AMONG THE GREEKS 63 



comparison of two great epics of the fifth cen- 

 tury B. c, the western Prometheus Bound and 

 the eastern Booh of Job. In the former, ^schy- 

 his, from the rising civihzation of Athens, de- 

 scribes man as a son of Mother Earth : 



. . . and thou, earth, mother of all ! 



while Job, coming from the falling civilization of 

 Ur in Chaldea, pictures man as the very handi- 

 work of the Deity and constantly enjoying su- 

 pernatural favor. 



^scliylus (525-456 b. c.) 



As in the Victorian Age Darwinism was 

 eagerly studied and even put into verse by Ten- 

 nyson and Browning, so in the fifth century b. c. 

 ^schylus, the earliest of the great Greek dram- 

 atists, reveals the biology and anthropology of 

 his day, the spirit of Empedocles and of Anaxag- 

 oras, in setting forth the principle of the moral, 

 social, intellectual and spiritual evolution of man. 

 ^schylus thus ranks as the first poet of Evolu- 

 tion, to be followed by Lucretius, and by Eras- 

 mus Darwin, Goethe, and Tennyson. 



We may permit ourselves a brief excerpt from 

 the splendid drama of iEschylus, Prometheus 

 Bound} 



^Translation by T. A. Buckley, 1849, pp. 15-17. 



