Διόθεν. “ἐκ δε Διός βασιλῆες,” says the theogony. Homer also considers the kingly office as having a divine sanction, and Agamemnon on Earth represents Jupiter in Heaven.—Iliad I. 279; II. 197. And there can be no doubt that the highest authority in a commonwealth, whether regal or democratic, has a divine sanction, so long as it is exercised within its own bounds, and according to the laws of natural justice.
“O’er the lone paths fitful-wheeling.”
I have endeavoured to combine both the meanings of ἐκπατιόις which have any poetical value; that of Sym. lonely, and that of Klausen, wandering, and therefore excessive, which Con. well gives “with a wandering grief.” The same beautiful image is used by Shelley in his Adonais.
“. . . The late-chastising Fury.”
That the divine vengeance for evil deeds comes not immediately, but slowly, at a predestined season, is a doctrine as true in Christian theology as it is familiar to the Heathen dramatists. Therefore, Tiresias, in the Antigone, prophesies to Creon that “the avenging spirits of Hades and of Heaven, storing up mischief for a future day (ὑστεροφθόροι), would punish him for his crimes. But when the sword of Olympian justice is once drawn, then the execution of the divine judgment comes swiftly and by a short way, and no mortal can stay it.” As the same Sophocles says—
συντέμνουσι γὰρ
θεῶν ποδώκεις τὸυς κακὸφρονας βλάβαι.
Antig. V. 1104.