"This said, his son undaunted snatched the reins,
Then smote the winged coursers' sides: they bound
Forth on the void and cavernous vault of air.
His father mounts another steed, and rides
With warning voice guiding his son. 'Drive there!
Turn, turn thy car this way.'"[5]
May we not say that the spirit of the poet mounts the chariot with his
hero, and accompanies the winged steeds in their perilous flight? Were
it not so,--had not his imagination soared side by side with them in
that celestial passage,--he would never have conceived so vivid an
image. Similar is that passage in his "Cassandra," beginning
"Ye Trojans, lovers of the steed."[6]
[Footnote 5: Eur. _Phaet._]
[Footnote 6: Perhaps from the lost "Alexander" (Jahn).]
5
Aeschylus is especially bold in forming images suited to his heroic
themes: as when he says of his "Seven against Thebes"--
"Seven mighty men, and valiant captains, slew
Over an iron-bound shield a bull, then dipped
Their fingers in the blood, and all invoked
Ares, Enyo, and death-dealing Flight
In witness of their oaths,"[7]
and describes how they all mutually pledged themselves without flinching
to die. Sometimes, however, his thoughts are unshapen, and as it were
rough-hewn and rugged. Not observing this, Euripides, from too blind a
rivalry, sometimes falls under the same censure.
[Footnote 7: _Sept. c. Th._ 42.]
6
Aeschylus with a strange violence of language represents the palace of
Lycurgus as _possessed_ at the appearance of Dionysus--
"The halls with rapture thrill, the roof's inspired."[8]