Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (39 page)
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Authors: Aeschylus
The story of Philoctetes, king of
Malis, touched upon in
Iliad
B 721, was narrated at length in two Cyclic
epics – the
Little Iliad
by Lesches and the
Destruction of Ilium
by Arctinus. On their expedition to Troy, the Greeks abandoned Philoctetes on
the island of Lemnos because, having been bitten in the foot by a poisonous
snake, his screams of pain and the odour from his wound rendered his presence
intolerable. In the tenth year of the war, when the Greeks were despairing of
victory, they learned from the seer Helenus that Troy could not be taken
without the aid of Philoctetes and his bow and arrows, weapons given him by the
dying Heracles, who had himself received them from Apollo. Diomedes was
accordingly sent to Lemnos, and fetched thence the hero and his arms.
In his fifty-second
Discourse
(4-10), Dion of Prusa, surnamed the “golden-mouthed,”
gives a brief comparison of the
Philoctetes
of Aeschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides. In the Aeschylean play, instead of the noble Diomedes, the “shrewd
and crafty” Odysseus was the envoy. Unchanged in aspect and voice by Athena, he
appeared before Philoctetes, but was unrecognized because the powers of the
sufferer had been impaired by his disease, his hardships, and his solitary
life. The Chorus consisted of men of Lemnos, who had left Philoctetes unvisited
until then – a more tragic and a simpler device (says Dion) than the excuse
proffered by them according to Euripides – so that he hero could with good
reason set forth to them, as something new, the story of his desertion by the
Greeks and the cause of his distress. Odysseus sought to cheer Philoctetes and
to gain his confidence by a false tale – disaster had befallen the Greeks;
Agamemnon was dead; Odysseus had been put to death by reason of some shameful
crime; and the Greeks at Troy were in desperate case. Dion omits to tell how
Odyseus secured the arms – whether this was done first by treason (as was done
by Neoptolemus in Sophocles) and then by persuading the hero that his bow as
necessary to the success of the Greeks. But Odysseus’ deception and his pleas
were seemly (Dion says), suited to a hero, and convincing – it needed no great
skill or plot to content against a sick man and that a simple bowman.
The drama of Aeschylus was distinguished, according to Dion, by simplicity,
absence of complicated plot, and dignity; by its antique air and its rugged
boldness of sentiment and diction, so that it was well suited to express the
nature of tragedy and to body forth the ancient manners of the heroic age.
Aspasius on Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics
1150 b6 states that in
Aeschylus, as in Sophocles, Philoctetes endeavoured to conceal his agony but
was finally forced to give it utterance.
See Fragments 163, 180, 185, 190, 191, 198.
FRAGMENT 136
Aristophanes,
Frogs
1383 with Scholiast
O Spercheus’ stream
and cattle-grazing haunts!
FRAGMENT 137
Cited as a proverb
by Suidas, Lexicon s.v.
enth’ oute
, Plutarch,
On the Tranquility of
the Mind
18. 476B, Aristaenetus,
Letters
i. 27, Pseudo-Diogenianus,
Proverbs
iv. 88, etc.
Where the wind
suffers neither to remain nor to sail forth.
FRAGMENT 138
Scholiast on
Odyssey
X 12, Eustathius on
Odyssey
1748.
Having hung the bow
on a black pine-tree
FRAGMENT 139
Plutarch, On the
Impossiblity of living happily by following Epicurus 3. 1087F.
For the snake let
not go its hold, but fixed in me its dreadful . . ., the ruin of my foot.
Hermann would read
stomôton
ekphusin
, which is supposed to mean “hard outgrowth,” “outgrowth with a
mouth-shaped cavity,” “sharp projection,” But we expect something like
odontôn
(Nauck)
ekptusin
(Herwerden), “venom spat from its teeth.”
FRAGMENT 140
Aristotle,
Poetics
22. 1458 b23.
The ulcer ever
feeds on my foot’s flesh.
FRAGMENT 141
Stobaeus,
Anthology
iv. 52. 32 (Hense v. 1082). Attributed to this play by Maximus of Tyre,
Dissertations
7. 5.
O death, the
healer, reject me not, but come! For thou alone art the mediciner of ills
incurable, and no pain layeth hold on the dead.
On death as the
deliverer cp. Sophocles,
Philoctetes
797,
Trachinians
1209,
Oedipus
Coloneus
1220,
Ajax
854, Frag. 698, Euripides,
Hippolytus
1373,
Heracleidae
595, Diphilus, Frag. 88. With l. 3 cp. Sophocles,
Oedipus
Coloneus
955, Euripides,
Alcestis
937,
Women of Troy
642.
The Phineus
preceded
The
Persians
in the tetralogy produced in 472 B.C.
Apollodorus,
Library
i. 9. 21, relates the story of Phineus as follows: “Thence
the Argonauts put out to sea and landed at Salmydessus in Thrace, where dwelt
the seer Phineus, who had lost the sight of his eyes. . . . The gods also sent
Harpies against him. These were winged female creatures, and when a table was
spread for Phineus, they flew down from the sky and snatched away most of the
food, but the little they left smelled so foul that no one could come near it.
And when the Argonauts wished to learn about their voyage, he said that he
would advise them about it if they would free him from the Harpies. So the
Argonauts placed beside him a table of eatables, and the Harpies with a cry
flew down and snatched the food. Seeing this, Zetes and Calaïs, the sons of
Boreas, who were winged, drew their swords and chased them through the air. . .
. Being freed from the Harpies, Phineus revealed their course to the Argonauts,
and advised them concerning the Clashing Rocks on the sea.”
FRAGMENT 142
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
x. 18. p. 421F.
And many a
deceitful meal with greedy jaws did they snatch away amid the first delight of
appetite.
FRAGMENT 143
Etymologicum Genuinum
s.v.
anêstis
.
Hungry wailing
standeth not aloof.
FRAGMENT 144
Pollux,
Vocabulary
7. 91; cp. 2. 196.
They wear socks in
their well-fitting shoes.
Perhaps from a
description of the sons of Boreas.
The Daughters of
Phorcys
was a part of the trilogy containing
The Net-Draggers
(
Diktyooulkoi
)
and
Polydectes
. In the first of these plays, fisher folk of Seriphus
rescue Danaë and her infant son Perseus, who had been placed in a chest and
cast into the sea by her father Acrisius. In the second, Polydectes, king of
Seriphus, in order the better to effect his purpose of marrying Danaë, sent her
son, now grown to manhood, to fetch the head of Medusa, the one of the three
Gorgons who was mortal. In pursuit of this quest, Perseus encountered the three
daughters of Phorcys, old women from their birth, who possessed between them a
single eye and tooth, which they passed to each other in turn, and also the cap
of Hades. These women, the Graeae, were sisters and guardians of the Gorgons,
who dwelt in a cave by the ocean. On his return, Perseus changed Polydectes
into stone by displaying Medusa’s head, which he had cut off with an adamantine
sickle that he had received from Hephaestus. In
Poetics
18. 1456 a2,
Aristotle regards as a distinct species of tragedy such plays as
The
Phorcides
,
Prometheus
, and those whose scene was laid in the lower
world.
The Phorcides
may be a satyr-drama.
FRAGMENT 145
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
ix. 65. p. 402B, Eustathius on
Odyssey
1872. 5.
Into the cave he
rushed like a wild boar.
Perseus enters the
cave of the Gorgons.
aschedôros
is called by the ancient grammarians a
Sicilian word for
syagros
.
The scene of
The Phrygians
or
The
Ransom of Hector
was the tent of Achilles, as in the twenty-fourth book of
the
Iliad
, which the poet here dramatized. Hermes, the divine guide of
Priam and his escort of Phrygians, preceded the entrance of the embassy to
regain the body of Hector. Except at the beginning, and then only in few words,
Achilles refused to speak to the god, but sat in silence, his head veiled in
token of his grief for Patroclus. The gold brought as ransom was actually
represented as weighed out in sight of the audience (Scholiast on
Iliad
X 351). To the peculiar dance-figures designed by the poet for the Chorus,
allusion is probably made in a passage of a lost play of Aristophanes (Frag.
678): “I remember seeing the Phrygians, when they came in order to join with
Priam in ransoming his dead son, how they often danced in many postures, now
this way, now that.”
See Fragments 155, 158, 180, 255, 267, 268.
FRAGMENT 146
Pollux,
Vocabulary
7. 131.
[Not a king,] but a
trafficker by sea, one who takes petty wares from out a land
FRAGMENT 147
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
ii. 36. p. 51C,
Eustathius on Iliad 211. 16.
But that man was
gentler than mulberries are soft.
The verse refers to
Hector and was probably spoken by Priam.
FRAGMENT 148
Stobaeus,
Anthology
iv. 57. 6 (Hense v. 1138).
And it unto the
dead thou art fain to do good, or if thou wouldst work them ill – ’tis all one,
since they feel not or joy or grief. Nevertheless our righteous resentment is
mightier than thye, and Justice executeth the dead man’s wrath.
Elsewhere Aeschylus
declares that the dead possess consciousness and are wroth with those who have
done them injury (
Libation-Bearers
324, 41). Here, where Hermes has in
mind the outrage done by Achilles to Hector’s corpse, his utterance is intended
to console Priam and rebuke Achilles with the thought that, though the dead are
insensible and cannot avenge themselves, their cause is in the divine keeping.
It is the gods alone who have power to do that which is commonly ascribed to
the spirits of the dead.
FRAGMENT 149
Scholiast on
Euripides,
Andromache
1
Hail, offspring of
Andraemon of Lyrnessus, whence Hector brought his dear wife.
The statement of
the Scholiast that Andromache is addressed is the sole warrant for the
interpretation of the action that supposes her to have accompanied Priam to the
tent of Achilles. Since her father was Eëtion from Hypoplacian Thebe according
to Homer, and since Chrysa and Lyrnessus were both in the plain of Thebe, the
Scholiast seems to have confused Andromache with Briseïs, though he properly
remarks on the strangeness of the name given to her father.
The ancients, say
Phrynichus (Bekker,
Anecdota Graeca
73. 10), used the word
psychagôgos
to denote one who by spells brought to life the spirits of the dead.
The
Spirit-Raisers
was connected with the
Penelope
and
The
Bone-Gatherers
, and included Teiresias’ prophecy to Odysseus concerning
that hero’s death (cp. L 100-37). In L 134 the seer obscurely declares that “from
out the sea thine own death shall come” (cp. Fragment 152).
FRAGMENT 150
Aristophanes,
Frogs
1266 with Scholiast.
We, who dwell by
the lake, honour Hermes as our ancestor.
Hermes was born on
Mt. Cyllene, not far from Lake Stymphalis.
FRAGMENT 151
Pollux,
Vocabulary
10. 10.
Arsenals and
wreckage of ships.
FRAGMENT 152
Scholiast Vulg. on
Odyssey
L 134.
For a heron, in its
flight on high, shall smite thee with its dung, its belly’s emptyings; a spine
from out this beast of the sea shall rot thy head, aged and scant of hair.
Spoken by
Teiresias. In Sophocles’
Odusseus akanthoplêx
, which took the story from
the Cyclic epic
Telegonia
, the hero was killed by his son Telegonus, who
smote him with a spear tipped with he spoke or fin of a roach.
According to the
legend probably followed by Aeschylus, Boreas, being enamoured of Oreithyia,
daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, sought her in marriage from her father;
repulsed by him, he laid hold of the girl by violence and carried her off as
she was sporting by the Ilissus. She bore him two daughters, Chione and
Cleopatra, the latter of whom became the wife of Phineus; and two sons, Zetes
and Calaïs, who rescued Phineus from the Harpies. In the two extant fragments,
which are cited as examples of pseudo-tragic diction, Boreas, enraged at the
rejection of his suit, threatens to display his power in its full force.
FRAGMENT 153
Pseudo-Longinus,
On
the Sublime
3. 1 (after a lacuna of two leaves); cp. John of Sicily,
On
Hermogenes’
“
Kinds of Style
” in
Rhetores Graeci
vi. 225.
. . . and check the
oven’s soaring blaze; for let me not behold some soot, the tenant of the
hearth, weaving in a single wreath of torrent flame, I’ll fire the roof and
cinder it. But now – not yet have I blared my noble strain.
FRAGMENT 154
John of Sicily, as
under Frag. 163.
With my two jaws I
blow a blast and confound the main.