Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/354

332 HISTORY OF THE The great tragic effect which this play cannot fail to produce on every one who is capable of reading and understanding it, is the contrast be- tween the external splendour of the house of the Atridee and its real condition. The first scenes are very imposing; — the light of the beacon, the news of the fall of Troy, and the entrance of Agamemnon ; — but, amidst these signs of joy, a tone of mournful foreboding resounds from the songs of the chorus, which grows more and more distinct and impressive till the inimitable scene between the chorus and Cas- sandra, when the whole misfortune of the house bursts forth into view. From this time forth our feelings are wrought to the highest pitch — the murder of Agamemnon follows immediately upon this announcement; while the triumph of Clytaemnestra and iEgisthus — the remorseless cold-bloodedness with which she exults in the deed, and the laments and reproaches of the chorus — leave the mind, sympathizing as it does with the fate of the house, in an agony of horror and excitement which has not a minute of repose or consolation, except in a sort of feeling that Agamemnon has fallen by means of a divine Nemesis. § 12. The Choephoros contains the mortal revenge of Orestes. The natural steps of the action, the revenge planned and resolved upon by Orestes with the chorus and Electra, the artful intrigues by which Orestes at length arrives at the execution of the deed, the execution itself, the contemplation of it after it is committed, all these points form so many acts of the drama. The first is the longest and the most finished, as the poet evidently makes it his great object to display dis- tinctly the deep distress of Orestes at the necessity he feels of revenging his father's death upon his mother. Thus the whole action takes place at the tomb of Agamemnon, and the chorus consists of Trojan women in the service of the family of the Atridae ; they are sent by Clytaem- nestra, who has been terrified by horrid dreams, in order, for the first time, to appease with offerings the spirit of her murdered husband, and, by the advice of Electra, bring the offerings, but not for the purpose for which they were sent. The spirit of Agamemnon is formally conjured to appear from below the earth, and to take an active part in the work of his own revenge, and the guidance of the whole work is repeatedly ascribed to the subterranean gods, especially to Hermes, the leader of the dead, who is also the god of all artful and hidden acts; and the poet has contrived to shed a gloomy and shadowy light over this whole proceeding. The act itself is represented throughout as a sore burthen undertaken by Orestes upon the requisition of the subterranean gods, and by the constraining influence of the Delphic oracle ; no mean motive, no trifling indifference mingle with his resolves, and yet, or rather the more on that very account, while Orestes stands beside the corpse of his mother and her paramour upon the same spot where his father was slain, and justifies his own act by proclaiming the heinous- ness of their crime, even at that moment the furies appear before him,