The best start in the attempt to understand Aeschylus is Professor F. M. Cornford's clearsighted explanation of his method. On the stage of Aeschylus, great forces are broadly symbolised, working, according to the Pythagorean scheme, through antagonism to a new harmony. It is also important to see the life-work of any great poet as a single process; Aeschylus solves problems in early plays, and afterwards surpasses them in more complex problems, which find their solutions in their turn. His material is a great range of political, moral, intellectual, and religious conflicts, all active in his own world. By symbolising them on the stage, he found a way from small things such as party quarrels to a sublime comprehension of the work of God and man, interacting together, within the framework of time. This is not so strange as it appears. The grandest and truest achievements of humanity often look like by-products.

I suggest that a poet may, and perhaps always does, first assimilate his world in time, and next create from that world a universe not limited to time and known actuality. A great poet's world is like ours, full of everyday things, but he likes them more, fascinated alike by the good and the evil. What he makes is not an everyday affair, but something more eternal. The transition from the poet's world to the poet's universe is like a transition from politics to religion and mysticism.