val of many years)[1] as its natural completion, the lesson stands out in daylight clearness. It is in the grove of the dark Goddesses that the wanderer finds rest at last, and the dread avenging Erinnyes have become the Eumenides, the Gentle Ones; and the sufferer is taught how to make atonement for his sins, and win their favour.[2] In the "Aias" and "Philoctetes," Athena and Heracles appear visibly on the stage as guiding and directing the whole course of events. If the "Maidens of Trachis" ends, as does "Œdipus the King," in what is simply terrible, we may see in the appearance of the hero in his new character, as one of the Immortals, in the play just named,[3] what was meant to complete and reconcile, and to remove the impression that Zeus had been unmindful of any of his children.
The precision with which the ritual of the grove of the Eumenides is given by the priest-poet in the "Œdipus at Colonos," (465–490,) may be accepted as fair evidence that it was to him significant, that each rite and rubric was for him a token of the truth. Man needs a "purification," and with "holy hands" must pour out water as the symbol of that which cleanses and renews. Repentance and prayer, in
- ↑ Schöll, (p. 169,) following Reisig and Lachmann, places the two in close union, as having been parts of the same Trilogy, and traces in both of them allusions to the same political events. The quarrel between Œdipus and Polyneikes shadows out, on this theory, that between Pericles and his son Xanthippos.
- ↑ Œd. Col., 40–43, 466–492.
- ↑ Philoct., 1413.
