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166 Introduction
logically convincing reasons, and with him justice seems to have been
tempered with mercy. Orestes leaves the scene almost immediately, but
the play continues, and it is in this closing passage that Aeschylus gives
the final resolution to his problem. There are no human characters left,
which suggests the idea that Aeschylus has used his human story merely
to provide illustrative material for his analysis of the central issue. The
Furies, who in their choral songs throughout the play have expressed
themselves as uncompromising instruments of Fate and of divine vengeance—"an
eye for an eye"—are won over by Athena, and mysteriously
and mystically become Goddesses of Mercy. Aeschylus' resolution then
is mystical and in a strange sense supra-rational. Its power is like in kind
to and of the same order as that in the Book of Job when the Voice from
the Whirlwind speaks. At the end of the Oresteia Aeschylus gives us a
conception of a godhead which is at once merciful and just, in which both
"Zeus" and "Fate" are fused, through whose wisdom man by suffering
can achieve wisdom. 1
1 A. W. Verrall in the introduction to his text of The Eumenides has developed at
some length this interpretation of the play's conclusion.
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