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Editor’s Note
Preface
On the Genius and Character of the Greek Tragedy
The Life of Æschylus
Agamemnon
ChoephorÆ Or, the Libation-bearers a Lyrico-dramatic Spectacle
The Eumenides
Prometheus Bound a Lyrico-dramatic Spectacle
The Suppliants a Lyrico-dramatic Spectacle
The Seven Against Thebes a Lyrico-dramatic Spectacle
The Persians a Historical Cantata
List of Editions Commentaries and Translations Used By the Translator

THE SUPPLIANTS

A LYRICO-DRAMATIC SPECTACLE

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby
Some have entertained angels unawares.
St. Paul.

πρὸς γὰρ Διός ἐισιν ἅπαντες
Ξεɩ̂νοί τε πτωχόι τε.
Homer.

PERSONS

Chorus of Danaides.

Danaus.

Pelasgus, King of Argos, and Attendants.

Herald.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Considered by itself, the action of this piece is the most meagre that can be conceived, and, as the poet has handled it, contains little that can stir the deeper feelings of the heart, or strike the imagination strongly That the king of the Argives should feel serious doubts as to the propriety of receiving such a band of foreigners into his kingdom, formidable not in their own strength, indeed, but in respect of the pursuing party, by whom they were claimed, was most natural; equally natural, however, and, in a poetic point of view, necessary, that his political fears should finally be outweighed by his benevolent regard for the rights of unprotected virgins, and his pious fear of the wrath of Jove, the protector of suppliants The alternation of mind between these contending feelings, till a final resolve is taken on the side of the right, affords no field for the higher faculty of the dramatist to display itself As we have it, accordingly, the Suppliants is, perhaps, the weakest performance of Æschylus. But the fact is, there is the best reason to believe that the great father of tragedy never meant this piece to stand alone, but wrote it merely to usher in the main action, which followed in the other pieces of a trilogy; the names of which pieces—Ἀιγύπτιοι, and Δαναίδες—are preserved in the list of the author’s pieces still extant. Of this, the whole conclusion of the present piece, and especially the latter half of the last choral chaunt, furnishes the most conclusive evidence.

The remainder of the story, which formed the main action of the trilogy, is well known. Immediately after the reception of the fugitives, by the Argives, their pursuers arrive, and land on the coast This arrival is announced in the last scene of the present piece. On this, Danaus, unwilling to lead his kind host into a war, pretends to yield to the suit still as eagerly pressed, and the marriage is agreed on. But a terrible revenge had been devised. At the very moment that he hands over his unwilling but obedient daughters to the subjection of their hated cousins, he gives them secret instructions to furnish themselves each with a dagger, and, during the watches of the nuptial night, to dip the steel in the throats of their unsuspecting lords. The bloody deed was completed. Only one of all the fifty daughters, preferring the fame of true womanhood to the claims of filial homage, spared her mate Hypermnestra saved her husband Lynceus. This conduct, of course, brought the daughter into collision with her father and her father’s family; and one of those strifes of our mysterious moral nature was educed, which, as we have seen in the trilogy of the Orestiad, it was one great purpose of the Æschylean drama to reconcile. If the murder occupied the second piece, as the progress of the story naturally brings with it, a third piece, according to the analogy of the Eumenides, would be necessary to bring about the reconciliation, and effect that purifying of the passions which Aristotle points out as the great moral result of tragic composition That Aphrodite was the great celestial agent employed in the finale of the Suppliants, as Pallas Athena is in the Furies, has been well divined; a beautiful fragment in celebration of love, and in favour of Hypermnestra remains; but to attempt a reconstruction of these lost pieces at the present day, though an amusement of which the learned Germans are fond, is foreign to the habits of the British mind. Those who feel inclined to see what ingenuity may achieve in this region, are referred to Welcker’s Trilogie, and Gruppe’s Ariadne.

The moral tone and character of this piece is in the highest degree pleasing and satisfactory. The Supreme Jove, whose prominent attribute is power, here receives a glorification as the protector of the persecuted, and the refuge of the distressed On the duty of hospitality, under the sanction of Ζεύς ξἑνιος and ἱκεσιος, as practised among the ancient Greeks, I refer the reader with pleasure to Grote’s History of Greece, Vol. II., p. 114

“The scene,” says Potter, “is near the shore, in an open grove, close to the altar and images of the gods presiding over the sacred games, with a view of the sea and ships of Egyptus on one side, and of the town of Argos on the other, with hills, and woods, and vales, a river flowing between them: all, together with the persons of the drama, forming a picture that would have well employed the united pencils of Poussin and Claude.”

Chorus,entering the stage in procession. March time.

Chorus

Jove, the suppliant’s high protector,1
Look from Heaven, benignly favouring
Us the suppliant band, swift-oared
Hither sailing, from the seven mouths
Of the fat fine-sanded Nile!2
From the land that fringes Syria,
Land divine, in flight we came,
Not by public vote forth-driven,
Not by taint of blood divorced
From our native state,* but chastely
Our abhorrent foot withdrawing
From impure ungodly wedlock
With Ægyptus’ sons, too nearly
Cousined with ourselves. For wisely,
This our threatened harm well-weighing,
Danaus, our sire, prime counsellor,
And leader of our sistered band,
Timely chose this least of sorrows
O’er the salt-sea wave to flee;
And here on Argive soil to plant us,
Whence our race its vaunted spring
Drew divinely, when great Jove
Gently thrilled the brize-stung heifer3
With his procreant touch, and breathed
Godlike virtue on her womb.
Where on Earth should we hope refuge
On more friendly ground than this,
In our hands these green boughs bearing
Wreathed with precatory wool?†
Ye blissful gods supremely swaying4
Land and city, and lucid streams;
And ye in sepulchres dark, severely
Worshipped ’neath the sunless ground;
And thou, the third, great Jove the Saviour,
Guardian of all holy homes,
With your spirit gracious-wafted,
Breathe fair welcome on this band
Of suppliant maids But in the depth
Of whirling waves engulph the swarm
Of insolent youths, Ægyptus’ sons,
Them, and their sea-cars swiftly oared,
Ere this slimy shore receive
Their hated footprint. Let them labour,
With wrath-spitting seas confronted.
By the wild storm wintry-beating,
Thunder-crashing, lightning flashing,
By the tyrannous blast shower-laden
Let them perish, ere they mount
Marriage beds which right refuses,5
Us, their father’s brother’s daughters
To their lawless yoke enthralling!

TheChorusassemble in a band round the centre of the Orchestra, and sing the Choral Hymn.

STROPHE I.
Give ear to our prayer, we implore thee,
Thou son, and the mother that bore thee—
The calf and the heifer divine!*
From afar be thine offspring’s avenger,
Even thou, once a beautiful ranger
O’er these meads with the grass-cropping kine!
And thou, whom she bore to her honor,
When the breath of the Highest was on her,
And the touch of the finger divine;
Thine ear, mighty god, we implore thee
To the prayer of thine offspring incline!

ANTISTROPHE I.
O Thou who with blessing anointed,
Wert born when by Fate ’twas appointed,
With thy name to all ages a sign!†
In this land of the mother that bore thee,
Her toils we remember before thee,
Where she cropped the green mead with the kine.
O strange were her fortunes, and stranger
The fate that hath chased me from danger
To the home of the heifer divine.
O son, with the mother that bore thee,
Stamp my tale with thy truth for a sign!

STROPHE AND ANTISTROPHE II.
While we cry, should there haply be near us
An Argive, an augur,* to hear us,
When our shrill-piercing wail
His ear shall assail,
’Tis the cry he will deem, and none other,
Of Procne, the woe-wedded mother,
The hawk-hunted nightingale;†
Sad bird, when its known streams it leaveth,
And with fresh-bleeding grief lonely grieveth,
And telleth the tale,
With a shrill-voiced wail,
How the son that she loved, and none other,
Was slain by his fell-purposed mother,
The woe-wedded nightingale!

STROPHE III.
Even so from the Nile summer-tinted,
With Ionian wailings unstinted,6
My cheek with the keen nail I tear;
And I pluck, where it bloweth,
Grief’s blossom that groweth
In this heart first acquainted with care;
And I fear the fierce band,
From the far misty land,7
Whom the swift ships to Argos may bear.

ANTISTROPHE III.
Ye gods of my race, seeing clearly
The right which ye cherish so dearly,
To the haughty your hatred declare!
’Gainst the right ye will never
Chaste virgins deliver,
The bed of the lawless to share;
From the god-fenced altar
Each awe-struck assaulter
Back shrinks. Our sure bulwark is there.

STROPHE IV.
O would that Jove might show to men
His counsel as he planned it,
But ah! he darky weaves the scheme,
No mortal eye hath scanned it.
It burns through darkness brightly clear
To whom the god shall show it;
But mortal man, through cloudy fear,
Shall search in vain to know it.

ANTISTROPHE IV.
Firm to the goal his purpose treads,
His will knows no frustration;
When with his brow the mighty god
Hath nodded consummation
But strangely, strangely weave their maze
His counsels, dusky wending,
Concealed in densely-tangled ways
From human comprehending.

STROPHE V.
From their high-towering hopes the proud
In wretched rout he casteth.
No force he wields; his simple will,
His quiet sentence blasteth.
All godlike power is calm;8 and high
On thrones of glory seated,
Jove looks from Heaven with tranquil eye,
And sees his will completed.

ANTISTROPHE V.
Look down, O mighty god, and see
How this harsh wedlock planning,
That dry old tree in saplings green,
The insolent lust is fanning!
Madly he hugs the frenzied plan
With perverse heart unbending,
Hot-spurred, till Ruin seize the man,
Too late to think of mending.

STROPHE VI.
Ah! well-a-day! ah! well-a-day!9
Thus sadly I hymn the sorrowful lay,
With a shrill-voiced cry,
With a sorrow-streaming eye,
Well-a-day, woe’s me!
Thus I grace my own tomb with the wail pouring free,
Thus I sing my own dirge, ah me!*
Ye Apian hills, be kind to me,
And throw not back the stranger’s note,
But know the Libyan wail.
Behold how, rent to sorrow’s note,
My linen robes all loosely float,
And my Sidonian veil.

ANTISTROPHE VI.
Ah! well-a-day! ah! well-a-day!
My plighted vows I’ll duly pay,
Ye gods, if ye will save
From the foe, and from the grave
My trembling life set free!
Surges high, surges high, sorrow’s many-billowed sea,
And woe towers on woe. Ah me!
Ye Apian hills,10 be kind to me,
And throw not back the stranger’s note
But know the Libyan wail!
Behold how, rent to sorrow’s note,
My linen robes all loosely float,
And my Sidonian veil!

STROPHE VII.
And yet, in that slight timbered house, well-armed
With frequent-plashing oar,
Stiff sail and cordage straining, all unharmed
By winter’s stormy roar,
We reached this Argive shore.
Safely so far. May Jove, the all-seeing, send
As the beginning, so the prosperous end.
And may he grant, indeed,
That we, a gracious mother’s gracious seed,
By no harsh kindred wooed,
May live on Apian ground unyoked and unsubdued!

ANTISTROPHE VII.
May she, the virgin daughter of high Jove,*
Our virgin litany hear,
Our loving homage answering with more love!
She that, with face severe,
Repelled, in awful fear,
Each rude aggressor, in firm virtue cased,
Nor knew the lustful touch divinely chaste.
And may she grant, indeed,
That we, a gracious mother’s gracious seed,
By no harsh kindred wooed,
May live on Apian ground unyoked and unsubdued.

STROPHE VIII.
But if no aid to us may be,
Libya’s swart sun-beaten daughters,
The rope shall end our toils; and we,
Beneath the ground, shall fare to thee,
Thou many-guested Jove,†
To thee our suppliant boughs we’ll spread,
Thou Saviour of the weary Dead,
Far from the shining thrones of blissful gods above.
Ah, Jove too well we know
What wrath divine scourged ancient Io, wailing
Beneath thy consort’s anger heaven-scaling;
And even so,
On Io’s seed may blow
A buffeting blast from her of black despairful woe.

ANTISTROPHE VIII.
O Jove, how then wilt thou be free
From just reproach of Libya’s daughters,
If thou in us dishonoured see
Him whom the heifer bore to thee
Whom thou didst chiefly love.
If thou from us shalt turn thy face,
What suppliant then shall seek thy grace?
O hear my prayer enthroned in loftiest state above!
For well, too well, we know
What wrath divine scourged ancient Io, wailing
Beneath thy consort’s anger heaven-scaling;
And even so,
On Io’s seed may blow
A buffeting blast from her of black despairful woe

EnterDanaus.

Danaus.

Be wise, my daughters. In no rash flight with me,
A hoary father, and a faithful pilot,
Ye crossed the seas; nor less is wisdom needful
Ashore; be wise, and on your heart’s true tablet
Engrave my words. For lo! where mounts the dust,
A voiceless herald of their coming; hear
Their distant-rumbling wheels! A host I see
Of bright shield-bearing and spear-shaking men,
Swift steeds, and rounded cars.11 Of our here landing,
Timely apprised, the chiefs that rule this country
Come with their eyes to read us. But be their coming
Harmless, or harsh with fell displeasure, here
On this high-seat of the Agonian gods12
Is safety for my daughters; for an altar
Is a sure tower of strength, a shield that bears
The rattling terror dintless. Go ye, therefore,
Embrace these altars, in your sistered hands13
These white-wreathed precatory boughs presenting,
Which awful Jove reveres; and with choice phrase
Wisely your pity-moving tale-commend
When they shall ask you; as becomes the stranger,
The bloodless motive of your flight declaring
With clear recital The bold tongue eschewing,
With sober-fronted face and quiet eye
Your tale unfold. The garrulous prate, the length
Of slow-drawn speech beware. Such fault offends
This people sorely. Chiefly know to yield:
Thou art the weaker—a poor helpless stranger—
The bold-mouthed phrase suits ill with thy condition.

Chorus.

Father, thou speakest wisely: nor unwisely
Thy words would we receive, in memory’s ward
Storing thy hests; ancestral Jove be witness!

Danaus.

Even so; and with benignant eye look down!14

EnterKing.

King.

Whom speak we here? Whence come? Certes no Greeks.
Your tire rich-flaunting with barbaric pride
Bespeaks you strangers. Argos knows you not,
Nor any part of Greece. Strange surely ’tis
That all unheralded, unattended all,
And of no host the acknowledged guest, unfearing
Ye tread this land.19 If these boughs, woolly-wreathed,
That grace the altars of the Agonian gods
Speak what to Greeks they should speak, ye are suppliants.
Thus much I see: what more remains to guess
I spare; yourselves have tongues to speak the truth.

Chorus.

That we are strangers is most true; but whom
See we in thee? a citizen? a priest?
A temple warder with his sacred wand?
The ruler of the state?

King.

Speak with a fearless tongue, and plainly. I
Of old earth-born Palæcthon am the son,20
My name Pelasgus, ruler of this land;
And fathered with my name the men who reap
Earth’s fruits beneath my sway are called Pelasgi;
And all the land where Algos flows, and Strymon,21
Toward the westering sun my sceptre holds.
My kingdom the Perrhæbians bound, and those
Beyond high Pindus, by Pæonia, and
The Dodonéan heights; the briny wave
Completes the circling line; within these bounds
I rule; but here, where now thy foot is planted,
The land is Apia, from a wise physician
Of hoary date so called. He, from Naupactus,
Apollo’s son, by double right, physician
And prophet both,22 crossed to this coast, and freed it
By holy purifyings, from the plague
Of man-destroying monsters, which the ground
With ancient taint of blood polluted bore.
This plague his virtue medicinal healed,
That we no more unfriendly fellowship
Hold with the dragon-brood. Such worthy service
With thankful heart the Argive land received,
And Apis lives remembered in her prayers.
Of this from me assured, now let me hear
Your whence, and what your purpose. Briefly speak;
This people hates much phrase.

Chorus.

Our tale is short.
We by descent are Argives, from the seed
Of the heifer sprung, whose womb was blest in bearing;
And this in every word we can confirm
By manifest proofs.

King.

That ye are Argives, this
My ear receives not; an unlikely tale!
Like Libyan women rather; not a line
I trace in you that marks our native race.
Nile might produce such daughters; ye do bear
A Cyprian character in your female features,
The impressed likeness of some plastic male.*
Of wandering Indians I have heard, that harness
Camels for mules, huge-striding, dwelling near
The swarthy Æthiop land; ye may be such;
Or, had ye war’s accoutrement, the bow,
Ye might be Amazons, stern, husband-hating,
Flesh-eating maids. But speak, that I may know
The truth. How vouch ye your descent from Argos?

Chorus.

They say that Io, on this Argive ground,
Erst bore the keys to Hera,23 then ’tis said,
So runs the general rumour—24

King.

I have heard.
Was it not so, Jove with the mortal maid
Mingled in love?

Chorus.

Even so; in love they mingled,
Deceiving Hera’s bed.

King.

And how then ended
The Olympian strife?

Chorus.

Enraged, the Argive goddess
To a heifer changed the maid.

King.

And the god came
To the fair horned heifer?

Chorus.

Like a leaping bull,
Transformed he came,25 so the hoar legend tells.

King.

Argives in sooth ye seem,
By old descent participant of the soil;
But by what stroke of sore mischance harsh-smitten,
Dared ye to wander from your native seats?

Chorus.

Pelasgian prince, a motley-threaded web
Is human woe; a wing of dappled plumes.
Past hope and faith it was that we, whose blood
From Argive Io flows, to Io’s city,
In startled flight, should measure back our way,
To escape from hated marriage.

King.

How say’st thou?
To escape from marriage thou art here, displaying
These fresh-cropt branches, snowy-wreathed, before
The Agonian gods?

Chorus

Ay! Never, never may we
Be thralled to Ægyptus’ sons!

King.

Speak’st thou of hate
To them, or of a bond your laws forbid?

Chorus.

Both this and that.27 Who should be friends were foes,
And blood with blood near-mingled basely flows

King.

But branch on branch well grafted goodlier grows

Chorus.

Urge not this point; but rather think one word
From thee the wretched rescues.

King.

How then shall I
My friendly disposition show?

Chorus.

We ask
But this—from our pursuers save us.

King.

What!
Shall I for unknown exiles breed a war?

Chorus.

Justice will fight for him who fights for us.

King.

Doubtless; if Justice from the first hath stamped
Your cause for hers.

Chorus[pointing to the altar].

The state’s high poop here crowned Revere.

King.

This green environment of shade,
Mantling the seats of the gods I see, and shudder.

Chorus.

The wrath of suppliant Jove28 is hard to bear.

STROPHE I.
O hear my cry, benignly hear!
Thou son of Palæcthon, hear me!
The fugitive wandering suppliant hear!
Thou king of Pelasgians, hear me!
Like a heifer young by the wolf pursued29
O’er the rocks so cliffy and lonely,
And loudly it lows to the herdsman good,
Whose strength can save it only.

King

My eyes are tasked; there, ’neath the shielding shade
Of fresh-lopt branches I behold you clinging
To these Agonian gods; but what I do
Must spare the state from harm. I must provide
That no unlooked-for unprepared event
Beget new strife; of this we have enough.

ANTISTROPHE I.

Chorus.

Great Jove that allotteth their lot to all,
By his sentence of right shall clear thee,
Dread Themis that heareth the suppliants’ call,
No harm shall allow to come near thee.
Though I speak to the old with the voice of the young,
Do the will of the gods, and surely
Their favour to thee justly weighed shall belong,
When thy gifts thou offerest purely.

King.

Not at my hearth with precatory boughs
Ye lie. The state, if guilty taint from you
Affect the general weal, will for the state
Take counsel. I nor pledge nor promise give,
Till all the citizens hear what thou shalt say.

STROPHE II.

Chorus.

Thou art the state, and the people art thou,30
The deed that thou doest who judges?
The hearth and the altar before thee bow,
The grace that thou grantest who grudges?
Thou noddest, the will that thou willest is thine,
Thy vote with no voter thou sharest;
The throne is all thine, and the sceptre divine,
And thy guilt, when thou sinnest, thou bearest.

King

Guilt lie on those that hate me! but your prayers
Harmless I may not hear; and to reject them
Were harsh. To do, and not to do alike
Perplex me; on the edge of choice I tremble.

ANTISTROPHE II.

Chorus.

Him worship who sitteth a watchman in Heaven,
And looks on this life of our labour;
Nor looketh in vain, when the wretched is driven
From the gate of his pitiless neighbour.
On our knees when we fall, and for mercy we call,
If his right thou deny to the stranger,
Jove shall look on thy home, from his thunder dome,
Sternly wrathful, the suppliants’ avenger.

King.

But if Ægyptus’ sons shall claim you, pleading
Their country’s laws, and their near kinship, who
Shall dare to stand respondent? You must plead
Your native laws, so the laws plead for you,
And speak you free from who would force your love.

STROPHE III.

Chorus.

Ah ne’er to the rough-handed youth let me yield,
But rather alone, ’neath the wide starry field,
Let me wander, an outcast, a stranger!
The ill-sorted yoke I abhor: and do thou,
With Justice to second thee, judge for me now,
And fear Him above, the Avenger!

King.

Not I shall judge: it is no easy judgment.
What I have said, I said. Without the people
I cannot do this thing;31 being absolute king,
I would not. Justly, if mischance shall follow,
The popular tongue will blame the ruler, who,
To save the stranger, ruined his own flock.

ANTISTROPHE III.

Chorus.

Where kindred with kindred contendeth in war,
Jove looks on the strife, and decides from afar,
Where he holdeth the scales even-handed,*
O why wilt thou doubt to declare for the right?
He blesseth the good, but in anger will smite,
Where the sons of the wicked are banded.

King.

To advise for you in such confounding depths,
My soul should be a diver, to plunge down
Far in the pool profound with seeing eye,
And feel no dizziness. ’Tis no light matter
Here to unite your safety and the state’s.
If that your kindred claim you as their right,
And we withstand, a bloody strife ensues.
If from these altars of the gods we tear you,
Your chosen refuge, we shall surely bring
The all-destroying god, the stern Alastor,*
To house with us, whom not the dead in Hades
Can flee. Is here no cause to ponder well?

STROPHE I.

Chorus.

Ponder well,
With thee to dwell,
A righteous-minded host receive us!
Weary-worn,
Exiles lorn,
From the godless men that grieve us
Save to-day;
Nor cast-a-way
Homeless, houseless, hopeless leave us!

ANTISTROPHE I.
Shall rash assaulters
From these altars
Rudely drag the friendless stranger?
Thou art king,
’Neath thy wing
Cowers in vain the weak from danger?
Thy terror show
To our fierce foe,
Fear, O fear our High Avenger!

STROPHE II.
Where they see
The gods and thee,
Shall their lawless will not falter?
Shall they tear
My floating hair,
As a horse dragged by the halter?
Wilt thou bear
Him to tear
My frontlets fair,
My linen robes—the bold assaulter?

ANTISTROPHE II.
One the danger,
If the stranger
Thou reject, or welcome wisely;
For thee and thine
To Mars a fine
Thou shalt pay the same precisely:
From Egypt far
Fearing war,
Thou shalt mar
Thy peace with mighty Jove, not wisely.

King.

Both ways I’m marred. Even here my wits are stranded.
With these or those harsh war to make, strong Force
Compels my will. Nailed am I like a vessel
Screwed to the dock, beneath the shipwright’s tool.
Which way I turn is woe. A plundered house
By grace of possessory Jove32 may freight
New ships with bales that far outweigh the loss;
And a rash tongue that overshoots the mark
With barbéd phrase that harshly frets the heart,
With one smooth word, may charm the offence away.
But ere the sluice of kindred blood be opened,
With vows and victims we must pray the gods
Importunate, if perchance such fateful harm
They may avert. Myself were little wise
To mingle in this strife: of such a war
Most ignorant is most blest: but may the gods
Deceive my fears, and crown your hopes with blessing!

Chorus.

These gods shall see me
Here hanging from their shrines.

King.

Hush, maiden! Hush!
Thy words pierce through my marrow!

Chorus.

Thou hast heard
No blind enigma now. I gave it eyes.

King.

Alas! with vast environment of ills
I’m hedged all round. Misfortune, like a sea,
Comes rushing in: the deep unfathomed flood
I fear to cross, and find no harbour nigh.
Thy prayer if I refuse, black horror rises
Before me, that no highest-pointed aim
May overshoot. If posted fore these walls
I give thy kindred battle, I shall be
Amerced with bitter loss, who reckless dared
For woman’s sake to incarnadine the plain
With brave men’s blood. Yet I perforce must fear
The wrath of suppliant Jove, than which no terror
Awes human hearts more strongly. Take these branches,
Thou aged father of these maids, and place them
On other altars of the native gods,
Where they may speak, true heralds of thy mission,
To all the citizens: and, mark me, keep
My words within thy breast: for still the people
To spy a fault in whoso bears authority
Have a most subtle sight. Trust your good cause.
Thy pitiful tale may move their righteous ire
Against your haughty-hearted persecutors,
And ’neath their wings they’ll shield you. The afflicted
Plead for themselves: their natural due is kindness.

Danaus.

Your worth we know to prize, and at their weight
Our high protector’s friendly words we value.
But send, we pray, attendant guides to show us
The pillar-compassed seats divine,33 the altars
That stand before their temples, who protect
This city and this land, and to insure
Our safety mid the people: for our coming
(Being strangers from the distant Nile, and not
Like you that drink the stream of Inachus
In features or in bearing) might seem strange.
Too bold an air might rouse suspicion; men
Oft-times have slain their best friends unawares.

King[to the Attendants].

See him escorted well! conduct him
hence
To the altars of the city, to the shrines
Of the protecting gods, wasting no speech
On whom you meet. Attend the suppliant stranger!

[Exeunt Attendants withDanaus.

Chorus.

These words to him: and, with his sails well trimmed,
Fair be his voyage! But I, what shall I do,
My anchor where?

King.

Here leave these boughs that prove
Thy sorrows.

Chorus.

Here at thy rever’d command
I leave them.

King.

Thy father will return anon, meanwhile
I go to call the assembly of the people,34
And in thy favour move them, if I can.
Thy father, too, I’ll aptly train, how he
Should woo their favour. Wait ye here, and pray
The native gods to crown your heart’s desire
I go to speed the business; may Persuasion
And Chance, with happy issue pregnant, guide me!

CHORAL HYMN.
STROPHE I.
King of all kings, high-blest above
Each blest celestial nature,
Strength of the strong, all-glorious Jove,
All crowning Consummator!35
Hear thou our prayer: the proud confound;
With hate pursue the hateful,
And plunge in purpling pools profound
The black-bench’d bark, the fateful!

ANTISTROPHE I.
Our ancient line from thee we trace
Our root divinely planted;
Look on these sisters with the grace
To that loved maid once granted,
Our mother Io; and renew
Sweet memory in the daughters
Of her thy gentle touch who knew
By Nile’s deep-rolling waters.

STROPHE II.
Here, even here, where ’mid the browsing kine,
My Argive mother fed her eye divine,
With rich mead’s flowery store,
My Libyan foot I’ve planted; hence by the brize36
Divinely fretted with fitful oar she hies37
From various shore to shore,
God-madded wanderer. Twice the billowy wave
She crossed; and twice her fated name she gave
To the wide sea’s straitened roar.

ANTISTROPHE II.
Spurred through the Asian land with swiftest speed
She fled, where Phrygian flocks far-pasturing feed
Then restless travelled o’er
Mysia, where Teuthras holds his fortress high,
Cilician and Pamphylian heights, and nigh
Where roaring waters pour
From fountains ever fresh their torrent floods,
And Aphrodite’s land whose loamy roods
Swell with the wheaten store.*

STROPHE III.
Thence by her wingéd keeper stung, she speeds
To the land divine, the many-nurturing meads,
And to the snow-fed stream,
Which like impetuous Typhon,† vasty pours
Its purest waves, that the salubrious shores
From pestilent taint redeem.‡
Here from harsh Hera’s madly-goading pest,
From hattering chase of undeserved unrest,
At length by the holy stream

ANTISTROPHE III.
She rests. Pale terror smote their hearts who saw
The unwonted sight beheld with startled awe
The thronging sons of Nile;
Nor dared to approach this thing of human face,38
Portentous-mingled with the lowing race,
Treading the Libyan soil.
Who then was he, the brize-stung Io’s friend,
With charms of soothing virtue strong to end
Her weary-wandering toil?

STROPHE IV.
Jove, mighty Jove, Heaven’s everlasting king,
He soft-inspiring came,
And with fond force innocuous heals her ills;
She from her eyes in lucent drops distils
The stream of sorrowful shame,
And in her womb from Jove a burden bore,
A son of blameless fame,
Who with his prosperous life long blessed the Libyan shore

ANTISTROPHE IV.
Far-pealed the land with jubilant shout—from Jove,
From Jove it surely came,
This living root of a far-branching line!
For who but Jove prevailed, with power divine,
Harsh Hera’s wrath to tame?
Such the great work of Jove; and we are such,
O Jove, our race who claim
From him whose name declares the virtue of thy touch.

STROPHE V.
For whom more justly shall my hymn be chaunted
Than thee, above all gods that be, high-vaunted,
Root of my race, great Jove;
Prime moulder from whose plastic-touching hand
Life leaps: thine ancient-minded counsels stand,
Thou all-devising Jove.

ANTISTROPHE V.
High-throned above the highest as the lowest,
Beyond thee none, and mightier none thou knowest,
The unfearing, all-feared one.
When his deep thought takes counsel to fulfil,
No dull delays clog Jove’s decided will,39
He speaks, and it is done.

EnterDanaus.

Danaus.

Be of good cheer, my daughters! All is well,
The popular voice hath perfected our prayers.

Chorus.

Hail father, bearer of good news: but say,
How was the matter stablished? and how far
Prevailed the people’s uplifted hands to save us?

Danaus.

Not doubtingly, but with a bold decision,
That made my old heart young again to see’t.
With one acclaim, a forest of right hands
Rose through the hurtled air. These Libyan exiles—
So ran the popular will—shall find a home
In Argos, free, and from each robber hand
Inviolate, the native or the stranger,
And, whoso holding Argive land refuses
To shield these virgins from the threatened force,
Disgrace shall brand him, and the popular vote
Oust him from Argos. Such response the king
Persuasive forced, with wise admonishment;
Urging the wrath of Jove, which else provoked
Would fatten on our woes, and the twin wrong
To you the stranger, and to them the city,
Pollution at their gate, a fuel to feed
Ills without end. These words the Argive people
Answered with suffragating hands, nor waited
The herald’s call to register their votes:
Just eloquence ruled their willing ear, and Jove
Crowned their fair purpose with the perfect deed.

[Exit.

Chorus.

Come then, sisters, pour we freely
Grateful prayers for Argive kindness;
Jove, the stranger’s friend, befriend us,
While from stranger’s mouth sincerest
Here we voice the hymn,
To a blameless issue, surely,
Jove will guide the fate.

CHORAL HYMN.
STROPHE I.
Jove-born gods, benignly bending,
Look, we pray, with eyes befriending,
On these Argive halls!
Ne’er may Mars, the wanton daring,
With his shrill trump, joyless-blaring,
Wrap, in wild flames, fiercely flaring,
These Pelasgian walls!
Go! thy gory harvest reaping
Far from us: thy bloody weeping
Distant tribes may know.
Bless, O Jove, this Argive nation!
They have heard the supplication
Of thy suppliants low;
Where the swooping Fate abased us,
They with Mercy’s vote upraised us
From the prostrate woe!

ANTISTROPHE I.
Not with the male, the stronger, erring,
But, woman’s weaker cause preferring,
Stood their virtue proof:
Wisely Jove, the Avenger, fearing,
To the chastened eye appearing,
High his front of wrath up-rearing
’Gainst the guilty roof.
For heavily, heavily weighs the Alastor,
Scapeless, and, with sore disaster,
Sinks the sinner low.
Bless, O Jove, this Argive nation,
That knew their kindred’s supplication,
And saved them from the foe:
And when their vows they pay, then surely
Gifts from clean hands offered purely
Thou in grace shalt know.

STROPHE II.
High these suppliant branches raising,
Sisters, ancient Argos praising,
Pour the grateful strain!
Far from thy Pelasgian portals
Dwell black Plague, from drooping mortals
Ebbing life to drain!
May’st thou see the crimson river
From fierce home-bred slaughter, never
Flowing o’er thy plain!
Far from thee the youth-consuming
Blossom-plucking strife!
The harsh spouse of Aphrodite,
Furious Mars in murder mighty,
Where he sees thy beauty blooming,
Spare his blood-smeared knife!

ANTISTROPHE II
May a reverend priesthood hoary
Belt thy shrines, their chiefest glory,
With an holy band!
By the bountiful libation,
By the blazing pile, this nation
Shall securely stand.
Jove, the great All-ruler, fearing,
Jove, the stranger’s stay, revering,
Ye shall save the land;
Jove, sure-throned above all cavil,
Rules by ancient right,
May just rulers never fail thee!
Holy Hecate’s aid avail thee,40
To thy mothers when in travail
Sending labours light!

STROPHE III.
May no wasting march of ruin
Work, O Argos, thine undoing!
Never may’st thou hear
Cries of Mars, the shrill, the lyreless!
Ne’er may tearful moans, and quireless,
Wake the sleeper’s ear!
Far from thee the shapes black-trooping
Of disease, delightless-drooping!
May the blazing death-winged arrow
Of the Sun-god spare the marrow
Of thy children dear!

ANTISTROPHE III.
Mighty Jove, the gracious giver,
With his full-sheaved bounty ever
Crown the fruited year!
Flocks that graze before thy dwelling
With rich increase yearly swelling
The prosperous ploughman cheer!
May the gods no grace deny thee,
And the tuneful Muses nigh thee,
With exuberant raptures brimming,
From virgin throats thy praises hymning
Hold the charmèd ear!

STROPHE IV.
O’er the general weal presiding,
They that rule with far-providing
Wisdom sway, and stably-guiding,
Changeful counsels mar!
Timely with each foreign nation
Leagues of wise conciliation
Let them join, fierce wars avoiding,
From sharp losses far!

ANTISTROPHE IV.
The native gods, strong to deliver,
With blood of oxen free-poured ever,
With laurel-branches failing never,
Piously adore!
Honour thy parents: spurn not lightly
This prime statute sanctioned rightly,
Cling to this, a holy liver,
Steadfast evermore!

Re-enterDanaus.

Danaus.

Well hymned, my daughters! I commend your prayers;
But brace your hearts, nor fear, though I, your father,
Approach the bearer of unlooked-for news.
For from this consecrated hold of gods
I spy the ship; too gallantly it peers
To cheat mine eye. The sinuous sail I see,
The bulging fence-work on each side,41 the prow
Fronted with eyes to track its watery way,42
True to the steerman’s hint that sits behind,
And with no friendly bearing On the deck
Appear the crew, their swarthy limbs more swart
By snow-white vests revealed: a goodly line
Of succour in the rear: but in the van
The admiral ship, with low-furled sail makes way
By the swift strokes of measured-beating oars.
Wait calmly ye, and with well-counselled awe
Cling to the gods; the while ye watch their coming,
Myself will hence, and straight return with aid
To champion our need.43 For I must look for
Some herald or ambassador claiming you,
Their rightful prey, forthwith; but fear ye not,
Their harsh will may not be. This warning take
Should we with help be slow, remain you here
Nor leave these gods, your strength. Faint not: for surely
Comes the appointed hour, and will not stay,
When godless men to Jove just fine shall pay.

STROPHE I.

Chorus.

Father, I tremble, lest the fleet-winged ships,
Ere thou return, shall land—soon—very soon!
O father, I tremble to stay, and not flee,
When the bands of the ruthless are near!
My flight to foreclose from the chase of my foes!
O father, I faint for fear!

Danaus.

Fear not, my children. The accomplished vote
Of Argos saves you. They are champions sworn.

ANTISTROPHE I.

Chorus.

They come—destruction’s minions mad with hate,
Of fight insatiate: well thou know’st the men.
With their host many-counted, their ships dark-fronted,44
They are near, O father, how near!
Their ships stoutly-timbered, their crews swarthy-membered,
Triumphant in wrath I fear!

Danaus.

Even let them come. They’ll find their match in Argos;
A strong-limbed race with noon-day sweats well hardened.45

STROPHE II.

Chorus.

Only not leave me! Pray thee, father, stay!
Weak is a lonely woman. No Mars is in her.46
Dark-counselled, false, cunning-hearted are they,
Unholy, as obscene crows
On the feast of the altar that filthily prey;
They fear not the gods, my foes!

Danaus.

’Twill make our cause the stronger, daughters, if
Their crime be sacrilege, and their foes the gods.

ANTISTROPHE II.

Chorus.

The trident and the sacred blazonry
Will not repel their violent hands, O father!
They are proud, haughty-hearted, a high-blown race;
They are hot, they are mad for the fray!
With the hound in their heart, and the dog in their face,
They will tear from the altar their prey.

Danaus.

Dogs let them be, the world has wolves to master them!
And good Greek corn is better than papyrus.47

Chorus.

Being reasonless as brutes, unholy monsters,
And spurred with wrath we must beware their fury.

Danaus.

’Tis no light work to land a fleet. To find
Safe roads, sure anchorage, and to make fast
The cables, this not with mere thought is done.
The shepherds of the ships48 are slow to feel
Full confidence, the more that on this coast
Harbours are few.49 Besides, thou see’st the sun
Slants to the night; and still a prudent pilot
Fears in the dark. No man will disembark,
Trust me, till all are firmly anchored. Thou
Through all thy terrors still cling to the gods,
Thy most sure stay. Thy safety’s pledged. For me
I’m old, but with the tongue of fluent youth
I’ll speak for thee, a pleader without blame.

[Exit.

CHORAL HYMN.
STROPHE I.
O hilly land, high-honoured land,
What wait we now, poor fugitive band?
Some dark, dark cave
Show me, within thy winding strand,
To hide and save!
Would I might vanish in smoke, ascending
To Heaven, with Jove’s light clouds dim-blending
In misty air,
Like wingless, viewless dust, and ending
In nothing there!

ANTISTROPHE I.
’Tis more than heart may bear. Quick Fear
My quaking life with dusky drear
Alarm surroundeth!
My father spied my ruin: sheer
Despair confoundeth.
Sooner, high-swung from fatal rope,
Here may I end both life and hope,
And strong Death bind me,
Than hated hearts shall reach their scope,
And shame shall find me!

STROPHE II.
Would I were throned in ether high,
Where snows are born, and through the sky
The white rack skurries! Would that I
Might sit sublime
On a hanging cliff where lone winds sigh,50
Where human finger never showed
The far-perched vultures’ drear abode,
Nor goat may climb!
Thence sheer to leap, and end for ever
My life and name,
Ere forceful hands this heart deliver
To married shame!

ANTISTROPHE II.
There, where no friendly foot may stray,
There let me lie, my limbs a prey
To dogs and birds: I not gainsay:
’Twas wisely said,
Free from much woe who dies to-day
Shall be to-morrow. Rather than wedded
To whom I hate, let me be bedded
Now with the dead!
Or if there be, my life to free,
A way, declare it,
Ye gods!—a surgeon’s cut for me,
My heart shall bear it!

STROPHE III.
Voice ye your sorrow! with the cry
Of doleful litany pierce the sky!
For freedom, for quick rescue cry
To him above!
Ruler of Earth, look from thy throne,
With eyes of love!
These deeds of violence wilt thou own,
Nor know thy prostrate suppliant’s groan,
Almighty Jove?

ANTISTROPHE III.
Ægyptus’ sons, a haughty race,
Follow my flight with sleepless chase,
With whoop and bay they scent my trace
To force my love
Thy beam is true; both good and ill
Thy sure scales prove,
Thou even-handed! Mortals still
Reap fair fulfilment from thy will,
All-crowning Jove.

Chorus,in separate voices, and short hurried exclamations:51

Voice 1.

Ah me! he lands! he leaps ashore!
He strides with ruffian hands to hale us!

Voice 2.

Cry, sisters, cry! swift help implore!
If here to cry may aught avail us!

Voice 3.

Ah me! ’tis but the muffled roar
Of forceful storms soon to assail us!

Voice 1.

Flee to the gods! to the altars cling!

Voice 2.

By sea, by land, the ruthless foe
Grimly wantons in our woe!

Voice 3.

Beneath thy wing shield us, O king!

EnterHerald.

Herald.

Hence to the ships! to the good ships fare ye!52
Swiftly as your feet may bear ye!

Chorus.

Tear us! tear us!
Rend us rather,
Torture and tear us!
From this body
Cut the head!
Gorily gather
Us to the dead!

Herald.

Hence to the ships, away! away!
A curse on you, and your delay!
O’er the briny billowy way
Thou shalt go to-day, to-day!
Wilt thou stand, a mulish striver,
I can spur, a forceful driver;
Deftly, deftly, thou shalt trip
To the stoutly-timbered ship!
If to yield thou wilt not know,
Gorily, gorily thou shalt go!
An’ thou be not madded wholly,
Know thy state, and quit thy folly!

Chorus.

Help, ho! help, ho! help!

Herald.

To the ships! to the ships away with me!
These gods of Argos what reck we?

Chorus.

Never, O never
The nurturing river,
Of life the giver,
The healthful flood
That quickens the blood
Let me behold!
An Argive am I,*
From Inachus old,
These gods deny
Thy claim. Withhold!

Herald.

To the ships, to the ships, with march not slow,
Will ye, nill ye, ye must go!
Quickly, quickly, hence away!
Know thy master and obey!
Ere a worse thing thou shalt know—
Blows and beating—gently go!

STROPHE I.

Chorus.

Worse than worsest
May’st thou know!
As thou cursest,
Curst be so!
The briny billow
O’er thee flow!
On sandy pillow
Bedded low,
’Neath Sarpedon’s breezy brow,*
With the shifting sands shift thou!

Herald.

Scream—rend your robes in rags!—call on the gods!
The Egyptian bark thou shalt not overleap.
Pour ye the bitter bootless wail at will!

ANTISTROPHE I.

Chorus.

With fierce heart swelling
To work my woe,
With keen hate yelling
Barks the foe.
Broad Nile welling
O’er thee flow!
Find thy dwelling
Bedded low,
’Neath the towering Libyan waters,
Towering thou ’gainst Libya’s daughters!

Herald.

To the ships! to the ships! the swift ships even-oared!
Quickly! no laggard shifts! the hand that drags thee
Will lord it o’er thy locks, not gently handled!

STROPHE II.

Chorus.

O father, oh!
From the altar
The assaulter
Drags me to my woe!
Step by step, a torturing guider,
Like the slowly-dragging spider,
Cruel-minded so
Like a dream,
A dusky dream,
My hope away doth go!
O Earth, O Earth,
From death redeem!
O Earth, O Jove deliver!

Herald.

Your Argive gods I know not; they nor nursed
My infant life, nor reared my riper age.

ANTISTROPHE II.

Chorus.

O father, oh!
From the altar
The assaulter
Drags me to my woe!
A snake two-footed fiercely fretted
Swells beside me! from his whetted
Fangs, black death doth flow!
Like a dream,
A dusky dream,
My hope is vanished so!
O Earth, O Earth,
From death redeem!
O Earth, O Jove deliver!

Herald.

To the ships! to the ships! Obey! I say, obey!
Pity thy robes, if not thy flesh—away!

STROPHE III.

Chorus.

Ye chiefs of the city,
By force they subdue me!

Herald.

Well! I must drag thee by the hair! come! come!
Point thy dull ears, and hear me!—come! come! come!

ANTISTROPHE III.

Chorus.

I’m lost! I’m ruined!
O king, they undo me!

Herald.

Thou shalt see kings enough anon, believe me,
Ægyptus’ sons—kingless thou shalt not die.

EnterKingwith Attendants.

King.

Fellow, what wouldst thou? With what purpose here
Dost flout this land of brave Pelasgian men?
Deem’st thou us women? A barbarian truly
Art thou, if o’er the Greek to sport it thus
The fancy tempts thee. Nay, but thou art wrong
Both root and branch in this

Herald.

How wrong? Speak plainly.

King.

Thou art a stranger here, and dost not know
As a stranger how to bear thee.

Herald.

This I know,
I lost my own, and what I lost I found.

King.

Thy patrons* who, on this Pelasgian ground?

Herald.

To find stray goods the world all over, Hermes
Is prince of patrons53

King.

Hermes is a god,
Thou, therefore, fear the gods

Herald.

And I do fear
The gods of the Nile.

King.

We too have gods in Argos.

Herald.

So be it: but, in Argos or in Africk,
My own’s my own

King.

Who touches these reaps harm,
And that right soon

Herald.

No friendly word thou speak’st,
To welcome strangers.

King.

Strangers are welcome here;
But not to spoil the gods.

Herald.

These words of thine
To Ægyptus’ sons be spoken, not to me

King.

I take no counsel, or from them, or thee.

Herald.

Thou—who art thou? for I must plainly make
Rehearsal to my masters—this my office
Enforces—both by whom, and why, unjustly
I of this kindred company of women
Am robbed. A serious strife it is; no bandying
Of words from witnesses, no silver passed
From hand to hand will lay such ugly strife;
But man for man must fall, and noblest souls
Must dash their lives away.

King.

For what I am,
You, and your shipmates, soon enough shall know me
These maids, if with the softly suasive word
Thou canst prevail, are thine; to force we never
Will yield the suppliant sisters; thus the people
With one acclaim have voted; ’tis nailed down
Thus to the letter. So it must remain.
Thou hast my answer, not in tablets graven,
Or in the volumed scroll, all stamped and sealed,
But from a free Greek mouth. Dost understand me?
Hence quickly from my sight!

Herald.

Of this be sure,
A war thou stirrest, in which, when once begun,
The males will be the stronger.

King.

We, too, have males
In Argos, lusty-blooded men, who drink
Good wine, not brewed from barley.* As for you,
Ye virgins, fearless follow where these guides
Shall lead. Our city strongly girt with wall,
And high-reared tower receives you. We can boast
Full many a stately mansion; stateliest piled
My palace stands, work of no feeble hands.
Right pleasant ’tis in populous floors to lodge
With many a fellow-tenant: some will find
A greater good in closely severed homes,
That have no common gates: of these thou hast
The ample choice: take what shall like thee most
Know me thy patron, and in all things know
My citizens thy shield, whose vote hath pledged
Thy safety; surer guarantee what wouldst thou?

Chorus.

Blessing for thy blessing given,
Flow to thee, divine Pelasgian!
But for our advisal forthwith
Send, we pray thee, for our father;
He the firm, the far foreseeing,
How to live, and where to lodge us,
Duly shall direct. For ever
Quick to note the faults of strangers
Sways the general tongue; though we
Hope all that’s good and best from thee.

King[to the attendant maids]:

Likewise you, ye maids attendant
For his daughters’ service, wisely
Portioned by the father, here
Be your home secure,
Far from idle-bruited babblings,
’Neath my wing to dwell!

EnterDanaus,attended by an Argive guard.

Danaus.

Daughters! if so the Olympian gods deserve
Your sacrifices, your libations, surely
Argos no less may claim them! Argos truly
Your Saviour in worst need! With eager ears
They drank my tale, indignant the foul deeds
Of our fell-purposed cousinship they heard,
And for my guard this goodly band they set me
Of strong spear-bearing men, lest being slain
By the lurking lance of some insidious foe
My death bring shame to Argos. Such high honor,
From hearts where kindness moves the friendly deed,
They heaped the sire withal, that you, the daughters,
In father’s stead should own them. For the rest,
To the chaste precepts graven on your heart
That oft I gave, one timely warning add,
That time, which proveth all, approve your lives
Before this people; for ’gainst the stranger, calumny
Flows deftly from the tongue, and cheap traducement
Costs not a thought. I charge ye, therefore, daughters,
Your age being such that turns the eyes of men
To ready gaze, in all ye do consult
Your father’s honor: such ripe bloom as yours
No careless watch demands: so fair a flower
Wild beasts and men, monsters of all degrees,
Winged and four-footed, wantonly will tear.
Her luscious-dropping fruits the Cyprian* hangs
In the general view, and publishes their praise;54
That whoso passes, and beholds the pomp
Of shapeliest beauty, feels the charmed dart
That shoots from eye to eye, and vanquished falls
By strong desire. Give, therefore, jealous heed
That our long toils, and ploughing the deep sea
Not fruitless fall; but be your portment such
As breeds no shame to us, nor to our enemies
Laughter. A double lodgment for our use,
One from the state, the other from the king,
Rentless we hold. All things look bright. This only,
Your father’s word, remember. More than life
Hold a chaste heart in honor.

Chorus.

The high Olympians
Grant all thy wish! For us and our young bloom,
Fear nothing, father: for unless the gods
Have forged new counsels, we ev’n to the end
Will tread the trodden path, and will not bend.

CHORAL HYMN.55
STROPHE I.

Semi-Chorus 1.

Lift ye the solemn hymn!
High let your pæans brim!
Praise in your strain
Gods that in glory reign
High o’er the Argive plain,
High o’er each castled hold,
Where Erasinus old*
Winds to the main!

Semi-Chorus 2 [to the attendant maids]:

Sing, happy maids, with me!
Loud with responsive glee
Voice ye the strain!
Praise ye the Argive shore,
Praise holy Nile no more,
Wide where his waters roar,
Mixed with the main!

ANTISTROPHE I.

Semi-Chorus 1.

Lift ye the solemn hymn!
High let your pæans brim!
Praise in your strain
Torrents that bravely swell
Fresh through each Argive dell,
Broad streams that lazily
Wander, and mazily
Fatten the plain.

Semi-Chorus 2.

Sing, sisters, sing with me
Artemis chaste! may she
List to the strain!
Never, O never may
Marriage with fearful sway
Bind me; nor I obey
Hatefullest chain!

STROPHE II.

Semi-Chorus 1.

Yet, mighty praise be thine56
Cyprian queen divine!
Hera, with thee I join,
Nearest to Jove.
Subtly conceiving all,
Wiseliest weaving all,
Thy will achieving all
Nobly by love!

Semi-Chorus 2.

With thee Desire doth go;
Peitho,* with suasive flow
Bending the willing foe,
Marches with thee.
Lovely Harmonia57
Knows thee, and, smote with awc,
Strong kings obey the law
Whispered by thee.

STROPHE IV.

Semi-Chorus 1.

Yet must I fear the chase,58
Sail spread in evil race,
War with a bloody pace
Spurred after me.
Why to this Argive shore
Came they with plashing oar,
If not with sorrow’s store
Treasured for me?

Semi-Chorus 2.

Comes fated good or ill,
Wait we in patience still!
No power may thwart his will
Jove, mighty Jove.
Laden with sorrow’s store
Virgins in days of yore
Praised, when their grief was o’er,
Jove, mighty Jove.

Semi-Chorus 1.

Jove, mighty Jove, may he
From wedded force for me
Rescue prepare!

Semi-Chorus 2.

Fair fall our maiden lot!
But mighty Jove may not
Yield to thy prayer.

Semi-Chorus 1.

Know’st thou what woes may be
Stored yet by Fate for me?

Semi-Chorus 2.

Jove and his hidden plan
Sight of the sharpest man
Searcheth in vain;
Thou in thy narrow span
Wisely remain!

Semi-Chorus 1.

Wisely my thought may fare
Tell me, O tell me where?

Semi-Chorus 2.

’Gainst what the gods ordain
Fret not thy heart in vain

STROPHE

Semi-Chorus 1

Save me, thou chief of gods, great Jove,
From violent bonds of hated love,
Even as the Inachian maid of yore
Thy hand set free from labour sore,
What time thou soothed with touch divine
Her weary frame,
And with a friendly force benign
Thy healing came.

ANTISTROPHE.

Semi-Chorus 2.

May the woman’s cause prevail!
And, when two certain ills assail,
Be ours the less: and Justice fair
For the just shall still declare.
Ye mighty gods o’er human fates
Supremely swaying,
On you my prayer, my fortune waits,
Your will obeying.

NOTES TO THE SUPPLIANTS

[* ]See Introductory Remarks to the Eumenides.

[† ]The usual insignia of Suppliants Wool was commonly used in the adornment of insignia hallowed by religion —See Dict Antiq, voc. infula and apex; and Note 72 to the Choephoræ, and Clem. Alex Prot. § 10

[* ]Epaphus and Io

[† ]Epaphus, from ἑπαϕὴ. See Note 3 immediately above.

[* ]This is explained by what follows An augur, of course, was the proper person to recognise the notes of birds, or what resembled them.

[† ]See Note 76 to Agamemnon.

[* ]Pal quotes from Massinger’s Emperor of the East, “To a sad tune I sing my own dirge,“ which I have adopted.

[* ]Artemis, or Diana.

[† ]τον πολυξενώτατον Ζη̂να, that is, Pluto.

[* ]See Note 46 to the Eumenides

[* ]See Iliad viii. 69, and other passages, describing the “golden scales of Jove,” in which the fates of men are weighed.

[* ]See the Agamemnon, Note 94.

[* ]See Paley.

[* ]Cyprus.

[† ]See Prometheus Bound, p. 192 above.

[‡ ]See Prometheus Bound, p 204 and Note 46.

[* ]In this very perplexed passage I follow Pal. Bothe’s conjecture, Αργεɩ̂ος, is very happy.

[* ]A promontory in Cilicia —Strabo, p. 670. Pal.

[* ]πρόξενοι.—See Note 19 to page 226 above.

[* ]“Potui humor ex hordeo aut frumento in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus.’—Tacitus de mor. Geom. c. 23.

[* ]Venus.

[* ]This river and the Inachus flow into the Argolic gulf, both near the city of Argos, taking their rise in the mountain ridge that separates Argos from Arcadia.

[* ]The goddess of Persuasion.

[Note 1 (p. 219).]

“Jove the suppliant’s high protector.”

Ζεὺς ἀϕίκτωρ, literally suppliant Jove, the epithet which properly belongs to the worshipper being transferred to the object of worship. The reader will note here another instance of the monotheistic element in Polytheism, so often alluded to in these Notes. Jove, as the supreme moral governor of the universe, has a general supervision of the whole social system of gods and men; and specially where there is no inferior protector, as in the case of fugitives and suppliants—there he presses with all the weight of his high authority. In such cases, religion presents a generous and truly humanizing aspect, and the “primus in orbe Deos fecit timor” of the philosophers loses its sting.

[Note 2 (p 219).]

“Of the fat fine-sanded Nile!”

Wellauer, in his usual over-cautious way, has not received Pauw’s emendation λεπτοψαμάθων into his text, though he calls it certissimum in his notes. Pal., whom I follow, acts in these matters with a more manly decision. Even without the authority of Pliny (XXXV. 13), I should adopt so natural an emendation, where the text is plainly corrupt.

[Note 3 (p. 219).]

“Gently thrilled the brize-stung heifer
With his procreant touch.”

See p. 204 above, and Note 48 to Prometheus. There prevails throughout this play a constant allusion to the divine significance of the name Epaphus, meaning, as it does, touch. To the Greeks, as already remarked (p. 388), this was no mere punning; and the names of the gods (Note 17, p. 391 above) were one of the strongest instruments of Heathen devotion. That there is an allusion to this in Matthew vi. 7, I have no doubt.

[Note 4 (p. 219).]

“Ye blissful gods supremely swaying.”

I see no necessity here, with Pal., for changing [Editor: illegible character]ν πολις into [Editor: illegible character] πολις—but it is a matter of small importance to the translator. Jove, the third, is a method of designating the supreme power of which we have frequent examples in Æschylus—see the Eumenides, p. 164, where Jove the Saviour all-perfecting is mentioned after Pallas and Loxias, as it were, to crown the invocation with the greatest of all names. In that passage τρίτου occurs in the original, which I was wrong to omit.

[Note 5 (p. 220)]

“Marriage beds which right refuses.”

In what countries are first cousins forbidden to marry? Welcker does not know. “Das Eherecht worauf diese Weigerung beruht ist nicht bekannt.”—Welcker (Trilog. 391).

[Note 6 (p. 221).]

“With Ionian wailings unstinted.”

“Perhaps Ionian is put in this place antithetically to Νειλοθερη̂, from the Nile, in the next line, and the sense is, ‘though coming from Egypt, yet, being of Greek extraction, I speak Greek.’ ”—Paley. This appears to me the simplest and most satisfactory comment on the passage.

[Note 7 (p. 221).]

“From the far misty land.”

That is Egypt. So called according to the Etymol. M. quoted by Stan., from the cloudy appearance which the low-lying Delta district presents to the stranger approaching it from the sea.

[Note 8 (p. 222).]

“All godlike power is calm.”

It would be unfair not to advertise the English reader that this fine sentiment is a translation from a conjectural reading, πα̂ν ἄπονον δαιμονιων, of Well., which, however, is in beautiful harmony with the context. The text generally in this part of the play is extremely corrupt. In the present stanza, Well.’s correction of δε ἀπιδων into ἐλπίδων deserves to be celebrated as one of the few grand triumphs of verbal criticism that have a genuine poetical value.

[Note 9 (p. 222).]

“Ah! well-a-day! ah! well-a-day!”

The reader must imagine here a complete change in the style of the music—say from the major to the minor key. In the whole Chorus, the mind of the singer sways fitfully between a hopeful confidence and a dark despair. The faith in the counsel of Jove, and in the sure destruction of the wicked, so finely expressed in the preceding stanzas, supports the sinking soul but weakly in this closing part of the hymn These alterations of feeling exhibited under such circumstances will appear strange to no one who is acquainted with the human, and especially with the female heart.

[Note 10 (p. 223).]

“Ye Apian hills.”

“Apia, an old name for Peloponnesus, which remains still a mystery, even after the attempt of Butmann to throw light upon it.”—Grote, Hist. of Greece, Part I. c. 4. Æschylus’ own account of Apis, the supposed originator of the name Apia, will be found in this play a few lines below. I have consulted Butmann, and find nothing but a conglomeration of vague and slippery etymologies.

[Note 11 (p. 225).]

“. . rounded cars.”

καμπύλος, with a bend or sweep; alluding to the form of the rim of the ancient chariot, between the charioteer and the horses. See the figure in Smith’sDict. Antiq., Articles ἄντυξ and currus.

[Note 12 (p. 225).]

“. . . the Agonian gods.”

The common meaning that a Greek scholar would naturally give to the phrase θεοɩ̂ ἀγωνιοι is that given by Hesych, viz., gods that preside over public games, or, as I have rendered it in the Agamemnon (p. 57 above), gods that rule the chance of combat. For persons who, like the Herald in that play, had just escaped from a great struggle, or, like the fugitive Virgins in this piece, were going through one, there does not appear to be any great impropriety (notwithstanding Pal.’s.inepte) in an appeal to the gods of combat. Opposed to this interpretation, however, we have the common practice of Homer, with whom the substantive ἀγών generally means an assembly; and the testimony of Eustathius, who, in his notes to that poet, Iliad, Ω 1335, 58, says, “παρ Αισχύλῳ ἀγώνιοι θεοὶ ὁι ἀγορα̂ιοι;” i.e. gods that preside over assemblies.

[Note 13 (p. 225).]

“. . . your sistered hands.”

διὰ χερων συνωνύμων. I am inclined to think with Pal. that ἐυωνύμων may be the true reading; i e. in your left hands. And yet, so fond is Æschylus of quaint phrases that I do not think myself at liberty to reject the vulgate, so long as it is susceptible of the very appropriate meaning given in the text. “Hands of the same name” may very well be tolerated for “hands of the same race”—“hands of sisters.”

[Note 14 (p. 225).]

“Even so; and with benignant eye look down!”

I have here departed from Well.’s arrangement of this short colloquy between Danaus and his daughters, and adopted Pal.’s, which appears to me to satisfy the demands both of sense and metrical symmetry. That there is something wrong in the received text Well. admits.

[Note 15 (p. 226).]

“There where his bird the altar decorates.”

I have here incorporated into the text the natural and unembarrassed meaning of this passage given by Pal. The bird of Jove, of course, is the eagle. What the Scholiast and Stan. say about the cock appears to be pure nonsense, which would never have been invented but for the confused order of the dialogue in the received text.

[Note 16 (p. 226).]

“Apollo, too, the pure, the exiled once.”

“They invoke Apollo to help them, strangers and fugitives, because that god himself had once been banished from heaven by Jove, and kept the herds of Admetus.

‘Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.’ ”
—Stan.

[Note 17 (p. 226).]

“Here, Hermes Likewise, as Greece knows the god.”

This plainly points out a distinction between the Greek and the famous Egyptian Hermes. So the Scholiast, and Stan. who quotes Cic., Nat. Deor. III. 22.

[Note 18 (p 226).]

“Can bird eat bird and be an holy thing?”

This seems to have been a common-place among the ancients. Pliny, in the following passage, draws a contrast between man and the inferior animals, not much to the honor of the former:—“Cætera animalia in suo genere probe degunt; congregari videmus et stare contra dissimilia; leonum feritas inter se non dimicat; serpentum morsus non petit serpentes; ne maris quidem belluæ ac pisces nisi in diversa genera sæviunt. At hercule homini plarima ex homine sunt mala.”—Nat. Hist. VII. proem. This custom of blackening human nature (which is bad enough, without being made worse) has been common enough also in modern times, especially among a certain school of theologians, very far, indeed, in other respects, from claiming kindred with the Roman polyhistor; but the fact is, one great general law over-rides both man and the brute, viz. this—Like herdswith like—the only difference being that human beings, with a great outward similarity, are characterized by a more various inward diversity than the lower animals. There are, in fact, men of all various kinds represented in the moral world—all those varieties which different races and species exhibit in the physical. There are lamb-men, tiger-men, serpent-men, pigeon-men, and hawk-men. That such discordant natures should sometimes, nay always in a certain sense, strive, is a necessary consequence of their existing.

[Note 19 (p. 226).]

“And of no host the acknowledged guest, unfearing
Ye tread this land.”

ἀπρόξενος, without a πρόξενος, or a public host or entertainer—one who occupied the same position on the part of the state towards a stranger that a ξάνος or landlord, did to his private guest. In some respects “the office of proxenus bears great resemblance to that of a modern consul or minister resident.”—Dr. Schmitz, in Smith’s Dict., article Hospitium. Compare Southey, Notes to Madoc. I. 5, The Stranger’s House.

[Note 20 (p. 227).]

“Of old earth-born Palæcthon am the son,
My name Pelasgus.”

Here we have an example of those names of the earliest progenitors of an ancient race that seem to bear fiction on their face; Palaecthon meaning merely the ancient son of the land, and Pelasgus being the name-father of the famous ante-Homeric wandering Greeks, whom we call Pelasgi.

[Note 21 (p. 227).]

“All the land where Algos flows, and Strymon.”

The geography here is very confused. I shall content myself with noting the different points from Muller’s map (Dorians)—

(1) Algos; unknown.
(2) Strymon; a well-known river in Thrace.
(3) Perrhæbians; in Thessaly, North of the Peneus (Homer, II. II. 749).
(4) Pindus; the well-known mountain ridge in the centre of Northern Greece, separating the great rivers which descend on the one hand through Epirus into the Ionian sea and the Adriatic, on the other, into the Ægean.
(5) Pæonia; in the North of Macedonia (Iliad II. 848).
(6) Dodona; in Epirus.

[Note 22 (p. 227).]

“Apollo’s son, by double right, physician
And prophet both.”

This is somewhat of a circumlocution for the single Greek phrase, ἱατρόμαντις, physician-prophet; a name applied to Apollo himself by the Pythoness, in the prologue to the Eumenides (p. 142 above). The original conjunction of the two offices of prophet and leech in the person of Melampus, Apis, Chiron, etc. and their patron Apollo, is a remarkable fact in the history of civilization. The multiplication and isolation of professions originally combined and confounded is a natural enough consequence of the progress of society, of which examples occur in every sphere of human activity; but there is, besides, a peculiar fitness in the conjunction of medicine and theology, arising from the intimate connexion of mind with bodily ailment, too much neglected by some modern drug-minglers, and also, from the fact that, in ancient times, nothing was more common than to refer diseases, especially those of a striking kind, to the immediate interference of the Divine chastiser—(see Hippocrates περὶ ἱερη̂ς νόσου init.). Men are never more disposed to acknowledge divine power than when under the influence of severe affliction; and accordingly we find that, in some savage or semi-savage tribes, the “medicine-man” is the only priest. It would be well, indeed, if, in the present state of advanced science, professional men would more frequently attempt to restore the original oneness of the healing science—(see Max Tyr. πωˆς α̂ν τις ἄλυπος [Editor: illegible character]ιη)—if all medical men would, like the late Dr. Abercrombie, bear in mind that man has a soul as well as a body, and all theologians more distinctly know that human bodies enclose a stomach as well as a conscience, with which latter the operations of the former are often strangely confounded.

[Note 23 (p. 228).]

“. . . Io, on this Argive ground,
Erst bore the keys to Hera.”

i.e. was priestess of the Argive goddess. The keys are the sign of custodiary authority in modern as in ancient times. See various instances in Stan.

[Note 24 (p. 228).]

“So runs the general rumour.”

After this, Well. supposes something has fallen out of the text; but to me a break in the narration of the Chorus, caused by the eagerness of the royal questioner, seems sufficiently to explain the state of the text. Pal. agrees.

[Note 25 (p. 228).]

“Like a leaping bull,
Transformed he came.”

Βουθόρῳ ταύρῳ. I have softened this expression a little; so modern delicacy compels. The original is quite Homeric—“συωˆν ἐπιβήτορα κάπρον.”—Odyssey XI. 131. Homer and the author of the Book of Genesis agree in expressing natural things in a natural way, equally remote (as healthy nature always is) from fastidiousness and from prudery.

[Note 26 (p. 228)]

King. A question has evidently dropt here; but it is of no consequence. The answer supplies the first link in the genealogical chain deducing the Danaides from Io and Epaphus. See above, p. 400, Note 44.

[Note 27 (p. 229).]

“Both this and that.”

I have translated this difficult passage freely, according to the note of Schutz., as being most comprehensive, and excluding neither the one ground of objection nor the other, both of which seem to have occupied the mind of the virgins. I am not, however, by any means sure what the passage really means E. P. Oxon has—

“Who would seek to obtain kindred as masters?”

Pot.—

“And who would wish to make their friends their lord.”

Where the real ground of objection is so darkly indicated, a translator is at liberty to smuggle a sort of commentary into the text.

[Note 28 (p. 229).]

“The wrath of suppliant Jove.”

i.e. Jove the protector of suppliants. See above, Note 1.

[Note 29 (p. 230).]

“Like a heifer young by the wolf pursued.”

The scholar will recognize here a deviation from Well.’s text λευκόστικτον, and the adoption of Hermann’s admirable emendation, λυκοδίωκτον. Pal. has received this into his text, and Lin., generally a severe censor, approves.—Class Museum, No. VII. p. 31. Both on metrical and philological grounds, the reading demands reception.

[Note 30 (p 230).]

“Thou art the state, and the people art thou.”

This is a very interesting passage in reference to the political constitution—if the term constitution be here allowable—of the loose political aggregates of the heroic ages. The Chorus, of course, speak only their own feelings; but their feelings, in this case, are in remarkable consistency with the usages of the ancient Greeks, as described by Homer. The government of the heroic ages, as it appears in the Iliad, was a monarchy, on common occasions absolute, but liable to be limited by a circumambient atmosphere of oligarchy, and the prospective possibility of resistance on the part of a people habitually passive. Another remarkable circumstance, is the identity of church and state, well indicated by Virgil, in that line—

Rex Anius, rex idem hominum Phœbique sacerdos
Æneid III.

and concerning which, Ottfried Muller says—“In ancient Greece it may be said, with almost equal truth, that the kings were priests, as that the priests were kings” (Mythology, Leitch, p. 187). On this identity of church and state were founded those laws against the worship of strange gods, which formed so remarkable an exception to the comprehensive spirit of toleration that Hume and Gibbon have not unjustly lauded as one of the advantageous concomitants of Polytheism. The intolerance, which is the necessary consequence of such an identity, has found its thorough and consistent champions only among the Mahommedan and Christian monotheists of modern times. Even the large-hearted and liberal-minded Dr. Arnold was so far possessed by the ancient doctrine of the identity of church and state, that he could not conceive of the possibility of admitting Jews to deliberate in the senate of a Christian state In modern times, also, we have witnessed with wonder the full development of a doctrine most characteristically Homeric, that the absolute power of kings, whether in civil or in ecclesiastical matters, is equally of divine right.

Τιμὴ τ’ ἐκ Διός ἐστι, ϕιλεɩ̂ δέ ἑ μητίετα Ζεύς.
Il. II. 197

“For from Jove the honor cometh, him the counsellor Jove doth love.” On this very interesting subject every page of Homer is pregnant with instruction; but those who are not familiar with that bible of classical scholars will find a bright reflection of the most important truths in Grote, Hist. Greece, P. I. c. XX.

[Note 31 (p. 231).]

“Without the people
I cannot do this thing.”

Æschylus makes the monarch of the heroic ages speak here with a strong tincture of the democracy of the latter times of Greece, no doubt securing to himself thereby immense billows of applause from his Athenian auditors, as the tragedians were fond of doing, by giving utterance to liberal sentiments like that of Æmon in Sophocles—“πόλις γὰρ ὀυκ [Editor: illegible character]σθ ἢτις άνδρός ἐσθ’ ὲνός.” But how little the people had to say in the government of the heroic ages appears strikingly in that most dramatic scene described in the second book of the Iliad, which Grote (II. 94) has, with admirable judgment, brought prominently forward in his remarks on the power of the ἀγορά, or popular assembly, in the heroic ages. Ulysses holds forth the orthodox doctrine in these terms—

“Sit thee down, and cease thy murmurings sit, and hear thy betters speak,
Thou unwarlike, not in battle known, in council all unheard!
Soothly all who are Achæans are not kings, and cannot be,
Evil is the sway of many, only one may bear the rule,
One be king, to whom the deep-designing Kronos’ mighty son
Gave the sceptre and the right.”
—Il II 200

[Note 32 (p. 233).]

“. . . possessory Jove.”

Ζεύς κτήσιος —An epithet characteristic of Jove, as the supreme disposer of human affairs. Klausen (Theolog. II. 15) compares the epithet κλαριος from κλη̂ρος, a lot, which I have paraphrased in p. 230 above.

“The Jove that allotteth their lot to all.”

Klausen quotes Pausanias (I. 31-4) to the effect that Ζευς κτησιος was worshipped in Attica along with Ceres, Minerva, Cora, and the awful Maids or Furies.

[Note 33 (p. 234).]

“The pillar-compassed seats divine.”

From a conjecture of Pal., περιστύλους; the πυλισσόυχων being evidently repeated by a wandering of the eye or ear of the transcriber. Sophocles, I recollect, in the Antigone, has ἀμϕικίονας ναοὺς. Of course, in the case of such blunders, where the true reading cannot be restored, the best that can be done is to substitute an appropriate one.

[Note 34 (p. 235).]

“. . . the assembly of the people.”

The word ἀγορά, popular assembly, does not occur here; but it is plainly implied. It is to be distinguished from the βουλή, or council of the chiefs.—See Grote as above, and Homerpassim.

[Note 35 (p. 235).]

“All crowning Consummator.”

As the opening words of this prayer generally are one of the finest testimonies to the sovereignty of Jove to be found in the poet, so the conjunction of words τελέων τελειὸτατον, κράτος is particularly to be noted. The adjectives τέλειος, τελεος, παντελής, and the verb τελέω, are often applied with a peculiar significancy to the king of the gods, as he who alone can conduct to a happy end every undertaking, under whatever auspices commenced. This doctrine is most reverently announced by the Chorus of this play towards the end (p. 244), in these comprehensive terms—

τι δε ἄνευ σέθεν
θνατοισι τελειον εστι.

“What thing to mortal men is completed without thee.” And in this sense Clytemnestra, in the Agamemnon (p. 69), prays—

Ζενˆ Ζενˆ τέλειε τὰς εμὰς ἐυχὰς τὲλει.

On the over-ruling special providence of Jove generally the scholar should read Klausen,Theol. II., 15, and Class. Mus. No. XXVI. pp. 429-433.

[Note 36 (p. 236).]

“. . . hence by the brize.”

The reader will observe that the course of Io’s wanderings here sketched is something very different from that given in the Prometheus, and much more intelligible. The geography is so familiar to the general reader from the Acts of the Apostles, that comment is unnecessary.

[Note 37 (p. 236).]

“Divinely fretted with fitful oar she hies.”

The partiality of Æschylus for sea-phrases has been often observed. Here, however, Paley for the ἐρεσσομένα of the vulgate has proposed ἐρεθομένα, aptly for the sense and the metre; but Lin. (Class. Mus. No. VII. 30) seems right in allowing the text to remain. I have taken up both readings into my rendering.

[Note 38 (p. 236).]

“Nor dared to approach this thing of human face”

It is difficult to know what δυσχερὲς in the text refers. Pot. refers it to the mind of the maid—

“Disdaining to be touched”

To me it seems more natural to refer the difficulty of touching to the superstitious fears of the Egyptians; and to translate “not safely to be meddled with.” This is the feeling that my translation has attempted to bring out.

[Note 39 (p. 237).]

“Jove’s decided will”

I adopt Heath’s emendation βούλιος for δούλιος. Well., with superstitious reverence for the most corrupt text extant, retaining the δούλίος, is forced to explain δούλιος ϕρην, “dictum videtur de hominibus qui Jovis auxilium imploraverunt,” but this will never do The reader is requested to observe what a pious interpretation is, in this passage, given to the connection of Jove and Io—how different from that given by Prometheus, p. 202 above. We may be assured that the orthodox Heathen view of this and other such matters lies in the present beautifully-toned hymn, and not in the hostile taunts which the poet, for purely dramatic purposes, puts into the mouth of the enemy of Jove.

[Note 40 (p. 240).]

“Holy Hecate’s aid avail thee.”

Hecate is an epithet of Artemis, as Hecatos of Apollo, meaning far or distant (ἔκας). According to the prevalent opinion among mythologists, both ancient and modern, this goddess is merely an impersonation of the Moon, as Phoebus of the Sun. The term “far-darting” applies to both equally; the rays of the great luminaries being fitly represented as arrows of a far-shooting deity. In the Strophe which follows, Phoebus, under the name of Λυκειος, is called upon to be gracious to the youth of Argos.

ἐυμενὴς δ’ ο̂ Λύκειος
ἔστω πάσᾳ νεολαίᾳ,

and in the translation I have taken the liberty, pro hac vice, as the lawyers say, to suppose that this epithet, as some modern scholars suggest, has nothing to do etymologically with λύκος, a wolf, but rather with the root λυκ, which we find in the substantive λυκάβας, and in the Latin luceo. Æschylus, however, in the Seven against Thebes (p. 266 above), adopts the derivation from λύκος, as will be seen from my version. I have only to add that, if Artemis be the Moon, her function as the patroness of parturition, alluded to in the present passage, is the most natural thing in the world. On this whole subject, Keightley, c. viii. is very sensible.

[Note 41 (p. 241).]

“The bulging fence-work on each side”

(παράῤῥυσεις, more commonly παραῤῥύματα) “The ancients, as early as the time of Homer, had various preparations raised above the edge of a vessel, made of skins and wicker-work, which were intended as a protection against high waves, and also to serve as a kind of breast-work behind which the men might be safe from the attacks of the enemy.”—Dict. Antiq.voceShips.

[Note 42 (p. 241).]

“. . . the prow
Fronted with eyes to track its watery way.”

“It is very common to represent an eye on each side of the prow of ancient ships”—Do. Do., and woodcuts there from Montfaucon. This custom, Pal. remarks, still continues in the Mediterranean.

[Note 43 (p 241).]

“To champion our need.”

Wellauer says that the “sense demands” a distribution of the concluding part of this speech between Danaus and the Chorus; but I can see no reason for disturbing the ancient order, which is retained by But., though not by Pal. That the sense requires no change, the translation should make evident.

[Note 44 (p. 242).]

“. . . their ships dark-fronted.”

(κυανώπιδες.) The reader will call to mind the νη̂ες μέλαιναι, the black ships in Homer.—See Dict. Antiq.voceShips.

[Note 45 (p. 242).]

“A strong-limbed race with noon-day sweats well hardened.”

This sentiment must have awakened a hearty response in the minds of the Greeks, who were superior to the moderns in nothing so much as in the prominency which they gave to gymnastic exercises, and their contempt for all sorts of σκιοτροϕία—rearing in the shade—which our modern bookish system tends to foster.

[Note 46 (p. 242).]

“No Mars is in her.”

ὄυκ ἔνεστ Ἄρης, a proverbial expression for pithless, nerveless. The same expression is used in the initiatory anapæsts of the Agamemnon. Ἄρης δ ὄυκ [Editor: illegible character]νι χώρᾳ.

[Note 47 (p. 242).]

“Good Greek corn is better than papyrus.”

“Præter alios plurimos usus etiam in cibis recepta fuit papyrus”—Abul. Fadi—“radix ejus pulcis est, quapropter eam masticant et sugunt Ægyptii.”—Olaus Celsius,Hierozoicon, Upsal, 1745. I consulted this valuable work myself, but owe the original reference to an excellent “Essay on the Papyrus of the Ancients, by W. H. de Vriese,” translated from the Dutch by W. B. Macdonald, Esq. of Rammerscales, in the Class. Mus. No. XVI. p. 202. In that article it is stated that “when Guilandinus was in Egypt in the year 1559-60, the pith was then used as food” Herodotus (Euterp. 92) says that they eat the lower part, roasting it in an oven (κλιβάνῳ πνίξαντες). Pliny (XIII. 11) says, “mandunt quoque, crudum decoctumque succum tantum devorantes” In the text, of course, the allusion is a sort of proverbial ground of superiority, on the part of the Greeks, over the sons of the Nile, pretty much in the spirit of Dr. Johnston’s famous definition of oats—“food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland” I have only further to add, that the papyrus belongs to the natural family of the Cyperaceæ or Sedges, and, though not now common in Egypt, is a well-known plant, and to be seen in most of our botanical gardens.

[Note 48 (p. 242).]

“The shepherds of the ships.”

I have retained this phrase scrupulously—ποιμένες ναωˆν—as an interesting relique of the patriarchal age. So in the opening choral chaunt of the Persians, Xerxes is “shepherd of many sheep,” and a little farther on in the same play, Atossa asks the Chorus, “who is shepherd of this (the Athenian) people?” It is in such small peculiarities that the whole character and expression of a language lies.

[Note 49 (p 242)]

“. . . on this coast
Harbours are few”

“Nauplia was almost the only harbour on the coast of Argolis.”—Pal., from Both. I am not topographer enough to be able to confirm this.

[Note 50 (p 243).]

“On a hanging cliff where lone winds sigh.”

κρεμὰς. Robertellus: which Well. might surely have adopted. The description of wild mountain loneliness is here very fine. Let the reader imagine such a region as that of Ben-Macdhui in Aberdeenshire, so well described in Blackwood’s Magazine, August, 1847. ὀιόϕρων is more than ὄιος; and I have ventured on a periphrasis. Hermann’s Latin translation given by Pal is—“saxum praeruptum, capris inaccessum, incommonstrabile, solitudine vastum, propendens, vulturibus habitatum”

[Note 51 (p 244)]

Chorus (in separate voices, and short hurried exclamations). I most cordially agree with Well. in attaching the ten verses 805-15 to what follows, rather than making it stand as an Epode to what precedes. A change of style is distinctly felt at the conclusion of the third Antistrophe; the dim apprehension of approaching harm becomes a distinct perception, and the choral music more turbid, sudden, and exclamatory. This I have indicated by breaking up the general chaunt into individual voices.—See p. 377, Note 19.

[Note 52 (p. 245).]

“Hence to the ships! to the good ships fare ye!”

“What follows is most corrupt, but so made up of short sentences, commands, and exclamations, that if the whole passage were wanting, it would not be much missed. It is very tasteless, and full of turgid phraseology”—Paley. All this is very true, if we look on the Suppliants as a play written to be read; but, being an opera composed for music, what appears to us tasteless and extravagant, without that stimulating emotional atmosphere, might have been, to the Athenians who heard it, the grand floodtide and tempestuous triumph of the piece. Compare, especially, the passionate Oriental coronach with which “The Persians” concludes. We must never forget that we possess only the skeleton of the sacred opera of the Greeks.

[Note 53 (p. 248).]

“To find stray goods the world all over, Hermes
Is prince of patrons.”

“Rei furtivae,” as the civil law says, “acterna est auctoritas”; and the Herald, being sent out on a mission to reclaim what was abstracted, requires no credentials but the fact of the heraldship, which he exercises under the patronage of the herald-god Hermes. It may be also, as the commentators suggest—though I recollect no passage to prove it—that Hermes, being a thief himself, and the patron of thieves, was the most apt deity to whose intervention might be referred the recovery of stolen goods. Something of this kind seems implied in the epithet μαστηριῳ, the searcher, here given to Hermes

[Note 54 (p. 250).]

“In the general view, and publishes their praise.”

After these words I have missed out a line, of which I can make nothing satisfactory—

κἄλωρα κωλύουσαν ὡς μένειν ἐρωˆ.

A few lines below, for [Editor: illegible character]υν ἐκληρώθη δορὶ, I have followed Pal. in adopting Heath’s ε[Editor: illegible character]νεκ’ ’ηρόθη ο̂ορὶ.

[Note 55 (p. 251)]

Choral Hymn. This final Chorus of the Suppliants and the opening one of the Persians are remarkable for the use of that peculiar rhythm, technically called the Ionic a minore, of which a familiar example exists in Horace, Ode III. 12. What the æsthetical or moral effect of this measure was on an Athenian ear it is perhaps impossible for us, at the present day, to know; but I have thought it right, in both cases, when it occurs, to mark the peculiarity by the adoption of an English rhythm, in some similar degree removed from the vulgar use, and not without a certain cognate character. In modern music, at least, the Ionic of the Greek text and the measure used in my translation are mere varieties of the same rhythmical genus marked musically by ¾ As for the structure of the Chorus, its division into two semi-choruses is anticipative of the division of feeling among the sisters, which afterwards arose when the conduct of their stern father forced them to choose between filial and connubial duty. One thing also is plain, that there is nothing of a real moral finale in this Chorus Regarded as a concluding ode, it were a most weak and impotent performance. The tone of grateful jubilee with which it sets out, is, after the second Strophe, suddenly changed into the original note of apprehension, evil-foreboding, doubt, and anxiety, plainly pointing to the terrible catastrophe to be unveiled in the immediately succeeding play.

[Note 56 (p. 251).]

“Yet, mighty praise be thine,
Cyprian queen divine!”

The Chorus here are evidently moved by a religious apprehension that, in placing themselves under the patronage of the goddess of chastity, they may have treated lightly the power and the functions of the great goddess of love. To reconcile the claims of opposing deities was a great problem of practical piety with all devout polytheists. The introduction of Aphrodite here, as has been remarked, is also plainly prophetic of the part which Hypermnestra is to play in the subsequent piece, under the influence of the great Cyprean goddess preferring the love of a husband to the command of a father.

[Note 57 (p 252).]

“Lovely Harmonia.”

“Hesiod says that Harmonia (ἁρμονία—order or arrangement) was the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. This has evidently all the appearance of a physical myth; for from love and strife—i.e. attraction and repulsion—arises the order or harmony of the universe.”—Keightley.

[Note 58 (p. 252).]

“Yet must I fear the chase.”

ϕυγάδεσσιν δ [Editor: illegible character]πιπλόιας. Haupt adopted by Pal. An excellent conjecture.

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THE SUPPLIANTS A LYRICO-DRAMATIC SPECTACLE - Aeschylus, The Lyrical Dramas of Aeschylus [1906]

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THE SUPPLIANTS A LYRICO-DRAMATIC SPECTACLE

PERSONS

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Chorus

Danaus.

Chorus.

Danaus.

Chorus.

Danaus.

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Danaus

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Danaus.

King.

Chorus.

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THE SUPPLIANTS

A LYRICO-DRAMATIC SPECTACLE