[295]. iv. 54. 7.
[296]. One must remember that Diodorus gathered his excerpts together at least 300 years after the date of our vase, during all of which time the mythographers had been busy helping to straighten out the family affairs that the tragedians of the fifth century had treated imperfectly!
[297]. As a matter of fact this reference, although brought in under another φασί than the first remark, where three sons are named, τοὺς μὲν πρεσβυτάτους δίο διδύμους Θετταλόν τε καὶ Ἀλκιμένην, τὸν δὲ τρίτον πολυνεώτερον τούτων Τίσανδρον, iv. 54. 1, seems to me to speak of a common origin, and I hold both as coming from the same authority, under whose influence our vase painter certainly never stood.
[298]. Eur. Orest. v. 791.
[299]. As in the Medeia, nothing is said to indicate how the chariot was drawn. It is only from the monuments and later literary references (vid. Argum. to the Medeia and schol. on v. 1320) that one learns of the dragons; or is the utterance of Jason, vs. 1297 f., ἢ πτηνὸν ἆραι σῶμ’ ες αἰθέρος βάθος | εἰ μὴ τυράννων δώμασιν δώσειν δίκην | πέποιθ’, an intimation of the strange escape of the sorceress? How was Lyssa’s chariot drawn? Why not also by dragons?
[300]. Cf. fig. 26, where the figure that stands beside the dragons has been identified as Οἶστρος or Λύσσα. That the latter is the child of night harmonizes well with the night escape indicated by Selene and the stars on this vase.
[301]. On a vase of Assteas, vid. p. [179] below, which shows Herakles in the act of murdering his sons, the painter calls the personification of Lyssa, mania.
[302]. Mention should be made here of the Parian inscription, which gives us the curious information that there was a society of hetairai established under the patronage of the goddess Οἰστρώ; cf. Pernice, Athen. Mitth. 1893, p. 16. 2, and Maass, ibid. p. 25 f. There is, of course, a wide distinction between the personification and the cult use of οἶστρος, but it is worth while to point out that Eur. Hipp. vs. 1300 ff., gives the same notion that Maass suggests and supports by a quotation from Paullus Silentiarius (Anth. Plan. v. 234), where οἰστροφόρου Παφίης occurs. Artemis, speaking to Theseus of Hippolytos’ death and its cause, says, ἀλλ’ ἐς τόδ’ ἦλθον, παιδὸς ἐκδεῖξαι φρένα | τοῦ σοῦ δικαίαν, ὁς ὑπ’ εὐκλείας θάνῃ | καὶ σῦς γυναικὸς οἶστρον, ἢ τρόπον τινὰ | γενναιότητα, where we may suppose Euripides to have thought of Phaidra as possessed with οἶστρος, which means τῆς ἐχθίστης θεῶν (v. 1301), i.e. τῆς Κύπριδος (v. 1304).
[303]. Cf. Aisch. Pers. vs. 681–842, where the εἴδωλον of Dareios is one of the dramatis personae. Also Eur. Hek., where the prologue is spoken by the εἴδωλον of Polydoros.
[304]. Dilthey, Arch. 219, 1875, p. 71, followed also by Vogel, Scen. eur. Trag. p. 151. How do these scholars account for the appearance of Megara and her sons upon the ‘under-world’ vases where Herakles is also represented in his last labour of capturing Kerberos? This latter must have been finished and Herakles must have returned to the upper world before Megara and the boys could be thought of as in fact in the under-world.