Aeschylus (Part 2)

(Pictured: Aeschylus.) Here we present Part 2 of the Introduction written by P. E. More for his translation of the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, published in 1899. We have returned to our category Poetry and the Classical Tradition after having completed our presentation of More’s essay on one of the most subjective and unclassical of authors, James Joyce. Paul Elmer More (1864-1937) was an American journalist, critic, essayist, and Christian apologist. He collaborated with Irving Babbitt from before 1900 in the project later called the New Humanism. His conservative literary criticism was published in the eleven-volume Shelburne Essays (1904-1921) and the three-volume New Shelburne Essays (1928). He also published several books on Plato and Greek philosophy, including the Greek Tradition. Late in his life he undertook Christian apologetics, notably in The Christ of the Testament. On Being Human was published in 1936.

The Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus
By Paul Elmer More

Introduction

Life of Aeschylus

Aeschylus, the son of Euphorion, was born at Eleusis in the year 525 b. c. Modern philosophers, who look to environment for the explanation of a man’s character, would find in the birthplace of the tragedian much to throw light on his temperament; and indeed the coincidence was not overlooked by the ancients. Aristophanes, in the Frogs (v. 886), puts this prayer into the mouth of Aeschylus : “O Demeter, who didst nourish my mind, may I prove worthy of thy mysteries”; and never was a prayer more fully answered. At Eleusis, where Demeter had found repose in the search for her daughter, were celebrated the most sacred and imposing of the Greek mysteries. Every year in the autumn, when the passing of summer foretold the winter death to come, the initiated of the Athenians purified themselves by bathing in the sea, offered expiatory sacrifices, and then in procession, now with solemn song and now with mocking jests, marched by the Sacred Way to Eleusis, carrying the image of Iacchus, the divine mediator; and there, chiefly in the secret hours of the night, the mystic drama and other ceremonies were performed which may have taught in symbolic manner the resurrection and judgment of the dead. Something of the solemnity and prophetic awe of these scenes no doubt entered into the inspiration of the young Eleusinian. At least he was accused in later years of divulging the mysteries in his plays, and it is probable that the gorgeous robes he adopted for his actors, and which became the conventional stage costume, were an imitation of the garments of the Eleusinian hierophants.

Aeschylus belonged to the aristocracy and bore his part in the terrible struggles of the times. He himself was present at the battles of Marathon and Salamis and Plataea. At Marathon he was wounded, and his brother was that Cynaegirus who clung to one of the retreating Persian ships until his hand was severed with an axe. The deeds of the two brothers, we are told, were commemorated in the picture of the battle set up in the Porch at Athens. These scenes of courage and patriotism exercised as strong an influence on the genius of the poet, no doubt, as did the religious surroundings of Eleusis. The rout of the barbarians at Salamis he made the theme of the Persians, one of the very few historic tragedies attempted by Greek writers, and the only one that has come down to us. The famous speech in which the messenger relates the story of the fatal battle in the straits is one of the most striking epic scenes in the language, and is besides true history. In some respects no better play than the Persians could be selected to set forth the aim of Greek tragedy. We have here a most impressive picture of the littleness of man in conflict with the powers of destiny, and a most memorable illustration of the moral Know thyself and Think as a mortal. The play is little more than a long lamentation for the Great King, who has gone forth with overweening confidence in his might to trample under foot an insignificant city, and who now returns defeated, humiliated, reft of his glorious trappings, the sport and laughter of an ironical fate. And when Darius, who formerly among the living enjoyed more than the ordinary prosperity of man and is now equally mighty among the dead, hears from the tomb the summons of the queen, he can only say to her: “Human ills must perforce chance to mortals [Alternative translation: “Fate sends many ills to mortals.”], for many ills from the sea and many from the land come upon men in the stretching out of a long life.”

But the Persians is not the only play in which we hear the clash of arms. In that extraordinary scene of the Frogs, where Dionysus, disguised in the trappings of Heracles, having gone down to Hades to fetch hack to earth some worthy tragic writer, instigates a debate between Aeschylus and Euripides, the elder poet is made to point to the martial character of his dramas as their chief glory. The exact words of Aristophanes may be quoted as showing also the high estimation in which Aeschylus was held and the strictly moral grounds on which a poet was judged:—

“Aeschylus. For what should we admire a poet?

“Euripides. For his cleverness and good advice, and because we make men better in the cities.

“Aes. Suppose you haven’t done this, but from good and noble have made them more villainous,—what pains do you think you ought to suffer ?

“Dionysus. Death; you needn’t ask that.

“Aes. See now what sort of men you received from my hands, how noble they were, great fellows six feet high, no shirkers of duty, market gossipers, swindlers, and general rascals like the race of to-day, but men who breathed of the spear and the lance and white-crested helmets and casques and greaves, and courage doughty as the sevenfold shield of Ajax.

“Eur. Worse and more of it! He’ll wear me to death with his tale of helmets.—And what on earth did you do to make them so noble?

“Dio. Speak, Aeschylus, and don’t get into such a big-winded rage.

“Aes. I made a drama full of Mars.

“Dio. What drama?

“Aes. The Seven Against Thebes; and every man who saw it burned to be a warrior.”

It is pleasant to dwell on the active and soldierly qualities of a great poet,—qualities which Aeschylus did not forget, as we shall see, when he came to die,—and to recollect that not a few of the world’s famous writers have been equally ready with the sword and the pen. As for the battle of Salamis, which he so graphically describes, that by a strange coincidence played a prominent part in the lives of the two other tragedians as well. Sophocles, who was then a boy of seventeen years, was chosen for his grace and comeliness to dance in the chorus of youths that celebrated the victory; and Euripides, the youngest of the three, was, if we may believe a doubtful tradition, born on the very day of the engagement in Salamis, whither his mother, with other Athenian women, had fled for refuge.

Aeschylus, as has been intimated, belonged to one of the old eupatrid families of Attica, and his sympathies were naturally with the aristocratic party. There is abundant testimony in his works to show how thoroughly he detested tyranny and despotism, as, for example, the proud saying in the Persians that the Athenians “are called the slaves and subjects of no man;” but on the other hand he was equally opposed to the popular democracy, which under the cunning guidance of Pericles was beginning to supplant the old traditional government, and which, when the hand of the master was slackened by death, was to break out into uncontrollable and fatal license. In 462 b. c. the popular party, instigated by Ephialtes, who was probably but a tool in the hands of Pericles, attacked the venerable court of the Areopagus, the assembly of Mars Hill, and stript it of its powers. Four years later, Aeschylus, then an old man, brought out the last and greatest of his plays, the Orestean trilogy, in which he uttered his vain protest against this revolution.

If any such explanation is needed, the hostility of Aeschylus to the democratic tendencies of the day may be alleged as the cause of his repeated absence from the city. In 476 b. c. he visited Syracuse at the invitation of Hiero, the tyrant, who had assembled at his brilliant court a circle of poets including Pindar and Simonides. The particular occasion for this invitation was the founding of a new town called Aetna, in honor of which Aeschylus exhibited an appropriate drama. At least twice again he came to Sicily, and indeed it is probable that Syracuse was a second home for him during the later years of his life. Grammarians found distinct traces of the Sicilian idiom in his language, and in at least one passage of his works he has made use of a memorable Sicilian event. The description of Typho in this play, and of the rivers of fire devouring the broad fair-fruited fields of Sicily, is inspired by the eruption of Aetna which occurred in 479 or 478. Both ancient and modern critics have assumed that there must have been some special cause for his leaving Athens: according to one credulous authority he fled because the wooden benches gave way during the performance of one of his plays; according to another he was banished on account of the introduction of the Furies in the drama of that name, their appearance being so awsome that children expired and women miscarried; another would have jealousy of Sophocles, who defeated him in a tragic contest, or of Simonides, who surpassed him in his elegy over the fallen heroes of Marathon,—foolish stories all, which have, however, a kind of interest as showing the flimsy materials out of which biographies were composed in later times. It has been supposed that he was on ill terms with the Athenians for religious indiscretions. The Athenian populace was in those days extremely bigoted in religious matters, and more than one rash man had to pay the penalty of death or exile for his free-thinking. Most notorious are the exile of Anaxagoras, although a friend of Pericles, the persecution of Euripides for his skepticism, and the execution of Socrates. There is no doubt but that Aeschylus was accused before the Areopagus of divulging the Eleusinian mysteries. A graphic but dubious account of the affair states that from some allusions in a play, in which he was himself acting the chief part, the audience conceived he was revealing the sacred mysteries, and would have killed him then and there had he not clung for refuge to the altar of Dionysus in the orchestra. Later he was tried by the court of the Areopagus, and acquitted on proving that he had never been initiated. Probably his guilt consisted in representing Artemis as the daughter of Demeter,—an Egyptian myth, as Herodotus (II. 156) assures us. Whether for this reason or because of his aristocratic leaning, we are justified in believing that for a time at any rate, as Aristophanes puts it, “Aeschylus didn’t just agree with the Athenians.” Yet it remains true that in general he was most popular as a dramatist, and after his death it was decreed that any man who wished to bring out one of Aeschylus’ plays should be furnished with a chorus. In later times tragic writers used to offer sacrifices at his tomb, as if he were the tutelary deity of their art.

His death occurred at Gela, in Sicily, in the year 456. A quaint story is told of his end. He had been warned of his fate by an oracle which declared, A stroke from heaven shall slay thee. So it was that an eagle carrying a tortoise in the air, and being unable to get at the meat, mistook the bald head of the poet for a stone on which he might drop his prey to crush the shell. The citizens of Gela buried him with great pomp in a public tomb, inscribing thereon an epitaph of the poet’s own composing, which has been translated as follows:—

“Euphorio’s son and Athens’ pride lies here;
In fertile Gela’s soil he found his rest;
His valour Marathon’s wide plains declare,
As long-hair’ d Medes who felt it can attest.”

The creator of tragedy, the sublime singer, was proudest in death of his reputation as a soldier of Marathon.

Of the eighty or more plays composed by Aeschylus, there have come down to us only seven which early in our era were selected by the grammarians as best suited for school use. Fortunately we have among these the complete Orestean trilogy, certainly the most important of his works, and the Prometheus Bound, which, although far from being one of the greatest of even extant Greek tragedies, has a peculiar interest in certain respects for modern readers.

[To be continued.]