did not know
this, in assuming the position of her daughter's avenger
she put herself under the karmic ban. And Agamemnon did
not know it: he had intended the sacrifice: and was therefore,
and for his supposed ruthlessness at Troy, under the same ban
himself. Hence the fate that awaited him on his return; and
hence because of Clytemnestra's useless crime--when she and
Aegisthos come out from murdering him, and announce what they
have done, the Chorus's dark foretellings--to come true presently
--of the Karma that is to follow upon it.

And here we must guard ourselves against the error--as I think it
is that Aeschylus set himself to create the perfect and final
art-form as such. I think he was just intent on announcing Karma
to the Athenians in the most effective way possible: bent all
his energies to making that--and that the natural result
of that high issue clear and unescapable; purpose was this
marvelous art-form--which Sophocles took up later, and in
some external ways perhaps perfected. Then came Aristotle after
a hundred years, and defining the results achieved, tried to make
Shakespeare impossible. The truth is that when you put yourself
to do the Soul's work, and have the great forces of the Soul to
back you therein, you create an art-form; and it only remains for
the Aristotelian critic to define it. Then back comes the Soul
after a thousand years, makes a new one, and laughs at the
Aristotles. The grand business is done by following the Soul--not
by conforming to rules or imitating models. But it must be the
Soul; rules and models are much better than personal whims;
they are a discipline good to be followed as long as one can.--
You will note how Aeschylus stood above the possibilities of
actualism with which we so much concern ourselves; in the course
of some sixteen hundred lines, and without interval or change of
act or scene, he introduces the watchman on the house-top who
first sees the beacons that announce the fall of Troy, on the
very night that Troy fell,--and the return of Agamemnon in his
chariot to Argos.

In the _Choephori_ or _Libation-Pourers,_ the second play of the
trilogy, Orestes returns from his Wittenberg, sent by Apollo to
avenge his father. The scene again is in front of the house of
Atreus. Having killed Aegistlios within, Orestes comes out to
the Chorus; then Clytemnestra enters; he tells her what he has
done, and what he intends to do; and despite her pleadings,
leads