That being so, how can there be any forgiveness? Would not forgiveness be a sort of monstrosity, a wanton breach in the law of Cause and Effect? Aeschylus, in the Agamemnon, gives his answer in unusually clear language (161–182). The prophet Calchas has been describing the ravenous feast of the two Eagles; the wrath of Artemis thereat and the vengeance exacted in the death of Iphigenia; the future vengeance to be exacted for that death; and beyond a yet further vista of vengeances re-avenged. Then Aeschylus asks how man can find escape from this endless chain and “cast off from his mind the burden of futility.” “Only,” he answers, “in the thought of Zeus, whatever Zeus may be.” It is a Zeus sublimated by the mind of Aeschylus and very different from that glorified Achaean chieftain who was King of gods and men in the ordinary Homeric tradition. To Aeschylus Zeus, as the ruler of heaven, is the founder of a new world, much as Athena herself was the founder of a new civilization on earth. The old gods struck and were stricken; they fought and they passed away. One had no more meaning than another. But Zeus is “He who made a road to Thought, who established Learning by Suffering to be an abiding law.” He himself in the distant past won his throne by violence, but now he has learned and his heart is changed.
This idea of a supreme Ruler who, though inscrutably wise, is not perfect but only working his way towards perfection, was developed by Aeschylus in the Prometheus-trilogy, where Zeus, beginning as a conqueror and a tyrant, seems at first like the villain of the piece. But he possesses this peculiar secret: he can learn by his own offences; so the end is reconciliation. Similarly in the Supplices we hear how Io, once the persecuted victim of his lust, is at last led to peace and blessedness and becomes the Virgin Mother of the Deliverer of Prometheus.1 The idea is not purely Aeschylean, for Pindar also tells us how Eternal Zeus set free his chained enemies, the Titans (Pyth. IV 291). It is also he who instituted the law of the suppliant. He forgave the bloodstained Ixion because of his suffering and prayer. Nay, he is not only the protector of suppliants, he is himself the Eternal Suppliant, the God and Master of all things, who forgives because he also craves for forgiveness (Supplices, l. 1). There, however, we touch upon a mystery. … The essential point is that the Zeus who learns and understands is also the Zeus who can forgive the sinner. He can forgive just because he understands. The Law of the Moirai and the Erinyes neither understands nor forgives. It simply operates.
“All this,” it may be said, “is possible enough, but it is not what Aeschylus represents as occurring. Zeus does not appear at all in the Eumenides.” Of course he does not. The Greek convention, like our own, did not easily represent the Supreme Father in bodily form on the stage. Apart from satyr-plays and comedy, I only know of one play, The Soul Weighing of Aeschylus, in which Zeus was actually represented; and there he appears not on the stage but in the sky, holding the divine balance. In the Eumenides he is represented by his son and daughter, Apollo and Athena.
Apollo, we are told expressly, is “the Prophêtês Dios, the revealer of Zeus” (19). He says himself, “Never have I spoken on my throne of prophecy any word concerning man, woman or city, which was not commanded by Zeus the Father” (616). He warns the Court not to disregard the oracles “that are mine and the Father’s” (713). Consequently we see that it was by the will of Zeus himself that Orestes slew his mother, it is Zeus who wills now that he be set free.
Athena likewise, we are told with emphasis, is the daughter of Zeus alone, with no mother. She is pure, undiluted Zeus (664 ff.). She is, so to speak, his Thought, not born by any bodily process, but sprung directly from his brain (665); and when she gives her vote it is not so much that she votes on the side of Zeus but that her judgement inevitably is the same as his, “for I am utterly the Father’s” (738). When she asks the Furies to yield to the will of Zeus she says, “I also trust and obey him. I know his overwhelming strength, but He needs it not!” (826). And she explains that Zeus has given to her just that power of thinking and understanding (τὸ φρονεῖν) to which we were told in the Agamemnon that he was guiding mankind. Thus the mechanical and automatic operation of the Law is corrected by the will of the Father. It is not broken, but more truly and perfectly fulfilled.
One is reminded of a passage in Plato’s Statesman: “The best of all is not that a law should rule, but a man, if the man be wise and of royal nature. … A law can never comprehend exactly what is noblest and most just for all cases, and consequently cannot enjoin what is best. The infinite varieties of men and circumstances, and the fact that nothing human ever for a moment stands still, make it impossible for any
