CHOR. Come, my friends, to the harbor, and the tents, to undergo the tasks imposed by our masters. For necessity is relentless.
NOTES ON HECUBA
[1] Homer makes Dymas, not Cisseus, the father of Hecuba. Virgil however follows Euripides, the rest of the Latin poets Virgil.
[2] In the martial time of antiquity the spear was reverenced as something divine, and signified the chief command in arms, it was also the insigne of the highest civil authority: in this sense Euripides in other places uses the word δορυ. See Hippol. 988.
[3] τριταιος properly signifies triduanus; here it is used for τριτος, the cardinal number for the ordinal. So also Hippol. 275.
Πως δ' ου, τριταιαν γ' ουσ' ασιτος ‛ημεραν:
[4] Most interpreters render this, leaning on the crooked staff with my hand. Nor has Beck altered it in his Latin version, though he transcribed Musgrave's note. "σκολιω, σκιμπωνι (for which Porson directs σκιπωνι,) Scipiones in universum recti sunt, non curvi. Loquitur igitur non de vero scipione, sed metaphorice de brachio, quod ancillis innitens, scipionis usum præstabat; quodque, ob cubiti flexuram, σκολιον σκιμπωμα vocat."
[5] that babbling knave.] Tzetzes on Lycophron, line 763. κοπις, ‛ο ‛ρητωρ, και εμπειρος, ‛ο ‛υπο πολλων πραγματων κεκομμενος. In the Index to Lycophron κοπις is translated scurra.