aut famam sequere aut sibi convenientia finge, he could have followed one or other of two possible courses: On the one hand he could have simply dramatised the Homeric story in its original setting, thus giving us what would be called an ‘historical drama,’ or, on the other hand, he could have invented a ‘drama’ in which the facts, the names and the characters alone were Homeric, but the ideas, the viewpoints, the legal and religious atmosphere were derived from contemporary life. If Aeschylus had chosen the former course he could not have produced a trilogy such as we now possess: the _Eumenides_ at least would have been impossible: he could, however, have written the _Agamemnon_, and a _Choephoroe_ somewhat similar to, though also somewhat different from, our present play, as both these dramas are Homeric in their main outlook. Again, if we suppose that Aeschylus chose the second course, the _Agamemnon_ would still have been possible: but the _Choephoroe_ would have been unrecognisable—in fact, there could not have been a _Choephoroe_ at all: Orestes could not have been regarded as the sole or proper agent of execution: if he slew his mother without trial, or without having given her the option of exile, he would have been a State criminal, liable to prosecution as a matricide or a violator of civic law. The _Eumenides_ would also, in this hypothesis, have been very different. There could not have been any doubt regarding Orestes’ guilt or the verdict of the court: there could not have been any conflict between Apollo and the Erinnyes. There could, in short, have been no _Eumenides_ drama worthy of the name. We may therefore, as a result of this reasoning, and from the actual nature of the extant Oresteian trilogy, infer that there must have existed a post-Homeric pre-Aeschylean legend, or legends, of Orestes which predetermined the Aeschylean presentation of the story. These legends, by combining very different reflections in the course of legal and religious developments, created the moral and the legal problems of the Oresteia. It was probably these problems which constituted, for the litigiously minded Athenian people, the main dramatic interest of the _Eumenides_, if not also of the _Choephoroe_. But that interest was purchased at the cost of obscurity and confusion. It is, for instance, quite inconsistent for Aeschylus to have represented the trial of Orestes as the first Greek trial[77] of homicide and at the same time to have conceived Orestes as guilty of bloodshed: for it was at the precise moment at which State trial and State execution came into being that Orestes became a criminal! Before that moment he was simply the normal avenger of blood. This inconsistency is, we think, a proof that the Aeschylean story was not his own invention: for if Aeschylus had invented it, it would not have contained so many inconsistencies. On the other hand, inconsistency would naturally