Ghost Ritual in Aeschylus
The Object of this brief survey is to discover, if we can, from the surviving plays of Aeschylus how, in the opinion of enlightened and pious men of his age, the spirits of the dead were to be approached when it was thought desirable to do so, and to compare the methods which were then in use with t...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1950
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 1950, Volume: 43, Issue: 4, Pages: 257-280 |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | The Object of this brief survey is to discover, if we can, from the surviving plays of Aeschylus how, in the opinion of enlightened and pious men of his age, the spirits of the dead were to be approached when it was thought desirable to do so, and to compare the methods which were then in use with those of other, especially of later, epochs. I speak of enlightened and pious men, for surely Aeschylus was both. Had he been born a generation later, he would probably have been something of a philosopher, influenced, as Euripides was, by the critical opinions of the contemporary sophists and investigating the fundamental assumptions upon which the traditional beliefs of his country rested. As it was, he, like his contemporary and acquaintance Pindar, came sufficiently early to take the form of their beliefs from tradition, with no more than revisal of details here and there (Pindar will not believe impious myths and does not know what to make of tales which represent the gods as fighting one another, Aeschylus is not sure that a god will really feel human passion for a mortal woman), ennobling the whole with their own lofty thoughts and feelings, in which the Athenian goes further than the Theban, for he was the deeper of soul and even the Apolline religion of Pindar, lofty though it is, the fruit apparently of a genuinely religious mind which had something mystical in it, lacks the sublimity of Aeschylus' attitude toward Zeus. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000024573 |