Note 321 — AGAMEMNON

It need hardly be said that it is as difficult to render a paronomasia of this kind as it is to reproduce those, more or less analogous, which we find in the prophets of the Old Testament (comp. especially Micah i.); but it seems better to substitute something which approaches, however imperfectly, to an equivalent than to obscure the reference to the nomen et omen by abandoning the attempt to translate it. “Hell of men, and hell of ships, and hell of towers,” has been the rendering adopted by many previous translators. The Greek fondness for this play on names is seen in Sophocles, Aias, v. 401.