events constantly increasing in magnitude, was one of the prevailing ideas of that time. It is probable that Æschylus took this idea as the basis of the prophecies of Phineus, and that he represented the expedition of the Argonauts as a type of the greater conflicts between Asia and Europe which succeeded it. We will not follow out the mythical combinations which the poet might have employed, inasmuch as what we have said is sufficient to explain the connexion and subject of the entire trilogy.
The same purpose is likewise perceptible in the third piece, the Glaucus-Pontius.[1] The extant fragments show that this marine demigod (of whose wanderings and appearances on various coasts strange tales were told in Greece) described in this tragedy a voyage which he had made from Anthedon through the Eubœan and Ægean seas to Italy and Sicily. In this narrative a prominent place was filled by Himera, the city in which the power of the Sicilian Greeks had crushed the attempts of the Carthaginian invaders, at the time of the battle of Salamis. In this manner Æschylus had an opportunity of bringing this event (which was considered as the second great exploit by which Greece was saved from the yoke of the barbarians) into close connexion with the battle of Platæa; since the scene of the drama was Anthedon in Bœotia, where Glaucus was supposed to have lived as a fisherman. It may likewise be conjectured that in the tragedy of Phineus, the Phœnicians, as well as the Persians, may have been introduced into the predictions respecting the conflicts between Asia and Greece.[2]
§ 5. Accordingly, in this trilogy, Æschylus shows himself a friend of the Sicilian Greeks, as well as of his countrymen at Athens. His connexion with the princes and republics of Sicily must be here considered, since it exercised some influence upon his poetry. The later grammarians (who have filled the history of literature with numerous stories founded upon mere conjecture) have assigned the most various
- ↑ The argument of the Persians mentions the Γλαῦκος Ποτνιεύς. But as the two plays of Æschylus, the Glaucus Pontius and Glaucus Potnieus are confounded in other passages, we may safely adopt the conjecture of Welcker, that the Glaucus Pontius is the play meant in the argument just cited.
- ↑ [The explanation given in § 4 of the trilogy referred to is exceedingly doubtful. The main subject of the Persians is evidently the discomfiture of the invading Persians by the Greeks. The evocation of Darius is merely a device to introduce the battle of Platæa, which consummated their defeat, as well as the battle of Salamis. The notion that the Phineus, Persians, and Glaucus formed a trilogy in which the subjects of the three pieces were connected, is highly improbable; and the conjecture that the third piece was the Glaucus Pontius, and not the Potnieus, as the didascalia tells us, is gratuitous. It cannot be doubted that many of the plays of Æschylus were written in connected trilogies; but it is impossible to prove that they all were, and that the introduction of disconnected pieces was an innovation of Sophocles, as is asserted below, chap. XXIV. § 4. p. 341. The very trilogy in question will be, to many persons, a sufficient proof of the contrary.—Editor.]
