INTRODUCTION
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 he 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 blood-stained Ixîon 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,
- ↑ See Rise of the Greek Epic, Edn. 3, p. 276 ff.
ix
