This new, but decidedly accurate interpretation of the Oresteia is one of the most beautiful and best passages in the whole book, but it proves at the same time that Bachofen himself believes as much in the Erinyes, in Apollo and in Athene, as Aeschylos did in his day. He really believes, that they performed the miracle of securing the downfall of maternal law through paternal law during the time of the Greek heroes. That a similar conception, representing religion as the main lever of the world's history, must finally lead to sheer mysticism, is evident. Therefore it is a troublesome and not always profitable task to work your way through the big volume of Bachofen. Still, all this does not curtail the value of his fundamental work. He was the first to replace the assumption of an unknown primeval condition of licentious sexual intercourse by the demonstration that ancient classical literature points out a multitude of traces proving the actual existence among Greeks and Asiatics of other sexual relations before monogamy. These relations not only permitted a man to have intercourse with several women, but also left a woman free to have sexual intercourse with several men without violating good morals. This custom did not disappear without leaving as a survival the form of a general surrender for a limited time by which women had to purchase the right of monogamy. Hence descent could originally only be traced by the female line, from mother to mother. The sole legality of the female line was preserved far into the time of monogamy with assured, or at least acknowledged, paternity. Consequently, the original position of the mothers as the sole absolutely certain parents of their children secured for them and for all other women a higher social level than they have ever enjoyed since. Although Bachofen, biased by his mystic conceptions, did not formulate these propositions so clearly, still he proved their correctness. This was equivalent to a complete revolution in 1861. Bachofen's big volume was written In German, i. e., in the language of a nation that cared less than any other of its time for the history of the present family. Therefore he remained unknown. The man next succeeding him in the same field made his appearance in 1865 without having ever heard of Bachofen.