Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (34 page)

DANAÏDE
S

When marriage with their cousins, the
sons of Aegyptus, had been forced upon the daughters of Danaüs, their father
commanded each to kill her husband during the marriage-night. Hypermestra
alone, swayed by the charm of love, disobeyed (cp.
Prometheus Bound
865). Of her, Horace,
Od
. iii. 11. 33 ff., says
una de multis face
nuptiali digna periurum fuit in parentem splendide mendax et in omen virgo nobilis
aevum.
To the
Danaïds
have been assigned Fragments 162, 163, 177, 206, 208,
231, 234, 238.

FRAGMENT 24

The fragment refers to the custom
that, on the morning after the marriage, newly-wed couples were wakened by song
(cp. Theocritus,
Idyll
xviii. 56). If the speaker was a servant (who was
not privy to the intended murder), the verses may belong to a prologue, which
was followed by the appearance of the Chorus of Danaïds; but, so far as we
know, the “wakening” was sung by friends of the bride and bridegroom presumably
the same as had, on the previous evening, sun the hymenaeus. If, as seems more
probably, the speaker is Danaüs, he is describing what occurred either on the
evening of the wedding or on the morning thereafter, before the discovery of the
murder, and the lines form part of his defence before the court that tried him
for his participation in the killing of his sons-in-law (Scholiast on
Euripides,
Orestes
872). The difficulty of interpretation is largely
concerned with the application of the last five words of the text.
1.
sun korois te kai korais
is the stereotyped form of a wish that the
marriage may be fruitful in children. These words were said to brides by the
singers of the wedding-song according to the Scholiast on Pindar and Hesychius,
Lexicon
s.v.
kourizmenoi
.
Hermann holds to the MS. reading.

And then the
radiant light of the sun is setting, while I call them forth, saying `let them
make their bridegrooms graciously disposed, as is the custom, with boys and
girls.’

On this interpretation, Danaüs
describes how, after the brides had departed to their new home, he addressed
their companions; but the situation is not clear, the meaning of
egeirô
is strained, and the explanation of nomoisi peculiar. Toup’s aneisi transfers
the scene to the morning, as does Wiliamowitz
eute . . . egeisê
(“and
when Dawn shall rouse the radiant light of the sun”); but the latter scholar
can find in the following words no more definite idea than that certain persons
are enjoined to make the young husbands (or the newly-wedded couples) friendly “with
boys and girls.”
2.
sun korais te kai korais
means the companions of the speaker, who,
with him, awakens the sleepers. So Welcker, reading
aneisi
and
thelgôn
:

And thereafter
uprises the radiant light of the sun, while I, in company with youths and
maidens, awaken the bridegrooms graciously disposed.

thelgôn
is ironical; as is
preumeneis, since Danaüs had married his daughter to suitors whom they, and he,
detested, and whose murder he planned.
The situation is moving: when the waking-song was sung, the husbands – all save
Lynceus, who was married to Hypermestra – were sleeping the sleep of death. But
the scene, because reported, is less dramatic than that in Euripides’
Phaëthon
,
in which play (Frag. 781) Merops appears with a chorus of maidens who sing the
nuptial song in honour of Phaëthon at the very moment when Phaëthon’s corpse is
being carried into the chamber of Clymene, the wife of Merops. In
Wilhelm
Tell
the music of a wedding-procession is heard while Gessler is in the
agonies of death.

FRAGMENT 25

Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
xiii. 73. p. 600B; Eustathius on
Iliad
978. 25 (omitting ll. 6-7),
misled the reference to Aeschylus of Alexandria in Athen. 599E, ascribed ll.
1-5 to that poet.

The holy heaven
yearns to wound the earth, and yearning layeth hold on the earth to join in
wedlock; the rain, fallen from the amorous heaven, impregnates the earth, and
it bringeth forth for mankind the food of flocks and herds and Demeter’s gifts;
and from that moist marriage-rite the woods put on their bloom. Of all these
things I am the cause.

These lines – the
Bridal of Heaven and Earth, imitated by Euripides, Fragment 898 – were spoken,
says Athenaeus, by Aphrodite herself; and probably in defence of Hypermestra at
her trial for disobedience to her father’s command. Cp. Lucretius i. 250 (
imbres
)
pater aether in gremium matris terrain praecipitavit
, and Virgil,
Georg
.
ii. 235.

ELEUSINIO
I

Plutarch in his
Life of Theseus
29, states that Theseus, in conjunction with Adrastus, effected the recovery of
the bodies of the Argives slain before Thebes (in the expedition against that
city undertaken by the seven champions); that Aeschylus made the recovery the
result of persuasion on the part of Theseus, whereas Euripides, in his
Suppliants
,
ascribed it to a victory over the Argives; and that Theseus appeared in
Aeschylus’ play, and out of kindness to Adrastus caused the leaders to be
buried at Eleusis, the soldiery at Eleutherae, where their tombs were still
shown in his day.
To
The Men of Eleusis
have been assigned Fragments 178, 199, 200, 214,
215, 241

FRAGMENT 25A

Didymus,
Commentary
on Demosthenes’ Philippic
xii (xiii) in Berliner Papyrus 978- (
Berliner
Klassikertexte
i. (1904) 66).

The matter pressed,
rotting already was the corpse.

EPIGONO
I

Ten years after the unsuccessful
attack on Thebes described in
The Seven against Thebes
, the son of the
fallen chieftains, called the
After-Born
, avenged the death of their
fathers in a second expedition, which resulted in the capture of the city. At the
end of Euripides’
Suppliants
(l. 1213) Athena prophesies the success of
the sons in the war that formed the theme of the Aeschylean drama. The legend
of the victorious issue of the second expedition is known to the
Iliad
in which (D 406) Sthenelus, the son of Capaneus, boasts the superiority of the
sons over their fathers. But the tradition that the seven champions had each a
son (named in Apollodorus,
Library
iii. 7. 2) who joined in the war, is
apparently later than Homer. In
The Seven against Thebes
, Aeschylus made
both Eteocles and Polynices die childless; but Pindar knew of Thersander, the
son of Polynices and successor to his claim to the throne; and late writers
report that Laodamas was the son of Eteocles.
Fragments 176, 247, 248 have been referred to
The Epigoni
.

FRAGMENT 26

Scholiast on
Pindar,
Isthmian
6. 10 (7).

First, libations to Zeus and Hera for
timely marriage
The second cup of mixed wine I serve to the Heroes
Third, a libation for blessing to Zeus, the Saviour.

ÊDÔNO
I

Apollodorus,
Library
iii. 5. 1,
gives the following version of the legend of Lycurgus and his rejection of the
god Dionysus:
“And afterwards he (Dionysus) arrived at Cybela in Phrygia, and there, having
been purified by Rhea, and learning the rites of initiation, he received from
her the costume, and hastened through Thrace [against the Indians]. But
Lycurgus, king of the Edonians, who dwell beside the river Strymon, was the
first to insult and expel him. And Dionysus took refuge in the sea with Thetis,
the daughter of Nereus, and the Bacchanals were taken captive and the multitude
of the satyrs that followed him. But afterwards the Bacchanals were suddenly
released, and Dionysus brought madness upon Lycurgus. And he, in his frenzy,
struck with an axe and killed his son Dryas, imagining that he was lopping off
the branch of a vine; and when he had cut off his son’s extremities, he came to
his senses. But since the land remained barren, the god made known by an oracle
that it would bear fruit if Lycurgus were put to death. On hearing this, the
Edonians took him to Mt. Pangaeus, and bound him; and there, by the will of
Dionysus, he died, destroyed by horses.”
Fragment 27 refers to the arrival of Dionysus and his worshippers, 28 to the
house of Lycurgus; to whom, or to one of his attendants, belong the satirical
descriptions of the god in 29-32.
To
The Edonians
have been ascribed Fragments 173, 188, 193, 201, 202.

FRAGMENT 27

Strabo,
Geography
x. 3. 16. p. 470 (l. 6 Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
xi. 57. p. 479B,
Scholiast BT on
Iliad
PS 34).

Practising the holy
rites of Cotyto . . . One, holding in his hands the pipe, the labour of the
lathe, blows forth his fingered tune, even the sound that wakes to frenzy.
Another, with brass-bound cymbals, raises a clang . . . the twang shrills; the unseen,
unknown, bull-voiced mimes in answer bellow fearfully, while the timbrel’s
echo, like that of subterranean thunder, rolls along inspiring a mighty terror.

From the parodus of
the play. In ll. 2-11 the Chorus of Edonians describes what Milton calls “the
barbarous dissonance of Bacchus and his revellers.” Cotys, Cotyto, or Cotytto,
was a Thracian goddess, akin to Rhea-Cybele, whose worship became popular in
Athens. Her rites resembled those of the Phrygian Sabazius, whose ritual was
similar to that of Bacchus. The Orphic ceremonies had their origin among the
Thracians.

FRAGMENT 28

Pseudo-Longinus,
On
the Sublime
15. 6.

Lo, the house is
frenzied with the god, the roof revels, Bacchant-like.

FRAGMENT 29

Etymologicum
Florentinum
62 (Miller),
Lexicon Sabbaïticum
5.

One who wears
Lydian tunics and fox-skin cloaks reaching to the feet

Dionysus is
described as wearing Lydian garments, which were famous for their
luxuriousness.

FRAGMENT 30

Scholiast on
Aristophanes,
Birds
276, Suidas,
Lexicon
s.v.
mousomantis

Who in the world is
this poet-prophet, speechless . . .

Bothe read
habros
,
asthenês
“daintly, weakling”; Hermann
amalos abrofatês sthenei
“soft,
a dainty stepper in his strength.”

FRAGMENT 31

Scholiast on
Aristophanes,
Thesmophoriazusae
135.

Whence hails this
woman-man? What’s his country? What’s his attire?

FRAGMENT 32

Scholiast B on
Iliad
I 539; cp. Eustathius on
Iliad
772. 53.

Long-legged indeed!
Was he not a
chlounês
?

The sense of
chlounês
is here obscure. In
Iliad
I 539 the word was explained by the ancients
as meaning “entire” (not castrated) or “couching in the grass”; elsewhere, as “rascal,”
“thief,” or “clothes-stealer.” Herman thought it was a designation of a locust.
See Wiliammowitz,
Aischylos: Interpretationen
p. 217.

HÊLIADE
S

The Daughters of Helios
dealt
with the legend of Phaëthon, whose rashness in diving the chariot of the Sun,
his father, caused the parching of the earth, and thereby his punishment at the
hands of Zeus, whose thunderbolt hurled him into the river Eridanus. In pity
for the unceasing grief of Phaëthon’s sisters, Zeus turned them into poplars,
from which, it was believed, their tears oozed forth and became amber, the
stone of light; a poetic fancy due to the association of
êlectron
“amber”
with
êlectôr
“the beaming sun.”
The form assumed by the myth in Aeschylus is unknown; but it is certain that
Euripides in his
Phaëthon
differed widely from the older poet. Aeschylus
was in part dependent on Hesiod for the story; but whereas Hesiod knew of seven
daughters of Helios, Aeschylus recognized only three – Lampetië, Aegle, and
Phaëthousa – children of the sun-god and Rhode. Furthermore he transferred to
Iberia the scene of the fall of Phaëthon.
Fragments 172, 177, 185 have been ascribed to the play.

FRAGMENT 33

Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
xi. 39. p. 469F.

Where, in the west,
is the bowl wrought by Hephaestus, the bowl of thy sire, speeding wherein he
crosseth the mighty, swelling stream that girdleth earth, fleeing the gloom of
holy night of sable steeds.

To explain the
rising of the sun in the east after it had set in the west, Greek fancy
invented the myth that the Sun-god possessed a golden bowl, in which he,
together with his steeds, was carried during the night across the ocean to the
place of his rising. When Heracles was journeying to Erythea to capture the
oxen of Geryon (Frag. 37), Helios lent his bowl to the hero; who, in Gerhard’s
Auserlesene
griechische Vasenbilder
, pl. 109, is pictured sitting therein. In the Veda
and in Germanic and Lettic myths the sun appears in the form of a golden bowl.

FRAGMENT 34

Clement of
Alexandria,
Miscellanies
v. 14. p. 718; cp. Philodemus,
On Piety
22.

Zeus is air, Zeus
is earth, Zeus is heaven, yea, Zeus is all things and whatsoever trancendeth
them.

FRAGMENT 35

Bekker,
Anecdota
Graeca
346. 10.

And Adria’s
daughters shall learn a (new) way of mourning.

Phaëthon was hurled
into the Eridanus, which Aeschylus, according to Pliny,
Nat. Hist.
xxxvii. 31, placed in Iberia and identified with the Rhone, a river confused
with the Po, on the banks of which was the city of Adria. Polybius,
History
ii. 16 and Plutarch,
On the Delay of Divine Vengeance
12. p. 557, report
that the inhabitants along the Eridanus wore black in mourning for Phaëthon.
Knaack,
Quaestiones Phaëthonteae
18, refers “the way of mourning” to the
tears of amber from the poplars into which the maidens had been transformed.

FRAGMENT 36

Etymologicum
Genuinum
(cod. Vaticanus Graceus 1818) s.v.
aphtonestaton
; cp.
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
x. 24. p. 424D, Eustathius on
Iliad
746. 45,
Lexicon Sabbaïticum
2.

Gushed from the
spring a more abundant stream.