12 Olivia Pound 
as said before, seems to personify the powers that are working 
through her. 
In Erechtheus fate seems even more unreasonable than in 
Atalanta in Calydon. Erechtheus in no way had been responsible 
for the choice that gave Athens to Athena, rather than to Posei- 
don; but he becomes the victim of the jealousy of the defeated 
god. In his case fate takes the form of the implacable anger of 
a god. Erechtheus is just, pious, humble before the gods. No 
overweening pride of his, or of his house, has brought this fate 
upon him. He accepts the will of the gods as inevitable, and 
yields unquestioningly. Submission with him is part of duty.* 
The gods have set his lips on fire withal 
Who threatens now in all their names to bring 
Ruin, but none of these, thou knowest, have I 
Chid with my tongue or cursed at heart for grief, 
Knowing how the soul runs reinless on sheer death 
Whose grief or joy takes part against the Gods. 
And what they will is more than our desire 
For no man’s will and no desire of man’s 
Shall stand as doth a God’s will. 
Swinburne’s idea of destiny, it will be seen, is more nearly 
that of Euripides. Destiny is not the mysterious and awful law 
that it is represented to be in so many of the plays of Aeschylus. 
Nor is it represented as the working out of moral forces, as in the 
plays of Sophocles. It is that cruel, pitiless fate that makes man 
rebel against its senselessness. So Althaea shows her bitterness 
toward the goddess who is the means of working out Meleager’s 
fate.” ’ 
First Artemis for all this harried land 
I praise not, and for wasting of the boar 
That mars with tooth and tusk and fiery feet 
Green pasturage and the grace of standing corn 
And meadow and marsh with springs and unblown leaves, 
Flocks and swift herds and all that bite sweet grass, 
I praise her not; what things are these to praise? 
48 Erechtheus, p. 343. 
49 Atalanta in Calydon, p. 253. 
352 
