In Æschylus the fundamental moral law of Nemesis, as a part of the divine government of the world, is set forth in three distinct manifestations. We find it expressed mythologically, as abstract and ideal, in the _Prometheus_. The offence of Prometheus against Zeus, though unselfish and generous, must be expiated by suffering; the rebellious demi-god must be brought at last to merge his will in that of Zeus, to bind his brows with the willow of submission, and to place upon his finger the iron ring of necessity. We find it expressed typically, as still ideal and almost superhuman, in the _Oresteia_. Here a whole family is vitiated by the offence of their first ancestor. The hereditary curse is renewed and fortified from generation to generation, by the sins of the children, until at last a reconciliation is effected between the purifying deities and the infernal powers of vengeance. In the _Persæ_ the same law is exhibited as a fact of contemporary history. It is no longer a matter of mythology, as in the _Prometheus_, or a matter of heroic legend, as in the _Oresteia_, but a matter of actual experience, that the godless man should suffer and involve the innocent in his disaster. Thus the law of Nemesis is displayed as an eternal verity in the _Prometheus_; and in the _Oresteia_ it is actualized and humanized within the region of heroic legend; in the _Persæ_ it is used for the explanation of every-day events. The pedigree of inherited crime and vengeance, as explained in the choruses of the _Oresteia_, and as illustrated by the whole history of the Tantalidæ, is this.[2] The pride of wealth in the first instance swells the heart, and inclines its possessor to ungodly thoughts. This leads to impiety (#to dyssebes#), and in the energetic language of the _Agamemnon_[3] the arrogant man kicks with his heel against the altar of Justice. A state of presumptuous insolence (#hybris#) is the result of the original unholiness. And now the man, who has been corrupted in his soul, is ready for the commission of some signal crime. Ate, or a blindness of the reason, which prevents him from foreseeing the consequences of his acts, is the child of this presumption. Inspired by Ate, he sheds the blood of his brother, or defiles his sister's bed; and from this moment the seed is sown which will spring up and breed fresh mischief for each successive generation. After the spilling of blood the affair passes into the hands of the Erinnyes, whose business it is to beset the house of the guilty doer. They form the bloody revel, which, though glutted with gore, refuse to quit the palace of Atreus. They leap upon it from above, and rack it like a tempest. Yet from their power there is escape. The curse of the house works; but it works only through the impure. Should a man arise capable of seeing rightly and living purely, he may work off the curse and become free. Such a man was Orestes. The leading thought in this