Young gods, young pride of unproved majesty.
We agree with Müller[100] that the ‘appeasement’ of the Furies and their transmutation into Semnai Theai was an essential part of the pre-Aeschylean legend. We have already suggested the forces which probably contributed to the story of their ‘conversion.’ Beneath the religious, mythical story of a transference of cult, beneath the story of the adoption by the Erinnyes of the worship of the Semnai, lurks, we believe, the echo if not the reality of legal and social evolution. The ‘conversion’ of the Erinnyes, which directly indicates the acceptance, on the part of non-Athenian avengers, of the verdict of an Athenian homicide court, symbolises also, in general, the acquiescence of rebellious clans, which in the seventh century B.C. were deprived of material retribution in cases of bloodshed, in the new system—the historical system—of murder-penalties, which we have associated with Apollo and political synoekism. The cult of the ‘Eumenides,’ who were probably the ‘Semnai’ under a different name, we need not discuss here. It is a religious rather than a legal matter. It has been discussed at length by Verrall,[101] Miss Harrison,[102] Müller,[103] and others, and we do not see that its elucidation affects in the least the intelligibility of this play.
The ‘Suppliants’ and the ‘Seven against Thebes’
In the remaining plays of Aeschylus there is little or nothing which is worthy of comment from our present viewpoint. In the Suppliants, the daughters of Danaus, in their efforts to avoid incestuous marriage, seek asylum at Argos. They have some difficulty in obtaining refuge there, and they feel it necessary to describe themselves thus:
Exiles from the sacred land
Bordering Syria’s meads, we flee,
Not for guilt of murder banned
By a people’s just decree.[104]
In this play the daughters of Danaus are not yet wedded nor have they slain their cousins, the sons of Aegyptus. We believe, however, that Aeschylus is thinking of their subsequent kin-slaying when he attributes to them these words. In historical Greece, persons guilty of ordinary homicide were legally entitled to reside as aliens abroad. It is only to kin-slayers that we can properly apply an expression which suggests that slayers could not be accorded the privilege of exile.
In the Septem we read of the impossibility of cleansing kin-slaughter—an idea which we have already explained.[105] The reference is to the war of the ‘Seven against Thebes’ and to the death of Eteocles and Polyneices[106]: