{404}
Note 1 (p. 219).
"Jove the suppliant's high protector."
Ζεὺς ἀφίκτωρ, literally _suppliant Jove_, the epithet which properly
belongs to the worshipper being transferred to the object of worship.
The reader will note here another instance of the monotheistic element
in Polytheism, so often alluded to in these Notes. Jove, as the supreme
moral governor of the universe, has a general supervision of the whole
social system of gods and men; and specially where there is no inferior
protector, as in the case of fugitives and suppliants--there he presses
with all the weight of his high authority. In such cases, religion
presents a generous and truly humanizing aspect, and the "_primus in
orbe Deos fecit timor_" of the philosophers loses its sting.
Note 2 (p. 219).
"Of the fat fine-sanded Nile!"
WELLAUER, in his usual over-cautious way, has not received PAUW's
emendation λεπτοψαμάθων into his text, though he calls it _certissimum_
in his notes. PAL., whom I follow, acts in these matters with a more
manly decision. Even without the authority of PLINY (XXXV. 13), I
should adopt so natural an emendation, where the text is plainly
corrupt.
Note 3 (p. 219).
"Gently thrilled the brize-stung heifer
With his procreant touch."
See p. 204 above, and Note 48 to Prometheus. There prevails throughout
this play a constant allusion to the divine significance of the name
EPAPHUS, meaning, as it does, _touch_. To the Greeks, as already
remarked (p. 388), this was no mere punning; and the names of the gods
(Note 17, p. 391 above) were one of the strongest instruments of Heathen
devotion. That there is an allusion to this in Matthew vi. 7, I have no
doubt.
Note 4 (p. 219).
"Ye blissful gods supremely swaying."
I see no necessity here, with PAL., for changing ὧν πολις into ὦ
πολις--but it is a matter of small importance to the translator. Jove,
_the third_, is a method of designating the supreme power of which we
have frequent examples in Æschylus--see the Eumenides, p. 164, where
_Jove the Saviour all-perfecting_ is mentioned after _Pallas_ and
_Loxias_, as it were, to crown the invocation with the greatest of all
names. In that passage τρίτου occurs in the original, which I was
wrong to omit.
Note 5 (p. 220).
"Marriage beds which right refuses."
In what countries are first cousins forbidden to marry? WELCKER does
not know. "_Das Eherecht worauf diese Weigerung beruht ist nicht
bekannt._"--WELCKER (_Trilog._ 391).
Note 6 (p. 221).
"With Ionian wailings unstinted."
"Perhaps _Ionian_ is put in this place antithetically to Νειλοθερῆ,
_from the Nile_, in the next line, and the sense is, 'though coming
from Egypt, {405} yet, being of Greek extraction, I speak Greek.'
"--PALEY. This appears to me the simplest and most satisfactory
comment on the passage.
Note 7 (p. 221).
"From the far misty land."
That is EGYPT. So called according to the Etymol. M. quoted by
STAN., from the cloudy appearance which the low-lying Delta district
presents to the stranger approaching it from the sea.
Note 8 (p. 222).
"All godlike power is calm."
It would be unfair not to advertise the English reader that this fine
sentiment is a translation from a conjectural reading, πᾶν ἄπονον
δαιμονιων, of WELL., which, however, is in beautiful harmony with
the context. The text generally in this part of the play is extremely
corrupt. In the present stanza, WELL.'s correction of δε ἀπιδων into
ἐλπίδων deserves to be celebrated as one of the few grand triumphs of
verbal criticism that have a genuine poetical value.
Note 9 (p. 222).
"Ah! well-a-day! ah! well-a-day!"
The reader must imagine here a complete change in the style of the
music--say from the major to the minor key. In the whole Chorus, the
mind of the singer sways fitfully between a hopeful confidence and a
dark despair. The faith in the counsel of Jove, and in the sure
destruction of the wicked, so finely expressed in the preceding stanzas,
supports the sinking soul but weakly in this closing part of the hymn.
These alterations of feeling exhibited under such circumstances will
appear strange to no one who is acquainted with the human, and
especially with the female heart.
Note 10 (p. 223).
"Ye Apian hills."
"Apia, an old name for Peloponnesus, which remains still a mystery, even
after the attempt of Butmann to throw light upon it."--GROTE, Hist, of
Greece, Part I. c. 4. Æschylus' own account of Apis, the supposed
originator of the name Apia, will be found in this play a few lines
below. I have consulted Butmann, and find nothing but a conglomeration
of vague and slippery etymologies.
Note 11 (p. 225).
". . . rounded cars."
καμπύλος, _with a bend_ or _sweep_; alluding to the form of the rim of
the ancient chariot, between the charioteer and the horses. See the
figure in SMITH's _Dict. Antiq._, Articles ἄντυξ and _currus_.
Note 12 (p. 225).
". . . the Agonian gods."
The common meaning that a Greek scholar would naturally give to the
phrase θεοῖ ἀγωνιοι is that given by HESYCH, viz., _gods that
preside over public games_, or, as I have rendered it in the Agamemnon
(p. 57 above), _gods that rule the chance of combat_. For persons who,
like the Herald in that play, had just escaped from a great struggle,
or, like the fugitive Virgins in this piece, were going through one,
there does not appear to be any great impropriety (notwithstanding
PAL.'s. _inepte_) in an appeal to the gods of combat. Opposed to this
interpretation, however, we have the common practice of Homer, with whom
the substantive ἀγών generally means an assembly; and the testimony
of Eustathius, who, in his notes to {406} that poet, Iliad, Ω 1335, 58,
says "παρ Αισχύλῳ ἀγώνιοι θεοὶ ὁι ἀγορᾶιοι;" _i.e. gods that preside over
assemblies._
Note 13 (p. 225).
". . . your sistered hands."
διὰ χερων συνωνύμων. I am inclined to think with PAL. that ἐυωνύμων
may be the true reading; _i.e. in your left hands_. And yet, so fond
is Æschylus of quaint phrases that I do not think myself at liberty to
reject the vulgate, so long as it is susceptible of the very
appropriate meaning given in the text. "_Hands of the same name_" may
very well be tolerated for "_hands of the same race_"--"hands of
sisters."
Note 14 (p. 225).
"Even so; and with benignant eye look down!"
I have here departed from WELL.'s arrangement of this short colloquy
between Danaus and his daughters, and adopted PAL.'s, which appears
to me to satisfy the demands both of sense and metrical symmetry. That
there is something wrong in the received text WELL. admits.
Note 15 (p. 226).
"There where his bird the altar decorates."
I have here incorporated into the text the natural and unembarrassed
meaning of this passage given by PAL. The bird of Jove, of course,
is the eagle. What the Scholiast and STAN. say about the cock
appears to be pure nonsense, which would never have been invented but
for the confused order of the dialogue in the received text.
Note 16 (p. 226).
"Apollo, too, the pure, the exiled once."
"They invoke Apollo to help them, strangers and fugitives, because
that god himself had once been banished from heaven by Jove, and kept
the herds of Admetus.
'Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.'"--STAN.
Note 17 (p. 226).
"Here, Hermes likewise, as Greece knows the god."
This plainly points out a distinction between the Greek and the famous
Egyptian Hermes. So the Scholiast, and STAN. who quotes Cic., Nat.
Deor. III. 22.
Note 18 (p. 226).
"Can bird eat bird and be an holy thing?"
This seems to have been a common-place among the ancients. PLINY, in
the following passage, draws a contrast between man and the inferior
animals, not much to the honor of the former:--"_Cætera animalia in suo
genere probe degunt; congregari videmus et stare contra dissimilia;
leonum feritas inter se non dimicat; serpentum morsus non petit
serpentes; ne maris quidem belluæ ac pisces nisi in diversa genera
sæviunt. At hercule homini plarima ex homine sunt mala._"--NAT. HIST.
VII. proem. This custom of blackening human nature (which is bad enough,
without being made worse) has been common enough also in modern times,
especially among a certain school of theologians, very far, indeed, in
other respects, from claiming kindred with the Roman polyhistor; but the
fact is, one great general law over-rides both man and the brute, viz.
this--LIKE HERDS {407} WITH LIKE--the only difference being that human
beings, with a great outward similarity, are characterized by a more
various inward diversity than the lower animals. There are, in fact, men
of all various kinds represented in the moral world--all those varieties
which different races and species exhibit in the physical. There are
lamb-men, tiger-men, serpent-men, pigeon-men, and hawk-men. That such
discordant natures should sometimes, nay always in a certain sense,
strive, is a necessary consequence of their existing.
Note 19 (p. 226).
"And of no host the acknowledged guest, unfearing
Ye tread this land."
ἀπρόξενος, without a πρόξενος, or a _public host_ or _entertainer_--one
who occupied the same position on the part of the state towards a
stranger that a ξένος or landlord, did to his private guest. In some
respects "the office of proxenus bears great resemblance to that of a
modern consul or minister resident."--Dr. SCHMITZ, in Smith's Dict.,
article _Hospitium_. Compare SOUTHEY, Notes to MADOC. I. 5, _The
Stranger's House_.
Note 20 (p. 227).
"Of old earth-born Palæcthon am the son,
My name Pelasgus."
Here we have an example of those names of the earliest progenitors of an
ancient race that seem to bear fiction on their face; PALAECTHON
meaning merely the _ancient son of the land_, and PELASGUS being the
name-father of the famous ante-Homeric wandering Greeks, whom we call
PELASGI.
Note 21 (p. 227).
"All the land where Algos flows, and Strymon."
The geography here is very confused. I shall content myself with noting
the different points from Müller's map (_Dorians_)--
(1) ALGOS; unknown.
(2) STRYMON; a well-known river in Thrace.
(3) PERRHÆBIANS; in Thessaly, North of the Peneus (Homer, Il. II.
749).
(4) PINDUS; the well-known mountain ridge in the centre of Northern
Greece, separating the great rivers which descend on the one hand
through Epirus into the Ionian sea and the Adriatic, on the other,
into the Ægean.
(5) PÆONIA; in the North of Macedonia (Iliad II. 848).
(6) DODONA; in Epirus.
Note 22 (p. 227).
"Apollo's son, by double right, physician
And prophet both."
This is somewhat of a circumlocution for the single Greek phrase,
ἱατρόμαντις, _physician-prophet_; a name applied to Apollo himself by
the Pythoness, in the prologue to the Eumenides (p. 142 above). The
original conjunction of the two offices of prophet and leech in the
person of Melampus, Apis, Chiron, etc. and their patron Apollo, is a
remarkable fact in the history of civilization. The multiplication and
isolation of professions originally combined and confounded is a
natural enough consequence of the progress of society, of which
examples occur in every sphere of human activity; but there is,
besides, a peculiar fitness in the conjunction of {408} medicine and
theology, arising from the intimate connexion of mind with bodily
ailment, too much neglected by some modern drug-minglers, and also, from
the fact that, in ancient times, nothing was more common than to refer
diseases, especially those of a striking kind, to the immediate
interference of the Divine chastiser--(see Hippocrates περὶ ἱερῆς νόσου
_init_.). Men are never more disposed to acknowledge divine power than
when under the influence of severe affliction; and accordingly we find
that, in some savage or semi-savage tribes, the "medicine-man" is the
only priest. It would be well, indeed, if, in the present state of
advanced science, professional men would more frequently attempt to
restore the original oneness of the healing science--(see Max. Tyr.
πῶς ᾶν τις ἄλυπος ἒιη)--if all medical men would, like the late Dr.
Abercrombie, bear in mind that man has a soul as well as a body, and all
theologians more distinctly know that human bodies enclose a stomach as
well as a conscience, with which latter the operations of the former are
often strangely confounded.
Note 23 (p. 228).
". . . Io, on this Argive ground,
Erst bore the keys to Hera."
_i.e._ was priestess of the Argive goddess. The keys are the sign of
custodiary authority in modern as in ancient times. See various
instances in STAN.
Note 24 (p. 228).
"So runs the general rumour."
After this, WELL. supposes something has fallen out of the text; but
to me a break in the narration of the Chorus, caused by the eagerness
of the royal questioner, seems sufficiently to explain the state of
the text. PAL. agrees.
Note 25 (p. 228).
"Like a leaping bull,
Transformed he came."
Βουθόρῳ ταύρῳ. I have softened this expression a little; so modern
delicacy compels. The original is quite Homeric--"συῶν ἐπιβήτορα
κάπρον."--Odyssey XI. 131. Homer and the author of the Book of Genesis
agree in expressing natural things in a natural way, equally remote
(as healthy nature always is) from fastidiousness and from prudery.
Note 26 (p. 228).
_King_. A question has evidently dropt here; but it is of no
consequence. The answer supplies the first link in the genealogical
chain deducing the Danaides from Io and Epaphus. See above, p. 400,
Note 44.
Note 27 (p. 229).
"Both this and that."
I have translated this difficult passage freely, according to the note
of SCHÜTZ., as being most comprehensive, and excluding neither the
one ground of objection nor the other, both of which seem to have
occupied the mind of the virgins. I am not, however, by any means sure
what the passage really means. E. P. Oxon. has--
"Who would seek to obtain kindred as masters?"