powers—a claim based on undefined prescription rather than on positive law—was a tribunal very unlikely to satisfy an expanding and restless democracy.
Justly or unjustly, such a popular feeling arose against it, and culminated in a measure—passed, after much resistance, by Ephialtes and Pericles, leaders of the popular party—by which the Areopagus was deprived of all its vague and comprehensive powers, and retained only the jurisdiction over homicide. This it was allowed to retain, not only on political, but also on religious grounds; in Grote's words, "the cognizance which it took of intentional homicide was a part of old Attic religion."
It might appear that the whole tenor of The Furies is to glorify the Areopagus in its hour of trial; and, consequently, that the political leaning of Æschylus, in this point at any rate, is obvious. Such a conclusion is, to some extent, fortified by Aristophanes' sketch of Æschylus, in the Frogs, as a stalwart champion and representative of old ideas.
On the other hand, it is plausibly urged that The Furies only glorifies the Areopagus as a tribunal for homicide, which function was expressly retained for it by Ephialtes and Pericles; that the policy of an alliance with Argos, unmistakably commended towards the close of the play, was a Periclean policy: in short, the Æschylus is advocating, or cordially acquiescing in, the Periclean ideas. It is even suggested that his opposition is directed against a certain reactionary innovation, so to speak, by which obsolete privileges of the Areopagus were to be revived, and that the close of The Furies is in reality an exhortation to all to be content with the high though limited jurisdiction left to the Areopagus, over matters of homicide.
There is here, it is plain, a literary and historical problem of considerable complexity, with which I do not think myself competent to deal. I will only hazard two opinions, of a negative kind. First, that the text of The Furies, however closely scanned, is not decisive enough in its allusions to enable us to measure the angle of Æschylus' political views with exactness. The solution of the problem must be sought elsewhere, if indeed it be soluble.
Secondly, that it is an error to treat the political references of a poet as the responsible utterances of a political leader; to demand the same consistency, or the same defence for inconsistency, from the former as from the latter.
