[506]. In the legend related by Pausanias (Corinth., c. 3), Trœzen was the first place where Orestes was thus received, and in his time the descendants of those who had thus helped held periodical feasts in commemoration of it.
[507]. The course which Athena takes is: (1) to receive Orestes as a settler with the rights which attached to such persons on Athenian soil, not a criminal fugitive to be simply surrendered; (2) to offer to the Erinnyes, as being too important to be put out of court, a fair and open trial; (3) to acknowledge that he and they are equally “blameless,” as far as she is concerned. She has no complaint to make of them.
[508]. The red blight of vines and wheat was looked on as caused by drops of blood which the Erinnyes had let fall.
[509]. Stress is laid on the fact that the judges of the Areopagos, in contrast with those of the inferior tribunes of Athens, discharged their duty under the sanction of an oath.
[510]. Perhaps
“And each from each shall learn, as he predicts
His neighbour's ills, that he
Shares in the same and harbours them, and speaks,
Poor wretch, of cures that fail.”
[511]. At a more advanced period of human thought, Cicero (Orat. pro Roscio, c. 24) could point to the “thoughts that accuse each other,” the horror and remorse of the criminal, as the true Erinnyes, the “assiduæ domesticæque Furiæ.” Æschylos clings to the mythical symbolism as indispensable for the preservation of the truth which it shadowed forth.