It remains to deal with the literary and religious aspects of the play. The poet sketches Orestes in but a rudimentary style. There is, indeed, hardly any character-drawing in him; he is simply any brave, sensitive, religious man. The “human interest” is almost confined to the gods, without our forgetting that they are surrounded by human auditors. Athena and the Furies are made to live by a few noble sweeping strokes; Athena, the majestic presentment of Olympian wisdom and the visible head of her favoured city; the Furies majestic in their rage, unanswerable in their claim that punishment of crime cannot be done away if the world is to endure. Apollo is a curious study, less sublime than we expected. His manner under cross-examination by the Furies is a little too human; indeed he loses his temper. The fact is that, though Æschylus has no desire to treat Apollo irreverently, he is by no means concerned to depict a perfect being; and for two reasons. Firstly, he insists on reminding us that Apollo is but the minister of Zeus; it is Zeus only whom he is bent on exalting. Secondly, he knows well that his audience, as between the Furies and Apollo, have a strong bias in favour of the latter. The poet does acquit Orestes, but it is of the deepest importance in his eyes that we should not complacently regard the Furies as mere malicious fiends, routed by a gloriously contemptuous Olympian; the Furies may be wrong, perhaps, but _prima facie_ they have a terribly strong case. Therefore in the scene of the pleadings they at least hold their own. Apollo may be more right than they; he is emphatically not their superior, his personal fiat is not a spiritual sanction profounder than theirs. Neither party has got to the root of things. The Furies say: “This man shed the blood of a kinswoman; he must be for ever damned”. Apollo says: “He has not sinned, for Zeus bade him act thus”. The acquittal of Orestes is not the solution of this disagreement, it is but the beginning; we can hardly understand the dispute as yet. We thus come to the religious aspect of the _Eumenides_. Æschylus is of course too sincere to be satisfied, or to allow us to be satisfied, with the fact that Orestes actually escapes. His pursuers attack not the Argive prince only; much of their language is an indictment of Apollo, and ultimately of Zeus. It is very well for Apollo to revile them as “beasts detested by the gods,”[248] but the gods are themselves arraigned. The earth-powers stand for the principle that sin, especially bloodshed, must be punished; this demand is recognized as just by Athena,[249] and is not repudiated by Apollo. Yet Zeus, the Sovereign of all things, extends his hand over the man who has fallen under their sway by his act. How shall these claims be reconciled?