Chorus. Whether Hermann in his “Dissertatio de Choro Eumenidum” (Leipzig, 1816) was the first that directed special attention to the peculiar character of this Chorus as indicated by the Scholiast, I do not know (Wellauer says so, and I presume he knew). Certain it is that Pot., by neglecting this indication, has lost a great deal of the dramatic effect of this part of the tragedy. The style of the chorus is decidedly fitful and exclamatory throughout, and must have formed a beautiful contrast to the steady stability of the solemn hymn that follows, beginning, “Mother night that bore me.” As to the particular distribution of the parts of this chorus, that is a matter on which, as Schoe. remarks, no two critics are likely to agree; nor is minute accuracy in this respect, even if it were attainable, a matter of any importance to the dramatic effect of the composition as now read. The only thing to be taken care of is, that we do not blend in a false continuity what was evidently spoken fitfully, and by different speakers, with a sort of staccato movement, as the musicians express it. This is Pot.’s grand error, not only here, but in many other of the choral parts of our poet; and, in this view, some of Hermann’s remarks (Opusc. VI. 2, 38) on Müller’s division are perfectly just. As for myself, by distributing the parts of the chorus among three voices, I mean nothing more than that these parts were likely spoken by separate voices. Scholefield and Dyer’s view (Classical Museum, Vol. I. p. 281), that there were three principal Furies prominent above the rest in this piece, is not improbable, but admits of no proof. In my versification I have endeavoured to imitate the rapid Dochmiacs of the original.
“Thou being young dost overleap the old.”
The idea of a succession of celestial dynasties proceeding on a system of “development,” as a certain class of modern philosophers are fond to express it, is characteristic of the Greek mythology.—(See [p. 47] above, Antistrophe I.) The Furies, according to all the genealogies given of them, were more ancient gods than Apollo, with whom they are here brought, into collision. Our poet, as we shall see in the opening invocation of the first grand choral hymn of this piece, makes them the daughters of most ancient Night, who, according to the Theogony (v. 123), proceeded immediately from the aboriginal Chaos. Hesiod himself makes the Erinyes, along with the giants, to be produced from the blood of Uranus, when his genitals were cut off by Kronos (Theog. 185); a genealogy, by the way, quite in consistency with the Homeric representation given in the Introductory Remarks, of the origin of the Furies from the curses uttered by injured persons, worthy of special veneration, on those by whom their sacrosanct character had been violated.
“But where beheading, eye-out-digging dooms.”
In this enumeration of horrors I have omitted κακοῦ τε χλ(ο)υνις, concerning which Lin. says, “Omnino de hoc loco maximis in tenebris versamur; nam neque de lectione, neque de verborum significatione certi quidquam constat.”
“She was murdered here,