Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (43 page)
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Authors: Aeschylus
FRAGMENT 267
Strabo,
Geography
xii. 8. 2. p. 572, and in collectors of proverbs; Gregory of Cyprus iii. 99,
Macarius,
Rose-bed
viii. 83, and other late writers.
The boundaries of
the Mysians and the Phrygians are distinct.
Assigned to
Aeschylus by Hermann.
FRAGMENT 268
Eustathius on
Odyssey
1484. 49.
The Cilisian
country and the haunts of the Syrians
Phryges Bergk (epistrophai occurred in
this play according to Hesychius,
Lexicon
s.v.).
Frag. 267 may have been followed immediately by Frag. 268 (Nauck).
FRAGMENT 269
Theophrastus,
History
of Plants
ix. 15; cp. Pliny,
Natural History
xxv. 11 (5).
The race of the
Tyrrhenes, a nation that maketh drugs
FRAGMENT 270
Plutarch,
Concerning
the Fortunes or Virtue of Alexander the Great
ii. 2. p. 334D, cp.
Table
Talk
ii. 5. 2. p. 640A; and without naming the poet,
Concerning the
Fortune of the Romans
3. 317E,
Comparison of Cicero and Demosthenes
2, Eustathius on
Iliad
513. 33.
[A warrior,] study,
heavy-armed, terrific to the foe
FRAGMENT 271
Palatine
Anthology
vii. 255.
On other Thessalian
champions. Dark Fate likewise laid low these valiant spearmen defending their
fatherland, rich in sheep. But living is the glory of the dead who of old,
steadfast in battle, clothed themselves in Ossa’s dust.
FRAGMENT 272
Life of
Aeschylus
in the Medicean and many other MSS, ll. 1-2 Plutarch,
Of
Banishment
13. 604F.
Eustratius on Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics
iii. 2. p. 1111a; ll. 3-4
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
xiv. 23. p. 627C.
This tomb hideth
the dust of Aeschylus, an Athenian, Euphorion’s son, who died in wheat-bearing
Gela; his glorious valour the precinct of Marathon may proclaim, and the
long-haired Medes, who knew it well.
Athenaeus and
Pausanias (i. 14. 5) state that the epigram was written by Aeschylus himself.
The
Life
states that it was inscribed by the Geloans on the public tomb
in which he was buried with splendid honours as the cost of their city.
FRAGMENT 273
Ed. Pr. Lobel,
P.
Oxy.
, vol. 18, no. 2159 with Plate I.
Lobel suggests that
this is part of a speech by Glaucus himself describing the miracle of the
aeizôos
poa
(cf. fr. 15, 16). But Glaucus before his transformation was a
fisherman, not a cowherd as the speaker seems to be; l. 6 looks as if the
speaker is protesting that the oddness of his story must not be set down to his
blindness or frivolity; and Siegmann seems likely to be right in suggesting
that an old herdsman is here describing to an incredulous listener an
appearance of the transformed Glaucus. Siegmann and Cantarella think we have
first part of a dialogue, then a continuous speech; Siegmann beings the latter at
l. 5, Cantarella at l. 8. But
isthi
in l. 4 is no certain evidence for
this, and for all we know the whole fragment may belong to a single speech by a
single speaker.
. . . foolish . . .
whirlwind . . . few . . be sure. . . . And I still believe the certain witness
of my own eyes. I was not blear-eyed or peering vainly to no purpose when I saw
this fearful thing, this awful happening. You know, I am a countryman and of
these parts; and I am always about the land here opposite Chalcis, and am used
to accompany the grazing cattle from the byre to Messapion’s1 leafless lofty
crag. And it was from here that my eye lit upon the miracle. When I had come to
the bend of Euboea, about the headland of Cenaean Zeus, right by unhappy Lichas’
tomb . . . four-horse chariot . . .
1. Mt. Messapion is
near Anthedon on the Boeotian shore of the Euripus; this is where the Glaucus
legend is localised by Strabo 9. 405, and Pausanias 9. 22. 5 f.
FRAGMENTS 274-275
(a) 274: ed. pr. Vitelli-Norsa,
Bulletin
de la société royale d’archéologie d’Alexandrie
, no. 28. 1933, 155 with
Plate.
(b) 275 : ed. pr. Lobel,
P. Oxy.
, vol. 18, 1941, no. 2161, 9, with Plate
III.
This was the
satyr-play that accompanied Aeschylus’ trilogy about Perseus. Two of the plays
were called
Phorcides
and
Polydectes
; the name of the third is
not known. If it was the first of the trilogy, it presumably described the
cruel treatment of Danaë by her father Acrisius; if it was the third, it may
have described Perseus’ coming to Argos and Acrisius’ death (see Pfeiffer,
l.c., 20; Howe,
A.J.A.
57, 1953, 269).
Fr. 274 describes
how two people catch sight of the chest containing Danaë and the infant Perseus
as it appears near the shore of the small Aegean island of Seriphos. The usual
legend was that it was fished up by Dictys, the brother of Polydectes, king of
that place; considering the proverbial insignificance of Seriphos there is
nothing odd in the king’s brother being a fisherman. Dictys must be one of the
speakers; who is the other? Possibly it is a companion of a slave of his; but
the limitation on the number of the actors makes against this. Settie thinks
that the Chorus of satyrs is already on the stage, and that one or more of its
members speaks during this scene; but it seems likelier that the Chorus arrives
in answer to the call for help in ll. 17 f., just as the Chorus of Aristophanes’
Peace
is summoned by a very similar appeal (269 f.). Perhaps the likeliest companion for
Dictys during this scene is the father of the satyrs, Silenus.
What are the satyrs
doing on Seriphos? Perhaps Aeschylus accounted for their presence by the legend
of their pursuit of the pirates who carried off Dionysus (cf. Euripides’
Cyclops
).
It may be that they are temporarily enslaved there, perhaps to Polydectes, as
they are to Polyphemus in the
Cyclops
. Dictys’ companion seems to be
there to help him; and it may be that Silenus has come fishing with him as his
assistant.
There is no certain
means of knowing which lines are spoken by Dictys and which by his companion.
Like all others except Setti, I have assumed that there are only two speakers;
but I have preferred to make Dictys the second, not the first, of these. The
chest is said to have been fished up by Dictys, and the first speaker has been
identified with Dictys on the ground of l. 12, where the net is called his. But
it is doubtful if the ethic dative shows that the net is regarded as the
special property of either speaker; they may well have one net between them,
and the words may simply mean, “What have you there in the net?” I suspect that
Dictys was the more observant and less excitable of the two companions; but
there is no knowing which he really was. If the other speaker really is
Silenus, and if the net was in any sense his, he may have based his claim to
Danaê later on this fact; compare the behaviour of Gripus in Plautus’
Rudens
.
Fr. 275 begins with
a solemn offer of protection made to Danaë by an unknown speaker. Danaë’s
response is to appeal to the gods for help. There follow 14 lines of what look
to have been choriambic dimeters, spoken by the Chorus. Next comes a passage of
glyconics and pherecrateans 22 lines long, in which the unknown speaker tries
to captivate the child by describing the delights of hunting that he will enjoy
when he, the speaker, is his stepfather. The Chorus next calls, in anapaestic
dimeters, for the immediate conclusion of the marriage.
Who is the unknown
speaker of 765-72 and of 798-820? If Lobel is right in suggesting that 799-800
may have meant “Damme if I am not glad . . .”, with the speaker referring to
himself, as people sometimes do in utterances of this kind, 798-820 will have
been spoken by Dictys. But as Lobel says (p. 9), one need only reject this
suggestion to make it possible to assign the parts differently. And the suggestion
is a very long way from being certain. It may be that the speaker is expected
to say “If damn me,” but gets a comic effect by saying instead, “If . . ., damn
Dictys
” (Dictys being his rival); or it may be that the apodosis to the “if”
clause came in the lost portion of the text that precedes it, and that a new
sentence begins at the beginning of l. 800. Now whoever speaks these lines is
evidently in close collusion with the satyrs, as their following anapaests
show. Can the person thus closely associated with the satyrs have been Dictys?
Nothing can be more unlikely. A reliable clue to his identity is given by his
holding out to the child the delights not of fishing, but of hunting. There
cannot have been much game on Seriphos; but the description of the woodland
life is just what might be expected from the other obvious possible speaker,
Silenus, father of the satyrs.
It is reasonable to
suppose, with Siegamm, that Dictys’ call for help in hauling in the heavy chest
was answered by the satyrs; that they helped him bring his catch to land; that
Dictys and the satyrs quarrelled over what should be done with Danaë; and that
Dictys went off to get help. Who will have spoken 765-72? These cannot be the
last words of Dictys before departing, for we would not then understand why
instead of answering Danaë implores the gods for help. They must have been
spoken by Silenus; 770-2 looks like a piece of the same grotesque wheedling as
Silenus’ later speech contains.
We know from a
stichometrical mark opposite l. 800 that the first line of this fragment was l.
765 of the play. Kamerbeek insists that an Aeschylean satyr-play cannot have
had many more than 800 lines; and that since other plays by Aeschylus ended
with marching anapaests, therefore this one must have ended with the marching
anapaests that begin at 821. As we have no idea of the average length of an
Aeschylean satyr-play, and as we have no possible ground for insisting that the
marching anapaests must have brought the play to a close, his argument lacks cogency.
And if the conclusions drawn above are not hopelessly wrong, we must infer that
Dictys returned with a party of his friend and forced Silenus to give up his
booty.
The view of Mette
and Kamerbeek that Dictys and Silenus are somehow one and the same person seems
to me very improbable indeed. The rescue of a distressed beauty from the satyrs
was a not uncommon theme in satyric drama; Amymone, Iris and even Hera were all
beset by satyrs (see Guggisberg,
Das Satyrspiel
, Diss. Zürich, 1947,
63). And the red-figure lecythos illustrated in
Ath. Mitt.
1891, plate
IX (cf. Buschor, ibid., 1927, 230, and
Satyrtänze und Frühes Drama
105,
with Abb. 80) illustrates what may happen when an unprotected female arrives at
a lonely island where there are satyrs who in Buschor’s words “are suffering
severely from the lack of nymphs.”
FRAGMENT 274
? — Can you see . . .?
DICTYS. — I can see. . . .
? — What do you want me to look out for? . . .
DICTYS. — In case anywhere . . . in the sea. . . .
— Not a sign; so far as I can see, the
sea’s a mill-pond.
DICTYS. — Look now at the crannies of the cliffs by the shore.
? — All right, I’m looking. . . . Good Lord, what am I to call this! Is it a
monster of the sea that meets my eyes, a grampus or a shark or a whale? Lord
Poseidon and Zeus of the deep, a fine gift to send up from the sea . . .!
DICTYS. — What gift of the sea does your net conceal? It’s covered with seaweed
like. . . . Is it some warm-blooded creature? Or has the Old Man of the Islands
sent us something in a chest? How tremendously heavy it is! the work’s not
going ahead! I’ll shout and raise an alarm. HALLO THERE! Farmers and ditchers,
this way, all of you! Herdsmen and shepherds, anyone in the place! Coastal folk
and all you other toilers of the sea! . . .
1. The context suggests that
gerôn
nêsaios
, “the Old Man of the Islands,” may have been identical with the
halios
gerôn
, “the Old Man of the Sea.” But the text is partly conjectural, and
the assumption is not a safe one.
Pfeiffer (l.c. 18, cf. ibid. 11) thinks the words
gerôn nêsaios
refer to
Dictys’ companion. If so, why is he referred to in the third person, as their
being in the nominative case seems to imply?
FRAGMENT 275
SILENUS.
[765]
. . . I
call upon . . . and the gods to witness what I now proclaim to the whole
company. But whatever you do, don’t rush recklessly away from us; understand at
last and accept me as a most kindly protector and supporter. Why, look, the boy
is greeting me with friendly words, as he would his respected grandmother. Won’t
he always be the same towards me, as time goes on?
DANAË
[773]
Rivers of
Argos and gods of my fathers, and you, Zeus, who bring my ordeal to such an
end! Will you give me to these beasts, so that they may outrage me with their
savage onslaughts, or so that I endure in captivity the worst of tortures?
Anyhow, I shall escape. Shall I then knot myself a noose, applying a desperate
remedy against this torture, so that no one may put me to sea again, neither a
lascivious beast nor a father? No, I am afraid to! Zeus, send me some help in
this plight, I beg you! for you were guilty of the greater fault, but it is I
who have paid the full penalty. I call upon you to set things right! You have
heard all I have to say.
CHORUS.
[786]
Look, the
little one is smiling sweetly as he looks on his shining raddled bald pate. . .
. Qualis vero amator mentularum est hic pusillus!
[SILENUS.]
[788]
. . . if I
don’t rejoice in the sight of you. Damnation take Dictys, who is trying to
cheat me of this prize behind my back! [To Perseus.] Come here, my dearie! [He
makes chuckling noises.] Don’t be frightened! Why are you whimpering? Over here
to my sons, so that you can come to my protecting arms, dear boy — I’m so kind
— , and you can find pleasure in the martens and fawns and the young porcupines,
and can make a third in bed with your mother and with me your father. And daddy
shall give, the little one his fun. And you shall lead a healthy life, so that
one day, when you’ve grown strong, you yourself — for your father’s losing his
grip on his fawn-killing footwork — you yourself shall catch beasts without a
spear, and shall give them to your mother for dinner, after the fashion of her
husband’s family, amongst whom you’ll be earning your keep.
CHORUS
[821]
Come now,
dear fellows, let us go and hurry on the marriage, for the time is ripe for it
and without words speaks for it. Why, I see that already the bride is eager to
enjoy our love to the full. No wonder: she spent a long time wasting away all
lonely in the ship beneath the foam. Well, now that she has before her eyes our
youthful vigour, she rejoices and exults; such is the bridegroom that by the
bright gleam of Aphrodite’s torches. . . .