NOTES
The play presupposes a knowledge of the Iliad in some form, if not exactly in the form which it now wears. We are not only supposed to know that Hector, son of Priam, leads the Trojans and their allies ("Trojans, and Lycians, and Dardans bold": in tragedy they are also called Phrygians) in defence against the Greeks—Argives, Achaeans, Hellênes—under Agamemnon, king of men, and his brother Menelaüs, husband of Helen. This sort of supposition is usual in all Greek tragedy. It merely means that the poet takes for granted the main outlines of the heroic saga. But in this play we are also supposed to take up the story as it stands at the opening of the Doloneia or Tenth Book of the Iliad. Indeed one might almost say that the Rhesus is simply the Doloneia turned into drama and set in the Trojan camp. The only other play that is taken straight from Homer is the Satyr-play, Cyclops, which tells the story of Odyssey IX., but it is likely enough that if we possessed more of the earlier epic literature we should find many other plays closely hugging their traditional sources.—The Trojans are camping out on the field of battle, close to the Greek lines. Hector, always ready for danger, seems to have his tent or log-hut set up quite in the van, just behind the outposts. In Il. X. 415 ff. he is holding counsel with the other chieftains "away from the throng"; the allies are taking their sleep and trusting to the Trojans, who keep awake in groups round the camp fires; no watchword is mentioned.
P. 5, l. 30, The priest.]—He would be needed to make the sacrifice before battle.
P. 5, l. 36, The lash of trembling Pan.]—i.e., a panic.
P. 5, l. 41, Great beacons in the Argive line.]—In the Iliad it is the Trojan watch-fires that are specially mentioned, especially VIII. 553-end. There is no great disturbance in the Greek camp in the Doloneia; there is a gathering of the principal chiefs, a visit to the Guards, and the despatch of the two spies, but no general tumult such as there is in Book II. One cannot help wondering whether our playwright found in his version of the Doloneia a description of fires in the Greek camp, such as our Eighth Book has of those in the Trojan camp. The object might be merely protection against a night attack, or it might be a wish to fly, as Hector thinks. If so, presumably the Assembly changed its mind—much as it does in our Book II.—and determined to send spies.
P. 5, l. 43 ff., The shipyard timbers.]—The Greeks had their ships drawn up on the beach and protected by some sort of wooden "shipyard"; then came the camp; then, outside the whole, a trench and a wall. The fires were in the camp.
P. 8, l. 105, Brother! I would thy wit were like thy spear!]—In Homer Hector is impulsive and over-daring, but still good in counsel. On the stage every quality that is characteristic is apt to be overemphasized, all that is not characteristic neglected. Hence on the Attic stage Odysseus is more crafty, Ajax and Diomedes more blunt, Menelaus more unwarlike and more uxorious than in Homer.
This speech of Aeneas, though not inapposite, is rather didactic—a fault which always remained a danger to Euripides.
P. 10, l. 150 ff., Dolon.]—The name is derived from dolos, "craft." In our version of Homer Dolon merely wears, over his tunic, the skin of a grey wolf. He has a leather cap and a bow. In the play he goes, as Red Indian spies used to go, actually disguised as a wolf, on all fours in a complete wolf-skin. The same version is found on the Munich cylix of the early vase-painter Euphronius (about 500 B.C.), in which Dolon wears a tight-fitting hairy skin with a long tail. The plan can of course only succeed in a country where wild animals are common enough to be thought unimportant. The playwright has evidently chosen a more primitive and romantic version of the story; the Homeric reviser has, as usual, cut out what might seem ridiculous. (See J. A. K. Thomson in Classical Review, xxv. pp. 238 f.)
P. 12, l. 175, Ajax, Îleus' son.]—"Ajax" is mentioned here and at ll. 463, 497, 601, as apparently next in importance to the two Atreidae or to Achilles. That is natural, but it is a shock to have him here described as son of Ileus. In the Iliad we should have had "Ajax son of Telamon." The son of Ileus is "Ajax the less," a hero of the second rank. Scholars have conjectured on other grounds that in some older form of the Iliad-saga Ajax son of Ileus was of much greater importance. The father "Telamon" and the connection with Aegina are neither of them original in the myth.