{215}
DANAUS, according to the received Greek story, was an Egyptian, who
founded a colony in Argos, at some date between the age of the oldest
Argive king Inachus, and the Trojan war. In the reality of this
sea-faring adventurer, modern historians, following the faith of the
ancient Greeks, have generally acquiesced, till, latterly, the Germans,
with that instinctive hostility to external tradition which
characterises them, have boldly ventured to explain both the Egyptian
and his colony away into a symbol, or an inanity. Of our most recent
writers, however, THIRLWALL, after considering all the German
speculations on the subject, is not ashamed to say a word in favour of
the possibility or probability of an Egyptian colony in Argos;[f1]
while CLINTON[f2] (Introd. pp. 6, 7), boldly announces the
principle that "we may acknowledge as real persons all those whom there
is no reason for rejecting. The presumption is in favour of the early
tradition. . . . Cadmus and Danaus appear to be real persons; for it is
conformable to the state of mankind, and perfectly credible that
Phœnician and Egyptian adventurers, in the ages to which these persons
are ascribed, should have found their way to the coasts of Greece."
GROTE, however, seems to have acted most wisely in refusing to decide
whether any particular legend of the earliest times is mythical or
historical, on the ground that, though many of the legends doubtless
contain truth, they contain it only "in a sort of chemical combination
with fiction, which we have no means of decomposing"--(II. p. 50). This
play of Æschylus, therefore, cannot boast of any accessory historical
superadded to the principal poetic interest.
Danaus, the legend tells, though an Egyptian born, was not of Egyptian
descent. The original mother of his race was Io, daughter of Inachus,
king of Argos, and priestess of Hera in that place. How this
much-persecuted maid found her way from the banks of the "Erasinus old"
to the shores of the nurturing Nile, we have seen in the previous piece.
Danaus had a brother called Ægyptus, the father of fifty sons, as
himself was of fifty daughters. These fifty sons Ægyptus sought to
unite in wedlock to the equal-numbered progeny of his brother; but the
chaste maidens, whether because they actually thought it unholy (as it
certainly is, in the general case, unadvisable) for first cousins to
marry first cousins, or {216} because the suit was pressed in a manner
not the most respectful, or from a combination of both motives, refused
to enter into the bond; and, to escape the importunities of their
stronger male suitors, fled, under the guidance of their father, over
the seas to Greece. As kind chance, or, rather, Divine Providence, would
have it, they were wafted to that very part of Greece whence their
famous ancestress Io had originally proceeded, when the god-sent gadfly
drove her, in a career of tempestuous wanderings, through great part of
Europe and Asia, to Egypt. With their landing on this coast the present
opera commences; and the action which it represents is the very simple
one of the reception of the Libyan fugitives, by the Argive monarch
Pelasgus (otherwise called Gelanor), and their participation in the
rights and privileges of Argive citizenship. The transference of their
affections from Nile to Erasinus is solemnly sung in the concluding
chaunt. The Danaides are now Argives.
Considered by itself, the action of this piece is the most meagre that
can be conceived, and, as the poet has handled it, contains little that
can stir the deeper feelings of the heart, or strike the imagination
strongly. That the king of the Argives should feel serious doubts as to
the propriety of receiving such a band of foreigners into his kingdom,
formidable not in their own strength, indeed, but in respect of the
pursuing party, by whom they were claimed, was most natural; equally
natural, however, and, in a poetic point of view, necessary, that his
political fears should finally be outweighed by his benevolent regard
for the rights of unprotected virgins, and his pious fear of the wrath
of Jove, the protector of suppliants. The alternation of mind between
these contending feelings, till a final resolve is taken on the side of
the right, affords no field for the higher faculty of the dramatist to
display itself. As we have it, accordingly, the Suppliants is, perhaps,
the weakest performance of Æschylus. But the fact is, there is the best
reason to believe that the great father of tragedy never meant this
piece to stand alone, but wrote it merely to usher in the main action,
which followed in the other pieces of a trilogy; the names of which
pieces--Ἀιγύπτιοι, and Δαναίδες--are preserved in the list of the
author's pieces still extant. Of this, the whole conclusion of the
present piece, and especially the latter half of the last choral chaunt,
furnishes the most conclusive evidence.
The remainder of the story, which formed the main action of the trilogy,
is well known. Immediately after the reception of the fugitives, by the
Argives, their pursuers arrive, and land on the coast. This arrival is
announced in the last scene of the present piece. On {217} this, Danaus,
unwilling to lead his kind host into a war, pretends to yield to the
suit still as eagerly pressed, and the marriage is agreed on. But a
terrible revenge had been devised. At the very moment that he hands over
his unwilling but obedient daughters to the subjection of their hated
cousins, he gives them secret instructions to furnish themselves each
with a dagger, and, during the watches of the nuptial night, to dip the
steel in the throats of their unsuspecting lords. The bloody deed was
completed. Only one of all the fifty daughters, preferring the fame of
true womanhood to the claims of filial homage, spared her mate.
Hypermnestra saved her husband Lynceus. This conduct, of course, brought
the daughter into collision with her father and her father's family; and
one of those strifes of our mysterious moral nature was educed, which,
as we have seen in the trilogy of the Orestiad, it was one great purpose
of the Æschylean drama to reconcile. If the murder occupied the second
piece, as the progress of the story naturally brings with it, a third
piece, according to the analogy of the Eumenides, would be necessary to
bring about the reconciliation, and effect that purifying of the
passions which Aristotle points out as the great moral result of tragic
composition. That Aphrodite was the great celestial agent employed in
the finale of the Suppliants, as Pallas Athena is in the Furies, has
been well divined; a beautiful fragment in celebration of love, and in
favour of Hypermnestra remains; but to attempt a reconstruction of these
lost pieces at the present day, though an amusement of which the learned
Germans are fond, is foreign to the habits of the British mind. Those
who feel inclined to see what ingenuity may achieve in this region, are
referred to Welcker's Trilogie, and Gruppe's Ariadne.
The moral tone and character of this piece is in the highest degree
pleasing and satisfactory. The Supreme Jove, whose prominent attribute
is power, here receives a glorification as the protector of the
persecuted, and the refuge of the distressed. On the duty of
hospitality, under the sanction of Ζεύς ξένιος and ἱκεσιος, as
practised among the ancient Greeks, I refer the reader with pleasure
to Grote's History of Greece, Vol. II., p. 114.
"The scene," says Potter, "is near the shore, in an open grove, close to
the altar and images of the gods presiding over the sacred games, with a
view of the sea and ships of Egyptus on one side, and of the town of
Argos on the other, with hills, and woods, and vales, a river flowing
between them: all, together with the persons of the drama, forming a
picture that would have well employed the united pencils of Poussin and
Claude."