Evening star., 1927-12-04
y q .Et
BY WILL DURANT, Ph. D.,
Author of -
''The Story of Philosophy"

reminds it how Agamemnon sacrificed
her daughter and his, the gentle
Iphigenia. to buy from the gods a lit
tie breeze that might watt his ships
to Troy. Dreading the vengeance of
the King. she lures him with soft
speech into an inner chamber and
buries dagger in his heart.
Even across the centuries and
through the disturbing medium of
translation, the Agamemhon moves
us; if we could see it acted as the
Athenians did we might understand
the famous remark of Aristotle, that
tragedy effects through pity and ter
ror a purgation of these passions in
the hearts of the spectators" 1t is
true that our modern haste, our
nervous activity and our moral skep.
ticism have spoiled us for the long
speeches of Eschylus, his choral lucu-
brations and Shelleyan distractions
and presidential platitudes; we do not
care for murderers who lecture as
they kill. But there are compensa-
tions.
Here, for example, is our first taste
of that sense of fate which darkens
and deepens the drama of the Greeks.
Tragedy, in the theory of 4Gschylus
and his countrymen, begin" with
hybris-presumptuou insolence. some
shameless violation of human decency.
Zeus Tor, in Napoleon's phrase, the
nature of things'o brings retributive
justice to every crime and to all ex-
cess; meden agan (nothing too much)
is the lesson Of Greek drama as we'll
as of Greek sculpture and Greek phi
losophy And this solemn sense of in
escapable retribution gives a dignity
to Attic drama which seldom comes to
the modern theater.
The pursuing Furies that avenge
all guilt weave many acts, and many
plays. and many generations into one
web Of crime and inevitable expiation.
Tantalus, insolent with wealth, steals
the nectar and ambrosia of the gods
and gives them to Pelops to eat;
Pelops, his son, slays the offspring
of Hermes; Niobe, his daughter, proud
of her IL children, sees them turned
into stone, and herself becomes a
symbol of sorrow and a monument
to grief; Atreus, Pelops' son, comes
upon his wife in adultery with his
brother Thyestes, kills Thyestes'
children and serves them up to him
at a banquet; his son Agamemnon
kills his own daughter to advance a
commercial war; Orestes, son of
Agamemnon, kills his mother for
numbering his father. No story
of crime was ever richer in horror
and blood; no Jewish prophet or
Hindu sage, preaching the coming of
karma or Jehovah's wrath, could
better the moral of the tale. We
catch a glimpse in it of the barbarism
that never completely died among
the Greeks. the hate and cruelty and
| Int oil hot fAvs to-
dined the world.
Far nobler is the earlier master.
piece of Eschylus, the Prometheus
Bound; here we rise from a local to
a universal theme, from a narrative
of primitive horror to a symbolism
that reaches into the very heart Of
the human tragedy. The hero of the
play, so loved by Goethe and Shelley,
was honored in Hellenic legend as
the diScoverer of fire and the con.
sequent initiator of Greek civiliza-
ton. In remarkable passage
Prometheus d.e., the fore.knower and
teacherl tells how he brought civiliza-
ton to mankind; to this day, as Prof.
Osborn says, it Is a fairly accurate
description of the origins of human
culture:
List to the deeds
did for mortals; how, being fools
before,
I made them wise and true in aim
of soul.
And let me tell you--not as taunt-
ing men,.
!, But teaching you the intention of
my gifts
How, first beholding, they beheld
in vain, r-s =
And, hearing, heard not, but, like
shapes in dreams,
Mixed all things wildly down the
tedious time.