384 mSTOBT OF GREECE. expression (otten but imperfectly intelligible to modern readers), reaches its maximum in his tragedies. As he throws round the more than in Hesiod : they appear as a race of aboriginal savages, having the god Prometheus for their protector. _35schylus has worked up the old legend, homely and unimpressive as we read it in Hesiod, into a sublime ideal. We are not to forget that Prome- theus is not a man, but a god, the equal of Zeus in race, though his infe- rior in power, and belonging to a family of gods who were once superior to Zeus : he has moreover deserted his own kindred, and lent all his aid and superior sagacity to Zeus, whereby chiefly the latter was able to acquire supremacy (this last circumstance is an addition by JEschylus himself to the Hesiodic legend). In spite of such essential service, Zeus had doomed him to cruel punishment, for no other reason than because he conferred upon helpless man the prime means of continuance and improvement, thus thwart- ing the intention of Zeus to extinguish the race. Now Zeus, though superior to all the other gods and exercising general control, was never considered, either in Grecian legend or in Grecian religions belief, to be superior in so immeasurable a degree as to supersede all free action and sentiment on the part of gods less powerful. There were many old legends of dissension among the gods, and several of disobedience against Zeus : when a poet chose to dramatize one of these, he might so turn his composition as to sympathize either with Zeus or with the inferior god, with- out in either case shocking the general religious feeling of the country. And if there ever was an instance in which preference of the inferior god would be admissible, it is that of Prometheus, whose proceedings are such as to call forth the maximum of human sympathy, superior intelligence pitted against superior force, and resolutely encountering foreknown suffering, for the sole purpose of rendering inestimable and gratuitous service to mortals. Of the Prometheus Solutus, which formed a sequel to the Prometheus Vinctus (the entire trilogy is not certainly known), the fragments preserved are very scanty, and the guesses of critics as to its plot have little base to proceed upon. They contend that, in one way or other, the apparent objec- tions which the Prometh. Vinctus presents against the justice of Zeus were in the Prometh. Solutus removed. Hermann, in his Dissertatio de ^Eschyli f Prometheo Soluto (Opuscula, vol. iv. p. 256), calls this position in question: I transcribe from his Dissertation one passage, because it contains an im- portant remark in reference to the manner in which the Greek poets handled their religious legends : " while they recounted and believed many enormi- ties respecting individual gods, they always described the Godhead in the abstract as holy and faultless." " Immo illud admirari oportet, quod qunm de singulis Diis indignissima quscque crederent, tamen ubi sine certo nomine Denm dicebant. immuneni D omni vitio, summftque sanctitate pracditum intelligebant Illam igitui Jovis ssevitiam ut cxcuscnt defensores Trilogiae, et jure punitum volunt P'o-
