rough-hew them as we will?”

In this
matter we are on the threshold of one of our insoluble problems — the freedom
of the will. An answer to this real fault in Aeschylus will be found in the
subsequent history of the Attic drama attempted in the next two chapters.
Suffice it to say that, whether the will is free or not, we act as if it were,
and that is enough to represent (as Aeschylus has done) human beings acting on
a stage as we ourselves would do in similar circumstances, for the discussions
about Destiny are very often to be found in the mouths not of the characters,
but of the Chorus, who are onlookers.

The positive
excellences of Aeschylus are numerous enough to make us thankful that he has
survived. His style is that of the great sublime creators in art, Dante,
Michaelangelo, Marlowe; it has many a “mighty line”. His subjects are the
Earth, the Heavens, the things under the Earth; more, he reveals a period of
unsuspected antiquity, the present order of gods being young and somewhat
inexperienced. He carries us back to Creation and shows us the primeval
deities, Earth, Night, Necessity, Fate, powers simply beyond the knowledge of
ordinary thoughtless men. His characters are cast in a mighty mould; he taps
the deepest tragic springs; he teaches that all is not well when we prosper.
The thoughtless, light-hearted, somewhat shallow mind which thinks it can
speak, think, and act without having to render an account needs the somewhat
stern tonic of these seven dramas; it may be chastened into some sobriety and
learn to be a little less flippant and irreverent.

Aeschylus’
influence is rather of the unseen kind. His genius is of a lofty type which is
not often imitated. Demanding righteousness, justice, piety, and humility, he
belongs to the class of Hebrew prophets who saw God and did not die.

Gela, a town in the province of Caltanissetta
in the south of Sicily.
In 458 BC, Aeschylus returned to Sicily for
the last time, visiting Gela
where he died in 456 or 455 BC.

‘The Death of Aeschylus’ — a 17th Century engraving. A
legend tells that he was killed by a tortoise falling out of the sky, dropped
by an eagle, mistaking his bald head for a rock.