ABSTRACT
Tragedy created new possibilities for allusion: suggestive echoes could be multiplied, dispersed, and made to resonate in a poetic space extended far beyond the usual limits of polished lyric and pointed elegiac. Hints could be followed up and reinforced, shaped, and modified just as could the imagery internal to the play or even trilogy. Thus, extended or multiple allusions might seem a natural means for Aeschylus to use; but perhaps engaged in the labor of bringing tragedy from some primitive form into what we recognize as its classic shape, his creative energy was consumed in other matters. In any case, the three earliest plays we have from Aeschylus, the Persians, Seven Against Thebes, and the Suppliants, seem to fall together into a group in which allusion was of relatively little importance. Perhaps if we had any respectable portion of Aeschylus’ dramatic output we would see this as part of a general pattern. Certainly he was generally less given to borrowing Homeric phrases and formulae than Sophocles or Euripides. 1 However, with so few plays to judge by, we may simply be faced with coincidence. Very different from the early plays is the work which closes Aeschylus’ career, the Oresteia; yet like so much in Aeschylus, it is a special case in multiple ways: besides being late, it is also our only extant trilogy, and, unlike his other extant plays, it is explicitly concerned with the story of Troy. Some or all of these circumstances may help explain why the Homeric past more frequently finds its way into the poetry of the trilogy than into that of the earlier plays. There is, of course, a seventh play, the Prometheus Bound, which here is reserved for separate treatment. The allusions in the play are so extensive, so closely related to each other, and so important to the plot and themes of the play itself that they require more extensive examination.
