Aeschylus Quotes (-525--456)

“I must bear What is ordained with patience, being aware Necessity doth front the universe With an invincible gesture.”

“Orestes: Ah, ah! Ye handmaidens, see them yonder—like Gorgons, stoled in sable garb, entwined with swarming snakes! I can no longer stay.Chorus: What fancies disturb thee, thou dearest of sons unto thy sire? Hold, be not greatly overborne by fear.Orestes: To me these are no fancied troubles. For in very truth yonder are the wrathful sleuth-hounds that avenge my mother.Chorus: ’Tis that the blood is still fresh upon thy hands—this is the reason of the disorder that assails thy wits.Orestes: O lord Apollo, lo! now they come in troops, and from their eyes they drip loathsome blood!”

“Aeschylus I define to have been a truly gigantic man (I mean by this much more than the mere trivial figure of elocution usually expressed by the word gigantic), one of the largest characters ever known, and all whose movements are clumsy and huge, like those of a son of Anak. In short, his character is just that of Prometheus himself as he has described him. I know no more pleasant thing than to study Aeschylus. You fancy that you hear the old dumb rocks speaking to you of all things they had been thinking of since the world began, in their wild, savage utterances.”

“Aeschylus is not impersonal but transpersonal, a believer in fate and moral responsibility at the same time.”

“He raised everything he touched to grandeur. The characters in his hands became heroic; the conflicts became tense and fraught with eternal issues.”

“The tragic style of Aeschylus is still imperfect. Now and then its constituents, epic and lyric, are not properly fused. He is often abrupt, immoderate, hard. To succeed him with a more artful tragedy was easy; in his almost superhuman greatness he is likely to remain unexcelled. . . .”