Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (35 page)
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Authors: Aeschylus
Of the personages, action, and scene
of
The Children of Heracles
nothing is known. It is, however, probably
that Aeschylus in part anticipated Euripides, who, in his same-named play, represented
Athens as the refuge of the fugitives from the persecution of Eurystheus, the
willingness of Macaria, the daughter of Heracles, to sacrifice her life as the
price of victory over the Argive invaders of Attica, and the triumph of the
children under the leadership of the aged Iolaüs, the nephew of Heracles.
The play is entitled
Hêrakleidai
, except in the Catalogue in the
Medicean MS., which has
Hêrakleidês
.
FRAGMENT 37
Scholiast on
Aristeides (cod. Marcianus 423).
Starting thence,
when that he had crossed the ocean in a golden bowl, he drave the
straight-horned kine from the uttermost parts of the earth, slew the evil
herdsmen and their triple-bodied master, who wielded three spears in his
(right) hands; in his left, extending three shields, and shaking his three
crests, he advanced like unto Ares in his might.
A description of
the tenth labour of Heracles – to fetch the kine of Geryon from the island of
Erythea, near the ocean, now Cadiz. Geryon had the body of three men grown
together and joined in one at the waist, but parted in three from the flanks
and thighs (Apollodorus,
Library
ii. 5. 10). Cp.
Agam.
870. For
the golden bowl see under Fragment 33.
FRAGMENT 38
Stobaeus,
Anthology
iv. 54. 2 (Hense v. 1113).
For I shall not
suffer any evil greater than this.
A play of this name is unknown in the
Catalogue in the Medicean MS., and is mentioned only by Pollux, citing Fragment
39. Some suppose that it is an alternative title of the
Aiguptioi
, and
that the name is derived from the carpenters who constructed the bridal
chambers in which the Danaïds killed their husbands. Hartung proposed to read
Thalamêtoloi
“attendants of the bridal chambers.” Welcker rejected connexion with the
Danaïd-myth and made the play precede the
Iphigeneia
and
Hiereiai
.
To the play have been referred Fragments 162, 163, 178, 189, 206, 238.
FRAGMENT 39
Pollux,
Vocabulary
7. 122.
Come! Let some one
work out in the ceiling a Lesbian moulding in triangular rhythms.
A
ceiling-compartment was formed, at its lower part, by “ladders” (
klimakides
)
laid across the “main beams” (
selides
). Below the former, in the present
case, ran a moulding with swelling above and hollow below (a
cyma reversa
)
and ornamented with a leaf-and-tongue pattern that approximates a triangle. The
Lesbian cyma appears in the Tholos at Epidaurus.
The original title
was probably
Theôroi, The Spectators
; to which was added that defining
the scene:
The Spectators at the Isthmian games.
FRAGMENT 40
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
xiv. 27. p. 629F.
And further these
old
skôpeumata
Athenaeus defines
the form of the
skôps
-dance as a figure in which people are represented
as looking at an object (
aposkopountôn
) by making an arch over their
brows. He has, however, here confused
skôps
with
skopos
, which
Hesychius,
Lexicon
4. 216, describes as a dance in which the dancers
shaded their eyes (cp.
huposkopon chera
, Aeschylus, Frag. 339 Nauck).
The screech-owl dance (
skôps
) got its name, says Athenaeus ix. 45. p.
391A, from the variety of motion displayed by the bird.
The play derives its title from
Thracian women, captives of Ajax, who formed the Chorus and had a like function
with the sailors from Salamis in Sophocles’
Ajax
: to support with their
sympathy the hero who has suffered the ignominy of defeat at the hands of
Achilles, and after his suicide to bewail his death. Though captives, they even
dared to protest against the inhumanity to Menelaüs, who would refuse burial to
the body of their master. In Sophocles’ play, Ajax killed himself on the stage
and in solitude; in Aeschylus, his suicide was reported by a messenger, an
eye-witness of the deed.
See Fragments 159, 194, 264.
FRAGMENT 41
Scholiast on
Sophocles,
Ajax
833. L.
1 restored by Hermann, 1. 2 (as 1. 1) by Hartung, 1. 3 by Sidgwick. The vial
part was
ta peri
(or
kata
)
tên maschalên
according to the
Scholiast on Sophocles and to Scholiasts TV on X 404 (cp.
Ajax
834).
Back he bent his
sword, as when a man bends a bow, for that his body offered no place to
murderous death, until at last some goddess appeared and showed him [the vital
spot].
The passage has
reference to the legend that the body of Ajax, when a babe, having been wrapped
by Heracles in his lion-skin, became invulnerable except the spot where
Heracles’ quiver prevented the hide from touching it. According to Homer, Ajax
was vulnerable, hence the legend was probably derived by Aeschylus from a
Cyclic poet; and is certainly due to the desire to make Ajax equally
invulnerable with Achilles. The sword with which Ajax slew himself had been
given him by Hector.
The Priestesses
was made by Welcker the third member of a trilogy, whose preceding parts were
the
Thalamopoioi
and the
Iphigeneia
. By others it has been
associated with the
Musoi
and
Têlephos
, or with the
Têlephos
and
Iphigeneia
. See Fragment 214.
FRAGMENT 42
Macrobius,
Saturnalia
v. 22. 13, Scholiast on Sophocles,
Oedipus Coloneus
793.
Send with all
speed; for these are the oracles that Father Zeus dost entrust unto Loxias.
FRAGMENT 43
Aristophanes,
Frogs
1274, with Scholiast.
Hold your peace!
The bee-keepers are at hand to open the house of Artemis.
From Iphigeneia according to Vater.
The Scholiast on Pindar,
Pythian
4. 104 (60) says that “
melissai
is a term used primarily of the priestesses of Demeter, and by a misuse of
language applied to all priestesses because of the purity of the animal.” Coins
of the Ephesian Artemis as early as the sixth century, and a Vatican statue of
the same goddess, show the bee as an emblem.
IXIO
N
Ixion was famous in Greek tradition as
the first man to shed kindred blood (Pindar,
Pythian
2. 31, cp.
Eumenides
718), and as the first to receive purification from the crime of murder. His
father’s name is variously reported, usually as Phlegyas, but Aeschylus made
him the son of Antion. His mother was Perimela, the daughter of Amythaon. Under
promise of rich wedding-gifts to Eïnoeus (or Deïoneus), the father of Dia, he
married her, and by her had a son, Peirithoüs. On his refusal to make over to
his father-in-law the wedding-gifts due to him, Eïnoeus took Ixion’s horses as
a pledge of payment; whereupon Ixion, pretending that he would submit himself
to his good pleasure, sent for Eïoneus and caused him to fall into a fiery pit.
For this offence he could obtain purification from neither man nor any god,
until Zeus, showing himself a “gracious avenger” (Frag. 92 N.), took compassion
on his suppliant, cleansed him of bloodshed, and even raised him to Olympus.
There Ixion conceived a made passion for the Queen of Heaven, and having
besought her to yield to his desires, Zeus fashioned a cloud in the semblance
of Hera. Ixion lay with the cloud, and from this union sprang the centaurs. In
punishment for this impious crime, Zeus bound him to a wheel on which he whirls
in an eternity of torment. To the above effect, in the main, Diodorus of
Sicily,
Historical Library
iv. 69. 3.
The play probably followed the
Perrhaebides
, which took its name from
the Chorus of women of Perrhaebia in Thessaly, which district, or the city of
Gyrton in the same, Ixion had subjected to his rule. The theme of the first
play may have been the deception and murder of Eïoneus; that of the Ixion, the
purification of the murderer. The third member of the trilogy is unknown.
Fragment 182 has been referred to the
Ixion
.
FRAGMENT 44
Stobaeus,
Anthology
iv. 53. 15 (Hense v. 1101),
Munich Anthology
134 (cod.
Augusanus-Monacensis 429).
Death hath a fairer
fame than a life of toil.
Cp. Fragment 229
and Euripides,
Women of Troy
637.
ponêros
, lit. “laborious,” may
not yet have acquired the meaning “bad,” “evil.”
FRAGMENT 45
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
iv. 79. p. 182C.
But anon the long
flute swallows up the half-holed.
Ixion’s lesser offence – the murder of
his father-in-law – is obscured by the enormity of his crime against Hera and
against Zeus.
hêmiopoi auloi
were the same as those used by boys (
paidikoi
) and
had higher tones than the
teleioi
. They were half as long as (perhaps)
the
huperteleioi
, which had the lowest pitch, and may have had no more
than four holes. See Howard,
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
iv.
(1898).
The theme of the play was probably the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia at Aulis, to which place she was brought by her mother
at the instance of Agamemnon, who alleged his intention of betrothing his
daughter to Achilles. The subject may thus have anticipated Sophocles’
Iphigenia
and Euripides’
Iphigenia at Aulis
.
See Fragments 43, 130, 214.
FRAGMENT 46
Scholiast on
Sophocles,
Ajax
722.
Surely it befits
not to be reviled by women. How should it?
This drama, which has its name from
the Chorus, is the earliest literary witness to the Cabiri, more often called
the Great Gods in Samothrace and Lemnos, the most ancient and famous seats of
their worship in the Aegean. Originally pre-Hellenic chthonian divinities, who primal
home was Phrygia, Phoenicia, or among the Pelasgians of Greece, their cult
gradually accommodated itself to the religion of the peoples with which it came
into contact; until in the historical period, the Cabiri appear as daimones who
foster vegetative life and protect seafaring folk, and whose Mysteries in
course of time spread over the greater part of the Greek world.
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
x. 33 p. 428F, declares that it was Aeschylus, not
Euripides (in the
Alcestis
), who first introduced drunken people to the
sight of the spectators of “tragedy”; and that this evil eminence was displayed
in his
Cabiri
, in which play he represented Jason and his companions as
drunk. Fragment 48 would seem to refer to the hospitable reception of the
Argonauts by the Cabiri, who furnished them with an abundance of wine upon
their landing at Lemnos, the first stopping-place of the Argo on its eastward
voyage. The introduction of a drunken orgy has caused many scholars to regard
the play as satyric rather than tragic. Whether pure tragedy may thus relax its
gravity is a question that has been raised also in connexion with the
Ostologoi
of Aeschylus and the
Sundeipnoi
of Sophocles.
The Scholiast on Pindar,
Pythian
4. 303 (171), states that the names of
the heroes of the Argonautic expedition were set forth in the
Kabeiroi
,
as also in the
Lêmniai
of Sophocles.
Fragment 164 has been referred to this play.
FRAGMENT 47
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
ix. 15. p. 373D.
But I take thee not
as an omen of my journey.
FRAGMENT 48
Pollux,
Vocabulary
10. 23; cp. Antiattacistes in Bekker,
Anecdota Graeca
115. 3.
Jars neither of
wine nor of water shall fail in the houses of the rich.
FRAGMENT 49
Plutarch,
Table
Talk
ii. 1. 7. p. 632F.
We shall make he
house to be scant of vinegar.
The Cabiri
jestingly threaten to produce so excellent, or so abundant, a vintage that
either the Argonauts will drink so much that no wine will be kept to make
vinegar; or that vinegar shall be poured out from the casks to give place to
wine. If
oxous
means “ordinary wine,” the meaning is that it will have
to be thrown away for the better quality.
Europe, the protagonist in the drama
bearing her name as an alternative title, in Fragment 50 tells of her
carrying-off by the bull, of the three sons she bore to Zeus (Minos,
Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon), and of her anxiety as to the fate of her youngest,
Sarpedon, whose warlike spirit has incited him to leave his home for Troy in
order to render assistance to the city now attacked by the Achaeans.
The scene was Lycia, whither Europe had come from Crete together with her son.
That the Chorus consisted of Carians, though Sarpedon was Prince of Lycia, may
be due to the fact that (as Strabo,
Geography
xiv. 5. p. 675, informs
us) the poets often included the Lycians among the Carians, who were the most
famous of all the races in south-western Asia Minor. The confusion had the
advantage of enabling the poet to reproduce the lamentations over the dead for
which the Carians were celebrated.
Popular tradition was inconsistent as to the name of Sarpedon’s mother.
Aeschylus followed the Hesiodic version in preference to that of Homer, who
calls her Laodamia. Nor was he disturbed by the Homeric genealogy, by which
Sarpedon was made the grandson of Bellerophon on the mother’s side. In the poet’s
time no one had yet thought, as did the mythographers later, to remove the
difficulty, either by assuming two Sarpedons (one the son of Laodamia, the
other the son of Europe) or by the notion that there was one Sarpedon, who had
been permitted by his father Zeus to live through three generations.
The drama probably dealt with the reception of the news of the hero’s death at
the hands of Patroclus and with the arrival of his body in Lycia, borne thither
by Sleep and Death (cp. P 682). All other Homeric warriors who fell before Troy
were buried in the Troad; Sarpedon alone had burial in his own land.
To this play has been ascribed Fragments 175, 231.
FRAGMENT 50
Weil,
Un papyrus inedit de le
bibliothèque de M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot
(1879) ; cp. Weil,
Revue de
philologie
nouv. Sér. iv. (1880) 10-13, 145-150.
The papyrus is relatively late and exceedingly corrupt. The verses are without
word-division.
And a lush meadow
gave friendly welcome to the bull. In such wise, biding where he was, did Zeus
succeed in his unlaboured theft of me from my aged sire. Why the whole tale? In
a few words I recount it all. A mortal woman, united to a god I lost the
holiness of maidenhood, but I was joined in wedlock with him who owned his
children equally with me. Thrice in childbirth did I endure the pangs of
womankind, and the field wherein he sowed complained not to bring forth the
seed of a noble sire. First of these mighty implantings that I bare was Minos .
. . Second, I brought forth Rhadamanthys, he who of my sons is free from death;
yet, though he lives, mine eyes behold him not – and to them that love, the
absent bring no delight. This was he for whom I am now sore distressed in
heart, even Sarpedon; for Ares’ warlike spirit hath laid hold of him. For it is
famed abroad that the choicest flower of all Hellas has come, preëminent in
valorous strength, and makes loud boast that it will perforce destroy the city
of the Trojans. It is for my son I fear, lest, raging with his lance, he may do
and suffer some surpassing ill. For slight is this my hope – and it standeth on
the razor’s edge – that by the bloody death of my child I may not lose my all.
1. Since Europa declares that Zeus
remained “where he was” (namely in Crete), she implies that her carrying-off
had been effected by the bull as the agent of the god, and not (as in the
ordinary version of the legend) by the god himself transformed into the animal.
2. Phoenix.
3. Since she bore no less than three children to Zeus, her relation to the god
is conceived as that of formal marriage founded on his desire for offspring.
zunônia
paidôn
, lit. joint-ownership of children. Cp.
koinan tekeôn tuchan
,
Euripides,
Ion
1101.
4. In the lacuna were described the deeds, honours, and death of Minos; but
Minos, since Rhadamanthys alone is called immortal, was probably not made the
judge of the dead.
5. Rhadamanthys has been translated to the Elysian Field (d563) or to the
Islands of the Blest (Pindar,
Olympian
2. 73).
6. The desire to employ the favourite antithesis of dran and paschein is
responsible for the condensed phrase, in which the emphasis rests on
pathê
(I fear, lest, as he may work some evil upon his foes, so he may suffer some
evil at their hands).
FRAGMENT 51
Stobaeus,
Anthology
iv. 10. 24 (Hense iv. 333).
But Ares ever loves
to pluck all the fairest flower of an armed host.