FOOTNOTES TO THE EUMENIDES
This original germ of the Furies is mentioned frequently in these plays, as πολυκρατεῖς ἀρὰι φθιμενων, Fell Curses of the Dead, in the Choephoræ, [p. 111] in above. See also the words of Clytemnestra, My curse beware, [p. 126] above.
Wordsworth’s “Athens and Attica,” London, 1836, c. 11.
“Καὶ τὴν μὲν ἐν Ἀρείῳ πάγῳ βουλὴν Ἑφιάλτης ἐκόλουσε καὶ Περικλῆς. τὰ δὲ δικαστήρια μισθοφόρα κατέστησε Περικλῆς.”—Aristotle, Pol. II. 9. 3.
“Τῆς ναναρχίας γὰρ ἐν τοῖς Μηδικοῖς ὁ δῆμος ἄιτιος γενόμενος ἐφρονηματίσθη.”—Aristotle, ibid.
The progeny of Earth and Heaven were called Titans, among whom Phœbe is numbered by Hesiod.—Theog. 136.
Apollo.
One of the waters that descend from Parnassus.
Neptune.
See note to Choephoræ, [No. 73].
πομπᾶιος. Of the dead specially, but also of the living: as of Ulysses in the Odyssey, Book X.
Literally the unseen world. Sometimes used for the King of the unseen world—Pluto.
Lucidae sedes.—Horace III. 3.
See [Introductory Remarks]. They designate themselves here from their origin, Ἀραὶ or imprecations.
That is, the Furies themselves.
Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass,
Und durch die kummervollen Nächte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sass,
Er kennt Euch nicht, ihr hîmmlischen Mächte!—Goethe.
“For strangers and the poor are from Jove.”—Homer.
See above, [p. 141], [Note 4].
That is, Asia. See [Introduction] to the Agamemnon.
Alluding to the well-known and beautiful allegoric myth that the goddess of wisdom sprang, full-armed, into birth from the brain of the all-wise Omnipotent, without the intervention of a mother.
See the [Preliminary Remarks].
παρόρνιθας, as we say ill-starred—that is, unfortunate, unlucky, the metaphor being varied, according to the changes of fashions in the practice of divination.
Alii γελῶμαι—“fortasse non male.”—Paley.
The goddess of Persuasion—πειθὼ.
Like Erectheus ([p. 167] above), one of the most ancient Earth-born kings of Attica.
So the Greeks called anything very ancient, from Ogyges, an old Bœotian king.