NOTES TO THE PLAYS (continued 2)

In imitation of which, the

“Audax omnia perpeti

Gens humana ruit in vetitum nefas”

of Horace has become proverbial. In modern times, the pages of the Times newspaper will supply more ample and various illustrations of the same great truth than the most learned ancient could have collected. In England especially, the strong nature of the Saxon shows something Titanic, both in feats of mechanical enterprise and in crime.

Note 46 (p. 117).

“All-venturing woman’s dreadful ire.”

Kl. quotes here the Homeric

ὡς ὀυκ ἀινότερον και κύντερον ἀλλο γυναικὸς.

“Woman like a dog unblushing deeds of terrible name will do.”

So a friend who was in Paris, at the time of the Revolution in 1848, wrote to me—“With the men I can easily manage, but the women are tigers.”

Note 47 (p. 117).

“Thestios’ daughter, wild with rage.”

Althea, the mother of the famous Calydonian boar-hunter, Meleager, who is so often seen on the sides of ancient sarcophagi. “When Meleager was seven days old, it is said the Fates appeared, declaring that the boy would die, as soon as the piece of wood that was burning on the hearth should be consumed. When Althea heard this, she extinguished the firebrand, and concealed it in a chest. Meleager himself became invulnerable; but when—in the war between the Calydonians and the Curetes—he had unfortunately killed his mother’s brother, she lighted the piece of wood, and Meleager died.”—Dict. Biog.

Note 48 (p. 117).

“How Scylla, gay, in gold arrayed.”

The daughter of Nisus, king of Megara, who, when Minos, in his expedition against Athens, took Megara, betrayed the city to the enemy, by cutting off the purple or golden hair which grew on the top of her father’s head, and on which his life and the preservation of the city depended.—Dict. Biog.; voce Nisus, and Virgil Georg. I. 404, and Ovid. Met VIII. 90, quoted here by Stan.

Note 49 (p. 118).

“O woman! woman! Lemnos saw.”

The Lemnian women, as Apollodorus relates (I. 9, 17), having neglected to pay due honor to Venus, were, by that goddess, made so ill-favoured and intolerable to consort with (ἀυταῖς ἐμβάλλη δοσοσμίαν), that their husbands, abandoning them, took themselves other wives from among the captive women that they had brought over from Thrace. The Lemnian women, in revenge, murdered both their fathers and their husbands; from which atrocious act, and another bloody deed mentioned by Herodotus (VI. 138), “it hath been the custom,” says the historian, “to call by the name Lemnian any monstrous and inhuman action.”

Note 50 (p. 118).

“And honor from the threshold hies,

On which the doom god-spoken lies.”

We are not always sufficiently alive to the deep moral power which lay concealed beneath the harlequin dress of the old Greek Polytheism. What Æschylus puts into the mouth of a theatrical chorus in sounding rhythm, Xenophon, in plain prose, teaches from the mouth of a Greek captain thus—“Whosoever violates an oath to which the gods are witness, him I can never be brought to look on as a happy man. For, when the gods are once hostile, no one can escape their anger—not by hiding himself in darkness—not by fencing himself within a strong place. For all things are subject to the gods.”—Anab. II. 5. Think on some of the Psalms!

Note 51 (p. 119).

“But nice regard for the fine feeling ear.”

I have here with a certain freedom of version expressed Kl.’s idea, that the preference expressed by Orestes for a male ear to receive his message arose from the nature of his news; but I do not think it is “inept” to believe, with Bl. and Peile, that we have here merely an instance of the general secluded state in which Greek women lived, so that it was esteemed not proper to talk with them, in public—as Achilles says, in Euripides—

ἀισχρὸν δέ μοὶ γυναιξὶν συμβὰλλειν λόγους.

“For me to hold exchange of words with women

Were most improper.”—Iphig. Aulid. 830.

Note 52 (p. 119).

“Hot baths.”

To an English ear this sounds more like the apparatus of modern luxury than the accompaniment of travel in the stout heroic times. It is a fact, however, as Kl. well notes, that of nothing is there more frequent mention in Homer than of warm baths. This is especially frequent in the Odyssey, where so many journeys are made. Telemachus, for instance, at Pylus, is washed by the beautiful Polycaste, the youngest daughter of his venerable host; and the poet records with pleasure how “out of the bath he came in appearance like to the immortal gods” (III. 468), a verse which might serve as a very suitable motto to a modern work on Hydropathy.

Note 53 (p. 119).

Electra. Well. is very imperative in taking these words out of Electra’s mouth, and giving them to some other person, he does not exactly know who; but, though she left the stage before, there is no reason why she should not come back; and, in fact, she is just doing what she ought to do in appearing here, and carrying on the deception.

Note 54 (p. 120).

“Is audited at nothing.”

The passage is corrupt. I read παρ᾽ ὀυδέν, with Blomfield. ’Tis certainly difficult to say whether βακχείας καλης should be made to depend on ἐλπὶς, as I have made it, or being changed into κακης, be referred to Clytemnestra.

Note 55 (p. 120).

“. . . suasive wile, and smooth deceit!”

The reader need hardly be reminded that these qualities, so necessary to the present transaction, render the invocation (in the next line) peculiarly necessary of the god, who was the recognised patron of thieves, and of whom the Roman lyrist, in a well-known ode sings—

“Te boves olim nisi reddidisses

Per dolum amotas puerum minaci

Voce dum terret, viduus pharetra

Risit Apollo.”

Note 56 (p. 120).

“The nightly courier of the dead.”

τὸν νύχιον. That there is a great propriety in the epithet nightly, as applied to Mercury, both in respect of his general function as πομπᾶιος, or leader of the dead through the realms of night, and in respect of the particular business now in hand, and the particular time of the action, is obvious. In spite of some grammatical objections, therefore, I cannot but think it far-fetched in Blom. and Peile to refer the epithet to Orestes. Were I editing the text I should be very much inclined to follow Herm. and Pal. in putting καὶ τὸν νύχιον within brackets, as perhaps a gloss.

Note 57 (p. 122).

“The bearer of a tale can make it wear

What face he pleases.”

I translate thus generally, in order to avoid the necessity of settling the point whether κυπτὸς or κρυπτὸς is the proper reading—a point, however, of little consequence to the translator of Æschylus, as the Venetian Scholiast to Il. O. 207 has been triumphantly brought forward to prove the real meaning of this otherwise corrupt and unintelligible verse. Pot. was not in a condition to get hold of the true text—so he has given the best version he could of what he had—

“For the mind catches from the messenger

A secret elevation and bold swell,”

evidently from the reading of Paw.—

ἐν ὰγγελῳ γὰρ κρυπτὸς ὠρθωθῃ φρενὶ

animo enim clam erigatur nuntio isto.

—See Butler’s Notes.

Note 58 (p. 122).

Choral Hymn. The text of this Chorus is a ruin, with here a pillar and there a pillar, some fragments of a broken cornice, and something like the cell of a god; but the rubbish is so thick, and the excavations so meagre, that perfect recovery of the original scheme is in some places impossible, and restoration in a great measure conjectural. Under these circumstances, with the help of the Commentators (chiefly Peile and Lin.), I have endeavoured to piece out a connection between the few fragments that are intelligible; but I have been guided throughout more by a sort of poetical instinct than by any philological science, and have allowed myself all manner of liberties, convinced that in this case the most accurate translation is sure to be the worst. In the metre, I follow Peile.

Note 59 (p. 125).

“Let’s go aside, the deed being done, that we

Seem not partakers of the bloody work.”

’Tis a misfortune, arising from having such a body as a Chorus always on the stage, that they are often found to be spectators, where they cannot be partakers of a great work; and thus their attitude as secret sympathisers, afraid to show their real sentiments, becomes on many occasions the very reverse of heroic. This strikes us moderns very strongly, apt as we are, from previous associations, to take the Chorus along with the other characters of the play, and judge it accordingly; but to the Greeks, who felt that the Chorus was there only for the purpose of singing, criticisms of this kind were not likely to occur.

Note 60 (p. 126).

“I nursed thy childhood, and in peace would die.”

Clytemnestra says only that she wished to be allowed to spend her old age in peace; but she implies further, according to a natural feeling strongly expressed by Greek writers, that it was the special duty of her son to support her old age, and thus pay the fee of his nursing. Thus, in Homer, it is a constant lament over one who dies young in battle—

“Not to his parents

The nursing fee (θρέπτρα) he paid.”

—Il. IV. 478.

“In general it was accounted a great misfortune by the Greeks to die childless (ἄπαιδα γηράσκειν, Eurip. Ion. 621). And at Athens there was a law making it imperative on an heir to afford aliment to his mother.”—Klausen.

Note 61 (p. 126).

“Thou art a woman sitting in thy chamber.”

“Go to thy chamber, mother, and mind the business that suits thee;

Tend the loom and the spindle, and give thy maidens the order

Each to her separate work; but leave the bow and the arrows

To the men and to me—for the man in the house is the master.”

Odyssey XXI. 350.

So Telemachus says to his mother; and on other occasions he uses what we should think, rather sharp and undutiful language—but in Greece a woman who left the woman’s chamber without a special and exceptional call subjected herself to just rebuke. With regard to the matter here at issue between Orestes and Clytemnestra, Kl. notes that, though the wandering Ulysses is allowed without blame to form an amorous alliance with Calypso, the same excuse is not allowed for the female sitting quietly in her “upper chamber” (ὑπερώιον, Il. II. 514) as Homer has it. For “in ancient times,” says the Scholiast to that passage, “the Greeks shut up their women in garrets (ὑπερ τοῦ δυσεντεύκτους ἀυτάς (ἐ)ιναι) that they might be difficult to get at.”—How Turkish!

Note 62 (p. 126).

Orestes. I have little doubt that Kl., Peile, Fr., Well., and Pal., are right in giving the line ἦ κάρτα μάντις to Orestes. I should be inclined to agree with Well. and Pal. also, that after this line a verse has dropt out—“in quo instantem sibi mortem deprecata sit Clytemnestra;” but there is no need of indicating the supposed blank in the translation, as the sense runs on smoothly enough without it.

Note 63 (p. 127).

“. . . the eye of this great house, may live.”

An Oriental expression, to which the magnificent phraseology of our Celestial brother who sells tea, has made the English ear sufficiently familiar. He calls our king, or our consul, I forget which, “the Barbarian eye.” Other examples of this style occur in the Persians and the Eumenides.—See p. 172 above.

Note 64 (p. 127).

“A pair of grim lions, a double Mars terrible.”

Klausen, who, like other Germans, has a trick, sometimes, of preferring what is far-fetched to what is obvious, considers that this double Mars is the double death, first of Agamemnon in the previous piece, then of Clytemnestra in this; but notwithstanding what he says, the best comment on this passage is that given by the old Scholiast, when he writes “Pylades and Orestes.”

Note 65 (p. 127).

“Sore chastisement.”

ποινὰ. Ahrens, with great boldness, changes this into Ἐρμᾶς, which reading has been rashly thrown into the text by Fr. If any special allusion is needed, I agree with Pal. that Orestes is indicated, who is mentioned in the next clause as inflicting the blow, under the guidance of celestial Justice.

Note 66 (p. 127).

“Her from his shrine sent the rock-throned Apollo.”

In this corrupt passage I adopt Hermann’s correction of τάν περ for τάπέρ. How much the whole meaning is guesswork, the reader may see, by comparing my translation with Pot. and the E. P. Oxon., in this place, who follow the old Scholiast in referring χρονισθ(ε)ισαυ to Clytemnestra.

Note 67 (p. 127).

“And blithely shall welcome them Fortune the fairest.”

This passage being very corrupt, is rendered freely. I adopt Stan.’s conjecture ἰδεῖν ἀκοῦσαι θ᾽ ἱεμενοις, and suppose μέτοικοι to refer to Orestes and Electra.

Note 68 (p. 128).

“. . . not

My father, but the Sun that fathers all

With light.”

There is a certain mannerism in this description of a thing by the negation of what is similar, to which the tragedians were much addicted. As to the invocation of the sun, see the note in the Prometheus to the speech beginning

O divine ether and swift-winged winds.

Note 69 (p. 128).

“Or a torpedo, that with biteless touch

Strikes numb who handles.”

Literally, a lamprey, μύραινα; but to translate so would have been ludicrous; and besides, as Blom. has noted from Athenaeus, it was not a common lamprey that, in the imagination of the Greeks, was coupled with a viper, but “a sort of monstrous reptile begotten between a viper and a lamprey.”

Note 70 (p. 128).

“This cloth to wrap the dead.”

’Tis difficult to say whether δρόιτη, in this place, means the bath in which Agamemnon was murdered, or the bier on which any dead body is laid after death. Kl. supports this latter interpretation. I have incorporated a reference to both versions.

Note 71 (p. 129).

“Others ’twixt hope and fear may sway, my fate

Is fixed and scapeless.”

I read—

Ἄλλοις ἄν ἐι δή. τουτ᾽ ἂρ (ὀ)ιδ ὃπη τελ(ε)ι.

Peile.

Note 72 (p. 129).

“With soft-wreathed wool, and precatory branch.”

These insignia of suppliants are familiar to every reader of the Classics. I shall only recall two of the most familiar instances. In the opening scene of the Iliad the priest of Apollo appears before Agamemnon, and

“In his hand he held the chaplet of the distant-darting Phœbus

On a golden rod.”

And in the opening lines of the Œdipus Tyrannus, the old King asks the Chorus—

“Why swarm ye here around the seats of the gods,

With branches furnished such as suppliants bear?”

Note 73 (p. 129).

“. . . navel of earth, where burns the flame

Of fire immortal.”

As the old astronomers made Earth the centre of the planetary system, and as men are everywhere, and at all times, apt to consider their own position and point of view as of more importance in the great whole of things than it really is; so the Greeks, in their ignorant vanity, considered their own Delphi to be the navel, or central point of Earth. As to the immortal fire, Stan. quotes here from Plutarch, who, in his life of Numa (c. ix.), describing the institution of the Vestal Virgins, takes occasion to mention the sacred fire kept alive in Greece at two places, Delphi and Athens, which, if extinguished, was always rekindled from no earthly spark, but from the Sun.

Note 74 (p. 130).

“There is atonement.”

Ἐισιν καθαρμόι, Schütz, Pal.; (ε)᾽ σται καθαρμός, Bothe. Either of these seems preferable to the vulgate ἐισω. Franz has ῟Εις σοι καθαρμὸς. Eins bleibt Dir Sühnung.

Note 75 (p. 130).

“Ye see them not. I see them.”

Ghosts and gods are never visible to the bystander, but only to the person or persons who may be under their special influence at the moment of their appearance—so in the Iliad (I. 197), Pallas Athena—

“There behind him stood, and by the yellow hair she seized Pelides,

Seen to him alone; the others saw not where the goddess stood.”

and so in a thousand places of the poet. To the spectator, however, in the theatre, spiritual beings must be visible, because (as Müller, Eumen. 3, properly remarks) they are the very persons from before whose eyes it is the business of the poet to remove the veil that interposes between our everyday life and the spiritual world. That the Furies of the following piece were seen bodily at this part of the present play, and are not supposed to exist merely in the brain of Orestes, is only what a decent regard for common poetical consistency on the part of a great tragic poet seems to imply.

Note 76 (p. 130).

“. . . the god whose eyes in love behold thee!”

What god is not said, but the word θεός is used indefinitely without the article. The Greeks had an indefinite style when talking of the divine providence—a god, or some god, or the god, or the gods—a style which arose naturally out of the Polytheistic form of celestial government. Examples of all the different kinds of phraseology are frequent in Homer. Sometimes, in that author, the expression, though indefinite in itself, has a special allusion, plain enough from the context; and in the present passage I see no harm in supposing an allusion to Apollo, under whose immediate patronage Orestes acts through the whole of this piece and that which follows.

NOTES TO THE EUMENIDES

Note 1 (p. 141).

“Old earth, primeval prophetess, I first

With these my prayers invoke; and Themis next.”

Earth, or Gaea, as the Greeks name her, is described here, and in Pausanias (X. 5), as the most ancient prophetess of Delphi, for two reasons; first, because out of the earth came those intoxicating fumes or vapours, by the inspiration of which the oracles were given forth (see Diodorus XVI. 26); second, because, as Schoemann well observes, Gaea, as the aboriginal divine mother, out of whose womb all the future celestial genealogies were developed, necessarily contained in herself the law of their development, and is accordingly represented by Hesiod as exercising a prophetic power with regard to the fates of the other gods.—(Theog. 463, 494, 625). The same writer remarks with equal ingenuity and truth, that Themis, her successor in the prophetic office, is only a personification of that law of development which, by necessity of her divine nature, originally lay in Gaea; and I would remark, further, how admirable the instinct was of those old mythologists, who placed Love and Right, and other ineradicable feelings or notions of the human mind, among the very oldest of the gods. It is notable also, that previous to Apollo, all the presidents of prophecy at Delphi—including the famous Phemonoe, not mentioned here but by Pausanias l. c., were women, and even Loxias himself could not give forth oracles without the help of a Pythoness. There is a great fitness in this, as women are naturally both more pious and more emotional than men. Hence their peculiar fitness for exercising prophetic functions, of which ancient Germany was witness—(see Cæsar B.C. I. 50).

Note 2 (p. 141).

“. . . rocky Delos’ lake.”

There can be no question that Schütz was right in translating λίμνη, in this passage, lake (and not sea, as Abresch did), it being impossible that a well-informed Athenian, on hearing this passage in the theatre, should not understand the poet to refer to the circular lake in Delos, described by Herodotus in II. 170.

Note 3 (p. 141).

“The Sons of Vulcan pioneer his path.”

i.e. “The Athenians”—Scholiast—“who,” adds Stan., “were called the sons of Vulcan, because they were skilled in all the arts of which Vulcan and Pallas were patrons; or, because Erichthonius, from whom the Athenians were descended, was the son of Vulcan;” with which latter view Müller and Schoemann concur; and it appears to me sufficiently reasonable. There is no reason, however, for not receiving, along with this explanation, another which has been given, that the sons of the fire-god mean “smiths.” Artificers of this kind were necessary to pioneer the path for the procession of the god in the manner here described, and would naturally form, at least, a part of the convoy.

Note 4 (p. 141).

“. . . Loxias, prophet of his father Jove.”

’Tis plain from the whole language of Homer, both in the Iliad and Odyssey, that the fountain of the whole moral government of the world is Jove, and, of course, that all divination and inspiration comes originally from him. Even Phœbus Apollo acts only as his instrument (Nägelsbach Homerische Theologie, p. 105). Stan. compares Virgil Æneid III. 250.

Note 5 (p. 141).

“. . . thee, likewise, who ’fore this temple dwellest.”

The reading προνάια (or προνᾴα), which I translate, is that of Well. and all the MSS.; but Lin. has put πρόνοια, providential or foreseeing, into the text, following out a criticism of Lennep on Phalaris, which has been stoutly defended by Hermann, in his remarks on Müller’s Eumenides (Opusc. VI. v. 2, p. 17). This, however, in the face of an express passage of Herodotus (I. 92), as Pal. well observes, has been done rashly; and now Fr. and Schoe. bring forward inscriptions which prove that there is not the slightest cause for tampering with the text. I have not been able to learn the substance of Lennep’s remarks otherwise than from the account of them by Müller in the Anhang, p. 14; but, taken at their highest value, they seem only to prove that a vagueness had taken hold of the ancients themselves in respect to the designation of this temple, not certainly that Æschylus and Herodotus both made a mistake in calling it προνᾴα, or that all the transcribers of their texts made a blunder.

Note 6 (p. 141).

“. . . ye Nymphs that love

The hollow Corycian rock.”

“From Delphi, which lies pretty high, the traveller ascended about 60 stadia, or two hours’ travel, till he arrived at the Corycian cave, dedicated to Pan and the Nymphs, in which there were many stalactites and live fountains.”—Sickler. alte geog. II. 134.

Note 7 (p. 141).

“Thee, Bromius, too, I worship.”

Bacchus, so called from βρέμω, fremo—the roaring or boisterous god. His connection with Apollo (though drinking songs are not so common now as they were last century) is obvious enough; and some places of the ancient poets where the close connection of these two gods is described, may be seen in Stan. The Scholiast to Euripides Phœnissai (v. 227, Matthiae) says expressly that Apollo and Artemis were worshipped on the one peak of Parnassus, and Bacchus on the other.

Note 8 (p. 141).

“. . . the godless Pentheus.”

“A son of Echion and Agave, the daughter of Cadmus. He was the successor of Cadmus as king of Thebes, and being opposed to the introduction of the worship of Dionysus in his kingdom, was torn to pieces by his own mother and two other Mænads, Ino and Autonoe, who in their Bacchic frenzy believed him to be a wild beast. The place where Pentheus suffered death is said to have been Mount Cithæron; but, according to some, it was Mount Parnassus.”—Myth. Dict.

Note 9 (p. 141).

“Poseidon’s mighty power.”

Next to Jove, Poseidon is the strongest of the gods, as the element which he rules demands; and this strength, in works of art, is generally indicated by the breadth of chest given to this god. So Homer, also, wishing to magnify Agamemnon, says—

“Like to Jove that rules the thunder were his kingly head and eyes;

Belted round the loins like Ares; like Poseidon was his breast.”

Il. II. 478.

The connection of the god of the waters with Delphi is given by Pausanias x. 5, where it is said, that originally Poseidon possessed the oracle in common with Gaea; a legend easily explained by the fact, that all high mountains necessarily produce copious streams of water of which, no less than of the waves of ocean, Poseidon is lord.

Note 10 (p. 142).

“A gray-haired woman, weaker than a child.”

Stan. refers here to the account given by Diodorus of the origin of the Delphic oracle, c. xvi. 26, where he relates, that in the most ancient times the prophetess was a young woman; but that, afterwards, one Echecrates, a Spartan, being smitten with the beauty of a prophetess, had offered violence to her, in consequence of which an edict was published by the Delphians, forbidding any female to assume the office of Pythoness till she was fifty years old.

Note 11 (p. 142).

“. . . the ravenous crew

That filched the feast of Phineus.”

The Harpies; who, from the names given to them in Homer and Hesiod (and specially from Odyssey xx. 66 and 77 compared) seem to have been impersonations of sudden and tempestuous gusts of wind; though, again, it is not impossible that these winds may be symbolical of the rapacious power of swift and sudden death—

“Venit Mors velociter

Rapit nos atrociter,”

as suggested by Braun. See the article by Dr. Schmitz in the Biographical Dictionary.

Note 12 (p. 142).

“Such uncouth sisterhood, apparel’d so.”

With regard to the dress of the Furies, Stan. quotes a curious passage from Diogenes Laertius, which I shall translate:—“Menedemus, the Cynic,” says he, “went to such fantastic excess as to go about in the dress of the Furies, saying, that he was sent as a visitant of human iniquity from Hades, that he might descend again, and report to the Infernal powers. His garb was as follows—a dun-coloured tunic (χιτων) reaching down to the feet, girt with a crimson sash; on his head an Arcadian cap, with the twelve signs of the Zodiac inwoven; tragic buskins, a very long beard, and an ashen rod in his hand.”—VI. 9. 2. The Romans were once put to flight by the Gauls, dressed in the terrible garb of the Furies, with burning torches in their hands.—Livy VII. 17.

Note 13 (p. 143).

“. . . A bitter pasture truly

Was thine from Fate.”

So I have thought it best to translate somewhat freely τὸνδε βουκολούμενος πόνον in order to express the original meaning of the verb βουκολουμαι. In this I have followed Müller—diese Schmerzentrift zu weiden. This is surely more pregnant and poetical than to say with Fr. “Diese Lebensbahn durcheilend.” The idea of soothing and beguiling, the only one given by Hesychius, cannot apply to this place. Pal., who agrees with me in this, translates the word in both places of our author where it occurs (here and in Agam. 655) by “brooding over” which differs little from my idea of feeding on.

Note 14 (p. 143).

“Her ancient image.”

“The image of Athena Pallas, on the citadel, which existed in the days of Pausanias, and had maintained for ages its place here by a sort of inviolable holiness. In the narrow area of the temple, on the north-east slope of the Acropolis, Erechtheus had placed a carved image, either first made by himself, or, perhaps, fallen from Heaven; and round this, as a centre, the most ancient groups of Attic religion and legend assembled themselves.”—Gerhard, “über die Minerven Idole Athen’s,” quoted by Schoe.

Note 15 (p. 144).

“Behold these wounds.”

I am not able to see what objection lies against the literal rendering of

ὁρά δε πληγὰς τάσδε καρδίᾴ σέθεν,

as I read with Fr. and Linw. Pal. and Schoe. take πληγὰς metaphorically to signify the contumelious language used by Clytemnestra to the Furies; but this is surely rather going out of the way. If there were any necessity for deserting the literal meaning, I would rather take Hermann’s way of turning it (Opusc. VI. v. 2, p. 28), and read—

ὁρά δε πληγὰς τάσδε καρδιάς ὃθεν.

Siehe diese Wunden meines Herzens woher sie kommen!

Note 16 (p. 144).

“Read with thy heart; some things the soul may scan

More clearly, when the sensuous lid hath dropt,

Nor garish day confounds.”

This method of speaking is quite in keeping with ancient ideas on the nature of the connection ’twixt mind and body, as Schoe. has proved from Galen (Kühn. Med. gr. V. 301). As to the sentiment which follows, Stan. has quoted—“Quum ergo est somno sevocatus animus a societate et a contagione corporis, tum meminit praeteritorum, praesentia cernit, futura providet”—Cic. Divinat. I. 30. According to Aelian (var. hist. III. 11). the Peripatetics held the same opinion.

Note 17 (p. 144).

“Once Clytemnestra famous, now a dream.”

There is another translation of this passage—the old one in Stan.—

“In somno enim vos nunc Clytemnestra voco,”

to which Pot., E. P. Oxon., and Mül. adhere; but I cannot help thinking with Hermann (Opusc. VI. p. ii. 30), that it is rather flat (matt) when compared with the other. Which of the two the poet meant cannot perhaps be settled now, as the meaning might depend on the rhetorical accent which the player was taught to give by the poet; but I am certain that the version in the text, sanctioned as it is by Wakefield, Schütz, Herm., Lin., and Pal. does not deserve to be stigmatised (in E. P.’s language) as “fanciful nonsense.” When Clytemnestra calls herself “a dream,” she uses the same sort of language which Achilles does to Ulysses regarding his own unsubstantial state as a Shade.—Odys. XI.

Note 18 (p. 144).

“. . . and seeks

For help from those that are no friends to me.”

I have thought it better to retain the old and most obvious interpretation of this passage; not seeing any proof that προσίκτορες can be used in this general way as applied to the gods who are supplicated, without being affixed as an epithet to some special god; as when we say Ζεὺς ἀφίκτωρ (Suppl. I.)

Note 19 (p. 144).

Chorus. Whether Hermann in his “Dissertatio de Choro Eumenidum” (Leipzig, 1816) was the first that directed special attention to the peculiar character of this Chorus as indicated by the Scholiast, I do not know (Wellauer says so, and I presume he knew). Certain it is that Pot., by neglecting this indication, has lost a great deal of the dramatic effect of this part of the tragedy. The style of the chorus is decidedly fitful and exclamatory throughout, and must have formed a beautiful contrast to the steady stability of the solemn hymn that follows, beginning, “Mother night that bore me.” As to the particular distribution of the parts of this chorus, that is a matter on which, as Schoe. remarks, no two critics are likely to agree; nor is minute accuracy in this respect, even if it were attainable, a matter of any importance to the dramatic effect of the composition as now read. The only thing to be taken care of is, that we do not blend in a false continuity what was evidently spoken fitfully, and by different speakers, with a sort of staccato movement, as the musicians express it. This is Pot.’s grand error, not only here, but in many other of the choral parts of our poet; and, in this view, some of Hermann’s remarks (Opusc. VI. 2, 38) on Müller’s division are perfectly just. As for myself, by distributing the parts of the chorus among three voices, I mean nothing more than that these parts were likely spoken by separate voices. Scholefield and Dyer’s view (Classical Museum, Vol. I. p. 281), that there were three principal Furies prominent above the rest in this piece, is not improbable, but admits of no proof. In my versification I have endeavoured to imitate the rapid Dochmiacs of the original.

Note 20 (p. 145).

“Thou being young dost overleap the old.”

The idea of a succession of celestial dynasties proceeding on a system of “development,” as a certain class of modern philosophers are fond to express it, is characteristic of the Greek mythology.—(See p. 47 above, Antistrophe I.) The Furies, according to all the genealogies given of them, were more ancient gods than Apollo, with whom they are here brought, into collision. Our poet, as we shall see in the opening invocation of the first grand choral hymn of this piece, makes them the daughters of most ancient Night, who, according to the Theogony (v. 123), proceeded immediately from the aboriginal Chaos. Hesiod himself makes the Erinyes, along with the giants, to be produced from the blood of Uranus, when his genitals were cut off by Kronos (Theog. 185); a genealogy, by the way, quite in consistency with the Homeric representation given in the Introductory Remarks, of the origin of the Furies from the curses uttered by injured persons, worthy of special veneration, on those by whom their sacrosanct character had been violated.

Note 21 (p. 147).

“But where beheading, eye-out-digging dooms.”

In this enumeration of horrors I have omitted κακοῦ τε χλ(ο)υνις, concerning which Lin. says, “Omnino de hoc loco maximis in tenebris versamur; nam neque de lectione, neque de verborum significatione certi quidquam constat.”

Note 22 (p. 147).

“She was murdered here,

That murdered first her husband.”

The reasons given by Well. and Her. (Opusc. vi. 2. 42.) why the two lines, 203-4 W., should not both be given with Stan., Schütz, and Mül., to Apollo, have satisfied Lin., Pal., Fr., Schoe., Dr., E. P. Oxon., and But. Certainly the epithets ὅμαιμος and αυθέντης (which latter the Scholiast interprets μιαρὸς) sound anything but natural in the mouth of Apollo. The emphasis put on ὃμαιμος in this very connection by the Furies, in v. 575, infra, noted by Hermann, should decide the question.

Note 23 (p. 147).

“. . . matrimonial Hera.”

Literally the perfect Hera, the perfecting or consummating Hera, Ἤρα τελεια, marriage being considered the sacred consummating ceremony of social life, and, therefore, designated among the Greeks by the same term, τέλος, which they used to express initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries. As Jove presides over all important turns in human fate, there is also necessarily a Ζὲυς τελειος. See Blom. Agam. 946, and Passow in voce τέλειος. Conf. Æn. iii. 605, Juno pronuba.

Note 24 (p. 147).

“The nuptial bed, to man and woman fated.”

Stan. has remarked that this word fated, μορσίμη, so applied, is Homeric (Od. XVI. 392); and, indeed, though we seem to choose our wives, we choose them oft-times so strangely, that a man may be said, without exaggeration, to have as little to do with his marriage as with his birth or his death—but all the three in a peculiar sense belong to that Μοῖρα, or divine lot, which distributes all the good and evil of which human life is made up.

Note 25 (p. 149).

Chorus. For the arrangement of this Chorus I refer the reader back to what I said on the previous one. The concluding part I have here arranged as an Epode, because it seems more continuous in its idea than what precedes—less violent and exclamatory.

Note 26 (p. 150).

“On Libyan plains beside Tritonian pools.”

Æschylus here follows the tradition of Apollodorus (I. 3, § 6), that the epithet Τριτογένεια, given by Homer to Pallas, was derived from the lake Tritonis in Libya, near which she is said to have been born. Compare Virgil Æn. IV. 480.

Note 27 (p. 150).

“. . . with forward foot firm planted,

Erect, or with decorous stole high-seated.”

I have not the slightest doubt that τίθησιν (ο)ρθὸν πόδα in this passage can only mean to plant the foot down firmly and stand erect; if so, τίθησι κατηρεφῆ πόδα can only mean to sit, “the feet being covered by the robes while sitting”—Lin.; so also Pal. and Schoe. Sitting statues of the gods were very common in ancient times, as we see in the Egyptian statues, and in the common representations of the Greek and Roman Jupiter (see Thirlwall’s History of Greece, c. VI.). I am sorry that Hermann (p. 57) should have thrown out the idea that κατηρεφῆς in this passage may mean “enveloped in clouds,” which has been taken up by Franz—

“Sichtbar sic jezt herschreitet, oder Wolkumhüllt,”

because manifestly κατηρεφῆς, in this sense, forms no natural contrast to ὀρθὸς. The “forward foot firm-planted,” I have taken from Müller’s note, p. 112, as, perhaps, pointing out more fully what may have been in the poet’s eye, without, however, meaning to assert seriously against a severe critic like Hermann, that the words of the text necessarily imply anything of the kind.

Note 28 (p. 150).

“The ordered battle on Phlegrean fields

Thou musterest.”

The peninsula of Pallene in Macedonia, as also the district of Campania about Baiæ and Cumae, were called Phlegraean, or fire-fields (φλέγω), in all likelihood from the volcanic nature of the country, to which Strabo (Lib. V. p. 245) alludes. These volcanic movements in the religious symbolism of early Greece became giants; and against these the Supreme Wisdom and his wise daughter had to carry on a war worthy of gods.

Note 29 (p. 151).

Choral Hymn. “This sublime hymn is of a character, in some respects, kindred to the καταδέσεις, or incantations of antiquity, which were directed to Hermes, the Earth, and other infernal Deities for the purpose of binding down certain hated persons to destruction. For this reason it is called ὕμνος δέσμιος. This character is specially indicated by the refrain or burden, which occurs in the first pair of Strophes; such repetitions containing the emphatic words of the incantation being common in all magical odes. So in Theocritus (Idyll. 2), we have constantly repeated, ‘Iungx, bring me the man, the man whom I mean, to my dwelling,’ and, in the song of the Fates at the marriage of Thetis in Catullus, the line—‘Currite ducentes subtemina, currite fusi!’ and there can be no question, the movements and gestures of the Furies while singing this hymn were such as to indicate the scapeless net of woe with which they were now encompassing their victim.”—Mül. The reader will observe how impressively the metre changes on the recurrence of this burden, the rhythm in the original being Pæonic v v v—, the agitated nature of which foot, when several times repeated, is sufficiently obvious. I have done what I could to make the transition and contrast sensible to the modern ear.

Note 30 (p. 151).

“The seeing and the sightless.”

αλα(ο)ισι και δεδορκόσι, i.e. the living and the dead; an expression familiar to the Greeks, and characteristic of a people who delighted to live in the sun. βλέπειν φάος—to look on the light, is the most common phrase in the tragedians for to live; and wisely so—

“Since light so necessary is to life,

And almost life itself, if it be true

That light is in the soul,

The soul in every part.”—Milton.

Pot. has allowed himself to be led quite astray here by a petulant criticism of De Pauw.

Note 31 (p. 151).

“The gleeless song, and the lyreless strain.”

ὕμνος ἀφόρμιγκτος. “The musical character of this Choral Hymn must be imagined as working upon the feelings with a certain solemn grandeur. The κιθάρα or lyre is silent; an instrument which, as the Greeks used it, always exercised a soothing power, restorative of the equipoise of the mind: only the flute is heard, whose notes, according to the unanimous testimony of antiquity, excited feelings, now of thrilling excitement, now of mute awe; always, however, disturbing the just emotional tenor of the soul. Assuredly the ὕμνος ἀφόρμιγκτος in this place is no mere phrase.”—Müller.

Note 32 (p. 152).

“This work of labour earnest.”

I have paraphrased, or rather interpolated, in this Antistrophe, a little, because I do not see much in it that is either translatable or worth translating. A meaning has been squeezed out of the two lines beginning σπευδόμενοι; but one cannot help feeling, after all, that there is something wrong, and saying with honest Wellauer, “certi nihil video.” The main idea, shimmering through the first three lines, is plain enough—that the Furies exercise a function, the legitimacy of which no one is entitled to question. This the words, μηδ ες ἄγκρισιν ἐλθεῖν, plainly indicate; and it is upon this, and Schoe.’s conjectural emendation of the first line—

σπευδομένος ἀπέχειν τινὰ τᾶσδε μερίμνας,

“Diesem Geschäft das wir treiben verbleibe man ferne,”

that my paraphrase proceeds. With regard to the second part of this Strophe, beginning with Μάλα γὰρ (ὀ)υν, I follow Well. and all the later editors, except Schoe., in retaining it for metrical reasons, in the place to which Heath transposed it. Schoe’s observations, however, are worthy of serious consideration, as it is manifest that, if these Pæonic lines be replaced to where they stand in all the old editions, viz.:—between ὀρχησμοῖς τ᾽ (ε)πιφθόνοις ποδός and πιπτων δ᾽ ουκ ὀιδεν, their connection with what precedes, and also with what follows, will be more obvious than what it is now. Fr.’s observation, however, in answer to this, is not to be kept out of view—that this second part of the Antistrophe takes up the idea, as it takes up the measure, with which the corresponding part of the Strophe, as now arranged, ends, viz.—διόμεναί κρατερὸν ὄνθ, which the reader will find clearly brought out in my version—the concluding lines of the Pæonic section of the Strophe—

“Though fleet we shall find him,”

being taken up in the opening lines of the Pæonic section of the Antistrophe—

“But swift as the wind,

We follow and find.”

Note 33 (p. 154).

“The cry that called me from Scamander’s banks.”

The Sigean territory in the Troad was disputed between the Athenians and the people of Mitylene; which strife Herodotus informs us (V. 94) ended, by the activity of Pisistratus, in favour of the Athenians—B.C. 606. In that same territory, continues the historian, there was a temple of Pallas, where the Athenians hung up the arms of the poet Alcæus, who, though “ferox bello,” had been obliged to flee from the battle which decided the matter in favour of the Athenians. Æschylus, like a true patriot and poet, throws the claim of the Athenians to this territory as far back into the heroic times as possible; and, by the words put into the mouth of Athena, makes the claim on the part of the Lesbians tantamount to sacrilege.—See Scholiast and Stan.

Note 34 (p. 155).

“He’ll neither swear himself, nor take my oath.”

“The Greek words, ἀλλ ὅρκον ὀυ δεξαιτ ἄν, ὀυ δοῦναι θέλει have, in the juridical language of Athens, decidedly only this meaning; and, in the present passage, there is no reasonable ground for taking them in any other sense, though it is perfectly true that in some passages, ὅρκου διδόναι signifies simply to swear, and ὅρκον δέχεσθαι, to accept an attestation on oath.”—Schoemann.

Note 35 (p. 155).

“In old Ixíon’s guise.”

“Ixíon was the son of Phlegyas, his mother Dia, a daughter of Deioneus. He was king of the Lapithæ, or Phlegyes, and the father of Peirithous. When Deioneus demanded of Ixíon the bridal gifts he had promised, Ixíon treacherously invited him as though to a banquet, and then contrived to make him fall into a pit filled with fire. As no one purified Ixíon from this treacherous murder, and all the gods were indignant at him, Zeus took pity on him, purified him, and invited him to his table.”—Mythol. Dict.

Note 36 (p. 156).

“The ancient city of famous Priam thou

Didst sheer uncity.”

The original ἄπολιν Ιλίου πόλιν ἔθηκας, contains a mannerism of the tragedians too characteristic to be omitted. ’Tis one of the many tricks of that wisdom of words which the curious Greeklings sought, and did not find, in the rough Gospel of St. Paul.

Note 37 (p. 156).

“For thee, in that thou comest to my halls.”

The best exposition that I have seen of the various difficulties of this speech, is that of Schoe., unfortunately too long for extract. As to κατηρτὺκὼς, Lin. has, in the notes to his edition, justly characterised his own translation of it, in the Dictionary as durissimum. The first ὃμως, of course, must go; and there is nothing better than changing it with Pauw, Müll., and Schoe., into ἐμ(ο)ις. The second ὅμως must likewise go; say ὁσιὼς with Müll. or ὅυτως with Schoe. There is then no difficulty.

Note 38 (p. 157).

Choral Hymn. This chorus contains a solemn enumeration of some of the main texts of Greek morality, and is in that view very important. The leading measure is the heptasyllabic trochaic verse so common in English, varied with cretics and dactyles. I have amused myself with giving a sort of imitation of the rhythm, so far as the trochees and cretics are concerned; to introduce the dactyles in the places where they occur, would produce—as I found by experiment—a tripping effect altogether out of keeping with the general solemnity of the piece.

Note 39 (p. 158).

“But who sports, a careless liver.”

’Tis impossible not to agree with Schoe. that these two lines are corrupt beyond the hope of emendation. He proposes to read—

τίς δὲ μηδὲν ἐυσεβεῖ

καρδίας ἄγᾳ τρεων.

A very ingenious restoration; and one which, as matters now stand, I should have little scruple in introducing into the text; but, for poetical purposes, I have not been willing to lose the image with which the present reading, ἐν φάει, supplies me and Fr.—

“Wer der nicht bei Wonneglanz

Trauer auch im Herzen hegt,” etc.

Note 40 (p. 158).

“To the wise mean strength is given,

Thus the gods have ruled in heaven.”

This is one of those current common-places of ancient wisdom, which are now so cheap to the ear, but are still as remote from the general temper and the public heart as they were some thousands of years ago, when first promulgated by some prophetic Phemonoe of the Primeval Pelasgi. The great philosopher of common sense, Aristotle, seized this maxim, as the groundwork of practical ethics, some three hundred years before Christ—῾Φθείρεται γαρ, says he, ἡ σωφροσύνη και ἡ ἀνδρεία ὑπὸ τῆς ὑπερβολῆς καὶ τῆς ἐλλειψεως, ὑπὸ δὲ τῆς μεσότητος σώζεται; and Horace, the poet of common sense, preached many a quiet, tuneful sermon to the same ancient text—

“Auream quisquis mediocritatem

Diligit, tutus caret obsoleti

Sordibus tecti, caret invidenda

Sobrius aula.”

Note 41 (p. 158).

“Pride, that lifts itself unduly.”

I will not multiply citations here to show the reader how this pride or insolence of disposition, ὓβρις (the German Uebermuth), is marked by the Greek moralists as the great source of all the darker crimes with which the annals of our floundering race are stained (See Note, p. 349 above). They are wrong who tell us that Humility is a Christian and not a Heathen virtue: no doubt the name ταπεινοφροσύνη, used in the New Testament, was not the fashionable one among the Greeks: but that they had the thing, every page of their poetry testifies, with this difference, however, to be carefully noted, that while Heathen humility is founded solely on a sense of dependence, Christian humility proceeds also, and perhaps more decidedly, from a sense of guilt. Neither does the phraseology of Heathen and Christian writers on this subject differ always so much as people seem to imagine; between the μη ὐπερφρον(ε)ιν παρ ὃ δεῖ φρονεῖν of St. Paul (Rom. xii. 3), and the ὀυδεπώποτε ὐπερ ἄνθρωπον ἐφρόνησα of Xenophon (Cyropaed. VIII), it were a foolish subtlety that should attempt to make a distinction.

Note 42 (p. 159).

“Give the air-shattering Tyrrhene trump free voice.”

“It is a correct and significant observation made by the Scholiast on Iliad XVIII. 219, that Homer never mentions the trumpet (σάλπιγξ) in the narrative part of his poem, but only for a comparison: familiar as he was with the instrument, he was not ignorant that the use of it was new, and not native in Greece. Indeed, it was never universally adopted in that country: the Spartans and Cretans marching into battle, first to the accompaniment of the lyre, and afterwards of the flute. The tragedians again are quite familiar with the Tuscan origin of the trumpet, though they make no scruple of introducing it into their descriptions of the Hellenic heroic age”—Müll.; Etrusker I. p. 286.

Note 43 (p. 160).

Enter Apollo. Here commences a debate between the daughters of Night and the god accusing and defending, which, as Grote (History of Greece, I. 512) remarks, is “eminently curious.” And not only curious, but unfortunately, to our modern sense at least, not a little ludicrous in some places. The fact is, that the strange moral contradictions and inconsistencies so common in the Greek mythology, so long as they are concealed or palliated under a fair imaginative show, give small offence; but when placed before the understanding, in order to be interrogated by the strict forms of judicial logic, they necessarily produce a collision with our practical reason and a smile is the result.

Note 44 (p. 161)

“. . . himself did bind

With bonds his hoary-dated father Kronos.”

“In the fable of the binding of Kronos by his son Jove, Æschylus saw nothing disrespectful to the character of the supreme ruler, but only the imaginative embodiment of the fact, that one celestial dynasty had been succeeded by another. The image of binding, and of the battles of the Titans generally, might seem to his mind not the most appropriate; but the offence that lay in them was softened not a little by the consideration that the enchainment of Kronos and the Titans was only a temporary affair, leading to a reconciliation. The result was, that the Titans themselves at last acknowledged the justice of their punishment, and submitted themselves to Jove, as the alone legitimate ruler of Earth; and Herr Welcker is quite wrong in supposing that either here, or in the Agamemnon, or the Prometheus, there is any indication that the mind of Æschylus was fundamentally at war with his age in regard to the celestial dynasties.”—Schoemann’s Prometheus, p. 97.

Note 45 (p. 162).

“. . . How

With any clanship share lustration?”

Or, with Buck., “what laver of his tribe shall receive him?”—the word in the original being φρατόρων. The ancient Hellenic tribes φράτραι were social unions, founded originally in the family tie, and afterwards extended. These unions had certain religious ceremonies which they performed in common, and to which allusion is here made. (Compare Livy VI. 40, 41, nos privatim auspicia habemus of the Patrician families.) To be ἀφρήτωρ, or excluded from a tribe (Il. IX. 63), was among the Greeks of the heroic ages a penalty half-civil, half-religious, similar in character to the excommunication of the middle ages. Of this extremely interesting subject, the English reader will find a most luminous exposition in Grote’s Greece, vol. iii. p. 74.

Note 46 (p. 162).

“. . . whom we call

The mother begets not.”

Strange as this doctrine may seem to our modern physiologists, it seems founded on a very natural notion; and to the Greeks, who had such a low estimate of women, must have appeared perfectly orthodox. The same doctrine is enunciated by the poet in the Suppliants, v. 279, when he says, “the male artist has imprinted a Cyprian character on your female features”—the image being borrowed from the art of coining. And this, like many fancies cherished by the Greeks, seems to have had its home originally in Egypt. Stan. quotes from Diodorus I. 80, who says—“The Egyptians count none of their sons bastards, not even the sons of a bought slave. For they are of opinion that the father is the only author of generation; the mother but supplieth space and nourishment to the fœtus.” In the play of Euripides, Orestes uses the same argument (Orest. 543).

Note 47 (p. 162).

“Now, hear my ordinance, Athenians!”

This address of the goddess, of practical wisdom, in constituting the Court of the Areopagus, was pointed by the poet directly against the democratic spirit, in his day beginning to become rampant in Athens; and is applicable not less to all times in which great and, perhaps, necessary social changes take place. The poet states, with the most solemn distinctness, that the mere love of liberty will never protect liberty from degenerating into licentiousness; but that a religious reverence for law is as essential to society as a religious jealousy of despotism. Only he who profoundly fears God can dispense with the fear of man; and he who fears both God and man is the only good citizen.

Note 48 (p. 162).

“. . . Here, on this hill,

The embattled Amazons pitched their tents of yore.”

The Amazons, “as strong as men” (αντιάνειραι, Il. III. 189), are famous in the history of the Trojan war; and their expedition against Athens, mentioned here, was familiar to every Athenian eye, from the painting in the Stoa Pœcile, described by Pausanias (I. 15). As to the historical reality of these hardy females, the sober Arrian (VII. 13) is by no means inclined (after the modern German fashion) to brush them, with a stroke of his pen, out of the world of realities; and, considering what a strange and strangely adaptable creature man is, I see no reason why we should be sceptical as to their historical existence.

Note 49 (p. 163).

“Thou say’st.”

“This is an ancient way of replying to a captious question, as we see in the Gospel (Matth. xxvii.), where, when Pilate asks, ‘art thou the king of the Jews,’ our Lord, Jesus Christ, answers in these very words Συ λέγεις—‘Thou say’st.’”—Stan.

Note 50 (p. 163).

“Such were thy deeds in Pheres’ house.”

“Alluding to Admetus, son of Pheres, whom Apollo raised from the dead, having obtained this boon from the Fates, on condition that some one should die in his stead.—See the well-known play of Euripides, the Alcestes.”—Stan. The Scholiast on that play, v. 12, as Dindorf notes, remarks that, on this occasion, Apollo moved the inflexible goddesses by the potent influence of wine. This is alluded to a few lines below.

Note 51 (p. 164).

“. . . all my father lives in me.”

κάρτα δ᾽ ειμι τοῦ πατρος; specially wisdom and energy.—So Milton—

“All my father shines in me.”—Paradise Lost, VII.

Compare the Homeric epithet of Pallas ὁβριμοπάτρη with Nägelsbach’s Comprehensive Commentary—Hom. Theologie, p. 100.

Note 52 (p. 164).

Apollo, Fr., who examined the Medicean Codex, says that there is here discernible the mark which introduces a new speaker. Who that speaker is, however, the sense does not allow us to decide; but Orestes and the Chorus having spoken, I do not see why Apollo, who showed such eagerness before, should not now also, put in his word; and, therefore, deserting Well., I follow the old arrangement of Vict. and Stan.

Note 53 (p. 167).

“Sharing alone the strong keys that unlock

His thunder-halls.”

As Pallas possesses all her father’s characteristic qualities of wisdom and strength, so she is entitled to wield all his instruments, and even the thunder. Stan. quotes—

“Ipsa (Pallas) Jovis rapidum jaculata e nubibus ignem.”—Virgil, Æn. I. 46.

And Wakefield compares Callim, Lavac. Pall, 132. So the aegis, or shield of dark-rushing storms (ἀισσω), belongs to Pallas no less than to Zeus (Il. V. 738).

Note 54 (p. 167).

“. . . thou shalt hold

An honoured seat beside Erectheus’ home.”

Erectheus, who, as his name signifies (ἔραζε, Eretz, Heb., Erde, Teut., Earth), was the earth-born, or Adam of Attic legend, had a temple on the Acropolis, beside the temple of the city-protecting (πολιάς) Pallas, of which the ruins yet remain. The cave of the Furies was on the Hill of Mars, directly opposite.—See Introductory Remarks.

Note 55 (p. 168).

“. . . save my city

From brothered strife, and from domestic brawls.”

It was a principle with the Romans that no victory in a civil war should be followed by a triumph; and, accordingly, in the famous triumph of Julius Cæsar, which lasted three days, there was nothing to remind the Roman eye that the conqueror of Pharsalia had ever plucked a leaf from Pompey’s laurels. In v. 826, I read with Mül. ὀυ δόμοις παρων, the present reading, μόλις, being clumsy any way that I have seen it translated.

Note 56 (p. 169).

“The fortress of gods.”

This designation is given to Athens with special reference to the Persian wars; for the Persians destroyed everywhere the temples of the Greek gods (only in the single case of Delos are they said to have made an exception), and the Athenians, in conquering the Persians, saved not only their own lives, but the temples of the gods from destruction.

Note 57 (p. 169).

“Woe to the wretch, by their wrath smitten.”

Well., as usual, is too cautious in not changing μὴ κύρσας into δὴ κύρσας with Pauw and Mül., or μὴν with Lin. and Schoe.

Note 58 (p. 169).

“Not for his own, for guilt inherited.”

“The sins of the fathers, as in the Old Testament, so also among the Greeks, are visited on the children even to the third and fourth generation; nay, even the idea of original sin, derived from the Titanic men of the early ages, and exhibiting itself as a rebellious inclination against the gods more or less in all—this essentially Christian idea was not altogether unknown to the ancient Greeks.”—Schoemann.

Note 59 (p. 170).

“And, when Hermes is near thee.”

What we call a “god-send,” or a “wind-fall,” was called by the Greeks ἓρμαιον, or a thing given by the grace of Hermes. In his original capacity as the patron god of Arcadian shepherds, Hermes was, in like manner, looked on as the giver of patriarchal wealth in the shape of flocks.—Il. xiv. 490.

Note 60 (p. 170).

“Ye Fates, high-presiding.”

There is no small difficulty in this passage, from the state of the text; but, unless it be the Furies themselves that are spoken of, as Kl. imagines (Theol. p. 45), I cannot think there are any celestial powers to whom the strong language of the Strophe will apply but the Fates. If the former supposition be adopted, we must interrupt the chaunt between Athena and the Furies, putting this Strophe into the mouth of the Areopagites, as, indeed, Kl. proposes; but this seems rather a bold measure, and has found no favour. It remains, therefore, only to make such changes in the text as will admit of the application of the whole passage to the Fates, who stand in the closest relation to the Furies, as is evident from Strophe III. of the chorus (p. 146 above). This Mül. has done; and I follow him, not, however, without desiring some more distinct proof that ματροκασιγνῆται, in Greek, can possibly mean sisters.—See Schoe.’s note.

Note 61 (p. 170).

“Jove, that rules the forum, nobly

In the high debate hath conquered.”

Ζεὺς ἀγορᾶιος. The students of Homer may recollect the appeal of Telemachus to the Ithacans in council assembled (Odys. II. 68). Jove, as we have already had occasion to remark, has a peculiar right of presidency over every grand event of human life, and every important social institution; so that, on certain occasions, the Greek Polytheism becomes, for the need, a Monotheism—somewhat after the same fashion as the aristocratic Government of the old Roman Republic had the power of suddenly changing itself, on important occasions, into an absolute monarchy, by the creation of a Dictator.

Note 62 (p. 172).

“Gracious-minded sisterhood.”

The Furies were called Ευμενίδες, or gracious, to propitiate their stern deity by complimentary language. Suidas says (voc. Ευμενίδες) that Athena, in this play, calls the Furies expressly by this name; but the fact is, that it does not occur in the whole play. Either, therefore, the word ἔυφρων, which I have translated “gracious-minded” in the play, must be considered to have given occasion to the remark of the lexicographer (which seems sufficient), or, with Hermann and Schoe., we must suppose something to have fallen out of the present speech.

NOTE.

On p. 132, after the dramatis personæ, I perceive that I have stated that the scene of this piece changes from Delphi to the Hill of Mars, Athens. This is either inaccurate, or, at least, imperfect; for the first change of scene is manifestly (as stated p. 148), to the temple of Athena Pallas, on the Acropolis; and, though the imagination naturally desires that the institution of the Court of the Areopagus should take place on the exact seat of its future labours, yet the construction of the drama by no means necessitates another change of scene, and the allusion to the Hill of Mars in p. 162 is easily explicable on the supposition that it lies directly opposite the Acropolis, and that Pallas points to it with her finger.

NOTES TO PROMETHEUS BOUND

Note 1 (p. 183).

“This Scythian soil, this wild untrodden waste.”

“The ancient Greek writers called all the Northern tribes (i.e. all who dwelt in the Northern parts of Europe and Asia) generally by the name of Scythians and Celto-Scythians; while some even more ancient than these make a division, calling those beyond the Euxine, Ister, and Adria, Hyperboreans, Sarmatians, and Arimaspi; but those beyond the Caspian Sea, Sacæ and Massagetæ.” Strabo, Lib. XI. p. 507.—Stan.

Note 2 (p. 183).

“This daring wretch.”

λεωργὸν, a difficult word; “evil-doer”—Med. and Prow.; Bösewicht—Toelp.; Freveler—Schoe. The other translation of this word—“artificer of man” (Potter)—given in the Etym. was very likely an invention of Lexicographers to explain this very passage. But the expounders did not consider that Æschylus through the whole play makes no allusion to this function of the fire-worker. It was, I believe, altogether a recent form of the myth.—See Weiske. “The precise etymology of the word is uncertain.”—Lin.

Note 3 (p. 183).

“. . . a kindred god.”

“A fellow deity”—Med. But this is not enough. Vulcan, as a smith, and Prometheus were kindred in their divine functions, for which reason they were often confounded in the popular legends, as in the case of the birth of Pallas from the brain of Jove, effected by the axe, some say of Hephaestus, some of Prometheus—Apollodor. I. 3-6. Euripid. Ion. 455; from which passage of the tragedian Welcker is of opinion that Prometheus, not Hephaestus, must have a place in the pediment of the Parthenon representing the birth of Pallas.—Class. Museum, Vol. II. p. 385.

Note 4 (p. 183).

“High-counselled son

Of right-decreeing Themis.”

Not Clymene according to the Theogony (V. 508) or Asia, one of the Oceanides according to Apollodorus (I. 2), which parentage has been adopted by Shelley in his Prometheus Unbound. That Æschylus in preferring this maternity meant to represent the Titan as suffering in the cause of Right against Might, as Welcker will have it (Trilog. p. 42), is more than doubtful. One advantage, however, is certainly gained, viz., that Prometheus is thus brought one degree further up the line of ascent in direct progress from the two original divinities of the Theogony—Uranus or Heaven, and Gee or the Earth; for, according to Hesiod, Themis is the daughter, Clymene only the grand-daughter, of these primeval powers (Theog. 135, 315). Thus, Prometheus is invested with more dignity, and becomes a more worthy rival of Jove.

Note 5 (p. 183).

“. . . saviour shall be none.”

I entirely agree with Schoe. that in the indefinite expression—(ο) λωφήσων γὰρ ὀυ πέφυκέ πω any allusion, such as the Scholiast suggests, to Hercules, the person by whom salvation did at length come, would be in the worst possible taste here, and quite foreign to the tone of the passage.

Note 6 (p. 184).

“Jove is not weak that he should bend.”

This character of harshness and inexorability belongs as essentially to Jove as to the Fates. Pallas, in the Iliad, makes the same complaint—

“But my father, harsh and cruel, with no gentle humour raging,

Thwarts my will in all things.”

Iliad VIII. 360.

We must bear in mind that Jove represents three things—(1) that iron firmness of purpose which is so essential to the character of a great ruler; (2) the impetuous violence and resistless power of the heavenly elements when in commotion; (3) the immutability of the laws of Nature.

Note 7 (p. 184).

“All things may be, but this

To dictate to the gods.”

Ἅπαντ ἐπράχθη πλὴν θε(ο)ισι κοιρανεῖν—literally, all things have been done, save commanding the gods. I do not know whether there is any philological difficulty in the way of this translation. It certainly agrees perfectly well with the context, and has the advantage of not changing the received text. Schoe., however, adopting Herm.’s emendation of ἐπαχθῆ translates—

“Last trägt ein jeder, nur der Götter König nicht.”

“All have their burdens save the king of the gods.”

On the theological sentiment, I would compare that of Seneca—“In regno nati sumus; Deo parere libertas est” (Vit. Beat. 15)—and that of Euripides, where the captive Trojan queen, finding the king of men, Agamemnon, willing to assist her, but afraid of the opinion of the Greeks, speaks as follows:—

“Ουκἔστι θνητῶν ὃστις ἐστ ἐλέυθερος,

ἢ χρημάτων γαρ δ(ο)υλος ἐστιν ἡ τύχης

η πλῆθος ἀυτὸν πόλεως, ἤ νόμων γρἤφαι

ἔιργουσι χρῆσθαι μὴ κατὰ γνῶμην τρόποις.”

Hec. 864.

Note 8 (p. 185).

“Thou hast been called

In vain the Provident.”

This is merely translating Prometheus (from προ before, and μῆτις counsel) into English. These allusions to names are very frequent in Æschylus—so much so as to amount to a mannerism; but we who use a language, the heritage of years, a coinage from which the signature has been mostly rubbed off, must bear in mind that originally all words, and especially names, were significant. See the Old Testament everywhere (particularly Gen. c. xxix. and xli., with which compare Homer, Odyssey xix. 407). And, indeed, in all original languages, like Greek or German, which declare their own etymology publicly to the most unlearned, no taunt is more natural and more obvious than that derived from a name. Even in Scotland, a man who is called Bairnsfather will be apt to feel rather awkward if he has no children. “In the oldest Greek legend,” says Welcker (Tril. p. 356), “names were frequently invented, in order to fix down the character or main feature of the story”—(so Bunyan in the Pilgrim’s Progress)—a true principle, which many German writers abuse, to evaporate all tradition into mere fictitious allegory. But the practice of the Old Testament patriarchs shows that the significancy of a name affords of itself no presumption against its historical reality.

Note 9 (p. 185).

Prometheus. The critics remark with good reason the propriety of the stout-hearted sufferer observing complete silence up to this point. It is natural for pain to find a vent in words, but a proud man will not complain in the presence of his adversary. Compare the similar silence of Cassandra in the Agamemnon; and for reasons equally wise, that of Faust in the Auerbach cellar scene. So true is it that a great poet, like a wise man, is often best known, not by what he says, but by what he does not say—(και τῆς ἂγαν γάρ έστί που σιγῆς βάρος, as Sophocles has it). As to the subject of the beautiful invocation here made by the Titan sufferer, the reader will observe not merely its poetical beauty (to which there is something analogous in Manfred, act I. sc. 2—

“My mother Earth,

And thou fresh-breaking day, and you, ye mountains,

And thou the bright eye of the Universe,”)

but also its mythological propriety in the person of the speaker, as in the early times the original elementary theology common to the Greeks with all polytheists, had not been superseded by those often sadly disguised impersonations which are represented by the dynasty of Jove. Ocean and Hyperion (ὑπερίων—he that walks aloft) are named in the Theogony, along with Themis and Iapetus, as the first generation of gods, directly begotten from Heaven and Earth.—(Theog. 133-4.) In the natural progress of religious opinion, this original cosmical meaning of the Greek gods, though lost by anthropomorphism to the vulgar, was afterwards brought out by the natural philosophers, and by the philosophical poets; of which examples occur everywhere among the later classics. Indeed, the elemental worship seems never to have been altogether exploded, but continued to exist in strange confusion along with the congregation of fictitious persons to which it had given birth. So in Homer, Agamemnon prays—

“Father Jove from Ida swaying, god most glorious and great,

And thou Sun, the all-perceiving and all-hearing power, and ye

Rivers and Earth,” etc.—Il. III. 277.

Note 10 (p. 185).

“The multitudinous laughter.”

ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα. I must offer an apology here for myself, Mr. Swayne, and Captain Medwyn, because I find we are in a minority. The Captain, indeed, has paraphrased it a little—

“With long loud laughs, exulting to be free,”

but he retains the laugh, which is the stumbling-block. Swayne has

“Ye ocean waves

That with incessant laughter bound and swell

Countless,”

also a little paraphrased, but giving due prominence to the characteristic idea. E. P. Oxon. has

“Ocean smiling with its countless waves,”

with a reference to Stanley’s note, “Refertur ad levem sonum undarum ventis exagitatarum qui etiam aliquantulum crispant maris dorsum quasi amabili quadam γελασιᾳ,” in which words we see the origin of Pot.’s—

“Ye waves

That o’er the interminable ocean wreathe

Your crisped smiles.”

Prow. has—

“Dimpled in multitudinous smiles.”

And Schoe.’s—

“Zahllosses Blinken.”

And so Blom. in a note, emphatically—

“Lenis fluctuum agitatio.”

But why all this gentleness? Does it agree either with the strength of the poet’s genius, or with the desolation of the wild scene around his hero? I at once admit that γελάω is often used in Greek, where, according to our usage, smile would be the word; but in the Old Testament we find the broad strong word laugh often retained in descriptions of nature; and I see not the least reason for walking in satin shoes here.

Note 11 (p. 186).

“. . . in a reed concealed it.”

νάρθηξ—“still used for this purpose in Cyprus, where the reed still retains the old Greek name”—Welcker, Tril. p. 8, who quotes Walpole’s Memoirs relative to Turkey, p. 284, and Tournefort, Letter 6. I recollect at school smoking a bit of bamboo cane for a cigar.

Note 12 (p. 186).

“. . . Ah me! ah me! who comes?”

The increased agitation of mind is here expressed in the original by the abandonment of the Iambic verse, and the adoption of the Bacchic—τίς ἀχὼ, etc., which speedily passes into the anapæst, as imitated by my Trochees. Milton was so steeped in Greek, that I think he must have had this passage in his mind when he wrote the lines of Samson Agonistes, v. 110, beginning “But who are these?” Altogether, the Samson is, in its general tone and character, quite a sort of Jewish Prometheus.

Note 13 (p. 187).

“Daughters of prolific Tethys.”

The ancient sea-goddess, sister and wife of Oceanus, daughter of Heaven and Earth. The reader will observe that the mythology of this drama preserves a primeval or, according to our phrase, antediluvian character throughout. The mythic personages are true contemporaries belonging to the most ancient dynasty of the gods. For this reason Ocean appears in a future stage of the play, not Poseidon. Tethys, with the other Titans and Titanesses are enumerated by Hesiod, Theog. 132-7, as follows—

“Earth to Uranus wedded bore Ocean deep with whirling currents,

Coeus, Creios, Hyperion, Theia, Rhea, Iapetus,

Themis, Mnemosyne, lovely Tethys, likewise Phœbe golden-crowned,

Then the youngest of them all, deep-designing Kronos.”

As for the epithet prolific applied to Tethys, the fecundity of fish is a proverb in natural history; but I suppose it is rather the infinite succession of waves on the expanded surface of Ocean that makes his daughters so numerous in the Theogony (362)—

“Thrice ten hundred they are counted delicate-ancled Ocean maids.”

Note 14 (p. 187).

“. . . the giant trace

Of Titan times hath vanished.”

Here we have distinctly indicated that contrast between the old and the new gods, which Æschylus makes so prominent, not only in this play, but also in the Furies. The conclusion has been drawn by various scholars that Æschylus was secretly unfavourable to the recognised dynasty of Jove, and that his real allegiance was to these elder gods. But the inference is hasty and unauthorised. His taste for the sublime led him into these primeval ages, as it also did Milton: that is all we can say.

Note 15 (p. 188).

“. . . the new-forged counsels

That shall hurl him from his throne.”

The new-forged counsels were of Jove’s own devising—viz., that he should marry Thetis; of which marriage, if it should take place, the son was destined to usurp his father’s throne.—Scholiast.

Note 16 (p. 188).

“O, ’tis hard, most hard to reach

The heart of Jove!”

Inexorability is a grand characteristic of the gods.

“Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando.”—Virg., Æn. VI.

And so Homer makes Nestor say of Agamemnon, vainly hoping to appease the wrath of Pallas Athena, by hecatombs—

“Witless in his heart he knew not what dire sufferings he must bear,

For not lightly from their purposed counsel swerve the eternal gods.”

Odys. III. 147.

And of Jove, in particular, Hera says to Themis, in the council of the gods—

“Well thou knowest

How the Olympian’s heart is haughty, and his temper how severe.”

Iliad XV. 94.

Note 17 (p. 188).

“My mother Themis, not once but oft, and Earth

(One shape of various names).”

Æschylus does not and could not confound these two distinct persons, as Pot. will have it.—See Eumenides, 2. Schoe. has stated the whole case very clearly. Pot. remarks with great justice, that a multiplicity of names “is a mark of dignity;” it by no means follows, however, that Themis, in this passage, is one of those many names which Earth receives. In illustration we may quote a passage from the Kurma Ouran (Kennedy’s Researches on Hindoo Mythology; London, 1831; p. 208)—“That,” says Vishnu, pointing to Siva, “is the great god of gods, shining in his own refulgence, eternal, devoid of thought, who produced thee (Brahma), and gave to thee the Vedas, and who likewise originated me, and gave me various names.” Southey, in the roll of celestial dramatis personæ prefixed to the Curse of Kehama, says “that Siva boasts as many as one thousand and eight names.”

Note 18 (p 189).

“Suspicion’s a disease that cleaves to tyrants,

And they who love most are the first suspected.”

“Nam regibus boni quam mali suspectiores sunt, semperque his aliena virtus formidolosa est.”—Sall. Cat. VII. “In princes fear is stronger than love; therefore it is often more difficult for them to tear themselves from persons whom they hate than to cast off persons whom they love.”—Richter (Titan).

Note 19 (p. 189).

“I only of the gods

Thwarted his will.”

This is one of the passages which has suggested to many minds a comparison between the mythical tortures of the Caucasus and the real agonies of Calvary. The analogy is just so far; only the Greek imagination never could look on Prometheus as suffering altogether without just cause; he suffered for his own sins. This Toepel. p. 71, has well expressed thus—“Prometheus deos laesit ut homines bearet: Christus homines beavit ut suae, Deique patris obsecundaret voluntati.”

Note 20 (p. 189).

“. . . in cunning torment stretched.”

ἀνηλεῶς ἐῤῥύθμισμαι—“so bin ich zugerichtet.”—Passow. A sort of studious malignity is here indicated. So we say allegorically to trim one handsomely, to dress him, when we mean to punish. The frequent use of this verb ρυθμίζω is characteristic of the Greeks, than whom no people, as has been frequently remarked, seem to have possessed a nicer sense of the beauty of measure and the propriety of limitation in their poetry and works of art. So Sophocles, Antig. 318, has ρυθμίζειν λύπην.

Note 21 (p. 190).

“Blind hopes of good I planted

In their dark breasts.”

A striking phrase, meaning, however, nothing more, I imagine, according to the use of the Greek writers (and also of the Latins with caecus) than dim, indistinct; neither, indeed, is the phrase foreign to our colloquial English idiom—“The swearing to a blind etcetera they (the Puritans) looked upon as intolerable.”—Calamy’s Life of Baxter. In the well-known story of Pandora, Hesiod relates that, when the lid of the fatal box was opened, innumerable plagues flew out, only Hope remained within.—Works and Days, 84.

Note 22 (p. 190).

“And flame-faced fire is now enjoyed by mortals?”

Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, in his account of New South Wales (London, 1804), mentions that the wild natives produced fire with much difficulty, and preserved it with the greatest care. The original inhabitants of New Holland, and the wild African bushmen described by Moffat, the missionary, are among the lowest specimens of human nature with which we are acquainted. As for Æschylus, it is evident he follows in this whole piece the notion of primitive humanity given in his introductory chapters by Diodorus, and generally received amongst the ancients, viz., that the fathers of our race were the most weak and helpless creatures imaginable, like the famous Egyptian frogs, as it were, only half developed from the primeval slime.

Note 23 (p. 191).

Enter Ocean. “This sea god enters,” says Brunoy, quoted by Pot., on “I know not what winged animal—bizarrerie inexplicable.” Very inexplicable certainly; and yet, as the tragedian expressly calls the animal a bird, I do not see why so many translators, both English and German, should insist on making it a steed. The bird certainly was a little anomalous, having, as we learn below, four feet (τετρασκελὴς ὀιωνός, v. 395—a four-footed bira); but it was a bird for all that, and the air was its element. If the creature must have a name, we must even call it a griffin, or a hippogriff, notwithstanding Welcker’s remarks (Tril. p. 26). Those who wish to see its physiognomy more minutely described may consult Aeliean. hist, animal. IV. 27, in an apt passage quoted from Jacobs by Both. There is an ambiguity in the passage which I have translated—

“Thought instinctive reined the creature,”

some applying γνώμῃ not to the animal, but to the will of the rider. So Prow.—

“Following still

Each impulse of my guiding will.”

But for the poetical propriety of my translation I can plead the authority of Southey—

“The ship of Heaven instinct with thought displayed

Its living sail, and glides along the sky.”

Curse of Kehama, VII. 1.

and of Milton—

“The chariot of paternal Deity

Instinct with spirit.”—VI. 750.

and what is much more conclusive in the present instance, that of Homer, whose τιτυσκόμεναι φρεσὶ νῆες (Odyssey VIII. 556), or self-piloted ships of the Phœnicians, belong clearly to the same mythical family as the self-reined griffin of old Ocean.

Note 24 (p. 191).

“From my distant caves cerulean.”

i.e., in the far West, extreme Atlantic, or “ends of the earth,” according to the Homeric phrase.

“To the ends I make my journey of the many-nurturing Earth,

There where Ocean, sire of gods, and ancient mother Tethys dwells,

They who nursed me in their palace, and my infant strength sustained,”

says Hera in the Iliad (XIV. 200).

Note 25 (p. 192).

“Enough my brother Atlas’ miseries grieve me.”

The reader will see by referring to the old editions and to Pot. that the following description of the miseries of Atlas and Typhon is, in the MS., given to Ocean; and, it must be confessed, there seems a peculiar dramatic propriety in making the old sea god hold up the fate of the Cilician Blaster as a warning to the son of Iapetus, whom he saw embarked in a similar career of hopeless rebellion against the Thunderer. But philological considerations, well stated by Schoe., have weighed with that editor, as with his predecessors Blom. and Well., whose authority and arguments I am for the present willing to follow, though not without some lingering doubts. The alteration of the text originally proceeded from Elmsley, and the original order of the dialogue is stoutly defended by Toepel. in his notes.

Note 26 (p. 192)

“The pillars of Heaven and Earth upon his shoulders.”

If the reader is a curious person, he will ask how Atlas when standing on the Earth—in the extreme west of the Earth—could bear the pillars of Heaven and Earth? and the question will be a very proper one; for the fact is that, as Hesiod distinctly states the case, he bore the pillars of Heaven only (Theog. 517). This is, indeed, the only possible idea that could be admitted into a mythology which proceeded on the old principle that the Earth was a flat solid platform in the centre of the Universe, round which the celestial pole (πόλος) wheeled. The phrase “pillars of Heaven and Earth” is, therefore, to a certain extent an improper one; for the Earth, being the stable base of all things, required no pillars to support it. In one sense it is true that the pillars of Atlas are the pillars of Heaven and Earth, viz., in so far as they have Heaven at one end and Earth at the other, which is what Homer means when he says (Odyssey I. 54), that these pillars “γᾶιάν τε καὶ ὀυρανὸν ἀμφὶς ἔχουσιν.” And that this is the idea of Æschylus, also, is plain, both from the present passage, and from the Epode of the next following Chorus, where, unless we force in one conjecture of Schütz, or another of Hermann into the text, there is no mention of anything but the celestial pole. In all this I but express in my own words, and with a very decided conviction, the substance of the admirable note in Schoe. to v. 426, Well.

Note 27 (p. 192).

“. . . Typhon.”

The idea of Typhon is that of a strong windy power, δεινόν ὑβριστήν τ ἄνεμον, according to the express statement of Hesiod (Theog. 307). The Greek word Typhon, with which our typhus fever is identical, expresses the state of being swollen or blown up; with this, the other idea of heat, which belongs also to Typhon (Sallust, περὶ θεῶν, c. 4), is naturally connected. According to the elementary or physical system of mythology, therefore, Typhon is neither more nor less than a simoom or hot wind.

Note 28 (p. 193).

“Knowest thou not this, Prometheus, that mild words

Are medicines of fierce wrath?”

The reader may like to see Cicero’s version of these four lines—

“Oceanus. Atqui Prometheu te hoc, tenere existimo

Mederi posse rationem iracundiæ.”

“Prom. Si quidem qui tempestivam medicinam admovens

Non ad gravescens vulnus illidat manus.”

Tusc. Q., III. 31.

Note 29 (p. 194).

“. . . holy Asia weep

For thee, Prometheus.”

Here, and in the epithet of the rivers in the Epode (compare Homer’s Odyssey X. 351, ἱερων ποταμων, and Nägelsbach, Homer, Theologie, p. 85), the original word is ἁγνος, a term to be particularly noted, both in the heathen writers and in the Old Testament, as denoting that religious purity in connection with external objects and outward ceremonies which the Christian sentiment confines exclusively to the moral state of the soul. I have thought it important, in all cases, to retain the Greek phrase, and not by modernizing to dilute it. The religious sentiment in connection with external nature is what the moderns generally do not understand, and least of all the English, whose piety does not readily exhibit itself beyond the precincts of the church porch. The Germans, in this regard, have a much more profound sympathy with the Greek mind.

Note 30 (p. 194).

“. . . Araby’s wandering warriors weep

For thee, Prometheus.”

Arabia certainly comes in, to a modern ear, not a little strangely here, between the Sea of Azof and the Caucasus; but the Greeks, we must remember, were a people whose notions of barbarian geography (as they would call it) were anything but distinct; and, in this play, the poet seems wisely to court vagueness in these matters rather than to study accuracy.

Note 31 (p 195).

“For, soothly, having eyes to see, they saw not.”

With regard to the origin of the human race there are two principal opinions, which have in all times prevailed. One is, that man was originally created perfect, or in a state of dignity far transcending what he now exhibits; that the state in which the earliest historical records present him is a state of declension and aberration from the primeval source; and that the whole progress of what is called civilization is only a series of attempts, for the most part sufficiently clumsy, and always painful, whereby we endeavour to reinstate ourselves in our lost position. This philosophy of history—for so it may most fitly be called—is that which has always been received in the general Christian world; and, indeed, it seems to flow necessarily from the reception of the Mosaic records, not merely as authentic Hebrew documents, but as veritable cosmogony and primeval history—as containing a historical exposition of the creation of the world, and the early history of man. The other doctrine is, that man was originally created in a condition extremely feeble and imperfect; very little removed from vegetable dulness and brutish stupidity; and that he gradually raised himself by slow steps to the exercise of the higher moral and intellectual faculties, by virtue of which he claims successful mastery over the brute, and affinity with the angel. This doctrine was very common, I think I may safely say the current and generally received doctrine, among the educated Greeks and Romans; though the poets certainly did not omit, as they so often do, to contradict themselves by their famous tradition of a golden age, which it was their delight to trick out and embellish. In modern times, this theory of progressive development, as it may be called, has, as might have been expected, found little favour, except with philosophers of the French school; and those who have broached it in this country latterly have met with a most hot reception from scientific men, principally, we may presume, from the general conviction that such ideas go directly to undermine the authority of the Mosaic record. It has been thought, also, that there is something debasing and contrary to the dignity of human nature in the supposition that the great-grandfather of the primeval father of our race may have been a monkey, or not far removed from that species; but, however this be, with regard to Æschylus, it is plain he did not find it inconsistent with the loftiest views of human duty and destiny to adopt the then commonly received theory of a gradual development; and, in illustration, I cannot do better than translate a few sentences from Diodorus, where the same doctrine is stated in prose: “Men, as originally generated, lived in a confused and brutish condition, preserving existence by feeding on herbs and fruits that grew spontaneously. * * * Their speech was quite indistinct and confused, but by degrees they invented articulate speech. * * * They lived without any of the comforts and conveniences of life, without clothing, without habitations, without fire (Prometheus!), and without cooked victuals; and not knowing to lay up stores for future need, great numbers of them died during the winter from the effects of cold and starvation. By which sad experience taught, they learned to lodge themselves in caves, and laid up stores there. By-and-by, they discovered fire and other things pertaining to a comfortable existence. The arts were then invented, and man became in every respect such as a highly-gifted animal might well be, having hands and speech, and a devising mind ever present to work out his purposes.” Thus far the Sicilian (I. 8); and the intelligent reader need not be informed that, to a certain extent, many obvious and patent facts seemed to give a high probability to his doctrine. “Dwellers in caves,” for instance, or “troglodytes,” were well known to the ancients, and the modern reader will find a historical account of them in Strabo, and other obvious places. The Horites (Gen. xiv. 6) were so called from the Hebrew word Hor, a cave—(see Gesenius and Jahn, I. 2-26). But it is needless to accumulate learned references in a matter patent to the most modern observation.—Moffat’s “African Missions” will supply instances of human beings in a state as degraded as anything here described by the poet; and with regard to the aboriginal Australians, I have preserved in my notes the following passage from Collins: “The Australians dwell in miserable huts of bark, all huddled together promiscuously (ἔφυρον εικῆ πάντα!) amid much smoke and dirt. Some also live in caves.” I do by no means assert, however, that these creatures are remnants of primeval humanity, according to the development theory; I only say they afford that theory a historic analogy; while, on the other hand, they are equally consistent with the commonly received Christian doctrine, as man is a creature who degenerates from excellence much more readily in all circumstances than he attains to it. These Australians and Africans may be mere imbecile stragglers who have been dropt from the great army of humanity in its march.

Note 32 (p. 195).

“Numbers, too,

I taught them (a most choice device).”

“The Pythagorean tenets of Æschylus here display themselves. It was one of the doctrines attributed to this mysterious sect that they professed to find in numbers, and their combinations, the primordial types of everything cognisable by the mind, whether of a physical or moral nature. They even spoke of the soul as a number.”—Prow. But, apart from all Pythagorean notions, we may safely say—from observation of travellers indeed certainly affirm—that there is nothing in which the civilized man so remarkably distinguishes himself from the savage, as in the power to grasp and handle relations of number. The special reference to Pythagoras in this passage is, I perceive, decidedly rejected by Schoe.; Bergk. and Haupt., according to his statement, admitting it. Of course, such a reference in the mind of the poet can never be proved; only it does no harm to suppose it.

Note 33 (p. 196).

“. . . the fire-faced signs.”

(φλογωπὰ σήματα). Prowett refers this to lightning; but surely, in the present connection, the obvious reference is to the sacrificial flame, from which, as from most parts of the sacrificial ceremony, omens were wont to be taken. When the flame burned bright it was a good omen; when with a smoky and troublous flame, the omen was bad. See a well-known description of this in Sophocles’ Antigone, from the mouth of the blind old diviner Tiresias, when he first enters the stage, v. 1005; and another curious passage in Euripides’ Phœniss. 1261.

Note 34 (p. 196).

“And who is lord of strong Necessity?”

Necessity (Ἀνάγκη), a favourite power to which reference is made by the Greek dramatists, is merely an impersonation of the fact patent to all, that the world is governed by a system of strict and inexorable law, from the operation of which no man can escape. That the gods themselves are subject to this Ἀνάγκη. is a method of expression not seldom used by Heathen writers; but that they had any distinct idea, or fixed theological notion of Necessity or Fate, as a power separate from and superior to the gods I see no reason to believe.—See my observations on the Homeric μοῖρα in Clas. Mus., No. XXVI., p. 437. And in the same way that Homer talks of the fate from the gods, so the tragedians talk of necessity from or imposed by the gods—τὰς γὰρ ἐκ θεῶν ἀνάγκας θνητον ὀντα δεῖ φέρειν. With regard to Æschylus, certainly one must beware of drawing any hasty inference with regard to his theological creed from this insulated passage. For here the poet adopts the notion of the strict subjection of Jove to an external Fate, principally, one may suppose, from dramatic propriety; it suits the person and the occasion. Otherwise, the Æschylean theology is very favourable to the absolute supremacy of Jove; and, accordingly, in the Eumenides, those very Furies, who are here called his superiors, though they dispute with Apollo, are careful not to be provoked into a single expression which shall seem to throw a doubt on the infallibility of “the Father.” For the rest, the Fates and Furies, both here and in the Eumenides, are aptly coupled, and, in signification, indeed, are identical; because a man’s fate in this world can never be separated from his conduct, nor his conduct from his conscience, of which the Furies are the impersonation.

Note 35 (p. 196).

“No more than others Jove can ’scape his doom.”

The idea that the Supreme Ruler of the Universe can ever be dethroned is foreign to every closely reasoned system of monotheism; but in polytheistic systems it is not unnatural (for gods who had a beginning may have an end); and in the Hindoo theology receives an especial prominence. Southey accordingly makes Indra, the Hindoo Jove, say—

“A stronger hand

May wrest my sceptre, and unparadise

The Swerga.”—Curse of Kehama, VII.

We must bear in mind, however, that it is not Æschylus in the present passage, but Prometheus who says this.

Note 36 (p. 197)

“Plant his high will against my weak opinion!”

The original of these words, “μηδάμ θ(ε)ιτ᾽ εμᾀ γνώμᾶ κράτος ἀντίπαλον Ζεὺς,” has been otherwise translated “Minime Jupiter indat animo meo vim rebellem;” but, apart altogether from theological considerations, I entirely agree with Schoe. that this rendering puts a force upon the word κράτος, which is by no means called for, and which it will not easily bear.

Note 37 (p. 197)

“Won by rich gifts didst lead.”

Observe here the primitive practice according to which the bridegroom purchased his wife, by rich presents made to the father. In Iliad IX. 288, Agamemnon promises, as a particular favour, to give his daughter in marriage to Achilles ἀνάεδνον, that is, without any consideration in the shape of a marriage gift.

Note 38 (p. 197).

Enter Io. Io is one of those mysterious characters on the borderland between history and fable, concerning which it is difficult to say whether they are to be looked on as personal realities, or as impersonated ideas. According to the historical view of ancient legends, Io is the daughter of Inachus, a primeval king of Argos; and, from this fact as a root, the extravagant legends about her, sprouting from the ever active inoculation of human fancy, branched out. Interpreted by the principles of early theological allegory, however, she is, according to the witness of Suidas, the Moon, and her wanderings the revolutions of that satellite. In either view, the immense extent of these wanderings is well explained by mythological writers (1) from the influence of Argive colonies at Byzantium and elsewhere; and (2) from the vain desire of the Greeks to connect their horned virgin Io, with the horned Isis of the Egyptians. It need scarcely be remarked that, if Io means the moon, her horns are as naturally explained as her wanderings. But, in reading Æschylus, all these considerations are most wisely left out of view, the Athenians, no doubt, who introduced this play, believing in the historical reality of the Inachian maid, as firmly as we believe in that of Adam or Methuselah. As little can I agree with Both. that we are called upon to rationalize away the reality of the persecuting insect, whether under the name of ᾽(ο)ιστρος or μύωψ. In popular legends the sublime is ever apt to be associated with circumstances that either are, or, to the cultivated imagination, necessarily appear to be ridiculous.