repay._ The
cycle, on the plane to which you have dragged it down, will run
its course; your high throne will go down with it, and yourself
shall kneel to races you now sniff at for 'inferior.' You have
brought it on to the material plane, and are now going upward on
its upward trend there gaily--

"Ah, let no evil lust attack the host
Conquered by greed, to plunder what they ought not;
For yet they need return in safety home,
Doubling the goal to run their backward race"
[_Agamemnon,_ Plumtre's translation]

The downtrend of the cycle awaits you--the other half--just as
the runner in the foot-races to win, must round the pillar at the
far end of the course, and return to the starting-place.--That is
among the warnings Aeschylus spoke in the _Agamemnon_ to an
Athens that was barefacedly conquering and enslaving the Isles of
Greece to no end but her own wealth and power and glory. The
obvious reference is of course to the conquerors of Troy.

I have spoken of this Oresteian Trilogy as his _Hamlet;_ with the
_Prometheus Bound_--another tremendous Soul-Symbol--it is
what puts him in equal rank with the four supreme Masters of
later Western Literature. I suppose it is pretty certain that
Shakespeare knew nothing of him, and had never heard of the plot
of his _Agamemnon._ But look here:--

There was one Hamlet King of Denmark, absent from control of his
kingdom because sleeping within his orchard (his custom always of
an afternoon). And there was one Agamemnon King of Men, absent
from control of his kingdom because leading those same Men at the
siege of Troy. Hamlet had a wife Gertrude; Agamemnon had a wife
Clytemnestra. Hamlet had a brother Claudius; who became the lover
of Gertrude. Agamemnon had a cousin Aegisthos, who became the
paramour of Clytemnestra. Claudius murdered Hamlet, and thereby
came by his throne and queen. Clytemnestra and Aegisthos murdered
Agamemnon, and Aegisthos thereby became possessed of his throne
and queen. Hamlet and Gertrude had a son Hamlet, who avenged his
father's murder. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had a son Orestes,
who avenged his father's murder.

There, however, the parallel ends. Shakespeare had to paint the
human soul at a certain stage of its evolution: the 'moment of
choice,' the entering on the path: and brought all his genius to
bear on revealing that. He had, here, to teach Karma only
incidentally; in _Macbeth,_ when the vo