Æschylos Tragedies and Fragments

417

The words are both doubtful and obscure. Taking the reading which I have adopted, they seem to mean that while men in general had means of propitiating the Erinnyes and other Powers for the guilt of unavenged bloodshed, Orestes and Electra had no such way of escape open to them. If they, the next of kin, failed to do their work, they would be exposed to the full storm of wrath. But a conjectural emendation of one word gives us,

“For making known to men the earth-born ills

That come from wrathful Powers.”

418

Either that old age would come prematurely, or that the hair itself would share the leprous whiteness of the flesh.

419

The words, as taken in the text, refer to Orestes seeing even in sleep the spectral forms of the Erinnyes. By some editors the verse is placed after v. 276, and the lines then read thus: —

“And that he calls fresh onsets of the Erinnyes

As brought to issue from a father's blood,

Seeing clearly, though he move his brow in darkness.”

So taken, the last line refers to Agamemnon, who, though in the darkness of Hades, sees the penalties which will fail upon his son should he neglect to take vengeance on his father's murderers.

420

Stress is laid here, as in Agam. 1224, on the effeminacy of the adulterer.

421

The great law of retribution is repeated from Agam. 1564. As one of the earliest utterances of man's moral sense, it was referred popularly among the Greeks to Rhadamanthos, who with Minos judged the souls of the dead in Hades. Comp. Aristot. Ethic. Nicom., v. 8.

422

The funeral pyre, which consumes the body, leaves the life and power of the man untouched. The spirit survives, and calls on the Gods that dwell in darkness to avenge him. The very cry of wailing tends, as a prayer to them, to the exposure of the murderer.

423

The Lykians, of whom Glaucos and Sarpedon are the representative heroes in the Iliad, are named as the chief allies of the Troïans.

424

The words embody the widespread feeling that the absence of funereal honours affected the spirit of the dead, and that the souls with whom he dwelt held him in high or low esteem according as they had been given or withheld.

425

Pindar (Pyth. x. 47), the contemporary of Æschylos, had made the name of these Hyperborei well known to all Greeks. The vague dreams of men, before the earth had been searched out, pictured a happy land as lying beyond their reach. There were Islands of the Blest in the far West; Æthiopians, peaceful and long-lived, in the South; and far away, beyond the cold North, a people exempt from the common evils of humanity. The latter have been connected with the old Aryan belief in the paradise of Mount Meru. Comp. also Herod. iv. 421; Prom. 812.

426

Sc., the beating of both hands upon the breast, as the Chorus uttered their lamentations.

427

Perhaps, simply “the sharp and bitter cry.” But the rendering in the text seems justified as repeating the wish already expressed (v. 260), that the murderers may die by this form of death.

428

The Chorus at this point renew their words and cries of lamentation, smiting on their breasts. By some critics this speech and Antistrophe VII. are assigned to Electra, Antistrophe VIII. to the Chorus, with a corresponding change in the pronouns “my” and “thy.” The Chorus, as consisting of Troïan captives, is represented as adopting the more vehement Asiatic forms of wailing. Among these the Arians, Kissians, and Mariandynians (Pers. 920) seem to have been most conspicuous for their skill in lamentation, and, as such, were in request where hired mourners were wanted. Compare the opening chorus, v. 22.

429

The practice of mutilating the corpse of a murdered man by cutting off his hands and feet and fastening them round his waist, seems to have been looked on as rendering him powerless to seek for vengeance. Comp. Soph. Elect. v. 437. This kind of mutilation, and not mere wanton outrage, is what the Chorus refer to.

430

As in v. 351 the loss of honour among the dead was represented as one consequence of the absence of funereal rites from those who loved the dead, so here the restoration of the children to their rights appears as the condition without which that dishonour must continue. If they succeed, then, and then only, can they offer funereal banquets, year by year, as was the custom. There may be a special reference to an Argive custom mentioned by Plutarch (Quæst. Græc., c. 24) of sacrificing immediately after the death of a relative to Apollo, and thirty days later to Hermes.

431

Another reference to the third cup of undiluted wine which men drank to the honour of Zeus the Preserver. Comp. Agam. v. 245.

432

Possibly the pronoun refers to Pylades.

433

The story of Althæa has perhaps been made most familiar to English readers by Mr. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon. More briefly told, the legend ran that she, being the wife of Œneus, bare a son, who was believed to be the child of Ares – that the Fates came to her when the boy, who was named Meleagros, was seven days old, and told her that his life should last until the firebrand then burning on the earth should be consumed. She took the firebrand and quenched it, and laid it by in a chest; but when Meleagros grew up, he joined in the chase of the great boar of Calydon, and when he had slain it, gave the skin as a trophy to Atalanta, and when his mother's brothers, the sons of Thestios, claimed it as their right, he waxed wroth with them and slew them. And then Althæa, in her grief, caring more for her brothers than her son, took the brand from the chest, and threw it into the fire, and so Meleagros died. Phrynichos is said to have made the myth the subject of a drama. In Homer (Il. x. 566), Althæa brings about her son's death by her curses.

434

Skylla (not to be confounded with the sea-monster of Messina) was the daughter of Nisos, king of Megaris, who had on his head a lock of purple hair, which was a charm that preserved his life from all danger. And the Cretans under Minos attacked Nisos, and besieged him in his city; and Minos won the love of Skylla, and tempted her with gifts, and she cut off her father's lock of hair, and so he perished. But Minos, scorning her for her deed, bound her by the feet to the stern of his ship and drowned her.

435

Hermes, i. e., in his office as the escort of the souls of the dead to Hades.

436

The Chorus apparently is represented as on the point of completing its catalogue of crimes committed by women with the story of Clytæmnestra's guilt. Something leads them to check themselves, and they are contented with a dark and vague allusion.

437

The story of the Lemnian women is told by Herodotos (vi. 138). They rose up against their husbands and put them all to death; and the deed passed into a proverb, so that all great crimes were spoken of as Lemnian. This guilt is that alluded to in Strophe III.

438

In every case of which the Chorus had spoken guilt had been followed by retribution. So, it is implied, it will be in that which is present to their thoughts.

439

Sc., is not forgotten or overlooked, but will assuredly meet with its due punishment.

440

So in Homer (Il. xxii. 444), the warm bath is prepared by Andromache for Hector on his return from the battle in which he fell.

441

As in her speeches in the Agamemnon (vv. 595, 884), Clytæmestra's words here also are full of significant ambiguity. The “things that befit the house,” the proposed conference with Ægisthos, her separation of Orestes from his companions, are all indications of suspicion already half aroused. The last three lines were probably spoken as an “aside.”

442

Suasion is personified, and invoked to come and win Clytæmnestra to trust herself in the power of the two avengers.

443

An alternative rendering is,

“Nay, say not that to him with show of hate.”

444

Apollo in the shrine at Delphi.

445

Hermes invoked once more, as at once the patron of craft and the escort of the dead.

446

Or “before our eyes.”

447

The “treasured score” is explained by the words that follow to mean the cry of exultation which the Chorus will raise when the deed of vengeance is accomplished; or, possibly (as Mr. Paley suggests), the funereal wail over the bodies of Ægisthos and Clytæmnestra, which the Chorus would raise to avert the guilt of the murder from Orestes.

448

As Perseus could only overcome the Gorgon, Medusa, by turning away his eyes, lest looking on her he should turn to stone, so Orestes was to avoid meeting his mother's glance, lest that should unman him and blunt his purpose.

449

Ægisthos had suffered enough, he says, for his share in Agamemnon's death. He has no wish that fresh odium should fall on him, as being implicated also in the death of Orestes, of which he has just heard.

450

The word (ephedros) was applied technically to one who sat by during a conflict between two athletes, prepared to challenge the victor to a fresh encounter. Orestes is such a combatant, taking the place of Agamemnon.

451

So, in Homer (Il. xxii. 79), Hecuba, when the entreaties of Priam had been in vain, makes this last appeal —

“Then to the front his mother rushed, in tears,Her bosom bare, with either hand her breastSustaining, and with tears addressed him thus,'Hector, my son, thy mother's breast revere.'”

452

The reader will note this as the only speech put into the lips of Pylades, though he is present as accompanying Orestes throughout great part of the drama.

453

The different ethical standard applied to the guilt of the husband and the wife was, we may well believe, that which prevailed among the Athenians generally. It has only too close a parallel in the ballads and romances of our own early literature.

454

The line is memorable as prophetic of the whole plot of the Eumenides.

455

The phrase “wail as to a tomb” seems to have been a by-word for fruitless entreaty and lamentation.

456

Clytæmnestra sees now the important of the dream referred to in vv. 518-522.

457

The words must be left in their obscurity. Commentators have conjectured Orestes and Pylades, or the deaths of Agamemnon and Iphigeneia, or those of Ægisthos and Clytæmnestra, as the “two lions,” spoken of. The first seems most in harmony with the context.

458

The Eternal Justice which orders all things is mightier than any arbitrary will, such as men attribute to the Gods. That will, even if we dare to think of it as changeable or evil, is held in restraint. It cannot, even if it would, protect the evildoers.

459

The Chorus feel that they have been too long silent; now, at last, they can speak. As slaves dreading punishment they had been gagged before; now the gag is removed.

460

Or, “Once more for those who wail.”

461

It is not clear with what form of animal life the myræna is to be identified. The ideal implied is that of some sea-monster whose touch was poisonous, but this does not hold good of the “lamprey.”

462

As the text stands, Orestes says that at last he can speak of the murder over which he had long brooded in silence. Another reading makes him speak of the oscillations in his own mind —

“Now do I praise myself, now wail and blame.”

463

Comp. vv. 270-288.

464

Delphi was to the Greek (as Jerusalem was to mediæval Christendom) the centre at once of his religious life and of the material earth. Its rock was the omphalos of the world. Consecrated widows watched over the sacred and perpetual fire. Once only up to the time of Æschylos, when the Temple itself was desecrated by the Persians, had it ceased to burn.

465

Once again we have the thought of the third cup offered as a libation to Zeus as saviour and deliverer. The Chorus asks whether this third deed of blood will be true to that idea and work out deliverance.

466

The succession is, in part, accordant with that in the Theogonia of Hesiod (vv. 116-136), but the special characteristic of the Æschylean form of the legend is that each change is a step in a due, rightful succession, as by free gift, not accomplished (as in other narratives of the same transition) by violence and wrong.

467

Phœbe, in the Theogonia, marries Coios, and becomes the mother of Leto, or Latona, and so the grandmother of Apollo. The “birthday gift” was commonly presented on the eighth day after birth, when the child was named. The oracle is spoken of as such a gift to Apollo, as bearing the name of Phœbos.

468

The sacred circular pool of Delos is the crater of an extinct volcano. There Apollo was born, and thence he passed through Attica to Parnassos, to take possession of the oracle, according to one form of the myth, depriving Themis of it and slaying the dragon Python that kept guard over it.

469

The people of Attica are thus named either as being mythically descended from Erichthonios the son of Hephæstos, or as artificers, who own him as their father. The words refer to the supposed origin of the Sacred Road from Athens to Delphi, passing through Bœotia and Phokis. When the Athenians sent envoys to consult the oracle they were preceded by men bearing axes, in remembrance of the original pioneering work which had been done for Apollo. The first work of active civilisation was thus connected with the worship of the giver of Light and Wisdom.

470

Delphos, the hero Eponymos (name-giving) of Delphi, was honoured as the son of Poseidon. Hence the Priestess invokes the latter as one of the guardian deities of the shrine.

471

Pronaia, as having her shrine or statue in front of the temple of Apollo.

472

The Korykian rock in Parnassos, as in Soph., Antig., v. 1128; known also as the “Nymphs' cavern.”

473

Bromios, a name of Dionysos, embodying the special attributes of loud, half-frenzied revelry.

474

In the legend which Euripides follows, Kithæron, not Parnassos, is the scene of the death of Pentheus. He, it was said, opposed the wild or frantic worship of the Pelasgic Bacchos, concealed himself that he might behold the mysteries of the Mœnads, and was torn to pieces by his mother and two others, on whose eyes the God had cast such glamour that they took him for a wild beast. English readers may be referred to Dean Milman's translation of the Bacchanals of Euripides.

475

Pleistos, topographically, a river flowing through the vale of Delphi, mythically the father of the nymphs of Korykos.

476

At one time the Oracle had been open to questioners once in the year only, afterwards once a month. The pilgrims, after they had made their offerings, cast lots, and the doors were opened to him to whom the lot had fallen. Plutarch, Qu. Græc., p. 292.

477

The altar of the adytum, on the very centre, as men deemed, of the whole earth. Zeus, it was said, had sent forth two eagles at the same moment; one from the East and the other from the West, and here it was that they had met. The stone was of white marble, and the two eagles were sculptured on it. Strabo, ix. 3.

478

The priestess dwells upon the outward tokens, which showed that the suppliant came as one whose need was specially urgent. On the ritual of supplication generally comp. Suppl., vv. 22, 348, 641, Soph., Œd. King, v. 3; Œd. Col., vv. 469-489.

479

Æschylos apparently follows the Theogonia of Hesiod, (l. 278), who describes the Gorgons as three in number, daughters of Phorkys and Keto, and bearing the names of Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa. The last enters into the Perseus cycle of myths, as one of the monsters whom he conquered, with a face once beautiful, but with her hair turned to serpents by the wrath of Athena, and so dreadful to look upon that those who gazed on her were turned to stone. When Perseus had slain her, Athena placed her head in her ægis, and thus became the terror of all who were foes to herself or her people. A wild legendary account of them meets us in the Prom. Bound, v. 812. As works of art, the Gorgon images are traceable to the earliest or Kyclopian period.

480

Here also we have a reference to a familiar subject of early Greek art, probably to some painting familiar to an Athenian audience. The name of Phineus indicates that the monstrous forms spoken of are those of the Harpies, birds with women's faces, or women with birds' wings, who were sent to vex the blind seer for his cruelty to the children of his first marriage. Comp. Soph. Antig., v. 973. In the Æneid they appear (iii. 225) as dwelling in the Strophades, and harassing Æneas and his companions.

481

The old image of Pallas, carved in olive-wood, as distinguished from later sculpture.

482

The early code of hospitality bound the host, who as such had once received a guest under the shelter of his roof, not to desert him, even though he might discover afterwards that he had been guilty of great crimes, but to escort him safely to the boundary of his territory. Thus Apollo, as the host with whom Orestes had taken refuge, sends Hermes, the escort God, to guide and defend him on his way to Athens.

483

The thought that the highest wisdom came to men rather in “visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,” than through the waking senses, which we have already met with in Agam., v. 173, is traceable to the mysticism of Pythagoras, more distinctly perhaps to that of Epimenides.

484

Wine, as in Soph. Œd. Col., vv. 100, 481, was rigidly excluded from the cultus of the Eumenides, and to them only as daughters of Night were midnight sacrifices offered. We must not lose sight of the thought thus implied, that Clytæmnestra had herself lived, after her deed of guilt, in perpetual terror of the Erinnyes, seeking to soothe them by her sacrifices.

485

The common rendering “in a dream” gives a sufficient meaning, and is, of course, tenable enough. But there is a force in the repetition of the same word, as in v. 116, which is thus lost, and which I have endeavoured to preserve. The Erinnyes, thus impotent in their rage, are as much mere dreamlike spectres as is the ghost of Clytæmnestra.

486

Here, as throughout Æschylos, the Olympian divinities are thought of as new comers, thrusting from their thrones the whole Chthonian and Titanic dynasty, Gods of the conquering Hellenes superseding those of the Pelasgi.

487

The accumulation of horrid forms of cruelty had, probably, a special significance for the Athenians. These punishments belonged to their enemies, the Persians, not to the Hellenic race, and the poet's purpose was to rekindle patriotic feeling by dwelling on their barbarity, as in Agam., v. 894, he points in like manner to their haughtiness and luxury.

488

The argument of the Erinnyes is, to some extent, like that of the Antigone of Sophocles (Antig., 909-913), and the wife of Intaphernes (Herod. iii. 119). The tie which binds the husband to the wife is less sacred than that between the mother and the son. This, therefore, brings on the slayer the guilt of blood of kin, while murder in the other case is reduced to simple homicide. Orestes therefore was not justified in perpetrating the greater crime as a retribution for the less. Apollo, in meeting this plea, asserts the sacredness of the marriage bond as standing on the same level as that of consanguinity.

489

The ideal interval of time between the two parts of the drama is left undefined, but it would seem from vv. 230, 274-6, and 429, to have been long enough to have allowed of many wanderings to sacred places, Orestes does not go straight from Delphi to Athens. He appears now, not as before dripping and besmeared with blood, but with hands and garments purified.

490

The story of Adrastos and Crœsos in Herod. i. 35, illustrates the gradual purification of which Orestes speaks. The penitent who has the stain of blood-guiltiness upon him comes to the king, and the king, as his host, performs the lustral rites for him. Here Orestes urges that he has been received at many homes, and gone through many such lustrations. He has been cleansed from the pollution of sin: what he now seeks, to use the terminology of a later system, is a forensic justification.

491

Sc., the scent of blood, which, though no longer visible to the eyes of men, still lingers round him and is perceptible to his pursuers.

492

Here, too, we trace the political bearing of the play. In the year when it was produced (B.C. 458) an alliance with Argos was the favourite measure of the more conservative party at Athens.

493

The names Triton and Tritonis, wherever found in classical geography (Libya, Crete, Thessaly, Bœotia), are always connected with the legend that Athena was born there. Probably both name and legend were carried from Greece to Libya, and then amalgamated with the indigenous local worship of a warlike goddess. Hesiod (iv. 180, 188) connects the Libyan lake with the legend of Jason and Argonauts.

494

In the war with the giants fought in the Phlegræan plains (the volcanic district of Campania) Athena had helped her father Zeus by her wise counsel, and was honoured there as keeping in check the destructive Titanic forces which had been so subdued, burying Enkelados, e. g., in Sicily. The “friends” are her Libyan worshippers. The passage is interesting, as showing the extent of Æschylos's acquaintance with the African and Italian coasts of the Mediterranean.

495

The Choral ode here is brought in as an incantation. This weapon is to succeed where others have failed, and this too, the frenzy which seizes the soul in the remembrance of its past transgression, is soothed and banished by Athena.

496

White, as the special colour of festal joy, was not used in the worship of the Erinnyes.

497

Another rendering gives —

“To dim the bright hue of the fresh-shed blood.”

498

The thought which underlies the obscurity of a corrupt passage seems to be that, as they relieve the Gods from the task of being avengers of blood, all that the Gods on their side can legitimately do against them is to render powerless the prayers for vengeance offered by the kindred of the slain. Their very isolation, as Chthonian deities, from the Gods of Olympos should protect them from open conflict. But an alternative rendering of the second line gives, perhaps, a better meaning —

“And by the prayers men offer unto me

Work freedom for the Gods;”