[195]. See the argument of the Suppliants, who, as the daughters of Danaos, descended from Epaphos, are here referred to. The passage is noticeable as showing that the theme of that tragedy was already present to the poet's thoughts.
[196]. Argos. So in the Suppliants, Pelasgos is the mythical king of the Apian land who receives them.
[197]. Hypermnæstra, who spared Lynceus, and by him became the mother of Abas and a line of Argive kings.
[198]. Heracles, who came to Caucasos, and with his arrows slew the eagle that devoured Prometheus.
[199]. The word is simply an interjection of pain, but one so characteristic that I have thought it better to reproduce it than to give any English equivalent.
[200]. The maxim, “Marry with a woman thine equal,” was ascribed to Pittacos.
[201]. The Euhemerism of later scholiasts derived the name from a king Adrastos, who was said to have been the first to build a temple to Nemesis, and so the power thus worshipped was called after his name. A better etymology leads us to see in it the idea of the “inevitable” law of retribution working unseen by men, and independently even of the arbitrary will of the Gods, and bringing destruction upon the proud and haughty.
[202]. Comp. Agam. 162-6.
[203]. Either a mere epithet of intensity, as in our “thrice blest,” or rising from the supposed fact that every third wave was larger and more impetuous than the others, like fluctus decumanus of the Latins, or from the sequence of three great waves which some have noted as a common phenomenon in storms.
[204]. Here again we have a strange shadowing forth of the mystery of Atonement, and what we have learnt to call “vicarious” satisfaction. In the later legend, Cheiron, suffering from the agony of his wounds, resigns his immortality, and submits to die in place of the ever-living death to which Prometheus was doomed.