_Xer._ Raise a re-echoing cry.
_Chor._ Ah woe! ah woe!
_Xer._ Go to thy home with wailing loud and long.
_Chor._ O land of Persia, full of lamentations!
_Xer._ Through the town raise your cries.
_Chor._ We raise them, yea, we raise. 1050
_Xer._ Wail, wail, ye men that walked so daintily.
_Chor._ O land of Persia, full of lamentations!
Woe; woe!
_Xer._ Alas for those who in the triremes perished!
_Chor._ With broken cries of woe will I escort thee.
[_Exeunt in procession, wailing, and
rending their robes._
-----
Footnote 3:
“The Faithful,” or “trusty,” seems to have been a special title of
honour given to the veteran councillors of the king (Xenoph. _Anab._
i. 15), just as that of the “Immortals” was chosen for his body-guard
(Herod, vii. 83).
Footnote 4:
Susa was pre-eminently the treasury of the Persian kings (Herod, v.
49; Strabo, xv. p. 731), their favourite residence in spring, as
Ecbatana in Media was in summer and Babylon in winter.
Footnote 5:
Kissia was properly the name of the district in which Susa stood; but
here, and in v. 123, it is treated as if it belonged to a separate
city. Throughout the play there is, indeed, a lavish use of Persian
barbaric names of persons and places, without a very minute regard to
historical accuracy.
Footnote 6:
Here, as in Herodotos and Greek writers generally, the title, “the
King,” or “the great King,” was enough. It could be understood only of
the Persian. The latter name had been borne by the kings of Assyria (2
Kings xviii. 28). A little later it passed into the fuller, more
boastful form of “The King of kings.”
Footnote 7:
The inhabitants of the Delta of the Nile, especially those of the
marshy districts near the Heracleotic mouth, were famed as supplying
the best and bravest soldiers of any part of Egypt.—Comp. Thucyd. i.
110.
Footnote 8:
The epithet was applied probably by Æschylos to the Lydians properly
so called, the barbaric race with whom the Hellenes had little or
nothing in common. They, in dress, diet, mode of life, their distaste
for the contests of the arena, seemed to the Greeks the very type of
effeminacy. The Ionian Greeks, however, were brought under the same
influence, and gradually acquired the same character. The suppression
of the name of the Ionians in the list of the Persian forces may be
noticed as characteristic. The Athenian poet would not bring before an
Athenian audience the shame of their Asiatic kinsmen.
Footnote 9:
Tmôlos, sacred as being the mythical birth-place of Dionysos.
Footnote 10:
“Spear-anvils,” _sc._, meeting the spear of their foes as the anvils
would meet it, turning its point, themselves steadfast and immovable.
Footnote 11:
So Herodotos (vii. 74) in his account of the army of Xerxes describes
the Mysians as using for their weapons those darts or “javelins” made
by hardening the ends in the fire.
Footnote 12:
Helle the daughter of Athamas, from whom the Hellespont took its name.
For the description of the pontoons formed by boats, which were moored
together with cables and finally covered with faggots, comp. Herod,
vii. 36.
Footnote 13:
“Gold-born,” _sc._, descended from Perseus, the child of Danaë.
Footnote 14:
Syrian, either in the vague sense in which it became almost synonymous
with Assyrian, or else showing that Syria, properly so called,
retained the fame for chariots which it had had at a period as early
as the time of the Hebrew Judges (Judg. v. 3). Herodotos (vii. 140)
gives an Oracle of Delphi in which the same epithet appears.
Footnote 15:
The description, though put into the mouth of Persians, is meant to
flatter Hellenic pride. The Persians and their army were for the most
part light-armed troops only, barbarians equipped with javelins or
bows. In the sculptures of Persepolis, as in those of Nineveh and
Khorsabad, this mode of warfare is throughout the most conspicuous.
They, the Hellenes, were the _hoplites_, warriors of the spear and the
shield, the cuirass and the greaves.
Footnote 16:
A touch of Athenian exultation in their life as seamen. To them the
sea was almost a home. They were familiar with it from childhood. To
the Persians it was new and untried. They had a new lesson to learn,
late in the history of the nation, late in the lives of individual
soldiers.
Footnote 17:
The bridge of boats, with the embankment raised upon it, is thought of
as a new headland putting out from the one shore and reaching to the
other.
Footnote 18:
Stress is laid by the Hellenic poet, as in the _Agamemnon_ (v. 895),
and in v. 707 of this play, on the tendency of the East to give to its
kings the names and the signs of homage which were due only to the
Gods. The Hellenes might deify a dead hero, but not a living
sovereign. On different grounds the Jews shrank, as in the stories of
Nebuchadnezzar and Dareios (Dan. iii. 6), from all such acts.
Footnote 19:
In the Greek, as in the translation, there is a change of metre,
intended apparently to represent the transition from the tone of eager
excitement to the ordinary level of discourse.
Footnote 20:
With reference either to the _mythos_ that Asia and Europa were both
daughters of Okeanos, or to the historical fact that the Asiatic
Ionians and the Dorians of Europe were both of the same Hellenic
stock. The contrast between the long flowing robes of the Asiatic
women, and the short, scanty kilt-like dress of those of Sparta must
be borne in mind if we would see the picture in its completeness.
Footnote 21:
Athenian pride is flattered with the thought that they had resisted
while the Ionian Greeks had submitted all too willingly to the yoke of
the Barbarian.
Footnote 22:
Lustrations of this kind, besides their general significance in
cleansing from defilement, had a special force as charms to turn aside
dangers threatened by foreboding dreams. Comp. Aristoph. _Frogs_, v.
1264; Persius, _Sat._ ii. 16.
Footnote 23:
The political bearing of the passage as contrasting this
characteristic of the despotism of Persia with the strict account to
which all Athenian generals were subject, is, of course, unmistakable.
Footnote 24:
The question, which seems to have rankled in the minds of the
Athenians, is recorded as an historical fact, and put into the mouth
of Dareios by Herodotos (v. 101). He had asked it on hearing that
Sardis had been attacked and burnt by them.
Footnote 25:
The words point to the silver mines of Laureion, which had been worked
under Peisistratos, and of which this is the first mention in Greek
literature.
Footnote 26:
Once more the contrast between the Greek _hoplite_ and the light-armed
archers of the invaders is dwelt upon. The next answer of the Chorus
dwells upon the deeper contrast, then prominent in the minds of all
Athenians, between their democratic freedom and the despotism of
Persia. Comp. Herod. v. 78.
Footnote 27:
The system of postal communications by means of couriers which Dareios
had organised had made their speed in running proverbial (Herod. vii.
97).
Footnote 28:
With the characteristic contempt of a Greek for other races, Æschylos
makes the Persians speak of themselves throughout as 'barbarians,'
'barbaric.'
Footnote 29:
Perhaps— “On planks that floated onward,”
or— “On land and sea far spreading.”
Footnote 30:
Possibly Salamis itself, as famed for the doves which were reared
there as sacred to Aphrodite, but possibly also one of the smaller
islands in the Saronic gulf, which the epithet would be enough to
designate for an Athenian audience. The “coasts of the Sileni” in v.
305 are identified by scholiasts with Salamis.
Footnote 31:
Perhaps—“And ten of these selected as reserve.”
Footnote 32:
As regards the number of the Persian ships, 1000 of average, and 207
of special swiftness. Æschylos agrees with Herodotos, who gives the
total of 1207. The latter, however, reckons the Greek ships not at
310, but 378 (vii. 89, viii. 48).
Footnote 33:
The fact that Athens had actually been taken, and its chief buildings
plundered and laid waste, was, of course, not a pleasant one for the
poet to dwell on. It could hardly, however, be entirely passed over,
and this is the one allusion to it. In the truest sense it was still
“unsacked:” it had not lost its most effective defence, its most
precious treasure.
Footnote 34:
As the story is told by Herodotos (vii. 75), this was Sikinnos, the
slave of Themistocles, and the stratagem was the device of that
commander to save the Greeks from the disgrace and ruin of a _sauve
qui peut_ flight in all directions.
Footnote 35:
The Greeks never beheaded their criminals, and the punishment is
mentioned as being specially characteristic of the barbaric Persians.
Footnote 36:
The Æginetans and Megarians, according to the account preserved by
Diodoros (xi. 18), or the Lacedæmonians, according to Herodotos (viii.
65).
Footnote 37:
This may be meant to refer to the achievements of Ameinias of Pallene,
who appears in the traditional life of Œschylos as his youngest
brother.
Footnote 38:
_Sc._, in Herod. viii. 60, the strait between Salamis and the
mainland.
Footnote 39:
Tunny-fishing has always been prominent in the occupations on the
Mediterranean coasts, and the sailors who formed so large a part of
every Athenian audience would be familiar with the process here
described, of striking or harpooning them. Aristophanes (_Wasps_,
1087) coins (or uses) the word “to tunny” (θυννάζω) to express the
act. Comp. Herod. i. 62.
Footnote 40:
_Sc._, Psyttaleia, lying between Salamis and the mainland. Pausanias
(i. 36-82) describes it in his time as having no artistic shrine or
statue, but full everywhere of roughly carved images of Pan, to whom
the island was sacred. It lay just opposite the entrance to the
Peiræos. The connexion of Pan with Salamis and its adjacent islands
seems implied in Sophocles, _Aias_, 695.
Footnote 41:
The manœuvre was, we learn from Herodotos (viii. 95), the work of
Aristeides, the personal friend of Æschylos, and the statesman with
whose policy he had most sympathy.
Footnote 42:
The lines are noted as probably a spurious addition, by a weaker hand,
to the text, as introducing surplusage, as inconsistent with
Herodotos, and as faulty in their metrical structure.
Footnote 43:
So Herodotos (viii. 115) describes them as driven by hunger to eat
even grass and leaves.
Footnote 44:
No trace of this passage over the frozen Strymon appears in Herodotos,
who leaves the reader to imagine that it was crossed, as before, by a
bridge. It is hardly, indeed, consistent with dramatic probability
that the courier should have remained to watch the whole retreat of
the defeated army; and on this and other grounds, the latter part of
the speech has been rejected by some critics as a later addition.
Footnote 45:
The Ionians, not of the Asiatic Ionia, but of Attica.
Footnote 46:
Kychreia, the archaic name of Salamis.
Footnote 47:
The ritual described is Hellenic rather than Persian, and takes its
place (Soph. _Electr._ 836; Eurip. _Iphig. Taur._ 583; Homer, _Il._
xxiii. 219) as showing what offerings were employed to soothe or call
up the spirits of the dead. Comp. Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ xxx.
Footnote 48:
The description obviously gives the state dress of the Persian kings.
They alone wore the tiara erect. Xen. _Kyrop._ viii. 3, 13.
Footnote 49:
Either that he has felt the measured tread of the mourners round his
tomb, as they went wailing round and round, or that he has heard the
rush of armies, and seen the plain tracked by chariot-wheels, and
comes, not knowing all these things, to learn what it means.
Footnote 50:
The words point to the widespread belief that when the souls of the
dead were permitted to return to the earth, it was with strict
limitations as to the time of their leave of absence.
Footnote 51:
Perhaps—“I dread to speak the truth.”
Footnote 52:
According to Herodotos (vii. 225) two brothers of Xerxes fell at
Thermopylæ.
Footnote 53:
As Herodotos (viii. 117) tells the story, the bridge had been broken
by the tempest before Xerxes reached it.
Footnote 54:
Probably Mardonios and Onomacritos the Athenian soothsayer are
referred to, who, according to Herodotos (vii. 6, viii. 99) were the
chief instigators of the expedition.
Footnote 55:
Astyages, the father-in-law of Kyaxares and grandfather of Kyros. In
this case Æschylos must be supposed to accept Xenophon's statement
that Kyaxares succeeded to Astyages. Possibly, however, the Median may
be Kyaxares I., the father of Astyages, and so the succession here
would harmonise with that of Herodotos. The whole succession must be
looked on as embodying the loose, floating notions of the Athenians as
to the history of their great enemy, rather than as the result of
inquiry.
Footnote 56:
Stress is laid on the violence to which the Asiatic Ionians had
succumbed, and their resistance to which distinguished them from the
Lydians or Phrygians, whose submission had been voluntary.
Footnote 57:
Mardos. Under this name we recognise the Pseudo-Smerdis of Herodotos
(iii. 67), who, by restoring the dominion of the Median Magi, the
caste to which he himself belonged, brought shame upon the Persians.
Footnote 58:
Possibly another form of Intaphernes, who appears in Herodotos (iii.
70) as one of the seven conspirators against the Magian
Pseudo-Smerdis.
Footnote 59:
The force of 300,000 men left in Greece under Mardonios (Herod. viii.
113), afterwards defeated at Platæa.
Footnote 60:
Comp. the speech of Mardonios urging his plan on Xerxes (Herod. viii.
100).
Footnote 61:
This was of course a popular topic with the Athenians, whose own
temples had been outraged. But other sanctuaries also, the temples at
Delphi and Abæ, had shared the same fate, and these sins against the
Gods of Hellas were naturally connected in the thoughts of the Greeks
with the subsequent disasters of the Persians. In Egypt these outrages
had an iconoclastic character. In Athens they were a retaliation for
the destruction of the temple at Sardis (Herod. v. 102).
Footnote 62:
The reference to the prominent part taken by the Peloponnesian forces
in the battle of Platæa is probably due to the political sympathies of
the dramatist.
Footnote 63:
The speech of Atossa is rejected by Paley, on internal grounds, as
spurious.
Footnote 64:
Apparently an allusion to the oracle given to Crœsos, that he, if he
crossed the Halys, should destroy a great kingdom.
Footnote 65:
The name originally given to the Echinades, a group of islands at the
mouth of the Acheloös, was applied generically to all islands lying
near the mouth of all great rivers, and here, probably, includes
Imbros, Thasos, and Samothrakè.
Footnote 66:
The geography is somewhat obscure, but the words seem to refer to the
portion of the islands that are named as opposite (in a southerly
direction) to the promontory of the Troad.
Footnote 67:
Salamis in Kypros had been colonised by Teukros, the son of Aias, and
had received its name in remembrance of the island in the Saronic
Gulf.
Footnote 68:
The Mariandynoi, a Paphlagonian tribe, conspicuous for their orgiastic
worship of Adonis, had become proverbial for the wildness of their
plaintive dirges.
Footnote 69:
The name seems to have been an official title for some
Inspector-General of the Army. Comp. Aristoph. _Acharn._ v. 92.
Footnote 70:
As in the account which Herodotos gives (vii. 60) of the way in which
the army of Xerxes was numbered, _sc._, by enclosing 10,000 men in a
given space, and then filling it again and again till the whole army
had passed through.
Footnote 71: