Chorus. This Chorus, Schneider remarks, naturally divides itself into four, or, as I think, rather into five distinct parts, (1) The Chorus enter the stage in great hurry and agitation, indicated by the Dochmiac verse—σποράδην, according to the analogy of the Eumenides—(see the βιος Αισχύλου)—in scattered array, and, perhaps in the person of their Coryphæus, describe generally the arrival of the Theban host, and their march against the walls of Thebes. (2) But as the agitation increases, continuity of description becomes impossible, and a series of broken and irregular exclamations and invocations by individual voices follows. (3) Then a more regular prayer, or the chaunting of the Theban litany begins, in which we must suppose the whole band to join. (4) This is interrupted, however, by the near terror of the assault, and the chaunt is again broken into hurried exclamations of individual voices. (5) The litany is then wound up by the whole band. Of course no absolute external proof of matters of this kind can be offered; but the internal evidence is sufficiently strong to warrant the translator in marking the peculiar character of the Chorus in some such manner as I have done. For dramatic effect, this is of the utmost consequence. Nothing has more hurt the dramatic character of Æschylus, than the practice of throwing into the form of a continuous ode what was written for a series of well-arranged individual voices. Whoever he was among more recent scholars that first analyzed the Choruses with a special view to separate the exclamatory parts from the continuous chaunt deserves my best thanks.—See [Note 19] to the Eumenides, [p. 377].
“With clattering hoofs, on and on still they ride.”
πεδιοπλόκτυπος. Before this word, another epithet ελεδεμνας occurs, which the intelligent scholar will readily excuse me for having omitted altogether.
“. . . the white-shielded host.”
The epithet λεύκασπις seems characteristic of the Argive host in the Bœotian legend. Sophocles, in the beautiful opening Chorus of the Antigone, and Euripides in the Phœnissæ, has it. Such traits were of course adopted by the tragedians from the old local legends always with conscientious fidelity. Stan. refers it to the general white or shining aspect of the shields of the common soldiers, distinguished by no various-coloured blazonry; which may be the true explanation.
“With chaplet and stole.”