[211]. The invocation is addressed—(1) to the Olympian Gods in the brightness of heaven; (2) to the Chthonian deities in the darkness below the earth; (3) to Zeus, the preserver, as the supreme Lord of both.
[212]. An Athenian audience would probably recognise in this a description of the swampy meadows near the coast of Lerna. The descendants of Io had come to the very spot where the tragic history of their ancestors had had its origin.
[213]. The invocation passes on to Epaphos, as a guardian deity able and willing to succour his afflicted children.
[214]. Philomela. See the tale as given in the notes to Agam. 1113.
[215]. “Streams,” as flowing through the shady solitude of the groves which the nightingale frequented.
[216]. “Ionian,” as soft and elegiac, in contrast with the more military character of Dorian music.
[217]. In the Greek the paronomasia turns upon the supposed etymological connection between θεὸς and τιθήμι. I have here, as elsewhere, attempted an analogous rather than identical jeu de mot.
[218]. The Greek word which I have translated “bluff” was one not familiar to Attic ears, and was believed to be of Kyrenean origin. Æschylos accordingly puts it into the lips of the daughters of Danaos, as characteristic more or less of the “alien speech” of the land from which they came.
[219]. So in v. 235 Danaos speaks of the “second Zeus” who sits as Judge in Hades. The feeling to which the Chorus gives utterance is that of—
“Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.”