P. 27, l. 501 ff. These three achievements of Odysseus are all in the traditional saga. The Rapt of the Palladium, or figure of Pallas, by Odysseus and Diomedes, was in an old lost epic, called The Little Iliad; the Begging in Troy in the Little Iliad and also in Odyssey IV. 242 ff.; the great ambuscades in Odyssey IV. 290 ff., VIII. 493 ff., and in Odysseus's own feigned story, XIV. 468 ff. According to our tradition they belong to a later period of the war than the death of Rhesus, but perhaps the sequence was different, or not so definite, at the time of this play.
P. 28, l. 528. Rhesus shows the simple courage of a barbarian in his contempt for the ruses of Odysseus, the brutality of a barbarian in the methods of punishment he proposes. Such proposals would disgust a Greek; it looks as if they displeased Hector. In any case his abruptness here, and his careful indication of the place where the Thracians are to sleep, far from the rest of the camp, have some dramatic value for the sequel.
Pp. 28-30, ll. 527-564, Stars and Nightingale chorus.]—The beauty of these lines in the Greek is quite magical, but the stage management of the scene is difficult. Apparently Hector (l. 523) bids the Guards come forward from where they are and wait nearer the front for Dolon; obeying this they come up from the orchestra, we may suppose, to the stage. Then watching somewhere near Hector's tent they partly express, in the usual song, the lyrical emotion of the night, partly they chat about Dolon and the order of the watches. The scene is technically very interesting with its rather abrupt introduction of realism into the high convention of tragedy. Meantime the Trojans' time of watch is over and the Lycians, who ought to watch next, have not come. In a modern army it would of course be the duty of the new watch to come and relieve the old; in an ancient barbaric army—characteristically—the old watch had to go and wake the new. You could not, one must suppose, trust them to take their turn otherwise. At the end of the first strophe a Guard suggests that they should rouse the Lycians; at the end of the second the Leader definitely gives the word to do so. The Guards go, and so the stage (and orchestra) is left empty.
This is plain enough; but why were the Guards brought away from their original position—from the orchestra to the stage? Probably to allow the Greek spies to pass on towards the Thracian camp by a different and unoccupied way, not by the way which the Guards had just taken.
The story of the Nightingale is well known: she was Philomêla, or in the older story Procnê, an Athenian princess, wedded to the faithless Thracian king, Têreus. In a fury of vengeance on her husband she slew their only son, Itys or Itylus, and now laments him broken-hearted for ever.
P. 31, l. 567 ff., Odysseus and Diomedes.]—Observe how we are left gradually to discover that they have met and killed Dolon. They enter carrying, as far as we can make out, a wolf-skin that looks like his: they had evidently spoken to him, ll. 572, 575: it is his and they have killed him—l. 592 f.
All the Odysseus-Diomedes scenes have something unusual about them, something daring, turbulent, and perhaps lacking in dramatic tact. The silent rush on Hector's empty tent is hard to parallel. The cruel Athena is Euripidean; but her appearance in the midst of the action is startling, though it may be paralleled from Sophocles' Ajax. In Euripides Gods are generally kept for the prologue or epilogue, away from the ordinary action. (The vision of Iris and Lyssa in the middle of the Heracles has at least the stage clear of mortals and the Chorus apparently in a kind of dream.) Again the conception of Athena pretending to be Cypris is curious. The disguised Athena is common in the Odyssey, but she does not disguise herself as another goddess. (It is sometimes held that this scene requires four actors, which would be a decisive mark of lateness; but this is not really so. The actor who took Odysseus could easily get round in time to take Paris also—especially if he made his exit at l. 626, before Athena sees Paris. And the Greek stage had no objection to such doubling.) Lastly, the scene of turmoil between the spies and the Guards is extraordinary in a tragedy, though it would suit well in a pro-satyric play. See Introduction.
P. 33, l. 594, Stage direction.]—They bear Dolon's "spoils" or "tokens": probably his wolf-skin. If they bring it with them they must probably do something with it, and to hang it where it may give Hector a violent start seems the natural proceeding. Also, they can hardly be carrying it in the scene with the Guards, l. 675 ff., p. 38 f. That would be madness. They must have got rid of it before then, and this seems the obvious place for doing so.
P. 36, ll. 637 ff., Athena as Cypris.]—It is not clear how this would be represented on the Greek stage, though there is no reason to think there would be any special difficulty. On a modern stage it could be worked as follows:—The Goddess will be behind a gauze, so that she is invisible when only the lights in front of the gauze are lit, but visible when a light goes up behind it. She will first appear with helmet and spear in some hard light; then disappear and be rediscovered in the same place in a softer light, the helmet and spear gone and some emblems of Cypris—say a flower and a dove—in their place. Of course the voice will change too.
The next scene, where the two spies are caught and let go, is clear enough in its general structure; the details must remain conjectural.