Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (33 page)
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Authors: Aeschylus
Athamas, a hero
localized in Boeotia and Thessaly, was the son of Aeolus according to the
genealogy commonly adopted in antiquity. By his divine wife Nephele he had two
children, Phrixus and Helle; by his second wife Ino, daughter of Cadmus, he had
two sons, Learchus and Melicertes. Apollodorus,
Library
, iii. 4. 3 (cp.
i. 9. 2) narrates that Zeus entrusted the newly-born Dionysus to Hermes, who
conveyed him to Ino and Athamas, and persuaded them to rear the babe as a girl.
In consequence of madness brought upon them by Hera in her indignation, Athamas
hunted his elder son as a deer and killed him; Ino threw Melicertes into a
boiling cauldron, and then, carrying it, together with the dead body of the
child, leaped into the sea. The Argument to the first Isthmian Ode of Pindar
reports a different version: that the corpse of Learchus was thrown into the
cauldron of Ino, who then, having become mad, plunged into the sea. The
Isthmian games were instituted by Sisyphus in honour of Melicertes.
FRAGMENT 1
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
,
ii. 6. p. 37F;
cp. vii. 100. p. 316B.
The one was cast
into the three-legged cauldron of the house, that ever kept its place above the
fire.
FRAGMENT 2
Etymologicum
Florentium
116 (Miller); cp.
Etymologicum Magnum
346. 56.
Taking out with
bronze flesh-hooks
A Sicilian maiden named Thaleia or
Aetna, having been embraced by Zeus, in fear of Hera’s wrath prayed that the
earth might open and swallow her up. Her prayer was granted, but when the time
of her delivery was at hand, the earth opened again and twin boys came forth,
who were called Palïci, because they had “come back” (
apo tou palin
hikesthai
) from the earth. The Palici were worshipped (originally with
human sacrifices) in the neighbourhood of Mount Aetna (Macrobius,
Saturnalia
,
v. 19. 17; cp. Servius on Virgil,
Aeneid
, ix. 584).
“Having arrived in Sicily, as Hiero was then (476 B.C.) founding the city of
Aetna, Aeschylus exhibited his
Aetnae
as an augury of a prosperous life
for those who were uniting in the settlement of the city” (
Life of Aeschylus
).
The play is named
Aitnaiai
,
The Women of Aetna
, in the Medicean
Catalogue, and so apparently in Frag. 9 and Frag. 10 (Nauck). The title has the
form
Aitnai
in the
Life
and Nauck’s 7 and 8;
Aitna
in
Nauck’s 11,
Aetna
in Macrobius. Alexandrian scholars thought to
distinguish a genuine from a spurious play of this name.
FRAGMENT 3
Macrobius,
Saturnalia
v. 19. 24.
A. What name, then, shall mortals put
upon them?
B. Zeus commandeth that they be called the holy Palici.
A. And shall the name “Palici” abide as rightly given?
B. Aye, for they shall “come back” from darkness to this light.
“But the land of
Argos being waterless, since Poseidon had dried up even the springs because of
his anger at Inachus for testifying that it belonged to Hera, Danaüs sent his
daughters to draw water. One of them, Amymone, as she was searching for water,
threw a dart at a deer and hit a sleeping satyr. He, starting up, desired to
force her; but Poseidon appearing on the scene, the satyr fled, and Amymone lay
with Poseidon, and he revealed to her the springs at Lerna.” (Apollodorus,
Library
,
ii. 1. 4). The play was probably satyric.
FRAGMENT 4
Ammonius,
On
Words of like Form but different Meaning
37 (Valckenaer), Bachmann,
Anecdota
Graeca
, ii. 375. 8
It is thy fate to
be my wife; mine to be thy husband.
FRAGMENT 5
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
xv. 41. p. 490C.
And for my part I
[wish] thy nards and balsam too
In the Medicean Catalogue and the
Etymologicum
Magnum
(see under Fragment 7) the play bears the title
Argeioi
,
The
Men of Argos
. In the authors citing Fragment 6 and Nauck’s 18 (Hesychius,
Lexicon
1. 257) the name is
Argeiai
, which suggests that the Chorus was formed
of the mothers of the Argive commanders who fell in the attack on Thebes
described in the extant play of Aeschylus. According to Welcker, the
Eleusinioi
anticipated the first, the
Argeioi
the second, part of Euripides’
Suppliants
.
M. Schmidt in
Philologus
, xvi. (1860) 161, conjectured that the drama
was entitled
Argeia
from the daughter Adrastus who married Polynices,
and who, in Statius’
Thebaid
, was joined by Antigone in burying her
father.
Fragment 155 has been assigned to this play.
FRAGMENT 6
Harpocration,
Glossary
of the Ten Attic Orators
306. 11.
Both darts and
looped javelins and heaped missiles
FRAGMENT 7
Etymologicum
Magnum
341. 5,
Lexicon Sabbaïticum
21.
Capaneus is left me
with the remains of his lightning-smitten limbs that the thunderbolt had left
behind (?)
From a lament,
probably by the Chorus, on the Argive chieftains who fell in the first attack
on Thebes; or possibly by Evadne over the body of her husband Capaneus, of
whose destruction, by the lightning of Zeus, Eteocles is confident in
Seven
against Thebes
444. In
Euripides’
Suppliants
the bodies of the other Argive champions were
burned on a single funeral pyre, that of Capaneus was burned apart as a
consecrated corpse; and upon his pyre his wife threw herself.
In the Medicean Catalogue the play is
entitled
Argô hê kôpastês
(so M); in the Aldine edition,
Argô ê
kôpeustês
. Referring the sub-title to the rowers of the Argo, Welcker
proposes
kôpeustai
; Hippenstiel,
De Graecorum tragicorum principum
fabularum nominibus
,
kôpastai
. Hartung, approved by Dieterich, read
kômastai
“revellers.”
See Fragments 164, 221.
FRAGMENT 8
Philo of
Alexandria,
On the Virtuous being also Free
20. 143 (Chon and Reiter vi.
41).
Where is Argo’s
sacred speaking beam?
Apollodorus,
Library
i. 9. 16: “and at the prow (of the Argo) Athena fitted a speaking timber from
the oak of Dodona.”
Fragment 215 has
been referred to the
Bacchae
.
FRAGMENT 9
Stobaeus,
Anthology
i. 3. 26 (Wachsmuth i. 57), Theophilus,
To Autolycus
2. 37. p. 178. The
verses are ascribed to the
Bakchai
only in the margin of the Farnesianus
of Stobaeus (
aischulou kakchôn
).
Truly upon mortals
cometh swift of foot their evil and his offence upon him that trespasseth against
Right.
Eratosthenes,
Legends of the
Constellations
, 24. p. 140 (Robert), says of Orpheus that he paid no honour
to Dionysus, but considered Helios to be the greatest of the gods and addressed
him as Apollo; that, by making haste during the night, he reached at dawn the
summit of Mt. Pangaeus, and waited there that he might see the rising of the
sun; and that Dionysus, in his wrath, sent against him the Bassarides (as
Aeschylus tells the story), who tore him to pieces and scattered his members,
which were collected and buried by the Muses in Leibethra. To the same effect,
Scholiast Germanicus, 84. 11.
The name
Bassarai
was given to Thracian (and to Phrygian and Lydian)
bacchanals, who wore fox-skin caps and long embroidered cloaks, pictured in Miss
Harrison’s
Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion
, 458. The word
bassara
(possibly of Phrygian origin but carried elsewhere) means “fox.” Cp. Fragment
29.
The play is entitled
Bassarides
in the Scholiast on Aristophanes,
Thesmophoriazusae
135, and on Nicander,
Theriaca
288.
To the
Bassarae
have been assigned Fragments 187. 215.
FRAGMENT 10
Hephaestion,
Handbook
of Metres
13. p. 43 (Consbruch) and Choeroboscus,
Commentary
p. 84.
3.
The bull was like
to butt the goat with his horns . . .
Dionysus is the
bull, the goat is Lycurgus, the king of the Edonians, who refused to adopt the
worship of the god.
FRAGMENT 11
Scholiast on
Nicander,
Theriaca
288.
Old chips and sooty
ashes on the altar
FRAGMENT 12
Scholiast (cod.
Vaticanus Graecus 909) on Euripides,
Rhesus
922.
For his gleaming
torch doth flood with flashing light Pangaeus’ headland, silver-seamed.
Probably from the
Messenger’s report to Dionysus concerning Orpheus ascent of the mountain to
behold the rising sun.
Pausanias,
Description of Greece
ix. 22. 7: “At Antehodon by the sea is what is called `Glaucus’ Leap.’ That
Glaucus was a fisherman, who, because he had eaten of a grass, was changed into
a daimon of the sea and foretells men the future, is believed by people in
general, and especially to seafaring men every year tell stories about his
prophetic art. Pindar and Aeschylus learned from the Anthedonians concerning
him, but wheras the former did not have much to do with the legends in his
poems, the latter worked them into a play.” Plutarch, in his
Life of Cicero
2, reports that there still existed in his timea short poet in tetrameters on
Glaucus of the Sea written by the orator in his youth.
In Fragments 17-19 Glaucus describes his wanderings by sea. To the play, which
was probably satyric, have been ascribed Fragments 203, 230, 231.
FRAGMENT 13
Phrynichus in
Bekker,
Anecdota Graeca
5. 21, Photius,
Lexicon
140. 22
(Reitzenstein). The line is a metrical attempt by a grammarian interpreting a
verse of Aeschylus, which Nauck would restore as
anthrôpomorphon kêtos
hudati ounnonon
.
[A creature, like
unto a man, living in the water]
FRAGMENT 14
Etymologicum
Magnum
250. 4, Eustathius on
Iliad
274. 24; cp. Pausanias,
Description
of Greece
x. 4. 7.
Shaggy his
moustache and his beard’s base
FRAGMENT 15
Bekker,
Anecdota
Graeca
347. 24, Photius,
Lexicon
36. 12 (Reitzenstein).
He that ate the
ever-living, imperishable grass
Ovid,
Metamorphoses
xiii. 930, relates that Glaucus was moved to eat of a certain grass because a
fish that he had caught, on touching the same, regained life and sprang into
the sea. The effect produced by the magic herb (according to the legend adopted
by Nicander,
Ther.
, Frag. 2) was that Glaucus became a god and leaped
into the sea.
FRAGMENT 16
Bekker,
Anecdota
Graeca
347. 29, Photius,
Lexicon
36. 16 (Reitzenstein).
And I taste,
methinks, the ever-living grass.
FRAGMENT 17
Strabo,
Geography
x. 1. 9. p. 447
The bend at Euboïs
about the headland of Cenaean Zeus, close to the tomb of wretched Lichas
Strabo says that
Euboïs was a city which had been engulfed by an earthquake. The Cenaean
promontory is situated at the end of the peninsula at the N.W. extremity of
Euboea. Near by is a mountain (about 2800 feet high), on the top of which Zeus
Cenaeus was worshipped. From the promontory, Lichas, the herald of Heracles,
was hurled into the sea by his master because he had been the bearer of the
poisoned robe sent by Deïaneira. Cp. Sophocles,
Women of Trachis
237,
750.
FRAGMENT 18
Life of Aratus
,
Westernmann’s
Lives of the Greeks
53. 26, from Petavius,
Uranologia
269A (Paris, 1637).
And thereafter
going out past Diad Athens
From Dion, a city
on the promontory of Cenaeum, a settlement of Athenians was called Athenae
Diades.
FRAGMENT 19
Scholiast on
Pindar,
Pythian
1. 79 (152).
Having washed my
body in fair baths, I came to steep-banked Himeras.
Potniae was a city in Boeotia where
Glaucus, the son of Sisyphus and Merope, kept mares that he had accustomed to
feed on human flesh in order to make them charge against the enemy with greater
eagerness and speed. When this food failed, they devoured their master at the
funeral games in honour of Pelias (Asclepiades,
On the Subjects of Tragedy
in Probus on Virgil,
Georgics
iii. 267). According to the Scholiast on
Euripides,
Orestes
318, the horses had eaten a (poisonous) grass,
whereby they became mad and tore Glaucus asunder. Strabo,
Geography
x.
409 omits any mention of the cause of madness, which other writers attribute,
now to the water of a sacred spring near Potniae, now to the anger of Aphrodite
(because Glaucus prevented his mares from mating in order to increase their
speed), now to their human food.
In Fragment 20 the Chorus utter their good wishes on Glaucus’ departure for the
games. In 21, 22, 23 the Messenger describes the contest, in which the
title-hero was hurled from his chariot in the collision caused by the madness
of the mares.
The
Glaucus of Potniae
was produced in 472 B.C. as the third member of
the tetralogy
Phineus, Persai, Glaukos
(
Potnieus
according to a
later Argument),
Promêtheus
(probably
purkaeus
).
See Fragments 88, 181, 184, 205.
FRAGMENT 20
Scholiast on
Aristophanes,
Frogs
1528.
“A prosperous
journey!” is the first wish we pour forth from our lips.
FRAGMENT 21
Scholiast on Plato,
p. 904 B 36 (Baiter-Orelli).
Not for laggards
doth a contest wait.
FRAGMENT 22
Scholiast on
Euripides,
Women of Phoenicia
1194.
For chariot on
chariot, corpse upon corpse, horse on horse, had been heaped in confusion.
FRAGMENT 23
Scholiasts BLTV on
Il.
N 198; cp. Eustathius on Il. 297. 39.
In their fury they
dragged him aloft, even as two wolves bear off a fawn by its shoulders.