List of Editions, Commentaries, and Translations — Used by the Translator
Editions of the whole Plays.
Aldus: Venet, 1518.
Victorius: ex officina Stephani; 1557.
Foulis: Glasguæ; 1746.
Schütz: 2 vols. Oxon.; 1810.
Butler: Cantab.; 1809-16, ex editione Stanleii; 4 vols. 4to.
Wellauer: cum. Lexico. Lipsiæ; 1823-31.
Scholefield: Cantab.; 1828.
Paley: Cantab.; 1844-47. 2 vols. 8vo.
Editions of the Separate Plays.
THE AGAMEMNON.
Blomfield: Cantab.; 1822.
Kennedy (with an English version, and Voss, German one). Dublin; 1829.
Klausen: Gothæ et Erfordiæ; 1833.
Peile. London: Murray; 1839.
Connington (with an English poetical version). London; 1848.
Franz: with the Choephoræ and the Eumenides, and a German metrical translation. Leipzig; 1849.
CHOEPHORÆ.
Schwenk: Trajecti ad Rhenum; 1819.
Klausen: Gothæ et Erfordiæ; 1835.
Peile. London: Murray; 1844.
EUMENIDES.
K. O. Müller (with a German translation). Göttingen; 1833: and Anhang; 1834.
Linwood: Oxon.; 1844.
PROMETHEUS.
Bothe: Lipsiæ; 1830.
G. C. W. Schneider. Weimar; 1834.
Schoemann (with a German translation). Greifswald; 1844.
THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES.
Blomfield. Cantab.; 1817.
G. C. W. Schneider. Weimar; 1834.
Griffith. Oxford.
THE PERSIANS.
Blomfield. Cantab; 1815.
G. C. W. Schneider. Weimar; 1837.
Commentaries, Dissertations, Monograms, &c.
Apparatus Criticus et Exegeticus in Æschyli tragædias; continens Stanleii commentarium, Abreschii animadersiones, et Reisigii emendationes in Prometheum. 2 vols. 8vo. Halis Saxonum; 1832.
Linwood: lexicon to Æschylus, 2nd edition. London; 1847.
Blümner: Weber die Idee des Schicksals in den Tragoedien des Æschylus. Leipzig; 1814.
Welcker: Die Æschyleische Trilogie. Darmstadt; 1824.
Hermanni Opuscula: 6 vols. 8vo., Latin and German. Leipzig; 1827-35.
Unger: Thebana Paradoxa. Halis; 1839.
Klausen: Theologoumena Æschyli. Berolini; 1829.
Toepelmann: Commentatio de Æschyli Prometheo (with a German translation). Lipsiæ; 1829.
B. G. Weiske: Prometheus und sein Mythenkreis. Leipzig; 1842.
Schoemann: Vindiciæ Jovis Æeschylei. Gryphiswaldiæ; 1846.
Translations.
Potter: English verse, 4to. Norwich; 1777.
Anon.: English prose (marked in my notes E. P. Oxon), 3rd edition. Oxford; 1840.
Droysen: German verse, 2nd edition. Berlin; 1842.
T. A. Buckley: English prose. London: 1849.
Wilhelm von Humboldt: Agamemnon metrisch übersetzt. Leipzig; 1816.
Symmons: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1824.
Harford: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1831.
Th. Medwyn: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1832.
Sewell: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1846.
Schoemann: die Eumeniden, German verse. Greifswald; 1845.
Th. Medwyn: the Prometheus, in English verse. London; 1832.
Prowett: the Prometheus, in English verse. Cambridge; 1846.
Swayne: the Prometheus, in English verse. London; 1846.
C. P. Conz: die Perser, and die Sieben vor Tüebae. Tübingen; 1817.
Footnotes
Footnotes to the Preface
Life, Vol. I. p. 192.
Southey requested a Frenchman ambitious of translating his Roderick, to do so in prose, not because he preferred that method in general, but because he believed that “poetry of the higher order is as impossible in French, as it is in Chinese!”—Life, Vol. IV. p. 100.
Life, Vol. III. p. 44.
Southey—Preface to A Vision of Judgment.
As for Klopstock’s Odes, written mostly in classical metres, Zelter, the Berlin musician, said significantly that, when reading them, he felt as if he were eating stones!—See Briefwechsel mit Goethe.
Τὸ μὲν γὰρ πρῶτον τετραμετρῳ εχρῶντο διὰ τὸ σατυρικὴν καὶ ὀρχηστκωτέραν (ἐ)ιναι τὴν ποίησιν.
Poet. 4.
As in the conclusion of the Agamemnon, when the passion of the interested parties has wrought itself up to a climax. So in the passionate dialogue between Eteocles and Polynices, in Eurip. Phœnis. 591. The use of the Trochees in these passages is thus precisely the same as that of the Anapæsts in the finale of the Prometheus. In the Persians, they serve to give an increased dignity to the person of Atossa, and the Shade of the royal Darius.
“Take our blank verse for all in all, in all its gradations from the elaborate rhythm of Milton, down to its lowest structure in the early dramatists, and I believe that there is no measure comparable to it, either in our own or in any other language, for might and majesty, flexibility and compass.”—Southey, Preface to the Vision of Judgment. What Bulwer says to the contrary (Athens and the Athenians, vol. II. p. 43), was crudely thought, or idly spoken, and unworthy of so great a genius.
Eumenides, § 16.
See Aristides and the musical writers; also Dionysius. Consider, also, what a solemnity Plutarch attributes to the ἐμβατηριος παιων of the Spartans (Lycurg. 22), which, of course, was either Dactylic or Anapæstic verse. Altogether, there can be no greater mistake than to imagine that our Dactylic and Anapæstic verse are the æsthetical equivalents of the ancient measures from which their names are borrowed. They are, in many parts of my translation, rather the equivalent of Dochmiac verse; and this, in obedience to the uniform practice of our highest poets, in passages of high passion and excitement.
Mitchell (Aristoph. Ran. v. 1083) has remarked, with justice, that Æschylus is particularly fond of this verse. I was prevented from using it so often as might have been desirable in the choric odes, from having made it the representative of the Anapæsts.
On the Dochmiacs, Ionic a minori, and other rhythmical details, the reader will find occasional observations in the Notes; and those who are curious in those matters will find my views on some points more fully stated in Classical Museum, No. III. p. 338; No. XIII. p. 319, and No. XXII. p. 432. The Dochmiac verse was, in fact, equivalent to a bar of 9/8 in modern music.—See Apel’s Metrik.
The corrupt state of the Æschylean text is no doubt to be attributed mainly to the rhetorical taste which, in the ages of the decadence, prevailed so long at Rome, Athens, Alexandria, and Byzantium, and which naturally directed the attention of transcribers to the text of Euripides, the great master of tongue-fence and the model-poet of the schools.—See Quinctil. X. 1.
Footnotes to on the Genius and Character of the Greek Tragedy
There is a prevalent idea that the modern Greek language, or Romaic, as it is called, is a different language from the ancient Greek, pretty much in the same way that Italian is different from Latin. But this is a gross mistake. Greek was and is one unbroken living language, and ought to be taught as such.
Whiston, Article Tragedy in Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities, Second Edition; and Donaldson in the Greek Theatre, Sixth Edition. London: 1849. P. 30.
Γενομένη ἀπ ἀρχῆς ἀυτοσχεδιαστικὴ ἡ τραγῳδία ἀπὸ τῶν ἐξαρχόντων τὸν διθύραμβον κατὰ μικρον ἠυξήθη.—Aristot. poet. 4.—Compare the words of the old Iambic poet Archilochus, given by Athenaeus (XIV. p. 628)—“I know well how to dance the Dithyramb when the wine thunders dizzily through my brain!” The word Dithyramb, according to the best etymology which has come in my way (Donaldson & Hartung), means the revel of the god.
Αρίον τὸν Μηθυμναῖον πρῶτον ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν ποιήσαντα τε καὶ ὀνομάσαντα και διδάξαντα τὸν διθύραμβον ἐν Κορίνθῳ.—Herod. I. 23. Compare Suidas in voce Arion, and Schol. Pindar., Olymp. XIII. 25.
Διθύραμβος (ο)ς ᾖν κύκλιος χορός.—Schol., Pindar, as above.
χορὸς ᾿εστὼς κυκλικῶς.—Tzetzes. Proleg. to Lycophron.
Hartung, on the Dithyramb.—Classical Museum, No. XVIII. p. 373. Mure’s literature of ancient Greece.—Vol. III., p. 85.
The number fifty is mentioned in the Epigram of Simonides, beginning ἠρχεν Αδείμαντος, in the above-mentioned prologue of Tzetzes, and in Pollux, Lib. iv., 15, who says that this number of the Chorus was used even by Æschylus up to the time when the Eumenides was represented. The number twelve is commonly mentioned by other authorities as having been used by Æschylus, while Sophocles is said to have increased it to fifteen, which afterwards became the standard number. Müller (Eumenides) ingeniously supposes that the tragic poets, so long as the exhibition by tetralogies lasted, got the original number of fifty from the public authorities, and divided it among the different pieces of the tetralogy. Blomfield’s notion (Preface to the Persae) that the Chorus to the Eumenides consisted of only three persons, though a kind word has been said in its favour lately (Mason in Smith’s Dict. of Antiq. voce Chorus), deserves, in my opinion, not a moment’s consideration, either on philological or æsthetical grounds. I may mention here further, for the sake of those to whom these matters are strange, that the Chorus holds communication with the other characters in a Greek play generally by means of its Coryphaeus or Leader, which is the reason why it is often addressed in the singular and not in the plural number.
Vit. Philos. III. 34. It will be observed that, if a third actor appears on the stage in some parts of the Orestean trilogy, this is to be accounted for by the supposition that, in his later plays, the poet adopted the improvements which his young rival had first introduced. The number of actors here spoken of does not, of course, take into account mutes or supernumeraries, such as we find in great numbers in the Eumenides, and more or less almost in every extant piece of Æschylus.
Poetics, c. xiii.
Wilson, Vol. I. p. xxvi.
Twining; but the meaning of the Greek is disputed.
“ἡ μελοποίια, μέγιστον τῶν ἡδυσμάτων.”—Poetics, c. vi. The success of the modern Italian opera in England, proves this in a style of which Aristotle could have had no conception.
The position of the old Theban senators, who form the Chorus in this play, has called forth not a little learned gladiatorship lately; Böckh (whose opinion on all such matters is entitled to the profoundest respect) maintaining that the Chorus is the impersonated wisdom of the play as conceived in the poet’s mind, while some of his critics (Dyer in Class. Mus. Vol. II. p. 69) represent them as a pack of cowardly sneaking Thebans, whom it was the express object of the poet to make ridiculous. This latter opinion is no more tenable than it would be to say that it was the object of Æschylus to make his Chorus of old men in that noted scene of the Agamemnon ridiculous; but so much truth there certainly is in it, that from the inherent defect of structure in the Greek tragedy, consisting in the constant presence of the Chorus in the double capacity of impartial moralizers and actors after a sort, there could not but arise this awkwardness to the poet that, while he always contrived to make them speak wisely, he sometimes could not prevent them from acting weakly, and even contemptibly.
On the dramatic imbecility of Euripides, see my article in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. XLVIII. His success as a dramatist is the strongest possible proof of the undramatic nature of the stage for which he wrote.
See the article Dionysia, by Dr. Schmitz, in Smith’s Dictionary of Antiq.
The same doctrine, I am sorry to see, has been repeated with special reference to Æschylus, and with very little qualification, by Whiston in the article Tragædia in Dr. Smith’s Dict. Antiq., 2d Edit., p. 1146. Schlegel is quite wrong, when he says “the Greek gods are mere Naturmächte”—physical or elemental powers. Connington, however, in the preface to his Agamemnon, expresses exactly my sentiments, when he protests against a “crystallization of destiny” being set up “as the presiding genius of the national dramatic literature of the Greeks.”
See the works of Klausen and Blumner in the List of Editions. And our English Sewell recognizes, in the works of Æschylus, “the voice of a self-constituted Heathen Church protesting against the vices and follies that surrounded her.”—Preface to the Agamemnon, p. 15.
Cicero pro Muræna, 13.
Αισχύλος πολλὰ σχήματα ὸρχηστικὰ ἀυτος ὲξευρίσκων, ἀνεδίδου τοῖς χορευταῖς.—Lib. I. p. 22.
See Dyer, on the Choral Dancing of the Greeks,—Classical Museum, No. IX. p. 229.
Böckh and Donaldson, in their editions of the Antigone. Berlin, 1843, p. 280. London, 1848. Introduction, p. xxix.
I read ἐισόδῳ, not (ε)ξόδῳ, as it is in Matthiae, which is either a misprint, or a mistake in the writer, as the quotation immediately following proves.
This is Müller’s view in Eumenides, § 21.
It may be as well here, for the sake of some readers, to remark that the orchestra, or dancing place (for so the word means), was that part of the ancient theatre which corresponds to the modern Pit. For a minute description of the ancient stage, the reader must consult Donaldson’s Greek Theatre, c. VII.
One of the most striking proofs of this is the many instances that occur in the tragedians of that most undramatic of all mannerisms—self-description—as when a sorrowful Chorus describes the tears on its cheek, the beating on its breast, and such like. True grief never paints itself.
Bulwer, in Athens and the Athenians.
From the limited number of actors arose necessarily this evil, that the persons in a Greek dramatic fable appear not cotemporaneously, but in succession, one actor necessarily playing several parts. Now, the commonest fabricator of a novel for the circulating library knows how necessary it is to keep up a sustained interest, that the character, when once introduced, shall not be allowed to drop out of view, but be dexterously intermingled with the whole complex progress of the story, and be felt as necessary, or at least as agreeable, to the very end.
Writers on Belles Lettres, from Trapp down to Schlegel, have been very severe on the modern opera, and indignantly repudiated all comparison between it and the Greek tragedy. It is a common illusion of mental optics with the learned to magnify the defects of what is near and before their nose, while the peculiar excellencies of what is far distant in time or space are in a corresponding degree exalted. So Schlegel, in his sublime German zeal against certain shallow judgments of Voltaire and other French critics, worked himself up into an idealized enthusiasm for some of the most glaring imperfections of the Greek stage, while in the modern opera he only sees the absurdities of the real. In assuming this tone he has, of course, been imitated by certain persons of little speculation in this country, who have thought it necessary slavishly to worship the Germans in all things, merely because certain other persons of no speculation ignorantly despised them. With regard to the opera, it is plain enough that it differs from the ancient tragedy in the following points:—(1) In not being essentially of a religious character; (2) in not varying the musical with the declamatory element; (3) in dealing more in monody, and less in choral singing; (4) in using the Chorus freely, according to the nature of the action, and not being always encumbered with it; (5) in making the mere musical element so predominate that poets of the first order seldom condescend to employ their talents in writing the text for an opera. All these special differences, however, do not mar the propriety of the general comparison between an ancient “goat-song” and a modern opera, justified, as it is, plainly by the common musical element which both contain in different degrees of prominence. In point of high moral tone, high poetic diction, and noble conception, the ancient lyrical drama is no doubt vastly superior to the modern opera; but in some other points, as in the more free and adroit use of the Chorus, the opera is as much superior to the goat-song. With respect to the Chorus in particular, Schlegel has said many things that look very wise, but are simply not true. The Chorus is only half described (see above, p. 20), when it is called the “ideal spectator.” What he says about publicity is mere talk. There is no other reason for the presence of the Chorus than because it was originally the essential part of the performance, and could not but be to the end the most popular.
Footnotes to the Life of Æschylus
“Æschylus used to say that his tragedies were only slices cut from the great banquet of Homeric dainties.”—Athenæus, VIII. p. 348.
In the Frogs (v. 886), Aristophanes makes him show at once the religiousness of his character, and its source, in the two lines of invocation—
“O thou that nourished my young soul, Demeter,
Make thou me worthy of thy mysteries!”
From the διδασκαλία, or note of the year of representation with the name of the author, in the argument to that play. On the arguments from internal evidence brought forward to prove that the Suppliants is the oldest extant play, I place no value whatever. The simplicity of structure proves nothing, because it proves too much. Several of the extant plays are equally simple. For aught we know, it may have been the practice of Æschylus to the very last, as we see in the case of the Choephoræ, to give the middle piece of his trilogies less breadth and variety than the opening and concluding ones; and it is almost certain that the Suppliants was either the second or the first play of a trilogy.
Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 1060, Welcker’s Tril. p. 475, and the Vit. Robortel. (which, however, I have not seen).
Mar. Par. ep. 53. Welcker’s Tril. p. 116.
See Introduction to that piece.
Scholiast, Aristoph. Acharn. v. 10.
Philostratus, Vit. Soph. I. 9; Vit. Apollon. VI. 11, p. 244.
The great comedian is particularly amusing in the contrast which he draws between the rude instinctive grandeur of the Æschylean diction and the elegant rhetorical decorations of Euripides:—
“With high-sounding words he will make such a pother,
With helmeted speeches he bravely will spout;
With chippings and shavings of rhetoric the other
All whirling and dancing about
Will stand at bay; but the deep-thoughted bard,
With equestrian harmonies, galloping hard,
Will floor in the fight
The glib-tongued wight.
The stiff hair of his mane all alive for the fray,
Bristling and big from the roots he will ruffle;
His black brows he will knit, and terribly bray,
Like a lion that roars for the scuffle.
Huge words by rivets and spike-nails bound,
Like plank on plank he will fling on the ground,
Blasting so bold
Like a Titan of old.”
Aristotle, Ethic. Nicom. III. 1. Clemen. Alex., Strom II. 14, p. 461. Pott. Aelian, V.H.V. 19, and Welcker, Trilog. p. 106.
The primary authorities for the life of Æschylus are the Parian Marble, the Βίος Αισχύλου, the Frogs of Aristophanes, the arguments of the extant plays, and various incidental notices in Athenæus and other ancient authors, most of whom have been quoted or mentioned in the text. With regard to secondary sources of information, the present writer has been much assisted, and had his labour essentially curtailed, by Petersen’s Vita Æschyli, Havniae, 1812; the article Æschylus, by Whiston, in Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of Biography and Mythology; the admirable condensed summary in Bernhardy’s Grundriss der Griechischen Litteratur, 2ter, Theil, Halle, 1845; and Donaldson’s Greek Theatre. In Chronology, I have followed Clinton.
Footnotes to the Agamemnon
Welcker, in the introductory remarks to his Epischer Cyclus (§ 1), has given what appear to me sufficient reasons for not confounding this Proclus with the famous Platonist of the same name.
This and other curious fragments from the wreck of the old Hellenic epos, will be found in Becker’s Scholia to Homer (Berlin, 1825), or in the second volume of Welcker’s Epic Cycle (Bonn, 1849), in the Appendix.
See Thucydides, I. 9.
See Welcker’s Trilogie, Darmstadt, 1824, p. 408, who, however, here, as in other parts of the same learned work, expends much superfluity of ingenious conjecture on subjects which, from their very nature, are necessarily barren of any certain result.
Jove to Priam sent the eagle, of all flying things that be
Noblest made, his dark-winged hunter.
i.e. The right hand—the hand which brandishes the spear, χερὸς ἐκ δοριπάλτου; right being the lucky side in Greek augury.—Iliad, xxiv. 320.
Calchas, the famous soothsayer of the Iliad.
Diana.
This excellent version I took from an article in the Quarterly Review.—Vol. lxx. p. 340.
The sacrifice of Iphigenia displeasing to Clytemnestra.
Chalcis, a city in Eubœa, opposite Aulis.
A river in Macedonia.
The epithet καλλιπρώρου, beautiful fronted, applied to στόματος being contrary to the genius of the English language, the translator must content himself with the simple epithet.
An old name for the Peloponnesus.
Vulcan.
Venus.
The Furies.
Mars.
“My bosom’s lord sits lightly on his throne.”—Shakespere, quoted by Symmons.
Æsculapius.
Swallow jabber.—“Barbarians are called swallows because their speech cannot be understood any more than the twitter of swallows.”—Stanley, from Hesychius.
An epithet of Apollo from λοξὸς oblique, for which Macrobius (Sat. I. 17) gives astronomical reasons; but it seems more obvious to say that the god is so called from the obliqueness or obscurity of his oracles.
From the looseness of the laws of quantity in English versification, it may be as well to state here that I wish these lines of seven syllables to be read as vv—’, v—’, v—’. not —’ v, —’ v, —’ v, —’.
The Furies.
Dun-plumed. ξουθὰ.
“Because the poor brown bird, alas!
Sings in the garden sweet and true.”
Miss Barrett.
“Most musical, most melancholy bird!
A melancholy bird? O idle thought!
In Nature there is nothing melancholy.”
Coleridge.
See Introductory Remarks.
The banquet of his own children, which Atreus offered to Thyestes.—See Introductory Remarks.
Apollo.
πόρθμευμ ἀχέων, whence Acheron, so familiar to English ears; as in the same way Cocytus, from κωκυω, to avail, and the other infernal streams, with a like appropriateness.
The house of Atreus, so called from Pleisthenes, one of the ancestry of Agamemnon.
Footnotes to the Choephoræ
See Niebuhr’s Travels (§ 25, c. 4); Michaelis’ Commentaries on the Laws of Moses (Art. 135); and Southey’s Thalaba.
Dictionary—voce Goel, and Commentaries, § 131.
Die Thymele in der Orchestra ist durch ein Aschenkrug als Agamemnon’s Grab bezeichnet.—Droysen.
Hermes, or Mercury, in his capacity of guide of the dead (ψυχοπομπός) is here called Χθόνιος, or subterranean.
Iphigenia.
Proserpine.
See 64 to Agamemnon.
Hermes or Mercury. See Notes 55 and 56 above.
The Gorgon Medusa.
Agamemnon and Electra.
The Furies.—See next piece.
Footnotes to the Eumenides
This original germ of the Furies is mentioned frequently in these plays, as πολυκρατεῖς ἀρὰι φθιμενων, Fell Curses of the Dead, in the Choephoræ, p. 111 in above. See also the words of Clytemnestra, My curse beware, p. 126 above.
Wordsworth’s “Athens and Attica,” London, 1836, c. 11.
“Καὶ τὴν μὲν ἐν Ἀρείῳ πάγῳ βουλὴν Ἑφιάλτης ἐκόλουσε καὶ Περικλῆς. τὰ δὲ δικαστήρια μισθοφόρα κατέστησε Περικλῆς.”—Aristotle, Pol. II. 9. 3.
“Τῆς ναναρχίας γὰρ ἐν τοῖς Μηδικοῖς ὁ δῆμος ἄιτιος γενόμενος ἐφρονηματίσθη.”—Aristotle, ibid.
The progeny of Earth and Heaven were called Titans, among whom Phœbe is numbered by Hesiod.—Theog. 136.
Apollo.
One of the waters that descend from Parnassus.
Neptune.
See note to Choephoræ, No. 73.
πομπᾶιος. Of the dead specially, but also of the living: as of Ulysses in the Odyssey, Book X.
Literally the unseen world. Sometimes used for the King of the unseen world—Pluto.
See Introductory Remarks.
Lucidae sedes.—Horace III. 3.
See Introductory Remarks. They designate themselves here from their origin, Ἀραὶ or imprecations.
That is, the Furies themselves.
Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass,
Und durch die kummervollen Nächte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sass,
Er kennt Euch nicht, ihr hîmmlischen Mächte!
—Goethe.
“For strangers and the poor are from Jove.”—Homer.
See above, p. 141, 4.
That is, Asia. See Introduction to the Agamemnon.
Alluding to the well-known and beautiful allegoric myth that the goddess of wisdom sprang, full-armed, into birth from the brain of the all-wise Omnipotent, without the intervention of a mother.
See the Preliminary Remarks.
παρόρνιθας, as we say ill-starred—that is, unfortunate, unlucky, the metaphor being varied, according to the changes of fashions in the practice of divination.
Alii γελῶμαι—“fortasse non male.”—Paley.
The goddess of Persuasion—πειθὼ.
Like Erectheus (p. 167 above), one of the most ancient Earth-born kings of Attica.
So the Greeks called anything very ancient, from Ogyges, an old Bœotian king.
Footnotes to the Prometheus Bound
Classical Museum, No. XV. p 1.
Buck. (Introduction, p. xiii.) has very aptly compared here the position of Antigone, in the well-known play of that name, and the half-approving, half-condemning tone of the Chorus in that play.
The most remarkable passages of the ancients where reference is made to the Prometheus Unbound of Æschylus are:—Cicero, Tusc. II. 10; Arrian. Periplus Pont. Eux. p. 19; Strabo, Lib. I. p. 33 and IV. 182-3; Plutarchus. vit. Pompeii, init.; Athenæus. XV. p. 672, Cas.
“Veniat Æschylus non poeta solum, sed etiam Pythagoreus. Sic enim accepimus. Quo modo fert apud eum Prometheus dolorem, quern excipit ob furtum Lemnium.”—Tusc. Quæst. II. 10, Welcker; Trilogie, p. 7.
“Chorus consilietur amicis.”—Horace.
On the stage, of course, her transmutation can only be indicated by the presence of a pair of ox horns on her virgin forehead.
ἡ ποικιλείμων νύξ. Buntgewandige—Schoe. “Various-vested Night.”—Coleridge, in a Sonnet to the Autumnal Moon.
ἀιθέριον κίνυγμα.
Saturn the father of Jove.
“And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air: for it repenteth me that I have made him.”—Gen. vi. 7.
The Sea of Azof.
“Of all the things that breathe the air, and creep upon the Earth,
The weakest thing that breathes and creeps on nurturing Earth is Man.”
Homer’s Odys. xviii. 130.
i.e. Delphi.—See Schol. to Iliad II. 519.
Rhea’s bosomed sea—the Hadriatic.
The Ionian sea.
The Danaids, daughters of Danaus, who colonized Argos from Egypt. This forms the subject of the next play—the Suppliants.
See the Agamemnon, 15.
Compare Odyssey, I. 32.
Footnotes to the Suppliants
Vol. I., c. 3.
Fast., Hellen., Introduc. pp. 6, 7.
See Introductory Remarks to the Eumenides.
The usual insignia of Suppliants. Wool was commonly used in the adornment of insignia hallowed by religion.—See Dict. Antiq., voc. infula and apex.; and 72 to the Choephoræ, and Clem. Alex. Prot. § 10.
Epaphus and Io.
Epaphus, from ἑπαφὴ. See 3 immediately above.
This is explained by what follows. An augur, of course, was the proper person to recognise the notes of birds, or what resembled them.
See 76 to Agamemnon.
Pal. quotes from Massinger’s Emperor of the East, “To a sad tune I sing my own dirge,” which I have adopted.
Artemis, or Diana.
τον πολυξενώτατον Ζῆνα, that is, Pluto.
See 46 to the Eumenides.
See Iliad viii. 69, and other passages, describing the “golden scales of Jove,” in which the fates of men are weighed.
See the Agamemnon, 94.
See Paley.
Cyprus.
See Prometheus Bound, p. 192 above.
See Prometheus Bound, p. 204 and 46.
In this very perplexed passage I follow Pal. Bothe’s conjecture, Αργεῖος, is very happy.
A promontory in Cilicia.—Strabo, p. 670. Pal.
πρόξενοι.—See 19 to page 226 above.
“Potui humor ex hordeo aut frumento in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus.”—Tacitus de mor. Geom. c. 23.
Venus.
This river and the Inachus flow into the Argolic gulf, both near the city of Argos, taking their rise in the mountain ridge that separates Argos from Arcadia.
The goddess of Persuasion.
Footnotes to the Seven Against Thebes
Eurip. Phœnissae. Prolog., and Argument to the same from the Cod. Guelpherbyt. in Matthiae.
πρῶτος ᾿εν ᾿ανθρώποις τὴν ἀῤῥενοφθορίαν ἑυρων.—Compare Romans i, 27.
Μὴ σπ(ε)ίρε τέκνων ἄλοκα δαιμόνων βίᾳ, κ.τ.λ.—Eurip. Phœnis. 19.
ὀιδέω to swell, and ποῦς a foot; literally swell-foot. Welcker remarks that there is a peculiar significancy in the appellations connected with this legend; even Λάϊος being connected with λαικάζω, λαισκαπρος, and other similar words—(Trilog. p. 355)—but this is dangerous ground.
The σχιστή ὁδος.—See Wordsworth’s Greece, p. 21.
It is particularly mentioned in the oldest form of the legend, that he considered his sons had not sent him his due share of the flesh offered in the family sacrifice.—Scholiast Soph. O. C. 1375. This is alluded to in the fifth antistrophe of the third great choral chaunt of this play, v. 768. Well. See my Note.
The subject of “The Eleusinians” was the burial of the dead bodies of the chiefs who had fallen before Thebes, through the mediation of Theseus.—See Plutarch, Life of that hero, c. 29.
See Welcker’s Trilogie, p. 359, etc.
Classical Museum, No. XXV. p. 312.
See Paley’s Note.
See Introductory Remarks.
See 35 to the Suppliants, p. 235 above.
Chance (Τύχη), it must be recollected, was a divine power among the ancients.
See 60 to the Choephoræ.
The name Parthenopaus, from παρθένος, a virgin, and ὤψ the countenance.
See 60 to Agamemnon.
See 73 to the Choephoræ.
See Pape. in voce αλφηστής.
Maritime similes are very common in Æschylus, and specially this.—Compare Agamemnon, p. 70, Strophe II.
Another pun on Polynices, see above, p. 278.
i.e. Raging flood, Thyad, from θύω, to rage.
See 67 to Agamemnon.
Footnotes to the Persians
The play of Phrynichus, which celebrated the defeat of Xerxes, was called Phœnissæ, from the Phœnician virgins who composed the chorus. How far Æschylus may have borrowed from this work is now impossible to know. Nothing certainly can be gained by pressing curiously the word παραπεποιῆσθαι in the mouth of an old grammarian.
Chœrilus was a Samian, contemporary of Herodotus, but younger. His poem, entitled περσικά, included the expedition of Darius as well as that of Xerxes.
By the praiseworthy exertions of Mr. Bohn, the English reader is now supplied with translations of this, and other Classical writers, at a very cheap rate.
Vol. V. p. 191. Thirlwall had defended the statement of Æschylus.
Herodotus VII. 1-4.
Trilogie, p. 470; Ariadne, p. 81.
These plays were Phineus, the Persians, Glaucus, and Prometheus. The last was a satiric piece, having no connection with the Prometheus Bound, or the trilogy to which it belonged.
See Linwood—voce βαΰζω.
“The people of Susa are also called Cissians.”—Strabo, p. 728.
See p. 172, Note.
“They who dwell in the marshes are the most warlike of the Egyptians.”—Thucyd. I. 110. Abresch.
“Tmolus, a hill overhanging Sardes, from which the famous golden-flooded Pactolus flows.”—Strabo, p. 625. “Called sacred from Bacchus worshipped there.”—Eurip. Bacch. 65. Pal.
The Hellespont; so called from Helle, the daughter of Athamas, a character famous in the Argonautic legend.
“As a dragon in a hollow fiercely waiteth for a man,
Eating venomed herbs, and darkly nursing anger in his breast,
Glaring with fierce looks of terror, as he winds him in his den.”
Iliad.
“They who are called by the Greeks Syrians, are called Assyrians by the Barbarians.”—Herodot. VII. 63.
The bridge of boats built by Xerxes. The original ἀμφίζευκτον αλιον πρῶνα ἀμφοτέρας κοινὸν ἄιας seems intelligible no other way. So Blom., Pal., and Buck., and Linw.—Compare 34 to the Eumenides.
See 63 to the Choephoræ.
Attica.
θυμόμαντις.—See 67 to Agamemnon.
The mines of Laurium, near the Sunian promontory. On their importance to the Athenians during this great struggle with Persia, see Grote, V. p. 71.
ἐπι σκηπτουχίᾳ ταχθεὶς. So the σκηπτουχοι βασιλεῖς of Homer.
Part of the shore of Salamis, called τροπάια ἄκρα.—Schol.
σκληρᾶς μέτοικος γῆς: inest amara ironia.—Blom.
αλάστωρ.
ἐπέφλεγεν.
The captain of this ship was Ameinias, brother of Æschylus.—See Grote, V. 178.
A bold expression, but used also by Euripides.—νυκτὸς ὄμμα λυγάιας—(Iphig. Taur., 110). To Polytheists such terms were the most natural things in language.
“As soon as the Persian fleet was put to flight, Aristides arrived with some Grecian hoplites at the island of Psyttaleia, overpowered the enemy, and put them to death to a man.”—Grote.
“Having caused the land force to be drawn up along the shore opposite to Salamis, Xerxes had erected for himself a lofty seat or throne upon one of the projecting declivities of Mount Aegaleos, near the Heracleion, immediately overhanging the sea.”—Grote.
θεὸς indefinitely; a common way of talking in Homer.
Facilis descensus Averni, etc.—Virgil, Æneid VI.
ὕβρις—See 61 to Agamemnon, and 41 Eumenides.
Salamis in Cyprus, from which the Grecian Salamis was a colony.
See p. 172, and compare p. 271.
See 63 to the Choephoræ.
See Ezra ix. 3.
[End of Footnotes.]