Note (return) — Chapter XV

The office and work which, in this trilogy, is assigned to Jove's son, Apollo, must strike every reader as at least a remarkable resemblance, if not a foreshadowing of the Christian doctrine of reconciliation. "This becomes yet more striking when we bring into view the relation in which this reconciling work stands to Ζεὺς Σωτήρ, Jupiter Saviour--Ζεὺς τρίτος, Jupiter the third, who, in connection with Apollo and Athena, consummates the reconciliation. Not only is Apollo a Σωτήρ, a Saviour, who, having himself been exiled from heaven among men, will pity the poor and needy; 951 not only does Athena sympathize with the defendant at her tribunal, and, uniting the office of advocate and judge, persuade the avenging deities to be appeased; 952 but Zeus is the beginning and end of the whole process. Apollo appears as the advocate of Orestes only at her bidding; 953 Athena inclines to the side of the accused, as the offspring of the brain of Zeus, and of like mind with him." 954 Orestes, after his acquittal, says that he obtained it