Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (37 page)
Read Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) Online
Authors: Aeschylus
The subject of this
play is the rejection of the newly instituted worship of Dionysus either by
Pentheus or by the daughters of Minyas. The Scholiast on
Eumenides
24
states that the death of Pentheus took place, in the
Xantriai
, on Mt.
Cithaeron; and Philostratus (
Images
3. 18) describes a picture in which
the mother and aunts of Pentheus rend asunder (
xainousi
) the body of the
unbelieving prince. On the other hand, Aelian (
Historical Miscellanies
3. 42, cp. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
14. 32 ff.) relates that Leucippe,
Arsippe, and Alcithoë, the daughters of Minyas, out of love for their husbands,
held themselves aloof from the orgiastic rites of Dionysus and attended to
their weaving (in which case
Xantriai
might yield the meaning “Wool-Carders”)
and to punish their obstinacy, the god brought madness upon the sisters, so
that they tore to pieces the son of Leucippe; in consequence of which deed of
blood they were pursued by the Maenads. – Hera appeared in the play in the
guise of a priestess begging alms (Fragment 84); and Bacchic frenzy was
incorporated as Lyssa (Fragment 85). By some the drama is regarded as satyric.
FRAGMENT 84
Scholiast on
Aristophanes,
Frogs
1344, Diogenes,
Letters
34. 2; l. 3 Plato,
Republic
ii. 381D.
For the nymphs of
the springs, the glorious goddesses mountain-born, I beg a dole, even for the
life-giving children of Inachus, the Argive river.
FRAGMENT 85
Photius,
Lexicon
326. 22, Suidas,
Lexicon
s.v
oktôpoun
.
From the feet up
the corwn of the head steals the spasm, the stab of Frenzy, aye, the scorpion’s
sting.
FRAGMENT 86
Pollux,
Vocabulary
10. 117.
Shafts of pine tree
ablaze with fire.
FRAGMENT 87
Galen,
Commentary
on Hippocrates’ Epidemics
vi, vol xvli. 1. 880.
[Women] upon whom
looketh neither the sun’s flashing ray nor the starry eye of Leto’s child.
Possibly from a
description of the Maenads, whose appearance is represented as equally strange
with that of the daughters of Phorcys, upon whom “neither doth the sun with his
beams look down, nor ever the nightly moon” (
Prom.
796). Hecate, a
moon-goddess, is here identified with Artemis.
The second play of the
Oedipoedea
:
Laïos, Oidipous, Hepta epi Thêbas, Sphinx
. Of the
Laïos
no certain
remains are attested.
See Fragments 164, 186, 201, 214, 229.
FRAGMENT 88
Scholiast on
Sophocles,
Oedipus Tyrranus
733.
We were coming on
our journey to the place from which three highways part in branching roads,
where we crossed the junction of the triple roads at Potniae.
The Award of the Arms
, the
first play of the Ajax-trilogy, dealt with the contest between Ajax and
Odysseus for the arms of Achilles after that hero’s death. From Fragment 90 it
appears that each of the chieftains set forth his pretensions and indulged in
detraction of his rival. According to a verse of the
Odyssey
(L 547,
rejected by Aristarchus) the Trojans were the judges; according to the
Aethiopis
of Arctinus the award was made by Trojan captives; according to Lesches’
Little
Iliad
the decision in favour of Odysseus resulted from the fact that a
Trojan, overheard by Achaean scouts under the walls of the city, pronounced
that warrior more redoubtable than Ajax. The constitution of the Chorus is
uncertain. Fragment 89 is cited as addressed to Thetis by some one who called
upon the Nereïds to make the award. Welcker held that Trojan captives formed
the choral group.
Fragment 189 has been referred to the play.
FRAGMENT 89
Scholiast on
Aristophanes,
Acharnians
883.
Queen of Nereus’
fifty daughters.
FRAGMENT 90
Scholiast on
Sophocles,
Ajax
190.
But Sisyphus drew
nigh unto Anticleia – aye, unto thy mother, I say, who bare thee.
Ajax calls Odysseus
a bastard of Sisyphus, the crafty knave.
FRAGMENT 91
Stobaeus,
Anthology
iv. 43. 24 (Hense v. 1104).
For wherein is life
sweet to him who suffers grief?
Spoken by Ajax.
FRAGMENT 92
Stobaeus,
Anthology
3. 11. 4 (Hense iii. 431).
For simple are the
words of truth.
FRAGMENT 93
Photius,
Lexicon
39. 7 (Reitzenstein).
And through his lungs
he breathes fevered sleep.
The Bone-Gatherers
was a
tragedy, if, as seems not improbably, the Chorus consisted of the relatives of
the suitors of Penelope who came to exact vengeance from Odysseus for the
slaughter of their kin and to collect their bones after their bodies had been
burned on the funeral pyre (cp ô 417). On this supposition, Fragments 94 and 95
were spoken by Odysseus standing by the corpses of the suitors and recounting
the insults he had received at their hands.
A counter interpretation, regarding the play as satyric, derives the title from
the hungry beggars in the palace at Ithaca, who collected the bones hurled at
them by the suitors (cp. u 299, s 394).
FRAGMENT 94
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
xv. 5. p. 667C.
Eurymachus here,
another, brought no less unseemly outrage upon me; for he continually made my
head his mark, and at it, with bent-armed casts, his vigorous hand kept aiming
true.
The poet has in
mind that form of the cottabus-game (
kottabos
or
kossabos
) in
which each of the players so bent his arm and turned his wrist as to aim the
wine left in the bottom of his cup at the head of a small bronze figure (
manes
)
placed in a saucer (
plastinx
).
FRAGMENT 95
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
i. 30. p. 17C;
cp. Eustathius on
Odyssey
1828. 28;
tên kakosmon . . . kara
Sopocles, Frag. 565. Ascribed to Aeschylus by Athenaeus, to this play by
Welcker.
There is the man
who once hurled at me (nor did he miss his aim) a missile that caused them all
to laugh, even the ill-smelling chamber-pot; crashed about my head, it was
shivered into shards, breathing upon me an odour unlike that of unguent-jars.
Palamedes, son of Nauplius, was the
human, as Prometheus was the divine, inventor or discoverer of arts and
sciences useful to man; and to both were ascribed the introduction of the
alphabet, number, and the skill to know the periods of the stars. Later epic
and the tragic drama were especially concerned with the manner of his death at
Troy. According to the legend preferred by the tragedians, his violent end was
due to the ancient enmity of Odysseus, whose feigned madness to escape
participation in the Trojan war had been detected by the ingenuity of
Palamedes. One account had him drowned by Odysseus and Diomedes; another had
him lured into a well in search of treasure and then crushed with stones. More
famous was the story that Odysseus, in concert with Agamemnon (to whom
Palamedes, as leader of the peace party, was opposed) concocted a plot to show
that their adversary purported to betray the Greeks: gold was hidden in his
tent, likewise a letter purporting to be written to him by Priam, on the
discovery of which by the people he was stoned to death by Odysseus and
Diomedes.
Nauplius, failing to obtain justice form the murderers of his son, took
vengeance on the Greek commanders by raising deceptive fire-signals on the
Capherean cliffs in Euboea at the time of their homeward voyage.
Fragment 252 has been referred to this play.
FRAGMENT 96
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
i. 19. p 11D;
oiston . . . trita
Eustathius on
Odyssey
1791. 42.;
l. 3 often in later writers.
Both commanders of
regiments and centurions did I appoint for the host, and I determined their
knowledge of different foods, and for them to take breakfast, dinner, and
supper third.
Spoken by Palamedes (Athenaeus).
1. At Athens taxiarchoi commanded the troops raised from each of the tribes.
2. It is uncertain whether the mention of food refers to soldiers’ rations or
has regard to a distinct invention on the part of Palamedes. Possibly eidenai
is corrupt.
FRAGMENT 97
Scholiast A on
Iliad
D 319.
By reason of what
injury hast thou slain my son?
Nauplius reproaches
Odysseus for the death of his son.
The
Pentheus
anticipated Euripides’
Bacchae
, in which play Dionysus, angered at the refusal
of Pentheus, ruler of Thebes, to recognize his godhead, inspired with frenzy
the prince’s mother Agave and her sisters. In their madness the women tore
Pentheus to pieces, and Agave bore his head in triumph in the delusion that it
was that of a lion. See
Eumenides
26, and cp. Fragment 197.
FRAGMENT 98
Galen,
Commentary
on Hippocrates’ Epidemics
vi. Vol. xvii. 1. 880.
Nor do thou cast a
drop of blood upon the ground.
The Women of
Perrhaebia
belongs with the
Ixion
. Compare Fragments 182, 192, 222.
FRAGMENT 99
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
xi. 99. p. 499A, Eustathius on
Odyssey
1775. 22.
Where are my many
promised gifts and spoils of war? Where are my bold and silver cups?
Eïnoeus here, as in
Frag. 100, demands the bridal-gifts promised him by Ixion.
FRAGMENT 100
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
xi. 51. p. 476C,
Eustathius on
Iliad
917. 63.
With silver-mounted
drinking-horns, fitted with golden mouthpieces.
FRAGMENT 101
Eustathius on
Iliad
352. 34, Favorinus,
Lexicon
s.v.
apaiolê
.
He has perished
piteously, defrauded of his own.
FRAGMENT 102
Etymologicum
Geniunum
s.v.
aoidoiestaton
; cp.
Etymologicum Magnum
31. 6.
I am a Cretan of
most ancient lineage.
Odysseus, on the
occasion of his first conversation with Penelope after his return, fabricates
the tale that he is a Cretan, the grandson of Minos (t 180). In x 199 he tells
Eumaeus that he is a Cretan, the son of Castor.
The Medicean Catalogue of Aeschylus’
plays names three entitled
Promêtheus
(
desmôtês, lyomenos, purphoros
);
a fourth,
Promêtheus purkaeus
(Pollux,
Vocabulary
9. 156, 10. 64)
was probably the satyric drama of the trilogy
Phineus, Persai, Glaukos
(
pontios
)
produced in 472 B.C. From the Scholiast on
Prom.
511 it is to be
inferred that the
Lyomenos
followed the
Desmôtês
. The theme and
place of the
Pyrphoros
are still disputed: (1) it is another name for
the
Pyrkaeus
; (2) it preceded the
Desmôtês
in the trilogy and
dealt with the Titan’s theft of fire – in this sense, it is the
Fire-Bringer
or
Fire-Giver
; (3) as the
Fire-Bearer
, it followed the
Lyomenos
,
and described the inauguration of the
Promêtheia
, the Athenian festival
at which torch-races were held in honour of the Titan, now become the god of
the potter-guild. Some, who follow Canter in identifying the
Pyrphoros
with the
Pyrkaeus
, maintain that it was the satyric drama, and dealt
with the Attic worship of the god. A satyr-play in the Prometheus-trilogy is
unknown.
The extract from the
Literary History
, appended to the
Life
of
the poet in the Medicean and many other manuscripts, says that “some of
Aeschylus’ plays, as those entitled
Prometheus
(
oi Promêtheis
),
dealt only with gods.” The singular
Promêtheus
, may at times be a
collective title; but it generally indicates a particular play whose more exact
designation was unknown or neglected. Late writers sometimes city, as from the
Desmôtês
,
passages not appearing in that play: these should, if possible, be located
among the other dramas of the group rather than forced into the text of the
extant tragedy.
FRAGMENT 103
Scholiast on
Aristeides,
In Defence of the Four Statesmen
, vol. iii. 501. 17 (
en
Promêthei desmôtê
).
For silence is gain
to many of mankind.
Cp.
Agam.
548, Frag. 118.
Fragments 104, 105, 106 are from the
parodus of the Chorus of Titans, now released from Tartarus by the clemency of
Zeus. To them Prometheus describes his tortures (Frag. 107) and his benefits to
man (Frag. 108). In his search for the golden apples of the Hesperides,
Heracles, having come to the Caucasus, where Prometheus is confined, receives
from him directions concerning his course through the land of the peoples in
the farthest north (Frag. 109-111) and the perils to be encountered on his
homeward march after slaying Geryon in the farthest west (Frag. 112, cp. 37).
Frag. 113-114 refer to Heracles’ shooting of the eagle that fed on the vitals
of the Titan.
See Fragments 204, 208, 209, 230, 261.
FRAGMENT 104
Arrian,
Voyage
in the Euxine
99. 22, Anonymous in Müller,
Fragmenta Historicum
Graecorum
v. 194.
We have come to
look upon these thy ordeals, Prometheus, and the affliction of thy bonds.
FRAGMENT 105
Strabo,
Geography
i. 2. 27. p. 33.
[Leaving] the
Erythraean Sea’s sacred stream red of floor, and the mere by Oceanus, the mere
of the Aethiopians . . . that giveth nourishment unto all, where the all-seeing
Sun doth ever, in warm outpourings of soft water, refresh his undying body and
his wearied steeds.
Cited by Strabo as
proof that the ancient Greeks designated as Aethiopia all the southern
countries toward the ocean. In l. 3
chalkokeraunon
is credited with the
meaning “flashing like bronze.” But keraunos is not used for
steropê
(
chalkosteropon
Weil,
chalkomaraugon
Hermann; but neither satisfies).
FRAGMENT 106
Arrian,
Voyage
in the Euxine
99. 22, Anonymous in Müller,
Fragmenta Historicorum
Graecorum
v. 184.
Here Phasis, the
mighty common boundary of the land of Europe and Asia
FRAGMENT 107
Cicero,
Tusculan
Disputations
ii. 10. 23-25; ll. 14-15
sublime – sanguinem
in Nonius
Marcellsu,
Compediosa Doctrina
17. 9M.
Ye race of Titans,
offspring of Uranus, blood-kinsmen mine ! Behold me fettered, clamped to these
rough rocks, even as a ship is moored fast by timid sailors, fearful of night
because of the roaring sea. Thus hath Zeus, the son of Cronus, fastened me, and
to the will of Zeus hath Hephaestus lent his hand. With cruel art hath he riven
my limbs by driving in these bolts. Ah, unhappy that I am! By his skill
transfixed, I tenant this stronghold of the Furies. And now, each third woeful
day, with dreadful swoop, the minister of Zeus with his hooked talons rends me
asunder by his cruel repast. Then, crammed and glutted to the full on my fat
liver, the utters a prodigious scream and, soaring aloft, with winged tail
fawns upon my gore. But when my gnawed liver swells, renewed in growth,
greedily doth he return anew to his fell repast. Thus do I feed this guardian
of my awful torture, who mutilates me living with never-ending pain. For
fettered, as ye see, by the bonds of Zeus, I have no power to drive from my
vitals the accursed bird. Thus, robbed of self-defence, I endure woes fraught
with torment: longing for death, I look around for an ending of my misery; but
by the doom of Zeus I am thrust far from death. And this my ancient dolorous
agony, intensified by the dreadful centuries, is fastened upon my body, from
which there fall, melted by the blazing sun, drops that unceasingly pour upon
the rocks of Caucasus.
FRAGMENT 108
Plutarch,
On
Fortune
3. 98C
(cp.
On the Craftiness of Animals
7. 965A), Porphyry,
On Abstinence
3. 18.
Giving to them
stallions – horses and asses –and the race of bulls to serve them as slaves and
to relieve them of their toil.
FRAGMENT 109
Galen,
Commentary
on Hippocrates’ Epidemics
vi, vol. xvii. 1. p. .
Follow this
straight road ; and, first of all, thou shalt come to the north winds, where do
thou beware the roaring hurricane, lest unawares it twist thee up and snatch
thee away in wintry whirlwind.
FRAGMENT 110
Stephen of
Byzantium,
Lexicon
7. 5 (s.v.
Abioi
) on
Iliad
N 6 (cp.
Scholiasts AT). Homer calls the Abioi the “most just of men.”
Thereafter thou
shalt come unto a people of all mortals most just and most hospitable, even
unto the Gabians; where nor plough nor mattock, that cleaves the ground,
parteth the earth, but where the fields, self-sown, bring forth bounteous
sustenance for mortals.
FRAGMENT 111
Strabo,
Geography
vii. 3. 7. p. 301.
But the
well-ordered Scythians that feed on mares’ milk cheese
In Iliad N 5 Homer
mentions
Hippêmolgoi
, who drink mares’ milk.
FRAGMENT 112
Strabo,
Geography
iv. 1. 7. p. 183; ll. 1-3 Dionysius of Halicarnasus,
Early History of Rome
i. 41.
Thou shalt come to
the dauntless host of the Ligurians, where, full well I know, thou shalt not be
eager for battle, impetuous though thou art; for it is fated that even thy
arrows shall fail thee there; and thou shalt not be able to take from the
ground any stone, because the whole place is smooth. But the Father, beholding
thy helplessness, shall pity thee, and, holding above thee a cloud, shall
overshadow the land with a shower of round stones. Hurling these, thou shalt
easily drive back the Ligurian host.
According to Strabo, Prometheus here
gives directions to Heracles concerning the road he is to take on his journey
from the Caucasus to the Hesperides.
Strabo states that the place was called the Stony Plain, and was situated
between Marseilles and the outlets of the Rhone, about a hundred stades distant
from the sea. It is now identified with “la plaine de la Crau” near Arles.
FRAGMENT 113
Plutarch,
On
Love
14. 757E. Ascribed to this play by Schültz.
May Hunter Apollo
speed my arrow straight!
The prayer of
Heracles as he bends his bow against the eagle that rends Prometheus
(Plutarch).
FRAGMENT 114
Plutarch,
Life
of Pompey
1.
Of his sire, mine
enemy, this dearest son
Prometheus addresses
Heracles as the author of his deliverance (Plutarch).