“. . . the fire-faced signs.”
(φλογωπὰ σήματα). Prowett refers this to lightning; but surely, in the present connection, the obvious reference is to the sacrificial flame, from which, as from most parts of the sacrificial ceremony, omens were wont to be taken. When the flame burned bright it was a good omen; when with a smoky and troublous flame, the omen was bad. See a well-known description of this in Sophocles’ Antigone, from the mouth of the blind old diviner Tiresias, when he first enters the stage, v. 1005; and another curious passage in Euripides’ Phœniss. 1261.
“And who is lord of strong Necessity?”
Necessity (Ἀνάγκη), a favourite power to which reference is made by the Greek dramatists, is merely an impersonation of the fact patent to all, that the world is governed by a system of strict and inexorable law, from the operation of which no man can escape. That the gods themselves are subject to this Ἀνάγκη. is a method of expression not seldom used by Heathen writers; but that they had any distinct idea, or fixed theological notion of Necessity or Fate, as a power separate from and superior to the gods I see no reason to believe.—See my observations on the Homeric μοῖρα in Clas. Mus., No. XXVI., p. 437. And in the same way that Homer talks of the fate from the gods, so the tragedians talk of necessity from or imposed by the gods—τὰς γὰρ ἐκ θεῶν ἀνάγκας θνητον ὀντα δεῖ φέρειν. With regard to Æschylus, certainly one must beware of drawing any hasty inference with regard to his theological creed from this insulated passage. For here the poet adopts the notion of the strict subjection of Jove to an external Fate, principally, one may suppose, from dramatic propriety; it suits the person and the occasion. Otherwise, the Æschylean theology is very favourable to the absolute supremacy of Jove; and, accordingly, in the Eumenides, those very Furies, who are here called his superiors, though they dispute with Apollo, are careful not to be provoked into a single expression which shall seem to throw a doubt on the infallibility of “the Father.” For the rest, the Fates and Furies, both here and in the Eumenides, are aptly coupled, and, in signification, indeed, are identical; because a man’s fate in this world can never be separated from his conduct, nor his conduct from his conscience, of which the Furies are the impersonation.
“No more than others Jove can ’scape his doom.”
The idea that the Supreme Ruler of the Universe can ever be dethroned is foreign to every closely reasoned system of monotheism; but in polytheistic systems it is not unnatural (for gods who had a beginning may have an end); and in the Hindoo theology receives an especial prominence. Southey accordingly makes Indra, the Hindoo Jove, say—
“A stronger hand