Let the drink-offerings come,
In order meet behind,
While torches fling their light;
*Zeus the All-seeing thus hath joined in league
*With Destiny for Pallas' citizens;
Shout, shout ye to our songs.
[_The procession winds its way_, ATHENA _at its head, then
the Eumenides, then the women, round the Areopagos
towards the ravine in which the dread Goddesses were
to find their sanctuary._
-----
Footnote 466:
The succession is, in part, accordant with that in the _Theogonia_ of
Hesiod (vv. 116-136), but the special characteristic of the Æschylean
form of the legend is that each change is a step in a due, rightful
succession, as by free gift, not accomplished (as in other narratives
of the same transition) by violence and wrong.
Footnote 467:
Phœbe, in the _Theogonia_, marries Coios, and becomes the mother of
Leto, or Latona, and so the grandmother of Apollo. The “birthday gift”
was commonly presented on the eighth day after birth, when the child
was named. The oracle is spoken of as such a gift to Apollo, as
bearing the name of Phœbos.
Footnote 468:
The sacred circular pool of Delos is the crater of an extinct volcano.
There Apollo was born, and thence he passed through Attica to
Parnassos, to take possession of the oracle, according to one form of
the myth, depriving Themis of it and slaying the dragon Python that
kept guard over it.
Footnote 469:
The people of Attica are thus named either as being mythically
descended from Erichthonios the son of Hephæstos, or as artificers,
who own him as their father. The words refer to the supposed origin of
the Sacred Road from Athens to Delphi, passing through Bœotia and
Phokis. When the Athenians sent envoys to consult the oracle they were
preceded by men bearing axes, in remembrance of the original
pioneering work which had been done for Apollo. The first work of
active civilisation was thus connected with the worship of the giver
of Light and Wisdom.
Footnote 470:
Delphos, the hero _Eponymos_ (name-giving) of Delphi, was honoured as
the son of Poseidon. Hence the Priestess invokes the latter as one of
the guardian deities of the shrine.
Footnote 471:
Pronaia, as having her shrine or statue in front of the temple of
Apollo.
Footnote 472:
The Korykian rock in Parnassos, as in Soph., _Antig._, v. 1128; known
also as the “Nymphs' cavern.”
Footnote 473:
Bromios, a name of Dionysos, embodying the special attributes of loud,
half-frenzied revelry.
Footnote 474:
In the legend which Euripides follows, Kithæron, not Parnassos, is the
scene of the death of Pentheus. He, it was said, opposed the wild or
frantic worship of the Pelasgic Bacchos, concealed himself that he
might behold the mysteries of the Mœnads, and was torn to pieces by
his mother and two others, on whose eyes the God had cast such glamour
that they took him for a wild beast. English readers may be referred
to Dean Milman's translation of the _Bacchanals_ of Euripides.
Footnote 475:
Pleistos, topographically, a river flowing through the vale of Delphi,
mythically the father of the nymphs of Korykos.
Footnote 476:
At one time the Oracle had been open to questioners once in the year
only, afterwards once a month. The pilgrims, after they had made their
offerings, cast lots, and the doors were opened to him to whom the lot
had fallen. Plutarch, _Qu. Græc._, p. 292.
Footnote 477:
The altar of the adytum, on the very centre, as men deemed, of the
whole earth. Zeus, it was said, had sent forth two eagles at the same
moment; one from the East and the other from the West, and here it was
that they had met. The stone was of white marble, and the two eagles
were sculptured on it. Strabo, ix. 3.
Footnote 478:
The priestess dwells upon the outward tokens, which showed that the
suppliant came as one whose need was specially urgent. On the ritual
of supplication generally comp. _Suppl._, vv. 22, 348, 641, Soph.,
_Œd. King_, v. 3; _Œd. Col._, vv. 469-489.
Footnote 479:
Æschylos apparently follows the _Theogonia_ of Hesiod, (l. 278), who
describes the Gorgons as three in number, daughters of Phorkys and
Keto, and bearing the names of Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa. The last
enters into the Perseus cycle of myths, as one of the monsters whom he
conquered, with a face once beautiful, but with her hair turned to
serpents by the wrath of Athena, and so dreadful to look upon that
those who gazed on her were turned to stone. When Perseus had slain
her, Athena placed her head in her ægis, and thus became the terror of
all who were foes to herself or her people. A wild legendary account
of them meets us in the _Prom. Bound_, v. 812. As works of art, the
Gorgon images are traceable to the earliest or Kyclopian period.
Footnote 480:
Here also we have a reference to a familiar subject of early Greek
art, probably to some painting familiar to an Athenian audience. The
name of Phineus indicates that the monstrous forms spoken of are those
of the Harpies, birds with women's faces, or women with birds' wings,
who were sent to vex the blind seer for his cruelty to the children of
his first marriage. Comp. Soph. _Antig._, v. 973. In the _Æneid_ they
appear (iii. 225) as dwelling in the Strophades, and harassing Æneas
and his companions.
Footnote 481:
The old image of Pallas, carved in olive-wood, as distinguished from
later sculpture.
Footnote 482:
The early code of hospitality bound the host, who as such had once
received a guest under the shelter of his roof, not to desert him,
even though he might discover afterwards that he had been guilty of
great crimes, but to escort him safely to the boundary of his
territory. Thus Apollo, as the host with whom Orestes had taken
refuge, sends Hermes, the escort God, to guide and defend him on his
way to Athens.
Footnote 483:
The thought that the highest wisdom came to men rather in “visions of
the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,” than through the waking
senses, which we have already met with in _Agam._, v. 173, is
traceable to the mysticism of Pythagoras, more distinctly perhaps to
that of Epimenides.
Footnote 484:
Wine, as in Soph. _Œd. Col._, vv. 100, 481, was rigidly excluded from
the _cultus_ of the Eumenides, and to them only as daughters of Night
were midnight sacrifices offered. We must not lose sight of the
thought thus implied, that Clytæmnestra had herself lived, after her
deed of guilt, in perpetual terror of the Erinnyes, seeking to soothe
them by her sacrifices.
Footnote 485:
The common rendering “in a dream” gives a sufficient meaning, and is,
of course, tenable enough. But there is a force in the repetition of
the same word, as in v. 116, which is thus lost, and which I have
endeavoured to preserve. The Erinnyes, thus impotent in their rage,
are as much mere dreamlike spectres as is the ghost of Clytæmnestra.
Footnote 486:
Here, as throughout Æschylos, the Olympian divinities are thought of
as new comers, thrusting from their thrones the whole Chthonian and
Titanic dynasty, Gods of the conquering Hellenes superseding those of
the Pelasgi.
Footnote 487:
The accumulation of horrid forms of cruelty had, probably, a special
significance for the Athenians. These punishments belonged to their
enemies, the Persians, not to the Hellenic race, and the poet's
purpose was to rekindle patriotic feeling by dwelling on their
barbarity, as in _Agam._, v. 894, he points in like manner to their
haughtiness and luxury.
Footnote 488:
The argument of the Erinnyes is, to some extent, like that of the
Antigone of Sophocles (_Antig._, 909-913), and the wife of Intaphernes
(Herod. iii. 119). The tie which binds the husband to the wife is less
sacred than that between the mother and the son. This, therefore,
brings on the slayer the guilt of blood of kin, while murder in the
other case is reduced to simple homicide. Orestes therefore was not
justified in perpetrating the greater crime as a retribution for the
less. Apollo, in meeting this plea, asserts the sacredness of the
marriage bond as standing on the same level as that of consanguinity.
Footnote 489:
The ideal interval of time between the two parts of the drama is left
undefined, but it would seem from vv. 230, 274-6, and 429, to have
been long enough to have allowed of many wanderings to sacred places,
Orestes does not go straight from Delphi to Athens. He appears now,
not as before dripping and besmeared with blood, but with hands and
garments purified.
Footnote 490:
The story of Adrastos and Crœsos in Herod. i. 35, illustrates the
gradual purification of which Orestes speaks. The penitent who has the
stain of blood-guiltiness upon him comes to the king, and the king, as
his host, performs the lustral rites for him. Here Orestes urges that
he has been received at many homes, and gone through many such
lustrations. He has been cleansed from the pollution of sin: what he
now seeks, to use the terminology of a later system, is a forensic
justification.
Footnote 491:
_Sc._, the scent of blood, which, though no longer visible to the eyes
of men, still lingers round him and is perceptible to his pursuers.
Footnote 492:
Here, too, we trace the political bearing of the play. In the year
when it was produced (B.C. 458) an alliance with Argos was the
favourite measure of the more conservative party at Athens.
Footnote 493:
The names Triton and Tritonis, wherever found in classical geography
(Libya, Crete, Thessaly, Bœotia), are always connected with the legend
that Athena was born there. Probably both name and legend were carried
from Greece to Libya, and then amalgamated with the indigenous local
worship of a warlike goddess. Hesiod (iv. 180, 188) connects the
Libyan lake with the legend of Jason and Argonauts.
Footnote 494:
In the war with the giants fought in the Phlegræan plains (the
volcanic district of Campania) Athena had helped her father Zeus by
her wise counsel, and was honoured there as keeping in check the
destructive Titanic forces which had been so subdued, burying
Enkelados, _e.g._, in Sicily. The “friends” are her Libyan
worshippers. The passage is interesting, as showing the extent of
Æschylos's acquaintance with the African and Italian coasts of the
Mediterranean.
Footnote 495:
The Choral ode here is brought in as an incantation. This weapon is to
succeed where others have failed, and this too, the frenzy which
seizes the soul in the remembrance of its past transgression, is
soothed and banished by Athena.
Footnote 496:
White, as the special colour of festal joy, was not used in the
worship of the Erinnyes.
Footnote 497: