{257}
ONE of the most indisputable laws of the moral world, and, when
seriously considered, perhaps the most awful one, is that principle of
hereditary dependence, which connects the sins of one generation, and
often of one individual, by an indissoluble bond, with the fortunes of
another. In the closely compacted machinery of the moral world no man
can be ignorant, or foolish, or vicious to himself. The most isolated
individual by the very act of his existence, as he necessarily inhales,
so he likewise exhales, a social atmosphere, either healthy so far, or
so far unhealthy, for the race. Nothing in the world is independent
either of what co-exists with it, or of what precedes it. The present,
in particular, is everywhere at once the child of the past, and the
parent of the future. It is no doubt true that a foolish father does not
always beget a foolish son. There are counteracting influences
constantly at work to prevent the fatal tendency to degeneration, of
which Horace speaks so feelingly--
Aetas parentum pejor avis tulit
Nos nequiores, mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem,
but the "Delicta majorum immeritus lues" of the same poet remains a
fearful reality in the daily administration of the world, which no
serious-thinking man can afford to disregard. In the ancient law of
Moses, as in the most famous systems of Christian theology, this
principle plays a prominent part; and awful as its operation is, often
sweeping whole generations into ruin, and smiting whole nations with a
chronic leprosy, for the folly or extravagance of an ephemeral
individual, we shall not be surprised to find it equally conspicuous in
the literature of so subtle a people as the Greeks. The Hellenic mind,
no doubt, was too sunny and too healthy to allow itself to be encased
and imprisoned with this idea, as with an iron mail; but as a mysterious
dark background of moral existence it was recognised in its highest
power; and nowhere so distinctly, and with such terrible iteration, as
in those lyrical exhibitions of solemn, religious, and legendary faith,
which we call tragedy.
{258}
Among the other serious ethico-religious legends with which the scanty
remains of the rich Greek tragedy have made us more familiar, the dark
fates of two famous families--the Pelopidae and the Labdacidae--force
themselves upon our attention with a marked distinctness. How the evil
genius (ἀλάστωρ) of inherited guilt revealed itself in the
blood-stained track of the descendants of Tantalus we have seen on the
large scale of a complete trilogy; the play to which we now introduce
the reader is an exhibition of the same stern law of moral
concatenation, in one of the scenes of the dark story of the Theban
family of the Labdacidae. Labdacus, the father of this unfortunate
race, is traced back in the legendary genealogy to the famous
Phœnician settler, Cadmus, being removed from him by only one
generation.[f1] This head of the family appears tainted with no moral
guilt of an extraordinary kind; but his son Laius figures in the
legend, not like Pelops in the Pelopidan story, as a murderer, but as
a licentious and a lustful character. Yielding to the violent impulses
of unnatural passion,[f2] he is said to have carried off from Elis,
Chrysippus, the son of Pelops; whereupon the injured father pronounced
against the unholy ravisher the appropriate curse that he should die
childless, or, if he did beget children, that himself should lose his
life by the hands of those to whom he had been the means of giving it.
We see here exemplified that grand principle of retaliation (_lex
talionis_), "_An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth_," which
stands out so prominently in the laws of Moses, and is so agreeable to
the moral instincts of the human heart. Laius was to perish by his own
progeny, because, in the irregular gratification of the procreative
instinct, he had sinned against Nature. The curse spoken against him
by Pelops was the wrathful expression of one of Nature's greatest
laws; in whatever way we seek violently to obtain happiness contrary
to the sober course of the divine arrangements, in that way we are
sure with our own hands to work our own destruction. This is
inevitable. Accordingly, that the direct sanction of the gods might be
added to the utterance of an aggrieved human heart, the legend
represents the lustful offender as consulting the oracle of Delphi,
whether he might not with safety disregard the imprecation of Pelops,
and beget children by his wife Iocaste (called Epicaste in Homer, Od.
XI. 271); and receiving the ominous answer--
Sow not the seed of children, in despite
Of the gods: for if thou shalt beget a son,
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Him who begat shall the begotten slay,
And all thy house in bloody ruin perish.[f3]
But the divine oracle, as was to have been expected from the character
of the questioner, was given in vain. Laius had consulted the oracle not
that he might know and obey the divine will, but that he might, if
possible, escape from the terrible consequences of the curse of Pelops,
and yet gratify his natural desire of having offspring. The result was
natural. In a moment of forgetfulness, induced by the free use of that
mother of many evils, wine, he neglected the divine warning; and, from
his fatal embrace, a child was born, destined in the course of the
accomplishment of the ancient curse, both to suffer many monstrous
misfortunes in his own person, and to transmit guilt and misery to
another generation. This child was Oedipus,[f4] so named from the
piercing of his feet by nails, and subsequent exposure on Mount
Cithaeron, a device contrived by his father, in order to escape the
fulfilment of the divine oracle. But it is not possible, as Homer
frequently inculcates, to deceive the mind of the gods. The helpless
infant, the child of destiny, is found (like Romulus), by some
shepherds, and by them taken to Polybus king of Corinth. Here the
foundling is brought up as the son of that monarch; but, on one
occasion, being taunted by some of his youthful comrades with the
reproach that he is not really the son of Polybus, but a fatherless
foundling, he goes forth to the oracle of Delphi, and to the wide world,
to clear up what had been more wisely left in the dark; and here his
god-sent misfortunes overtake him, and the evil genius of his father
drives the innocent son blindfold into inevitable woe. The Pythoness,
according to her wont, returned an answer more doubtful than the
question. Oedipus was told not who his father was, but that a dark
destiny hung over him, to kill his father, and to commit incest with his
mother. Knowing no parents but those whom he had left at Corinth, he
proceeded on his wanderings, in a direction the opposite of that by
which he had come; and, on the road between Delphi and Daulis,[f5]
met a person of consequence, with a charioteer and an attendant, in a
car. The charioteer immediately ordered the foot traveller, somewhat
insolently, after the manner of aristocratic satellites, to get out of
the way; which rudeness the hot youth resenting, a scuffle ensued, in
which the charioteer {260} and his master were slain, while the
attendant fled. The murdered prince was Laius; and Oedipus, unwittingly,
nay, doing everything he could to elude the fate, had slain his own
father. But the ancient Fury, for a season, concealed her vengeance, and
allowed a brief glory to be shed round her victim, that he might
thereafter be plunged in more terrible darkness. The Sphynx, a monstrous
creature, of Egyptian birth, half virgin, half lion, had been sent by
wrathful Mars, to desolate the Theban country, devouring, with her
bloody jaws, whosoever could not solve her famous riddle. When
depopulation proceeded at a fearful rate from this cause, the Thebans
promised Iocaste, the widow of Laius, and queen of the country, in
marriage, to him who should succeed in explaining the enigma. Oedipus
was successful; and, becoming king of Thebes, was married, in ignorance,
to his own mother. Thus the net of destiny was drawn closer and closer
round its victim; but the hour of doom was not yet come. Joined in this
unnatural wedlock, the unfortunate son of Laius became the father of two
sons, Eteocles and Polynices, and of two daughters, Antigone and Ismene.
Circumstances (which Sophocles narrates in his Oedipus Tyrannus)
afterwards bringing the story of Oedipus' life and the nature of his
connection with Iocaste to light, the unfortunate old king looking upon
himself as an object of hatred to the gods, and unworthy to look upon
the day, tore out his eyes, and was confined by his sons--whether from
cruelty or superstition--in a separate house, and treated otherwise in a
manner that appeared to him disrespectful and unkind.[f6] Enraged
at this treatment, he pronounced an imprecation against them, that they
should one day DIVIDE THEIR INHERITED LAND BY STEEL; whereupon they,
to render any hostile collision impossible, made an agreement to
exercise kingly authority over the whole Theban territory, each for a
year at a time, while the other should leave the country. Eteocles, as
the elder, reigned first; but when the appointed term came round, like
other holders of power, he showed himself loath to quit; and Polynices,
fleeing to Argos, sought assistance from Adrastus, king of that country.
This prince, along with the Ætolian Tydeus, the father of Diomede, and
other chiefs, marched against Thebes with a great armament, in order to
force Eteocles to yield the yearly tenure of the throne to his brother,
according to agreement. The appearance of this armament before the gates
of the Cadmean city, and its sad issue, in the death, by their own {261}
hands, of the two hostile brothers, form the subject of the present
play.
From this rapid sketch, the reader will see plainly that the dismal
story of Laius and Oedipus, and his children, affords materials for a
whole series of tragedies; and that, in fact, "THE SEVEN AGAINST
THEBES" is only one of the last acts of a great consecutive legendary
history, of which each part is necessary to explain the other. This
close connection of the subjects naturally suggests the question,
whether our play, as we now have it, stood alone in dramatic
representation, or whether it was not only a subordinate part of a large
dramatic whole. We know for certain that Æschylus wrote at least four
plays, besides the present, of which the materials were taken from the
cycle of this Theban legend--namely, LAIUS, OEDIPUS, THE SPHYNX, and the
ELEUSINIANS;[f7] and it has been not unplausibly conjectured that some
of his other plays, of which the names are preserved, belong to the same
series.[f8] In what precise connection, however, the existing play stood
to any of the rest in actual representation, there were, till very
recently, no satisfactory means of judging; and accordingly no scanty
wealth of erudite speculation (after the German fashion), made to look
like science, was spent upon the subject. Now, at length it has been
announced, that the διδασκαλία, containing the actual order of
representation of four of these plays, has been discovered;[f9] and, if
the document be genuine, we are enabled to assert that, in the 78th
Olympiad, Æschylus gained the tragic prize with the tetralogy, of
LAIUS, OEDIPUS, THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, and the SPHYNX, a satiric
drama.
With regard to the merits of the present piece, while its structure
exhibits, in the most striking manner, the deficient skill of the early
dramatists, its spirit is everywhere manly and noble, and instinct with
the soul of the warlike actions which it describes. The best parts are
epic, not dramatic--namely, those in which the Messenger describes the
different characters and appearance of the seven chiefs posted each at a
separate gate of the Cadmean city. The drama concludes with a Theban
coronach or wail over the dead bodies of the self-slain brothers; for
the proper relishing of which, the imaginative reproduction of some
appropriate music is indispensable. The introduction after this of the
Herald, announcing the decree of the Theban senate, whereby burial is
denied to the body of Polynices, {262} and the heroic display of
sisterly affection on the part of Antigone, are--if this really was the
last piece of a trilogy--altogether foreign both to the action and to
the tone of the tragedy, and must be regarded as a blunder. If Schiller,
and even Shakespere, on occasions, could err in such matters, much more
Æschylus.