The Theory of Greek Tragedy 33 
advantage, in vilifying Apollo as the instigator of his crime. As 
for Aeschylus, however, he accuses Apollo no more than he does 
Zeus—for one thing which romantic criticism has overlooked is 
the fact that if Zeus is to blame for Prometheus’ plight, Apollo 
is equally to blame for Orestes’ and with less excuse because 
without provocation. At best the circumstances are different, 
the responsibility is the same. It is fair, therefore, to argue that 
Aeschylus’ idea must have been alike in both cases. But if any- 
thing is clear, it is that the author of the Oresteia is no romanti- 
cist; he is not disintegrating the moral edifice but cementing it; 
he is not relaxing discipline but tightening it. It is not at Apol- 
lo’s expense that he claims the audience’s pity for Orestes, whose 
saving virtue, as compared with Prometheus, is his submission 
to authority. What is impossible and intolerable in his situation 
is the fault of an imperfect and makeshift institution, the lex 
talionis, whose whole enormity is finally demonstrated in the 
fatal dilemma of this last sad inheritor of a bloody old tradition. 
The impulsive movements of private retaliation must give way 
to the deliberate decisions of an impartial and dispassionate 
court. And though it would be an insult to justice, were the per- 
petrator of what is after all a monstrous crime, allowed to go 
scot free, yet it is only equity that he whose sufferings have been 
the occasion of reform, should benefit by the amendment to 
whose adoption he has at least contributed. 
In these pieces at which I have glanced as those most critically 
interested in the method and conception of Attic tragedy, Aeschy- 
lus is concerned mainly for the reconciliation of might and right 
through the medium of divine legislation—what we should call 
- nowadays in secular terms the evolution of justice. The subject 
corresponds with his place in the history of tragic ideas and re- 
sponds:to the conscious craving for a definite moral constitution. 
His problem is one of institutional morality—if such a phrase 
is permissible in such a connection; its solution is an affair of 
moral statesmanship and administration. Personally I do not 
believe that a more tremendous tragedy than Agamemnon has 
ever been written; I do not know of any tragic impression more 
awe-inspiring than that produced by Cassandra arrested by the 
331 
