Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (46 page)

SEMELÊ Ê
HYDROPHORO
I

FRAGMENT 279

Ed. pr. Lobel,
P.
Oxy.
, vol 18, no. 2164, with Plate I.

Ed. pr. Assigned
this fragment to the
Xantriae
, because ll. 16-17 coincide with a
quotation assigned by one of its quoters to that play. This quotation is fr.
84, the following authors preserve: (1) Plato,
Rep.
381D; (2) Diogenes,
Epist.
34, 2; (3) Scholiaston Aristophanes,
Frogs
1344. These authorities in
Lobel’s words, “diverge strangely from each other and from the papyrus.”

Only the scholion
on Aristophanes names the
Xantriae
. Latte points out that we have good
reason to think this play contained an account of the tearing to pieces on Mt.
Cithaeron of Semele’s nephew, Pentheus; the testimony of a scholion on
Eum.
26, is borne out by fr. 85, whose words were spoken by Lyssa, the goddess of
madness (see Dodds on Eur.,
Bacchae
977). It is hard to see how a play
that contained this can also have contained a scene in which Hera appeared
disguised as a begging priestess. But such a scene would fit well into another
play which was part of the same trilogy, the
Semele
. Semele’s ruin,
according to the usual story, was brought about by Hera, who disguised as an
old woman induced her to persuade Zeus to appear before her armed with his
thunder. The versions of this legend known to us make Hera disguise herself as
an old nurse. But these are all of much later date. In Aeschylus she may well
have disguised herself as a priestess; and such a priestess may well have
claimed to have arrived in Thebes from Argos, the centre of Hera’s worship. (Nilsson’s
assumption that the invocation of the Argive nymphs proves that the scene of
the play was Argos seems to me unsafe.) Latte points out that Asclepiades was a
careless writer, and gives several examples of a quotation being mistakenly
assigned to a play belonging to the same trilogy as that to which it really
belongs. He rightly concludes that the balance of probability is in favour of
the Semele, and not the
Xantriae
, being the play to which this fragment
belongs.

Ll. 1-11 seem to
consist of choriambic dimeters, 12-15 of marching anapaests, 16-30 or lyric
hexameters. The general sense of 1-15 cannot be guessed at with any certainty;
but it seems reasonable to guess that the Chorus is describing the favours
conferred by Zeus on Semele and praying that her good fortune may continue.

At 16-17, the
reading of the papyrus seems to confirm the opinion of the commentator on
Aristophanes that
oressigonoi
was not in the text, as Asclepiades
supposed it was. Diogenes’
krênais
may be an explanatory gloss; and Latte’s
suggestion (printed below) is likely to be right. The nymphs of the Argive
rivers were four of the daughters of Danaus, Hippe, Automate, Amymone and
Physadeia. Danaus was descended from Inachus; and this, together with the fact
that Inachus was the principal river of Argos, makes it natural for the nymphs
to be called “daughters of Inachus.” The nymphs were patronesses of marriage
and childbirth (se Latte, p. 54). This is why brides and women who had just
given birth performed a ceremonial ablution in the water of the particular
spring consecrated by their city to this purpose. At Athens this was
Enneakrounos (Thuc., 2, 15), at Thebes Ismenus (Eur.
Phoen.
347), at
Argos Atuomate (see Callim., fr. 65 Pfeiffer).

[?]
. . . anointed with unguents . . . not more than Hera . . . more arrogant . . .
mighty . . . from afar. May there abide . . . life . . . the gods . . . among
friendly . . . But may all the envious be absent, and all unseemly rumour. We
pray that Semele’s good fortune may ever steer a straight course. For . . .
this other . . . Semele . . . Cadmus . . . the all-powerful Zeus . . .
marriage.

[HERA]
Nymphs that speak the truth, honoured goddesses are they for whom I collect
offerings, the life-giving children of Inachus the river of Argos. They are
present at all the actions of men, at feasts and banquets and the sweet songs
of marriage, and they initiate maidens lately wedded and new to love. . . .
kindly . . . eyes . . . of the eye . . . For unsullied modesty . . . is by far
the best or adorners for a bride. And fruitful in children are the families of
those to whom the nymphs shall come in kindness, with sweet disposition, . . .
coming . . . both . . . harsh and hateful . . . when they come near. Many . . .
husband . . . girdles . . .

UNKNOWN PLAY
(I)

FRAGMENT 280

Ed. pr. Lobel,
P.
Oxy.
, vol. 20, no. 2251, with Plate III.

A Chorus composed
of female persons is lamenting for a hospitable person (or for such a person’s
house), one who (or which) has been visited by some grievous and, in their opinion
undeserved, fate. Miss Cunningham thinks the fragment belongs to the
Aigyptioi
,
the second play of the trilogy about the Danaids; she recalls the conjecture
(see Hermann,
Opusc.
, ii, 323
f.) that the Argive king Pelasgus was killed in battle
while protecting the Danaids against the sons of Aegyptus. But for all we know
many hospitable persons may have suffered destruction in lost plays of
Aeschylus; and there are positive objections to Miss Cunningham’s view. One is
that the name of the play
Aigyptioi
indicates that the sons of Aegyptus
formed the Chorus; this compels Miss Cunningham to suggest that the Danaids may
have formed an additional Chorus. There is an extra Chorus of handmaidens in
the
Supplices
, and it is not impossible that there may have been an
extra Chorus in the
Aigyptioi
. But the necessity of supposing that here
is does not recommend the theory which involves it. Further, the letters
katask
[
in l. 3 are most easily explained by Snell’s supplement, printed below; Miss
Cunningham in the interests of her theory is driven to conjecture that
kataskaphenta
was written by mistake for
katasphagenta
. The verdict must be that the
evidence is wholly insufficient to assign this piece to the
Aigyptioi
or
to any other play.

L. 8: “the metaphor
in anaulon bregma is not appreciably odder than in
kai psall’ etheiran
(
Persae
1062)”: Lobel. One may speak of “plucking” the string of a musical instrument;
and to speak of “plucking” one’s hair is not unnatural extension of this usage.
But is it easy to speak of the front of one’s head as being “without the pipe”?
Since the pipe was associated with joyful occasions, “without the pipe” might
be used as equivalent to “joyless”. (But Stinton suggests
anaudon
, which
may be right).

For look now, Zeus,
lord of the law of host and guest, upon the destruction of the hospitable
house! What kindness do the gods show to righteous men? Therefore I tear my
hair with unsparing hand and beat my crown with joyless sound, lamenting with
wailing your fortune. . . .

UNKNOWN PLAY
(II a)

FRAGMENT 281

Ed. pr. Lobel,
P.
Oxy.
, vol. 20, no. 2256, fr. 9, with Plate V.

This piece is
written in the same hand as No. 282.
In itself, this need mean no more than that both are by
the same author (see Lobel in
P. Oxy.
, vol. 20, p. 29); but the content
indicates that they may well come form the same scene of the same play. If so,
it seems rather likelier than not that this piece came before the other; but
one cannot be sure of this. The text presents several difficult problems of
interpretation.

. . . girdling (?)
. . . not to sow evil . . . (Then Peace is . . for mortals. And I praise this
goddess; for she honours a city that reposes in a life of quiet, and augments
the admired beauty of its houses, so that they surpass in prosperity the
neighbours who are their rivals), nor yet to engender it. And they earnestly
desire land for ploughing, abandoning the martial trumpet, nor do . . garrisons
. . .

1. Translation very
dubious.

UNKNOWN PLAY
(II b)

FRAGMENT 282

Ed. pr. Lobel,
P.
Oxy.
, vol. 20, no 2256, fr. 91, with Plate VI.

This fragment is
shown to be Aeschylean by the coincidence of l. 29 with fr. 377 Nauck; the
occurrence in l.9 of the word
hotiê
(found at Eur.,
Cycl.
643,
but nowhere in tragedy) points to its coming from a satyr-play. Clearly one of
the speakers is the goddess Dike, Justice, who is explaining how she came by
her prerogatives and what they are. It is likely, though not certain, that she
is conversing with the Chorus. Dike is the
paredros
of Zeus as early as
Hesiod (
Op.
259); but in Hesiod it is not she herself, but thirty
thousand
daimones
who are appointed by Zeus to keep a watch on men. On
the notion of the “book of Zeus,” in which men’s crimes are recorded, see
Solmsen,
Class. Quart
., 58, 1944, 27. It looks as if Euripides had this play
in mind when, in a famous passage from one of his two plays about Melanippe
(fr. 506 Nauck) he ridiculed this belief.

Ll. 30 ff. raise
awkward problems. Is the persecutor of travellers, who is cited as a classic
instance of injustice punished, Ares himself, or another? The only person
connected with Ares who is known to have behaved in this fashion is Cycnus, not
the king of Tenedos, but the Cycnus of the Hesiodic
Shield of Heracles
who persecuted visitors to Delphi and was slain by Heracles. Aeschylus
certainly wrote a play in which a Cycnus was a character (see Ar.,
Frogs
963), though this may have been the other Cycnus. Ares is surely the subject of
ll. 31 f.:
and perhaps Ares’ support of Cycnus is the subject lower down.

Another explanation
is offered by Robertson, who thinks the speaker is leading up to an account of
the trial of Ares before the court of Areopagus for the murder of Poseidon’s
son Halirrhothius; and he explains the behaviour attributed to Ares by
supposing that he may have been represented as having been a difficult child at
this time (cf. the Hermes of the Homeric Hymn and the
Ichneutae
of
Sophocles). Yet in the usual version of this story, Ares was not an aggressor,
but was defending the virtue of his daughter Alcippe (see Frazer,
Apollodorus
,
ii. p. 81).

We
cannot be sure that this narration relates to the main theme of the play, and
there seems to be nothing to indicate the name of the play this fragment comes
from. Eduard Fraenkel has inferred from the apparent importance of Dike in the
plot that it is the
Aetnaeae
(or
Aetnae
), which Aeschylus wrote
to celebrate Hieron’s foundation of the city of Aetna,
oiônizomenos bion
agathon tois sunoikizousi tên polin
(
Vita Aeschyli
, p. 371, Murry,
i. 8; see p. 381). A play that celebrates Dike might be thought appropriate to
the foundation of the city which Pindar hopes will conduce
sumphônon es
hasuchian
(
Pyth.
1. 71); and he presence among these fragments of a
hypothesis of the Aetna-play shows that it would not be surprising if they
contained also a portion of its text. But these considerations fall a very long
way short of being concrete evidence.

In.
J.H.S.
,
l.c., I have tried to show how this fragment stands in relation to Aeschylus’
theology.

(Fragments of four
lines, the two first beginning makarôn and autê (hautê?) theôn.)

DIKE
[5]
And he has
his seat upon his father’s very throne, having overcome Kronos by means of
Justice; for Zeus can now boast, since his father began the quarrel, that he
paid him back with Justice on his side. That is why Zeus ahs done me great
honour, because after being attacked he paid him back, not unjustly. I sit in
glory by the throne of Zeus, and he of his own will sends me to those he
favours; I mean Zeus, who has sent me to this land with kind intent. And you
shall see for yourselves whether my words are empty.

CHORUS
[14]
How then
shall we rightly address you?

DIKE
[15]
By the name
of Dike, her who is greatly revered in heaven.

CHORUS
[16]
And of what
privilege are you the mistress?

DIKE
[17]
As for the
just, I reward their life of justice.

[CHORUS?]
[18]
. . . this
ordinance among mortals.

DIKE
[19]
But in the
reckless I implant a chastened mind.

CHORUS
[20]
By
Persuasion’s spells, or in virtue of your might?

DIKE
[21]
I write
their offences on the tablet of Zeus.

CHORUS
[22]
And at what
season do you unroll the list of crimes?

DIKE
[23]
When the
proper time brings the fulfilment of what is theirs by right.

CHORUS
[24]
Eagerly, I
think, should the host welcome you.

DIKE
[25]
Much would
they gain, should they receive me kindly.
(Two lines unintelligible).
. . . no city of people or private man, since such is the god-sent fortune she
enjoys. And I will tell you a proof which gives you this clearly. Hera has
reared a violent son whom she has borne to Zeus, a god irascible, hard to
govern, an one whose mind knew no respect for others. He shot wayfarers with
deadly arrows, and ruthless hacked . . . with hooked spears . . . he rejoiced
and laughed . . . evil . . . scent of blood. . . .
(Two lines unintelligible) . . . is therefore justly called . . . just.

1. Perhaps “the people.”
2. Clearly this passage contained one of those etymologisings of proper names
which are not rare in Aeschylus. Lobel suggests that he name “Ares” may have
been derived from
arê
, “bane,” “ruin.”