by Aeschylus
Nauck ascribed sphaleis gar ktl. to Chaeremon (Frag. 26), the two verses to Euripides (Frag. 1032).
FRAGMENT 256
Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. methystades.
Like maids, wine-stricken and drunk with love
Lykourgeia Hermann, Neaniskoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 257
Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. prosaurizousa.
Moisture meeting a current from dry land (?)
Assigned to Aeschylus by Dindorf.
FRAGMENT 258
Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. prosaitherizousa.
Raising to the skies the missive flame
Intruded into Agam. 301 by Dindorf.
FRAGMENT 259
Aelian, Historical Miscellanies xiii. 1.
Shooting upward, [the flame] flashed forth like lightning.
Placed after Agam. 301 by Meineke, after l. 307 by Wecklein.
FRAGMENT 260
Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 20. 13 (Hense iii. 541).
Words do provoke to senseless wrath.
A corruption or variation of Prom. 380.
FRAGMENT 261
Strabo, Geography iv. 1. 7. p. 182.
The black North, a blast violent and chilling, descends in a tempest.
Promêtheus lyomenos Teuffel.
Probably from a description of the Lithôdes, the Stony Plain; cp. Frag. 112.
FRAGMENT 262
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies ii. 15. p. 462: l. 2 cited, without the poet’s name, by Plutarch, On Moral Virtue 6. 446A, Stobaeus, Anthology ii. 7. 10a (Wachsmuth ii. 89).
Naught escapes me whereof thou admonishest me; yet, for all my resolve, Nature constrains me.
Laïos Gataker, Euripides Chrysippos Valckenaer.
FRAGMENT 263
Trypho, On Tropes in Rhetores Graeci viii. 738, who saw that pheidôlia (which generally means “sparing”) is here used in the sense of akibeia, “accurace”; cp. Gregory of Corinth, Tropes viii. 767, Moschopulus, Opsuscula Grammatica 76.
Teucer, plying his bow with sure aim, stayed the Phrygians as they would overleap the foss.
Salaminiai Hermann, Myrmidones Anon. in Welcker; Sophocles Teukros Blomfield. From a description of the battle in TH 266 ff.
FRAGMENT 264
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies ii. 15. p. 462; ll. 1-2 Letronne, Les Papyres grecs p. 96.
So then ’tis true – no misery gnaws a free man’s soul like dishonour. Thus do I suffer, and the deep stain of my calamity ever stirs me from the depths, agitated as I am by the piercing goads of frenzy.
Thrêssai Süvern.
Spoken by Ajax before his suicide (Clement).
FRAGMENT 265
Plato, Republic viii. 550C.
Another man stationed against another State
Quoted by Plato as from Aeschylus, but probably a playful allusion to Seven against Thebes (cp. ll. 451, 570).
From a lost play, Herwerden.
FRAGMENT 266
Aristophanes, Frogs 1400.
Achilles has thrown two aces and a four.
Of unknown source (Aristarchus), Myrmidones (a late Scholiast). Now generally assigned to Euripides (Frag. 688), whose Telephus is said, on poor authority, to have represented the heroes as dicing. Dionysus, who quotes the verse in Aristophanes, implies that he verse is as bad as the throw. Three dice were used, the highest cast being a triple six (Agam. 33).
FRAGMENT 267
Strabo, Geography xii. 8. 2. p. 572, and in collectors of proverbs; Gregory of Cyprus iii. 99, Macarius, Rose-bed viii. 83, and other late writers.
The boundaries of the Mysians and the Phrygians are distinct.
Assigned to Aeschylus by Hermann.
FRAGMENT 268
Eustathius on Odyssey 1484. 49.
The Cilisian country and the haunts of the Syrians
Phryges Bergk (epistrophai occurred in this play according to Hesychius, Lexicon s.v.).
Frag. 267 may have been followed immediately by Frag. 268 (Nauck).
ELEGIAC FRAGMENTS
FRAGMENT 269
Theophrastus, History of Plants ix. 15; cp. Pliny, Natural History xxv. 11 (5).
The race of the Tyrrhenes, a nation that maketh drugs
FRAGMENT 270
Plutarch, Concerning the Fortunes or Virtue of Alexander the Great ii. 2. p. 334D, cp. Table Talk ii. 5. 2. p. 640A; and without naming the poet, Concerning the Fortune of the Romans 3. 317E, Comparison of Cicero and Demosthenes 2, Eustathius on Iliad 513. 33.
[A warrior,] study, heavy-armed, terrific to the foe
EPIGRAMS
FRAGMENT 271
Palatine Anthology vii. 255.
On other Thessalian champions. Dark Fate likewise laid low these valiant spearmen defending their fatherland, rich in sheep. But living is the glory of the dead who of old, steadfast in battle, clothed themselves in Ossa’s dust.
FRAGMENT 272
Life of Aeschylus in the Medicean and many other MSS, ll. 1-2 Plutarch, Of Banishment 13. 604F. Eustratius on Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics iii. 2. p. 1111a; ll. 3-4 Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xiv. 23. p. 627C.
This tomb hideth the dust of Aeschylus, an Athenian, Euphorion’s son, who died in wheat-bearing Gela; his glorious valour the precinct of Marathon may proclaim, and the long-haired Medes, who knew it well.
Athenaeus and Pausanias (i. 14. 5) state that the epigram was written by Aeschylus himself. The Life states that it was inscribed by the Geloans on the public tomb in which he was buried with splendid honours as the cost of their city.
GLAUKOS PONTIOS
FRAGMENT 273
Ed. Pr. Lobel, P. Oxy., vol. 18, no. 2159 with Plate I.
Lobel suggests that this is part of a speech by Glaucus himself describing the miracle of the aeizôos poa (cf. fr. 15, 16). But Glaucus before his transformation was a fisherman, not a cowherd as the speaker seems to be; l. 6 looks as if the speaker is protesting that the oddness of his story must not be set down to his blindness or frivolity; and Siegmann seems likely to be right in suggesting that an old herdsman is here describing to an incredulous listener an appearance of the transformed Glaucus. Siegmann and Cantarella think we have first part of a dialogue, then a continuous speech; Siegmann beings the latter at l. 5, Cantarella at l. 8. But isthi in l. 4 is no certain evidence for this, and for all we know the whole fragment may belong to a single speech by a single speaker.
. . . foolish . . . whirlwind . . . few . . be sure. . . . And I still believe the certain witness of my own eyes. I was not blear-eyed or peering vainly to no purpose when I saw this fearful thing, this awful happening. You know, I am a countryman and of these parts; and I am always about the land here opposite Chalcis, and am used to accompany the grazing cattle from the byre to Messapion’s1 leafless lofty crag. And it was from here that my eye lit upon the miracle. When I had come to the bend of Euboea, about the headland of Cenaean Zeus, right by unhappy Lichas’ tomb . . . four-horse chariot . . .
1. Mt. Messapion is near Anthedon on the Boeotian shore of the Euripus; this is where the Glaucus legend is localised by Strabo 9. 405, and Pausanias 9. 22. 5 f.
DIKTYOULKOI
FRAGMENTS 274-275
(a) 274: ed. pr. Vitelli-Norsa, Bulletin de la société royale d’archéologie d’Alexandrie, no. 28. 1933, 155 with Plate.
(b) 275 : ed. pr. Lobel, P. Oxy., vol. 18, 1941, no. 2161, 9, with Plate III.
This was the satyr-play that accompanied Aeschylus’ trilogy about Perseus. Two of the plays were called Phorcides and Polydectes; the name of the third is not known. If it was the first of the trilogy, it presumably described the cruel treatment of Danaë by her father Acrisius; if it was the third, it may have described Perseus’ coming to Argos and Acrisius’ death (see Pfeiffer, l.c., 20; Howe, A.J.A. 57, 1953, 269).
Fr. 274 describes how two people catch sight of the chest containing Danaë and the infant Perseus as it appears near the shore of the small Aegean island of Seriphos. The usual legend was that it was fished up by Dictys, the brother of Poly
dectes, king of that place; considering the proverbial insignificance of Seriphos there is nothing odd in the king’s brother being a fisherman. Dictys must be one of the speakers; who is the other? Possibly it is a companion of a slave of his; but the limitation on the number of the actors makes against this. Settie thinks that the Chorus of satyrs is already on the stage, and that one or more of its members speaks during this scene; but it seems likelier that the Chorus arrives in answer to the call for help in ll. 17 f., just as the Chorus of Aristophanes’ Peace is summoned by a very similar appeal (269 f.). Perhaps the likeliest companion for Dictys during this scene is the father of the satyrs, Silenus.
What are the satyrs doing on Seriphos? Perhaps Aeschylus accounted for their presence by the legend of their pursuit of the pirates who carried off Dionysus (cf. Euripides’ Cyclops). It may be that they are temporarily enslaved there, perhaps to Polydectes, as they are to Polyphemus in the Cyclops. Dictys’ companion seems to be there to help him; and it may be that Silenus has come fishing with him as his assistant.
There is no certain means of knowing which lines are spoken by Dictys and which by his companion. Like all others except Setti, I have assumed that there are only two speakers; but I have preferred to make Dictys the second, not the first, of these. The chest is said to have been fished up by Dictys, and the first speaker has been identified with Dictys on the ground of l. 12, where the net is called his. But it is doubtful if the ethic dative shows that the net is regarded as the special property of either speaker; they may well have one net between them, and the words may simply mean, “What have you there in the net?” I suspect that Dictys was the more observant and less excitable of the two companions; but there is no knowing which he really was. If the other speaker really is Silenus, and if the net was in any sense his, he may have based his claim to Danaê later on this fact; compare the behaviour of Gripus in Plautus’ Rudens.
Fr. 275 begins with a solemn offer of protection made to Danaë by an unknown speaker. Danaë’s response is to appeal to the gods for help. There follow 14 lines of what look to have been choriambic dimeters, spoken by the Chorus. Next comes a passage of glyconics and pherecrateans 22 lines long, in which the unknown speaker tries to captivate the child by describing the delights of hunting that he will enjoy when he, the speaker, is his stepfather. The Chorus next calls, in anapaestic dimeters, for the immediate conclusion of the marriage.
Who is the unknown speaker of 765-72 and of 798-820? If Lobel is right in suggesting that 799-800 may have meant “Damme if I am not glad . . .”, with the speaker referring to himself, as people sometimes do in utterances of this kind, 798-820 will have been spoken by Dictys. But as Lobel says (p. 9), one need only reject this suggestion to make it possible to assign the parts differently. And the suggestion is a very long way from being certain. It may be that the speaker is expected to say “If damn me,” but gets a comic effect by saying instead, “If . . ., damn Dictys” (Dictys being his rival); or it may be that the apodosis to the “if” clause came in the lost portion of the text that precedes it, and that a new sentence begins at the beginning of l. 800. Now whoever speaks these lines is evidently in close collusion with the satyrs, as their following anapaests show. Can the person thus closely associated with the satyrs have been Dictys? Nothing can be more unlikely. A reliable clue to his identity is given by his holding out to the child the delights not of fishing, but of hunting. There cannot have been much game on Seriphos; but the description of the woodland life is just what might be expected from the other obvious possible speaker, Silenus, father of the satyrs.
It is reasonable to suppose, with Siegamm, that Dictys’ call for help in hauling in the heavy chest was answered by the satyrs; that they helped him bring his catch to land; that Dictys and the satyrs quarrelled over what should be done with Danaë; and that Dictys went off to get help. Who will have spoken 765-72? These cannot be the last words of Dictys before departing, for we would not then understand why instead of answering Danaë implores the gods for help. They must have been spoken by Silenus; 770-2 looks like a piece of the same grotesque wheedling as Silenus’ later speech contains.
We know from a stichometrical mark opposite l. 800 that the first line of this fragment was l. 765 of the play. Kamerbeek insists that an Aeschylean satyr-play cannot have had many more than 800 lines; and that since other plays by Aeschylus ended with marching anapaests, therefore this one must have ended with the marching anapaests that begin at 821. As we have no idea of the average length of an Aeschylean satyr-play, and as we have no possible ground for insisting that the marching anapaests must have brought the play to a close, his argument lacks cogency. And if the conclusions drawn above are not hopelessly wrong, we must infer that Dictys returned with a party of his friend and forced Silenus to give up his booty.
The view of Mette and Kamerbeek that Dictys and Silenus are somehow one and the same person seems to me very improbable indeed. The rescue of a distressed beauty from the satyrs was a not uncommon theme in satyric drama; Amymone, Iris and even Hera were all beset by satyrs (see Guggisberg, Das Satyrspiel, Diss. Zürich, 1947, 63). And the red-figure lecythos illustrated in Ath. Mitt. 1891, plate IX (cf. Buschor, ibid., 1927, 230, and Satyrtänze und Frühes Drama 105, with Abb. 80) illustrates what may happen when an unprotected female arrives at a lonely island where there are satyrs who in Buschor’s words “are suffering severely from the lack of nymphs.”
FRAGMENT 274
? — Can you see . . .?
DICTYS. — I can see. . . .
? — What do you want me to look out for? . . .
DICTYS. — In case anywhere . . . in the sea. . . .
— Not a sign; so far as I can see, the sea’s a mill-pond.
DICTYS. — Look now at the crannies of the cliffs by the shore.
? — All right, I’m looking. . . . Good Lord, what am I to call this! Is it a monster of the sea that meets my eyes, a grampus or a shark or a whale? Lord Poseidon and Zeus of the deep, a fine gift to send up from the sea . . .!
DICTYS. — What gift of the sea does your net conceal? It’s covered with seaweed like. . . . Is it some warm-blooded creature? Or has the Old Man of the Islands sent us something in a chest? How tremendously heavy it is! the work’s not going ahead! I’ll shout and raise an alarm. HALLO THERE! Farmers and ditchers, this way, all of you! Herdsmen and shepherds, anyone in the place! Coastal folk and all you other toilers of the sea! . . .
1. The context suggests that gerôn nêsaios, “the Old Man of the Islands,” may have been identical with the halios gerôn, “the Old Man of the Sea.” But the text is partly conjectural, and the assumption is not a safe one.
Pfeiffer (l.c. 18, cf. ibid. 11) thinks the words gerôn nêsaios refer to Dictys’ companion. If so, why is he referred to in the third person, as their being in the nominative case seems to imply?
FRAGMENT 275
SILENUS.
[765] . . . I call upon . . . and the gods to witness what I now proclaim to the whole company. But whatever you do, don’t rush recklessly away from us; understand at last and accept me as a most kindly protector and supporter. Why, look, the boy is greeting me with friendly words, as he would his respected grandmother. Won’t he always be the same towards me, as time goes on?
DANAË
[773] Rivers of Argos and gods of my fathers, and you, Zeus, who bring my ordeal to such an end! Will you give me to these beasts, so that they may outrage me with their savage onslaughts, or so that I endure in captivity the worst of tortures? Anyhow, I shall escape. Shall I then knot myself a noose, applying a desperate remedy against this torture, so that no one may put me to sea again, neither a lascivious beast nor a father? No, I am afraid to! Zeus, send me some help in this plight, I beg you! for you were guilty of the greater fault, but it is I who have paid the full penalty. I call upon you to set things right! You have heard all I have to say.
CHORUS.
[786] Look, the little one is smiling sweetly as he looks on his shining r
addled bald pate. . . . Qualis vero amator mentularum est hic pusillus!
[SILENUS.]
[788] . . . if I don’t rejoice in the sight of you. Damnation take Dictys, who is trying to cheat me of this prize behind my back! [To Perseus.] Come here, my dearie! [He makes chuckling noises.] Don’t be frightened! Why are you whimpering? Over here to my sons, so that you can come to my protecting arms, dear boy — I’m so kind — , and you can find pleasure in the martens and fawns and the young porcupines, and can make a third in bed with your mother and with me your father. And daddy shall give, the little one his fun. And you shall lead a healthy life, so that one day, when you’ve grown strong, you yourself — for your father’s losing his grip on his fawn-killing footwork — you yourself shall catch beasts without a spear, and shall give them to your mother for dinner, after the fashion of her husband’s family, amongst whom you’ll be earning your keep.
CHORUS
[821] Come now, dear fellows, let us go and hurry on the marriage, for the time is ripe for it and without words speaks for it. Why, I see that already the bride is eager to enjoy our love to the full. No wonder: she spent a long time wasting away all lonely in the ship beneath the foam. Well, now that she has before her eyes our youthful vigour, she rejoices and exults; such is the bridegroom that by the bright gleam of Aphrodite’s torches. . . .
THEÔROI Ê ISMIASTAI
FRAGMENT 276
Ed. pr. Lobel, P. Oxy., vol. 18, no. 2162, with Plates IV and V.
These fragments are preserved on two sheets of papyrus (1 and 2), each containing two columns of writing; of these columns, 1 (i) and 2 (ii) are mostly readable, but only the bottom part of 1 (ii) and only the top part of 2 (i) are preserved. Were the two sheets in fact consecutive, so that 2 (i) supplies the top and 1 (ii) the bottom of the same column, a column that stood in the text between 1 (i) and 2 (ii)? Lobel says that this cannot be determined, but that the possibility cannot be excluded; Snell (in Hermes, l.c.) boldly assumes that it is so. The sense yielded by the text at the three points where the fragments would join one another ought to resolve this question; these points fall between lines 35 and 36, between lines 53 and 61 and between lines 72 and 73 in the text printed below. At the first two points, the text is too deficient for the sense to furnish any evidence either way; but at the third the sense given by the join is good. I have therefore followed Snell in printing the text in accordance with this suggestion, but not without considerable misgivings. If 1 (ii) and 2 (i) really belonged to the same column, one would expect the pattern of the fibres to make this clear: but it does not. There is a small fragment (1 (b)) which if this is right must come from the middle of the column containing 1 (ii) and 2 (i); but it cannot be fitted to either of these fragments.