NOTES TO THE CHOEPHORÆ
“What power thy father lent.”
Jove was regarded as the grand source of the power exercised by all the other gods, even Apollo receiving the gift of prophecy from him. There is a peculiar propriety in the allusion to the father Zeus, as Mercury is requested to perform the same office of σωτήρ or Saviour to Orestes that Jove in a peculiar manner performs to all mankind.—See Müller on Zeus Soter. (Eumenides, § 94), whose observations, however, on this particular passage, seem to force an artificial accent on the epithet σώτηρ. The opening lines of this piece are wanting in the MSS. and were supplied by Stan. from the Frogs of Aristophanes.
“* * My early growth of hair
To Inachus I vowed.”
These words will recall to the student of Homer a passage from the twenty-third book of the Iliad, where an account is given of the funeral ceremonies of Patroclus.
“First the horsemen came, and then a cloud of infantry behind,
Tens of thousands; his companions bore Patroclus in the midst,
And the corpse they sadly covered with the locks which grief had shorn.”
v. 133-5
And again—
“Then another deed devised Achilles, godlike, swift of foot;
Stationed sad behind the pyre he dipt his locks of yellow hair,
Which, luxuriant shed, he cherished to Spercheius’ flowing stream.”
v. 140-3.
Compare the beautiful passage on the Greek mythology in Wordsworth’s Excursion, Book IV.
“O Jove, be thou mine aid.”
Of the high functions which belong to the supreme god of the Greeks, that of avenger is not the least notable, and is alluded to with special frequency in the Odyssey, of which poem, retribution in this life for wicked works is the great moral—whence the frequent line—
ἀι κε πόθι Ζεὺς δῶσι παλίντιτα ἔργα γενέσθαι.
“And my cheeks, that herald sorrow.”
“As these violent manifestations of grief were forbidden by Solon (Plut. 21), we are to look upon them in this place as peculiarly characteristic of the foreign captive maidens who compose the chorus”—Kl.; though the epithet of ἄμφιδρυφὴς ἄλοχος applied to the wife of Protesilaus by Homer (Il. ii. 700, xi. 393), shows that, in the heroic times, at least, the expression of sorrow was almost as violent on the west as on the east side of the Hellespont.
“And now fear rules.”
φοβεῖτας δέ τις. “People are afraid, and dare not speak out”—Peile. abruptness of this passage renders it difficult to see the allusion. Paley gives it quite a different turn. “Sunt qui ob commissi sceleris quo adepti sint magnam fortunam (το ἐυτυχ(ε)ίν) conscientiam torqueantur.” But I do not think that this rendering agrees so well with the words that follow. The thought seems to be—the world judges by results; and men are content, even in fear, to obey a usurper, who shows his right by his success. This brings out a beautiful contrast to the σέβας, or feeling of loyal reverence that filled the public mind towards Agamemnon, who is alluded to in the first words of the Antistrophe.
“So filthy hands with blood bedabbled.”
I do not see why Well. and Kl. should object to πόροι being taken, as the Scholiast hints, for an equivalent to ποταμοὶ. The word simply means “channels,” and in the present connection of purification would naturally explain itself to a Greek ear, as channels of water. Kl.’s rendering of πόρος, ratio expiandae caedis, has no merit but being unpoetical. The ἰοῦσαν ἄτην holds concealed some hopeless blunder; but for the need the κλύσειαν άν μάτην of Fr. may be adopted.
“What the masters of my fate
In their strength decree.”
“There is a proverb, Δ(ο)υλε δεσποτῶν ἄκουε καὶ δίκαια καὶ αδικα. Slave hear thy master whether right or wrong.”—Scholiast.
“. . . beneath the veil.”
ὑφ (ε)ιμάτων. Stan. quotes the beautiful picture of Telemachus (Odyssey IV. 114), endeavouring to conceal his filial sorrow from the eyes of Menelaus at Sparta—
“From his eye the tear-drop fell when he heard his father’s name,
And with both his hands before his eyes he held the purple cloak.”
“. . . libations pure,
Poured on my father’s tomb.”
These libations are described in various passages of the Classics, of which the following may suffice:—
“Then to all the dead I poured libations, first with honied milk,
Then with sweetest wine, and then with water, and I strewed the grains
Of whitest meal.”—Odyssey XI. 26.
“Go, my Hermione, without the door,
And these libations take, and take my hair,
And, standing over Clytemnestra’s tomb,
Milk-mingled honey and the winy foam
Pour, and thus speak.”—Eurip., Orest. 112.
“And with the due libation’s triple flow
She crowns the corpse.”—Soph. Antig., 429.
The χοᾶισι πρισπόνδαισι, being the wine, water, and milk, particularised in the above extract from Homer. Compare Virgil’s Æn. V. 78, and St. Augustine’s Confessions vi. 2, with regard to his mother’s offering at the tombs of the martyrs—pultes et panem et merum.
“. . . as who throws lustral ashes.”
καθάρματα. “Ashes of lustral offerings”—Peile. “Alluding to the custom of the Athenians, who, after purifying their houses with incense in an earthen vessel, threw the vessel into the streets, and retired with averted eyes.”—Scholiast.
“What other quittance to a foe
Than hate repaid with hate, and blow with blow?”
Why not? πῶς δ᾽ ου; how should it be otherwise? Observe, here, how far the Christian rule, love thine enemies, was from the Heathen mind. It is very far yet from our practice; though it is difficult to over-estimate the value of having such ideal moral maxims as those of the New Testament to refer to as a generally recognized standard.
“Hermes, that swayest underneath the ground.”
All the recent editors agree in bringing up the line—
κήρυξ μέγιστε των άνω τε καὶ κάτω,
from v. 162 to this place, where the initial words are plainly wanting. “Hermes is invoked here as the great mediator between the living and the dead.”—Kl. “Herald me in this”—κηύξας ᾽εμοι—perform a herald’s function to me in this; the verb chosen with special reference to the name κήρυξ, according to the common practice of the Greek writers. In the second line below, I can have no hesitation in adopting Stan.’s emendation of ὸωμάτων for ομμάτων. Ahrens (in Fr.) has tried to make the passage more pregnant by reading ἁιμάτων, but this scarcely seems such an obvious emendation.
“These words of evil imprecation dire.”
This is said to avoid the bad omen of mingling a curse with a blessing. The ancients were very scrupulous as to the use of evil words in religious services, and, when such were either necessary, or had accidentally crept in, they always made a formal apology. This I have expressed more largely than my text warrants in the next line, where I follow Schütz in reading καλῆς for κακῆς; a correction which, though not absolutely necessary, is sufficiently plausible to justify Blom., Schol., and Pal. in their adoption of it.
Chorus. This chorus seems hopelessly botched in the first half, and all the attempts to mend it are more or less unsatisfactory. If any one think “plashing torrents” a strong phrase, he must know that it is no stronger than καναχὲς in the original, a word familiar to every student of Homer. The ἐρυμα (or ἐρμα—Herm.), I agree with every interpreter, except Klausen, in applying to the tomb of Agamemnon; of the κακῶν κεδνῶν τε, I can make nothing, beyond incorporating the Scholiast’s gloss, ἀπότροπον των ἠμετέρων κακῶν.
Electra. The reader will find in Pot. a somewhat amplified translation of the line here—
κήρυξ μεγιστε των άνω τε καὶ κάτω,
mentioned above as having been thrown back by Hermann to the commencement of Electra’s address over the tomb of her father, immediately preceding the short choral ode. It is literally translated by E. P., Oxon.—
“O mightiest herald of the powers above and below,”
but comes in quite awkwardly, and manifestly out of place.
“. . . a low-zoned maid’s.”
βαθυζώνου. “High-bosomed,” Potter; “hochgeschürzt,” Droysen; “deep-bosomed,” E. P., Oxon.; “Weib im Festgewand,” Franz. Not having a distinct idea of what is meant by this epithet, I have contented myself with a literal rendering.
“If it was dipt
From head in Argos, it should be my own.”
This passage has given great trouble to commentators, who cannot see how Electra should say that no person but herself could have owned this lock, which yet she knew was not her own. They have, accordingly, at least Lin., Peile, and Pal., adopted Dobrees’ emendation of ἑνος (one person, i.e., Orestes), instead of ἐμου, mine, which, though ingenious, does not appear to me at all necessary. Electra means to say, nobody here could have done it but me; and yet it is not mine (this implied); therefore, of course, the conclusion to be made is clear, ἐυξύμβολον τὸδ ἐστι δοξάσαι, it must have been Orestes!
“. . . But lo! a further proof.”
Imagine such evidence produced as a step in the chain of circumstantial evidence before a court of justice! Even the perturbed state of Electra’s mind may not redeem it from the charge of being grossly ludicrous. Well. and Fr., with that solemn conscientious gravity for which the Germans are notable, have, however, taken it under their wing, followed here, strangely enough, by Peile. If the circumstance is to be defended at all, we had better suppose that Æschylus has given the details of the recognition exactly as he had received them from the old popular legend in the mouth of some story-teller. But why should not the father of tragedy, as well as the father of Epos, sometimes nod?
“Pray that fair end may fair beginning follow.”
This seems to have been a sort of proverbial prayer among the Greeks, used for the sake of a good omen, as we find Clytemnestra, in the Agamemnon ([p. 57] above), saying the same thing.
῏Ευ γὰρ πρὸς ἐυ φαν(ε)ισι προσθήκη πελοι. v. 486.
“. . . behold this web.”
“The ladies, in the simplicity of ancient times, valued themselves much, and, indeed, were highly esteemed, for their skill in embroidery; those rich wrought vests made great part of the wealth of noble houses. Andromache, Helen, and Penelope, were celebrated for their fine work, of which Minerva herself was the patroness, and Dido was as excellent as the best of them.”—Pot. The student will recall a familiar instance from Virgil—
“Munera praetrea Iliacis erepta ruinis
Ferre jubet; pallam signis auroque rigentem
Et circumtextum croceo velamen acantho
Ornatus Argivae Helenæ.”—Æneid I. 651.
evidently modelled on Odys. xix. 225.
“May Power and Justice aid thee, mighty Twain.”
The reader will note this theological triad as very characteristic of the Greeks. Power (Κράτος) is coupled with Jove, as being his most peculiar physical attribute. Personified, this attribute appears in the Prometheus; and in Homer,
“Jove, the lofty-pealing Thunderer, and in power the chiefest god,”
answers to the opening words of our own solemn addresses to the Supreme Being—Almighty God. Justice, again, belongs to Jove as the highest moral attribute; and this conjunction we find also very distinctly expressed in Homer.
“By Olympian Jove I charge you, and by Themis who presides
O’er the assemblies of the people.”—Odyssey II. 68.
“. . . exasperate at the loss
Of my so fair possessions.”
ἀποχρημάτοισι ζημιάις ταυρόυμενον. Kl. has made sad havoc of this line; but his objections to the old translation are weak, and his transpositions, so far as I can see, only make confusion more confounded. I stick by Stan. Ἀποχρήματος ζημιά est damnum bonorum omnium. Huc facit illud quod sequitur v. 299. και προσπιέζει χρημάτων ἀχηνία.
“. . . The evil-minded Powers
Beneath the Earth.”
I am quite at a loss to explain the original of this passage further than that I see nothing harsh (as Lin. does) in referring the general term δυσφρόνων to the Furies, who are specially mentioned afterwards. It is quite common with Æschylus to give a general description first, and then specialise; and, moreover, in the present instance the λιχήνος which the δυσφρονες are to send on the flesh of the sinner, are strictly analogous to the λιχὴν ἀφυλλος (Eumen. v. 788), with which, in the Eumenides, they threaten to curse the Athenian soil. For the rest I should have little objection, in the present state of the MSS., to adopt Lobeck’s suggestion, μηνίματα, into the text, and have in effect so translated.
“And through the dark his prescient eyebrow arched.”
The reference of this impracticable line to Apollo comes from Pauw, and has been adopted by Schwenck, who reads—
‘Ορῶν τε λαμπρὸν ὲν σκότῳ τ᾽ ᾽οφρὺν.
Another way of squeezing a meaning from the line is to refer it to Agamemnon—
“With trains of heavier woes
Raised by the Furies from my father’s blood,
Who in the realms of night sees this, and bends
His gloomy brows.”—Pot.
The other translations proposed are meagre and unpoetical.
“. . . him no share
In festal cup awaits, or hallowed drop
Of pure libation.”
Here we have a notable example of the terms of that sort of excommunication which the religious and social feeling of the ancients passed against the perpetrators of atrocious crimes. See [Introductory Remarks] to the Eumenides.
“Age to age with hoary wisdom
Speaketh thus to men.”
The old Jewish maxim of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, will here recur to every one; and, indeed, it is, to the present day, an instinctive dictate of social justice, however insufficient it may be as a general motive for individual conduct. In this spirit, wise old Nestor, in the Iliad (II. 354), considers that it would be disgraceful for the Greeks to think of returning home “before some Greek had slept with the wife of some Trojan,” as a retaliation for the woes that Paris had inflicted on Greek social life, in the matter of Helen. In Dante’s Inferno there are many instances, sometimes ingenious, sometimes only ridiculous, of the application of this principle to retributive punishment in a future life.
“There where in dark, the dead-man’s day, thou liest.”
Kl. appears to me to have supplied the true key to σκότω φάος ἰσόμοιρον, by comparing the exclamation of Ajax in Sophocles, v. 394—
Ιὼ σκότος ἐμὸν φάος
ἔρεβος ὠ φαεννότατον ὡς εμόι!
The gloomy state of the dead in Hades is pictured yet more darkly, by saying that the night, which covers them, is all that serves them for day.
“The monarch of the awful dead.”
The Hades of the ancients was, as is well remarked by Kl. on this place, in all things an image of this upper world; an observation to be made on the surface of Virgil—
“Quae gratia currum
Armorumque fuit viris, quæ cura nitentes
Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos.”
Æneid VI. 653.
But the parallel most striking to the present passage occurs in the address of Ulysses to Achilles, Odyssey XI. 482—
“Achilles,
Never man before was happier, nor shall ever be, than thou;
When thou wert among the living all the Argives honoured thee
Like a god, and now amid the dead thou sway’st with mighty power.”
To which address the hero gave the well-known reply, a reply characteristic at once of his own tremendous energy, and of the Greek views of a future state:—
“Noble Ulysses, praise me not the state of death; for I would rather
Be a serf, and break the clods to him that owneth acres few
On Earth, than reign the mighty lord of millions of the shadowy dead.”
“Hyperborean bliss.”
“Fair birds have fair feathers;” so the Greeks, who had sent no voyages of discovery to the Arctic seas, were free, without contradiction, to place Utopia at the North Pole. (See Herodot. III. 106, quoted by Nitzsh in his comments on the Phœacians, Od. VII. 201-6.) Schütz quotes Pomp. Mela. III. 5—“diutius quam ulli mortalium et beatius vivunt.” Some of these Hyperboreans drank nothing but milk (γαλακτοφάγοι, Hom. Il. XIII. 6), and from this practice the alleged purity of their manners, according to certain modern theories of dietetics, may have arisen.
“O Jove, O Jove! that sendest from below.”
“Zeus, though his proper region is above, yet, by reason of his perfect concord with his brother in the moral government of the world, exercises authority also in Hades”—Kl. This is one of the many instances to be found in Homer and Æschylus of the Monotheistic principle of an enlightened Deism controlling and overruling the apparent confusion and anarchy of Polytheism.
“Ye that honoured reign below.”
What the true reading of the corrupt original here is, no one can know; but it may be some satisfaction to the student to note that the different readings of all the emendators bring out substantially the same sense. I give the various translations as follows:—
You, whose dreaded power
The infernal realms revere, ye Furies, hear me!—Pot.
O ye powers that are honoured among the dead, listen to my prayer.—E. P., Oxon.
Höret ihr Herrscher der Tiefe, hört mich.—Droy.
Höret mich Erd, und des Abgrund’s mächte!—Fr.
Neither this “Earth,” nor my “Furies,” can be looked on as part of the text. They are only put in to fill up a gap, where nothing better can be done.
“And if blithe confidence awhile.”
This passage is desperate. I follow Peile in the translation; though, if I were editing the Greek, I should prefer to follow Well. and Pal. in doing nothing.
“The mother gave her child
This wolfish nature wild.”
This translation, which is supported by Peile, and Pal., and Lin., seems to me to give θυμὸς that reference to Orestes which connects it best with the previous lines, while it, at the same time, gives the least forced explanation of ἐκ μάτρος.
“Like a Persian mourner.”
The student will find a very remarkable difference between this version and that in Pot. and E. P. Oxon., arising from the conversion of the word πολεμιστρίας into ἰηλεμιστρίας, a conjectural emendation which we owe to Hermann and Ahrens, and which appears to me to be one of the most satisfactory that has ever been made on the text of Æschylus. It has, accordingly, been adopted by Kl., Peile, Pal., Fr., and Droy. The oriental wailers were famous, and the “Maryandine and Mysian wailers” are especially mentioned by our poet in the final chorus of “the Persians;” which will be the best commentary on the exaggerated tone of the present passage. I have followed the recent German editors and translators in giving the first part of this Strophe to the Chorus. There seems to be a natural division at the words Ἰὼ, Ἰὼ δαία.
Orestes. Well. has certainly made a great oversight in running on continuously with these two Strophes. However the division be made, a new person must commence with Αέγεις πατρώϊον μόρον.
Chorus. Here again I follow the later editors and translators in dividing the part given to the Chorus by Well. There is a sort of natural partition of the style and sentiment palpable to any reader. It may also be remarked in general, that the broken and exclamatory style of the lamentation in this Chorus is quite incompatible with long continuous speeches (such as Pot. has given), out of one mouth. The order of persons I give as in Peile.
“Scathless myself.”
φυγεῖν. Fr. has unnecessarily changed this into τυχεῖν. In Odyssey XX. 43, Ulysses uses the same language to Athena.
“Thou too shalt taste.”
That the dead were believed actually to eat the meat and drink that was prepared for them at the funeral feast is evident from the eleventh book of the Odyssey, where they come up in fluttering swarms and sip the pool of blood from the victim which he had sacrificed.
“Well spoken both.”
With Kl., Peile, Fr., and Pal., I adopt Hermann’s emendation—
κὰι μὴν ἀμεμφῆ τον δ ἐτείνατον λόγον.
and with him give the four lines to the Chorus. A very obvious and natural sense is thus brought out, besides that καὶ μὴν naturally indicates a change of person.
“. . . try what speed the gods may give thee.”
δαίμονος πειρῶμενος. Literally trying your god—the dependence of fortune upon God being a truth so vividly before the Greek mind that the term δαίμων came to be used for both in a manner quite foreign to the use of the English language, and which can only be fully expressed by giving both the elements of the word in a sort of paraphrase.
“. . . this whole house with ills
Is sheer possessed.”
δαὶμονᾷ δόμος κακοῖς. Literally, “the house is godded with ills,” that is, so beset with evil that we can attribute it only to a special superhuman power—to a god, as the Greeks expressed it, to the devil, as we say.
“. . . Sirs, why dare ye shut
Inhospitable doors against the stranger?”
To shut the door upon a stranger or a beggar, seems, in Homer’s days, to have been accounted as great a sin, as it is now, from change of circumstances, necessarily looked on as almost a virtue. Every book of the Odyssey has some testimony to this; suffice it to quote the maxim—
“προς γαρ Διος ἐισιν ἂπαντες
ξεινοί τε πτωχοί τε.”
“All strangers and beggars come from Jove.”
“The third and crowning cup.”
“Alluding first to the slaughter of the children of Thyestes by Atreus, then to the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, and thirdly, that of Clytemnestra and Ægisthus presently to take place.”—Kl.
“. . . his present aid I ask.
Who laid on my poor wits this bloody task.”
I am inclined with Schütz, Kl., and Peile, to think that there is more propriety in referring this to Apollo than to Pylades. It is true, also, as Schütz remarks, that Æschylus generally, if not invariably, applies the word ἐποπτεύω to the notice taken of anything by a god.
“Earth breeds a fearful progeny.”
The sentiment of this chorus was familiar to the ancients, and was suggested with peculiar force to the minds of the tragedians, from the contemplation of those terrible deeds of old traditionary crime, which so often formed the subject of their most popular and most powerful efforts. Sophocles had a famous chorus in the Antigone, beginning in the same strain, though ranging over a wider and a more ennobling field—“πολλὰ τα δεινὰ κ᾽ ουδὲν ανθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.”
“Things of might hath Nature many
In her various plan,
But of daring powers who dareth
Most on Earth is man.”
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.
“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.”
“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.
“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.
“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.”
“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!
“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.
“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.
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.
“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.
“. . . 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.”
“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.
“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.
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.
“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.
“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.
“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!
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.
“. . . 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.
“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.”
“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.
“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.
“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.
“. . . 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.
“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.”
“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.
“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.
“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?”
“. . . 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.
“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.
“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.
“. . . 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.