Furies; and the man Orestes is justified by the free grace of Minerva, who represents the compromise of the Creator of man, in accepting into fellowship with himself the human being, whose very existence is a compromise between the finite and infinite.
Are we surprised to meet these great ideas in heathen Greece? But it cannot be denied that here they are; conceived, indeed, only by the highest mind of his time, of almost any time, and probably not realized very widely; yet they may have been understood more widely than we think. And why should we doubt? It is the Christian's formula, if not his faith, that "His goings forth were of old," and that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." Truth has no age; and the mind, at a certain point of elevation, must necessarily find itself in it. To that elevation, no condition is so indispensable as an atmosphere of tolerance.
It may be observed, that Æschylus was not a Dorian. In his time, however, the Dorian culture had spread over Greece; and Æschylus was a Pythagorean, and Pythagoreanism was the philosophic expression of the Dorian religion; for, though Pythagoras was a Samian by birth, he was a Dorian by culture, and lived in the Dorian cities of Magna Græcia, where he endeavored to realize in political institutions the Dorian idea, to which his plans did, in some respects, do more complete justice than the Spartan institutions ascribed to Lycurgus.
But to return: by accepting with reverence and liberality the worship of Bacchus, Apollo modified it. No stronger proof can be given of this than the very fact, that the feasts of Bacchus were celebrated in Athens by the tragic drama, which, with both Æschylus and Sophocles, was consecrated, as it were, to the worship of Apollo. Before that era, all the excesses of the Bacchic orgies had yielded to the superior genius of the Dorian worship. Apollo is the god of Œdipus and his ill-fated family, of Cassandra, of Orestes; and, if he does not appear by name in the "Prometheus," yet nowhere is that depth of idea which belonged to his worship more manifest.
