“On Libyan plains beside Tritonian pools.”
Æschylus here follows the tradition of Apollodorus (I. 3, § 6), that the epithet Τριτογένεια, given by Homer to Pallas, was derived from the lake Tritonis in Libya, near which she is said to have been born. Compare Virgil Æn. IV. 480.
“. . . with forward foot firm planted,
Erect, or with decorous stole high-seated.”
I have not the slightest doubt that τίθησιν (ο)ρθὸν πόδα in this passage can only mean to plant the foot down firmly and stand erect; if so, τίθησι κατηρεφῆ πόδα can only mean to sit, “the feet being covered by the robes while sitting”—Lin.; so also Pal. and Schoe. Sitting statues of the gods were very common in ancient times, as we see in the Egyptian statues, and in the common representations of the Greek and Roman Jupiter (see Thirlwall’s History of Greece, c. VI.). I am sorry that Hermann (p. 57) should have thrown out the idea that κατηρεφῆς in this passage may mean “enveloped in clouds,” which has been taken up by Franz—
“Sichtbar sic jezt herschreitet, oder Wolkumhüllt,”
because manifestly κατηρεφῆς, in this sense, forms no natural contrast to ὀρθὸς. The “forward foot firm-planted,” I have taken from Müller’s note, p. 112, as, perhaps, pointing out more fully what may have been in the poet’s eye, without, however, meaning to assert seriously against a severe critic like Hermann, that the words of the text necessarily imply anything of the kind.