&c. Yet the poet by no means wants the power of adapting his language to the different characters, to say nothing of all those differences which depend upon the metrical forms; and, notwithstanding the general elevation of his style, persons of an inferior grade, such as the watchman in the Agamemnon, and the nurse of Orestes in the Choëphorœ, are made to descend, as well in the words as in the turn of the expressions, to the use of language more nearly approaching that of common life, and manifest even in the collocation of their words a weaker order of mind.
§ 15. To return once more to the Orestean trilogy of Orestes: the judges of tragic merit adjudged the prize to it before all the rival pieces. But this poetic victory seems to have been no compensation to Æschylus for the failure of the practical portion of his design, as the Athenians at the same time deprived the Areopagus of all the honour and power which the poet had striven to preserve for it. Æschylus returned a second time to Sicily, and died in his favourite city of Gela, three years after the performance of the Orestea.
The Athenians had a feeling that Æschylus would not be satisfied with the course their public life and their taste for art and science took in the next generation; the shadow of the poet, as he is brought up by Aristophanes from the other world in the "Frogs," manifests an angry discontent with the public, who were so pleased with Euripides, although the latter was no rival of Æschylus, for he did not appear upon the stage till the year in which Æschylus died. Yet this did not prevent the Athenians from recognizing most fully the beauty and sublimity of his poetry. "With him his muse died not," said Aristophanes, alluding to the fact that his tragedies were allowed to be performed after his death, and might even be brought forward as new pieces. The poet, who taught his chorus the plays of Æschylus, was remunerated by the state, and the crown was dedicated to the poet who had been long dead.[1] The family of Æschylus, which continued for a long time, preserved a school of poetry in his peculiar style, which we will hereafter notice.
- ↑ This is the result of the passages in the Vita Æschyli; Philostrat. Vita Apollon. vi. 11. p. 245, Olear.; Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 10. Ran. 892. The Vita Æschyli says that the poet was crowned after his death; and this view seems preferable to Quinctilian's assertion (Inst. x. 1), that many other poets obtained the crown by representing the plays of Æschylus. We must distinguish from this case the victories of Euphorion (above, § 2 and note) obtained by producing plays of Æschylus that had not been represented; the law of Lycurgus, too, with regard to the representation of pieces by the three great tragedians, from copies officially verified, has nothing to do with the custom alluded to in the text.
