“A Maryandine wailer.”
The Maryandini were a Bithynian people, near the Greek city of Heraclea, Xenoph. Anab. vi. 2; Strabo xii. p. 542. The peasants in that quarter were famous for singing a rustic wail, which is alluded to in the text. See Pollux, Lib. iv. περὶ ᾳσμάτων ἐθνικῶν. The Mysians mentioned, p. 331, below, were their next door neighbours; and the Phrygians generally, who in a large sense include the Mysians and Bithynians, were famous for their violent and passionate music, displayed principally in the worship of Cybele. So the Phrygian in Euripides (Orest. 1384) is introduced wailing ἁρμάτειον μέλος βαρβαρῳ βοᾳ. The critics who have considered this last scene of the cantata ridiculous, have not attended either to human nature or to the customs of the Persians, as Stan. quotes them from Herod. ix. 24, and Curtius iii. 12.
Leader of the Chorus. I have here adopted Lin.’s view, that the Leader of the Chorus here addresses the whole body; and, for the sake of symmetry, have repeated the couplet in the Antistrophe. No violence is thus done to the meaning of ἐκπεύθου. Another way is, with Pal., to put the line into the mouth of Xerxes—“Cry out and ask me!”
“Oaring with the oars of woe!”
I have carefully retained the original phraseology here, as being characteristic of the Greek tragedians, perhaps of the maritime propensities of the Athenians. See in Seven against Thebes, [p. 286] above, and Chœophoræ, [p. 112], Strophe VII. Euripides, in Iphig. Aul. 131, applies the same verb to the lower extremities, making Agamemnon say to his old servant ερέσσον σὸν πόδα—as if one of our jolly tars should say in his pleasant slang, “Come along, my boy, put the oars to your old hull, and move off!”
“Sons of Susa, with delicate feet.”