[33]. The fact that Athens had actually been taken, and its chief buildings plundered and laid waste, was, of course, not a pleasant one for the poet to dwell on. It could hardly, however, be entirely passed over, and this is the one allusion to it. In the truest sense it was still “unsacked:” it had not lost its most effective defence, its most precious treasure.
[34]. As the story is told by Herodotos (vii. 75), this was Sikinnos, the slave of Themistocles, and the stratagem was the device of that commander to save the Greeks from the disgrace and ruin of a sauve qui peut flight in all directions.
[35]. The Greeks never beheaded their criminals, and the punishment is mentioned as being specially characteristic of the barbaric Persians.
[36]. The Æginetans and Megarians, according to the account preserved by Diodoros (xi. 18), or the Lacedæmonians, according to Herodotos (viii. 65).
[37]. This may be meant to refer to the achievements of Ameinias of Pallene, who appears in the traditional life of Œschylos as his youngest brother.
[38]. Sc., in Herod. viii. 60, the strait between Salamis and the mainland.
[39]. Tunny-fishing has always been prominent in the occupations on the Mediterranean coasts, and the sailors who formed so large a part of every Athenian audience would be familiar with the process here described, of striking or harpooning them. Aristophanes (Wasps, 1087) coins (or uses) the word “to tunny” (θυννάζω) to express the act. Comp. Herod. i. 62.
[40]. Sc., Psyttaleia, lying between Salamis and the mainland. Pausanias (i. 36-82) describes it in his time as having no artistic shrine or statue, but full everywhere of roughly carved images of Pan, to whom the island was sacred. It lay just opposite the entrance to the Peiræos. The connexion of Pan with Salamis and its adjacent islands seems implied in Sophocles, Aias, 695.
[41]. The manœuvre was, we learn from Herodotos (viii. 95), the work of Aristeides, the personal friend of Æschylos, and the statesman with whose policy he had most sympathy.
[42]. The lines are noted as probably a spurious addition, by a weaker hand, to the text, as introducing surplusage, as inconsistent with Herodotos, and as faulty in their metrical structure.