own discretion; he was not even bound to be consistent with himself; the Creon of the Oedipus Tyrannus is different from the Creon of the Coloneus; so is the Helen of the Helena from that of the Orestes. Still less did one dramatist feel bound by another's conception; witness the Electra of Sophocles and the Electra of Euripides. But when the creative period of Greek poetry was closed; when the literary poets of a later age, Greek or Roman, looked back on the Attic drama as a whole; then it was recognized that the heroic persons had there been delineated once for all. The characters as drawn in Attic Tragedy were for these later writers the standard conceptions. Clytaemnestra, Oedipus, and the rest had received from the Attic dramatist certain attributes which thenceforth adhered to them. Horace reminds us of this in the Ars Poetica; and Seneca's plays practically illustrate Horace. Thus Attic Tragedy became to the later literature nearly what epos had been to Tragedy. Epos had prescribed outlines which Tragedy had filled in, observing, while it did so, the limitations imposed by the first law of its being, its ideal scope; and these characters became traditional, without receiving, however, any further development comparable with that which Tragedy had effected. Remembering these general qualities of Attic Distinctive traits of the three masters. Tragedy, we may next consider the particular stamp impressed upon it by each of the great masters. Among the seven extant plays of Aeschylus, the oldest is the Supplices, which has been conjecturally Aeschylus. placed a year or two before the battle of Marathon. Whatever its precise date may be, it undoubtedly has the interest of showing us the creator of Tragedy at a comparatively early moment in his career; as the Oresteia, near the end of his life, shows us the climax of his achievement. When the work of Aeschylus is viewed in regard to its form, the first broad characteristic which claims notice is his treatment of the His use of Chorus. In the Supplices, the Chorus the Chorus. is the true protagonist. We are reminded of the time, then recent, before Aeschylus had introduced the second actor, when Tragedy had been essentially lyric. And in that choral ode of the Supplices which invokes blessings upon Dorian Argos, there is a significant reference to Dorian lyric poetry, as composed, in various kinds, for public ritual; "May the singers raise holy song at the altars, and may the chant, wedded to the harp, be poured from pure lips." The Danaides, who form the Chorus of the Supplices, were regularly represented as fifty in number; and it is not improbable that, in this play, the Chorus consisted of fifty persons, the number, as we have seen, of the cyclic or dithyrambic Chorus. The chorus of only twelve, used in the later plays of Aeschylus, representing roughly one quarter of the cyclic Chorus, may have come in along with the tetralogy, presumably his invention. In no other play is the Chorus quite so important as in the Supplices; yet in each of the other six, besides bearing a large part, it has also a real share in the action. Thus in the Prometheus the Ocean Nymphs are not merely the comforters of the sufferer, who remain with him throughout; at the end they defy the Olympian threats, and resolve to share his doom. The Persian Elders in the Persae represent the nation smitten at Salamis, and interpret the effect of the battle upon Asia. In the Seven against Thebes the Theban maidens are so closely interested in the events that at the end they even divide into two factions, one siding with Antigone and the other with Ismene. The Elders of Mycenae in the Agamemnon are outspoken opponents of Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus. In the Choephori the Chorus of captive maidens assist the vengeance; and the Eumenides, in the play called after them, have a part second only, if second, to that of Orestes. His style in lyrics. As a lyric poet, in his choral odes, Aeschylus has a strongly-marked style, which must be recognized as altogether his own; the history of the choral lyric, so far as we know, shows nothing resembling it as a whole, nor is there anything like it in the later dramatists. typical example of this style is afforded by the first two odes in the Agamemnon. We find there three principal characteristics. First, there is an epic tone, Homeric in its nobleness, and accord AESCHYLUS 171 ant with the hexameter rhythms which are so largely used; Homeric also in the variety and vivacity given to the narrative by short speeches like those of Calchas and Agamemnon. Secondly, the lyric expression is boldly imaginative, in a manner which sometimes recalls Pindar; thus there is a Pindaric rapidity in the succession of images and metaphors. Thirdly, there is an element of reflection, not practically sententious or didactic, as with Pindar, but rather the outcome of a deeply-brooding mind, with a mystic tinge. The lofty language in which these three qualities are blended exhibits varying harmonies between form and matter. At one moment it has the vigorous directness of Homeric narrative. At another it labors with the stress of conflicting thoughts, as in the verses which picture the anguish of Agamemnon. Or solemn emphasis and intense earnestness are expressed by a cumulative weight of phrase, as in the warning of Calchas, μίμνει γὰρ φοβερὰ παλίνορτος οἰκονόμος δολία μνάμων μῆνις τεκνόποινος. Again, plastic beauty and human pathos are marvellously united in the description of Iphigeneia, about to die at the altar, and in the passage picturing the desolation of Menelaus. It is needless to multiply illustrations from other plays ; but we might mention the two odes of benediction that of the Danaides for Argos and of the Eumenides for Athens-as examples of a gentle lyric charm and, as marking the height of sublimity, that ode in which the Eumenides describe their own nature and office. His style in As in the lyrics of Tragedy, so also in dialogue, the style of Aeschylus is distinctive. dialogue. He was not, indeed, the first who had lent dignity and beauty to the measures which tragic dialogue employs. Nearly two hundred years earlier, Archilochus had given a majestic rhythm to the trochaic tetrameter. A century before Aeschylus, Solon had written iambic trimeters, among which there are at least some lines not unworthy of Aeschylus himself. But it remained for the mighty spirit of Aeschylus to give the iambic trimeter a sustained grandeur which it had never possessed before. His style is always the grand style; yet it is not monotonous. He can use iambic verse with equal mastery for terse and vigorous narrative, as in describing the battle of Salamis; for declamation, as in the brilliant rhetoric of Clytaemnestra, or the stately oration of Athena; for concentrated invective, as when Apollo drives the Furies from his temple; for keen controversy, as in the trial of Orestes; or for descriptive passages of tranquil beauty, as when Prometheus depicts the change which he had wrought on the primitive life of mankind. Towards the end of the fifth century B. C., it became the fashion of a new school to censure Aeschylus as bombastic. The extant plays do not justify the charge. They rather illustrate the |