“The ordered battle on Phlegrean fields
Thou musterest.”
The peninsula of Pallene in Macedonia, as also the district of Campania about Baiæ and Cumae, were called Phlegraean, or fire-fields (φλέγω), in all likelihood from the volcanic nature of the country, to which Strabo (Lib. V. p. 245) alludes. These volcanic movements in the religious symbolism of early Greece became giants; and against these the Supreme Wisdom and his wise daughter had to carry on a war worthy of gods.
Choral Hymn. “This sublime hymn is of a character, in some respects, kindred to the καταδέσεις, or incantations of antiquity, which were directed to Hermes, the Earth, and other infernal Deities for the purpose of binding down certain hated persons to destruction. For this reason it is called ὕμνος δέσμιος. This character is specially indicated by the refrain or burden, which occurs in the first pair of Strophes; such repetitions containing the emphatic words of the incantation being common in all magical odes. So in Theocritus (Idyll. 2), we have constantly repeated, ‘Iungx, bring me the man, the man whom I mean, to my dwelling,’ and, in the song of the Fates at the marriage of Thetis in Catullus, the line—‘Currite ducentes subtemina, currite fusi!’ and there can be no question, the movements and gestures of the Furies while singing this hymn were such as to indicate the scapeless net of woe with which they were now encompassing their victim.”—Mül. The reader will observe how impressively the metre changes on the recurrence of this burden, the rhythm in the original being Pæonic v v v—, the agitated nature of which foot, when several times repeated, is sufficiently obvious. I have done what I could to make the transition and contrast sensible to the modern ear.
“The seeing and the sightless.”
αλα(ο)ισι και δεδορκόσι, i.e. the living and the dead; an expression familiar to the Greeks, and characteristic of a people who delighted to live in the sun. βλέπειν φάος—to look on the light, is the most common phrase in the tragedians for to live; and wisely so—
“Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true