If we ask why men are so blind, seeking their welfare thus through
incessant evil, Aeschylus will tell us that the cause lies in the
infection of old sin, old cruelty. There is no doubt somewhere a
_[Greek: prôtarchos hAtê ]_, a "first blind deed of wrong," but in
practice every wrong is the result of another. And the Children of Atreus
are steeped to the lips in them. When the prophetess Cassandra, out of her
first vague horror at the evil House, begins to grope towards some
definite image, first and most haunting comes the sound of the weeping of
two little children, murdered long ago, in a feud that was not theirs.
From that point, more than any other, the Daemon or Genius of the
House--more than its "Luck," a little less than its Guardian
Angel--becomes an Alastor or embodied Curse, a "Red Slayer" which cries
ever for peace and cleansing, but can seek them only in the same blind
way, through vengeance, and, when that fails, then through more vengeance
(p. 69).

This awful conception of a race intent upon its own wrongs, and blindly
groping towards the very terror it is trying to avoid, is typified, as it
were, in the Cassandra story. That daughter of Priam was beloved by
Apollo, who gave her the power of true prophecy. In some way that we know
not, she broke her promise to the God; and, since his gift could not be
recalled, he added to it the curse that, while she should always foresee
and foretell the truth, none should believe her. The Cassandra scene is a
creation beyond praise or criticism. The old scholiast speaks of the "pity
and amazement" which it causes. The Elders who talk with her wish to
believe, they try to understand, they are really convinced of Cassandra's
powers. But the curse is too strong. The special thing which Cassandra
tries again and again to say always eludes them, and they can raise no
finger to prevent the disaster happening. And when it does happen they