‘O Justice, O ye thrones Of the Erinyes,’ and chant the doom that awaits the transgressor in general; but the circumstances of the plot compel a speedy return within narrower limits. THE TRAGIC ERINYES. The Erinyes in Homer are terrors unseen: Homer who lends to his Olympians such clear human outlines has no embodied shape for these underworld Angry Ones; he knows full well what they do, but not how they look. But Aeschylus can indulge in no epic vagueness. He has to bring his Erinyes in flesh and blood actually on the stage; he must make up his mind what and who they are. Fortunately at this point we are not left with a mere uncertain stage tradition or the statements of late scholiasts and lexicographers. From Aeschylus himself we know with unusual precision how his Erinyes appeared on the stage. The priestess has seen within the temple horrible things; she staggers back in terror to give—for her horror-stricken state—a description remarkably explicit. The exact order of her words is important[580]: ‘Fronting the man I saw a wondrous band Of women, sleeping on the seats. But no! No women these, but Gorgons—yet methinks I may not liken them to Gorgon-shapes. Once on a time I saw those pictured things That snatch at Phineus’ feast, but these, but these Are wingless—black, foul utterly. They snore, Breathing out noisome breath. From out their eyes They ooze a loathly rheum.’ The whole manner of the passage arrests attention at once. Why is Aeschylus so unusually precise and explicit? Why does he make the priestess midway in her terror give this little archaeological lecture on the art-types of Gorgons and Harpies? The reason is a simple one; the Erinyes _as Erinyes_ appear for the first time in actual definite shape. Up to the time when Aeschylus brought them on the stage, no one, if he had been asked what an Erinys was like, could have given any definite answer; they were unseen horrors which art up to that time had never crystallized into set form. The priestess is literally correct when she says[581]: ‘This race of visitants ne’er have I seen.’