AESCHYLUS AND ATHENS

He competed first in 499--against Choerilos and Pratinas, older
poets--and was defeated; and soon afterwards sailed for Sicily,
where he remained for seven years. The dates of Pythagoras are
surmised, not known; Plumptre, with a query, gives 497 for his
death. I wonder whether, in the last years of his life, that
great Teacher met this young Aeschylus from Athens; whether the
years the latter spent in Sicily on this his first visit there,
were the due seven years of his Pythagorean probation and
initiation? "Veniat Aeschylus," says Cicero, "non poeta solum,
sed etiam Pythagoreus: sic enim accepimus ";--and we may accept
it too; for that was the Theosophical Movement of the age;
and he above all others, Pythagoras having died, was the great
Theosophist. They had the Eleusinian Mysteries at Athens, and
Most of the prominent Athenians must have been initiated
into them--since that was the State Religion; but Aeschylus
alone in Athens went through life clothed in the living power
of Theosophy.

Go to the life of such a man, if you want big clues as to the
inner history of his age;--the life of Aeschylus, I think, can
interpret for us that of Athens. There are times when the
movement of the cycles is accelerated, and you can see the
great wheel turning; this was one. Aeschylus had proudly
distinguished himself at Marathon; and Athens, as the highest
honor she could do him for that, must have his portrait appear in
the battle-picture painted for a memorial of the victory. He
fought, too, at Artemisium and Salamis; with equal distinction.
In 484 he won the first of thirteen annual successes in the
dramatic competitions. These were the years during which Athens
was really playing the hero; the years of Aristides' ascendency.
In 480 Xerxes burned the city; but the people fought on,
great in faith. In 479 came Plataea, Aeschylus again fighting.
Throughout this time, he, the Esotericist and Messenger of the
Gods, was wholly at one with his Athens--an Athens alive enough
then to the higher things to recognize the voice of the highest
when it spoke to her--to award Aeschylus, year after year, the
chief dramatic prize. Then in 478 or 477 she found herself in a
new position: her heroism and intelligence had won their reward,
and she was set at the head of Greece. Six years later Aeschylus
produced _The Persians,_ the first of the seven extant out of the
seventy or eighty plays he wrote; in it he is still absolutely
the patriotic Athenian. In 471 came the _Seven against Thebes;_
from which drama, I think, we get a main current of light on the
whole future history of Athens.

Two men, representing two forces, had guided the city during
those decades. On the one hand there was Aristides, called the
Just--inflexible, incorruptible, impersonal and generous; on the
other, Themistocles--precocious and wild as a boy; profligate as
a youth and young man; ambitious, unscrupulous and cruel; a
genius; a patriot; without moral sense. The policy of Aristides,
despite his so-called democratic reforms, was conservative; he
persuaded Greece, by sound arguments, to the side of Athens: he
was for Athens doing her duty by Greece, and remaining content.
That of Themistocles was that she should aim at empire by any
means: should make herself a sea-power with a view to dominating
the Greek world.

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