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INTRODUCTION

cleansing and supplication, that union is achieved between the Law which acts like blind fate and the Father who understands.[1]

Thus at last the offender who deserves pardon can be pardoned. But that is not all. The Law that can pardon and understand can itself be understood and loved. Its ministers are no longer alien and hostile beings, proud of the agonies which they righteously inflict and the hatred which they naturally inspire. They are accepted by Athena as fellow-citizens, and their Law recognized as an inward aspiration, a standard of right living which men consciously need and seek. The "Furies" have become "Eumenides."

  1. See the last verses of the play. On the political circumstances which gave point to the poet's doctrine of Reconciliation see note on vv. 682 and 864.

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