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The chorus of the Eumenides, representing the people, defends the position of the mother; Apollo pleads for the father, and ends by declaring, in a fit of patriarchal delirium, that the child is not of the blood of the mother. “It is not the mother who begets what is called her child; she is only the nurse of the germ poured into her womb; he who begets is the father.
I saw her start up, pace the narrow spot, saw her stand and pull down the masses, so interspersed with golden light, that crowned her head, and look at them wonderingly as they overlay her fingers, then saw those fingers clasped across the eyes, and the lips part with a sigh that, prolonged and deepened, grew to be a groan, while all the time that shadow on the ceiling hovered and fluttered and grew still, till it seemed the cluster of Eumenides waiting to pounce on its prey.
It is asserted that the rule was observed by the ancients. Not always, only generally. Of seven plays by Aeschylus, and the same number by Sophocles, there are two, the Eumenides and the Ajax, in which the scene is changed.
Thus, I doubt not, but that in the Eumenides the spectators were twice addressed as an assembled people; first, as the Greeks invited by the Pythoness to consult the oracle; and a second time as the Athenian multitude, when Pallas, by the herald, commands silence during the trial about to commence.
The ancient and mysterious mythical tradition of the strife between the old gods and the new was astutely used by Æschylus to teach us how the terrible vengeance of the Eumenides gradually gave place to a gentler and more humane law; just as the primitive despotism of Zeus was gradually transformed into a providential and moral rule of the universe.
On either side of a throne of sulphur, from which issued the four infernal rivers of Lethe, Phlegethon, Cocytus, and Acheron, were ranged the Eumenides and Parcæ. Lachesis and her sisters turned up their noses when they observed Proserpine; but the Eumenides could not stifle their fury, in spite of the hints of their more subdued but not less malignant companions.
But on the other side, the same Graecians, did often ascribe madnesse, to the operation of the Eumenides, or Furyes; and sometimes of Ceres, Phoebus, and other Gods: so much did men attribute to Phantasmes, as to think them aereal living bodies; and generally to call them Spirits.
So Jurgen was content enough. But still he was not actually happy, not even among the endless pleasures of Cocaigne. "And what is this thing that I desire?" he would ask himself, again and again. And still he did not know: he merely felt he was not getting justice: and a dim sense of this would trouble him even while he was playing with the Eumenides. Cantraps of the Master Philologist
Such natures are aeolian harps acted upon, not by "the viewless air," but by a subtler, more impalpable power, which comes none know whence, and goes none know whither one moment yielding soft melodies as of an angel's lute borne across sapphire seas, the next wailing like some lost soul or shrieking like Eumenides.
Since The Eumenides of Aeschylus, nothing so grand and terrible has ever been written. The witches are not, it is true, divine Eumenides, and are not intended to be: they are ignoble and vulgar instruments of hell.
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