“The bolt from on high shall blast his eye.”
“Peile greatly admires Klausen’s interpretation”—
“Jacitur oculis a Jove fulmen,”
but the passages which the latter adduce are not to the point. The Greeks do not attribute any governing virtue to the eyes of the gods, further than this, that the immortal beings who are supposed to govern human affairs must see, and take cognizance of them. Jupiter’s eye may glare like lightning, but the real lightning is always hurled from his hand. Compare Soph. Antiq. 157. The words βάλλεται ὄσσοις Λιόθεν can bear no other sense naturally than “is flashed in the eyes from Jove.”—Con.
“Where women wield the spear.”
The spear (δόρυ) is with the Greeks the regular emblem of war, as the sword is with us; so a famous warrior in Homer is δουρικλυτὸς, a famous spearman, and a warrior generally ἀιχμητὴς. Further, as in the heroic or semi-civilized age, authority presents itself, not under the form of law and peaceful order, so much as under that of force and war, the spear comes to be a general emblem of authority; so in the present passage. St. Paul’s language, Rom. xiii. 4, the magistrate weareth not the sword (μάχαιραν) in vain, gives the modern counterpart of the Æschylean phraseology.
“. . . our healer from much harm.”