i. e. “Now how near we are being caught with the sword.”
[682] Il. v. 487.
[683] Cratini Fragmenta, a Runkel, p. 28.
[684] Καί εἰσὶν αἱ κύνες αὗται, ὅ τι περ αἱ ἄρκυς Ξενοφῶντι ἐκείνῳ, i. e. “And here greyhounds answered the same purpose as Xenophon’s hunting-nets.” De Venat. ii. 21. See Dansey’s translation, pp. 72, 121.
[685] Medea, 1268.
Also in the Agamemnon of Æschylus (l. 1085):
Ἡ δίκτυον τί γ’ Αἴδου;
ἀλλ’ ἄρκυς ἡ ζύνευνος, ἡ ζυναιτία
φόνου.
In this passage reference is made to the large shawl in which Clytemnestra wrapt the body of Agamemnon, as in a net, in order to destroy him. On account of the use made of it, the same fatal garment is afterwards (l. 1353) compared to a casting-net, which in its form bore a considerable resemblance to the cassis. In l. 1346, ἀρκύστατα[686] denotes this net as set up for hunting. The same form occurs again in the Eumenides (l. 112); and in the Persæ (102-104) escape from danger is in nearly the same terms expressed by the notion of overleaping the net. In Euripides[687] this contrivance is called ἀρκύστατος μηχανὴ; and in the Agamemnon of Seneca[688] the same allusion is introduced: