With a reference to Menelaus and not to Helen. In doing so, I am not at all moved by any merely philological consideration; but I may observe that the remark made by Well., Peile, and Con., that the words cannot refer to Menelaus, because he has not yet been mentioned, can have little weight in the present chorus, in the first antistrophe of which Paris is first alluded to, by dim indications, and afterwards distinctly by name. This method of merely hinting at a person, before naming him, is common in all poetry, but peculiarly characteristic of Æschylus. Besides, it is impossible to deny that the πόθος in the next line refers to Menelaus, and can refer to no other. Con., who refers the words to Helen, translates thus—
“She stands in silence, scorned, yet unrebuking,
Most sweetly sorrowfully looking
Of brides that have from wedlock fled;”
to which I have this further objection, that it is contrary to the poet’s intention and to the moral tone of the piece, to paint the fair fugitive with such an engaging look of reluctance to leave her husband; on the contrary, he blames her in the strongest language, ἄτλητα τλᾶσα, and represents her as leaving Argos with all the hurry of a common elopement, where both parties are equally willing for the amorous flight, ῎Βέβακε ρίμφα διὰ πυλᾶν. After which our fancy has nothing to do but imagine her giving her sails to the wind as swiftly as possible, and bounding gaily over the broad back of ocean with her gay paramour. In this connection, to say “she stands,” appears quite out of place. In my view of this “very difficult and all but desperate passage” (Peile) I am supported by Sym. in an able note, which every student ought to read, by Med. and Sew., Buck., Humb., and Droys. Neither is Fr. against me, because, though following a new reading of Hermann,
πάρεστι σιγὰς ἀτίμους ἀλοιδόρους
᾽αισχρῶς ἀφειμενων ιδειν,
he avoids all special allusions to Menelaus, it is evident that the picture of solitary desolation given in his translation can have no reference but to the palace of the king of Sparta—
“Ein Schweigen, sieh! voll von Schmach, nicht gebrochen church
Vorwurf, beherrscht die Einsamkeit.”