καμπύλος, with a bend or sweep; alluding to the form of the rim of the ancient chariot, between the charioteer and the horses. See the figure in Smith’s Dict. Antiq., Articles ἄντυξ and currus.
“. . . the Agonian gods.”
The common meaning that a Greek scholar would naturally give to the phrase θεοῖ ἀγωνιοι is that given by Hesych, viz., gods that preside over public games, or, as I have rendered it in the Agamemnon ([p. 57] above), gods that rule the chance of combat. For persons who, like the Herald in that play, had just escaped from a great struggle, or, like the fugitive Virgins in this piece, were going through one, there does not appear to be any great impropriety (notwithstanding Pal.’s. inepte) in an appeal to the gods of combat. Opposed to this interpretation, however, we have the common practice of Homer, with whom the substantive ἀγών generally means an assembly; and the testimony of Eustathius, who, in his notes to that poet, Iliad, Ω 1335, 58, says “παρ Αισχύλῳ ἀγώνιοι θεοὶ ὁι ἀγορᾶιοι;” i.e. gods that preside over assemblies.
“. . . your sistered hands.”
διὰ χερων συνωνύμων. I am inclined to think with Pal. that ἐυωνύμων may be the true reading; i.e. in your left hands. And yet, so fond is Æschylus of quaint phrases that I do not think myself at liberty to reject the vulgate, so long as it is susceptible of the very appropriate meaning given in the text. “Hands of the same name” may very well be tolerated for “hands of the same race”—“hands of sisters.”
“Even so; and with benignant eye look down!”
I have here departed from Well.’s arrangement of this short colloquy between Danaus and his daughters, and adopted Pal.’s, which appears to me to satisfy the demands both of sense and metrical symmetry. That there is something wrong in the received text Well. admits.