“This Scythian soil, this wild untrodden waste.”
“The ancient Greek writers called all the Northern tribes (i.e. all who dwelt in the Northern parts of Europe and Asia) generally by the name of Scythians and Celto-Scythians; while some even more ancient than these make a division, calling those beyond the Euxine, Ister, and Adria, Hyperboreans, Sarmatians, and Arimaspi; but those beyond the Caspian Sea, Sacæ and Massagetæ.” Strabo, Lib. XI. p. 507.—Stan.
“This daring wretch.”
λεωργὸν, a difficult word; “evil-doer”—Med. and Prow.; Bösewicht—Toelp.; Freveler—Schoe. The other translation of this word—“artificer of man” (Potter)—given in the Etym. was very likely an invention of Lexicographers to explain this very passage. But the expounders did not consider that Æschylus through the whole play makes no allusion to this function of the fire-worker. It was, I believe, altogether a recent form of the myth.—See Weiske. “The precise etymology of the word is uncertain.”—Lin.
“. . . a kindred god.”
“A fellow deity”—Med. But this is not enough. Vulcan, as a smith, and Prometheus were kindred in their divine functions, for which reason they were often confounded in the popular legends, as in the case of the birth of Pallas from the brain of Jove, effected by the axe, some say of Hephaestus, some of Prometheus—Apollodor. I. 3-6. Euripid. Ion. 455; from which passage of the tragedian Welcker is of opinion that Prometheus, not Hephaestus, must have a place in the pediment of the Parthenon representing the birth of Pallas.—Class. Museum, Vol. II. p. 385.
“High-counselled son