which he played in a very stirring epoch of the world's history. By this prominence he was qualified, on the one hand, to represent his countrymen; on the other, to speak to the common sympathies of mankind. As a genuine Athenian citizen, mixed up in the battles and politics of his city, engaged in providing for Athenian taste, and to no small degree in guiding it, he cannot fail to express most truthfully the significant features of the Athenian mind. And since Athens was in a sense the world—represented the future civilisation against Persia, and was the chief scene of its growth—a citizen of Athens was a citizen of the world, and his character was not only not provincial, but not even transitory. Hence it is that, speaking from the Athenian stage, Æschylus can address men of all ages. Hence it is that his views of life, as well as the passions he represents, have interest for us still; and the pagan creed with which they are connected does not seem to impair their value.
What, then, was his view of life, or did he take any consistent view of life at all? It is possible, perhaps, that men should go through life, as some savages indeed probably do, without any attempt at explanation of the events that occur to them, regarding each as a separate fact, and not comparing them together. This, however, is only possible where there is not only no history, but not even any continuous memory of the past; and a nation like the Athenian, which had enjoyed for centuries a noble literature, could not be in any such case as this. To them the freewill of man and his responsibility, and such questions as these, had
