by Aeschylus
Stobaeus, Anthology i. 3. 26 (Wachsmuth i. 57), Theophilus, To Autolycus 2. 37. p. 178. The verses are ascribed to the Bakchai only in the margin of the Farnesianus of Stobaeus (aischulou kakchôn).
Truly upon mortals cometh swift of foot their evil and his offence upon him that trespasseth against Right.
BASSARAI
Eratosthenes, Legends of the Constellations, 24. p. 140 (Robert), says of Orpheus that he paid no honour to Dionysus, but considered Helios to be the greatest of the gods and addressed him as Apollo; that, by making haste during the night, he reached at dawn the summit of Mt. Pangaeus, and waited there that he might see the rising of the sun; and that Dionysus, in his wrath, sent against him the Bassarides (as Aeschylus tells the story), who tore him to pieces and scattered his members, which were collected and buried by the Muses in Leibethra. To the same effect, Scholiast Germanicus, 84. 11.
The name Bassarai was given to Thracian (and to Phrygian and Lydian) bacchanals, who wore fox-skin caps and long embroidered cloaks, pictured in Miss Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 458. The word bassara (possibly of Phrygian origin but carried elsewhere) means “fox.” Cp. Fragment 29.
The play is entitled Bassarides in the Scholiast on Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 135, and on Nicander, Theriaca 288.
To the Bassarae have been assigned Fragments 187. 215.
FRAGMENT 10
Hephaestion, Handbook of Metres 13. p. 43 (Consbruch) and Choeroboscus, Commentary p. 84. 3.
The bull was like to butt the goat with his horns . . .
Dionysus is the bull, the goat is Lycurgus, the king of the Edonians, who refused to adopt the worship of the god.
FRAGMENT 11
Scholiast on Nicander, Theriaca 288.
Old chips and sooty ashes on the altar
FRAGMENT 12
Scholiast (cod. Vaticanus Graecus 909) on Euripides, Rhesus 922.
For his gleaming torch doth flood with flashing light Pangaeus’ headland, silver-seamed.
Probably from the Messenger’s report to Dionysus concerning Orpheus ascent of the mountain to behold the rising sun.
GLAUKOS PONTIOS
Pausanias, Description of Greece ix. 22. 7: “At Antehodon by the sea is what is called `Glaucus’ Leap.’ That Glaucus was a fisherman, who, because he had eaten of a grass, was changed into a daimon of the sea and foretells men the future, is believed by people in general, and especially to seafaring men every year tell stories about his prophetic art. Pindar and Aeschylus learned from the Anthedonians concerning him, but wheras the former did not have much to do with the legends in his poems, the latter worked them into a play.” Plutarch, in his Life of Cicero 2, reports that there still existed in his timea short poet in tetrameters on Glaucus of the Sea written by the orator in his youth.
In Fragments 17-19 Glaucus describes his wanderings by sea. To the play, which was probably satyric, have been ascribed Fragments 203, 230, 231.
FRAGMENT 13
Phrynichus in Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 5. 21, Photius, Lexicon 140. 22 (Reitzenstein). The line is a metrical attempt by a grammarian interpreting a verse of Aeschylus, which Nauck would restore as anthrôpomorphon kêtos hudati ounnonon.
[A creature, like unto a man, living in the water]
FRAGMENT 14
Etymologicum Magnum 250. 4, Eustathius on Iliad 274. 24; cp. Pausanias, Description of Greece x. 4. 7.
Shaggy his moustache and his beard’s base
FRAGMENT 15
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 347. 24, Photius, Lexicon 36. 12 (Reitzenstein).
He that ate the ever-living, imperishable grass
Ovid, Metamorphoses xiii. 930, relates that Glaucus was moved to eat of a certain grass because a fish that he had caught, on touching the same, regained life and sprang into the sea. The effect produced by the magic herb (according to the legend adopted by Nicander, Ther., Frag. 2) was that Glaucus became a god and leaped into the sea.
FRAGMENT 16
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 347. 29, Photius, Lexicon 36. 16 (Reitzenstein).
And I taste, methinks, the ever-living grass.
FRAGMENT 17
Strabo, Geography x. 1. 9. p. 447
The bend at Euboïs about the headland of Cenaean Zeus, close to the tomb of wretched Lichas
Strabo says that Euboïs was a city which had been engulfed by an earthquake. The Cenaean promontory is situated at the end of the peninsula at the N.W. extremity of Euboea. Near by is a mountain (about 2800 feet high), on the top of which Zeus Cenaeus was worshipped. From the promontory, Lichas, the herald of Heracles, was hurled into the sea by his master because he had been the bearer of the poisoned robe sent by Deïaneira. Cp. Sophocles, Women of Trachis 237, 750.
FRAGMENT 18
Life of Aratus, Westernmann’s Lives of the Greeks 53. 26, from Petavius, Uranologia 269A (Paris, 1637).
And thereafter going out past Diad Athens
From Dion, a city on the promontory of Cenaeum, a settlement of Athenians was called Athenae Diades.
FRAGMENT 19
Scholiast on Pindar, Pythian 1. 79 (152).
Having washed my body in fair baths, I came to steep-banked Himeras.
GLAUKOS POTNIEUS
Potniae was a city in Boeotia where Glaucus, the son of Sisyphus and Merope, kept mares that he had accustomed to feed on human flesh in order to make them charge against the enemy with greater eagerness and speed. When this food failed, they devoured their master at the funeral games in honour of Pelias (Asclepiades, On the Subjects of Tragedy in Probus on Virgil, Georgics iii. 267). According to the Scholiast on Euripides, Orestes 318, the horses had eaten a (poisonous) grass, whereby they became mad and tore Glaucus asunder. Strabo, Geography x. 409 omits any mention of the cause of madness, which other writers attribute, now to the water of a sacred spring near Potniae, now to the anger of Aphrodite (because Glaucus prevented his mares from mating in order to increase their speed), now to their human food.
In Fragment 20 the Chorus utter their good wishes on Glaucus’ departure for the games. In 21, 22, 23 the Messenger describes the contest, in which the title-hero was hurled from his chariot in the collision caused by the madness of the mares.
The Glaucus of Potniae was produced in 472 B.C. as the third member of the tetralogy Phineus, Persai, Glaukos (Potnieus according to a later Argument), Promêtheus (probably purkaeus).
See Fragments 88, 181, 184, 205.
FRAGMENT 20
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Frogs 1528.
“A prosperous journey!” is the first wish we pour forth from our lips.
FRAGMENT 21
Scholiast on Plato, p. 904 B 36 (Baiter-Orelli).
Not for laggards doth a contest wait.
FRAGMENT 22
Scholiast on Euripides, Women of Phoenicia 1194.
For chariot on chariot, corpse upon corpse, horse on horse, had been heaped in confusion.
FRAGMENT 23
Scholiasts BLTV on Il. N 198; cp. Eustathius on Il. 297. 39.
In their fury they dragged him aloft, even as two wolves bear off a fawn by its shoulders.
DANAÏDES
When marriage with their cousins, the sons of Aegyptus, had been forced upon the daughters of Danaüs, their father commanded each to kill her husband during the marriage-night. Hypermestra alone, swayed by the charm of love, disobeyed (cp. Prometheus Bound 865). Of her, Horace, Od. iii. 11. 33 ff., says una de multis face nuptiali digna periurum fuit in parentem splendide mendax et in omen virgo nobilis aevum.
To the Danaïds have been assigned Fragments 162, 163, 177, 206, 208, 231, 234, 238.
FRAGMENT 24
The fragment refers to the custom that, on the morning after the marriage, newly-wed couples were wakened by song (cp. Theocritus, Idyll xviii. 56). If the speaker was a servant (who was not privy to the intended murder), the verses may belong to a prologue, which was followed by the appearance of the Chorus of Danaïds; but, so far as we know, the “wakening” was sung
by friends of the bride and bridegroom presumably the same as had, on the previous evening, sun the hymenaeus. If, as seems more probably, the speaker is Danaüs, he is describing what occurred either on the evening of the wedding or on the morning thereafter, before the discovery of the murder, and the lines form part of his defence before the court that tried him for his participation in the killing of his sons-in-law (Scholiast on Euripides, Orestes 872). The difficulty of interpretation is largely concerned with the application of the last five words of the text.
1. sun korois te kai korais is the stereotyped form of a wish that the marriage may be fruitful in children. These words were said to brides by the singers of the wedding-song according to the Scholiast on Pindar and Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. kourizmenoi.
Hermann holds to the MS. reading.
And then the radiant light of the sun is setting, while I call them forth, saying `let them make their bridegrooms graciously disposed, as is the custom, with boys and girls.’
On this interpretation, Danaüs describes how, after the brides had departed to their new home, he addressed their companions; but the situation is not clear, the meaning of egeirô is strained, and the explanation of nomoisi peculiar. Toup’s aneisi transfers the scene to the morning, as does Wiliamowitz eute . . . egeisê (“and when Dawn shall rouse the radiant light of the sun”); but the latter scholar can find in the following words no more definite idea than that certain persons are enjoined to make the young husbands (or the newly-wedded couples) friendly “with boys and girls.”
2. sun korais te kai korais means the companions of the speaker, who, with him, awakens the sleepers. So Welcker, reading aneisi and thelgôn:
And thereafter uprises the radiant light of the sun, while I, in company with youths and maidens, awaken the bridegrooms graciously disposed.
thelgôn is ironical; as is preumeneis, since Danaüs had married his daughter to suitors whom they, and he, detested, and whose murder he planned.
The situation is moving: when the waking-song was sung, the husbands – all save Lynceus, who was married to Hypermestra – were sleeping the sleep of death. But the scene, because reported, is less dramatic than that in Euripides’ Phaëthon, in which play (Frag. 781) Merops appears with a chorus of maidens who sing the nuptial song in honour of Phaëthon at the very moment when Phaëthon’s corpse is being carried into the chamber of Clymene, the wife of Merops. In Wilhelm Tell the music of a wedding-procession is heard while Gessler is in the agonies of death.
FRAGMENT 25
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xiii. 73. p. 600B; Eustathius on Iliad 978. 25 (omitting ll. 6-7), misled the reference to Aeschylus of Alexandria in Athen. 599E, ascribed ll. 1-5 to that poet.
The holy heaven yearns to wound the earth, and yearning layeth hold on the earth to join in wedlock; the rain, fallen from the amorous heaven, impregnates the earth, and it bringeth forth for mankind the food of flocks and herds and Demeter’s gifts; and from that moist marriage-rite the woods put on their bloom. Of all these things I am the cause.
These lines – the Bridal of Heaven and Earth, imitated by Euripides, Fragment 898 – were spoken, says Athenaeus, by Aphrodite herself; and probably in defence of Hypermestra at her trial for disobedience to her father’s command. Cp. Lucretius i. 250 (imbres) pater aether in gremium matris terrain praecipitavit, and Virgil, Georg. ii. 235.
ELEUSINIOI
Plutarch in his Life of Theseus 29, states that Theseus, in conjunction with Adrastus, effected the recovery of the bodies of the Argives slain before Thebes (in the expedition against that city undertaken by the seven champions); that Aeschylus made the recovery the result of persuasion on the part of Theseus, whereas Euripides, in his Suppliants, ascribed it to a victory over the Argives; and that Theseus appeared in Aeschylus’ play, and out of kindness to Adrastus caused the leaders to be buried at Eleusis, the soldiery at Eleutherae, where their tombs were still shown in his day.
To The Men of Eleusis have been assigned Fragments 178, 199, 200, 214, 215, 241
FRAGMENT 25A
Didymus, Commentary on Demosthenes’ Philippic xii (xiii) in Berliner Papyrus 978- (Berliner Klassikertexte i. (1904) 66).
The matter pressed, rotting already was the corpse.
EPIGONOI
Ten years after the unsuccessful attack on Thebes described in The Seven against Thebes, the son of the fallen chieftains, called the After-Born, avenged the death of their fathers in a second expedition, which resulted in the capture of the city. At the end of Euripides’ Suppliants (l. 1213) Athena prophesies the success of the sons in the war that formed the theme of the Aeschylean drama. The legend of the victorious issue of the second expedition is known to the Iliad in which (D 406) Sthenelus, the son of Capaneus, boasts the superiority of the sons over their fathers. But the tradition that the seven champions had each a son (named in Apollodorus, Library iii. 7. 2) who joined in the war, is apparently later than Homer. In The Seven against Thebes, Aeschylus made both Eteocles and Polynices die childless; but Pindar knew of Thersander, the son of Polynices and successor to his claim to the throne; and late writers report that Laodamas was the son of Eteocles.
Fragments 176, 247, 248 have been referred to The Epigoni.
FRAGMENT 26
Scholiast on Pindar, Isthmian 6. 10 (7).
First, libations to Zeus and Hera for timely marriage
The second cup of mixed wine I serve to the Heroes
Third, a libation for blessing to Zeus, the Saviour.
ÊDÔNOI
Apollodorus, Library iii. 5. 1, gives the following version of the legend of Lycurgus and his rejection of the god Dionysus:
“And afterwards he (Dionysus) arrived at Cybela in Phrygia, and there, having been purified by Rhea, and learning the rites of initiation, he received from her the costume, and hastened through Thrace [against the Indians]. But Lycurgus, king of the Edonians, who dwell beside the river Strymon, was the first to insult and expel him. And Dionysus took refuge in the sea with Thetis, the daughter of Nereus, and the Bacchanals were taken captive and the multitude of the satyrs that followed him. But afterwards the Bacchanals were suddenly released, and Dionysus brought madness upon Lycurgus. And he, in his frenzy, struck with an axe and killed his son Dryas, imagining that he was lopping off the branch of a vine; and when he had cut off his son’s extremities, he came to his senses. But since the land remained barren, the god made known by an oracle that it would bear fruit if Lycurgus were put to death. On hearing this, the Edonians took him to Mt. Pangaeus, and bound him; and there, by the will of Dionysus, he died, destroyed by horses.”
Fragment 27 refers to the arrival of Dionysus and his worshippers, 28 to the house of Lycurgus; to whom, or to one of his attendants, belong the satirical descriptions of the god in 29-32.
To The Edonians have been ascribed Fragments 173, 188, 193, 201, 202.
FRAGMENT 27
Strabo, Geography x. 3. 16. p. 470 (l. 6 Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xi. 57. p. 479B, Scholiast BT on Iliad PS 34).
Practising the holy rites of Cotyto . . . One, holding in his hands the pipe, the labour of the lathe, blows forth his fingered tune, even the sound that wakes to frenzy. Another, with brass-bound cymbals, raises a clang . . . the twang shrills; the unseen, unknown, bull-voiced mimes in answer bellow fearfully, while the timbrel’s echo, like that of subterranean thunder, rolls along inspiring a mighty terror.
From the parodus of the play. In ll. 2-11 the Chorus of Edonians describes what Milton calls “the barbarous dissonance of Bacchus and his revellers.” Cotys, Cotyto, or Cotytto, was a Thracian goddess, akin to Rhea-Cybele, whose worship became popular in Athens. Her rites resembled those of the Phrygian Sabazius, whose ritual was similar to that of Bacchus. The Orphic ceremonies had their origin among the Thracians.
FRAGMENT 28
Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime 15. 6.
Lo, the house is frenzied with the god, the roof revels, Bacchant-like.
FRAGMENT 29
Etymologicum
Florentinum 62 (Miller), Lexicon Sabbaïticum 5.
One who wears Lydian tunics and fox-skin cloaks reaching to the feet
Dionysus is described as wearing Lydian garments, which were famous for their luxuriousness.
FRAGMENT 30
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Birds 276, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. mousomantis
Who in the world is this poet-prophet, speechless . . .
Bothe read habros, asthenês “daintly, weakling”; Hermann amalos abrofatês sthenei “soft, a dainty stepper in his strength.”
FRAGMENT 31
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 135.
Whence hails this woman-man? What’s his country? What’s his attire?
FRAGMENT 32
Scholiast B on Iliad I 539; cp. Eustathius on Iliad 772. 53.
Long-legged indeed! Was he not a chlounês?
The sense of chlounês is here obscure. In Iliad I 539 the word was explained by the ancients as meaning “entire” (not castrated) or “couching in the grass”; elsewhere, as “rascal,” “thief,” or “clothes-stealer.” Herman thought it was a designation of a locust. See Wiliammowitz, Aischylos: Interpretationen p. 217.
HÊLIADES
The Daughters of Helios dealt with the legend of Phaëthon, whose rashness in diving the chariot of the Sun, his father, caused the parching of the earth, and thereby his punishment at the hands of Zeus, whose thunderbolt hurled him into the river Eridanus. In pity for the unceasing grief of Phaëthon’s sisters, Zeus turned them into poplars, from which, it was believed, their tears oozed forth and became amber, the stone of light; a poetic fancy due to the association of êlectron “amber” with êlectôr “the beaming sun.”
The form assumed by the myth in Aeschylus is unknown; but it is certain that Euripides in his Phaëthon differed widely from the older poet. Aeschylus was in part dependent on Hesiod for the story; but whereas Hesiod knew of seven daughters of Helios, Aeschylus recognized only three – Lampetië, Aegle, and Phaëthousa – children of the sun-god and Rhode. Furthermore he transferred to Iberia the scene of the fall of Phaëthon.