The main theme of the _Eumenides_ is the trial, at the Athenian Areopagus, of the Argive Orestes who had slain at Argos his mother and her paramour, and who upon acquittal returns to Argos to occupy the throne of his murdered father. We admit that the exaltation of the Areopagus is one of the motives of the dramatist. There is much to be said for the view of Blass[36] that the conflict between Apollo and the Furies made this ‘divine drama’ worthy of Athenian interest. But we maintain that Aeschylus would not have selected such a theme for presentation to an Athenian audience, if it had not also contained a difficult legal problem which was calculated to thrill the emotions of those litigious men of Athens who were at once judges, litigants and legislators. The play was produced at the time of the curtailment of the powers of the Areopagus by Pericles and by Ephialtes. Aeschylus suggests[37] that it was this Council which held the first trial for bloodshed in a barbarian world. In this view there is no protest against the reform of Ephialtes, for such a reform seemed to recognise that homicide-trial was the sole and proper function of the Areopagus. Whether the play was produced before or after this reform it is impossible to say. Bury holds[38] that the play is not a protest after the event, that, on the contrary, Aeschylus approved of the reform. Other scholars maintain, however, that Aeschylus was opposed to democratic interference with the established privileges of an ancient Council, and that he left Athens on this account and died in Sicily of a broken heart.[39] Our reading of the play inclines us to support the view of Jevons which will be manifest from the following extract[40]: ‘The _Eumenides_,’ he says, ‘was produced in 458 B.C. ... at a time of great political excitement in Athens. The oligarchical party had just been defeated on both their foreign and their home policy. Their foreign policy was alliance with Sparta.[41] The home policy consisted in opposing such changes in the constitution as would give more power to the people, and at this time also consisted particularly in supporting the powers and privileges of the Areopagus against the attacks of the democratic party.... The democrats under Ephialtes succeeded in depriving the Areopagus of its political powers, leaving to it only the right of trying cases of homicide....[42] The _Eumenides_ is sometimes said to be a panegyric on the Areopagus and sometimes even to have been a call to all good men to join in preserving to it the political powers which it had long enjoyed. But it is probable that the _Eumenides_ was produced after the reforms of Ephialtes: and as Aeschylus represents the Aeropagus to have been founded to try cases of homicide, the very class of cases which Ephialtes left to it, it is more reasonable to regard the play as having been intended to reconcile those who strove for the preservation of the political powers of the Areopagus to the new state of things