NOTES TO THE SUPPLIANTS
“Jove the suppliant’s high protector.”
Ζεὺς ἀφίκτωρ, literally suppliant Jove, the epithet which properly belongs to the worshipper being transferred to the object of worship. The reader will note here another instance of the monotheistic element in Polytheism, so often alluded to in these Notes. Jove, as the supreme moral governor of the universe, has a general supervision of the whole social system of gods and men; and specially where there is no inferior protector, as in the case of fugitives and suppliants—there he presses with all the weight of his high authority. In such cases, religion presents a generous and truly humanizing aspect, and the “primus in orbe Deos fecit timor” of the philosophers loses its sting.
“Of the fat fine-sanded Nile!”
Wellauer, in his usual over-cautious way, has not received Pauw’s emendation λεπτοψαμάθων into his text, though he calls it certissimum in his notes. Pal., whom I follow, acts in these matters with a more manly decision. Even without the authority of Pliny (XXXV. 13), I should adopt so natural an emendation, where the text is plainly corrupt.
“Gently thrilled the brize-stung heifer
With his procreant touch.”
See [p. 204] above, and [Note 48] to Prometheus. There prevails throughout this play a constant allusion to the divine significance of the name Epaphus, meaning, as it does, touch. To the Greeks, as already remarked ([p. 388]), this was no mere punning; and the names of the gods ([Note 17], p. 391 above) were one of the strongest instruments of Heathen devotion. That there is an allusion to this in Matthew vi. 7, I have no doubt.
“Ye blissful gods supremely swaying.”
I see no necessity here, with Pal., for changing ὧν πολις into ὦ πολις—but it is a matter of small importance to the translator. Jove, the third, is a method of designating the supreme power of which we have frequent examples in Æschylus—see the Eumenides, [p. 164], where Jove the Saviour all-perfecting is mentioned after Pallas and Loxias, as it were, to crown the invocation with the greatest of all names. In that passage τρίτου occurs in the original, which I was wrong to omit.
“Marriage beds which right refuses.”
In what countries are first cousins forbidden to marry? Welcker does not know. “Das Eherecht worauf diese Weigerung beruht ist nicht bekannt.”—Welcker (Trilog. 391).
“With Ionian wailings unstinted.”
“Perhaps Ionian is put in this place antithetically to Νειλοθερῆ, from the Nile, in the next line, and the sense is, ‘though coming from Egypt, yet, being of Greek extraction, I speak Greek.’”—Paley. This appears to me the simplest and most satisfactory comment on the passage.
“From the far misty land.”
That is Egypt. So called according to the Etymol. M. quoted by Stan., from the cloudy appearance which the low-lying Delta district presents to the stranger approaching it from the sea.
“All godlike power is calm.”
It would be unfair not to advertise the English reader that this fine sentiment is a translation from a conjectural reading, πᾶν ἄπονον δαιμονιων, of Well., which, however, is in beautiful harmony with the context. The text generally in this part of the play is extremely corrupt. In the present stanza, Well.’s correction of δε ἀπιδων into ἐλπίδων deserves to be celebrated as one of the few grand triumphs of verbal criticism that have a genuine poetical value.
“Ah! well-a-day! ah! well-a-day!”
The reader must imagine here a complete change in the style of the music—say from the major to the minor key. In the whole Chorus, the mind of the singer sways fitfully between a hopeful confidence and a dark despair. The faith in the counsel of Jove, and in the sure destruction of the wicked, so finely expressed in the preceding stanzas, supports the sinking soul but weakly in this closing part of the hymn. These alterations of feeling exhibited under such circumstances will appear strange to no one who is acquainted with the human, and especially with the female heart.
“Ye Apian hills.”
“Apia, an old name for Peloponnesus, which remains still a mystery, even after the attempt of Butmann to throw light upon it.”—Grote, Hist, of Greece, Part I. c. 4. Æschylus’ own account of Apis, the supposed originator of the name Apia, will be found in this play a few lines below. I have consulted Butmann, and find nothing but a conglomeration of vague and slippery etymologies.
“. . . rounded cars.”
καμπύλος, with a bend or sweep; alluding to the form of the rim of the ancient chariot, between the charioteer and the horses. See the figure in Smith’s Dict. Antiq., Articles ἄντυξ and currus.
“. . . the Agonian gods.”
The common meaning that a Greek scholar would naturally give to the phrase θεοῖ ἀγωνιοι is that given by Hesych, viz., gods that preside over public games, or, as I have rendered it in the Agamemnon ([p. 57] above), gods that rule the chance of combat. For persons who, like the Herald in that play, had just escaped from a great struggle, or, like the fugitive Virgins in this piece, were going through one, there does not appear to be any great impropriety (notwithstanding Pal.’s. inepte) in an appeal to the gods of combat. Opposed to this interpretation, however, we have the common practice of Homer, with whom the substantive ἀγών generally means an assembly; and the testimony of Eustathius, who, in his notes to that poet, Iliad, Ω 1335, 58, says “παρ Αισχύλῳ ἀγώνιοι θεοὶ ὁι ἀγορᾶιοι;” i.e. gods that preside over assemblies.
“. . . your sistered hands.”
διὰ χερων συνωνύμων. I am inclined to think with Pal. that ἐυωνύμων may be the true reading; i.e. in your left hands. And yet, so fond is Æschylus of quaint phrases that I do not think myself at liberty to reject the vulgate, so long as it is susceptible of the very appropriate meaning given in the text. “Hands of the same name” may very well be tolerated for “hands of the same race”—“hands of sisters.”
“Even so; and with benignant eye look down!”
I have here departed from Well.’s arrangement of this short colloquy between Danaus and his daughters, and adopted Pal.’s, which appears to me to satisfy the demands both of sense and metrical symmetry. That there is something wrong in the received text Well. admits.
“There where his bird the altar decorates.”
I have here incorporated into the text the natural and unembarrassed meaning of this passage given by Pal. The bird of Jove, of course, is the eagle. What the Scholiast and Stan. say about the cock appears to be pure nonsense, which would never have been invented but for the confused order of the dialogue in the received text.
“Apollo, too, the pure, the exiled once.”
“They invoke Apollo to help them, strangers and fugitives, because that god himself had once been banished from heaven by Jove, and kept the herds of Admetus.
‘Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.’”—Stan.
“Here, Hermes likewise, as Greece knows the god.”
This plainly points out a distinction between the Greek and the famous Egyptian Hermes. So the Scholiast, and Stan. who quotes Cic., Nat. Deor. III. 22.
“Can bird eat bird and be an holy thing?”
This seems to have been a common-place among the ancients. Pliny, in the following passage, draws a contrast between man and the inferior animals, not much to the honor of the former:—“Cætera animalia in suo genere probe degunt; congregari videmus et stare contra dissimilia; leonum feritas inter se non dimicat; serpentum morsus non petit serpentes; ne maris quidem belluæ ac pisces nisi in diversa genera sæviunt. At hercule homini plarima ex homine sunt mala.”—Nat. Hist. VII. proem. This custom of blackening human nature (which is bad enough, without being made worse) has been common enough also in modern times, especially among a certain school of theologians, very far, indeed, in other respects, from claiming kindred with the Roman polyhistor; but the fact is, one great general law over-rides both man and the brute, viz. this—Like herds with like—the only difference being that human beings, with a great outward similarity, are characterized by a more various inward diversity than the lower animals. There are, in fact, men of all various kinds represented in the moral world—all those varieties which different races and species exhibit in the physical. There are lamb-men, tiger-men, serpent-men, pigeon-men, and hawk-men. That such discordant natures should sometimes, nay always in a certain sense, strive, is a necessary consequence of their existing.
“And of no host the acknowledged guest, unfearing
Ye tread this land.”
ἀπρόξενος, without a πρόξενος, or a public host or entertainer—one who occupied the same position on the part of the state towards a stranger that a ξένος or landlord, did to his private guest. In some respects “the office of proxenus bears great resemblance to that of a modern consul or minister resident.”—Dr. Schmitz, in Smith’s Dict., article Hospitium. Compare Southey, Notes to Madoc. I. 5, The Stranger’s House.
“Of old earth-born Palæcthon am the son,
My name Pelasgus.”
Here we have an example of those names of the earliest progenitors of an ancient race that seem to bear fiction on their face; Palaecthon meaning merely the ancient son of the land, and Pelasgus being the name-father of the famous ante-Homeric wandering Greeks, whom we call Pelasgi.
“All the land where Algos flows, and Strymon.”
The geography here is very confused. I shall content myself with noting the different points from Müller’s map (Dorians)—
(1) Algos; unknown.
(2) Strymon; a well-known river in Thrace.
(3) Perrhæbians; in Thessaly, North of the Peneus (Homer, Il. II. 749).
(4) Pindus; the well-known mountain ridge in the centre of Northern Greece, separating the great rivers which descend on the one hand through Epirus into the Ionian sea and the Adriatic, on the other, into the Ægean.
(5) Pæonia; in the North of Macedonia (Iliad II. 848).
(6) Dodona; in Epirus.
“Apollo’s son, by double right, physician
And prophet both.”
This is somewhat of a circumlocution for the single Greek phrase, ἱατρόμαντις, physician-prophet; a name applied to Apollo himself by the Pythoness, in the prologue to the Eumenides ([p. 142] above). The original conjunction of the two offices of prophet and leech in the person of Melampus, Apis, Chiron, etc. and their patron Apollo, is a remarkable fact in the history of civilization. The multiplication and isolation of professions originally combined and confounded is a natural enough consequence of the progress of society, of which examples occur in every sphere of human activity; but there is, besides, a peculiar fitness in the conjunction of medicine and theology, arising from the intimate connexion of mind with bodily ailment, too much neglected by some modern drug-minglers, and also, from the fact that, in ancient times, nothing was more common than to refer diseases, especially those of a striking kind, to the immediate interference of the Divine chastiser—(see Hippocrates περὶ ἱερῆς νόσου init.). Men are never more disposed to acknowledge divine power than when under the influence of severe affliction; and accordingly we find that, in some savage or semi-savage tribes, the “medicine-man” is the only priest. It would be well, indeed, if, in the present state of advanced science, professional men would more frequently attempt to restore the original oneness of the healing science—(see Max. Tyr. πῶς ᾶν τις ἄλυπος ἒιη)—if all medical men would, like the late Dr. Abercrombie, bear in mind that man has a soul as well as a body, and all theologians more distinctly know that human bodies enclose a stomach as well as a conscience, with which latter the operations of the former are often strangely confounded.
“. . . Io, on this Argive ground,
Erst bore the keys to Hera.”
i.e. was priestess of the Argive goddess. The keys are the sign of custodiary authority in modern as in ancient times. See various instances in Stan.
“So runs the general rumour.”
After this, Well. supposes something has fallen out of the text; but to me a break in the narration of the Chorus, caused by the eagerness of the royal questioner, seems sufficiently to explain the state of the text. Pal. agrees.
“Like a leaping bull,
Transformed he came.”
Βουθόρῳ ταύρῳ. I have softened this expression a little; so modern delicacy compels. The original is quite Homeric—“συῶν ἐπιβήτορα κάπρον.”—Odyssey XI. 131. Homer and the author of the Book of Genesis agree in expressing natural things in a natural way, equally remote (as healthy nature always is) from fastidiousness and from prudery.
King. A question has evidently dropt here; but it is of no consequence. The answer supplies the first link in the genealogical chain deducing the Danaides from Io and Epaphus. See above, [p. 400], [Note 44].
“Both this and that.”
I have translated this difficult passage freely, according to the note of Schütz., as being most comprehensive, and excluding neither the one ground of objection nor the other, both of which seem to have occupied the mind of the virgins. I am not, however, by any means sure what the passage really means. E. P. Oxon. has—
“Who would seek to obtain kindred as masters?”
Pot.—
“And who would wish to make their friends their lord.”
Where the real ground of objection is so darkly indicated, a translator is at liberty to smuggle a sort of commentary into the text.
“The wrath of suppliant Jove.”
i.e. Jove the protector of suppliants. See above, [Note 1].
“Like a heifer young by the wolf pursued.”
The scholar will recognize here a deviation from Well.’s text λευκόστικτον, and the adoption of Hermann’s admirable emendation, λυκοδίωκτον. Pal. has received this into his text, and Lin., generally a severe censor, approves.—Class. Museum, No. VII. p. 31. Both on metrical and philological grounds, the reading demands reception.
“Thou art the state, and the people art thou.”
This is a very interesting passage in reference to the political constitution—if the term constitution be here allowable—of the loose political aggregates of the heroic ages. The Chorus, of course, speak only their own feelings; but their feelings, in this case, are in remarkable consistency with the usages of the ancient Greeks, as described by Homer. The government of the heroic ages, as it appears in the Iliad, was a monarchy, on common occasions absolute, but liable to be limited by a circumambient atmosphere of oligarchy, and the prospective possibility of resistance on the part of a people habitually passive. Another remarkable circumstance, is the identity of church and state, well indicated by Virgil, in that line—
Rex Anius, rex idem hominum Phœbique sacerdos.
Æneid III.
and concerning which, Ottfried Müller says—“In ancient Greece it may be said, with almost equal truth, that the kings were priests, as that the priests were kings” (Mythology, Leitch, p. 187). On this identity of church and state were founded those laws against the worship of strange gods, which formed so remarkable an exception to the comprehensive spirit of toleration that Hume and Gibbon have not unjustly lauded as one of the advantageous concomitants of Polytheism. The intolerance, which is the necessary consequence of such an identity, has found its thorough and consistent champions only among the Mahommedan and Christian monotheists of modern times. Even the large-hearted and liberal-minded Dr. Arnold was so far possessed by the ancient doctrine of the identity of church and state, that he could not conceive of the possibility of admitting Jews to deliberate in the senate of a Christian state. In modern times, also, we have witnessed with wonder the full development of a doctrine most characteristically Homeric, that the absolute power of kings, whether in civil or in ecclesiastical matters, is equally of divine right.
Τιμὴ τ´ ἐκ Διός ἐστι, φιλεῖ δέ ἑ μητίετα Ζεύς.
Il. II. 197.
“For from Jove the honor cometh, him the counsellor Jove doth love.”
On this very interesting subject every page of Homer is pregnant with instruction; but those who are not familiar with that bible of classical scholars will find a bright reflection of the most important truths in Grote, Hist. Greece, P. I. c. XX.
“Without the people
I cannot do this thing.”
Æschylus makes the monarch of the heroic ages speak here with a strong tincture of the democracy of the latter times of Greece, no doubt securing to himself thereby immense billows of applause from his Athenian auditors, as the tragedians were fond of doing, by giving utterance to liberal sentiments like that of Æmon in Sophocles—“πόλις γὰρ ὀυκ ἒσθ ἣτις ἀνδρός ἐσθ᾽ ἑνός.” But how little the people had to say in the government of the heroic ages appears strikingly in that most dramatic scene described in the second book of the Iliad, which Grote (II. 94) has, with admirable judgment, brought prominently forward in his remarks on the power of the ἀγορά, or popular assembly, in the heroic ages. Ulysses holds forth the orthodox doctrine in these terms—
“Sit thee down, and cease thy murmurings: sit, and hear thy betters speak,
Thou unwarlike, not in battle known, in council all unheard!
Soothly all who are Achæans are not kings, and cannot be;
Evil is the sway of many; only one may bear the rule,
One be king, to whom the deep-designing Kronos’ mighty son
Gave the sceptre and the right.”—Il. II. 200.
“. . . possessory Jove.”
Ζεύς κτήσιος.—An epithet characteristic of Jove, as the supreme disposer of human affairs. Klausen (Theolog. II. 15) compares the epithet κλαριος from κλῆρος, a lot, which I have paraphrased in [p. 230] above.
“The Jove that allotteth their lot to all.”
Klausen quotes Pausanias (I. 31-4) to the effect that Ζευς κτησιος was worshipped in Attica along with Ceres, Minerva, Cora, and the awful Maids or Furies.
“The pillar-compassed seats divine.”
From a conjecture of Pal., περιστύλους; the πυλισσόυχων being evidently repeated by a wandering of the eye or ear of the transcriber. Sophocles, I recollect, in the Antigone, has ἀμφικίονας ναοὺς. Of course, in the case of such blunders, where the true reading cannot be restored, the best that can be done is to substitute an appropriate one.
“. . . the assembly of the people.”
The word ἀγορά, popular assembly, does not occur here; but it is plainly implied. It is to be distinguished from the βουλή, or council of the chiefs.—See Grote as above, and Homer passim.
“All crowning Consummator.”
As the opening words of this prayer generally are one of the finest testimonies to the sovereignty of Jove to be found in the poet, so the conjunction of words τελέων τελειὸτατον, κράτος is particularly to be noted. The adjectives τέλειος, τελεος, παντελής, and the verb τελέω, are often applied with a peculiar significancy to the king of the gods, as he who alone can conduct to a happy end every undertaking, under whatever auspices commenced. This doctrine is most reverently announced by the Chorus of this play towards the end ([p. 244]), in these comprehensive terms—
τι δε ἄνευ σέθεν
θνατοισι τελειον εστι.
“What thing to mortal men is completed without thee.” And in this sense Clytemnestra, in the Agamemnon ([p. 69]), prays—
Ζεῦ Ζεῦ τέλειε τὰς εμὰς ἐυχὰς τὲλει.
On the over-ruling special providence of Jove generally the scholar should read Klausen, Theol. II., 15, and Class. Mus. No. XXVI. pp. 429-433.
“. . . hence by the brize.”
The reader will observe that the course of Io’s wanderings here sketched is something very different from that given in the Prometheus, and much more intelligible. The geography is so familiar to the general reader from the Acts of the Apostles, that comment is unnecessary.
“Divinely fretted with fitful oar she hies.”
The partiality of Æschylus for sea-phrases has been often observed. Here, however, Paley for the ἐρεσσομένα, of the vulgate has proposed ἐρεθομένα, aptly for the sense and the metre; but Lin. (Class. Mus. No. VII. 30) seems right in allowing the text to remain. I have taken up both readings into my rendering.
“Nor dared to approach this thing of human face.”
It is difficult to know what δυσχερὲς in the text refers. Pot. refers it to the mind of the maid—
“Disdaining to be touched.”
To me it seems more natural to refer the difficulty of touching to the superstitious fears of the Egyptians; and to translate “not safely to be meddled with.” This is the feeling that my translation has attempted to bring out.
“Jove’s decided will.”
I adopt Heath’s emendation Βούλιος for δούλιος. Well., with superstitious reverence for the most corrupt text extant, retaining the δούλίος, is forced to explain δούλιος φρην, “dictum videtur de hominibus qui Jovis auxilium imploraverunt;” but this will never do. The reader is requested to observe what a pious interpretation is, in this passage, given to the connection of Jove and Io—how different from that given by Prometheus, [p. 202] above. We may be assured that the orthodox Heathen view of this and other such matters lies in the present beautifully-toned hymn, and not in the hostile taunts which the poet, for purely dramatic purposes, puts into the mouth of the enemy of Jove.
“Holy Hecate’s aid avail thee.”
Hecate is an epithet of Artemis, as Hecatos of Apollo, meaning far or distant (ἕκας). According to the prevalent opinion among mythologists, both ancient and modern, this goddess is merely an impersonation of the Moon, as Phoebus of the Sun. The term “far-darting” applies to both equally; the rays of the great luminaries being fitly represented as arrows of a far-shooting deity. In the Strophe which follows, Phoebus, under the name of Λυκειος, is called upon to be gracious to the youth of Argos.
ἐυμενὴς δ᾽ (ο) Λύκειος
ἔστω πάσᾳ νεολαίᾳ,
and in the translation I have taken the liberty, pro hac vice, as the lawyers say, to suppose that this epithet, as some modern scholars suggest, has nothing to do etymologically with λύκος, a wolf, but rather with the root λυκ, which we find in the substantive λυκάβας, and in the Latin luceo. Æschylus, however, in the Seven against Thebes ([p. 266] above), adopts the derivation from λύκος, as will be seen from my version. I have only to add that, if Artemis be the Moon, her function as the patroness of parturition, alluded to in the present passage, is the most natural thing in the world. On this whole subject, Keightley, c. viii. is very sensible.
“The bulging fence-work on each side.”
(παράῤῥυσεις, more commonly παραῤῥύματα.) “The ancients, as early as the time of Homer, had various preparations raised above the edge of a vessel, made of skins and wicker-work, which were intended as a protection against high waves, and also to serve as a kind of breast-work behind which the men might be safe from the attacks of the enemy.”—Dict. Antiq. voce Ships.
“. . . the prow
Fronted with eyes to track its watery way.”
“It is very common to represent an eye on each side of the prow of ancient ships.”—Do., and woodcuts there from Montfaucon. This custom, Pal. remarks, still continues in the Mediterranean.
“To champion our need.”
Wellauer says that the “sense demands” a distribution of the concluding part of this speech between Danaus and the Chorus; but I can see no reason for disturbing the ancient order, which is retained by But., though not by Pal. That the sense requires no change, the translation should make evident.
“. . . their ships dark-fronted.”
(κυανώπιδες.) The reader will call to mind the νῆες μέλαιναι, the black ships in Homer.—See Dict. Antiq. voce Ships.
“A strong-limbed race with noon-day sweats well hardened.”
This sentiment must have awakened a hearty response in the minds of the Greeks, who were superior to the moderns in nothing so much as in the prominency which they gave to gymnastic exercises, and their contempt for all sorts of σκιοτροφία—rearing in the shade—which our modern bookish system tends to foster.
“No Mars is in her.”
ὄυκ ἔνεστ Ἄρης, a proverbial expression for pithless, nerveless. The same expression is used in the initiatory anapæsts of the Agamemnon. Ἄρης δ ὄυκ ἔνι χώρᾳ.
“Good Greek corn is better than papyrus.”
“Præter alios plurimos usus etiam in cibis recepta fuit papyrus”—Abul. Fadi—“radix ejus pulcis est; quapropter eam masticant et sugunt Ægyptii.” —Olaus Celsius, Hierozoicon, Upsal, 1745. I consulted this valuable work myself, but owe the original reference to an excellent “Essay on the Papyrus of the Ancients, by W. H. de Vriese,” translated from the Dutch by W. B. Macdonald, Esq. of Rammerscales, in the Class. Mus. No. XVI. p. 202, In that article it is stated that “when Guilandinus was in Egypt in the year 1559-60, the pith was then used as food.” Herodotus (Euterp. 92) says that they eat the lower part, roasting it in an oven (κλιβάνῳ πνίξαντες). Pliny (XIII. 11) says, “mandunt quoque, crudum decoctumque succum tantum devorantes.” In the text, of course, the allusion is a sort of proverbial ground of superiority, on the part of the Greeks, over the sons of the Nile, pretty much in the spirit of Dr. Johnston’s famous definition of oats—“food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland.” I have only further to add, that the papyrus belongs to the natural family of the Cyperaceæ or Sedges, and, though not now common in Egypt, is a well-known plant, and to be seen in most of our botanical gardens.
“The shepherds of the ships.”
I have retained this phrase scrupulously—ποιμένες ναῶν—as an interesting relique of the patriarchal age. So in the opening choral chaunt of the Persians, Xerxes is “shepherd of many sheep,” and a little farther on in the same play, Atossa asks the Chorus, “who is shepherd of this (the Athenian) people?” It is in such small peculiarities that the whole character and expression of a language lies.
“. . . on this coast
Harbours are few.”
“Nauplia was almost the only harbour on the coast of Argolis.”—Pal., from Both. I am not topographer enough to be able to confirm this.
“On a hanging cliff where lone winds sigh.”
κρεμὰς. Robortellus: which Well. might surely have adopted. The description of wild mountain loneliness is here very fine. Let the reader imagine such a region as that of Ben-Macdhui in Aberdeenshire, so well described in Blackwood’s Magazine, August, 1847. ὀιόφρων is more than ὄιος; and I have ventured on a periphrasis. Hermann’s Latin translation given by Pal. is—“saxum praeruptum, capris inaccessum, incommonstrabile, solitudine vastum, propendens, vulturibus habitatum.”
Chorus (in separate voices, and short hurried exclamations). I most cordially agree with Well. in attaching the ten verses 805-15 to what follows, rather than making it stand as an Epode to what precedes. A change of style is distinctly felt at the conclusion of the third Antistrophe; the dim apprehension of approaching harm becomes a distinct perception, and the choral music more turbid, sudden, and exclamatory. This I have indicated by breaking up the general chaunt into individual voices.—See [p. 377], [Note 19].
“Hence to the ships! to the good ships fare ye!”
“What follows is most corrupt, but so made up of short sentences, commands, and exclamations, that if the whole passage were wanting, it would not be much missed. It is very tasteless, and full of turgid phraseology.”—Paley. All this is very true, if we look on the Suppliants as a play written to be read; but, being an opera composed for music, what appears to us tasteless and extravagant, without that stimulating emotional atmosphere, might have been, to the Athenians who heard it, the grand floodtide and tempestuous triumph of the piece. Compare, especially, the passionate Oriental coronach with which “The Persians” concludes. We must never forget that we possess only the skeleton of the sacred opera of the Greeks.
“To find stray goods the world all over, Hermes
Is prince of patrons.”
“Rei furtivae,” as the civil law says, “acterna est auctoritas”; and the Herald, being sent out on a mission to reclaim what was abstracted, requires no credentials but the fact of the heraldship, which he exercises under the patronage of the herald-god Hermes. It may be also, as the commentators suggest—though I recollect no passage to prove it—that Hermes, being a thief himself, and the patron of thieves, was the most apt deity to whose intervention might be referred the recovery of stolen goods. Something of this kind seems implied in the epithet μαστηριῳ, the searcher, here given to Hermes.
“In the general view, and publishes their praise.”
After these words I have missed out a line, of which I can make nothing satisfactory—
κἄλωρα κωλύουσαν ὡς μένειν ἐρῶ.
A few lines below, for (ὀ)υν ἐκληρώθη δορὶ, I have followed Pal. in adopting Heath’s εἵνεκ᾽ ἠρόθη δορὶ.
Choral Hymn. This final Chorus of the Suppliants and the opening one of the Persians are remarkable for the use of that peculiar rhythm, technically called the Ionic a minore, of which a familiar example exists in Horace, Ode III. 12. What the æsthetical or moral effect of this measure was on an Athenian ear it is perhaps impossible for us, at the present day, to know; but I have thought it right, in both cases, when it occurs, to mark the peculiarity by the adoption of an English rhythm, in some similar degree removed from the vulgar use, and not without a certain cognate character. In modern music, at least, the Ionic of the Greek text and the measure used in my translation are mere varieties of the same rhythmical genus marked musically by ¾. As for the structure of the Chorus, its division into two semi-choruses is anticipative of the division of feeling among the sisters, which afterwards arose when the conduct of their stern father forced them to choose between filial and connubial duty. One thing also is plain, that there is nothing of a real moral finale in this Chorus. Regarded as a concluding ode, it were a most weak and impotent performance. The tone of grateful jubilee with which it sets out, is, after the second Strophe, suddenly changed into the original note of apprehension, evil-foreboding, doubt, and anxiety, plainly pointing to the terrible catastrophe to be unveiled in the immediately succeeding play.
“Yet, mighty praise be thine,
Cyprian queen divine!”
The Chorus here are evidently moved by a religious apprehension that, in placing themselves under the patronage of the goddess of chastity, they may have treated lightly the power and the functions of the great goddess of love. To reconcile the claims of opposing deities was a great problem of practical piety with all devout polytheists. The introduction of Aphrodite here, as has been remarked, is also plainly prophetic of the part which Hypermnestra is to play in the subsequent piece, under the influence of the great Cyprian goddess preferring the love of a husband to the command of a father.
“Lovely Harmonia.”
“Hesiod says that Harmonia (ἁρμονία—order or arrangement) was the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. This has evidently all the appearance of a physical myth; for from love and strife—i.e. attraction and repulsion—arises the order or harmony of the universe.”—Keightley.
“Yet must I fear the chase.”
φυγάδεσσιν δ ἒπιπλόιας. Haupt adopted by Pal. An excellent conjecture.