o
every person and every thing connected with them. "The country and the
country's gods are polluted."[944] "The army and the people share in the
curse."[945] "The earth itself is polluted with the shedding of
blood,"[946] "and even the innocent and the virtuous who share the
enterprises of the wicked may be involved in their ruin, as the pious
man must sink with the ungodly when he embarks in the same ship."[947]

[Footnote 938: Tyler, "Theology of the Greek Poets," p. 258.]

[Footnote 938: AEschylus, "Persae," l. 821.]

[Footnote 940: "Agamemnon," l. 763.]

[Footnote 941: Ibid., l. 788.]

[Footnote 942: Ibid., l. 1529.]

[Footnote 943: Ibid., l. 1397.]

[Footnote 944: Ibid., l. 1645.]

[Footnote 945: "Persae," _passim._]

[Footnote 946: "Sup.," 265.]

[Footnote 947: "Theb.," p. 602.]

The pollution and curse of sin, when once contracted by an individual,
or entailed upon a family, will rest upon them and pursue them till the
polluted individual or the hated and accursed race is extinct, unless in
some way the sin can be expiated, or some god interpose to arrest the
penalty. The criminal must die by the hand of justice, and even in Hades
vengeance will still pursue him.[948] Others may in time be washed away
by ablutions, worn away by exile and pilgrimage, and expiated by
offerings of blood.[949] But great crimes can not be washed away; "For
what expiation is there for blood when once it has fallen on the
ground."[950] Thus the law (_[Greek: nomos]_)--for so it is expressly
called--as from an Attic Sinai, rolls its reverberating thunders, and
pronounces its curses upon sin, from act to act and from chorus to
chorus of that grand trilogy--the "Agamemnon," the "Choephoroe," and the
"Eumenides."

[Footnote 948: "Sup.," l. 227.]

[Footnote 949: "Eum.," l. 445 seq.]

[Footnote 950: "Choeph.," l. 47.]

But after the law comes the gospel. First the controversy, then the
reconciliation. A dim consciousness of sin and retribution as a fact,
and of reconciliation as a _want_, seems to have revealed itself even in
the darkest periods of history. This consciousness underlies not a few
of the Greek tragedies. "The 'Prometheus Bound' was followed by the
'Prometheus Unbound,' reconciled and restored through the intervention
of Jove's son. The 'oedipus Tyrannus' of Sophocles was completed by the
'oedipus Colonus,' where he dies in peace amid tokens of divine favor.
And so the 'Agamemnon' and 'Choephoroe' reach thei