That such immense force should be manifested only at the end of the play, that until and during the crisis Æschylus exerts only sufficient dramatic energy to present his situations intelligibly, is the most significant fact in the _Choephorœ_. This is deliberate in an artist who has composed the _Agamemnon_ and the _Eumenides_. In the opening stage it is human sin and courage which provide the rising interest; in the third the righteousness and wisdom of the Most High unloose the knot and save mankind; at both periods personality is the basis of action. But in the middle stage the master is not personality, but the impersonal Fury demanding blood in vengeance for blood, a law of life and of the universe, named by a name but possessing no attributes. This law may be called by a feminine title Erinys; it is called also by a phrase: “Do and Suffer”;[242] it is the shade of Agamemnon, thirsting—is it for blood as a bodily drink or for death as expiation?—and sending the dark progeny of his soul up from Hades. This fact, then, and no person, it is which dominates the play, and that is why the persons concerned are for the time no magnificent figures of will or valour or wisdom, but the panting driven thralls of something unseen which directs their movements and decides their immediate destiny. The plot of the third play, the EUMENIDES[243] (Εὐμενίδες, “the Kindly Ones,” an euphemistic name of the Furies) is as follows. Outside the shrine at Delphi, the Pythian priestess utters a prayer to all the deities connected with the spot, after which she enters the sanctuary. Almost instantly she returns in horror, and tells how she has seen a blood-stained man seated upon the _Omphalos_ and round him a band of sleeping females, loathly to the sight. She departs. From the temple the god appears[244] with his suppliant Orestes, whom he encourages and sends forth (led by the god Hermes) on his wanderings, which are to end in peace at Athens. When the two have disappeared, the ghost of Clytæmnestra rises and awakens the sleeping Furies. They burst forth from the temple in frenzy at the escape of their victim. In the midst of the clamour Apollo, with words of contemptuous hatred, bids them begone. The scene now changes to Athens, where Orestes throws himself upon the protection of the goddess Athena, whose statue he clasps. In a moment the chorus of Furies enter in pursuit; they discover Orestes and describe the horrible doom which he must suffer. He defies them and calls upon the absent Athena. But they circle about him chanting their fearful “binding-song”—the proclamation of their office and rights as the implacable avengers of bloodshed and every other sin. As their strains die away Athena enters. She hears the dispute in outline, the Furies insisting that for matricide there can be no pardon, Orestes declaring that he has been purified ritually by Apollo who urged him to his deed. The goddess determines that the suit shall be tried by a court of her