“Jove, that rules the forum, nobly
In the high debate hath conquered.”
Ζεὺς ἀγορᾶιος. The students of Homer may recollect the appeal of Telemachus to the Ithacans in council assembled (Odys. II. 68). Jove, as we have already had occasion to remark, has a peculiar right of presidency over every grand event of human life, and every important social institution; so that, on certain occasions, the Greek Polytheism becomes, for the need, a Monotheism—somewhat after the same fashion as the aristocratic Government of the old Roman Republic had the power of suddenly changing itself, on important occasions, into an absolute monarchy, by the creation of a Dictator.
“Gracious-minded sisterhood.”
The Furies were called Ευμενίδες, or gracious, to propitiate their stern deity by complimentary language. Suidas says (voc. Ευμενίδες) that Athena, in this play, calls the Furies expressly by this name; but the fact is, that it does not occur in the whole play. Either, therefore, the word ἔυφρων, which I have translated “gracious-minded” in the play, must be considered to have given occasion to the remark of the lexicographer (which seems sufficient), or, with Hermann and Schoe., we must suppose something to have fallen out of the present speech.
NOTE.
On [p. 132], after the dramatis personæ, I perceive that I have stated that the scene of this piece changes from Delphi to the Hill of Mars, Athens. This is either inaccurate, or, at least, imperfect; for the first change of scene is manifestly (as stated [p. 148]), to the temple of Athena Pallas, on the Acropolis; and, though the imagination naturally desires that the institution of the Court of the Areopagus should take place on the exact seat of its future labours, yet the construction of the drama by no means necessitates another change of scene, and the allusion to the Hill of Mars in [p. 162] is easily explicable on the supposition that it lies directly opposite the Acropolis, and that Pallas points to it with her finger.