s.]

[Footnote 169: Mueller, "Science of Language," p. 434.]

The Greek tragedians were the great religious instructors of the
Athenian people. "Greek tragedy grew up in connection with religious
worship, and constituted not only a popular but a sacred element in the
festivals of the gods.... In short, strange as it may sound to modern
ears, the Greek stage was, more nearly than any thing else, the Greek
pulpit.[170] With a priesthood that offered sacrifice, but did not
preach, with few books of any kind, the people were, in a great measure,
dependent on oral instruction for knowledge; and as they learned their
rights and duties as citizens from their orators, so they hung on the
lips of the 'lofty, grave tragedians' for instruction touching their
origin, duty, and destiny as mortal and immortal beings.... Greek
tragedy is essentially didactic, ethical, mythological, and
religious."[171]

[Footnote 170: Pulpitum, a stage.]

[Footnote 171: Tyler, "Theology of Greek Poets," pp. 205, 206.]

Now it is unquestionable that, with the tragedians, Zeus is the Supreme
God. AEschylus is pre-eminently the theological poet of Greece. The great
problems which lie at the foundation of religious faith and practice are
the main staple of nearly all his tragedies. Homer, Hesiod, the sacred
poets, had looked at these questions in their purely poetic aspects. The
subsequent philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, developed them more fully
by their didactic method. AEschylus stands on the dividing-line between
them, no less poetic than the former, scarcely less philosophical than
the latter, but more intensely practical, personal, and _theological_
than either. The character of the Supreme Divinity, as represented in
his tragedies, approaches more nearly to the Christian idea of God. He
is the Universal Father--Father of gods and men; the Universal Cause
(panaitios, Agamem. 1485); the All-seer and All-doer (pantopies,
panergetes, ibid, and Sup. 139); the All-wise and All-controlling
(pankrates, Sup. 813); the Just and the Executor of justice (dikephoros,
Agamem. 525); true and incapable of falsehood (Prom. 1031);

pseudegorein gar ouk epistatai stoma
to dion, alla pan epos telei,--

holy (agnos, Sup. 650); merciful (preumenes, ibid. 139); the God
especially of the suppliant and the stranger (Supplices, passim); the
most high and perfect One (teleion upsiston, Eumen. 28); King of kings,
of the happy, most happy, of the perfect,