“Winged hounds.”
“This is one of those extravagances of expression in which the wild fancy of Æschylus often indulged, and for which he is rallied by Aristophanes.”—Harford. I cannot allow this to pass without remark. No expression could be more appropriate to picture that singular combination of the celerity of the bird nature, with the ferocity of the quadruped, which is described here, and in the Prometheus, in the speech of Mercury. Besides, in the present case the prophetic style would well excuse the boldness of the phrase, were any excuse required. Harford has put the tame expression, “Eagles,” into his text; but Shelley in his “Prometheus Unbound,” had not the least hesitation to adopt the Greek phrase.
“The fair goddess.”
ἁ καλὰ, “the beauteous one,”—Sew. An epithet which Con. was surely wrong to omit, for it is characteristic. To this Müller has called attention in his Prolegomena zu einer wissensch; Mythologie (p. 75; edit. 1825) noting the expressions of Sappho, ἀρίστη καὶ καλλίστη, the best and the fairest, as applied to Artemis, according to the testimony of Pausanias, I. 29. The prominence given by Æschylus here to that function of Artemis, by which, as the goddess of beauty, she is protectress of the wild beasts of the forest, is quite Homeric; as we may see from these three lines of the Odyssey:—
“Even as Artemis, dart-rejoicing, o’er the mountains walks sublime,
O’er the lofty ridge of Taygetus, o’er the Erymanthian steep,
And with gladsome heart beholds the wild boar and the nimble stag.”
VI. 102.
According to the elemental origin of mythology, this superintendence naturally arose from the fact, that Artemis was the Moon, and that the wild beasts go abroad to seek for prey in the night time.