Though wingless, Fame.”
ἄπτερος is an epithet by negation after a fashion not at all uncommon in the Greek drama; the meaning being, though fame is not a bird, and has no wings, yet it flies as fast as if it had. The idea that ἄπτερος is the same as πτερωτὸς I agree with Con. is the mere expedient of despair. I have not the slightest doubt that Rumour is called a wingless messenger, just as Dust is called a voiceless messenger in the Seven against Thebes. Sym. is too subtle in explaining ἄπτερος after the analogy of the beautiful simile in Virgil, Æneid V. 215, so swift as not to appear to move its wings.
“. . . He from Ida shot the spark.”
The geographical mountain points in the following famous descriptive passages are as follows: (1) Mount Ida, near Troy; (2) the Island of Lemnos, in the Ægean, half-way between Asia and Europe, due West; (3) Mount Athos, the South point of the most Easterly of the three peninsulas that form the South part of Macedonia; (4) a station somewhere betwixt Athos and Bœotia, which the poet has characterised only by the name of the Watchman Macistus; (5) the Messapian Mount, West of Anthedon in the North of Bœotia; (6) Mount Cithæron, in the South of Bœotia; (7) Mount Aegiplanctus, between Megara and Corinth; (8) Mount Arachne, in Argolis, between Tiryns and Epidaurus, not far from Argos.
“. . . the forward strength
Of the far-travelling lamp strode gallantly.”
I have not had the courage with Sym. to reject the πρὸς ἡδονὴν and supply a verb. The phrase is not colloquial, as he says, but occurs, as Well. points out, in Prom. 492. Medwyn has “crossing the breast of ocean with a speed plumed by its joy.” That there is some blunder in the passage the want of a verb seems to indicate, but, with our present means, it appears wise to let it alone; not, like Fr., from a mere conjecture, to introduce ἰχθῦς for ἰσχύς, and translate—
“Und fern hin dass der Wanderflamme heller Schein,