by Aeschylus
SALAMINIAI
In Aristophanes, Frogs 1040, Aeschylus declares that his spirit, taking its impress from Homer, created many types of excellence, such as Patroclus and Teucer, the lion-hearted. It is highly probably that The Women of Salamis, the third play of the Ajax-trilogy, had as its theme the fortunes of Teucer, Ajax’s half-brother, after his return from Troy with Eurysaces, the son of Ajax. Tradition reports Teucer’s repudiation of his father Telamon, inconsolable at the loss of Ajax, for whose death he held Teucer responsible; Teucer’s expulsion from his home; and his founding a new Salamis in Cyprus. The Chorus probably consisted of women of Salamis, who joined with their mistress Eriboea in lamenting the death of her son. The drama may have ended with the inauguration of the annual festival in honour of Ajax, whose virtues and unhappy fate were thus commemorated by his aged father.
The play is entitled Salaminiai in Herodian (see Frag. 120), Salaminioi in the Medicean Catalogue.
To The Women of Salamis have been referred Fragments 157, 167, 196, 2332, 263.
FRAGMENT 120
Herodian, On Peculiar Words ii. 942. 4 (Lentz), On Words of Two Qualities in Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia iii. 295. 15. Pseudo-Draco, On Metres 35.12 (=Grammaticus Hermanni) derives from Herodian.
Would that I might get a mantle like unto the heavens!
Mantles and curtains were often embroidered with stars among many ancient peoples: Eurip. Ion 1147, Nonnus, Dion. Xl. 578; cp. Psalm civ. 2.
SISYPHOS
Sisyphos dratetês, Sisyphus the Runaway, is named only in the Medicean Catalogue; Sisyphos petrokylistês, Sisyphus the Stone-Roller, is mentioned twice in grammarians; elsewhere the form of citation is simply Sisyphos.
The first-named drama was satyric; its theme, the escape from Hades of the crafty Corinthian king. According to the fabulous story told by Pherecydes (Frag. 78 in Müller, Fragmenta Historicum Graecorum, i. p. 91) Sisyphus made known to Asopus that it was Zeus who had carried off his daughter Aegina; in punishment for which offence the god sent Death against the babbler; but Sisyphus bound Death fast, so that men ceased to die, until Ares came to the rescue, released Death, and gave Sisyphus into his power. Before he died, however, Sisyphus directed his wife Merope to omit his funeral rites, so that Hades, being deprived of his customary offerings, was persuaded by the cunning trickster to let him go back to life in order to complain of his wife’s neglect. But, once in the upper world, he refused to return, and had to be fetched back by Hermes. – The Satyrs forming the Chorus were probably represented as initiates if the play was a parody of the Dionysiac-Orphic mysteries. (Sisyphus the Stone-Roller is one of the six dramas mentioned by the ancients in connexion with the charge of impiety brought against the poet.)
Sisyphos petrokylistês is probably identical with the Sisyphos drapetês (at least Frag. 127 savours of a satyr-play); and the conclusion of the single drama may have been the famous punishment inflicted on the “craftiest of men” (cp. l 593).
FRAGMENT 121
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 78 (cp. 7. 40).
And now it behoves to bring water for feet that bear a god. Where is the bronze-wrought tub with lion-base?
Returning to Corinth from his journey from Hades, Sisyphus orders a bath for his feet, that bear one more than mortal. Cp. Horace, Satires ii. 3. 20.
FRAGMENT 122
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 20.
Do thou, the master of the house, leer well and mark!
FRAGMENT 123
Aelian, On Animals xii. 5.
Nay, is it some field-mouse so monstrous large?
From a description of Sisyphus emerging from the earth.
FRAGMENT 124
Etymologicum Gudianum 227. 40, Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia ii. 443. 11.
Now [I came] to bid farewell to Zagreus and to his sire, the hospitaler.
Sisyphus describes his departure from the lower world. Dionysus, viewed by the Orphics as the child of Zeus and Persephone, received the name Zagreus, the “great hunter.” At times he was thus identified with Hades, at times made the son of the “hospitaler of the dead” (Suppliant Maidens 157).
FRAGMENT 125
Etymologicum Gudianum 321. 58, Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Parisiensia iv. 35. 22.
And in the sinews of the dead there is no blood.
FRAGMENT 126
Etymologicum Gudianum 321. 58, Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Parisiensia iv. 35. 23.
But in thee there is no vigour nor veins that flow with blood.
FRAGMENT 127
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Peace 73 (en Sisuphô petrokulistê).
’Tis a beetle of Aetna, toiling violently.
The ancients explained a “beetle of Aetna” either as a comic exaggeration (“as huge as Aetna”) or as referring to the actual size of the beetles on the mountain. Epicharmus mentions (Frag. 76) a report that these beetles were of vast size. Pearson, Class. Rev. 28 (1914) 223, sees here a jest due to the verbal similarity of kanthôn “pack-ass” and kantharos. Cp. Sophocles frag. 162.
SPHINX
The Sphinx was the satyr-play of the Oedipus-trilogy. See Fragment 155.
FRAGMENT 128
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xv. 16. p. 674D.
For the stranger a garland, an ancient crown, the best of bonds, as Prometheus said.
Athenaeus (xv. 13. p. 672E-F) cites Menodotus of Samos to the effect that, after Zeus had freed Prometheus from his bonds and the Titan had professed himself willing to make a “voluntary and painless” expiation for his theft of fire, Zeus ordered him to wear a garland as a symbolic punishment; and that the Carian custom of wearing garlands of osier was a memorial of the shackles once worn by Prometheus, the benefactor of mankind. Athenaeus himself (xv. 16. p. 674D) states that Aeschylus, in the Prometheus Unbound, distinctly says: “In honour of Prometheus we place garlands on our heads as an atonement for his bonds.”
Ek Promtheôs logou may signify either (1) that in tô de xenô . . . logou (the (unknown) speaker is simply referring to the “story of Prometheus”; or (2) that the words desmôn aristos were spoken by the Titan in the Prometheus Unbound as an indication of his satisfaction with the form of retribution imposed on him after his release from the torture of his bonds. The latter explanation would dispose of the inconsistency thought by Athenaeus to exist between the utterance of Prometheus quoted above (676D) and Fragment 128: namely, that a garland, which in later times was worn as a symbol of the agony of Prometheus, could not have been praised by the sufferer himself. If the second interpretation is correct, the Prometheus-trilogy is earlier than 467 B.C., the date of the production of the Sphinx.
The “stranger” is probably Oedipus; but the situation is unknown.
FRAGMENT 129
Aristophanes, Frogs 1287 with Scholiast.
The Sphinx, the Watch-dog that presideth over evil days
TÊLEPHOS
According to the Cyclic epic, the Cyprian Lays, Telephus, king of Mysia, having been wounded by the lance of Achilles in the first expedition of the Greeks against Troy, had recourse to the Delphic oracle, which returned the answer ho trôsas kai iasetai, “he who wounded, he shall also heal.” The drama may also have adopted the legend that Telephus went to Argos, where, by the counsel of Clytaemestra, he seized the infant Orestes, whom he threatened to kill unless Agamemnon persuaded Achilles to heal him of his wound. The Scholiast on Aristophanes, Acharnians 323, says that, in Aeschylus, Telephus, in order to secure his safety among the Greeks, laid hold of Orestes. Since it is the Telephus of Euripides that is ridiculed by Aristophanes, it is supposed by many scholars that “Aeschylus” is an error for “Euripides” in the statement of the Scholiast.
See Fragment 198.
FRAGMENT 130
Aristophanes, Frogs 1270. The Scholiast on the passage declares that, whereas Timachidas referred the verse to the Telephus, Asclepiades ascribed it to the Iphigenia of Aeschylus.
Most glorious of the Achaeans, wide-ruling son of Atreus, learn of me!
F
RAGMENT 131
Plato, Phaedo 108A, Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies iv. 7. p. 583; cp. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Art of Rhetoric 6. 5 (Reiske v. 265).
For a single path leads to the house of Hades.
Cp. Cicero, Tusculun Disputations i. 43. 104 undique enim ad inferos tantundem viae est, referring the sentiment to Anaxagoras : pantachothen homoia estin hê eis Haidou katabasis (Diogenes Laertius ii. 3. 11).
TOXOTIDES
Actaeon, the hunter, turned into a deer, was torn asunder by his dogs, who did not recognize their master. The common version of the legend – that he was thus punished by Artemis for having seen her bathing – seems to have been adopted by Aeschylus. The Chorus of “Archer-Maidens” were nymphs, attendants of Artemis in the chase.
FRAGMENT 132
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 351. 9; cp. Photius, Lexicon 41. 10 (Reitzenstein) s.v. athêros hêmera.
Not yet has any day, without its game, sent Actaeon homeward empty-handed, only rich in toil.
FRAGMENT 133
Antigonus of Carystus, Incredible Tales 115.
For in pure maidens, knowing not the marriage-bed, the glance of the eyes sinks from shame.
FRAGMENT 134
Antigonus of Carystus, Incredible Tales 115; ll. 1-2, Plutarch, On Love 21. 767B; l. 2 Plutarch, On Progress in Virtue 10. 81D. In Antigonus these lines follow Fragment 133 after a short interval.
The burning gaze of a young woman, such as hath tasted man, shall not escape me; for I have a spirit keen to mark these things.
FRAGMENT 135
Scholiast A on Iliad I 593.
The dogs destroyed their master utterly.
PHILOKTÊTÊS
The story of Philoctetes, king of Malis, touched upon in Iliad B 721, was narrated at length in two Cyclic epics – the Little Iliad by Lesches and the Destruction of Ilium by Arctinus. On their expedition to Troy, the Greeks abandoned Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos because, having been bitten in the foot by a poisonous snake, his screams of pain and the odour from his wound rendered his presence intolerable. In the tenth year of the war, when the Greeks were despairing of victory, they learned from the seer Helenus that Troy could not be taken without the aid of Philoctetes and his bow and arrows, weapons given him by the dying Heracles, who had himself received them from Apollo. Diomedes was accordingly sent to Lemnos, and fetched thence the hero and his arms.
In his fifty-second Discourse (4-10), Dion of Prusa, surnamed the “golden-mouthed,” gives a brief comparison of the Philoctetes of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In the Aeschylean play, instead of the noble Diomedes, the “shrewd and crafty” Odysseus was the envoy. Unchanged in aspect and voice by Athena, he appeared before Philoctetes, but was unrecognized because the powers of the sufferer had been impaired by his disease, his hardships, and his solitary life. The Chorus consisted of men of Lemnos, who had left Philoctetes unvisited until then – a more tragic and a simpler device (says Dion) than the excuse proffered by them according to Euripides – so that he hero could with good reason set forth to them, as something new, the story of his desertion by the Greeks and the cause of his distress. Odysseus sought to cheer Philoctetes and to gain his confidence by a false tale – disaster had befallen the Greeks; Agamemnon was dead; Odysseus had been put to death by reason of some shameful crime; and the Greeks at Troy were in desperate case. Dion omits to tell how Odyseus secured the arms – whether this was done first by treason (as was done by Neoptolemus in Sophocles) and then by persuading the hero that his bow as necessary to the success of the Greeks. But Odysseus’ deception and his pleas were seemly (Dion says), suited to a hero, and convincing – it needed no great skill or plot to content against a sick man and that a simple bowman.
The drama of Aeschylus was distinguished, according to Dion, by simplicity, absence of complicated plot, and dignity; by its antique air and its rugged boldness of sentiment and diction, so that it was well suited to express the nature of tragedy and to body forth the ancient manners of the heroic age.
Aspasius on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 1150 b6 states that in Aeschylus, as in Sophocles, Philoctetes endeavoured to conceal his agony but was finally forced to give it utterance.
See Fragments 163, 180, 185, 190, 191, 198.
FRAGMENT 136
Aristophanes, Frogs 1383 with Scholiast
O Spercheus’ stream and cattle-grazing haunts!
FRAGMENT 137
Cited as a proverb by Suidas, Lexicon s.v. enth’ oute, Plutarch, On the Tranquility of the Mind 18. 476B, Aristaenetus, Letters i. 27, Pseudo-Diogenianus, Proverbs iv. 88, etc.
Where the wind suffers neither to remain nor to sail forth.
FRAGMENT 138
Scholiast on Odyssey X 12, Eustathius on Odyssey 1748.
Having hung the bow on a black pine-tree
FRAGMENT 139
Plutarch, On the Impossiblity of living happily by following Epicurus 3. 1087F.
For the snake let not go its hold, but fixed in me its dreadful . . ., the ruin of my foot.
Hermann would read stomôton ekphusin, which is supposed to mean “hard outgrowth,” “outgrowth with a mouth-shaped cavity,” “sharp projection,” But we expect something like odontôn (Nauck) ekptusin (Herwerden), “venom spat from its teeth.”
FRAGMENT 140
Aristotle, Poetics 22. 1458 b23.
The ulcer ever feeds on my foot’s flesh.
FRAGMENT 141
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 52. 32 (Hense v. 1082). Attributed to this play by Maximus of Tyre, Dissertations 7. 5.
O death, the healer, reject me not, but come! For thou alone art the mediciner of ills incurable, and no pain layeth hold on the dead.
On death as the deliverer cp. Sophocles, Philoctetes 797, Trachinians 1209, Oedipus Coloneus 1220, Ajax 854, Frag. 698, Euripides, Hippolytus 1373, Heracleidae 595, Diphilus, Frag. 88. With l. 3 cp. Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus 955, Euripides, Alcestis 937, Women of Troy 642.
PHINEUS
The Phineus preceded The Persians in the tetralogy produced in 472 B.C.
Apollodorus, Library i. 9. 21, relates the story of Phineus as follows: “Thence the Argonauts put out to sea and landed at Salmydessus in Thrace, where dwelt the seer Phineus, who had lost the sight of his eyes. . . . The gods also sent Harpies against him. These were winged female creatures, and when a table was spread for Phineus, they flew down from the sky and snatched away most of the food, but the little they left smelled so foul that no one could come near it. And when the Argonauts wished to learn about their voyage, he said that he would advise them about it if they would free him from the Harpies. So the Argonauts placed beside him a table of eatables, and the Harpies with a cry flew down and snatched the food. Seeing this, Zetes and Calaïs, the sons of Boreas, who were winged, drew their swords and chased them through the air. . . . Being freed from the Harpies, Phineus revealed their course to the Argonauts, and advised them concerning the Clashing Rocks on the sea.”
FRAGMENT 142
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists x. 18. p. 421F.
And many a deceitful meal with greedy jaws did they snatch away amid the first delight of appetite.
FRAGMENT 143
Etymologicum Genuinum s.v. anêstis.
Hungry wailing standeth not aloof.
FRAGMENT 144
Pollux, Vocabulary 7. 91; cp. 2. 196.
They wear socks in their well-fitting shoes.
Perhaps from a description of the sons of Boreas.
PHORKIDES
The Daughters of Phorcys was a part of the trilogy containing The Net-Draggers (Diktyooulkoi) and Polydectes. In the first of these plays, fisher folk of Seriphus rescue Danaë and her infant son Perseus, who had been placed in a chest and cast into the sea by her father Acrisius. In the second, Polydectes, king of Seriphus, in order the better to effect his purpose of marrying Danaë, sent her son, now grown to manhood, to fetch the head of Medusa, the one of the three Gorgons who was mortal. In pursuit of this quest, Perseus encountered th
e three daughters of Phorcys, old women from their birth, who possessed between them a single eye and tooth, which they passed to each other in turn, and also the cap of Hades. These women, the Graeae, were sisters and guardians of the Gorgons, who dwelt in a cave by the ocean. On his return, Perseus changed Polydectes into stone by displaying Medusa’s head, which he had cut off with an adamantine sickle that he had received from Hephaestus. In Poetics 18. 1456 a2, Aristotle regards as a distinct species of tragedy such plays as The Phorcides, Prometheus, and those whose scene was laid in the lower world. The Phorcides may be a satyr-drama.
FRAGMENT 145
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ix. 65. p. 402B, Eustathius on Odyssey 1872. 5.
Into the cave he rushed like a wild boar.
Perseus enters the cave of the Gorgons. aschedôros is called by the ancient grammarians a Sicilian word for syagros.
PHRYGES ê HEKTOROS LYTRA
The scene of The Phrygians or The Ransom of Hector was the tent of Achilles, as in the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, which the poet here dramatized. Hermes, the divine guide of Priam and his escort of Phrygians, preceded the entrance of the embassy to regain the body of Hector. Except at the beginning, and then only in few words, Achilles refused to speak to the god, but sat in silence, his head veiled in token of his grief for Patroclus. The gold brought as ransom was actually represented as weighed out in sight of the audience (Scholiast on Iliad X 351). To the peculiar dance-figures designed by the poet for the Chorus, allusion is probably made in a passage of a lost play of Aristophanes (Frag. 678): “I remember seeing the Phrygians, when they came in order to join with Priam in ransoming his dead son, how they often danced in many postures, now this way, now that.”
See Fragments 155, 158, 180, 255, 267, 268.
FRAGMENT 146
Pollux, Vocabulary 7. 131.
[Not a king,] but a trafficker by sea, one who takes petty wares from out a land