Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics)
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FRAGMENT 147
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ii. 36. p. 51C, Eustathius on Iliad 211. 16.
But that man was gentler than mulberries are soft.
The verse refers to Hector and was probably spoken by Priam.
FRAGMENT 148
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 57. 6 (Hense v. 1138).
And it unto the dead thou art fain to do good, or if thou wouldst work them ill – ’tis all one, since they feel not or joy or grief. Nevertheless our righteous resentment is mightier than thye, and Justice executeth the dead man’s wrath.
Elsewhere Aeschylus declares that the dead possess consciousness and are wroth with those who have done them injury (Libation-Bearers 324, 41). Here, where Hermes has in mind the outrage done by Achilles to Hector’s corpse, his utterance is intended to console Priam and rebuke Achilles with the thought that, though the dead are insensible and cannot avenge themselves, their cause is in the divine keeping. It is the gods alone who have power to do that which is commonly ascribed to the spirits of the dead.
FRAGMENT 149
Scholiast on Euripides, Andromache 1
Hail, offspring of Andraemon of Lyrnessus, whence Hector brought his dear wife.
The statement of the Scholiast that Andromache is addressed is the sole warrant for the interpretation of the action that supposes her to have accompanied Priam to the tent of Achilles. Since her father was Eëtion from Hypoplacian Thebe according to Homer, and since Chrysa and Lyrnessus were both in the plain of Thebe, the Scholiast seems to have confused Andromache with Briseïs, though he properly remarks on the strangeness of the name given to her father.
PSYCHAGÔGOI
The ancients, say Phrynichus (Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 73. 10), used the word psychagôgos to denote one who by spells brought to life the spirits of the dead. The Spirit-Raisers was connected with the Penelope and The Bone-Gatherers, and included Teiresias’ prophecy to Odysseus concerning that hero’s death (cp. L 100-37). In L 134 the seer obscurely declares that “from out the sea thine own death shall come” (cp. Fragment 152).
FRAGMENT 150
Aristophanes, Frogs 1266 with Scholiast.
We, who dwell by the lake, honour Hermes as our ancestor.
Hermes was born on Mt. Cyllene, not far from Lake Stymphalis.
FRAGMENT 151
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 10.
Arsenals and wreckage of ships.
FRAGMENT 152
Scholiast Vulg. on Odyssey L 134.
For a heron, in its flight on high, shall smite thee with its dung, its belly’s emptyings; a spine from out this beast of the sea shall rot thy head, aged and scant of hair.
Spoken by Teiresias. In Sophocles’ Odusseus akanthoplêx, which took the story from the Cyclic epic Telegonia, the hero was killed by his son Telegonus, who smote him with a spear tipped with he spoke or fin of a roach.
ÔREITHYIA
According to the legend probably followed by Aeschylus, Boreas, being enamoured of Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, sought her in marriage from her father; repulsed by him, he laid hold of the girl by violence and carried her off as she was sporting by the Ilissus. She bore him two daughters, Chione and Cleopatra, the latter of whom became the wife of Phineus; and two sons, Zetes and Calaïs, who rescued Phineus from the Harpies. In the two extant fragments, which are cited as examples of pseudo-tragic diction, Boreas, enraged at the rejection of his suit, threatens to display his power in its full force.
FRAGMENT 153
Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime 3. 1 (after a lacuna of two leaves); cp. John of Sicily, On Hermogenes’ “Kinds of Style” in Rhetores Graeci vi. 225.
. . . and check the oven’s soaring blaze; for let me not behold some soot, the tenant of the hearth, weaving in a single wreath of torrent flame, I’ll fire the roof and cinder it. But now – not yet have I blared my noble strain.
FRAGMENT 154
John of Sicily, as under Frag. 163.
With my two jaws I blow a blast and confound the main.
FRAGMENTS OF UNCERTAIN PLAYS
Under each Fragment are added ancient or modern conjectures as to its source.
FRAGMENT 155
Aristophanes, Frogs 1291. Ascribed to Aeschylus because ll. 1264-1288 contain quotations from him.
Giving him (?) as booty to the eager hounds that range the air.
Agamemnôn Scholiast, Memnôn Bergk, Sphinx Fritzche, Argeioi Hartung, Myrmidones or Phryges Rogers.
The “eager hounds” are eagles or vultures. Who or what is their booty is unknown.
FRAGMENT 156
Aelian, On Animals xii. 8, Zenobius, Proverbs v. 79, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. pyraustou moron.
Verily I do fear the stupid death of the moth.
Promêtheus purkaeus Bothe, Semelê ê Hydrophoroi Hartung.
pyraustou moros was a proverbial expression for the brevity of life (Eustathius on Iliad 1304. 8, etc.).
FRAGMENT 157
Ammonius, On Words of like Form but different Meaning 59 (Valckenaer).
Thou criest aloud, thou who art but a spectator of such a deed as this.
Hypsipylê Valckenaer, Salaminiai Hartung.
FRAGMENT 157A
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 349. 7.
She waileth the nightingale’s lament.
Compare Agam. 1146.
FRAGMENT 158
Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia i. 119. 12.
For all Troy hath beheld by reason of Hector’s fate
Nêreides, or a connected play, Welcker, Phryges Hermann.
FRAGMENT 159
Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia ii. 414. 13.
He bellowed like a bull whose throat has just been cut.
Thrêssai Hartung.
FRAGMENT 160
Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia iv. 315. 28.
Neither am I without experience of this manner of address.
FRAGMENT 161
Anonymous, On the Swelling of the Nile, quoted from cod. Laurentianus lvi. 1 (F) by H. Stephanus in Appendix ad Aristotelis et Theophrasti scripta quadam, and inserted in Parisinus C in the Epitome of the second book of Athenaeus, Deipnosophists (Dindorf i. 165); cp. Aristeides, Or. 48, On Egypt (vol. ii. 443, 460).
Knowing full well, I can laud the race of the Aethiopian land, where seven-channelled Nile rolleth its refreshing tide, fed by abundant, wind-born rain, and therein the fire-eyed sun, beaming forth upon the earth, melteth the snow amid the rocks; and all luxuriant Egypt, filled with the sacred flood, maketh to spring up Demeter’s life-giving grain.
Memnôn Butler, Psychostasia Welcker.
FRAGMENT 162
Anonymous in Orelli, Opuscula Graecorum veterum sententiosa et moralia ii. 222, Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 3. 13 (Hense iii. 195), Scholiast on Iliad B 114, Eustathius on Iliad 188. 43, 480. 43.
From righteous deception God standeth not aloof.
Danaïdes Hermann, Aigyptioi Hartung, Thalamopoioi Oberdick.
FRAGMENT 163
Anonymous in Orelli (as under Frag. 162).
But times there are when God honoureth the season for untruth.
Danaïdes Hermann, Philoktêtês Hartung, Thalamopoioi Wecklein.
FRAGMENT 164
Aristeides, In Defence of the Four Statesmen 46 (vol. ii. 379).
Nor companion in arms, nor neighbour, let him be to me!
Argô Wagner, Oidipous Hartung, Kabeiroi Bergk.
FRAGMENT 165
Aristotle, Natural History ix. 49. p. 633 a20; cp. Pliny, Natural History x. 86 (44).
This hoopoe, spectator of his own distress, hath Zeus bedecked in various hue and showed him forth a bird courageous in his full armour, tenanting the rocks. With the new-come spring he will ply the pinion of the white-feathered hawk – for he will display two forms from a single egg, his offspring’s and his own –; but when the grain is threshed in early harvest0time, parti-coloured wing will direct his course to this side or that. But ever quitting these haunts in loathing he will seek a new
home amid the solitary woods and hills.
Now generally referred, with Welcker, to the Têreus of Sophocles (Frag. 581 Jebb-Pearson); Krêssai Hartung.
When Procne had served to Tereus the flesh of their son Itys in revenge for his violation of her sister Philomela, Tereus pursued them with an axe; and when the sisters were overtaken, the gods in pity turned Procne into a nightingale and Philomela into a swallow. Tereus became a hoopoe, or a hawk, according to a variant version of the legend. The poet seems to have assimilated the two legends by making the young hoopoe resemble a hawk.
Before speaking of the hoopoe’s change in colour and appearance, Aristotle remarks that the cuckoo changes its colour. “On the zoological side,” says D’Arcy Thompson, “the myth is based on the similarity of note in the hoopoe and cuckoo, and on the hawk-like appearance of the latter bird.” In l. 1 the epops is called epoptês “spectator” by word-play; and similarly Tereus was “the watcher” (têreô).
FRAGMENT 166
Aristotle, Rhetoric ii. 10. p. 1388 a7 with Scholiast.
For kinsfolk know well to envy too.
FRAGMENTS 167
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists vii. 66. p. 303c, Plutarch, On the Craftiness of Animals 29. 979E, Aelian, On Animals ix. 42, Scholiast on Oppian, On Fishing iv. 504, Eustathius on Iliad 994. 52.
Squinting his left eye, like a tunny-fish
Kêrykes Droysen.
FRAGMENT 169
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ix. 17. p. 375E.
But this pig – and a well-fatted pig it is – I will place within the crackling oven. For what daintier dish could a man get than this?
Kirkê E. A. J. Ahrens, Promêtheus saturikos Hartung.
FRAGMENT 170
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ix. 17. p. 375E; cp. Eustathius on Iliad, 1286. 21.
White, of course, and rarely singed, the pig. Boil him and don’t be troubled by the sire.
Kêrykes E. A. J. Ahrens, Promêtheus satyrikos Hartung.
FRAGMENT 171
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ix. 17. p. 375E.
But having killed yon pig from the same sow, the sow that had worked me much havoc in the house, pushing and turning everything upside down pell-mell
Kêrykes E. A. J. Ahrens, Promêtheus satyrikos Hartung.
FRAGMENT 172
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xi. 80. p. 491A; cp. Scholiast A on Iliad S 486, Eustathius on Odyssey 1713. 4.
And they who bear the name of Atlas’ daughters seven oft bewailed their sire’s supremest labour of sustaining heaven, where as wingless Peleiades they have the form of phantoms of the night.
Hêliades Butler, Promêtheus satyrikos Hartung.
The daughters of Atlas and Pleione, transformed by Zeus into the constellation of the Pleiades, were often regarded as doves (peleiades) by poetic fancy and popular mythology. The epithet “wingless” is corrective, because the maidens are not real birds.
FRAGMENT 173
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xii. 37. p. 528C; cp. Eustathius on Iliad 1292. 53.
And luxurious locks, like those of delicate maidens; wherefore they approved the name Curetes for the folk.
The Kourêtes in question were the earliest inhabitants of Pleuron in Aetolia (cp. Iliad I 529; kourêtes in T 193 are “youths,” kouroi). That the Greeks were hopelessly confused as to the meaning of the name is clear from the lengthy discussion in Strabo, Geography x. 3. 6-8, p. 466-467. Apart from other explanations, the word was derived now from koura, properly “clipping” of the hair; now from kouros “boy” or kourê “girl” (the Homeric forms of koros and korê), and with reference either to hair or to dress. The historian Phylarchus (third century B.C.) declares that Aeschylus here says that the Kourêtes got their name from their luxury; and the Fragment certainly implies that, like girls, they wore their hair long (cp. Scholiast on I 529 para to mê keirethai tas komas, Scholiast L ê epei komas koran eichon). But in Agathon’s Thyestes certain suitors say that they wore their hair long (komôntes) until they had been rejected by their lady-love, when they cut off their locks, “the witnesses of their luxury,” and by reason of their shorn hair (kourimos thrix) gained the glory of being Kourêtes. Archemachus of Euboea (see Strabo) had the notion that the Kourêtes, before they removed to Aetolia, wore their hair long behind, but cut it short in front in order that their enemies might not seize them there. Strabo himself attaches no little probability to the opinion of those who sought to reconcile the different accounts of the name; for he says that the application of art to the hair consists in attending to its growth and koura, and that both are the peculiar care of korai and koroi. To render koura by “hair-dressing,” “coiffure,” with the implication that the reference is to long hair, is opposed to the etymology (from keirô “cut”). Relationship between koura and kourê, korê, accepted by Curtius, is altogether improbable.
Krêssai Butler, Êdônoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 174
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xiv. 32. p. 632C.
Or the master of his craft was present, deftly striking the lyre.
Athenaeus says that sophists was anciently used of musicians.
FRAGMENT 175
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies iv. 7. p. 586.
To him that toileth God oweth glory, child of his toil.
Kares ê Eurôpê Hartung.
FRAGMENT 176
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies v. 5. p. 661.
But I too have a seal, as a guard, upon my lips.
“My lips were lock’d upon me,” Beaumont and Fletcher.
Epigonoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 177
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies vi. 2. p. 739; l. 1 Pseudo-Diogenianus Proverbs vii. 35 (without naming the poet); with dei for chrê, attributed to Sophocles (Frag. 934 Jebb-Pearson) by Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 39. 14 (Hense iii. 724).
He who is truly happy should bide at home [and he who fares ill, he too should bide at home]
L1. 1-2 Danaïdes Hermann, l. 1 Hêliades Hartung.
Nauck regards l. 2 as a tag by a comic poet: “And he who fares ill? He too should bide at home.” The comic poets were fond of describing “the truly happy man.”
FRAGMENT 178
Etymologicum Magnum 149. 57.
So much, Herald, do thou set forth from me point by point.
Hiketides l. 953A Burges, Eleusinioi Hartung, Kêrykes Droysen, Thalamopoioi Wecklein.
FRAGMENT 179
Etymologicum Genuinum s.v. asalês (Etymologicum Magnum 151. 49 s.v. asalês mania).
Or reckless madness from the gods.
Neaniskoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 180
Etymologicum Magnum 490. 12, Etymologicum Gudianum 298. 9, Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia ii. 456. 6, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. kapêlos.
Applying huckster tricks
Phryges Welcker, Philoktêtês Hartung.
FRAGMENT 181
Eustathius on Iliad 1157. 36; cp. Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 56, Hesychius, Lexicon i. 323.
Who had four fillies under yoke, their nostrils bound with fluted muzzles.
Psychostasia Butler, Glaukos Potnieus Hermann, Memnôn Kausche.
To produce a terrifying effect by a horse’s breathing or trumpeting, its bronze muzzle was pierced with holes, through which the sound issued, as though the pipes of a flute. Cp. Seven against Thebes 461 ff.
FRAGMENT 182
Eustathius on Iliad 1183. 18.
Until Zeus, letting fall the drops from his hands, himself shall purify thee with sprinklings of the blood of a slain swine.
Ixiôn Pauw, Perrhaibides Hermann.
FRAGMENT 183
Eustathius on Odyssey 1484. 48.
Is it some Aethiopian dame that shall appear?
Memnôn Hermann.
FRAGMENT 184
Eustathius on Odyssey 1625. 44.
A newly caught antelope, a lion’s food
Glaukos Potnieus Hermann, Xantriai Hartung.
FRAGMENT 185
Harpocration, Glossary of
the Ten Attic Orators 198. 3.
Push on, pursue, in no wise faint of foot!
Laïos Gronovius, Hêliades Gataker, Philoktêtês Hermann.
FRAGMENT 186
Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. ostrakôn; cp. Photius, Lexicon 353. 17.
Wingless, tiny, but just now bare of the egg-shell.
Oidipous Hartung.
FRAGMENT 187
Macrobius, Saturnalia i. 18. 6.
Apollo, the ivy-crowned, the reveller, the seer.
Neaniskoi Hartung, Bassarai Nauck.
The ecstatic mantic art of Apollo assumes a Bacchic character.
FRAGMENT 188
Orion, Etymologicum 26. 5.
Mistress maiden, ruler of the stormy mountains.
Êdônoi Hermann, Kallistô Hartung.
FRAGMENT 189
Plato, Republic ii. 383B, whence Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel xiii. 3. p. 647A; ll. 5-9 Athenagoras, Apology 21. 104; ll. 7-8 attributed to Sophocles by Phoebammon, On Figures, in Rhetores Graeci viii. 518; cited, without naming the author, by Plutarch, How a Young Man ought to hear Poems 2. 16E.
He dwelt on my happiness in my children, whose days were to be many and unacquainted with disease; and, comprising all, in triumph-strain that cheered my soul, he praised my lot, blest of the gods. And so I deemed that falsehood sat not upon Phoebus’ lips divine, fraught with the prophet’s art. But he, who raised this song himself, he who himself was present at my marriage-feast, he who himself spake thus, he it is who himself hath slain my son.
Psychostasia Butler, Welcker (or from another play of the same group), Hoplôn krisis Ern. Schneider, Thalamopoioi Wagner, Nêreides Hartung.
Thetis contrasts Apollo’s prophecy of her happy motherhood, uttered at her marriage to Peleus, with his deed in guiding the shaft of Paris that killed her son.
FRAGMENT 190
Plutarch, How a Young Man ought to hear Poems 14. 36B.
Courage! Suffering, when it climbs highest, lasts not long.
Philoktêtês Hartung.
FRAGMENT 191
Plutarch, Consolation to Apollonius 10. 106C.
Since unjustly men hate death, which is the greatest defence against their many ills.
Philoktêtês Hartung.
FRAGMENT 192
Plutarch, Of Isis and Osiris 20. 358E; cp. Etymologicum Genuinum and Etymologicum Magnum s.v. apargmata.