its solution, the rest of the trilogy being lost): that the national polytheism had little hold on his belief, however largely it affected his poetry, seems to me plain from all his deeper utterances, notwithstanding the assertion of Klausen (Theol. Æsch., p. 5) to the contrary.[1] But of the poet's attitude towards the theory of a vindictive God, there is no question. "I am alone in my thought," he cries; "it is not wealth, nor prosperity it is impiety that breeds other sins, and woe for its sequel." It is hard to resist the temptations of wealth, and power, and victory; yet not these things, but the yielding to their temptations, do the gods punish: not Agamemnon's triumph, not even the carnage of Troy, but his arrogance and pride on his return: his making himself equal to the gods. (Ag. l. 811).
The second doctrine—that of the inheritance of evil in certain families, forms the groundwork of the whole Trilogy; and the poet's views on it must be collected: they are nowhere concentrated or distinctly expressed. Substantially they appear to apply to the following condition of things. The idea of an Atè, or inherited curse which dogs certain families, has a double origin.
I. An origin of fact: that children are like their parents, grow up under their influence, borrow from their connection with them much of their own character.
II. An origin in custom. A family crime had a far more serious import to an ancient Greek than we can readily realize.[2] It is the simple fact, that the idea of individual responsibility, and even of individual existence, was almost absent from him. The family was his unit; the family sinned in the sin of any of its members; the family exacted or suffered vengeance; any member of the family who was slain by another was held to have incurred the stain of suicide.
- ↑ See Fr. 295.
- ↑ See Maine, "Ancient Law," ch. 5.
