“Of the fat fine-sanded Nile!”
Wellauer, in his usual over-cautious way, has not received Pauw’s emendation λεπτοψαμάθων into his text, though he calls it certissimum in his notes. Pal., whom I follow, acts in these matters with a more manly decision. Even without the authority of Pliny (XXXV. 13), I should adopt so natural an emendation, where the text is plainly corrupt.
“Gently thrilled the brize-stung heifer
With his procreant touch.”
See [p. 204] above, and [Note 48] to Prometheus. There prevails throughout this play a constant allusion to the divine significance of the name Epaphus, meaning, as it does, touch. To the Greeks, as already remarked ([p. 388]), this was no mere punning; and the names of the gods ([Note 17], p. 391 above) were one of the strongest instruments of Heathen devotion. That there is an allusion to this in Matthew vi. 7, I have no doubt.
“Ye blissful gods supremely swaying.”
I see no necessity here, with Pal., for changing ὧν πολις into ὦ πολις—but it is a matter of small importance to the translator. Jove, the third, is a method of designating the supreme power of which we have frequent examples in Æschylus—see the Eumenides, [p. 164], where Jove the Saviour all-perfecting is mentioned after Pallas and Loxias, as it were, to crown the invocation with the greatest of all names. In that passage τρίτου occurs in the original, which I was wrong to omit.