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conclusion of the trilogy were in evidence, it is probably with 
this accommodation that it would deal. The first necessity, how- 
ever, is to create the idea of justice and to establish it. And if 
Zeus is justly on probation for his management, Prometheus is 
no less justly in duress for rebelling, in the hot-headed old 
Titanic fashion, against the sole authority by which this result 
may be accomplished and its fruits secured. Before the advent 
of justice the world must be broken of Titanism. 
Such, it seems to me, is the sense of the drama; and the 
Oresteia tends, I think, to confirm this conclusion. The theme 
is the same in both instances. In the latter case, however, where 
we have the whole story, there is less danger of mistaking its 
purport. The only difficulty is that just as the modern reader’s 
impression of the Prometheus is falsified by a failure to feel the 
horror of Prometheus’ sacrilege, so here his judgment of the 
Oresteia is liable to be warped inversely by an inability to feel 
the pity of Orestes’ murderous legacy. What requires emotional 
correction with respect to the tragic passions at present, is not the 
odium but the pathos of the action. There is nothing equivocal 
about Orestes’ guilt: matricide is as abhorrent to-day as it ever 
was. But private vengeance is no longer recognized as a duty; 
there is nothing that is sacred, little that is sympathetic, about it. 
In the mind of the Greeks, however, who appreciated the obliga- 
tion of the latter as fully as the abomination of the former, the 
situation inspired the usual tragic duplicity of feeling. They 
were of a temper to be touched by the dutifulness of Agamem- 
non’s avenger and to be horrified at the impiety of Clytemnestra’s 
executioner. Otherwise I am at a loss to account for my senti- 
ments in reading the trilogy; for I must confess that my wishes 
are for the success of Orestes and his sister, much as I may 
reprobate the deed by which it is assured. Nor is this the senti- 
ment of the situation as such; it is not in the Electra of Eurip- 
ides. The Aeschylean Orestes, though a criminal in act, is no 
epileptic monster like the Euripidean: albeit he does not lend 
himself so readily to humanitarian attitudinizing, there is as 
much to be said for him as for Prometheus. And curiously 
enough it is Euripides who finally says it, though not much to his 
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