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The other sort is not so remarkable for the plenty and richness of its sentiments, as for its rapid volubility of expression, which at present is the ruling taste in Asia; but, besides it's uncommon fluency, it is recommended by a choice of words which are peculiarly delicate and ornamental: of this kind were Aeschylus the Cnidian, and my cotemporary Aeschines the Milesian; for they had an admirable command of language, with very little elegance of sentiment.
AEschylus' tragedy of the "Persae" is, in this respect, true to nature, and represents with accuracy the real habits of the nation. The Persian was a stranger to the dignified reserve which has commonly been affected by the more civilized among Western nations.
Great artists, however, had previously made themselves famous, like Miron, Polycletus, and Ageladas; but the great riches which flowed into Athens at this time gave a peculiar stimulus to art, especially under the encouragement of such a ruler as Pericles, whose age was the golden era of Grecian history. Pheidias or Phidias was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic poetry, sublime and grand.
Aeschylus, it is well known, had written a sequel to his "Prometheus Bound", in which he showed the final reconciliation between Zeus, the oppressor, and Prometheus, the champion, of humanity. What that reconciliation was, we do not know, because the play is lost, and the fragments are too brief for supporting any probable hypothesis. But Shelley repudiated the notion of compromise.
In him we find a greater range of emotions than in AEschylus figures more distinctly seen, a more expanded dialogue, simplicity of speech mixed with rhetorical declamation, and the highest degree of poetic beauty. Says a late writer: "The artist and the man were one in Sophocles.
There was Cynaegeirus, the brother of Aeschylus, who lost both his arms at Marathon, beating the stumps against his sides with rapture. When the crowd remarked him But where are you going? SPEUSIPPUS. To sup with Alcibiades; he sails with the expedition for Sicily in a few days; this is his farewell entertainment. CALLIDEMUS. So much the better; I should say, so much the worse.
Pheidias, or Phidias, was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic poetry, the representative of the sublime and grand. He was born four hundred and eighty-four years before Christ, and was the pupil of Ageladas.
My studies, which, as I have already mentioned, I pursued eagerly at the same time as I was working on my opera, made me feel more light-hearted than I had ever done before. For the first time I now mastered AEschylus with real feeling and understanding.
Some years after this, I read "Agamemnon" of Aeschylus; and then, in the prophetic horror with which Cassandra surveys the regal abode in Mycenae, destined to be the scene of murders so memorable through the long traditions of the Grecian stage, murders that, many centuries after all the parties to them perpetrators, sufferers, avengers had become dust and ashes, kindled again into mighty life through a thousand years upon the vast theaters of Athens and Rome, I retraced the horrors, not prophetic but memorial, with which I myself had invested that humble dwelling of Dr.
The former clause whereof is that which Aeschylus here saith expressly, and the latter but the consequent of that. For if a great and intense sorrow do not last, then that which doth last is not great nor hard to be borne. And those words of Thespis, Seest not how Jove, because he cannot lie Nor vaunt nor laugh at impious drollery, And pleasure's charms are things to him unknown,
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