PREFACE.
ix
These plays (in the chronological order that seems most probable) are—
| I. | The Suppliant Maidens. The Scene is laid at Argos. | |
| II. | The Prometheus Bound. The Scene is on a Scythian peak, looking down from afar upon the Euxine. | |
| III. | The Persians. Scene—The Tomb of Darius at Susa, the treasure city of the king of Persia. | |
| IV. | The Seven against Thebes. Scene, the City of Thebes in Bœotia. | |
| V. | The Agamemnon. | |
| VI. | The Libation-Bearers. | |
| VII. | The Furies. |
Of these three last plays, which form a consecutive whole, called a Trilogy, and yet are individually complete, the scene is Argos or Mycenæ:[1] afterwards, the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: lastly, the Acropolis and Areopagus at Athens.
Of an Athenian Trilogy (i.e., a combination of three dramas by the same hand, whether on the same or different subjects, for consecutive presentment on the same day, and followed by a lighter play called a Satyric Drama), there
- ↑ Argos and Mycenæ are in reality about six miles apart, in the great κοῖλον Ἄργος, wide valley of Argolis. The relics of the dynasty of Atreus are undoubtedly at Mycenæ. Æschylus however calls the scene, always, Argos: not caring to particularize about a district so well known. The fact that he describes the beacon fire on Mount Arachne as visible to the palace need not lead us to conclude that he had Argos more in mind than Mycenæ: though the mountain is visible (if I remember right) from Larissa, the citadel of Argos, and not (I am sure) from the Acropolis of Mycenæ. The beacon-glare would have been clearly seen from either, no doubt. But Æschylus ignores such detail: as Mr. Clark (Peloponnesus, p. 70) remarks, every Athenian saw daily from his own hills the peak of Arachne to the south, and knew it looked upon the region of Argos: and this was enough for the poet.
