The solution of Æschylus is not unlike that which (it appears) he offered at the end of the Prometheus-trilogy. We are to imagine that we witness the events of a time when Zeus himself has not attained to full stature. His face is set towards the perfection of righteousness, but development awaits even him. In the instance of Orestes, the jar between Furies and Apollo, or more ultimately between the earth-powers and Zeus, shows that neither party is perfectly right. None the less, it is essential that there should be but one master of the universe, and the Furies are compelled to submit. But Æschylus does not lay down his pen at this point; nothing does he avoid more carefully than an ending which might appear as desirable as obvious to a vulgar playwright, some showy tableau of grovelling fiends and triumphant goddess. The Furies themselves look for nothing less than moral annihilation[250] as the result of defeat. But something of which they have never dreamed—of which, probably, no Greek in the theatre has dreamed—is in store for them; neither victory nor defeat, but recognition by the power to which they have been forced to bow, assimilation to that religion from which they have kept themselves so jealously sundered. They are still to be mighty powers of earth, yet their function is to be cursing no more, but blessing only. But is this a solution at all? Is it enough to hint at the thunderbolt, to offer a bribe of power and worship that the Furies may forget their rage against Attica?[251] What is to become of their function as inflexible champions of righteousness, which has been the moral safeguard of men? This duty the goddesses leave as a legacy to the newly-formed court of chosen Athenians:—[252] τὸ μήτ’ ἄναρχον μήτε δεσποτούμενον ἀστοῖς περιστέλλουσι βουλεύω σέβειν καὶ μὴ τὸ δεινὸν πᾶν πόλεως ἔξω βαλεῖν.[253]