Such was the "tremendous creed" of which Æschylus was a fitting exponent; with him the Furies are the satellites of Fate, and it is their eternal duty to pursue the murderer till death and after death. The complaint which Corneille puts into the mouth of Theseus, in his 'Œdipe,' might have been more truly uttered by Eteocles in the 'Seven against Thebes,' as he feels the blast of his father's curse which is wafting him to Hades:—
"Quoi! la nécessité des vertus et des vices
D'un astre imperieux doit suivre les caprices,
Et Delphes malgrè nous conduit nos actions
Au plus bizarre effet de ses predictions?
E'âme est donc toute esclave; une loi souveraine
Vers le bien ou le mal incessament l'entraine;
Et nous ne recevons ni crainte, ni désir,
De cette liberté qui n'a rien à choisir;
Attachés sans relâche à cet ordre sublime,
Vertueux sans mérite, et vicieux sans crime."[1]
It is true that in the 'Prometheus' we have the spectacle of an indomitable will, proof against all suffering; yet it is in this very play that Æschylus most insists on the "invincible might of Necessity,"
- ↑ Readers of Shakspeare may remember Edmund's description of the "excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves and thieves by spherical predominance, . . . and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on."—King Lear, act i. sc. 2.
