APPENDIX.
Eumenides, ll. 650–676, p. 167.
It cannot be necessary to remind any scholar who may read the foregoing translation, of the historical interest that attaches to this passage, and, indeed, to the whole conclusion of The Furies. A mere reference to Grote's "History of Greece" (Vol. IV., ch. 46), to Muller's "Dissertation on the Eumenides," and Oncken's "Athen und Hellas," will suffice to recall a vexed literary and historical problem, and the conflict of doctors who disagree.
But those unacquainted with the literature and politics of ancient Greece (and for such, of course, this translation is mainly intended) will hardly fail to have recognized, in the last part of the concluding drama, a definitely political and patriotic fervour which the legend of the House of Atreus seems hardly calculated to arouse. The cause of Orestes is decided in his favour; but it is impossible to feel that the theatrical interest of the drama is concentrated, as might be expected, on his acquittal: it has been shifted to the Tribunal of Areopagus, before which he is tried, and thence to the destiny of the Athenian race and its dependence on celestial and terrestrial deities.
The general explanation of this political turn and complexion given to the play is simple enough; the details are involved in great obscurity: and the precise attitude of Æschylus' mind to the politics of the day remains uncertain.
The Senate of Areopagus was at this time the object of a considerable popular jealousy. Of immemorial antiquity, and strengthened by the memory of its courage and patriotism at the time of the Persian invasion, it either had, or was believed to have, become oligarchical in its opinions and corrupt in its practice. Grote perhaps overstates the case against the Areopagus; and, in any case, his argument that, because the senate at Sparta was corrupt, that at Athens must have been so as well (Hist. IV., p. 105), should be received with caution. But there is every reason to trust his conclusion that the Areopagus, consisting almost entirely of ex-ministers, and claiming large judicial, censorial, and revisionary
