ἅδην πόντιον, I took this from Med. and give him a thousand thanks for supplying me with so literal, and yet so admirable a translation. Sym. is also excellent here, though, as usual, too fine—
“O how the day looked lovely, when ashore
We crawled, escaped from the watery jaws
Of a sea death.”
“Far-labouring o’er the loosely-driving main.”
There is a fine word in the original here, σποδουμένου, easily and admirably rendered by Fr.—zerstaübt—but to express which I have found myself forced to have recourse to a cognate idea. The main idea is dispersion and diffusion, to drive about like dust, or, perhaps, the meaning may be, to rub down to dust.—See Passow. In the present passage the context makes the former meaning preferable.
“By Jove’s devising.”
The reader will note here the supreme controlling power of Jove, forming, as it were, a sort of monotheistic keystone to the many-stoned arch of Hellenic Polytheism. Μηχαναῖς Διὸς here is just equivalent to our phrase by Divine interposition, or, by the interposition of Divine Providence, or the supreme moral superintendence of Jove.