ies
ever for peace and cleansing, but can seek them only in the same blind
way, through vengeance, and, when that fails, then through more vengeance
(p. 69).

This awful conception of a race intent upon its own wrongs, and blindly
groping towards the very terror it is trying to avoid, is typified, as it
were, in the Cassandra story. That daughter of Priam was beloved by
Apollo, who gave her the power of true prophecy. In some way that we know
not, she broke her promise to the God; and, since his gift could not be
recalled, he added to it the curse that, while she should always foresee
and foretell the truth, none should believe her. The Cassandra scene is a
creation beyond praise or criticism. The old scholiast speaks of the "pity
and amazement" which it causes. The Elders who talk with her wish to
believe, they try to understand, they are really convinced of Cassandra's
powers. But the curse is too strong. The special thing which Cassandra
tries again and again to say always eludes them, and they can raise no
finger to prevent the disaster happening. And when it does happen they
are, as they have described themselves, weak and very old, "dreams
wandering in the daylight."

The characters of this play seem, in a sense, to arise out of the theme
and consequently to have, amid all their dramatic solidity, a further
significance which is almost symbolic. Cassandra is, as it were, the
incarnation of that knowledge which Herodotus describes as the crown of
sorrow, the knowledge which sees and warns and cannot help (Hdt. ix. 16).
Agamemnon himself, the King of Kings, triumphant and doomed, is a symbol
of pride and the fall of pride. We must not think of him as bad or
specially cruel. The watchman loved him (ll. 34 f.), and the lamentations
of the Elders over his death have a note of personal affection (pp. 66
ff.). But I suspect that Aeschylus, a believer in the mystic meaning of
names, took the name Agamemnon to be a warning that [Greek: Aga mimnei],
"the unseen Wrath abides." _Aga_, of course, is not exactly wrath; it is
more like Nemesis, the feeling that something is [Greek: agan], "too
much," the condemnation of _Hubris_ (pride or overgrowth) and of all
things that are in excess. _Aga_ is sometimes called "the jealousy of
God," but such a translation is not happy. It is not the jealousy, nor
even the indignation, of a personal God, but the profound repudiation and
reversal of Hubris which is the very law of the Cosmos.