But Apollo had commanded the deed, so that the father's
murder should not remain unavenged.
Not to the mother is the child indebted
For life; she tends and guards the kindling spark
The father lighted; she but holds his pledge.----
he explains. And the answer is the lament of the Erinnys:
Thus thou destroy'st the gods of ancient times!
Athene, the virgin goddess, the motherless daughter of Zeus, appearing
as mediator between the opponents, decides in favour of the new
dispensation which places the father's claim above the mother's. Orestes
is free of guilt; his deed was justifiable according to the canons of
the new law. The tragedy is the symbolical commemoration of the victory
of the male principle in Greece. But Athene is the embodiment of the new
hermaphroditic ideal of the Greek which stood in close connexion to
their homosexuality, and with which I propose to deal later on.
There is a psychical law ordaining that nothing which has ever quickened
the soul of man shall be entirely lost.
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