Second page of Greek (page 243):
You have gone away from friends and from song, to gather the flowers of gentle Persephone. You have gone, you will live no more, and never again will I sit next to you in awe, touching your hands with my devout hands. Bitter-sweet reverent awe has now again stolen over me, as I remember what I, such as I am, received from the man that you were. Never, old man, will my loving eyes take delight in your loved eyes, as I grasp, beloved old man, your right hand. Ah, dust crumbles, life crumbles: which of these passing things is less? Not dust but life. Yet you are far dearer to me than those who still live, for once you lived. I bring to you in death these things, few but from the heart; do not turn away. Take them, casting even now a gentle look. I cannot, greatly though I wish it, give you what you deserve, since I am far from where you are buried, for it is not in my power. Nor can I provide a gleaning libation of milk and honey. O that it were possible to touch you with my hands and see you once again, to tend upon your dear head with tears and libations and your holy eyes and holy body. O that I could, for this would greatly relieve my sorrow. Now far away from your grave I make my lament, and do not keen the dirge over your tomb, but I am kept apart, with tears of sorrow. Farewell to you in death; know that you are honoured by men and gods, if any god is set over those below. Farewell, old man, farewell dear father, greatest of singers we have seen, greatest of singers to come. Farewell, may you have such happiness as dead men have, peace without hatred and without love.
Third page of Greek (page 244):
When your tomb has vanished, there will be monuments to you; there will be loving memory of you when your monument has vanished. You the divine Graces mourn and Aphrodite mourns, she who took delight in the Muses’ garlands and lovely dances. Never once has old age worn away holy singers. Your monument reveals this splendour. You were a mortal dear indeed to the blessed ones, and to you if to any the Nymphs gave their lovely, their final gifts, to possess. On them has brazen sleep come, and windless eternity; buried with you they share one fate. You too sleep, having come upon lovely and glorious sleep in the hollow earth, far away from your country, by the Etruscan wave of a golden stream, but still your mother land longs for you; but you keep apart, you renounced her of old, though you loved her. Sleep; blessed not wretched will you be to us. Brief is the time of mortals, and fate will master them. Gladness sometimes posseses them, grief sometimes. Many times the light harms them or the dark shrouds them when they weep, and sleep stings those who are awake. But when the eyes of the dead have fallen asleep in their graves, neither the dark nor the light of the sun will sting. No dream vision at night nor waking vision will ever be theirs when they rejoice or mourn. But all keep together one seat and abode forever, immortal instead of mortal, beautiful instead of evil.
ARGUMENT
Greek plays were supplied with the πóθεσις, a summary of the action, in Alexandrian times. The argument to Milton’s Samson Agonistes serves the same purpose.
GREEK EPIGRAPH
The text is that of Dindorf’s Poetae Scenici Graeci (1851) and varies somewhat from modern editions. Thestia is Althaea, the daughter of Thestius. ‘This,’ in the first sentence, refers to the violent passion of women, the subject of the choral ode from which the passage is taken.
Let him who is not light-witted know this, by learning of the plot of burning in the fire which the reckless killer of her son, Thestia, devised, burning the tawny brand coeval with the life of her son, from the time when with a cry he came from his mother’s womb until the day appointed by fate.
Prologue (lines 1–64)
Chief Huntsman.
At dawn, the chief huntsman prays to Artemis, who has sent the wild boar to ravage Aetolia. She is treble (line 4) because she is Artemis on earth, Selene in heaven, and Hecate in the underworld (cf. Horace, Odes III 22, line 4 and Ovid, Metamorphoses Book 7, lines 94, 177 and 194). ‘A light for dead men and dark hours’ (line 5) characterizes her under the Hecate and Selene aspects respectively, while ‘a foot swift’ (lines 5–6) and ‘a hand… mortal’ (lines 6–8) present her as Artemis, goddess of the hunt. At line 17, Apollo is invoked, and at line 37, the hunter returns to Artemis, for whom a sacrifice is now prepared; the Aetolian virgins (who constitute the chorus) will offer her hymns, flowers and locks of their hair.
For place-names, see the map in the appendix. Achelous and Euenus are rivers in Aetolia; Ladon is a river, and Maenalus is a mountain, in Arcadia. The struggle between Heracles and Achelous for Deianira, alluded to in lines 53–57, is recounted in Sophocles, Trachiniae, lines 497–530. Deianira is Meleager’s sister. Euenus is wedded with the straitening sea (line 36) because it flows into a narrow part of the Corinthian gulf. The plain near the river Lelantus (line 52) is actually in Euboea; Herlet finds that the Greek geographer Strabo (10.3.6) may have led Swinburne into error.
Sometimes Swinburne’s diction draws directly on Greek literature. Artemis’s shafts are said to be gentler than snow or sleep (line 8) because in Homer her shafts, like those of Apollo, are described as gentle, bringing an easy death. The expression ‘on the knees of gods’ (line 16) is also Homeric, and lines 25–6 may recall the Iliad, Book 19, line 362, where the earth laughs. The laughter of the sea is mentioned in Prometheus Bound, line 90. In Greek and Latin, the horns of a river (line 35) refer to its branches (see OED 20c). Swinburne also used ‘full-flowered’ (line 52) in his translation of Euripides’ πoιηρoυς… νομους (Cyclops, line 61): ‘full-flowered pasture-grasses’ (‘Notes on the Text of Shelley’, Essays and Studies, [1869] 1875, p. 207). More generally, the opening scene resembles that of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, in which the watchman likewise prays to the gods.
Among English writers, Shelley most influenced Swinburne’s language and imagery. Stars led at dawn into the folds of the fields of heaven (line 2, and see also line 884) recall Prometheus Unbound (1820) Act 4, lines 1–3 and also Shelley’s ‘Lines Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon’ (1824), line 5; the image also derives from the ‘unfolded star’ of Shakespeare, Measure for Measure Act IV, Scene 2. The ‘mistress of the months’ (line 1) is similar to the ‘mother of months’ (line 66), an expression for the moon that Shelley uses repeatedly (see commentary on the parodos). Compare the redundant ‘most dimmest’ (line 20) with Shakespeare, King Lear, Act II, Scene 3, line 7, ‘most poorest’. The appositional phrase ‘All gold’ (line 32) may recall the phrase in the fifth line of Milton’s translation of Horace, Odes I 5.
The grammar is sometimes compressed and elliptical. In lines 25-36, ‘let laugh’ has for its subject earth, the long sea, all the winds and fountainheads, each horn of Achelous, and the green Euenus. Lines 30–2 might be rephrased as ‘whose hair with salt close tresses cleaving lock to lock, all like gold, or whose breast, shuddering and like unfurrowed snow, divides the wandering wave’.
Parodos (lines 65–120)
The first stanza tells the story of Procne and Philomela; see the notes on ‘Itylus’. The nightingale is ‘brown bright’ (line 69), Swinburne’s translation of the adjective (ξουθá) that Aeschylus uses for it in Agamemnon, line 1142. The Maenad (line 108), Bassarid (line 108), and Bacchanal (line 113) are all votaries of Bacchus. According to the OED, ‘Bassarid’ was first used by Swinburne.
The advent of spring is being celebrated. The meadow or plain (line 66) is where the signs of spring are first evident. Lines 79–80 imply that the day is gathering in strength and the night is declining, the reverse of line 92. It is time for rural celebration, and here the oat pipes of rustic festivals are more prominent than the sophisticated lyre (line 102; cf. Milton, Lycidas, lines 32–4 and 88). It is also time for amorous pursuits; lines 111–12 can be glossed as ‘the leaves of the tree screen the maiden from being seen by the god and leave in her sight the god pursuing’.
Artemis is the ‘mother of months’ (line 66), a Shelleyan expression for the moon; see The Revolt of Islam (1818) Canto IV, stanza 1, line 7, Prometheus Unbound (1820) Act 4, line
207, and ‘The Witch of Atlas’ ‘ (1824), line 73. ‘All the pain’ recalls ‘all that pain’ of Ceres in Milton, Paradise Lost Book 4, line 271. ‘Fleet-foot’ (line 106) echoes the κπoυς of Homer (an epithet of horses) and Sophocles (applied to deer in Oedipus at Colonus, line 1093), as well as the ‘fleet-foot roe’ of Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, line 561.
The stanzas consist of eight lines rhyming ababccab, where a may be a single, double or a triple rhyme. Each line is tetrameter, and the feet are either iambs or anapests. This combination allows a variety of rhythmical effects, though here the anapest dominates. This variety is a feature of Greek choral lyric, which combines elements of different metrical systems within a single strophe. Occasionally Swinburne has a direct approximation of a Greek line, with stress accent replacing quantitative length. For example, Swinburne’s line ‘Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid’ (line 106) may be seen as a metrical equivalent to Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes, line 229, κριμναμεναv vεøαλαν ορθoî. However, Swinburne is not attempting to imitate Greek metres but rather to bring into English poetry new rhythmical inventions inspired by Greek choral odes. See D. S. Carne-Ross, ‘Jocasta’s Divine Head’, Arion, 3rd. ser. Winter 1990, pp. 138–9.
A manuscript of an early draft of the chorus is reproduced in Wise’s 1919 Bibliography. See also Cecil Y. Lang, ‘The First Chorus of Swinburne’s Atalanta’, Yale University Library Gazette 27 (1953), pp. 119–22.
First Episode (lines 121–313)
Chorus, Althaea.
For recollections of Greek poetry, compare ‘Look you, I speak not as one light of wit’ (line 201) with Aeschylus, Agamemnon, lines 590–3, where Clytemnestra rejects the rebuke that she had wandered in her wits. Compare the description of the destructive power of love at lines 209–10 with the choral ode on Eros in Sophocles, Antigone, lines 781–800. Lines 222–3 (‘seeing I see not, hear / And hearing am not holpen’) recall both Prometheus Bound, lines 447–8, and Matthew 13:13. Althaea’s dream is reminiscent of Clytemnestra’s dream in Aeschylus, The Libation-Bearers, lines 523–50; as Praz puts it, both mothers give birth to symbols of their sons’ destinies.
For echoes of English literature, consider Shelley’s description of hours that chase the day like a bleeding deer (Prometheus Unbound, 1820, Act 4, lines 73–4) in relation to ‘Night, a black hound, follows the white fawn day’ (line 125). ‘Gall for milk’ (line 155) recalls Macbeth, Act I, Scene 5. Praz compares lines 217–22 with Job 7:14, ‘thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions’. ‘Standing corn’ (line 166) is an Old Testament phrase. ‘Sweet grass’ (line 168) occurs three times in William Morris, Earthly Paradise (1868–70; ‘The Man Born to Be King’, line 1503, ‘The Watching of the Falcon’, line 57, and ‘The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon’, line 131). ‘Touch of love’ is from Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II, Scene 7, line 18. For the beaks of ships drinking death (line 271), compare the ships that ‘drank death’ in Shelley, ‘Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills’ (1824), lines 14–15.
The visit of the three Fates to Althaea in lines 242–6 is recounted in the Fables of Hyginus, 171. Eurythemis (line 299), Althaea’s mother, is the husband of Thestius and also the mother of Leda; thus the children of Leda (Castor and Pollux, Helen, Clytemnestra) are the nieces and nephews of Althaea.
Bruno Herlet suggests that there are two meanings combined in lines 135–6: first, that the least god is more than we are, asleep or awake, and second, that the least god is more than waking or even sleep (which itself is enough to destroy us in our dreams). The members of the chorus ‘say well’ according to Althaea (line 145) because they have just (line 144) unknowingly introduced the subject of her dream, fire.
‘Ruined’ (line 131) has the sense of calamity or disaster. ‘North’ in line 188 is the north wind (a poetic usage; see OED 4a, which cites Shakespeare and Shelley); ‘sets’, applied to a wind or current, means to have or take a direction or course (see OED 107a). ‘Presage’ (line 216) is a trochee, not an iamb. ‘Salter’ (line 231) is the comparative from the older adjective ‘salt’, now common only in phrases like ‘salt water’. ‘These’ at line 300 refers to the gods; at line 303, ‘these’ may refer instead to ‘such gifts’.
First Stasimon (lines 314–61)
There are several echoes of biblical passages. ‘They breathed upon his mouth’ (line 344) recalls the creation of Adam, Genesis 2:7. Lines 348–9 (‘time for… a time for’) resemble the parallel structure of Ecclesiastes 3:1–8. ‘His speech is a burning fire’ (line 354) recalls Proverbs 16:27 (‘An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is as a burning fire’). ‘Clothed with’ (line 358, ‘clothed with derision’) is a biblical locution; compare, e.g., Ezekiel 7:27, ‘clothed with desolation’.
Lines 316–17 reverses the expected description: time brings grief, but grief fades in time. Line 337 (‘death beneath and above’) may recall Shelley’s lines from ‘Death’ (1824), lines 3–4, ‘All around, within, beneath, / Above, is death.’
The three stanzas are of unequal length, but all rhyme ababcdcd… Each line is iambo-anapestic trimeter.
Second Episode (lines 362–718)
Meleager, Althaea, Chorus, Oeneus.
The first part of the episode is modelled on Homer, Iliad, Book 3, lines 161–244, where Helen identifies for Priam the Greek leaders before the walls of Troy; here, Meleager identifies for Althaea the assembled hunters (including Althaea’s brothers). The comparison of the assembled fighters to rain-flakes (line 374) is the inverse of Pindar, Pythian 6.10–14, where he compares winter rain to an army.
Peleus (lines 390–5) is the father of Achilles and the husband of Thetis, the silver-shod (γυγυπεζα in Homer) sea-nymph; Larissa is the chief city of Thessaly, where he rules.
Castor and Pollux (lines 396–425) are nephews of Althaea by her sister Leda, mother also of Helen and Clytemnestra. In the scene from the Iliad, Helen likewise shows particular interest in Castor and Pollux. They are Spartan; Eurotas (line 410) is a river in Sparta.
Telamon (lines 426–34) is the king of Salamis (an island in the Saronic Gulf) and a brother of Peleus. ‘Twice-washed’ (line 431) may have been suggested by μøυτoς, the epithet of Salamis in Sophocles, Ajax, line 134. He is ‘vine-chapleted’ (line 433) because he wore clusters of grapes around his head in honour of Salamis, rich in vines, according to a fragment surviving from Euripides’ Meleager (Dindorf fragment 531).
Ancaeus (lines 435–9) and Cepheus (lines 439–40) are sons of Lycurgus from Tegea in Arcadia. Ancaeus may be ‘girt round… roughly’ because he was clothed in bear skin; he is ‘two-edged’ for fight because he fights with a two-edge battleaxe (see Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica Book 1, lines 168–9).
Toxeus and Plexippus (lines 443–8), Althaea’s brothers, have their left feet unsandalled; perhaps the description in Euripides’ Meleager of the Aetolian custom to wear a sandal rather than a boot on the left foot is behind Swinburne’s description. ‘Unsandalled’ occurs in Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820) Act 3, Scene 1, line 15 and Prometheus Bound, line 135; see also line 2043.
Althaea’s speech (lines 466–568) begins with a warning about the just destruction (lines 471–3) of one who suffers infatuation (Atê in Greek); the furies are suggested. The ‘twin-born fate’ (line 471) has a particular application to Meleager: the firebrand that measures the span of his life (the δαλς χξ of Aeschylus, The Libation-Bearers, line 608) is in his mother’s control. ‘Be man at one’ (line 474) may be glossed ‘If [or when, or should] a man be at one.’ For the phrase ‘use and wont’ (line 478), see OED ‘use’ 8a(b), where Tennyson, In Memoriam XXIX. 11, is cited. Althaea describes the Elysian fields as the destination of the just in lines 510–16 (see Homer, Odyssey, Book 4, lines 563–8); Swinburne intended her depiction of the aged just man as an allusion to Landor (Lang, 1, 115). ‘Timeless’ (line 532) means untimely or premature. ‘Light and might communicable’ (line 541) are embodied by the stars,
and stars ‘above the hours’ (line 542) are those near the North Star which do not set. The raid of the Thessalians against the Aetolians (lines 549–58) seems to be Swinburne’s invention; instead of hostile Thessalians, ancient tradition records a battle with a local tribe called the Curetes. (Herlet suggests that the Thessalians are called the mad people (line 550) because they are conflated with the Curetes of Crete, themselves associated with the Corybantes, who participate in orgiastic cults of Dionysus and Cybele.) Swinburne makes this battle the motive for Artemis’s anger and her sending the boar. In lines 565–8, Althaea refers to Meleager’s participation in the voyage of the Argonauts.
Meleager’s speech (lines 571–621) further recounts the story of the Argonauts. To set one’s mouth against something (line 572) is a biblical phrase; see Psalms 73:9. ‘Reverencing’ (line 578 and also line 1686), like other forms of that verb, is common in Tennyson. A Nereid (line 593) is a sea-nymph. The Symplegades are the clashing rocks that guarded the entrance at the Bosporus to the Euxine (line 613, the Black Sea). Jason succeeded in passing through by first sending ahead a dove, whose tail-feathers were nipped by the clashing of the rocks as it emerged; he then hurried through while the rocks were rebounding. ‘Irremeable’ (line 599) means admitting of no return, from the Latin irremeabilis. In English, the word was used in Dryden’s Aeneid Book 6, line 575 and Pope’s Iliad, Book 19, line 312. The Argonauts were on their way to Colchis (line 601) to recover the Golden Fleece. Once there, Medea (line 616), the daughter of Aeetes, the king of the region, fell in love with Jason.
Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon Page 47