Fragments — Aeschylus
=====================
ΑΠΟΣΠΑΣΜΑΤΑ
Translation/edition: Herbert Weir Smyth (Loeb Classical Library, 1926)
Language: English
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Numbers in [brackets] are the edition's reference loci (Stephanus, Bekker, book.line, page...). Superscript numerals refer to the Notes at the end.


## Fragments

[Image: ]The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, where many of Aeschylus’ plays were first performed

## THE SURVIVING TITLES OF AESCHYLUS’ PLAYS

SEVENTY-THREE OF THE under-mentioned titles appear in the list of the dramas that is found in the Medicean manuscript.
. Agamemnôn.
. Athamas.
3. Aigyptioi.
. Aitnaiai (gnêsioi).
. Aitnaiai (nothoi).
6. Alkmênê.
. Amymônê.
. Argeioi or Argeiai.
. Argô ê Kôpastês.
10. Atalantê.
. Bakchai.
. Bassarai.
. Glaukos pontios.
. Glaukos Potnieus.
. Danaïdes.
16. Diktyoulkoi.
17. Dionysou trophoi (or Troiphoi).
. Eleusinioi.
. Epigonoi.
. Hepta epi Thêbas.
. Eumenides.
. Êdônoi.
. Hêliades
. Hêrakleidai.
. Thalamopoioi.
. Theôroi ê Isthmiastai.
. Thrêssai.
. Hiereiai.
. Hiketides.
. Ixiôn.
. Iphigeneia.
. Kabeiroi.
33. Kallistô.
. Kares ê Eurôpê.
. Kerkyôn.
. Kêrykes.
37. Kirkê.
. Krêssai.
39. [Kyknos.]
40. Laïos.
. Leôn.
42. Lêmnioi or Lêmniai.
. Lykourgos.
. Memnôn.
. Myrmidones.
. Mysoi.
. Neaniskoi.
48. Nemea.
. Nêreïdes.
. Niobê.
. Xantriai.
. Oidipous.
. Hoplôn krisis.
. Ostologoi.
. Palamêdês.
. Pentheus.
. Perrhaibides.
58. Persai.
. Pênelopê.
60. Polydektês.
. Promêtheus desmôtês.
. Promêtheus lyomenos.
. Promêtheus pyrkaeus.
. Promêtheus pyrphoros.
65. Propompoi.
. Prôteus.
. Salaminiai.
68. Semelê ê Hydrophoroi.
. Sisyphos drapetês.
. Sisyphos petrokylistês.
. Sphinx.
. Têlephos.
. Toxotides.
74. Hypsipylê.
. Philoktêtês.
. Phineus.
. Phorkides.
. Phryges ê Hektoros lytra.
79. Phrygioi.
. Choêphoroi.
. Psychagôgoi.
82. Psychostasia.
. Ôreithyia.
1. Not mentioned in the Katalogos tôn Aischulou dramatôn.
2. No identified fragment is extant.
3. No identified fragment forming an entire verse is extant.
4. The two plays of this name are not to be distinguished in the extant fragments.
5. Alternative titles are due to Alexandrian scholars whose explanatory designations sought to avoid confusion between dramas of the same name. Where such alternative titles occur, that denoting the Chorus is presumably older than that denoting a principal personage or the subject matter of the play.
6. The descriptive epithet added after a title may be due to Alexandrian scholars, who sought thereby to distinguish dramas of the same name.
Satyric plays attested: Kerkuôn, Kêrukes, Kirkê, Leôn, Lukourgos, Promêtheus (purkaeus), Prôteus, Sphinx.
Possibly satiric are: Amumônê, Glaukos pontios, Kallistô, Kabeiroi, Xantriai, Sisuphos drapetês, Phorkides.
Tetralogies attested:
1. (472 B.C.) Phineus, Persai, Glaukos (Potnieus), Promêtheus (purkaeus).
2. (467 B.C.) Laïos, Oidipous, Epta epi Thêbas, Sphinx.
3. Lukourgeia: êdônoi, Bassarai, Neaniskoi, Lukourgos.
4. Oresteia (458 B.C.): Agamemnôn, Choêphoroi, Eumenides, Prôteus.
By reason of the myth or of other indication of connexion between their several members, the following groups may be assumed with some probability. (The order within the group is often uncertain.)
Iketides, Aiguptioi, Danaïdes, Amumônê (satiric).
Psuchagôgoi, Ostrologoi, Pênelopê, Kirkê (satyric).
Promêtheus desmoôtes, Promêtheus luomenos, Promêtheus purphoros.
Hoplôn krisis, Thrêssai, Salaminiai.
Murmidones, Nêreïdes, Phruges ê Hektoros lutra.
Argô, Lêmnioi (Lêmniai ?), Hupsipulê, Kabeiroi (satyric ?).
Eleusinioi, Argeioi (Argeiai ?), Epigonoi.
Diktuolkoi, Poludektês, Phorkides.
Memnôn, Psuchostasia
Perraibides, Ixiôn.
Musoi, Têlephos.
Theban legends of Dionysus seem to have formed the subject of no less than five plays: Semelê ê Hudrophoroi, Dionusos trophoi (or Trophoi), Bakchai, Xantriai, Pentheus. The Argument to Euripides’ Bakchai asserts that the story of that drama had been handled in Pentheus.
To reduce the number of these Dionysus-plays to the compass of a trilogy or tetralogy, various expedients have been proposed:
1. To seek other connexions for Dionusos trophoi and assume a tetralogy consisting of Semelê ê Hudrophoroi, Bakchai, Pentheus, Xantriai (satiric).
2. To regard Bakchai as an alternative name for Pentheus, or for Xantriai (not satiric), or even for Bassarai.
3. To make Bakchai the title of the group Semelê ê Hudrophoroi, Pentheus, Xantriai.
4. To make Pentheus the name of the trilogy Semelê ^h Hudrophoroi, Bakchai, Xantriai.

## ATHAMAS

ATHAMAS, A HERO localized in Boeotia and Thessaly, was the son of Aeolus according to the genealogy commonly adopted in antiquity. By his divine wife Nephele he had two children, Phrixus and Helle; by his second wife Ino, daughter of Cadmus, he had two sons, Learchus and Melicertes. Apollodorus, Library, iii. 4. 3 (cp. i. 9. 2) narrates that Zeus entrusted the newly-born Dionysus to Hermes, who conveyed him to Ino and Athamas, and persuaded them to rear the babe as a girl. In consequence of madness brought upon them by Hera in her indignation, Athamas hunted his elder son as a deer and killed him; Ino threw Melicertes into a boiling cauldron, and then, carrying it, together with the dead body of the child, leaped into the sea. The Argument to the first Isthmian Ode of Pindar reports a different version: that the corpse of Learchus was thrown into the cauldron of Ino, who then, having become mad, plunged into the sea. The Isthmian games were instituted by Sisyphus in honour of Melicertes.
FRAGMENT 1
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, ii. 6. p. 37F; cp. vii. 100. p. 316B.
The one was cast into the three-legged cauldron of the house, that ever kept its place above the fire.
FRAGMENT 2
Etymologicum Florentium 116 (Miller); cp. Etymologicum Magnum 346. 56.
Taking out with bronze flesh-hooks

## AITNAIAI

A Sicilian maiden named Thaleia or Aetna, having been embraced by Zeus, in fear of Hera’s wrath prayed that the earth might open and swallow her up. Her prayer was granted, but when the time of her delivery was at hand, the earth opened again and twin boys came forth, who were called Palïci, because they had “come back” (apo tou palin hikesthai) from the earth. The Palici were worshipped (originally with human sacrifices) in the neighbourhood of Mount Aetna (Macrobius, Saturnalia, v. 19. 17; cp. Servius on Virgil, Aeneid, ix. 584).
“Having arrived in Sicily, as Hiero was then (476 B.C.) founding the city of Aetna, Aeschylus exhibited his Aetnae as an augury of a prosperous life for those who were uniting in the settlement of the city” (Life of Aeschylus).
The play is named Aitnaiai, The Women of Aetna, in the Medicean Catalogue, and so apparently in Frag. 9 and Frag. 10 (Nauck). The title has the form Aitnai in the Life and Nauck’s 7 and 8; Aitna in Nauck’s 11, Aetna in Macrobius. Alexandrian scholars thought to distinguish a genuine from a spurious play of this name.
FRAGMENT 3
Macrobius, Saturnalia v. 19. 24.
A. What name, then, shall mortals put upon them?
B. Zeus commandeth that they be called the holy Palici.
A. And shall the name “Palici” abide as rightly given?
B. Aye, for they shall “come back” from darkness to this light.

## AMYMÔNÊ

“BUT THE LAND of Argos being waterless, since Poseidon had dried up even the springs because of his anger at Inachus for testifying that it belonged to Hera, Danaüs sent his daughters to draw water. One of them, Amymone, as she was searching for water, threw a dart at a deer and hit a sleeping satyr. He, starting up, desired to force her; but Poseidon appearing on the scene, the satyr fled, and Amymone lay with Poseidon, and he revealed to her the springs at Lerna.” (Apollodorus, Library, ii. 1. 4). The play was probably satyric.
FRAGMENT 4
Ammonius, On Words of like Form but different Meaning 37 (Valckenaer), Bachmann, Anecdota Graeca, ii. 375. 8
It is thy fate to be my wife; mine to be thy husband.
FRAGMENT 5
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xv. 41. p. 490C.
And for my part I [wish] thy nards and balsam too

## ARGEIOI

In the Medicean Catalogue and the Etymologicum Magnum (see under Fragment 7) the play bears the title Argeioi, The Men of Argos. In the authors citing Fragment 6 and Nauck’s 18 (Hesychius, Lexicon 1. 257) the name is Argeiai, which suggests that the Chorus was formed of the mothers of the Argive commanders who fell in the attack on Thebes described in the extant play of Aeschylus. According to Welcker, the Eleusinioi anticipated the first, the Argeioi the second, part of Euripides’ Suppliants. M. Schmidt in Philologus, xvi. (1860) 161, conjectured that the drama was entitled Argeia from the daughter Adrastus who married Polynices, and who, in Statius’ Thebaid, was joined by Antigone in burying her father.
Fragment 155 has been assigned to this play.
FRAGMENT 6
Harpocration, Glossary of the Ten Attic Orators 306. 11.
Both darts and looped javelins and heaped missiles
FRAGMENT 7
Etymologicum Magnum 341. 5, Lexicon Sabbaïticum 21.
Capaneus is left me with the remains of his lightning-smitten limbs that the thunderbolt had left behind (?)
From a lament, probably by the Chorus, on the Argive chieftains who fell in the first attack on Thebes; or possibly by Evadne over the body of her husband Capaneus, of whose destruction, by the lightning of Zeus, Eteocles is confident in Seven against Thebes 444. In Euripides’ Suppliants the bodies of the other Argive champions were burned on a single funeral pyre, that of Capaneus was burned apart as a consecrated corpse; and upon his pyre his wife threw herself.

## ARGÔ

In the Medicean Catalogue the play is entitled Argô hê kôpastês (so M); in the Aldine edition, Argô ê kôpeustês. Referring the sub-title to the rowers of the Argo, Welcker proposes kôpeustai; Hippenstiel, De Graecorum tragicorum principum fabularum nominibus, kôpastai. Hartung, approved by Dieterich, read kômastai “revellers.”
See Fragments 164, 221.
FRAGMENT 8
Philo of Alexandria, On the Virtuous being also Free 20. 143 (Chon and Reiter vi. 41).
Where is Argo’s sacred speaking beam?
Apollodorus, Library i. 9. 16: “and at the prow (of the Argo) Athena fitted a speaking timber from the oak of Dodona.”

## BAKCHAI

FRAGMENT 215 HAS been referred to the Bacchae.
FRAGMENT 9
Stobaeus, Anthology i. 3. 26 (Wachsmuth i. 57), Theophilus, To Autolycus 2. 37. p. 178. The verses are ascribed to the Bakchai only in the margin of the Farnesianus of Stobaeus (aischulou kakchôn).
Truly upon mortals cometh swift of foot their evil and his offence upon him that trespasseth against Right.

## BASSARAI

Eratosthenes, Legends of the Constellations, 24. p. 140 (Robert), says of Orpheus that he paid no honour to Dionysus, but considered Helios to be the greatest of the gods and addressed him as Apollo; that, by making haste during the night, he reached at dawn the summit of Mt. Pangaeus, and waited there that he might see the rising of the sun; and that Dionysus, in his wrath, sent against him the Bassarides (as Aeschylus tells the story), who tore him to pieces and scattered his members, which were collected and buried by the Muses in Leibethra. To the same effect, Scholiast Germanicus, 84. 11.
The name Bassarai was given to Thracian (and to Phrygian and Lydian) bacchanals, who wore fox-skin caps and long embroidered cloaks, pictured in Miss Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 458. The word bassara (possibly of Phrygian origin but carried elsewhere) means “fox.” Cp. Fragment 29.
The play is entitled Bassarides in the Scholiast on Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 135, and on Nicander, Theriaca 288.
To the Bassarae have been assigned Fragments 187. 215.
FRAGMENT 10
Hephaestion, Handbook of Metres 13. p. 43 (Consbruch) and Choeroboscus, Commentary p. 84. 3.
The bull was like to butt the goat with his horns . . .
Dionysus is the bull, the goat is Lycurgus, the king of the Edonians, who refused to adopt the worship of the god.
FRAGMENT 11
Scholiast on Nicander, Theriaca 288.
Old chips and sooty ashes on the altar
FRAGMENT 12
Scholiast (cod. Vaticanus Graecus 909) on Euripides, Rhesus 922.
For his gleaming torch doth flood with flashing light Pangaeus’ headland, silver-seamed.
Probably from the Messenger’s report to Dionysus concerning Orpheus ascent of the mountain to behold the rising sun.

## GLAUKOS PONTIOS

Pausanias, Description of Greece ix. 22. 7: “At Antehodon by the sea is what is called `Glaucus’ Leap.’ That Glaucus was a fisherman, who, because he had eaten of a grass, was changed into a daimon of the sea and foretells men the future, is believed by people in general, and especially to seafaring men every year tell stories about his prophetic art. Pindar and Aeschylus learned from the Anthedonians concerning him, but wheras the former did not have much to do with the legends in his poems, the latter worked them into a play.” Plutarch, in his Life of Cicero 2, reports that there still existed in his timea short poet in tetrameters on Glaucus of the Sea written by the orator in his youth.In Fragments 17-19 Glaucus describes his wanderings by sea. To the play, which was probably satyric, have been ascribed Fragments 203, 230, 231.
FRAGMENT 13
Phrynichus in Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 5. 21, Photius, Lexicon 140. 22 (Reitzenstein). The line is a metrical attempt by a grammarian interpreting a verse of Aeschylus, which Nauck would restore as anthrôpomorphon kêtos hudati ounnonon.
[A creature, like unto a man, living in the water]
FRAGMENT 14
Etymologicum Magnum 250. 4, Eustathius on Iliad 274. 24; cp. Pausanias, Description of Greece x. 4. 7.
Shaggy his moustache and his beard’s base
FRAGMENT 15
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 347. 24, Photius, Lexicon 36. 12 (Reitzenstein).
He that ate the ever-living, imperishable grass
Ovid, Metamorphoses xiii. 930, relates that Glaucus was moved to eat of a certain grass because a fish that he had caught, on touching the same, regained life and sprang into the sea. The effect produced by the magic herb (according to the legend adopted by Nicander, Ther., Frag. 2) was that Glaucus became a god and leaped into the sea.
FRAGMENT 16
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 347. 29, Photius, Lexicon 36. 16 (Reitzenstein).
And I taste, methinks, the ever-living grass.
FRAGMENT 17
Strabo, Geography x. 1. 9. p. 447
The bend at Euboïs about the headland of Cenaean Zeus, close to the tomb of wretched Lichas
Strabo says that Euboïs was a city which had been engulfed by an earthquake. The Cenaean promontory is situated at the end of the peninsula at the N.W. extremity of Euboea. Near by is a mountain (about 2800 feet high), on the top of which Zeus Cenaeus was worshipped. From the promontory, Lichas, the herald of Heracles, was hurled into the sea by his master because he had been the bearer of the poisoned robe sent by Deïaneira. Cp. Sophocles, Women of Trachis 237, 750.
FRAGMENT 18
Life of Aratus, Westernmann’s Lives of the Greeks 53. 26, from Petavius, Uranologia 269A (Paris, 1637).
And thereafter going out past Diad Athens
From Dion, a city on the promontory of Cenaeum, a settlement of Athenians was called Athenae Diades.
FRAGMENT 19
Scholiast on Pindar, Pythian 1. 79 (152).
Having washed my body in fair baths, I came to steep-banked Himeras.

## GLAUKOS POTNIEUS

Potniae was a city in Boeotia where Glaucus, the son of Sisyphus and Merope, kept mares that he had accustomed to feed on human flesh in order to make them charge against the enemy with greater eagerness and speed. When this food failed, they devoured their master at the funeral games in honour of Pelias (Asclepiades, On the Subjects of Tragedy in Probus on Virgil, Georgics iii. 267). According to the Scholiast on Euripides, Orestes 318, the horses had eaten a (poisonous) grass, whereby they became mad and tore Glaucus asunder. Strabo, Geography x. 409 omits any mention of the cause of madness, which other writers attribute, now to the water of a sacred spring near Potniae, now to the anger of Aphrodite (because Glaucus prevented his mares from mating in order to increase their speed), now to their human food.
In Fragment 20 the Chorus utter their good wishes on Glaucus’ departure for the games. In 21, 22, 23 the Messenger describes the contest, in which the title-hero was hurled from his chariot in the collision caused by the madness of the mares.
The Glaucus of Potniae was produced in 472 B.C. as the third member of the tetralogy Phineus, Persai, Glaukos (Potnieus according to a later Argument), Promêtheus (probably purkaeus).
See Fragments 88, 181, 184, 205.
FRAGMENT 20
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Frogs 1528.
“A prosperous journey!” is the first wish we pour forth from our lips.
FRAGMENT 21
Scholiast on Plato, p. 904 B 36 (Baiter-Orelli).
Not for laggards doth a contest wait.
FRAGMENT 22
Scholiast on Euripides, Women of Phoenicia 1194.
For chariot on chariot, corpse upon corpse, horse on horse, had been heaped in confusion.
FRAGMENT 23
Scholiasts BLTV on Il. N 198; cp. Eustathius on Il. 297. 39.
In their fury they dragged him aloft, even as two wolves bear off a fawn by its shoulders.

## DANAÏDES

When marriage with their cousins, the sons of Aegyptus, had been forced upon the daughters of Danaüs, their father commanded each to kill her husband during the marriage-night. Hypermestra alone, swayed by the charm of love, disobeyed (cp. Prometheus Bound 865). Of her, Horace, Od. iii. 11. 33 ff., says una de multis face nuptiali digna periurum fuit in parentem splendide mendax et in omen virgo nobilis aevum.
To the Danaïds have been assigned Fragments 162, 163, 177, 206, 208, 231, 234, 238.
FRAGMENT 24
The fragment refers to the custom that, on the morning after the marriage, newly-wed couples were wakened by song (cp. Theocritus, Idyll xviii. 56). If the speaker was a servant (who was not privy to the intended murder), the verses may belong to a prologue, which was followed by the appearance of the Chorus of Danaïds; but, so far as we know, the “wakening” was sung by friends of the bride and bridegroom presumably the same as had, on the previous evening, sun the hymenaeus. If, as seems more probably, the speaker is Danaüs, he is describing what occurred either on the evening of the wedding or on the morning thereafter, before the discovery of the murder, and the lines form part of his defence before the court that tried him for his participation in the killing of his sons-in-law (Scholiast on Euripides, Orestes 872). The difficulty of interpretation is largely concerned with the application of the last five words of the text.
1. sun korois te kai korais is the stereotyped form of a wish that the marriage may be fruitful in children. These words were said to brides by the singers of the wedding-song according to the Scholiast on Pindar and Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. kourizmenoi.
Hermann holds to the MS. reading.
And then the radiant light of the sun is setting, while I call them forth, saying `let them make their bridegrooms graciously disposed, as is the custom, with boys and girls.’
On this interpretation, Danaüs describes how, after the brides had departed to their new home, he addressed their companions; but the situation is not clear, the meaning of egeirô is strained, and the explanation of nomoisi peculiar. Toup’s aneisi transfers the scene to the morning, as does Wiliamowitz eute . . . egeisê (“and when Dawn shall rouse the radiant light of the sun”); but the latter scholar can find in the following words no more definite idea than that certain persons are enjoined to make the young husbands (or the newly-wedded couples) friendly “with boys and girls.”
2. sun korais te kai korais means the companions of the speaker, who, with him, awakens the sleepers. So Welcker, reading aneisi and thelgôn:
And thereafter uprises the radiant light of the sun, while I, in company with youths and maidens, awaken the bridegrooms graciously disposed.
thelgôn is ironical; as is preumeneis, since Danaüs had married his daughter to suitors whom they, and he, detested, and whose murder he planned.
The situation is moving: when the waking-song was sung, the husbands – all save Lynceus, who was married to Hypermestra – were sleeping the sleep of death. But the scene, because reported, is less dramatic than that in Euripides’ Phaëthon, in which play (Frag. 781) Merops appears with a chorus of maidens who sing the nuptial song in honour of Phaëthon at the very moment when Phaëthon’s corpse is being carried into the chamber of Clymene, the wife of Merops. In Wilhelm Tell the music of a wedding-procession is heard while Gessler is in the agonies of death.
FRAGMENT 25
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xiii. 73. p. 600B; Eustathius on Iliad 978. 25 (omitting ll. 6-7), misled the reference to Aeschylus of Alexandria in Athen. 599E, ascribed ll. 1-5 to that poet.
The holy heaven yearns to wound the earth, and yearning layeth hold on the earth to join in wedlock; the rain, fallen from the amorous heaven, impregnates the earth, and it bringeth forth for mankind the food of flocks and herds and Demeter’s gifts; and from that moist marriage-rite the woods put on their bloom. Of all these things I am the cause.
These lines – the Bridal of Heaven and Earth, imitated by Euripides, Fragment 898 – were spoken, says Athenaeus, by Aphrodite herself; and probably in defence of Hypermestra at her trial for disobedience to her father’s command. Cp. Lucretius i. 250 (imbres) pater aether in gremium matris terrain praecipitavit, and Virgil, Georg. ii. 235.

## ELEUSINIOI

Plutarch in his Life of Theseus 29, states that Theseus, in conjunction with Adrastus, effected the recovery of the bodies of the Argives slain before Thebes (in the expedition against that city undertaken by the seven champions); that Aeschylus made the recovery the result of persuasion on the part of Theseus, whereas Euripides, in his Suppliants, ascribed it to a victory over the Argives; and that Theseus appeared in Aeschylus’ play, and out of kindness to Adrastus caused the leaders to be buried at Eleusis, the soldiery at Eleutherae, where their tombs were still shown in his day.
To The Men of Eleusis have been assigned Fragments 178, 199, 200, 214, 215, 241
FRAGMENT 25A
Didymus, Commentary on Demosthenes’ Philippic xii (xiii) in Berliner Papyrus 978- (Berliner Klassikertexte i. (1904) 66).
The matter pressed, rotting already was the corpse.

## EPIGONOI

Ten years after the unsuccessful attack on Thebes described in The Seven against Thebes, the son of the fallen chieftains, called the After-Born, avenged the death of their fathers in a second expedition, which resulted in the capture of the city. At the end of Euripides’ Suppliants (l. 1213) Athena prophesies the success of the sons in the war that formed the theme of the Aeschylean drama. The legend of the victorious issue of the second expedition is known to the Iliad in which (D 406) Sthenelus, the son of Capaneus, boasts the superiority of the sons over their fathers. But the tradition that the seven champions had each a son (named in Apollodorus, Library iii. 7. 2) who joined in the war, is apparently later than Homer. In The Seven against Thebes, Aeschylus made both Eteocles and Polynices die childless; but Pindar knew of Thersander, the son of Polynices and successor to his claim to the throne; and late writers report that Laodamas was the son of Eteocles.
Fragments 176, 247, 248 have been referred to The Epigoni.
FRAGMENT 26
Scholiast on Pindar, Isthmian 6. 10 (7).
First, libations to Zeus and Hera for timely marriage
The second cup of mixed wine I serve to the Heroes
Third, a libation for blessing to Zeus, the Saviour.

## ÊDÔNOI

Apollodorus, Library iii. 5. 1, gives the following version of the legend of Lycurgus and his rejection of the god Dionysus:
“And afterwards he (Dionysus) arrived at Cybela in Phrygia, and there, having been purified by Rhea, and learning the rites of initiation, he received from her the costume, and hastened through Thrace [against the Indians]. But Lycurgus, king of the Edonians, who dwell beside the river Strymon, was the first to insult and expel him. And Dionysus took refuge in the sea with Thetis, the daughter of Nereus, and the Bacchanals were taken captive and the multitude of the satyrs that followed him. But afterwards the Bacchanals were suddenly released, and Dionysus brought madness upon Lycurgus. And he, in his frenzy, struck with an axe and killed his son Dryas, imagining that he was lopping off the branch of a vine; and when he had cut off his son’s extremities, he came to his senses. But since the land remained barren, the god made known by an oracle that it would bear fruit if Lycurgus were put to death. On hearing this, the Edonians took him to Mt. Pangaeus, and bound him; and there, by the will of Dionysus, he died, destroyed by horses.”
Fragment 27 refers to the arrival of Dionysus and his worshippers, 28 to the house of Lycurgus; to whom, or to one of his attendants, belong the satirical descriptions of the god in 29-32.
To The Edonians have been ascribed Fragments 173, 188, 193, 201, 202.
FRAGMENT 27
Strabo, Geography x. 3. 16. p. 470 (l. 6 Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xi. 57. p. 479B, Scholiast BT on Iliad PS 34).
Practising the holy rites of Cotyto . . . One, holding in his hands the pipe, the labour of the lathe, blows forth his fingered tune, even the sound that wakes to frenzy. Another, with brass-bound cymbals, raises a clang . . . the twang shrills; the unseen, unknown, bull-voiced mimes in answer bellow fearfully, while the timbrel’s echo, like that of subterranean thunder, rolls along inspiring a mighty terror.
From the parodus of the play. In ll. 2-11 the Chorus of Edonians describes what Milton calls “the barbarous dissonance of Bacchus and his revellers.” Cotys, Cotyto, or Cotytto, was a Thracian goddess, akin to Rhea-Cybele, whose worship became popular in Athens. Her rites resembled those of the Phrygian Sabazius, whose ritual was similar to that of Bacchus. The Orphic ceremonies had their origin among the Thracians.
FRAGMENT 28
Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime 15. 6.
Lo, the house is frenzied with the god, the roof revels, Bacchant-like.
FRAGMENT 29
Etymologicum Florentinum 62 (Miller), Lexicon Sabbaïticum 5.
One who wears Lydian tunics and fox-skin cloaks reaching to the feet
Dionysus is described as wearing Lydian garments, which were famous for their luxuriousness.
FRAGMENT 30
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Birds 276, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. mousomantis
Who in the world is this poet-prophet, speechless . . .
Bothe read habros, asthenês “daintly, weakling”; Hermann amalos abrofatês sthenei “soft, a dainty stepper in his strength.”
FRAGMENT 31
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 135.
Whence hails this woman-man? What’s his country? What’s his attire?
FRAGMENT 32
Scholiast B on Iliad I 539; cp. Eustathius on Iliad 772. 53.
Long-legged indeed! Was he not a chlounês?
The sense of chlounês is here obscure. In Iliad I 539 the word was explained by the ancients as meaning “entire” (not castrated) or “couching in the grass”; elsewhere, as “rascal,” “thief,” or “clothes-stealer.” Herman thought it was a designation of a locust. See Wiliammowitz, Aischylos: Interpretationen p. 217.

## HÊLIADES

The Daughters of Helios dealt with the legend of Phaëthon, whose rashness in diving the chariot of the Sun, his father, caused the parching of the earth, and thereby his punishment at the hands of Zeus, whose thunderbolt hurled him into the river Eridanus. In pity for the unceasing grief of Phaëthon’s sisters, Zeus turned them into poplars, from which, it was believed, their tears oozed forth and became amber, the stone of light; a poetic fancy due to the association of êlectron “amber” with êlectôr “the beaming sun.”
The form assumed by the myth in Aeschylus is unknown; but it is certain that Euripides in his Phaëthon differed widely from the older poet. Aeschylus was in part dependent on Hesiod for the story; but whereas Hesiod knew of seven daughters of Helios, Aeschylus recognized only three – Lampetië, Aegle, and Phaëthousa – children of the sun-god and Rhode. Furthermore he transferred to Iberia the scene of the fall of Phaëthon.
Fragments 172, 177, 185 have been ascribed to the play.
FRAGMENT 33
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xi. 39. p. 469F.
Where, in the west, is the bowl wrought by Hephaestus, the bowl of thy sire, speeding wherein he crosseth the mighty, swelling stream that girdleth earth, fleeing the gloom of holy night of sable steeds.
To explain the rising of the sun in the east after it had set in the west, Greek fancy invented the myth that the Sun-god possessed a golden bowl, in which he, together with his steeds, was carried during the night across the ocean to the place of his rising. When Heracles was journeying to Erythea to capture the oxen of Geryon (Frag. 37), Helios lent his bowl to the hero; who, in Gerhard’s Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder, pl. 109, is pictured sitting therein. In the Veda and in Germanic and Lettic myths the sun appears in the form of a golden bowl.
FRAGMENT 34
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies v. 14. p. 718; cp. Philodemus, On Piety 22.
Zeus is air, Zeus is earth, Zeus is heaven, yea, Zeus is all things and whatsoever trancendeth them.
FRAGMENT 35
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 346. 10.
And Adria’s daughters shall learn a (new) way of mourning.
Phaëthon was hurled into the Eridanus, which Aeschylus, according to Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvii. 31, placed in Iberia and identified with the Rhone, a river confused with the Po, on the banks of which was the city of Adria. Polybius, History ii. 16 and Plutarch, On the Delay of Divine Vengeance 12. p. 557, report that the inhabitants along the Eridanus wore black in mourning for Phaëthon. Knaack, Quaestiones Phaëthonteae 18, refers “the way of mourning” to the tears of amber from the poplars into which the maidens had been transformed.
FRAGMENT 36
Etymologicum Genuinum (cod. Vaticanus Graceus 1818) s.v. aphtonestaton; cp. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists x. 24. p. 424D, Eustathius on Iliad 746. 45, Lexicon Sabbaïticum 2.
Gushed from the spring a more abundant stream.

## HÊRAKLEIDAI

Of the personages, action, and scene of The Children of Heracles nothing is known. It is, however, probably that Aeschylus in part anticipated Euripides, who, in his same-named play, represented Athens as the refuge of the fugitives from the persecution of Eurystheus, the willingness of Macaria, the daughter of Heracles, to sacrifice her life as the price of victory over the Argive invaders of Attica, and the triumph of the children under the leadership of the aged Iolaüs, the nephew of Heracles.
The play is entitled Hêrakleidai, except in the Catalogue in the Medicean MS., which has Hêrakleidês.
FRAGMENT 37
Scholiast on Aristeides (cod. Marcianus 423).
Starting thence, when that he had crossed the ocean in a golden bowl, he drave the straight-horned kine from the uttermost parts of the earth, slew the evil herdsmen and their triple-bodied master, who wielded three spears in his (right) hands; in his left, extending three shields, and shaking his three crests, he advanced like unto Ares in his might.
A description of the tenth labour of Heracles – to fetch the kine of Geryon from the island of Erythea, near the ocean, now Cadiz. Geryon had the body of three men grown together and joined in one at the waist, but parted in three from the flanks and thighs (Apollodorus, Library ii. 5. 10). Cp. Agam. 870. For the golden bowl see under Fragment 33.
FRAGMENT 38
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 54. 2 (Hense v. 1113).
For I shall not suffer any evil greater than this.

## THALAMOPOIOI

A play of this name is unknown in the Catalogue in the Medicean MS., and is mentioned only by Pollux, citing Fragment 39. Some suppose that it is an alternative title of the Aiguptioi, and that the name is derived from the carpenters who constructed the bridal chambers in which the Danaïds killed their husbands. Hartung proposed to read Thalamêtoloi “attendants of the bridal chambers.” Welcker rejected connexion with the Danaïd-myth and made the play precede the Iphigeneia and Hiereiai.
To the play have been referred Fragments 162, 163, 178, 189, 206, 238.
FRAGMENT 39
Pollux, Vocabulary 7. 122.
Come! Let some one work out in the ceiling a Lesbian moulding in triangular rhythms.
A ceiling-compartment was formed, at its lower part, by “ladders” (klimakides) laid across the “main beams” (selides). Below the former, in the present case, ran a moulding with swelling above and hollow below (a cyma reversa) and ornamented with a leaf-and-tongue pattern that approximates a triangle. The Lesbian cyma appears in the Tholos at Epidaurus.

## THESMOI ê ISTHMIASTAI

THE ORIGINAL TITLE was probably Theôroi, The Spectators; to which was added that defining the scene: The Spectators at the Isthmian games.
FRAGMENT 40
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xiv. 27. p. 629F.
And further these old skôpeumata
Athenaeus defines the form of the skôps-dance as a figure in which people are represented as looking at an object (aposkopountôn) by making an arch over their brows. He has, however, here confused skôps with skopos, which Hesychius, Lexicon 4. 216, describes as a dance in which the dancers shaded their eyes (cp. huposkopon chera, Aeschylus, Frag. 339 Nauck). The screech-owl dance (skôps) got its name, says Athenaeus ix. 45. p. 391A, from the variety of motion displayed by the bird.

## THRÊISSAI

The play derives its title from Thracian women, captives of Ajax, who formed the Chorus and had a like function with the sailors from Salamis in Sophocles’ Ajax: to support with their sympathy the hero who has suffered the ignominy of defeat at the hands of Achilles, and after his suicide to bewail his death. Though captives, they even dared to protest against the inhumanity to Menelaüs, who would refuse burial to the body of their master. In Sophocles’ play, Ajax killed himself on the stage and in solitude; in Aeschylus, his suicide was reported by a messenger, an eye-witness of the deed.
See Fragments 159, 194, 264.
FRAGMENT 41
Scholiast on Sophocles, Ajax 833. L. 1 restored by Hermann, 1. 2 (as 1. 1) by Hartung, 1. 3 by Sidgwick. The vial part was ta peri (or kata) tên maschalên according to the Scholiast on Sophocles and to Scholiasts TV on X 404 (cp. Ajax 834).
Back he bent his sword, as when a man bends a bow, for that his body offered no place to murderous death, until at last some goddess appeared and showed him [the vital spot].
The passage has reference to the legend that the body of Ajax, when a babe, having been wrapped by Heracles in his lion-skin, became invulnerable except the spot where Heracles’ quiver prevented the hide from touching it. According to Homer, Ajax was vulnerable, hence the legend was probably derived by Aeschylus from a Cyclic poet; and is certainly due to the desire to make Ajax equally invulnerable with Achilles. The sword with which Ajax slew himself had been given him by Hector.

## HIEREIAI

THE PRIESTESSES WAS made by Welcker the third member of a trilogy, whose preceding parts were the Thalamopoioi and the Iphigeneia. By others it has been associated with the Musoi and Têlephos, or with the Têlephos and Iphigeneia. See Fragment 214.
FRAGMENT 42
Macrobius, Saturnalia v. 22. 13, Scholiast on Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus 793.
Send with all speed; for these are the oracles that Father Zeus dost entrust unto Loxias.
FRAGMENT 43
Aristophanes, Frogs 1274, with Scholiast.
Hold your peace! The bee-keepers are at hand to open the house of Artemis.
From Iphigeneia according to Vater.
The Scholiast on Pindar, Pythian 4. 104 (60) says that “melissai is a term used primarily of the priestesses of Demeter, and by a misuse of language applied to all priestesses because of the purity of the animal.” Coins of the Ephesian Artemis as early as the sixth century, and a Vatican statue of the same goddess, show the bee as an emblem.

## IXION

Ixion was famous in Greek tradition as the first man to shed kindred blood (Pindar, Pythian 2. 31, cp. Eumenides 718), and as the first to receive purification from the crime of murder. His father’s name is variously reported, usually as Phlegyas, but Aeschylus made him the son of Antion. His mother was Perimela, the daughter of Amythaon. Under promise of rich wedding-gifts to Eïnoeus (or Deïoneus), the father of Dia, he married her, and by her had a son, Peirithoüs. On his refusal to make over to his father-in-law the wedding-gifts due to him, Eïnoeus took Ixion’s horses as a pledge of payment; whereupon Ixion, pretending that he would submit himself to his good pleasure, sent for Eïoneus and caused him to fall into a fiery pit. For this offence he could obtain purification from neither man nor any god, until Zeus, showing himself a “gracious avenger” (Frag. 92 N.), took compassion on his suppliant, cleansed him of bloodshed, and even raised him to Olympus. There Ixion conceived a made passion for the Queen of Heaven, and having besought her to yield to his desires, Zeus fashioned a cloud in the semblance of Hera. Ixion lay with the cloud, and from this union sprang the centaurs. In punishment for this impious crime, Zeus bound him to a wheel on which he whirls in an eternity of torment. To the above effect, in the main, Diodorus of Sicily, Historical Library iv. 69. 3.
The play probably followed the Perrhaebides, which took its name from the Chorus of women of Perrhaebia in Thessaly, which district, or the city of Gyrton in the same, Ixion had subjected to his rule. The theme of the first play may have been the deception and murder of Eïoneus; that of the Ixion, the purification of the murderer. The third member of the trilogy is unknown.
Fragment 182 has been referred to the Ixion.
FRAGMENT 44
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 53. 15 (Hense v. 1101), Munich Anthology 134 (cod. Augusanus-Monacensis 429).
Death hath a fairer fame than a life of toil.
Cp. Fragment 229 and Euripides, Women of Troy 637. ponêros, lit. “laborious,” may not yet have acquired the meaning “bad,” “evil.”
FRAGMENT 45
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists iv. 79. p. 182C.
But anon the long flute swallows up the half-holed.
Ixion’s lesser offence – the murder of his father-in-law – is obscured by the enormity of his crime against Hera and against Zeus.
hêmiopoi auloi were the same as those used by boys (paidikoi) and had higher tones than the teleioi. They were half as long as (perhaps) the huperteleioi, which had the lowest pitch, and may have had no more than four holes. See Howard, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology iv. (1898).

## IPHIGENEIA

The theme of the play was probably the sacrifice of Iphigeneia at Aulis, to which place she was brought by her mother at the instance of Agamemnon, who alleged his intention of betrothing his daughter to Achilles. The subject may thus have anticipated Sophocles’ Iphigenia and Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis.
See Fragments 43, 130, 214.
FRAGMENT 46
Scholiast on Sophocles, Ajax 722.
Surely it befits not to be reviled by women. How should it?

## KABEIROI

This drama, which has its name from the Chorus, is the earliest literary witness to the Cabiri, more often called the Great Gods in Samothrace and Lemnos, the most ancient and famous seats of their worship in the Aegean. Originally pre-Hellenic chthonian divinities, who primal home was Phrygia, Phoenicia, or among the Pelasgians of Greece, their cult gradually accommodated itself to the religion of the peoples with which it came into contact; until in the historical period, the Cabiri appear as daimones who foster vegetative life and protect seafaring folk, and whose Mysteries in course of time spread over the greater part of the Greek world.
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists x. 33 p. 428F, declares that it was Aeschylus, not Euripides (in the Alcestis), who first introduced drunken people to the sight of the spectators of “tragedy”; and that this evil eminence was displayed in his Cabiri, in which play he represented Jason and his companions as drunk. Fragment 48 would seem to refer to the hospitable reception of the Argonauts by the Cabiri, who furnished them with an abundance of wine upon their landing at Lemnos, the first stopping-place of the Argo on its eastward voyage. The introduction of a drunken orgy has caused many scholars to regard the play as satyric rather than tragic. Whether pure tragedy may thus relax its gravity is a question that has been raised also in connexion with the Ostologoi of Aeschylus and the Sundeipnoi of Sophocles.
The Scholiast on Pindar, Pythian 4. 303 (171), states that the names of the heroes of the Argonautic expedition were set forth in the Kabeiroi, as also in the Lêmniai of Sophocles.
Fragment 164 has been referred to this play.
FRAGMENT 47
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ix. 15. p. 373D.
But I take thee not as an omen of my journey.
FRAGMENT 48
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 23; cp. Antiattacistes in Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 115. 3.
Jars neither of wine nor of water shall fail in the houses of the rich.
FRAGMENT 49
Plutarch, Table Talk ii. 1. 7. p. 632F.
We shall make he house to be scant of vinegar.
The Cabiri jestingly threaten to produce so excellent, or so abundant, a vintage that either the Argonauts will drink so much that no wine will be kept to make vinegar; or that vinegar shall be poured out from the casks to give place to wine. If oxous means “ordinary wine,” the meaning is that it will have to be thrown away for the better quality.

## KARES ê EURÔPÊ

Europe, the protagonist in the drama bearing her name as an alternative title, in Fragment 50 tells of her carrying-off by the bull, of the three sons she bore to Zeus (Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon), and of her anxiety as to the fate of her youngest, Sarpedon, whose warlike spirit has incited him to leave his home for Troy in order to render assistance to the city now attacked by the Achaeans.
The scene was Lycia, whither Europe had come from Crete together with her son. That the Chorus consisted of Carians, though Sarpedon was Prince of Lycia, may be due to the fact that (as Strabo, Geography xiv. 5. p. 675, informs us) the poets often included the Lycians among the Carians, who were the most famous of all the races in south-western Asia Minor. The confusion had the advantage of enabling the poet to reproduce the lamentations over the dead for which the Carians were celebrated.
Popular tradition was inconsistent as to the name of Sarpedon’s mother. Aeschylus followed the Hesiodic version in preference to that of Homer, who calls her Laodamia. Nor was he disturbed by the Homeric genealogy, by which Sarpedon was made the grandson of Bellerophon on the mother’s side. In the poet’s time no one had yet thought, as did the mythographers later, to remove the difficulty, either by assuming two Sarpedons (one the son of Laodamia, the other the son of Europe) or by the notion that there was one Sarpedon, who had been permitted by his father Zeus to live through three generations.
The drama probably dealt with the reception of the news of the hero’s death at the hands of Patroclus and with the arrival of his body in Lycia, borne thither by Sleep and Death (cp. P 682). All other Homeric warriors who fell before Troy were buried in the Troad; Sarpedon alone had burial in his own land.
To this play has been ascribed Fragments 175, 231.
FRAGMENT 50
Weil, Un papyrus inedit de le bibliothèque de M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot (1879); cp. Weil, Revue de philologie nouv. Sér. iv. (1880) 10-13, 145-150.
The papyrus is relatively late and exceedingly corrupt. The verses are without word-division.
And a lush meadow gave friendly welcome to the bull. In such wise, biding where he was, did Zeus succeed in his unlaboured theft of me from my aged sire. Why the whole tale? In a few words I recount it all. A mortal woman, united to a god I lost the holiness of maidenhood, but I was joined in wedlock with him who owned his children equally with me. Thrice in childbirth did I endure the pangs of womankind, and the field wherein he sowed complained not to bring forth the seed of a noble sire. First of these mighty implantings that I bare was Minos . . . Second, I brought forth Rhadamanthys, he who of my sons is free from death; yet, though he lives, mine eyes behold him not – and to them that love, the absent bring no delight. This was he for whom I am now sore distressed in heart, even Sarpedon; for Ares’ warlike spirit hath laid hold of him. For it is famed abroad that the choicest flower of all Hellas has come, preëminent in valorous strength, and makes loud boast that it will perforce destroy the city of the Trojans. It is for my son I fear, lest, raging with his lance, he may do and suffer some surpassing ill. For slight is this my hope – and it standeth on the razor’s edge – that by the bloody death of my child I may not lose my all.
1. Since Europa declares that Zeus remained “where he was” (namely in Crete), she implies that her carrying-off had been effected by the bull as the agent of the god, and not (as in the ordinary version of the legend) by the god himself transformed into the animal.
2. Phoenix.
3. Since she bore no less than three children to Zeus, her relation to the god is conceived as that of formal marriage founded on his desire for offspring. zunônia paidôn, lit. joint-ownership of children. Cp. koinan tekeôn tuchan, Euripides, Ion 1101.
4. In the lacuna were described the deeds, honours, and death of Minos; but Minos, since Rhadamanthys alone is called immortal, was probably not made the judge of the dead.
5. Rhadamanthys has been translated to the Elysian Field (d563) or to the Islands of the Blest (Pindar, Olympian 2. 73).
6. The desire to employ the favourite antithesis of dran and paschein is responsible for the condensed phrase, in which the emphasis rests on pathê (I fear, lest, as he may work some evil upon his foes, so he may suffer some evil at their hands).
FRAGMENT 51
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 10. 24 (Hense iv. 333).
But Ares ever loves to pluck all the fairest flower of an armed host.

## KERKYÔN

A SATYRIC PLAY dealing with the story of Cercyon, son of Poseidon and king of Eleusis, who forced all passers-by to wrestle with him. Bacchylides 17. 26 says that Theseus “closed his wrestling-school.”
FRAGMENT 52
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 175.
Ear-coverings close to his ear-rings.
amphôtides were worn to protect the ears of wrestlers.

## KÊRYKES

The Heralds or The Messengers was a satyric play on an unknown subject; possibly connected with Heracles.
See Fragments 168, 170, 171, 178.
FRAGMENT 53
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 186.
Down over the skin-coat of lion’s hide.

## KRÊSSAI

The seer Polyidus of Corinth discovered the dead body of Glaucus, the lost son of Minos, and restored it to life by his skill in interpreting Apollo’s oracle that had been made known to the father. The power to bring the child back alive – so the god declared – was to be given him who could find the most appropriate object to be compared to Minos’ marvellous cow, which each day became in turn white, red, and black (cp. Frag. 54). The legend of Polyidus was the theme of Sophocles’ Seers.
To The Women of Crete have been ascribed Fragments 165, 173.
FRAGMENT 54
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ii. 36. p. 51D; cp. Eustathius on Iliad 1254. 25.
For at the same season [the branch] is weighed down by mulberries, white and black and red.

## LEÔN

THE LION WAS a satyric play of unknown subject. The title may be derived from the Nemean lion overcome by Heracles.
Stephen of Byzantium, Lexicon 699. 13.
The bane of wayfarers, the serpent that haunts the place.

## LYKOURGOS

THE SATYRIC PLAY of the Lycurgean trilogy.
FRAGMENT 56
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists x. 67. p. 447C.
And after this he drank beer thinned by age, and made thereof loud boast in the banquet-hall (?).

## MEMNÔN

ACCORDING TO THE story in the Aethiopis of the Cyclic poet Arctinus of Miletus, as summarized by Proclus in his Chrestomathy 458, Achilles is informed by his mother Thetis that Memnon, the son of Eos, clad in full armour fashioned by Hephaestus, has come to the aid of the Trojans. Antilochus, the son of Nestor, is slain in battle by the Ethiopian prince, who in turn is slain by Achilles, whose mother begs of Zeus the boon of immortality for her son. Achilles routs the Trojans, bursts into the city, is killed by Paris and Apollo; his body is borne to the ships by Ajax, while Odysseus keeps the Trojans at bay. Thetis, attended by the Muses and her sister Nereïds, arrives on the scene bewails her son, whose body she takes from the funeral pyre and carries to the island of Leuce.
The trilogy consisted of The Memnôn, Psychostasia, The Weighing of Souls (the order is disputed), and a third play unknown, but probably dealing with the death of Achilles. In the Psychostasia Zeus was represented as holding aloft the balance, in the scales of which were the souls of Achilles and Memnon, while beneath each stood Thetis and Eos, praying each for the life of her son. Comparing the passage in the Iliad (X 210), in which Zeus weighs the fates of Achilles and Hector, Plutarch (How a Young Man ought to hear Poems 2. p. 17A) says that Aeschylus accommodated a whole play to this fable.
Fragments 155, 161, 181, 183 have been referred to the Memnon.
FRAGMENT 57
Eustathius on Iliad 1156. 18, Bekker, Anecdota Gracea 445. 18 (kai . .. arkios); cp. Hesychius, Lexicon.
And lo, he draws near and his advance fills us with chilling fear, like a blast from the North that falls on sailors unprepared.
FRAGMENT 58
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 353. 11 (Aischulos Agamemnoni: Memnoni Wellaeuer), Photius, Lexicon 42. 16 (Reitzenstein).
Bronze, unshorn (?) and stretched over the shield.
Restoration and translation are wholly uncertain. The ancients were hopelessly confused between the words athêrês, atheirês, ateirês, atêrês, atherêtos, atheritos. Possibly the bronze of a shield may be said to be “unshorn,” “unconquered,” since a weapon “shears off” what it strikes (cp. Euripides, Suppliants 716).

## MYRMIDONES

The Achilles-trilogy, the “tragic Iliad,” consisting of the Myrmidones, Nêreïdes, Phruges ê Hektoros lutra, dramatized (so far as this was appropriate by visible action or reported description) the chief events of the Homeric story of the death of Patroclus, the slaying of Hector, and Priam’s ransom of the body of his son.
See Fragments 155, 240, 263, 266.
FRAGMENT 59
Harpocration, Glossary of the Ten Attic Orators 259. 11, explaining propepôkôs as having the meaning of prodedôkôs; l. 1 Aristophanes, Frogs with Scholiast.
Beholdest thou this, glorious Achilles, beholdest thou the distress wrought by the destructive lance upon the Danaans, whom thou hast betrayed, yet sittest idle within thy tent?
From the parodus of the Chorus of Myrmidons.
FRAGMENT 60
Aristophanes, Frogs 1264 with Scholiast.
Lord of Phthia, Achilles! Why, oh, why, when thou hearest the man-slaying (Ah woe!) buffetings of war, dost thou not draw night to our rescue?
By the repetition of l. 2 in Frogs 1266, 1271, 1275, 1277, after other high-sounding dactylic measures, Aristophanes is here seeker (inter alia) to ridicule Aeschylus for his iteration of the refrain and his strange use of interjections. In the present instance kopon yields an intelligible sense with androdaïkton; in the other cases the word (and the entire verse) has no connexion with what precedes, being solely designed to mark the obscurity of Aeschylus’ choral lyrics.
A later Scholiast on Frogs 1264 and on Prom. 441 ascribes the two verses to envoys, whose pleadings that Achilles enter the battle were received with inflexible silence.
FRAGMENT 61
Scholiast Venetus on Aristophanes, Peace 1177; l. 1 Scholiast Ravennus on Frogs 932.
The buff horse-cock fastened thereon, the laborious work of outpoured paints, is dripping.
When the Trojans set fire to a ship of the Greeks (in O 7171 Hector attempts to burn that of Protesilaüs), the heat caused the melting of the paint of the figure (or picture of a horse-cock, the emblem of the vessel. A horse-cock is pictured in Harrison and MacColl, Greek Vase-Paintings pl. viii.
FRAGMENT 62
Aristophanes, Women in Parliament 392 with Scholiast. The Scholiast ends the quotation with mallon, but, since Gataker, the following words are also generally ascribed to Aeschylus.
Antilochus, bewail me, the living, rather than him, the dead; for I have lost my all.
FRAGMENT 63
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Birds 807, 808, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. tauti men; l. 1 Pseudo-Diogenianus, Proverbs (Paroemiographi Graeci i. 180); ll. 4-5 Birds 808 and often in late writers: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On the Power of the Style of Demosthenes 7, Philo of Alexandria, On the Incorruptibility of the World 14. 49 (Cohn and Reiter vi. 88), Galen, On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato iv (vol. v. 395), Aristeides, On Rhetoric 15 (ii. 17), Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xi. 86. p. 494B. Eustathius on Iliad 632. 35.
Even so is the Libyan fable famed abroad: the eagle, pierced by the bow-sped shaft, looked at the feathered device, and said, “Thus, not by others, but by means of our own plumage, are we slain.”
Achilles has lost his friend Patroclus, who, by his consent and clad in his armour, fought to rescue the Greeks only to lose his life.
FRAGMENT 64
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xiii. 79. p. 602E, cp. Plutarch, On Love 5. p. 751C; 1.2 Plutarch, How to know a Flatterer from a Friend, 19. 61A.
No reverence hadst thou for the unsullied holiness of thy limbs, oh thou most ungrateful for my many kisses!
Fragments 64-66 are from the address of Achilles in the presence of the corpse of Patroclus, who had been slain by Hector (P 821) and lay with his lower limbs uncovered. Achilles here mournfully urges against him the reproach that, in his forbidden advance against the Trojans, he had been heedless of the affection of his friend.
FRAGMENT 65
[Lucian], The Loves 54.
And the chaste nearness of thy limbs.
The Fragment was ascribed to Aeschylus by Porson.
FRAGMENT 66
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 321. 22, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. abdelukta, etc.
And yet – for that I love him – they are not repuslive to my sight.

## MYSOI

According to the common version of the legend, Telephus, son of Heracles and Auge, daughter of Aleüs of Tegea, being ignorance of his parents, was directed by an oracle to seek for them in Mysia, of which country Teuthras was ruler. Aristotle (Poetics 1460 a 32), however, referring to the fault that improbably incidents are sometimes set forth within a play (whereas they ought, if possible, to be external, as part of the fable) alludes to Telephus as having come speechless all the way from Tegea to Mysia, a taboo explicable only if he had incurred blood-guiltiness (cp. Eumenides 448). Telephus had, in fact, killed his maternal uncles.
Fragment 208 has been referred to The Mysians.
FRAGMENT 67
Strabo, Geography xiii. 1. 70. p. 616 (wrongly ascribing the verse to the prologue of The Myrmidones, an error corrected by Pauw), Macrobius, Saturnalia v. 20. 16.
Hail, Caïcus and ye streams of Mysia!
FRAGMENT 68
Photius, Lexicon 344, 19, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. orgeônes.
Hail, thou first priest of Caïcus’ stream, by thy healing prayers mayest thou preserve thy lords!
FRAGMENT 69
Photius, Lexicon 113. 15 (Reitzenstein).
I saw them trotting (?) amid the spears.

## NEANISKOI

The Youths, the third play of the Lycurgus-trilogy, apparently has its name form the Edonians who celebrated the worship of Dionysus that had gained admission into the kingdom of Lycurgus despite the opposition of that prince.
See Fragments 179, 187, 193, 210, 256.
FRAGMENT 70
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xi. 109. p. 503C.
Breezes in cool, shady places
FRAGMENT 71
Photius, Lexicon 102. 13 (Reitzenstein).
Besides, in addition to these, having the plenteous woes of the immortals.

## NÊREÏDES

Thetis, accompanied by her sister Nereïds, comes from the depths of the sea to enquire the cause of the lamentations of her son (cp. S 53 ff.). She finds Achilles by the dead body of Patroclus and promises to procure from Hephaestus new armour that he may take vengeance on Hector, who has been exulting over the death of Patroclus. The play probably contained a description of Achilles’ new armour, his reconciliation with Agamemnon, and his combat with Hector, whose corpse was dragged in at the close.
See Fragments 158, 189.
FRAGMENT 72
Scholiast on Euripides, Women of Phoenicia 209.
Having crossed the plain of the sea, that bears dolphins
FRAGMENT 73
Herodianus Technicus, Excerpts 22. 31 (Hilgard).
Let fine linen be cast about his body.
FRAGMENT 74
Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. enarophoros, states that ancient commentators compared X 412: “for it is unholy to boast over slain men,” and gives the meaning of the much mangled words as follows:
Death, the spoiler and slayer, angry at boastings, will quit the company of the immortals on high (?).
FRAGMENT 75
Scholiast on Pindar, Nemean 6. 85 (53).
Hurling the shaft with forked point

## NIOBÊ

The place and progress of the action of this famous drama cannot be determined with any certainty. Apart from the title-heroine, the only person know to participate in the action is Tantalus, the father of Niobe – himself, like his daughter, destroyed because of evil pride engendered by great good fortune. Niobe, according to Homer (Ô 602 ff.), had vaunted herself a more prolific mother than Leto, whose two children, Apollo and Artemis, therefore slew her seven sons and seven daughters. From Fragment 81 it has been inferred that he scene remained Thebes throughout the play. Since it is expressly reported that Sophocles in his Niobe made the mother return to her native Lydia after the destruction of her children in Thebes, it is likely that this transference of the place of action from Thebes to Lydia was not anticipated by Aeschylus. – The older poet gives no hint as to the reason for the calamity visited by Zeus upon Amphion, Niobe’s husband and his own son.
Sources other than the text inform us that Aeschylus gave Niobe fourteen children, a number adopted by Euripides and Aristophanes; whereas, apart from other variations in the tradition, Homer states that they were twelve, Hesiod twenty, equally divided as to sex. – Until the third part of the play Niobe sat speechless upon the tomb of her dead offspring, apparently the most celebrated instance of the dramatic device of silence often employed by Aeschylus, and for which he is ridiculed by Euripides in Aristophanes, Frogs 911.
It has been disputed whether the title refers only to the one play Niobe, or whether, like Prometheus, it was both a collective designation of an entire trilogy and also the name of a single drama; in any case, as to the dramas presented at the same time we have no information. Welcker sought to establish the group Trophoi (distinct from Dionysos trophoi), Niobê, Propompoi. R. J. Walker finds a trilogy in Kallistô, Atalantê, Niobê on the ground that all the persons thus named suffered metamorphosis, and that Artemis was prominent in each member of the group. From Aristotle (Poetics 18. 1456 a 16) it would seem that Aeschylus did not, like some playwrights, deal with the whole story of Niobe. There is no indication whether or not Aeschylus adopted the legend that Niobe was turned to stone.
Fragments 197, 227, 240 have been ascribed to the Niobe.
FRAGMENT 76
Choeroboscus (41. 10) on Hephaestion’s Handbook of Metres 7 (Consbruch 3. 15).
Maidens such as these Ister and pure Phasis claim to breed.
FRAGMENT 77
Plato, Republic ii. 380A, whence Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel xiii. 3. 643C; without mention of the poet’s name: Plutarch, How a Young Man ought to hear Poems 2. 17B, On Common Conceptions against the Stoics 14. 1065E.
God planteth in mortal men the cause of sin whensoever he wills utterly to destroy a house.
FRAGMENT 78
Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. epôzein (he took the passage to mean that Niobe sat over her dead children as a hen sits on her eggs – an interpretation still current).
Seated on their tomb she made lament over her dead children.
FRAGMENT 79
Strabo, Geography xii. 7. 18. p. 580; speirô . . . chôron Plutarch, On Banishment 10. 603A, That a Philosopher ought chiefly to converse with Great Men 3. 778B.
I sow a field twelve days’ journey wide, even the Berecynthian land, where Adrastea’s seat and Ida resound with lowing oxen and bleating sheep, and the whole plain roars.
Spoken by Tantalus. The words of Fragment 80 have regard to the overthrow of his house and followed close upon those of Fragment 79.
FRAGMENT 80
Plutarch, On Banishment 10. 603A.
My fate, that dwelt aloft in Heaven, now falleth to earth and saith to me “Learn not to esteem human things overmuch.”
FRAGMENT 81
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 51. 1 (Hense v. 1066) in cod. Sambuci; ll. 1-3 Scholiasts AB on Iliad I 158 (cp. Eustathius on Iliad 744. 3); l. 1 Aristophanes, Frogs 1392, Scholiast on Sophocles, Electra 139, and on Euripides, Alcestis 55, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. thanatôn, monos theôn, pagkoinos.
For, alone of gods, Death loves not gifts; no, not by sacrifice, nor by libation, canst thou aught avail with him; he hath no altar nor hath he hymn of praise; from him, alone of gods, Persuasion stands aloof.
FRAGMENT 83
Plato, Republic iii. 391E; cp. Strabo, Geography xii. 8. 21. p. 580.
The kindred of the gods, men near to Zeus, whose is the altar of Zeus, their sire, high in clear air on Ida’s hill, and in their veins not yet hath ceased to flow the blood divine.
Spoken by Niobe, says Strabo.

## XANTRIAI

THE SUBJECT OF this play is the rejection of the newly instituted worship of Dionysus either by Pentheus or by the daughters of Minyas. The Scholiast on Eumenides 24 states that the death of Pentheus took place, in the Xantriai, on Mt. Cithaeron; and Philostratus (Images 3. 18) describes a picture in which the mother and aunts of Pentheus rend asunder (xainousi) the body of the unbelieving prince. On the other hand, Aelian (Historical Miscellanies 3. 42, cp. Ovid, Metamorphoses 14. 32 ff.) relates that Leucippe, Arsippe, and Alcithoë, the daughters of Minyas, out of love for their husbands, held themselves aloof from the orgiastic rites of Dionysus and attended to their weaving (in which case Xantriai might yield the meaning “Wool-Carders”) and to punish their obstinacy, the god brought madness upon the sisters, so that they tore to pieces the son of Leucippe; in consequence of which deed of blood they were pursued by the Maenads. – Hera appeared in the play in the guise of a priestess begging alms (Fragment 84); and Bacchic frenzy was incorporated as Lyssa (Fragment 85). By some the drama is regarded as satyric.
FRAGMENT 84
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Frogs 1344, Diogenes, Letters 34. 2; l. 3 Plato, Republic ii. 381D.
For the nymphs of the springs, the glorious goddesses mountain-born, I beg a dole, even for the life-giving children of Inachus, the Argive river.
FRAGMENT 85
Photius, Lexicon 326. 22, Suidas, Lexicon s.v oktôpoun.
From the feet up the corwn of the head steals the spasm, the stab of Frenzy, aye, the scorpion’s sting.
FRAGMENT 86
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 117.
Shafts of pine tree ablaze with fire.
FRAGMENT 87
Galen, Commentary on Hippocrates’ Epidemics vi, vol xvli. 1. 880.
[Women] upon whom looketh neither the sun’s flashing ray nor the starry eye of Leto’s child.
Possibly from a description of the Maenads, whose appearance is represented as equally strange with that of the daughters of Phorcys, upon whom “neither doth the sun with his beams look down, nor ever the nightly moon” (Prom. 796). Hecate, a moon-goddess, is here identified with Artemis.

## OIDIPOUS

The second play of the Oedipoedea: Laïos, Oidipous, Hepta epi Thêbas, Sphinx. Of the Laïos no certain remains are attested.
See Fragments 164, 186, 201, 214, 229.
FRAGMENT 88
Scholiast on Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrranus 733.
We were coming on our journey to the place from which three highways part in branching roads, where we crossed the junction of the triple roads at Potniae.

## HOPLÔN KRISIS

The Award of the Arms, the first play of the Ajax-trilogy, dealt with the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles after that hero’s death. From Fragment 90 it appears that each of the chieftains set forth his pretensions and indulged in detraction of his rival. According to a verse of the Odyssey (L 547, rejected by Aristarchus) the Trojans were the judges; according to the Aethiopis of Arctinus the award was made by Trojan captives; according to Lesches’ Little Iliad the decision in favour of Odysseus resulted from the fact that a Trojan, overheard by Achaean scouts under the walls of the city, pronounced that warrior more redoubtable than Ajax. The constitution of the Chorus is uncertain. Fragment 89 is cited as addressed to Thetis by some one who called upon the Nereïds to make the award. Welcker held that Trojan captives formed the choral group.
Fragment 189 has been referred to the play.
FRAGMENT 89
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Acharnians 883.
Queen of Nereus’ fifty daughters.
FRAGMENT 90
Scholiast on Sophocles, Ajax 190.
But Sisyphus drew nigh unto Anticleia – aye, unto thy mother, I say, who bare thee.
Ajax calls Odysseus a bastard of Sisyphus, the crafty knave.
FRAGMENT 91
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 43. 24 (Hense v. 1104).
For wherein is life sweet to him who suffers grief?
Spoken by Ajax.
FRAGMENT 92
Stobaeus, Anthology 3. 11. 4 (Hense iii. 431).
For simple are the words of truth.
FRAGMENT 93
Photius, Lexicon 39. 7 (Reitzenstein).
And through his lungs he breathes fevered sleep.

## OSTOLOGOI

The Bone-Gatherers was a tragedy, if, as seems not improbably, the Chorus consisted of the relatives of the suitors of Penelope who came to exact vengeance from Odysseus for the slaughter of their kin and to collect their bones after their bodies had been burned on the funeral pyre (cp ô 417). On this supposition, Fragments 94 and 95 were spoken by Odysseus standing by the corpses of the suitors and recounting the insults he had received at their hands.
A counter interpretation, regarding the play as satyric, derives the title from the hungry beggars in the palace at Ithaca, who collected the bones hurled at them by the suitors (cp. u 299, s 394).
FRAGMENT 94
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xv. 5. p. 667C.
Eurymachus here, another, brought no less unseemly outrage upon me; for he continually made my head his mark, and at it, with bent-armed casts, his vigorous hand kept aiming true.
The poet has in mind that form of the cottabus-game (kottabos or kossabos) in which each of the players so bent his arm and turned his wrist as to aim the wine left in the bottom of his cup at the head of a small bronze figure (manes) placed in a saucer (plastinx).
FRAGMENT 95
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists i. 30. p. 17C; cp. Eustathius on Odyssey 1828. 28; tên kakosmon . . . kara Sopocles, Frag. 565. Ascribed to Aeschylus by Athenaeus, to this play by Welcker.
There is the man who once hurled at me (nor did he miss his aim) a missile that caused them all to laugh, even the ill-smelling chamber-pot; crashed about my head, it was shivered into shards, breathing upon me an odour unlike that of unguent-jars.

## PALAMÊDÊS

Palamedes, son of Nauplius, was the human, as Prometheus was the divine, inventor or discoverer of arts and sciences useful to man; and to both were ascribed the introduction of the alphabet, number, and the skill to know the periods of the stars. Later epic and the tragic drama were especially concerned with the manner of his death at Troy. According to the legend preferred by the tragedians, his violent end was due to the ancient enmity of Odysseus, whose feigned madness to escape participation in the Trojan war had been detected by the ingenuity of Palamedes. One account had him drowned by Odysseus and Diomedes; another had him lured into a well in search of treasure and then crushed with stones. More famous was the story that Odysseus, in concert with Agamemnon (to whom Palamedes, as leader of the peace party, was opposed) concocted a plot to show that their adversary purported to betray the Greeks: gold was hidden in his tent, likewise a letter purporting to be written to him by Priam, on the discovery of which by the people he was stoned to death by Odysseus and Diomedes.
Nauplius, failing to obtain justice form the murderers of his son, took vengeance on the Greek commanders by raising deceptive fire-signals on the Capherean cliffs in Euboea at the time of their homeward voyage.
Fragment 252 has been referred to this play.
FRAGMENT 96
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists i. 19. p 11D; oiston . . . trita Eustathius on Odyssey 1791. 42.; l. 3 often in later writers.
Both commanders of regiments and centurions did I appoint for the host, and I determined their knowledge of different foods, and for them to take breakfast, dinner, and supper third.
Spoken by Palamedes (Athenaeus).
1. At Athens taxiarchoi commanded the troops raised from each of the tribes.
2. It is uncertain whether the mention of food refers to soldiers’ rations or has regard to a distinct invention on the part of Palamedes. Possibly eidenai is corrupt.
FRAGMENT 97
Scholiast A on Iliad D 319.
By reason of what injury hast thou slain my son?
Nauplius reproaches Odysseus for the death of his son.

## PENTHEUS

THE PENTHEUS ANTICIPATED Euripides’ Bacchae, in which play Dionysus, angered at the refusal of Pentheus, ruler of Thebes, to recognize his godhead, inspired with frenzy the prince’s mother Agave and her sisters. In their madness the women tore Pentheus to pieces, and Agave bore his head in triumph in the delusion that it was that of a lion. See Eumenides 26, and cp. Fragment 197.
FRAGMENT 98
Galen, Commentary on Hippocrates’ Epidemics vi. Vol. xvii. 1. 880.
Nor do thou cast a drop of blood upon the ground.

## PERRHAIBIDES

THE WOMEN OF Perrhaebia belongs with the Ixion. Compare Fragments 182, 192, 222.
FRAGMENT 99
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xi. 99. p. 499A, Eustathius on Odyssey 1775. 22.
Where are my many promised gifts and spoils of war? Where are my bold and silver cups?
Eïnoeus here, as in Frag. 100, demands the bridal-gifts promised him by Ixion.
FRAGMENT 100
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xi. 51. p. 476C, Eustathius on Iliad 917. 63.
With silver-mounted drinking-horns, fitted with golden mouthpieces.
FRAGMENT 101
Eustathius on Iliad 352. 34, Favorinus, Lexicon s.v. apaiolê.
He has perished piteously, defrauded of his own.

## PÊNELOPÊ

FRAGMENT 102
ETYMOLOGICUM GENIUNUM S.V. aoidoiestaton; cp. Etymologicum Magnum 31. 6.
I am a Cretan of most ancient lineage.
Odysseus, on the occasion of his first conversation with Penelope after his return, fabricates the tale that he is a Cretan, the grandson of Minos (t 180). In x 199 he tells Eumaeus that he is a Cretan, the son of Castor.

## PROMÊTHEIS

The Medicean Catalogue of Aeschylus’ plays names three entitled Promêtheus (desmôtês, lyomenos, purphoros); a fourth, Promêtheus purkaeus (Pollux, Vocabulary 9. 156, 10. 64) was probably the satyric drama of the trilogy Phineus, Persai, Glaukos (pontios) produced in 472 B.C. From the Scholiast on Prom. 511 it is to be inferred that the Lyomenos followed the Desmôtês. The theme and place of the Pyrphoros are still disputed: (1) it is another name for the Pyrkaeus; (2) it preceded the Desmôtês in the trilogy and dealt with the Titan’s theft of fire – in this sense, it is the Fire-Bringer or Fire-Giver; (3) as the Fire-Bearer, it followed the Lyomenos, and described the inauguration of the Promêtheia, the Athenian festival at which torch-races were held in honour of the Titan, now become the god of the potter-guild. Some, who follow Canter in identifying the Pyrphoros with the Pyrkaeus, maintain that it was the satyric drama, and dealt with the Attic worship of the god. A satyr-play in the Prometheus-trilogy is unknown.
The extract from the Literary History, appended to the Life of the poet in the Medicean and many other manuscripts, says that “some of Aeschylus’ plays, as those entitled Prometheus (oi Promêtheis), dealt only with gods.” The singular Promêtheus, may at times be a collective title; but it generally indicates a particular play whose more exact designation was unknown or neglected. Late writers sometimes city, as from the Desmôtês, passages not appearing in that play: these should, if possible, be located among the other dramas of the group rather than forced into the text of the extant tragedy.
FRAGMENT 103
Scholiast on Aristeides, In Defence of the Four Statesmen, vol. iii. 501. 17 (en Promêthei desmôtê).
For silence is gain to many of mankind.
Cp. Agam. 548, Frag. 118.

## PROMÊTHEUS LYOMENOS

Fragments 104, 105, 106 are from the parodus of the Chorus of Titans, now released from Tartarus by the clemency of Zeus. To them Prometheus describes his tortures (Frag. 107) and his benefits to man (Frag. 108). In his search for the golden apples of the Hesperides, Heracles, having come to the Caucasus, where Prometheus is confined, receives from him directions concerning his course through the land of the peoples in the farthest north (Frag. 109-111) and the perils to be encountered on his homeward march after slaying Geryon in the farthest west (Frag. 112, cp. 37). Frag. 113-114 refer to Heracles’ shooting of the eagle that fed on the vitals of the Titan.
See Fragments 204, 208, 209, 230, 261.
FRAGMENT 104
Arrian, Voyage in the Euxine 99. 22, Anonymous in Müller, Fragmenta Historicum Graecorum v. 194.
We have come to look upon these thy ordeals, Prometheus, and the affliction of thy bonds.
FRAGMENT 105
Strabo, Geography i. 2. 27. p. 33.
[Leaving] the Erythraean Sea’s sacred stream red of floor, and the mere by Oceanus, the mere of the Aethiopians . . . that giveth nourishment unto all, where the all-seeing Sun doth ever, in warm outpourings of soft water, refresh his undying body and his wearied steeds.
Cited by Strabo as proof that the ancient Greeks designated as Aethiopia all the southern countries toward the ocean. In l. 3 chalkokeraunon is credited with the meaning “flashing like bronze.” But keraunos is not used for steropê (chalkosteropon Weil, chalkomaraugon Hermann; but neither satisfies).
FRAGMENT 106
Arrian, Voyage in the Euxine 99. 22, Anonymous in Müller, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum v. 184.
Here Phasis, the mighty common boundary of the land of Europe and Asia
FRAGMENT 107
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations ii. 10. 23-25; ll. 14-15 sublime – sanguinem in Nonius Marcellsu, Compediosa Doctrina 17. 9M.
Ye race of Titans, offspring of Uranus, blood-kinsmen mine! Behold me fettered, clamped to these rough rocks, even as a ship is moored fast by timid sailors, fearful of night because of the roaring sea. Thus hath Zeus, the son of Cronus, fastened me, and to the will of Zeus hath Hephaestus lent his hand. With cruel art hath he riven my limbs by driving in these bolts. Ah, unhappy that I am! By his skill transfixed, I tenant this stronghold of the Furies. And now, each third woeful day, with dreadful swoop, the minister of Zeus with his hooked talons rends me asunder by his cruel repast. Then, crammed and glutted to the full on my fat liver, the utters a prodigious scream and, soaring aloft, with winged tail fawns upon my gore. But when my gnawed liver swells, renewed in growth, greedily doth he return anew to his fell repast. Thus do I feed this guardian of my awful torture, who mutilates me living with never-ending pain. For fettered, as ye see, by the bonds of Zeus, I have no power to drive from my vitals the accursed bird. Thus, robbed of self-defence, I endure woes fraught with torment: longing for death, I look around for an ending of my misery; but by the doom of Zeus I am thrust far from death. And this my ancient dolorous agony, intensified by the dreadful centuries, is fastened upon my body, from which there fall, melted by the blazing sun, drops that unceasingly pour upon the rocks of Caucasus.
FRAGMENT 108
Plutarch, On Fortune 3. 98C (cp. On the Craftiness of Animals 7. 965A), Porphyry, On Abstinence 3. 18.
Giving to them stallions – horses and asses –and the race of bulls to serve them as slaves and to relieve them of their toil.
FRAGMENT 109
Galen, Commentary on Hippocrates’ Epidemics vi, vol. xvii. 1. p. .
Follow this straight road; and, first of all, thou shalt come to the north winds, where do thou beware the roaring hurricane, lest unawares it twist thee up and snatch thee away in wintry whirlwind.
FRAGMENT 110
Stephen of Byzantium, Lexicon 7. 5 (s.v. Abioi) on Iliad N 6 (cp. Scholiasts AT). Homer calls the Abioi the “most just of men.”
Thereafter thou shalt come unto a people of all mortals most just and most hospitable, even unto the Gabians; where nor plough nor mattock, that cleaves the ground, parteth the earth, but where the fields, self-sown, bring forth bounteous sustenance for mortals.
FRAGMENT 111
Strabo, Geography vii. 3. 7. p. 301.
But the well-ordered Scythians that feed on mares’ milk cheese
In Iliad N 5 Homer mentions Hippêmolgoi, who drink mares’ milk.
FRAGMENT 112
Strabo, Geography iv. 1. 7. p. 183; ll. 1-3 Dionysius of Halicarnasus, Early History of Rome i. 41.
Thou shalt come to the dauntless host of the Ligurians, where, full well I know, thou shalt not be eager for battle, impetuous though thou art; for it is fated that even thy arrows shall fail thee there; and thou shalt not be able to take from the ground any stone, because the whole place is smooth. But the Father, beholding thy helplessness, shall pity thee, and, holding above thee a cloud, shall overshadow the land with a shower of round stones. Hurling these, thou shalt easily drive back the Ligurian host.
According to Strabo, Prometheus here gives directions to Heracles concerning the road he is to take on his journey from the Caucasus to the Hesperides.
Strabo states that the place was called the Stony Plain, and was situated between Marseilles and the outlets of the Rhone, about a hundred stades distant from the sea. It is now identified with “la plaine de la Crau” near Arles.
FRAGMENT 113
Plutarch, On Love 14. 757E. Ascribed to this play by Schültz.
May Hunter Apollo speed my arrow straight!
The prayer of Heracles as he bends his bow against the eagle that rends Prometheus (Plutarch).
FRAGMENT 114
Plutarch, Life of Pompey 1.
Of his sire, mine enemy, this dearest son
Prometheus addresses Heracles as the author of his deliverance (Plutarch).

## PROMÊTHEUS PYRKAEUS

TO PROMETHEUS THE Fire-Kindler has been referred Fragment 156; to the “satyric Prometheus,” 169, 170, 171, 172.
FRAGMENT 115
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 64.
And linen-lint and long bands of raw flax
FRAGMENT 116
Galen, Commentary on Hippocrates’ Epidemics vi, vol. xvii. 1. 880.
And do thou guard thee well lest a blast strike thy face; for it is sharp, and deadly-scorching its hot breaths.
FRAGMENT 117
Plutarch, How to Profit by our Enemies 2. 86F, Eustathius on Iliad 415. 7.
Like the goat, you’ll mourn for your beard, you will.
Spoken, says Plutarch, by Prometheus to the satyr who desired to kiss and embrace fire on seeing it for the first time. Eustathius took tragos to be the nominative used for the vocative; and the passage thus interpreted has been regarded as a proof that the satyr of the satyr-play was addressed as “goat.” The translation assumes the existence of a proverb about a goat that burnt his beard (Shorey in Classical Philology iv. (1904) 433).

## PROMÊTHEUS PYRPHOROS

APART FROM FRAGMENT 118, the only extant reference to Prometheus the Fire-Bearer is contained in the scholium on Prom. 94, where the statement is made that, in the Pyrphoros, Prometheus declared that he had been bound (dedesthai) thirty thousand years (to the same effect, Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 15, but without naming the play). On the assumption that the Pyrphoros preceded the Desmôtês and that the Titan was prophesying the duration of his bondage, Hartung conjectured dedêsesthai, Cobet dethêsesthai. Welcker proposed to refer the utterance of Prometheus to the Lyomenos; in Desmôtês l. 774 the hero says to Io that he shall be released by her descendant in the thirteenth generation.
FRAGMENT 118
Gellius, Attic Nights xiii. 19. 4.
Both silent, when there is need, and speaking in season
Cp. Seven against Thebes 619, Libation-Bearers 582, Euripides, Frag. 413.

## PRÔTEUS

THE SATYR-PLAY OF the Orestea and dealing with the fortunes of Menelaüs in Egypt, whither he seems to have been carried by the storm described in Agam. 674. In the fourth book of the Odyssey, Menelaüs relates his encounter with the “deathless Egyptian Proteus,” whom he compelled to disclose how he might find his way home from the island of Pharos.
FRAGMENT 119
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ix. 50. p. 394A.
A wretched piteous dove, in quest of food, dashed amid the winnowing-fans, its breast broken in twain

## SALAMINIAI

In Aristophanes, Frogs 1040, Aeschylus declares that his spirit, taking its impress from Homer, created many types of excellence, such as Patroclus and Teucer, the lion-hearted. It is highly probably that The Women of Salamis, the third play of the Ajax-trilogy, had as its theme the fortunes of Teucer, Ajax’s half-brother, after his return from Troy with Eurysaces, the son of Ajax. Tradition reports Teucer’s repudiation of his father Telamon, inconsolable at the loss of Ajax, for whose death he held Teucer responsible; Teucer’s expulsion from his home; and his founding a new Salamis in Cyprus. The Chorus probably consisted of women of Salamis, who joined with their mistress Eriboea in lamenting the death of her son. The drama may have ended with the inauguration of the annual festival in honour of Ajax, whose virtues and unhappy fate were thus commemorated by his aged father.
The play is entitled Salaminiai in Herodian (see Frag. 120), Salaminioi in the Medicean Catalogue.
To The Women of Salamis have been referred Fragments 157, 167, 196, 2332, 263.
FRAGMENT 120
Herodian, On Peculiar Words ii. 942. 4 (Lentz), On Words of Two Qualities in Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia iii. 295. 15. Pseudo-Draco, On Metres 35.12 (=Grammaticus Hermanni) derives from Herodian.
Would that I might get a mantle like unto the heavens!
Mantles and curtains were often embroidered with stars among many ancient peoples: Eurip. Ion 1147, Nonnus, Dion. Xl. 578; cp. Psalm civ. 2.

## SISYPHOS

Sisyphos dratetês, Sisyphus the Runaway, is named only in the Medicean Catalogue; Sisyphos petrokylistês, Sisyphus the Stone-Roller, is mentioned twice in grammarians; elsewhere the form of citation is simply Sisyphos.
The first-named drama was satyric; its theme, the escape from Hades of the crafty Corinthian king. According to the fabulous story told by Pherecydes (Frag. 78 in Müller, Fragmenta Historicum Graecorum, i. p. 91) Sisyphus made known to Asopus that it was Zeus who had carried off his daughter Aegina; in punishment for which offence the god sent Death against the babbler; but Sisyphus bound Death fast, so that men ceased to die, until Ares came to the rescue, released Death, and gave Sisyphus into his power. Before he died, however, Sisyphus directed his wife Merope to omit his funeral rites, so that Hades, being deprived of his customary offerings, was persuaded by the cunning trickster to let him go back to life in order to complain of his wife’s neglect. But, once in the upper world, he refused to return, and had to be fetched back by Hermes. – The Satyrs forming the Chorus were probably represented as initiates if the play was a parody of the Dionysiac-Orphic mysteries. (Sisyphus the Stone-Roller is one of the six dramas mentioned by the ancients in connexion with the charge of impiety brought against the poet.)
Sisyphos petrokylistês is probably identical with the Sisyphos drapetês (at least Frag. 127 savours of a satyr-play); and the conclusion of the single drama may have been the famous punishment inflicted on the “craftiest of men” (cp. l 593).
FRAGMENT 121
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 78 (cp. 7. 40).
And now it behoves to bring water for feet that bear a god. Where is the bronze-wrought tub with lion-base?
Returning to Corinth from his journey from Hades, Sisyphus orders a bath for his feet, that bear one more than mortal. Cp. Horace, Satires ii. 3. 20.
FRAGMENT 122
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 20.
Do thou, the master of the house, leer well and mark!
FRAGMENT 123
Aelian, On Animals xii. 5.
Nay, is it some field-mouse so monstrous large?
From a description of Sisyphus emerging from the earth.
FRAGMENT 124
Etymologicum Gudianum 227. 40, Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia ii. 443. 11.
Now [I came] to bid farewell to Zagreus and to his sire, the hospitaler.
Sisyphus describes his departure from the lower world. Dionysus, viewed by the Orphics as the child of Zeus and Persephone, received the name Zagreus, the “great hunter.” At times he was thus identified with Hades, at times made the son of the “hospitaler of the dead” (Suppliant Maidens 157).
FRAGMENT 125
Etymologicum Gudianum 321. 58, Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Parisiensia iv. 35. 22.
And in the sinews of the dead there is no blood.
FRAGMENT 126
Etymologicum Gudianum 321. 58, Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Parisiensia iv. 35. 23.
But in thee there is no vigour nor veins that flow with blood.
FRAGMENT 127
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Peace 73 (en Sisuphô petrokulistê).
’Tis a beetle of Aetna, toiling violently.
The ancients explained a “beetle of Aetna” either as a comic exaggeration (“as huge as Aetna”) or as referring to the actual size of the beetles on the mountain. Epicharmus mentions (Frag. 76) a report that these beetles were of vast size. Pearson, Class. Rev. 28 (1914) 223, sees here a jest due to the verbal similarity of kanthôn “pack-ass” and kantharos. Cp. Sophocles frag. 162.

## SPHINX

THE SPHINX WAS the satyr-play of the Oedipus-trilogy. See Fragment 155.
FRAGMENT 128
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xv. 16. p. 674D.
For the stranger a garland, an ancient crown, the best of bonds, as Prometheus said.
Athenaeus (xv. 13. p. 672E-F) cites Menodotus of Samos to the effect that, after Zeus had freed Prometheus from his bonds and the Titan had professed himself willing to make a “voluntary and painless” expiation for his theft of fire, Zeus ordered him to wear a garland as a symbolic punishment; and that the Carian custom of wearing garlands of osier was a memorial of the shackles once worn by Prometheus, the benefactor of mankind. Athenaeus himself (xv. 16. p. 674D) states that Aeschylus, in the Prometheus Unbound, distinctly says: “In honour of Prometheus we place garlands on our heads as an atonement for his bonds.”
Ek Promtheôs logou may signify either (1) that in tô de xenô . . . logou (the (unknown) speaker is simply referring to the “story of Prometheus”; or (2) that the words desmôn aristos were spoken by the Titan in the Prometheus Unbound as an indication of his satisfaction with the form of retribution imposed on him after his release from the torture of his bonds. The latter explanation would dispose of the inconsistency thought by Athenaeus to exist between the utterance of Prometheus quoted above (676D) and Fragment 128: namely, that a garland, which in later times was worn as a symbol of the agony of Prometheus, could not have been praised by the sufferer himself. If the second interpretation is correct, the Prometheus-trilogy is earlier than 467 B.C., the date of the production of the Sphinx.
The “stranger” is probably Oedipus; but the situation is unknown.
FRAGMENT 129
Aristophanes, Frogs 1287 with Scholiast.
The Sphinx, the Watch-dog that presideth over evil days

## TÊLEPHOS

According to the Cyclic epic, the Cyprian Lays, Telephus, king of Mysia, having been wounded by the lance of Achilles in the first expedition of the Greeks against Troy, had recourse to the Delphic oracle, which returned the answer ho trôsas kai iasetai, “he who wounded, he shall also heal.” The drama may also have adopted the legend that Telephus went to Argos, where, by the counsel of Clytaemestra, he seized the infant Orestes, whom he threatened to kill unless Agamemnon persuaded Achilles to heal him of his wound. The Scholiast on Aristophanes, Acharnians 323, says that, in Aeschylus, Telephus, in order to secure his safety among the Greeks, laid hold of Orestes. Since it is the Telephus of Euripides that is ridiculed by Aristophanes, it is supposed by many scholars that “Aeschylus” is an error for “Euripides” in the statement of the Scholiast.
See Fragment 198.
FRAGMENT 130
Aristophanes, Frogs 1270. The Scholiast on the passage declares that, whereas Timachidas referred the verse to the Telephus, Asclepiades ascribed it to the Iphigenia of Aeschylus.
Most glorious of the Achaeans, wide-ruling son of Atreus, learn of me!
FRAGMENT 131
Plato, Phaedo 108A, Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies iv. 7. p. 583; cp. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Art of Rhetoric 6. 5 (Reiske v. 265).
For a single path leads to the house of Hades.
Cp. Cicero, Tusculun Disputations i. 43. 104 undique enim ad inferos tantundem viae est, referring the sentiment to Anaxagoras: pantachothen homoia estin hê eis Haidou katabasis (Diogenes Laertius ii. 3. 11).

## TOXOTIDES

ACTAEON, THE HUNTER, turned into a deer, was torn asunder by his dogs, who did not recognize their master. The common version of the legend – that he was thus punished by Artemis for having seen her bathing – seems to have been adopted by Aeschylus. The Chorus of “Archer-Maidens” were nymphs, attendants of Artemis in the chase.
FRAGMENT 132
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 351. 9; cp. Photius, Lexicon 41. 10 (Reitzenstein) s.v. athêros hêmera.
Not yet has any day, without its game, sent Actaeon homeward empty-handed, only rich in toil.
FRAGMENT 133
Antigonus of Carystus, Incredible Tales 115.
For in pure maidens, knowing not the marriage-bed, the glance of the eyes sinks from shame.
FRAGMENT 134
Antigonus of Carystus, Incredible Tales 115; ll. 1-2, Plutarch, On Love 21. 767B; l. 2 Plutarch, On Progress in Virtue 10. 81D. In Antigonus these lines follow Fragment 133 after a short interval.
The burning gaze of a young woman, such as hath tasted man, shall not escape me; for I have a spirit keen to mark these things.
FRAGMENT 135
Scholiast A on Iliad I 593.
The dogs destroyed their master utterly.

## PHILOKTÊTÊS

The story of Philoctetes, king of Malis, touched upon in Iliad B 721, was narrated at length in two Cyclic epics – the Little Iliad by Lesches and the Destruction of Ilium by Arctinus. On their expedition to Troy, the Greeks abandoned Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos because, having been bitten in the foot by a poisonous snake, his screams of pain and the odour from his wound rendered his presence intolerable. In the tenth year of the war, when the Greeks were despairing of victory, they learned from the seer Helenus that Troy could not be taken without the aid of Philoctetes and his bow and arrows, weapons given him by the dying Heracles, who had himself received them from Apollo. Diomedes was accordingly sent to Lemnos, and fetched thence the hero and his arms.
In his fifty-second Discourse (4-10), Dion of Prusa, surnamed the “golden-mouthed,” gives a brief comparison of the Philoctetes of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In the Aeschylean play, instead of the noble Diomedes, the “shrewd and crafty” Odysseus was the envoy. Unchanged in aspect and voice by Athena, he appeared before Philoctetes, but was unrecognized because the powers of the sufferer had been impaired by his disease, his hardships, and his solitary life. The Chorus consisted of men of Lemnos, who had left Philoctetes unvisited until then – a more tragic and a simpler device (says Dion) than the excuse proffered by them according to Euripides – so that he hero could with good reason set forth to them, as something new, the story of his desertion by the Greeks and the cause of his distress. Odysseus sought to cheer Philoctetes and to gain his confidence by a false tale – disaster had befallen the Greeks; Agamemnon was dead; Odysseus had been put to death by reason of some shameful crime; and the Greeks at Troy were in desperate case. Dion omits to tell how Odyseus secured the arms – whether this was done first by treason (as was done by Neoptolemus in Sophocles) and then by persuading the hero that his bow as necessary to the success of the Greeks. But Odysseus’ deception and his pleas were seemly (Dion says), suited to a hero, and convincing – it needed no great skill or plot to content against a sick man and that a simple bowman.
The drama of Aeschylus was distinguished, according to Dion, by simplicity, absence of complicated plot, and dignity; by its antique air and its rugged boldness of sentiment and diction, so that it was well suited to express the nature of tragedy and to body forth the ancient manners of the heroic age.
Aspasius on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 1150 b6 states that in Aeschylus, as in Sophocles, Philoctetes endeavoured to conceal his agony but was finally forced to give it utterance.
See Fragments 163, 180, 185, 190, 191, 198.
FRAGMENT 136
Aristophanes, Frogs 1383 with Scholiast
O Spercheus’ stream and cattle-grazing haunts!
FRAGMENT 137
Cited as a proverb by Suidas, Lexicon s.v. enth’ oute, Plutarch, On the Tranquility of the Mind 18. 476B, Aristaenetus, Letters i. 27, Pseudo-Diogenianus, Proverbs iv. 88, etc.
Where the wind suffers neither to remain nor to sail forth.
FRAGMENT 138
Scholiast on Odyssey X 12, Eustathius on Odyssey 1748.
Having hung the bow on a black pine-tree
FRAGMENT 139
Plutarch, On the Impossiblity of living happily by following Epicurus 3. 1087F.
For the snake let not go its hold, but fixed in me its dreadful . . ., the ruin of my foot.
Hermann would read stomôton ekphusin, which is supposed to mean “hard outgrowth,” “outgrowth with a mouth-shaped cavity,” “sharp projection,” But we expect something like odontôn (Nauck) ekptusin (Herwerden), “venom spat from its teeth.”
FRAGMENT 140
Aristotle, Poetics 22. 1458 b23.
The ulcer ever feeds on my foot’s flesh.
FRAGMENT 141
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 52. 32 (Hense v. 1082). Attributed to this play by Maximus of Tyre, Dissertations 7. 5.
[Image: ]“The Death of Aeschylus” — a seventeenth-century engraving of the legend that he was killed by a falling tortoise
O death, the healer, reject me not, but come! For thou alone art the mediciner of ills incurable, and no pain layeth hold on the dead.
On death as the deliverer cp. Sophocles, Philoctetes 797, Trachinians 1209, Oedipus Coloneus 1220, Ajax 854, Frag. 698, Euripides, Hippolytus 1373, Heracleidae 595, Diphilus, Frag. 88. With l. 3 cp. Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus 955, Euripides, Alcestis 937, Women of Troy 642.

## PHINEUS

The Phineus preceded The Persians in the tetralogy produced in 472 B.C.
Apollodorus, Library i. 9. 21, relates the story of Phineus as follows: “Thence the Argonauts put out to sea and landed at Salmydessus in Thrace, where dwelt the seer Phineus, who had lost the sight of his eyes. . . . The gods also sent Harpies against him. These were winged female creatures, and when a table was spread for Phineus, they flew down from the sky and snatched away most of the food, but the little they left smelled so foul that no one could come near it. And when the Argonauts wished to learn about their voyage, he said that he would advise them about it if they would free him from the Harpies. So the Argonauts placed beside him a table of eatables, and the Harpies with a cry flew down and snatched the food. Seeing this, Zetes and Calaïs, the sons of Boreas, who were winged, drew their swords and chased them through the air. . . . Being freed from the Harpies, Phineus revealed their course to the Argonauts, and advised them concerning the Clashing Rocks on the sea.”
FRAGMENT 142
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists x. 18. p. 421F.
And many a deceitful meal with greedy jaws did they snatch away amid the first delight of appetite.
FRAGMENT 143
Etymologicum Genuinum s.v. anêstis.
Hungry wailing standeth not aloof.
FRAGMENT 144
Pollux, Vocabulary 7. 91; cp. 2. 196.
They wear socks in their well-fitting shoes.
Perhaps from a description of the sons of Boreas.

## PHORKIDES

THE DAUGHTERS OF Phorcys was a part of the trilogy containing The Net-Draggers (Diktyooulkoi) and Polydectes. In the first of these plays, fisher folk of Seriphus rescue Danaë and her infant son Perseus, who had been placed in a chest and cast into the sea by her father Acrisius. In the second, Polydectes, king of Seriphus, in order the better to effect his purpose of marrying Danaë, sent her son, now grown to manhood, to fetch the head of Medusa, the one of the three Gorgons who was mortal. In pursuit of this quest, Perseus encountered the three daughters of Phorcys, old women from their birth, who possessed between them a single eye and tooth, which they passed to each other in turn, and also the cap of Hades. These women, the Graeae, were sisters and guardians of the Gorgons, who dwelt in a cave by the ocean. On his return, Perseus changed Polydectes into stone by displaying Medusa’s head, which he had cut off with an adamantine sickle that he had received from Hephaestus. In Poetics 18. 1456 a2, Aristotle regards as a distinct species of tragedy such plays as The Phorcides, Prometheus, and those whose scene was laid in the lower world. The Phorcides may be a satyr-drama.
FRAGMENT 145
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ix. 65. p. 402B, Eustathius on Odyssey 1872. 5.
Into the cave he rushed like a wild boar.
Perseus enters the cave of the Gorgons. aschedôros is called by the ancient grammarians a Sicilian word for syagros.

## PHRYGES ê HEKTOROS LYTRA

The scene of The Phrygians or The Ransom of Hector was the tent of Achilles, as in the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, which the poet here dramatized. Hermes, the divine guide of Priam and his escort of Phrygians, preceded the entrance of the embassy to regain the body of Hector. Except at the beginning, and then only in few words, Achilles refused to speak to the god, but sat in silence, his head veiled in token of his grief for Patroclus. The gold brought as ransom was actually represented as weighed out in sight of the audience (Scholiast on Iliad X 351). To the peculiar dance-figures designed by the poet for the Chorus, allusion is probably made in a passage of a lost play of Aristophanes (Frag. 678): “I remember seeing the Phrygians, when they came in order to join with Priam in ransoming his dead son, how they often danced in many postures, now this way, now that.”
See Fragments 155, 158, 180, 255, 267, 268.
FRAGMENT 146
Pollux, Vocabulary 7. 131.
[Not a king,] but a trafficker by sea, one who takes petty wares from out a land
FRAGMENT 147
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ii. 36. p. 51C, Eustathius on Iliad 211. 16.
But that man was gentler than mulberries are soft.
The verse refers to Hector and was probably spoken by Priam.
FRAGMENT 148
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 57. 6 (Hense v. 1138).
And it unto the dead thou art fain to do good, or if thou wouldst work them ill – ’tis all one, since they feel not or joy or grief. Nevertheless our righteous resentment is mightier than thye, and Justice executeth the dead man’s wrath.
Elsewhere Aeschylus declares that the dead possess consciousness and are wroth with those who have done them injury (Libation-Bearers 324, 41). Here, where Hermes has in mind the outrage done by Achilles to Hector’s corpse, his utterance is intended to console Priam and rebuke Achilles with the thought that, though the dead are insensible and cannot avenge themselves, their cause is in the divine keeping. It is the gods alone who have power to do that which is commonly ascribed to the spirits of the dead.
FRAGMENT 149
Scholiast on Euripides, Andromache 1
Hail, offspring of Andraemon of Lyrnessus, whence Hector brought his dear wife.
The statement of the Scholiast that Andromache is addressed is the sole warrant for the interpretation of the action that supposes her to have accompanied Priam to the tent of Achilles. Since her father was Eëtion from Hypoplacian Thebe according to Homer, and since Chrysa and Lyrnessus were both in the plain of Thebe, the Scholiast seems to have confused Andromache with Briseïs, though he properly remarks on the strangeness of the name given to her father.

## PSYCHAGÔGOI

THE ANCIENTS, SAY Phrynichus (Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 73. 10), used the word psychagôgos to denote one who by spells brought to life the spirits of the dead. The Spirit-Raisers was connected with the Penelope and The Bone-Gatherers, and included Teiresias’ prophecy to Odysseus concerning that hero’s death (cp. L 100-37). In L 134 the seer obscurely declares that “from out the sea thine own death shall come” (cp. Fragment 152).
FRAGMENT 150
Aristophanes, Frogs 1266 with Scholiast.
We, who dwell by the lake, honour Hermes as our ancestor.
Hermes was born on Mt. Cyllene, not far from Lake Stymphalis.
FRAGMENT 151
Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 10.
Arsenals and wreckage of ships.
FRAGMENT 152
Scholiast Vulg. on Odyssey L 134.
For a heron, in its flight on high, shall smite thee with its dung, its belly’s emptyings; a spine from out this beast of the sea shall rot thy head, aged and scant of hair.
Spoken by Teiresias. In Sophocles’ Odusseus akanthoplêx, which took the story from the Cyclic epic Telegonia, the hero was killed by his son Telegonus, who smote him with a spear tipped with he spoke or fin of a roach.

## ÔREITHYIA

ACCORDING TO THE legend probably followed by Aeschylus, Boreas, being enamoured of Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, sought her in marriage from her father; repulsed by him, he laid hold of the girl by violence and carried her off as she was sporting by the Ilissus. She bore him two daughters, Chione and Cleopatra, the latter of whom became the wife of Phineus; and two sons, Zetes and Calaïs, who rescued Phineus from the Harpies. In the two extant fragments, which are cited as examples of pseudo-tragic diction, Boreas, enraged at the rejection of his suit, threatens to display his power in its full force.
FRAGMENT 153
Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime 3. 1 (after a lacuna of two leaves); cp. John of Sicily, On Hermogenes’ “Kinds of Style” in Rhetores Graeci vi. 225.
. . . and check the oven’s soaring blaze; for let me not behold some soot, the tenant of the hearth, weaving in a single wreath of torrent flame, I’ll fire the roof and cinder it. But now – not yet have I blared my noble strain.
FRAGMENT 154
John of Sicily, as under Frag. 163.
With my two jaws I blow a blast and confound the main.

## FRAGMENTS OF UNCERTAIN PLAYS

UNDER EACH FRAGMENT are added ancient or modern conjectures as to its source.
FRAGMENT 155
Aristophanes, Frogs 1291. Ascribed to Aeschylus because ll. 1264-1288 contain quotations from him.
Giving him (?) as booty to the eager hounds that range the air.
Agamemnôn Scholiast, Memnôn Bergk, Sphinx Fritzche, Argeioi Hartung, Myrmidones or Phryges Rogers.
The “eager hounds” are eagles or vultures. Who or what is their booty is unknown.
FRAGMENT 156
Aelian, On Animals xii. 8, Zenobius, Proverbs v. 79, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. pyraustou moron.
Verily I do fear the stupid death of the moth.
Promêtheus purkaeus Bothe, Semelê ê Hydrophoroi Hartung.
pyraustou moros was a proverbial expression for the brevity of life (Eustathius on Iliad 1304. 8, etc.).
FRAGMENT 157
Ammonius, On Words of like Form but different Meaning 59 (Valckenaer).
Thou criest aloud, thou who art but a spectator of such a deed as this.
Hypsipylê Valckenaer, Salaminiai Hartung.
FRAGMENT 157A
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 349. 7.
She waileth the nightingale’s lament.
Compare Agam. 1146.
FRAGMENT 158
Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia i. 119. 12.
For all Troy hath beheld by reason of Hector’s fate
Nêreides, or a connected play, Welcker, Phryges Hermann.
FRAGMENT 159
Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia ii. 414. 13.
He bellowed like a bull whose throat has just been cut.
Thrêssai Hartung.
FRAGMENT 160
Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia iv. 315. 28.
Neither am I without experience of this manner of address.
FRAGMENT 161
Anonymous, On the Swelling of the Nile, quoted from cod. Laurentianus lvi. 1 (F) by H. Stephanus in Appendix ad Aristotelis et Theophrasti scripta quadam, and inserted in Parisinus C in the Epitome of the second book of Athenaeus, Deipnosophists (Dindorf i. 165); cp. Aristeides, Or. 48, On Egypt (vol. ii. 443, 460).
Knowing full well, I can laud the race of the Aethiopian land, where seven-channelled Nile rolleth its refreshing tide, fed by abundant, wind-born rain, and therein the fire-eyed sun, beaming forth upon the earth, melteth the snow amid the rocks; and all luxuriant Egypt, filled with the sacred flood, maketh to spring up Demeter’s life-giving grain.
Memnôn Butler, Psychostasia Welcker.
FRAGMENT 162
Anonymous in Orelli, Opuscula Graecorum veterum sententiosa et moralia ii. 222, Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 3. 13 (Hense iii. 195), Scholiast on Iliad B 114, Eustathius on Iliad 188. 43, 480. 43.
From righteous deception God standeth not aloof.
Danaïdes Hermann, Aigyptioi Hartung, Thalamopoioi Oberdick.
FRAGMENT 163
Anonymous in Orelli (as under Frag. 162).
But times there are when God honoureth the season for untruth.
Danaïdes Hermann, Philoktêtês Hartung, Thalamopoioi Wecklein.
FRAGMENT 164
Aristeides, In Defence of the Four Statesmen 46 (vol. ii. 379).
Nor companion in arms, nor neighbour, let him be to me!
Argô Wagner, Oidipous Hartung, Kabeiroi Bergk.
FRAGMENT 165
Aristotle, Natural History ix. 49. p. 633 a20; cp. Pliny, Natural History x. 86 (44).
This hoopoe, spectator of his own distress, hath Zeus bedecked in various hue and showed him forth a bird courageous in his full armour, tenanting the rocks. With the new-come spring he will ply the pinion of the white-feathered hawk – for he will display two forms from a single egg, his offspring’s and his own –; but when the grain is threshed in early harvest0time, parti-coloured wing will direct his course to this side or that. But ever quitting these haunts in loathing he will seek a new home amid the solitary woods and hills.
Now generally referred, with Welcker, to the Têreus of Sophocles (Frag. 581 Jebb-Pearson); Krêssai Hartung.
When Procne had served to Tereus the flesh of their son Itys in revenge for his violation of her sister Philomela, Tereus pursued them with an axe; and when the sisters were overtaken, the gods in pity turned Procne into a nightingale and Philomela into a swallow. Tereus became a hoopoe, or a hawk, according to a variant version of the legend. The poet seems to have assimilated the two legends by making the young hoopoe resemble a hawk.
Before speaking of the hoopoe’s change in colour and appearance, Aristotle remarks that the cuckoo changes its colour. “On the zoological side,” says D’Arcy Thompson, “the myth is based on the similarity of note in the hoopoe and cuckoo, and on the hawk-like appearance of the latter bird.” In l. 1 the epops is called epoptês “spectator” by word-play; and similarly Tereus was “the watcher” (têreô).
FRAGMENT 166
Aristotle, Rhetoric ii. 10. p. 1388 a7 with Scholiast.
For kinsfolk know well to envy too.
FRAGMENTS 167
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists vii. 66. p. 303c, Plutarch, On the Craftiness of Animals 29. 979E, Aelian, On Animals ix. 42, Scholiast on Oppian, On Fishing iv. 504, Eustathius on Iliad 994. 52.
Squinting his left eye, like a tunny-fish
Kêrykes Droysen.
FRAGMENT 169
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ix. 17. p. 375E.
But this pig – and a well-fatted pig it is – I will place within the crackling oven. For what daintier dish could a man get than this?
Kirkê E. A. J. Ahrens, Promêtheus saturikos Hartung.
FRAGMENT 170
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ix. 17. p. 375E; cp. Eustathius on Iliad, 1286. 21.
White, of course, and rarely singed, the pig. Boil him and don’t be troubled by the sire.
Kêrykes E. A. J. Ahrens, Promêtheus satyrikos Hartung.
FRAGMENT 171
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists ix. 17. p. 375E.
But having killed yon pig from the same sow, the sow that had worked me much havoc in the house, pushing and turning everything upside down pell-mell
Kêrykes E. A. J. Ahrens, Promêtheus satyrikos Hartung.
FRAGMENT 172
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xi. 80. p. 491A; cp. Scholiast A on Iliad S 486, Eustathius on Odyssey 1713. 4.
And they who bear the name of Atlas’ daughters seven oft bewailed their sire’s supremest labour of sustaining heaven, where as wingless Peleiades they have the form of phantoms of the night.
Hêliades Butler, Promêtheus satyrikos Hartung.
The daughters of Atlas and Pleione, transformed by Zeus into the constellation of the Pleiades, were often regarded as doves (peleiades) by poetic fancy and popular mythology. The epithet “wingless” is corrective, because the maidens are not real birds.
FRAGMENT 173
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xii. 37. p. 528C; cp. Eustathius on Iliad 1292. 53.
And luxurious locks, like those of delicate maidens; wherefore they approved the name Curetes for the folk.
The Kourêtes in question were the earliest inhabitants of Pleuron in Aetolia (cp. Iliad I 529; kourêtes in T 193 are “youths,” kouroi). That the Greeks were hopelessly confused as to the meaning of the name is clear from the lengthy discussion in Strabo, Geography x. 3. 6-8, p. 466-467. Apart from other explanations, the word was derived now from koura, properly “clipping” of the hair; now from kouros “boy” or kourê “girl” (the Homeric forms of koros and korê), and with reference either to hair or to dress. The historian Phylarchus (third century B.C.) declares that Aeschylus here says that the Kourêtes got their name from their luxury; and the Fragment certainly implies that, like girls, they wore their hair long (cp. Scholiast on I 529 para to mê keirethai tas komas, Scholiast L ê epei komas koran eichon). But in Agathon’s Thyestes certain suitors say that they wore their hair long (komôntes) until they had been rejected by their lady-love, when they cut off their locks, “the witnesses of their luxury,” and by reason of their shorn hair (kourimos thrix) gained the glory of being Kourêtes. Archemachus of Euboea (see Strabo) had the notion that the Kourêtes, before they removed to Aetolia, wore their hair long behind, but cut it short in front in order that their enemies might not seize them there. Strabo himself attaches no little probability to the opinion of those who sought to reconcile the different accounts of the name; for he says that the application of art to the hair consists in attending to its growth and koura, and that both are the peculiar care of korai and koroi. To render koura by “hair-dressing,” “coiffure,” with the implication that the reference is to long hair, is opposed to the etymology (from keirô “cut”). Relationship between koura and kourê, korê, accepted by Curtius, is altogether improbable.
Krêssai Butler, Êdônoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 174
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xiv. 32. p. 632C.
Or the master of his craft was present, deftly striking the lyre.
Athenaeus says that sophists was anciently used of musicians.
FRAGMENT 175
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies iv. 7. p. 586.
To him that toileth God oweth glory, child of his toil.
Kares ê Eurôpê Hartung.
FRAGMENT 176
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies v. 5. p. 661.
But I too have a seal, as a guard, upon my lips.
“My lips were lock’d upon me,” Beaumont and Fletcher.
Epigonoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 177
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies vi. 2. p. 739; l. 1 Pseudo-Diogenianus Proverbs vii. 35 (without naming the poet); with dei for chrê, attributed to Sophocles (Frag. 934 Jebb-Pearson) by Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 39. 14 (Hense iii. 724).
He who is truly happy should bide at home [and he who fares ill, he too should bide at home]
L1. 1-2 Danaïdes Hermann, l. 1 Hêliades Hartung.
Nauck regards l. 2 as a tag by a comic poet: “And he who fares ill? He too should bide at home.” The comic poets were fond of describing “the truly happy man.”
FRAGMENT 178
Etymologicum Magnum 149. 57.
So much, Herald, do thou set forth from me point by point.
Hiketides l. 953A Burges, Eleusinioi Hartung, Kêrykes Droysen, Thalamopoioi Wecklein.
FRAGMENT 179
Etymologicum Genuinum s.v. asalês (Etymologicum Magnum 151. 49 s.v. asalês mania).
Or reckless madness from the gods.
Neaniskoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 180
Etymologicum Magnum 490. 12, Etymologicum Gudianum 298. 9, Cramer, Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia ii. 456. 6, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. kapêlos.
Applying huckster tricks
Phryges Welcker, Philoktêtês Hartung.
FRAGMENT 181
Eustathius on Iliad 1157. 36; cp. Pollux, Vocabulary 10. 56, Hesychius, Lexicon i. 323.
Who had four fillies under yoke, their nostrils bound with fluted muzzles.
Psychostasia Butler, Glaukos Potnieus Hermann, Memnôn Kausche.
To produce a terrifying effect by a horse’s breathing or trumpeting, its bronze muzzle was pierced with holes, through which the sound issued, as though the pipes of a flute. Cp. Seven against Thebes 461 ff.
FRAGMENT 182
Eustathius on Iliad 1183. 18.
Until Zeus, letting fall the drops from his hands, himself shall purify thee with sprinklings of the blood of a slain swine.
Ixiôn Pauw, Perrhaibides Hermann.
FRAGMENT 183
Eustathius on Odyssey 1484. 48.
Is it some Aethiopian dame that shall appear?
Memnôn Hermann.
FRAGMENT 184
Eustathius on Odyssey 1625. 44.
A newly caught antelope, a lion’s food
Glaukos Potnieus Hermann, Xantriai Hartung.
FRAGMENT 185
Harpocration, Glossary of the Ten Attic Orators 198. 3.
Push on, pursue, in no wise faint of foot!
Laïos Gronovius, Hêliades Gataker, Philoktêtês Hermann.
FRAGMENT 186
Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. ostrakôn; cp. Photius, Lexicon 353. 17.
Wingless, tiny, but just now bare of the egg-shell.
Oidipous Hartung.
FRAGMENT 187
Macrobius, Saturnalia i. 18. 6.
Apollo, the ivy-crowned, the reveller, the seer.
Neaniskoi Hartung, Bassarai Nauck.
The ecstatic mantic art of Apollo assumes a Bacchic character.
FRAGMENT 188
Orion, Etymologicum 26. 5.
Mistress maiden, ruler of the stormy mountains.
Êdônoi Hermann, Kallistô Hartung.
FRAGMENT 189
Plato, Republic ii. 383B, whence Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel xiii. 3. p. 647A; ll. 5-9 Athenagoras, Apology 21. 104; ll. 7-8 attributed to Sophocles by Phoebammon, On Figures, in Rhetores Graeci viii. 518; cited, without naming the author, by Plutarch, How a Young Man ought to hear Poems 2. 16E.
He dwelt on my happiness in my children, whose days were to be many and unacquainted with disease; and, comprising all, in triumph-strain that cheered my soul, he praised my lot, blest of the gods. And so I deemed that falsehood sat not upon Phoebus’ lips divine, fraught with the prophet’s art. But he, who raised this song himself, he who himself was present at my marriage-feast, he who himself spake thus, he it is who himself hath slain my son.
Psychostasia Butler, Welcker (or from another play of the same group), Hoplôn krisis Ern. Schneider, Thalamopoioi Wagner, Nêreides Hartung.
Thetis contrasts Apollo’s prophecy of her happy motherhood, uttered at her marriage to Peleus, with his deed in guiding the shaft of Paris that killed her son.
FRAGMENT 190
Plutarch, How a Young Man ought to hear Poems 14. 36B.
Courage! Suffering, when it climbs highest, lasts not long.
Philoktêtês Hartung.
FRAGMENT 191
Plutarch, Consolation to Apollonius 10. 106C.
Since unjustly men hate death, which is the greatest defence against their many ills.
Philoktêtês Hartung.
FRAGMENT 192
Plutarch, Of Isis and Osiris 20. 358E; cp. Etymologicum Genuinum and Etymologicum Magnum s.v. apargmata.
Thou needs must spit it out and make clean thy mouth.
Perrhaibides or Laïos Etymologicum Genuinum.
Those who committed murder by treachery sought to purify themselves by tasting, and then spitting out, the blood of their victims.
FRAGMENT 193
Plutarch, On the E at Delphi 9. 389A.
’Tis meet that the dithyramb, his fellow-reveller, half song, half shout, attend on Dionysus.
Neaniskoi Hermann, Êdônoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 194
Plutarch, On the Cessation of Oracles 43. 434A.
For seizing a self-sharpened Euboean sword
Thrêssai Osann.
“Self-sharpened” is supposed to mean “cold-forged,” not “fire-forged” (cp. Seven against Thebes 942). artithêkton “just sharpened,” Sidgwick (after arti thêkton Blaydes) is the best of the many conjectures.
FRAGMENT 195
Plutarch, On the Restraint of Anger 4. 454E.
[The flame,] come to its youthful strength, consumed the lofty labour of the carpenters.
FRAGMENT 196
Plutarch, Table Talk i. 8. 1. p. 625D.
. . . But when old show thyself a clear scribe (?)
Salaminiai Hartung.
Cited by Plutarch to illustrate his remark that old men can read only when a book is held at a distance. The mangled passage eludes satisfactory emendation: su de (so Heath)| apothem eides auton ou gar egguthen | horan gerôn ktl. Dindorf; and so E. A. J. Ahrens, but reading horas. su d’ ex apoptou (cp. Sophocles, Philoctetes 446) Headlam. The second line seems to mean “when old, write a large, clear hand,” remembering that the aged read with difficulty.
FRAGMENT 197
Plutarch, On Monarchy, Democracy, Oligarchy 4. 827A, Life of Demetrius 35.
Thou indeed didst give me life, thou dost think to destroy me.
Pentheus Anonymous reported by Stanley, Xantriai Stanley, Niobê Hartung, a satyr-play Gomperz.
The reading su toi me phygas, su me kataithein dokeis, adopted by Perrin, means “Thou fannest indeed my flame, methinks thou dost quench me too.”
Demetrius Poliocetes quoted the verse in addressing Fortune.
FRAGMENT 198
Plutarch, That the Stoics speak greater Improbabilities than the Poets 2. 1057F.
[Changed from] a piteous old man with a stitch in his back and cramped by pain
Têlephos Schülz, Philoktêtês Butler, Dionysou trophoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 199
Plutarch, Life and Poety of Homer 157 (Wyttenbach v. 1196). In l. 2 Wecklein read moira for terma.
A man dies not for the many wounds that pierce his breast, unless it be that life’s end keep pace with death, nor by sitting on his hearth at home doth he the more escape his appointed doom
Eleusinioi Hartung.
This is perhaps the nearest approach to pure fatalism in Greek tragedy. Cp. Demosthenes, On the Crown (18. 97) peras men gar apasin anthrôtois esti tou biou thanatos, kan en oikiskô tis auton katheirxas têrê, “for all men’s lives have a fixed limit in death, even though a man shut himself in a chamber and keep watch.”
FRAGMENT 200
Cited from Aeschylus by Aristophanes, Fragment 610 (Pollux, Vocabulary 6. 80).
Truly then thou shalt pick the seeds from out the bitter-sweet pomegranate.
Eleusinioi Butler.
FRAGMENT 201
Pollux, Vocabulary 7. 60; cp. Stephen of Byzantium, Lexicon 415. 10.
A fock that copies the Libyrnic cloak
Êdônoi Hartung, Oidipous others.
FRAGMENT 202
Pollux, Vocabulary 7. 78
And thou in a well-woven robe of drill
Êdônoi Hartung.
trimitos, “three-threaded,” having three threads in the warp.
FRAGMENT 203
Pollux, Vocabulary 7. 167, cp. 10. 46.
But easily from baths exceedingly large
Glaukos pontios Hermann.
FRAGMENT 204
Proclus, Commentary on Hesiod’s Works and Days 156.
A mortal woman from out a seed moulded of clay
Promêtheus lyomenos Butler, a Promêtheus Hermann.
After Prometheus had stolen fire, Zeus in revenge bade Hephaestus fashion Pandora out of earth.
FRAGMENT 205
Scholiast Ravennas on Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1257.
Froth from human blood streamed over their jaws.
Glaukos Potnieus Hartung.
FRAGMENT 206
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Clouds 1130, on Theocritus, Idyll xv. 48; and in collectors of proverbs: Zenobius iii. 37, Pseudo-Diogenianus iv. 35, Gregory of Cyprus (cod. Leid. 1. 88, Mosq. 2. 84), Macarius, Rose-bed iii. 21, and other late writers.
Truly at weaving wiles the Egyptians are clever.
Danaïdes Hermann, Thalamopoioi Oderdick.
FRAGMENT 207
Scholiast on Euripides, Orestes 25.
A device, irresistible and inextricable
In place of Choêphoroi l. 999 Wecklein, Prôteus Wilamowitz.
FRAGMENT 208
Scholiast B on Iliad X 200, Scholiasts DE on Odyssey a98.
Take ye your stand in a ring about yon altar and its gleaming fire, and with your band grouped in a circle offer up your prayers.
Hiketides (after l. 232) Burges, Danaïdes Hermann, Promêtheus lyomenos Hartung, Mysoi Droyson.
FRAGMENT 209
Scholiasts BLT on Iliad P 542.
For where might and justice are yoke-fellows – what pair is stronger than this?
Promêtheus lyomenos Hartung.
FRAGMENT 210
Scholiast and Tzetzes on Lycophron’s Alexandra 1247; cp. Harpocration, Glossary of the Ten Attic Orators 151. 5, Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. theoinia.
Father Theoinos, thou subduer of the Maenads!
From a Dionysiac drama, possibly the Xantriai, Butler; Neaniskoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 211
Scholiast on Pindar, Nemean 10. 31 (18).
Hera, the Perfecter, wedded wife of Zeus
Compare Eumenides 214.
FRAGMENT 212
Scholiast on Pindar, Pythian 2. 18 (10).
O Hermes, lord of games, son of Maia and Zeus!
FRAGMENT 213
Scholiast on Sophocles, Electra 286, and Scholiasts TV on Iliad PS 10.
Truly lamentation is a prop of suffering.
FRAGMENT 214
Scholiast on Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus 1047.
With bright flashes, the torches’ might.
Eleusinioi Pauw, Oidipous Lobeck, Iphigeneia or Hiereiai Fritzche.
Aeschylus may be speaking of Eleusis, where the initiates bore torches. But cp. Eumenides 1022.
FRAGMENT 215
Scholiast on Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus 1049.
I thrill with the rapture of this mystic rite.
Eleusinioi Pauw, Bakchai (=Bassarai) Hartung.
FRAGMENT 216
Scholiast on Theocritus, Idyll ii. 36; cp. Aristeides, Athena 17 (vol i. 27).
Lady Hecate, before the portal of the royal halls
Aigyptioi Tittler, Dionysou trophoi Hartung.
FRAGMENT 217
Stobaeus, Anthology ii. 8. 10 (Wachsmuth ii. 155), Menander, Single-verse Maxims 679.
Fortune is for all, judgment is theirs who have won it for themselves.
FRAGMENT 218
Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 3. 11 (Hense iii. 194) MA, om. S.
Who knows things useful, not many things, is wise.
FRAGMENT 219
Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 3. 14 (Hense iii. 195) MA, om. S.
Truly even he errs that is wiser than the wise.
FRAGMENT 220
Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 4. 18 (Hense iii. 223).
Verily a prosperous fool is a heavy load.
FRAGMENT 221
Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 18. 12 (Hense iii. 515); cp. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists x. 31. p. 427F omitting the source.
Bronze is a mirror of the face, wine of the mind.
Argô Hartung.
FRAGMENT 222
Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 27. 2 (Hense iii. 6110, Arsenius, Violet-bed in Paroemiographi Graeci i. 579. 25.
Oaths are not surety for a man, but the man for the oaths.
Perrhaibides Hartung.
FRAGMENT 223
Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 29. 31 (Hense iii. 630).
God loves to help him who strives to help himself.
From Euripides, according to Arsenius, Violet-bed in Paroemiographi Graeci ii. 712. 13.
FRAGMENT 224
Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 29. 24 (Hense iii. 632), Menander, Single-verse Maxims 297.
’Tis seemly that even the aged learn wisdom.
FRAGMENT 225
Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 34. 5 (Hense iii. 683) SM, om. A.
Ere thou utterest words such as these, thou must bite thy lips.
FRAGMENT 226
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 4. 14 (Hense iv. 187).
For successful rascals are insufferable.
FRAGMENT 227
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 34. 44 (Hense v. 838), Apostolius in Paroemiographi Graeci ii. 686. 3.
For mortal kind taketh thought only for the day, and hath no more surety than the shadow of smoke.
Niobê Hartung.
FRAGMENT 228
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 50. 7 (Hense v. 1022).
For age is more just than youth.
FRAGMENT 229
Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 53. 17 (Hense v. 1102) SA, om. M, Menander, Single-verse Maxims 193.
Death is rather to be chosen than a toilsome life; and not to be born is better than to be born to misery.
Oidipous Hartung; Euripides, L. Dindorf.
FRAGMENT 230
Strabo, Geography vi. 6. p. 258.
Whence it shall bear the name Rhegium
Glaukos pontios Hermann, Promêtheus lyomenos Schültz.
At Rhegium Sicily was broken off (aporrhêgnym) from the mainland by an earthquake.
FRAGMENT 231
Strabo, Geography viii. 7. 5. p. 387 (ll. 2-3 in the Cozza-Luzzi MS.); l. 3 Stephen of Byzantium, Lexicon 707. 13; cp. Photius, Lexicon 492. 10.
Hallowed Bura and thunder-smitten Rhypae, and Dyme, Helice and Aegeira and precipitous, sacred Olenus
All these places are in Achaea.
Glaukos pontios Hartung, Kares ê Eurôpê Meineke, Danaïdes M. Schmidt.
FRAGMENT 232
Strabo, Geography ix. 1. 9. p. 393.
Aegina yonder lies towards the southern blasts.
Salaminiai Wagner. A description of the position of the ancient city of Salamis.
FRAGMENT 233
Anonymous Grammarian in Lexicon Vaticanum (cod. Vaticanus Graecus 12) s.v. akmên.
But as yet all the cymbals that raised a din
FRAGMENT 234
Aristophanes, Frogs 1431, Palatine Anthology x. 110, Suidas, Lexicon s.v. ou chrê and skymos; l. 1 Macarius, Rose-bed vi. 71; ll. 2-3 quoted by Plutarch in reference to Alcibiades in his Life 16.
One must not rear a lion’s whelp in the State [best of all not to rear a lion in the State]; but if one be reared to his full growth, we must humour his ways.
Compare Agam. 717 ff.
L1. 1 and 3 Danaïdes Hermann.
FRAGMENT 235
Thomas Magister, Collection of Attic Nouns and Verbs 238.8
Nobly to die were better than to save one’s life.
Hept epi Thêbas Thomas Magister, but mallon enoikôteros (cp. l. 673) is lacking in his citation.
FRAGMENT 236
Stobaeus, Anthology i. 3. 24 (Wachsmuth i. 56), Theophilus, To Autoloycus ii. 37. p. 176.
For, of a truth, the doer is bound to suffer.
Probably from Sophocles (Fragment 229 Jebb-Pearson), but ascribed to Aeschylus because of Choëph. 313.
FRAGMENT 237
Aristophanes, Frogs 704 with Scholiast.
With our lives in the clasp of the waves
Archilochus 25, but ascribed to Aeschylus by Didymus.
FRAGMENT 238
Strabo, Geography viii. 3. 8. p. 341, Eustathius on Iliad 305. 534.
Possessing as their allotted share all Cyprus and Paphos
Danaïdes or Thalamêpoloi (sic) Hartung; from Archilochus according to Meineke.
FRAGMENT 239
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies v. 14. p. 727, Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel xiii. 13. p. 689B, [Justin Martyr,] On Monarchy 2. 130.
Set God apart from mortal men, and deem not that he, like them, is fashioned out of flesh. Thou knowest him not; now he appeareth as fire, unapproachable in his onset, now as water, now as gloom; and he, even himself, is dimly seen in the likeness of wild beasts, of wind, of cloud, of lightning, thunder, and of rain. Ministers unto him are sea, and rocks, and every spring, and gathered floods; before him tremble mountains and earth and the vast abyss of the sea and the lofty pinnacles of the mountains, whensoever the flashing eye of their lord looketh on them. For all power hath he; lo, this is the glory of the Most High God.
Aeschylean authorship has generally been rejected since Grotius.
The Fragment was ascribed to Aeschylus in antiquity probably because of its lofty conception of God.
FRAGMENT 240
Plutarch, Consolation to Apollonius 29. 116F, Stobaeus, Anthology iv. 4. 36 (Hense v. 967).
This is the mark of men just and wise as well – even in calamity not to cherish anger against the gods.
From Aeschylus (Plutarch), Myrmidones E. A. J. Ahrens, Niobê Burmeisters; from Euripides (Stobaeus: Nauck Frag. 1078).
FRAGMENT 241
Spoken by Aeschylus to Aristophanes, Frogs 886-7 (see Scholiast); l. 1 assigned to Aeschylus in inferior MSS. (not in Ven. or Rav.).
O Demeter, thou that didst nourish my soul, grant that I be worthy of thy Mysteries!
Eleusinioi Butler.
FRAGMENT 242
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists x. 85 p. 457B.
Having won a glorious victory in battle
Assigned to Aeschylus by Nauck.
FRAGMENT 243
Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. empedês.
May Hades, whose portion is the earth, seize and fetter thee!
Assigned to Aeschylus by Burges.
Text and application are uncertain. Possibly Hades is called “landowner” to contrast his distinctive domain from that of Zeus and of Poseidon.
FRAGMENT 244
Hesychius, Lexicon s.v. Tirynthion plintheuma and Kyklôpôn edos.
Walled Tiryns, the Cyclopes’ seat.
Assigned to Aeschylus by Nauck. The two glosses were joined by Meineke.
FRAGMENT 245
Lucian, The Fly 11 (Sommerbrodt iii. 121).
Shameful is it that the fly, with courageous might, should leap upon men’s bodies to glut itself with blood, yet men-at-arms should dread the foeman’s spear.
Assigned to Aeschylus by Bergk.
FRAGMENT 246
Marcus Antoninus, Meditations 7. 51.
When a storm bloweth, sent of the gods, we needs must endure it, toiling without complaint.
Assigned to Aeschylus by Wagner.
FRAGMENT 247
Plutarch, How a Young Man ought to hear Poems 13. 35E, How to Profit by our Enemies 5. 88F.
Thou art near akin to a woman that brought death upon her husband.
ADR. And thou, with thine own hand, didst slay the mother that bare thee.
Epigonoi Wagner. Brunck and Hermann ascribed the verses to Sophocles’ Epigonoi.
L. 1 spoken by Alcmeon, son of Amphiaraüs and Eriphyle, l. 2 by Adrastus, brother of Eriphyle. Eriphyle had been bribed by Polynices with the necklace of Harmonia to influence Amphiaraüs against his better judgment to join the first expedition against Thebes, from which he knew that he should not return alive (cp. Seven against Thebes l. 587). In the second expedition the most important person was Alcmeon, who killed his mother and went mad.
FRAGMENT 248
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists xiii. 14. p. 584D.
Cursed boy! What word is this that thou hast uttered?
From the Epigonoi of Aeschylus or of Sophocles (Wagner).
FRAGMENT 249
Plutarch, On Superstition 3. 166A.
But either thou art frightened of a spectre beheld in sleep and hast joined the revel-rout of nether Hecate
Assigned to Aeschylus by Porson
FRAGMENT 250
Pluatch, On Love 15. 758B.
For Night brought me not forth to be the lord of the lyre, nor to be seer or leech, but to lull to rest men’s souls.
Assigned to Aeschylus by Hermann.
Spoken by Sleep.
FRAGMENT 251
Scholiast B on Iliad A 175, and cited by collectors of proverbs; Zenobius iv. 11, Gregory of Cyprus (cod. Leid. 2. 19, Mosq. 3. 53), Pseudo-Diogenianus iv. 95a.
Zeus looked late into his book.
Assigned to Aeschylus by Valckenaer.
A proverb concerning the delayed punishment of the wicked. The “book of Zeus” is the “book of life.” Cp. Eum. 275.
FRAGMENT 252
Stobaeus, Anthology i., proem 1a (Watchsmuth 1. 15); cp. Plato, Republic vii. 522D.
Thereafter I ordered the life of all Hellas and of the allies, the life aforetime confused and like to that of wild beasts. First I invented number, all-wise, chiefest of sciences.
Palamêdês, Wachsmuth. Cp. Frag. 96, from that play.
FRAGMENT 253
Stobaeus, Anthology i. 3. 98 (Wachsmuth i. 57), Theophilus, To Autolycus ii. 37. p. 178.
Justice, voiceless, unseen, seeth thee when thou sleepest and when thou goest forth and when thou liest down. Continually doth she attend thee, now aslant thy course, now at a later time.
Assigned to Aeschylus by Hermann.
FRAGMENT 254
Stobaeus, Anthology i. 6. 16 (Wachsmuth i. 87).
Sovereign of all the gods is Fortune, and these other names are given her in vain; for she alone disposeth all things as she wills.
Assigned to Aeschylus by Achsmuth.
Some “other names” of Tyche are praktêrios Suppliant Maidens 523, sôtêr Agam. 664, hê eu didousa Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrranus 1080.
FRAGMENT 255
Stobaeus, Anthology iii. 4. 16 (Hense iii. 223).
One must not have a manner too swift-paced.
Assigned to Phryges ê Hektoros lytra by Hermann, who made Priam speak this verse, followed (as in Stobaeus) by “For none who hath been overthrown deems that he has been counselled well;” and let Priam, after two verses by Achilles, continue his reproach with the lines: “For this hastiness and lightness of mind hath oft brought mortals to misery.”
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
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 Polydectes, 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: . . . 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: 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: Look, the little one is smiling sweetly as he looks on his shining raddled bald pate. . . . Qualis vero amator mentularum est hic pusillus!
[SILENUS.] . . . 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: CHORUS
 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
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.
In view of the length of these fragments, it is remarkable that we can make out so little of the subject-matter. theôroi could mean “spectators” or “members of a sacred embassy”; and since ht text shows that the satyrs of the Chorus mean to compete in the Isthmian games, the title probably indicates that they came there as members of a sacred embassy, presumably sent or conducted by Dionysus in honour of Poseidon.
Our portion of the text begins with the satyrs, thanking someone for exact likenesses of themselves, which they then proceed to nail up upon the temple of Poseidon Isthmios, with the remark that they will frighten away strangers. The strangers will presumably be frightened, as Snell suggests, because they will think they have come to a place like the palace of Oenomaus with its display of severed human heads. We are told that the likenesses are painted (l. 12); but that does not rule out their being sculptures rather than pictures. Eduard Fraenkel has suggested that they are antefixes, the upright ornaments placed along the cornices of Greek temples, originally in order to mask the ends of the covering tiles that protected the joints between the rain-tiles, and customarily shaped like masks. Satyr-masks were sometimes used as antefixes, and the practice may well have suggested this scene; it is not, of course, meant that the satyr’s portraits are antefixes, since antefixes cannot be nailed up or taken down at will. The fright which the portraits are likely to give to the satyrs’ mother or to any strangers makes it likely that such portraits, and probably the art of portraiture itself, are thought of as being unusual or even new at the time in question.
A new character now enters the stage; he has been looking for the satyrs, and grimly remarks that he has known where to find them. He remarks on them what are probably the effects of the practice known as ligatura praeputii, one which was often adopted by Greek athletes in training and which satyr-athletes on several vases are shown as adopting; on this and on the similar but distinct Roman practice of infibulatio, see Dingwall, Male Infibulation, London, 1925, and Brommer, Satyrspele 74. The satyrs should be giving their minds to the dance, says this personage, but instead they have learned new habits, and are exercising their arms and wasting his money (or “ruining his property”?). Between lines 35 and 65 very little can be made out; but it looks as if either the Choragus or a Silenus like those of the Ichneutae and the Cyclops replied to this speech with one in which he complained of the discomforts which the satyrs have endured while in the other speaker’s service and declared that they would no longer obey his orders. Lines 53-60 are missing. When we pick up the thread, the other speaker is replying. “You say I am no good at iron-work,” he says, “but am a cowardly, womanish creature”; then he repeats his former reproaches, and threatens to be avenged. Finally he draws the attention of the satyrs to somebody or something near at hand.
The satyrs now repeat their refusal to leave the temple (80-4). L. 85 seems to be addressed to a new character, who has brought with him, he says, newly-made objects straight from adze and anvil. He offers the first of these to the satyrs, who refuse it with alarm. “What am I to do with this?” they ask, and are told in reply that they are to use it in practising the new craft that they have adopted (91-2). This presumably means athletics (cf. 35). A dangerous object is made with an adze may well be javelin, as Snell suggests.
Silenus (or the Choragus) now says to the other person, “What will you do in return if I let you sail?” (l. 93: Lobel’s suggested restoration of this line, which Snell ignores, seems almost unavoidable). The other replies that he will be a good comrade to him at the Isthmian games. Then Silenus may have said that the other character “will go on board” (l. 95). Soon after that, the text breaks off.
The character who quarrels with the satyrs is very probably Dionysus, their usual master. It might be Silenus, in which case the part which I have suggested might belong to Silenus would belong to the Choragus; but Snell rightly observes that the reproach of being a gynnis is much more appropriately levelled against Dionysus (cf. fr. 31, etc.). It seems that the satyrs have been brought by Dionysus to the Isthmus as members of a sacred embassy to the Isthmian games. Once arrived, they have decided to compete in the games themselves, and have slipped off to practise them instead of dancing. Perhaps Dionysus had meant them to give a display of their usual dances or to enter for the choral contest. They are encouraged in this behaviour by a character who first brings them their portraits meant apparently to scare off rival competitors, and then implements, very likely javelins, that will be useful in the games. (If the javelin-throwing competition was already in existence, the javelin could not be a new invention; but perhaps these were the first javelins equipped with the agkylê (Lat. amentum), a device which makes them a good deal easier to aim; see Saglio in Darember-Saglio i, 226).
Who can this other character be? Snell suggests that it is Sisyphus, the crafty king of Corinth, who figured in satyr-plays by all the three great tragedians. Sisyphus, according to one story, founded the Isthmian games, and Snell thinks the play may have dealt with their foundation. Corinth was a famous centre of craftsmanship; Sisyphus himself is credited with philotechnia as well as with panourgia by Diodorus 6, fr. 6, 3 and is coupled with the famous smiths, the Cercopes and the Telchines, by Aelian, De nat. anim. 6, 58. Snell also suggests that a fragmentary text (P. Oxy. 2250, in vol. xx, 12) in which a rich king is addressed in marching anapaests, may come from an address to Sisyphus by the Chorus of this play.
This suggestion might possibly be right, but there is very little positive evidence in its favour. There is no suggestion in the text that this is the first performance of the Isthmian games: if it were, Aeschylus as an Athenian might be thought likely to prefer the legend that made Theseus their founder. Nor is there any real evidence for Sisyphus as a craftsman. philotechnia in Diodorus must mean much the same as panourgia, and Aelian compares Sisyphus to the Cercopes and Telchines in point of cunning, not of craftsmanship. No tradition connects Corinth with the origins of representative art or of weapons; its fame as a centre of craftsmanship belongs to historic rather than to heroic times. A more positive objection to the theory is the difficulty of reconciling it with Lobel’s very probably restoration of l. 93. Why should Sisyphus ask the satyrs “to let him sail” or “to take him on board”? As for P. Oxy. 2250, it might have occurred in any number of different contexts, and there is no substantial reason for connecting it with this play.
It is worth exploring other possibilities, provided one remembers that certainty is not likely to be attainable. It seems likely that he maker of the portraits and weapons may be one of the great artificers of mythology. At l. 7 one of the likenesses is called to Daidalou mimêma. This has been taken to mean “the likeness like one by Daedalus.” But a more natural sense would be “the likeness by Daedalus.” Can Daedalus be the maker of the portraits and the javelins?
Daedalus is often said to have invented the art of sculpture (see Apollodorus 3. 15. 9, Hyginus, Fab. 274). He was also the inventor of carpentry and several of its instruments, including the adze (Pliny, N.H. 7. 198). He was by origin a noble Athenian, a kinsman of Theseus (Cleidemus ap. Plutarch, Theseus 19, etc.), and had to leave Athens because he killed his nephew out of jealousy at his superior skill. Is Daedalus at the Isthmus, trying to persuade the satyrs to take him on their ship, perhaps so that he can get to Crete? Daedalus certainly figures in the Daedalus and Camici of Sophocles, either or both of which may have been satyric, apart from the comedies by Plato and Aristophanes called after him.
But there is a sculptor and smith even more renowned than Daedalus who is constantly portrayed on vases in the company of satyrs. This is Hephaestus. In spite of Wilamowitz (Kleine Schriften v. 11), there is good reason to believe that Hephaestus was sometimes referred to as Daidalos (see Pearson, Fragments of Sophocles i. 110 and literature there quoted). No legend about satyrs is more commonly depicted on vases than that of the Return of Hephaestus; of how Hera slighted her deformed son; of how he made for her a marvellous throne, which when she tried to rise from it held her fast bound; of how Ares tried to overcome Hephaestus by force and failed miserably; of how Hepheastus vanished from Olympus, so that no one was able to release his mother; and of how he was finally brought back by Dionysus and his satyrs, who had made him drunk (see Beazley, Development of Attic Black-Figure 31, 44; Brommer, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Institute 52, 1937, 198; id. Satyrspiele 23, 68, etc.). Wilamowitz’ guess that it formed the subject of a lost Homeric Hymn rests on insufficient evidence; but it was handled by Alcaeus (see Page, Sappho and Alcaeus 258 f.) and by Epicharmus in his Kômastai ê Haphaistos. The earliest Athenian work that we know to have treated this theme is the satyr-play Hêphaistos of the tragedian Achaeus; but there must have been other satyr-plays that had the exile and return of Hephaestus as a principal or as a subsidiary theme.
Dionysus complains (l. 66 f.) that the satyrs reproach him with being no good at work in iron. This suggests that he may be being unfavourably contrasted with some other possible patron who is. It reminds us that there are several legends in which the satyrs figure as Hephaestus’ workmen (see Pearson, op. cit, ii. 136). And it recalls the problem set by a fairly numerous group of vases which feature what at first sight seems to be the Return of Hephaestus: only the figure on the ass and holding the smith’s tools that we should expect to be Hephaestus turns out on closer inspection to be Dionysus (see Brommer, Jahrb. Des Deut. Inst. L.x., 206, with literature there quoted). It has already been suggested that there may have been a story of Dionysus stealing Hephaestus’ tools. I cannot help suspecting that the giver of the portraits and the javelins may have been the exiled Hephaestus, eager for a lift on the satyrs’ ship to escape those who are trying to fetch him back to Olympus; that Dionysus may have tried to punish Hephaestus for stealing his retainers by stealing his tools; and that finally Dionysus may have learned that Hephaestus was wanted on Olympus and have made the return of the tools conditional upon his surrender. But I put this forward only as a guess at the nature of facts that are not known. ⁹ ¹⁰
Ho there! look upon the house of the Lord of the Sea, the Shaker of the Earth! and let each fasten up the likeness of his handsome face, a truthful messenger, a voiceless herald to keep of travellers; he’ll halt strangers on their way by his terrifying look, Hail, King, hail, Poseidon . . . protector . . . ¹¹
(Fifteen lines unintelligible, including “a slave or thrice a slave,” “rightful master,” “miserable bed and miserable sleepings-out,” “in the (?wretched) . . . of this old . . .,” “running away from . . . of a polyp,” “Did I do anything . . . to you? Didn’t I do you many . . .?” “Well, then, be brave and speak . . .,” “. . . stay in the temple.” Eight lines missing; fragments of two lines.)
. . . covering with a shield . . . and you spread this story . . . and let loose a spate of words, venting your fury against me, saying that I’m no good at work in iron, but am a cowardly, womanish creature, not to be counted as a male. And now you have to hand these other new implements, the most detestable of all tools. And you abuse me and my dancing, for which I’m summoning together the people of the Isthmian land, and no one, young or old, stays away from these double rows of dancers if he can help it. But you are playing the Isthmian competitor, and with your wreath of pine-leaves you refuse the ivy its due honour. Well, you’ll weep for this, you’ll weep tears that are not stung from you by mere smoke. But don’t you see your darling close at hand? ¹² ¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁷ ¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²⁰
1. Text very doubtful: see Summary.2. Ogtogterôzoydêlosêsthodoiporôn: other editors read this as outoi heterôs, ou, dêlos, ktl. Prof. K. J. Dover makes the very attractive suggestion that the words I have put in inverted commas may be a quotation from one of Archilochus’ beast-fables. But I can find no evidence to substantiate this.3. Text very doubtful: see Summary.4. Doubtless erdoi tis ên hekastos eideiê technên: “Let each other practise the craft he knows” (Lobel).5. Worn by competitors at the Isthmian games in early times.6. Emblem of Dionysus

## NIOBÊ

FRAGMENT 277
VITELLI-NORSA, Bulletin de la société royale d’archéologie d’Alexandrie 28, 1933, 108, with Plate.
The Papyrus gives no direct indication of speaker or speakers. Are the words preserved spoken by one speaker or no? And is all or part of the fragment spoken by Niobe herself?
Let us first consider ll. 1-9. We know from Aristophanes (Ran. 911 f.) and from the ancient Life of Aeschylus (quoted below) that for the whole of the early part of the play Niobe remained veiled and silent. Do these lines come from a speech made by her, after she has at last broken her silence, or do they come from a description of her behaviour by some other character? Three passages look as though, if their text was complete, they would supply an answer to this question. But of these three passages two (1-4, 10-11) are mutilated at the vital point, and might be supplemented in accordance with either view. In l. 1, we might read either anasten[ein echo or anasten[ein echei. L. 11 would be most naturally filled in by a participle (e.g. zêtôn, agôn); but one cannot rule out the possibility that the poet wrote, e.g., psuchês] komistra têde, ktl: in which case Niobe would after all have been the speaker. Ll. 6-8 should furnish a more certain indication, especially since they are quoted, or rather paraphrased by Hesychius (cf. fr. 78). But unfortunately the text of the papyrus is almost certainly corrupt, nor does Hesychius help us to amend it with certainty. ²¹
The verbs epôzô and epôazô can both mean “to sit on eggs”; but also both can mean “to utter cries,” one deriving from ô and the other from ôa. (When they mean “to sit on eggs,” they should properly be written with adscript iota after the ô, but adscript iotas are so often omitted in papyri that the absence of this is of no significance.) Hesychius, or rather his authority, clearly thought that Niobe was compared to a hen; and some of those who share his view argue against Niobe’s beign the speaker on the ground that she herself can hardly have made such a comparison. But the argument has no force, since Hesychius is unlikely to be right. The sense of “utter cries of lamentation” is far better suited to the context; nor is it reasonable to insist that Niobe’s silence must exclude the uttering of cries of lamentation. See Kloesel’s excellent treatment of this point.
Page rightly says that it would have been far easier for the MS. reading to be displaced by a paraphrasing word that would not destroy the sense than by a word that would destroy it; and this makes in favour of epoimôzousa as against epôzei zôna. But it is still unlikely that those who supply an aorist in l. 8 are right. Wolff’s tritai]on at the beginning of l. 6 is generally accepted. He compares Vita Aeschylus s. 6, where in all MSS. except M we read en gar têi Niobêi heôs tritês hêmeras epikathêmenê tôi taphôi tôn paidôn ouden phtheggetai. The words tritês hêmeras may be a mere corruption of M’s reading tritou merous. But even if it is, tritaion or some other ordinal number is very probably right. Is it possible for tritaion êmar . . . ephêmenê, “I have been sitting . . . for two days,” to be followed by a main verb that is not present but aorist? Page explains his reading eklausa as being an instantaneous aorist, of the kind which in English is properly rendered by a present. But I know of no case of a present participle that is used closely with an indication of time, as ephêmenê is used with tritaion hêmar, being followed by an aorist main verb. Instantaneous aorists of this sort may be equivalent in sense to English presents, but they are not treated as presents in Greek syntax. I therefore think it likely that whatever was displaced by epoimôzousa must have included a main verb in the present tense and that at the beginning of l. 8 we should supply a participle.
The favourite supplement of those who insist that Niobe must be the speaker is therefore unlikely to be right; but their main contention is not necessarily wrong. For epoimôzousa did not necessarily arise from epôzei zôsa. It may equally well have arisen from epôzô zôsa; and though the ugly repetition of zô may be thought to make against this reading, it is somewhat likelier to have given reise to the corruption in the papyrus than is epôzei zôsa. Hesychius, it is true, puts the verb in the third person; but since he is probably paraphrasing the text rather than quoting it, this consideration has little weight.
We are forced to conclude that the text as it stands offers no reliable means of determining whether Niobe speaks the lines or no. Those who argue that she does not contend that their tone is too calm and reflective to be suitable to her. I feel some sympathy with this argument, but it is not one that can be pressed far; though it may derive some strength from the reflection that ll. 10-11 look as if they are not spoken by or to Niobe. Not that this is certain.
Some scholars think the fragment is part of a dialogue, ll. 1-9 being spoken by an actor, 10-13 by the Chorus and the rest by the actor again. This cannot be ruled out, but is unlikely to be right. The question in ll. 12-13 looks like a rhetorical question of the kind that the asker himself at once proceeds to answer; for such a question and answer in Aeschylus compare, for instance, P.V. 500-4.
If the speaker is not Niobe, who else may it be? Latte suggested Niobe’s nurse; others refuse to credit a nurse with so much semnotês and suggest Niobe’s mother-in-law, Antiope. There is some reason to suspect that a nurse was mentioned in this play (see Lesky, l.c., p. 7); and as the single instance of the Choephoroe does not prove that all Aeschylean nurses were incapable of semnotês, the nurse ahs a shade the better claim. But we cannot know which of them it was, if it was either.
To sum up, we have not sufficient evidence to know whether Niobe is the speaker or no. Nor can we be quite sure that they belong to a single speaker, though it is likelier than not that this is so. I suspect, although I cannot prove, that this speaker was not Niobe, and my supplements are made accordingly. But I offer them with very little confidence.
1-3 The speaker does not mean to say: “She can only weep for Tantalus.” The speaker means to say: “She can only weep for the disastrous marriage which Tantalus made for her”; but this is expressed by means of the common construction exemplified, e.g., by Eur., Med. 37: dedoika d’autên mê ti bouleuêi neon.
But she can only lament over her luckless marriage, one that proved no haven, into which mighty Tantalus, the father that begot her and gave her away., forced her fortune’s ship. For the blast of all manner of evil is striking against her house, and you yourselves can see the conclusion of the marriage. This is the third day she has sat by this tomb, wailing over her children, the living over the dead, and mourning the misfortune of their beauty. Man brought to misery is but a shadow. Mighty Tantalus will in due course come here; to bring her home will be the purpose of his coming. But what cause of wrath had the Father against Amphion, that he has thus ruthlessly destroyed his family, root and branch? Loyal as you are, I will tell you. A god causes a fault to grow in mortals, when he is minded utterly to ruin their estate. But none the less, a mortal must abstain from rash words, carefully nursing the happiness that the gods give him. But in great prosperity men never think that they may stumble and spill the full cup of their fortune. So it was that this woman, exultant in . . . beauty . . .

## PROMÊTHEUS PYRKAEUS

FRAGMENT 278
LOBEL, P. Oxy., vol. 20, no. 2245, with Plate I.
Aeschylus wrote certainly three and probably four plays about Prometheus; the extant Prometheus Desmotes, the Prometheus Lyomenos, the Prometheus Pyrphoros, which was probably either the first or the third play of the trilogy that contained the former two, and the Prometheus Pyrkaeus. The last-mentioned play was probably the satyr-play produced in 472 together with the Persae, the Phineus and the Glaucus Potnieus: see the hypothesis to the Persae. The play probably dealt with the bringing of fire to earth by Prometheus; and the numerous vases that show satyrs carrying fire in fennel-stalks, sometimes accompanied by Prometheus himself, are likely to be connected with it: see Beazley in A.J.A. 43, 1939, 618; ibid., 44, 1940, 212; Brommer, Satyrspiele 44, 79. Fraenkel is almost certainly right in assigning this fragment to this play. Its subject-matter accords well with what is known of the Pyrkaeus (see fr. 117 with note); and both the dance and the allusion to the nymphs suggest satyric drama rather than tragedy. The lines may belong to the chorus of satyrs; but he reference to Prometheus in the third person does not preclude their belonging to Prometheus himself.
Terzaghi’s case for attributing the fragment to the Pyrphoros rests on the word chitôna in l. 3. Satyrs, he says, do not wear chitônes and therefore the text cannot belong to a satyr-play. But even if we could be sure that this word referred to the dress of the Chorus, which we cannot, vases not infrequently show satyrs dressed like ordinary people. Of course we do not know to which play the fragment belongs; but there is no positive evidence in favour of Terzaghi’s view.
. . . and . . . gracious kindness sets me dancing. [Throw down] your bright cloak by the unwearying light of the fire. Often shall one of the Naiads, when she has heard me tell this tale, pursue me by the blaze within the hearth.The nymphs, I know full well, shall join their dances in honour of Prometheus’ gift!Sweet, I think, will be the song they sing in honour of the giver, telling how Prometheus is the bringer of sustenance and the eager giver of gifts to men.The nymphs, I know full well, shall join their dances in honour of Prometheus’ gift!(Fragments of six more lines, including “. . . shine . . . shepherd’s (shepherds?),” “night-wandering dance . . . crowned with . . . leaves,” “deep thicket.”)

## SEMELÊ Ê HYDROPHOROI

FRAGMENT 279
LOBEL, P. Oxy., vol 18, no. 2164, with Plate I.
Ed. pr. Assigned this fragment to the Xantriae, because ll. 16-17 coincide with a quotation assigned by one of its quoters to that play. This quotation is fr. 84, the following authors preserve: (1) Plato, Rep. 381D; (2) Diogenes, Epist. 34, 2; (3) Scholiaston Aristophanes, Frogs 1344. These authorities in Lobel’s words, “diverge strangely from each other and from the papyrus.”
Only the scholion on Aristophanes names the Xantriae. Latte points out that we have good reason to think this play contained an account of the tearing to pieces on Mt. Cithaeron of Semele’s nephew, Pentheus; the testimony of a scholion on Eum. 26, is borne out by fr. 85, whose words were spoken by Lyssa, the goddess of madness (see Dodds on Eur., Bacchae 977). It is hard to see how a play that contained this can also have contained a scene in which Hera appeared disguised as a begging priestess. But such a scene would fit well into another play which was part of the same trilogy, the Semele. Semele’s ruin, according to the usual story, was brought about by Hera, who disguised as an old woman induced her to persuade Zeus to appear before her armed with his thunder. The versions of this legend known to us make Hera disguise herself as an old nurse. But these are all of much later date. In Aeschylus she may well have disguised herself as a priestess; and such a priestess may well have claimed to have arrived in Thebes from Argos, the centre of Hera’s worship. (Nilsson’s assumption that the invocation of the Argive nymphs proves that the scene of the play was Argos seems to me unsafe.) Latte points out that Asclepiades was a careless writer, and gives several examples of a quotation being mistakenly assigned to a play belonging to the same trilogy as that to which it really belongs. He rightly concludes that the balance of probability is in favour of the Semele, and not the Xantriae, being the play to which this fragment belongs.
Ll. 1-11 seem to consist of choriambic dimeters, 12-15 of marching anapaests, 16-30 or lyric hexameters. The general sense of 1-15 cannot be guessed at with any certainty; but it seems reasonable to guess that the Chorus is describing the favours conferred by Zeus on Semele and praying that her good fortune may continue.
At 16-17, the reading of the papyrus seems to confirm the opinion of the commentator on Aristophanes that oressigonoi was not in the text, as Asclepiades supposed it was. Diogenes’ krênais may be an explanatory gloss; and Latte’s suggestion (printed below) is likely to be right. The nymphs of the Argive rivers were four of the daughters of Danaus, Hippe, Automate, Amymone and Physadeia. Danaus was descended from Inachus; and this, together with the fact that Inachus was the principal river of Argos, makes it natural for the nymphs to be called “daughters of Inachus.” The nymphs were patronesses of marriage and childbirth (se Latte, p. 54). This is why brides and women who had just given birth performed a ceremonial ablution in the water of the particular spring consecrated by their city to this purpose. At Athens this was Enneakrounos (Thuc., 2, 15), at Thebes Ismenus (Eur. Phoen. 347), at Argos Atuomate (see Callim., fr. 65 Pfeiffer). ²² ²³

## UNKNOWN PLAY (I)

FRAGMENT 280
LOBEL, P. Oxy., vol. 20, no. 2251, with Plate III.
A Chorus composed of female persons is lamenting for a hospitable person (or for such a person’s house), one who (or which) has been visited by some grievous and, in their opinion undeserved, fate. Miss Cunningham thinks the fragment belongs to the Aigyptioi, the second play of the trilogy about the Danaids; she recalls the conjecture (see Hermann, Opusc., ii, 323 f.) that the Argive king Pelasgus was killed in battle while protecting the Danaids against the sons of Aegyptus. But for all we know many hospitable persons may have suffered destruction in lost plays of Aeschylus; and there are positive objections to Miss Cunningham’s view. One is that the name of the play Aigyptioi indicates that the sons of Aegyptus formed the Chorus; this compels Miss Cunningham to suggest that the Danaids may have formed an additional Chorus. There is an extra Chorus of handmaidens in the Supplices, and it is not impossible that there may have been an extra Chorus in the Aigyptioi. But the necessity of supposing that here is does not recommend the theory which involves it. Further, the letters katask[ in l. 3 are most easily explained by Snell’s supplement, printed below; Miss Cunningham in the interests of her theory is driven to conjecture that kataskaphenta was written by mistake for katasphagenta. The verdict must be that the evidence is wholly insufficient to assign this piece to the Aigyptioi or to any other play.
L. 8: “the metaphor in anaulon bregma is not appreciably odder than in kai psall’ etheiran (Persae 1062)”: Lobel. One may speak of “plucking” the string of a musical instrument; and to speak of “plucking” one’s hair is not unnatural extension of this usage. But is it easy to speak of the front of one’s head as being “without the pipe”? Since the pipe was associated with joyful occasions, “without the pipe” might be used as equivalent to “joyless”. (But Stinton suggests anaudon, which may be right).
For look now, Zeus, lord of the law of host and guest, upon the destruction of the hospitable house! What kindness do the gods show to righteous men? Therefore I tear my hair with unsparing hand and beat my crown with joyless sound, lamenting with wailing your fortune. . . .

## UNKNOWN PLAY (II a)

FRAGMENT 281
LOBEL, P. Oxy., vol. 20, no. 2256, fr. 9, with Plate V.
This piece is written in the same hand as No. 282. In itself, this need mean no more than that both are by the same author (see Lobel in P. Oxy., vol. 20, p. 29); but the content indicates that they may well come form the same scene of the same play. If so, it seems rather likelier than not that this piece came before the other; but one cannot be sure of this. The text presents several difficult problems of interpretation.
. . . girdling (?) . . . not to sow evil . . . (Then Peace is . . for mortals. And I praise this goddess; for she honours a city that reposes in a life of quiet, and augments the admired beauty of its houses, so that they surpass in prosperity the neighbours who are their rivals), nor yet to engender it. And they earnestly desire land for ploughing, abandoning the martial trumpet, nor do . . garrisons . . .
1. Translation very dubious.

## UNKNOWN PLAY (II b)

FRAGMENT 282
LOBEL, P. Oxy., vol. 20, no 2256, fr. 91, with Plate VI.
This fragment is shown to be Aeschylean by the coincidence of l. 29 with fr. 377 Nauck; the occurrence in l.9 of the word hotiê (found at Eur., Cycl. 643, but nowhere in tragedy) points to its coming from a satyr-play. Clearly one of the speakers is the goddess Dike, Justice, who is explaining how she came by her prerogatives and what they are. It is likely, though not certain, that she is conversing with the Chorus. Dike is the paredros of Zeus as early as Hesiod (Op. 259); but in Hesiod it is not she herself, but thirty thousand daimones who are appointed by Zeus to keep a watch on men. On the notion of the “book of Zeus,” in which men’s crimes are recorded, see Solmsen, Class. Quart., 58, 1944, 27. It looks as if Euripides had this play in mind when, in a famous passage from one of his two plays about Melanippe (fr. 506 Nauck) he ridiculed this belief.
Ll. 30 ff. raise awkward problems. Is the persecutor of travellers, who is cited as a classic instance of injustice punished, Ares himself, or another? The only person connected with Ares who is known to have behaved in this fashion is Cycnus, not the king of Tenedos, but the Cycnus of the Hesiodic Shield of Heracles who persecuted visitors to Delphi and was slain by Heracles. Aeschylus certainly wrote a play in which a Cycnus was a character (see Ar., Frogs 963), though this may have been the other Cycnus. Ares is surely the subject of ll. 31 f.: and perhaps Ares’ support of Cycnus is the subject lower down.
Another explanation is offered by Robertson, who thinks the speaker is leading up to an account of the trial of Ares before the court of Areopagus for the murder of Poseidon’s son Halirrhothius; and he explains the behaviour attributed to Ares by supposing that he may have been represented as having been a difficult child at this time (cf. the Hermes of the Homeric Hymn and the Ichneutae of Sophocles). Yet in the usual version of this story, Ares was not an aggressor, but was defending the virtue of his daughter Alcippe (see Frazer, Apollodorus, ii. p. 81).
We cannot be sure that this narration relates to the main theme of the play, and there seems to be nothing to indicate the name of the play this fragment comes from. Eduard Fraenkel has inferred from the apparent importance of Dike in the plot that it is the Aetnaeae (or Aetnae), which Aeschylus wrote to celebrate Hieron’s foundation of the city of Aetna, oiônizomenos bion agathon tois sunoikizousi tên polin (Vita Aeschyli, p. 371, Murry, i. 8; see p. 381). A play that celebrates Dike might be thought appropriate to the foundation of the city which Pindar hopes will conduce sumphônon es hasuchian (Pyth. 1. 71); and he presence among these fragments of a hypothesis of the Aetna-play shows that it would not be surprising if they contained also a portion of its text. But these considerations fall a very long way short of being concrete evidence.
In. J.H.S., l.c., I have tried to show how this fragment stands in relation to Aeschylus’ theology.
(Fragments of four lines, the two first beginning makarôn and autê (hautê?) theôn.)
DIKE And he has his seat upon his father’s very throne, having overcome Kronos by means of Justice; for Zeus can now boast, since his father began the quarrel, that he paid him back with Justice on his side. That is why Zeus ahs done me great honour, because after being attacked he paid him back, not unjustly. I sit in glory by the throne of Zeus, and he of his own will sends me to those he favours; I mean Zeus, who has sent me to this land with kind intent. And you shall see for yourselves whether my words are empty.
CHORUS How then shall we rightly address you?
DIKE By the name of Dike, her who is greatly revered in heaven.
CHORUS And of what privilege are you the mistress?
DIKE As for the just, I reward their life of justice. ²⁴
DIKE But in the reckless I implant a chastened mind.
CHORUS By Persuasion’s spells, or in virtue of your might?
DIKE I write their offences on the tablet of Zeus.
CHORUS And at what season do you unroll the list of crimes?
DIKE When the proper time brings the fulfilment of what is theirs by right.
CHORUS Eagerly, I think, should the host welcome you.
DIKE Much would they gain, should they receive me kindly.(Two lines unintelligible).. . . no city of people or private man, since such is the god-sent fortune she enjoys. And I will tell you a proof which gives you this clearly. Hera has reared a violent son whom she has borne to Zeus, a god irascible, hard to govern, an one whose mind knew no respect for others. He shot wayfarers with deadly arrows, and ruthless hacked . . . with hooked spears . . . he rejoiced and laughed . . . evil . . . scent of blood. . . .(Two lines unintelligible) . . . is therefore justly called . . . just.
1. Perhaps “the people.”2. Clearly this passage contained one of those etymologisings of proper names which are not rare in Aeschylus. Lobel suggests that he name “Ares” may have been derived from arê, “bane,” “ruin.”

## UNKNOWN PLAY (III)

FRAGMENT 283
LOBEL, P. Oxy., vol. 20, no. 2253, with Plate III.
This looks very like the beginning of a prologue of a play; it recalls Eum. 1 ff. Clearly it comes from a play “about the matter of Troy.” The word sunallagê (l. 7) can mean “relations”, “dealings”, “visitation” or it can mean “reconciliation”; in this context, it is likeliest to have the latter meaning. At what stage of the Trojan war can a Greek have prayed for “friendly reconciliation”? If reconciliation with the Trojans is meant, we think of the early stages, of the time before and just after the arrival of the Greeks at Troy: Stark ahs suggested that the play may be the Iphigeneia, but without adducing any substantial evidence. P. Oxy. 2254 seems to come from a play that dealt with the fight at Tenedos which preceded the siege, and it is possible that both come from the Iphigeneia or from some play unknown to us which described an early stage in the history of the war: e.g., Aeschylus may have written a Cycnus, and the Cycnus in question may have been the king of Tenedos killed by Achilles.
But the “reconciliation” may easily have been a reconciliation between the Greek chiefs themselves. A famous Aeschylean trilogy (Myrmidones, Nereides, Phryges or Hektoros Lytra) is known to have dealt with the most notorious of their quarrels. The speaker seems to be praying for a friendly reconciliation “for the chieftains of Greece”. This might mean “a reconciliation with the Trojans”; but it more probably means “a reconciliation with each other.” It is therefore likelier than not to come from the Achillean trilogy; and the likelihood is strengthened by the fact that very minute scraps, proved by a coincidence with a quotation (fr. 59) to come from the Myrmidones and probably by the same copyist as the Aeschylean fragments in vol. 20, have already been published (vol. xviii, 2163; Snell, l.c., has shown that another small fragment in vol. 20 – 2256, fr. 55 – probably coincides with a quotation, fr. 65 in this book). Further, the formal stateliness and the impression which it gives of introducing the audience to a new situation makes somewhat in favour of it belonging to the first play of the trilogy; though here the similarity with the opening of Eum. should put us on our guard. And who is the speaker likely to be? Maas has thought of Calchas; but Agamemnon has at least as good a claim. The range of possibilities is very wide; and the supplements are more than usually uncertain.
To Zeus’ majesty I first do reverence, and with supplication I beseech him that this day’s light may see us exchange our labours for prosperous fortune; and for the chieftains of the land of Greece, who with Menelaus demand vengeance of Paris, son of Priam, for the violent rape of Helen, I pray for a friendly reconciliation of their grievous quarrel.

## UKNOWN PLAY (IV)

FRAGMENT 284
LOBEL, P. Oxy., vol. 20, no. 2256, fr. 71, with Plate VIII.
“The subject of this fragment of a chorus is evidently the death of Ajax consequent on the award of the arms of Achilles”: Lobel. This was the subject of Aeschylus’ Ajax-trilogy; and Lobel suggests that this may come from the Hoplôn Krisis, Mette preferring the Salaminiai. But the lines contain a summary account of the end of Ajax, not at all what we should expect to find in a play of which this formed the main subject, but very much what might be given if the story of Ajax is being cited as a parallel to a similar episode that ahs occurred or seems likely to occur in some different play. This impression is strengthened by the occurrence of hôster kai at the beginning of l. 16. As Snell (l.c., 440) has noticed, this can hardly introduce a theme for comparison; for a mention of Ajax follows, and Ajax has been the subject of the preceding stanza. The obvious inference is that after briefly narrating the death of Ajax the Chorus said: “Just as the noble son of Telamon perished by his own hand . . . so will (someone else) perish.”
In what lost play of Aeschylus might this have happened? Several of them may have contained characters who threatened suicide (the Oedipus, for example, comes to mind); but there are slight indications in favour of the Philoctetes. Philoctetes threatens suicide in Sophocles’ play; his suicide and that of Ajax would have had this in common, that in both cases Odysseus was responsible; and among the Aeschylean fragments in P. Oxy., vol. 20, is a fragmentary hypothesis to the Philoctetes (no. 2256, fr. 5). But these indications do not amount to anything like proof.
I will dissolve in tears (?) . . . who . . . these . . . sufferings . . . receive. . . . He, the city-guarding chieftain of the seagirt land, was brought to ruin by the shepherds of the people, the chieftains and commanders of the host, after he had set his heart upon the arms. And in the judgment the generals connived with Odysseus, with no impartial mind . . guide . . . his mind cloaked in darkness . . contrivance of the fatal sword.Even as the noble son of Telamon perished by his own hand.

## HÊRAKLEIDAI

FRAGMENT 285
LEFEBVRE, Bulletin de la société royale d’archéologie d’Alexandrie, no. 14, 191, 192, with Plate IX, 3.
Körte assigned this fragment to Aeschylus on the score of his supplement amphimêt[ores in l. 4. This adjective occurs in extant literature only at Eur., Andr. 466; but Hesychius says that Aeschylus used it in his Heracleidae (fr. 76 Nauck). Page (l.c.) has pointed out that this supplement is far from certain, since in l. 4 amphi mêt[era is an obvious possibility. And even if it were certain, it would not prove that this fragment came from Aeschylus’ Heracleidae; since we have no reason to assume that the word occurred only in that play. We know that it occurred also in the Andromache; and it may easily have occurred elsewhere also. We must therefore recognise at the outset that it is very doubtful whether this fragment is from the Heracleidae or is by Aeschylus at all.
But several scholars have maintained that the action which the fragment describes can be shown to be one likely to have been described in the Heracleidae. If this is true, the possibility that this fragment belongs to that play becomes greater; and this claim must therefore be investigated.
Körte, Fritsch and Mette all assume that the Heracleidae of Aeschylus, like the play of the same name by Euripides, dealt with the persecution of the Heraclids, after their father’s death, by Eurystheus. They take amphimêtores to mean “children by different mothers”, as it does in the Andromache and as Hesychius says it meant in Aeschylus; this description, they say, is true of the children of Heracles. They think this passage came from part of the play in which Eurystheus or one of his adherents (perhaps the herald Copreus) is threatening the Heraclids with burning, and supplement accordingly.
Lycus threatens to burn the children of Heracles by Megara in the Heracles of Euripides; but we are nowhere told that Eurystheus did the same. Heracles certainly had children by many different mothers (though it is doubtful whether the description amphimêtores applies to the children who survived to be persecuted by Eurystheus; according to the usual legend, all these were his children by Deianeira). In l. 3, Körte and his followers read th[lam]ouchoi[s domois, but [lam] is too long for the gap; and in l. 6 they presumably take pharmakou to refer to fire, which it can scarcely do.
This attempt to show that the fragment fits the plot of the Heracleidae scarcely stands up to examination. Stebrny has made another on quite different lines. He calls attention to the bold attempt of Zielinsky (Eos 25, 57; cf. Tragodumenon libri tres, 3, 90) to show that Aeschylus’ Heracleidae dealt with the same subject as Sophocles’ Trachiniae, the death of Heracles. Zielinski’s arguments fall a long way short of proving his case; but they certainly show that it is just as likely that the play was about this as that it was about the same subject as Euripides’ play of the same name. Accepting his thesis, Srebrny offers a restoration of this fragment based upon it. In itself, this restoration is less open to objection that are those of Körte and his followers. In l. 3 the word tha[mn]ouchoi[s (for which cf. the sense of druocha at Eur., Electra 1163), though it occurs nowhere else, seems to be the only conceivable word that will fit the space; and in l. 6 pharmakou can refer to the poison in the blood of Nessus. Leaving aside any considerations based on the conjecture amphimêt[ores, Srebrny’s hypothesis seems to explain the fragment more satisfactorily than any other assumption I have been able to think of, and after considerable hesitation I have decided to print the text with supplements along the lines he indicates. But the considerations I have set out above oblige us to recognise that any such hypothesis is anything but certain.
Suppose Srebrny is right, the fragment seems to describe the circumstances of Heracles’ death in too summary a manner for it to be the principal account given in the play of an important episode in the action; contrast the elaborate instructions which Heracles gives to Hyllus in the Trachiniae. The tense of ên in l.2 is surprising. Can the whole narration have been in the past tense? If so, the fragment teaches us nothing about the plot of Aeschylus’ Heracleidae, even if we suppose Srebrny’s whole argument to be correct; for even a play that dealt with the same subject as Euripides’ Heracleidae, or with a different subject altogether, might have included a description of the death of Heracles in the past tense.
The possibility that this is so is somewhat strengthened if one considers the problem of the letter missing in l. 4 between oide and the A of amphimêtores or amphi. Only a vertical stroke is preserved; G, M, N are possible. No supplement seems suitable except ge or a pronoun; and ge neither suits the sense nor fits the psace. What would fit the space would be this writer’s broad M.
For in those parts was visible a place designed by Nature for a pyre, in the lofty, bush-covered country of Oeta. To this did [?my] children by different mothers raise [?me] aloft, encompassed with trees for fuel, flesh swollen and skin peeling beneath the strong poison.

## MYRMIDONES

FRAGMENT 286
VITELLI-NORSA, Mélanges Bidez, Annuaire de l’institut de philogogie et d’histoire orientales, ii, 1934, 968, with Plate.
Page rightly points out that earlier writers were over-confident in their assignation of this fragment to Aeschylus’ Myrmidones. The only expression in the fragment which they were able to claim was peculiarly Aeschylean was diai in l. 8; and even this piece of evidence has no value, as these forms of the disyllabic preopositions occur in Sophocles and in para-tragedic passages of comedy (see Page, l.c.). Further, the style of the fragment is simpler and plainer than that of Aeschylus commonly is; though I do not think this argument can be pressed. Page also contends that the Achilles of this piece is “psychologically more advanced, more sophisticated and argumentative, more interested in himself and his own motives and actions, than we expect in Aeschylus”. I cannot share this opinion; to me this Achilles seems very like Homer’s and therefore very like the Achilles we might expect from Aeschylus.
It is true that the content of the scene is what we might expect to have occurred somewhere in Aeschylus’ Achilles trilogy, and that there is nothing in it that we can positively state to be unaeschylean: it is also true that we do not know Sophocles or Euripides to have written on this theme. But, as Page points out, Achilles was the hero of plays by Astydamas, Carcinus and others; and there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that this must be Aeschylean. The writing of the exiguous fragments printed in P. Oxy. 2163, and shown by coincidence with a quotation (fr. 59) to be from the Myrmidones is like that of P.S.I. 1208-10 (Lobel, P. Oxy., vol. 19, p. 23), but not like that of this piece. Neither does the writing of P. Oxy. 2256, fr. 55 (plausibly assigned to the Myrmidones by Snell, Gnomon 25, 1953, 437) nor that of fr. 283 resemble the writing of this fragment.
The situation in which the speech is delivered must be quite clear to anyone who knows the Iliad; the Greeks are suffering grievous losses through Achilles’ refusal to fight, and Achilles is being unsuccessfully implored to return to the battle.
ACHILLES. . . they will stone me! The torturing of Peleus’ son with stones will prove no blessing – never think it! – to the Greeks in the land of Troy. No, then the Trojans could sit at their ease and win the victory without a fight; and you would more easily meet . . the healer of mortal sorrows. Shall fear of the Achaeans force me to lay my hand upon my spear, a hand now quivering with anger through the doing of a cowardly leader? Why, if I alone by my absence from the battle caused this great rout, as my comrades say, am I not all in all to the Achaean host? Respect forbids me not to utter such words; for who could say such chieftains, such commanders of the army, were nobler than I? . . . one man has stricken you . . . shaken and scattered you . . . armour on youthful shoulders . . .(Fragments of nineteen more lines.)

## HYPOTHESIS I

FRAGMENT 287
LOBEL, P. Oxy., vol. 20, no. 2257, fr. 1, with Plate IX.
This seems likely to come from a hypothesis of the play mentioned in Vita Aeschyli, ch. 9, p. 371, Murray: elthôn toinun es Sikelian, Hierônos tote tên Aitnên ktizontos, epedeixato tas Ainas oiôizomenos bion agathon tois sunoikizousi tên polin. Ll. 6-7 seem to refer to the Eumenides; the Achilleôs erastai, mentioned in l. 8, was a satyr-play of Sophocles (see Pearson, Fragments of Sophocles, I, 103 f.). The Eumenides contains a change of scene from Delphi to Athens, and it is therefore likely that these two plays are cited as containing changes of scene, and so helping to render less surprising the numerous changes of scene that are attributed to the play in question. Lobel suggests that the letters trôi in l. 7 may indicate a reference to another Sophoclean play, the Troilus (see Pearson, op. cit., II, 253 f.). “I could reconcile the remaining ink in l. 7,” he writes, “with ]dum . . . trôi . kephal.” The Troilus may have been cited as nother instance of a change of scene; though Snell thinks this line may have described the Achilleôs erastai as containing a change of scene from some unknown place (]dum) to Troy and again to another unknown place ](.) . . phal(). On the suggestion that frs. 281-2 may belong to this play, see the Summary prefixed to fr. 282.
. . . is transferred from Delphi to Athens . . . the Lovers of Achilles. For during the first act the scene is Aetna, in the second Xuthia, in the third Aetna again; then it shifts from here to Leontini and the scene is Leon . . ., and after that it is Syracuse and the rest is concluded at . . ., which is a place . . .
1. This is the name of hê peri Leontinous chôra, according to Diodorus 5. 8.2. Pfeiffer suggests that in l. 13 we might read [en tôi Temeni]têi (cf. Thuc., vi 75. 1).

## Notes

[9] [?] . . . seeing the portraits, wrought by super-human skill. And however you may act, you won’t be guilty of irreverence.
[10] [CHORUS] I’m very grateful to you for this: you’re most obliging. Listen, all of you, and . . . in silence. Look and see whether this image could [possibly] be more [like] me, this likeness by the Skilful One; it can do everything but talk! Look at these! You see? Yes, come! Come! I bring this offering to the god to ornament his house, my lovely votive picture. It would give my mother a bad time! If she could see it, she’d certainly run shrieking off, thinking it was the son she brought up: so like me is this fellow.
[11] [DIONYSUS] I knew I’d find you, my good fellows! I won’t apply to you the words, “I couldn’t see that you were on your way.” The road itself tells me this, and [the . . . . , seeing these companions of yours], warned me of this and set me on the right track . . . cum decurtatas, tanquam murium caudas, mentulas vobis video. You’ve practised hard for the Isthmia; you haven’t been slack but have trained properly. Well, if you’d been loyal to the old saying, you might have seen to your dancing instead. But you’re playing the Isthmian competitor; you’ve learned new ways, and are keeping your arm-muscles in trim and wasting my money . . . So aren’t you breaking your oath when you flout me? a curse on you . . .
[12] [CHORUS] No, I will never leave the temple! Why do you keep threatening me so? I enter my new home, the Isthmian house of Poseidon. But you must direct these gifts to others.
[13] [?] Since you like to learn of novelties like these, I’m bring these new toys, freshly made, straight from adze and anvil. Here’s the first plaything for you.
[14] [CHORUS] No, not for me! Give it to one of my friends!
[15] [?] Don’t refuse, my dear fellow! Why, think of the evil omen!
[16] [CHORUS] How can one enjoy this thing? and how shall I use it?
[17] [?] It is suited toe the new craft which you’ve taken up.
[18] [CHORUS] But what are you willing to do in return, if I let you sail?
[19] [?] To be your comrade at the Isthmian games, a most agreeable pursuit.
[20] [CHORUS] . . . bring . . . shall go on board . . . you shall go on foot . . . ankles.
[21] Hesychius explains the word epôzein as follows: epikathêsthai tois ôois. Aischylos Niobê metaphorikôs. ephêmenê taphon teknois epôze tois tethnêksin. From this scholars have inferred that the epoimôzousa of the papyrus in l. 7 is corrupt. Those who think Niobe is not the speaker mostly suppose that the corruption arose from epôze⟨I zôsa⟩ (Latte), and in l. 8 supply a participle; those who think she is in l. 7 read epôazousa and l. 8 supply an aorist indicative.
[22] [?]. . . anointed with unguents . . . not more than Hera . . . more arrogant . . . mighty . . . from afar. May there abide . . . life . . . the gods . . . among friendly . . . But may all the envious be absent, and all unseemly rumour. We pray that Semele’s good fortune may ever steer a straight course. For . . . this other . . . Semele . . . Cadmus . . . the all-powerful Zeus . . . marriage.
[23] [HERA]Nymphs that speak the truth, honoured goddesses are they for whom I collect offerings, the life-giving children of Inachus the river of Argos. They are present at all the actions of men, at feasts and banquets and the sweet songs of marriage, and they initiate maidens lately wedded and new to love. . . . kindly . . . eyes . . . of the eye . . . For unsullied modesty . . . is by far the best or adorners for a bride. And fruitful in children are the families of those to whom the nymphs shall come in kindness, with sweet disposition, . . . coming . . . both . . . harsh and hateful . . . when they come near. Many . . . husband . . . girdles . . .
[24] [CHORUS?] . . . this ordinance among mortals.