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Authors: Aeschylus
Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (38 page)
To
Prometheus
the Fire-Kindler
has been referred Fragment 156; to the “satyric
Prometheus,” 169, 170, 171, 172.
FRAGMENT 115
Pollux,
Vocabulary
10. 64.
And linen-lint and
long bands of raw flax
FRAGMENT 116
Galen,
Commentary
on Hippocrates’ Epidemics
vi, vol. xvii. 1. 880.
And do thou guard
thee well lest a blast strike thy face; for it is sharp, and deadly-scorching
its hot breaths.
FRAGMENT 117
Plutarch,
How to
Profit by our Enemies
2. 86F,
Eustathius on
Iliad
415. 7.
Like the goat, you’ll
mourn for your beard, you will.
Spoken, says
Plutarch, by Prometheus to the satyr who desired to kiss and embrace fire on
seeing it for the first time. Eustathius took
tragos
to be the nominative
used for the vocative; and the passage thus interpreted has been regarded as a
proof that the satyr of the satyr-play was addressed as “goat.” The translation
assumes the existence of a proverb about a goat that burnt his beard (Shorey in
Classical Philology
iv. (1904) 433).
Apart from Fragment
118, the only extant reference to
Prometheus the Fire-Bearer
is
contained in the scholium on
Prom.
94, where the statement is made that,
in the
Pyrphoros
, Prometheus declared that he had been bound (
dedesthai
)
thirty thousand years (to the same effect, Hyginus,
Astronomica
2. 15,
but without naming the play). On the assumption that the
Pyrphoros
preceded the
Desmôtês
and that the Titan was prophesying the duration of
his bondage, Hartung conjectured
dedêsesthai
, Cobet
dethêsesthai
.
Welcker proposed to refer the utterance of Prometheus to the
Lyomenos
;
in
Desmôtês
l. 774 the hero says to Io that he shall be released by her
descendant in the thirteenth generation.
FRAGMENT 118
Gellius,
Attic
Nights
xiii. 19. 4.
Both silent, when
there is need, and speaking in season
Cp.
Seven
against Thebes
619,
Libation-Bearers
582, Euripides, Frag. 413.
The satyr-play of
the
Orestea
and dealing with the fortunes of Menelaüs in Egypt, whither
he seems to have been carried by the storm described in
Agam.
674. In the fourth book of
the
Odyssey
, Menelaüs relates his encounter with the “deathless Egyptian
Proteus,” whom he compelled to disclose how he might find his way home from the
island of Pharos.
FRAGMENT 119
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
ix. 50. p. 394A.
A wretched piteous
dove, in quest of food, dashed amid the winnowing-fans, its breast broken in
twain
In Aristophanes,
Frogs
1040,
Aeschylus declares that his spirit, taking its impress from Homer, created many
types of excellence, such as Patroclus and Teucer, the lion-hearted. It is
highly probably that
The Women of Salamis
, the third play of the
Ajax-trilogy, had as its theme the fortunes of Teucer, Ajax’s half-brother,
after his return from Troy with Eurysaces, the son of Ajax. Tradition reports
Teucer’s repudiation of his father Telamon, inconsolable at the loss of Ajax,
for whose death he held Teucer responsible; Teucer’s expulsion from his home;
and his founding a new Salamis in Cyprus. The Chorus probably consisted of
women of Salamis, who joined with their mistress Eriboea in lamenting the death
of her son. The drama may have ended with the inauguration of the annual
festival in honour of Ajax, whose virtues and unhappy fate were thus commemorated
by his aged father.
The play is entitled
Salaminiai
in Herodian (see Frag. 120),
Salaminioi
in the Medicean Catalogue.
To
The Women of Salamis
have been referred Fragments 157, 167, 196,
2332, 263.
FRAGMENT 120
Herodian,
On
Peculiar Words
ii. 942. 4 (Lentz),
On Words of Two Qualities
in
Cramer,
Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia
iii. 295. 15. Pseudo-Draco,
On
Metres
35.12 (=Grammaticus Hermanni) derives from Herodian.
Would that I might
get a mantle like unto the heavens!
Mantles and
curtains were often embroidered with stars among many ancient peoples: Eurip.
Ion
1147, Nonnus,
Dion.
Xl. 578; cp. Psalm civ. 2.
Sisyphos dratetês, Sisyphus the
Runaway
, is named only in the Medicean Catalogue;
Sisyphos
petrokylistês, Sisyphus the Stone-Roller
, is mentioned twice in
grammarians; elsewhere the form of citation is simply Sisyphos.
The first-named drama was satyric; its theme, the escape from Hades of the
crafty Corinthian king. According to the fabulous story told by Pherecydes
(Frag. 78 in
Müller,
Fragmenta Historicum Graecorum
, i. p. 91) Sisyphus made known to
Asopus that it was Zeus who had carried off his daughter Aegina; in punishment
for which offence the god sent Death against the babbler; but Sisyphus bound
Death fast, so that men ceased to die, until Ares came to the rescue, released
Death, and gave Sisyphus into his power. Before he died, however, Sisyphus
directed his wife Merope to omit his funeral rites, so that Hades, being
deprived of his customary offerings, was persuaded by the cunning trickster to
let him go back to life in order to complain of his wife’s neglect. But, once
in the upper world, he refused to return, and had to be fetched back by Hermes.
– The Satyrs forming the Chorus were probably represented as initiates if the
play was a parody of the Dionysiac-Orphic mysteries. (
Sisyphus the
Stone-Roller
is one of the six dramas mentioned by the ancients in
connexion with the charge of impiety brought against the poet.)
Sisyphos petrokylistês
is probably identical with the
Sisyphos
drapetês
(at least Frag. 127 savours of a satyr-play); and the conclusion
of the single drama may have been the famous punishment inflicted on the “craftiest
of men” (cp. l 593).
FRAGMENT 121
Pollux,
Vocabulary
10. 78 (cp. 7. 40).
And now it behoves
to bring water for feet that bear a god. Where is the bronze-wrought tub with
lion-base?
Returning to
Corinth from his journey from Hades, Sisyphus orders a bath for his feet, that
bear one more than mortal. Cp. Horace,
Satires
ii. 3. 20.
FRAGMENT 122
Pollux,
Vocabulary
10. 20.
Do thou, the master
of the house, leer well and mark!
FRAGMENT 123
Aelian,
On
Animals
xii. 5.
Nay, is it some
field-mouse so monstrous large?
From a description
of Sisyphus emerging from the earth.
FRAGMENT 124
Etymologicum
Gudianum
227. 40, Cramer,
Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia
ii. 443. 11.
Now [I came] to bid
farewell to Zagreus and to his sire, the hospitaler.
Sisyphus describes
his departure from the lower world. Dionysus, viewed by the Orphics as the
child of Zeus and Persephone, received the name Zagreus, the “great hunter.” At
times he was thus identified with Hades, at times made the son of the “hospitaler
of the dead” (
Suppliant Maidens
157).
FRAGMENT 125
Etymologicum
Gudianum
321. 58, Cramer,
Anecdota Graeca Parisiensia
iv. 35. 22.
And in the sinews
of the dead there is no blood.
FRAGMENT 126
Etymologicum
Gudianum
321. 58, Cramer,
Anecdota Graeca Parisiensia
iv. 35. 23.
But in thee there
is no vigour nor veins that flow with blood.
FRAGMENT 127
Scholiast on
Aristophanes,
Peace
73 (
en Sisuphô petrokulistê
).
’Tis a beetle of
Aetna, toiling violently.
The ancients
explained a “beetle of Aetna” either as a comic exaggeration (“as huge as Aetna”)
or as referring to the actual size of the beetles on the mountain. Epicharmus
mentions (Frag. 76) a report that these beetles were of vast size. Pearson,
Class.
Rev.
28 (1914) 223, sees here a jest due to the verbal similarity of
kanthôn
“pack-ass” and
kantharos
. Cp. Sophocles frag. 162.
The Sphinx
was the satyr-play of the Oedipus-trilogy. See Fragment 155.
FRAGMENT 128
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
xv. 16. p. 674D.
For the stranger a
garland, an ancient crown, the best of bonds, as Prometheus said.
Athenaeus (xv. 13. p. 672E-F) cites
Menodotus of Samos to the effect that, after Zeus had freed Prometheus from his
bonds and the Titan had professed himself willing to make a “voluntary and
painless” expiation for his theft of fire, Zeus ordered him to wear a garland
as a symbolic punishment; and that the Carian custom of wearing garlands of
osier was a memorial of the shackles once worn by Prometheus, the benefactor of
mankind. Athenaeus himself (xv. 16. p. 674D) states that Aeschylus, in the
Prometheus
Unbound
, distinctly says: “In honour of Prometheus we place garlands on our
heads as an atonement for his bonds.”
Ek Promtheôs logou
may signify either (1) that in
tô de xenô . . .
logou
(the (unknown) speaker is simply referring to the “story of
Prometheus”; or (2) that the words
desmôn aristos
were spoken by the
Titan in the
Prometheus Unbound
as an indication of his satisfaction
with the form of retribution imposed on him after his release from the torture
of his bonds. The latter explanation would dispose of the inconsistency thought
by Athenaeus to exist between the utterance of Prometheus quoted above (676D)
and Fragment 128: namely, that a garland, which in later times was worn as a
symbol of the agony of Prometheus, could not have been praised by the sufferer
himself. If the second interpretation is correct, the Prometheus-trilogy is
earlier than 467 B.C., the date of the production of the
Sphinx
.
The “stranger” is probably Oedipus; but the situation is unknown.
FRAGMENT 129
Aristophanes,
Frogs
1287 with Scholiast.
The Sphinx, the
Watch-dog that presideth over evil days
According to the Cyclic epic, the
Cyprian
Lays
, Telephus, king of Mysia, having been wounded by the lance of Achilles
in the first expedition of the Greeks against Troy, had recourse to the Delphic
oracle, which returned the answer
ho trôsas kai iasetai
, “he who
wounded, he shall also heal.” The drama may also have adopted the legend that
Telephus went to Argos, where, by the counsel of Clytaemestra, he seized the
infant Orestes, whom he threatened to kill unless Agamemnon persuaded Achilles
to heal him of his wound. The Scholiast on Aristophanes,
Acharnians
323,
says that, in Aeschylus, Telephus, in order to secure his safety among the
Greeks, laid hold of Orestes. Since it is the
Telephus
of Euripides that
is ridiculed by Aristophanes, it is supposed by many scholars that “Aeschylus”
is an error for “Euripides” in the statement of the Scholiast.
See Fragment 198.
FRAGMENT 130
Aristophanes,
Frogs
1270. The Scholiast on the passage declares that, whereas Timachidas referred
the verse to the Telephus, Asclepiades ascribed it to the
Iphigenia
of
Aeschylus.
Most glorious of
the Achaeans, wide-ruling son of Atreus, learn of me!
FRAGMENT 131
Plato,
Phaedo
108A, Clement of Alexandria,
Miscellanies
iv. 7. p. 583; cp. Dionysius
of Halicarnassus,
Art of Rhetoric
6. 5 (Reiske v. 265).
For a single path
leads to the house of Hades.
Cp. Cicero,
Tusculun
Disputations
i. 43. 104
undique enim ad inferos tantundem viae est
,
referring the sentiment to Anaxagoras :
pantachothen homoia estin hê eis
Haidou katabasis
(Diogenes Laertius ii. 3. 11).
Actaeon, the
hunter, turned into a deer, was torn asunder by his dogs, who did not recognize
their master. The common version of the legend – that he was thus punished by
Artemis for having seen her bathing – seems to have been adopted by Aeschylus.
The Chorus of “Archer-Maidens” were nymphs, attendants of Artemis in the chase.
FRAGMENT 132
Bekker,
Anecdota
Graeca
351. 9; cp. Photius,
Lexicon
41. 10 (Reitzenstein) s.v.
athêros
hêmera
.
Not yet has any
day, without its game, sent Actaeon homeward empty-handed, only rich in toil.
FRAGMENT 133
Antigonus of
Carystus,
Incredible Tales
115.
For in pure
maidens, knowing not the marriage-bed, the glance of the eyes sinks from shame.
FRAGMENT 134
Antigonus of
Carystus,
Incredible Tales
115; ll. 1-2, Plutarch,
On Love
21.
767B; l. 2 Plutarch,
On Progress in Virtue
10. 81D. In Antigonus these
lines follow Fragment 133 after a short interval.
The burning gaze of
a young woman, such as hath tasted man, shall not escape me; for I have a
spirit keen to mark these things.
FRAGMENT 135
Scholiast A on
Iliad
I 593.
The dogs destroyed
their master utterly.