Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Volume II Commentary on 1–1055 [PDF]

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AESCHYLUS

AGAMEMNON IDITllD WITH A COMMENTAlk Y BY

EDUARD FRAENKEL

VOLUME II COMMENTAlkY ON 1-1oss

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

Oxjqra University Press, Amen House, ~. E.C.4 Cl..UCO\Y NEW YOIUt '?OJI.ONTO IJl&LllOlla.'f& W&LUlfO"rOH •OM•AY CALCUTTA MIADRAI JCAllAClll l.AKO:U: DACCA CAP& TOWN IAUbllll.Y l•ADAH HAlll.O•l Ac:caA XVAl.A LU>CPllll.

HOMO XOHO

Pill.ST POBLISKCD 19$0 UPlUMT:a> LITHOOll.APHICALLY IM OllllAT •11.ITAIH •Y D. ll, lllLL>CAH .SC SOHS LTD, J'll.OIJI COll.UCT&D lltS&TS OJ' 'Ill& P'lll.ST ltDITIOH

1962

CONTENTS VOLUME II A SELECT LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS COMMENTARY ON I-1055

vi I

A SELECT LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS (Most of th1 abbreuiali011s iiutl in lh• commn1lary 11eed tso ujJlanalion) Ahrens.

H. L. Ahrens, 'Studicn zum Agamemnon des Aeschylus', Philolocus,

Supplm1entband i, 186o, 213 ff., 477 ff., 535 ff. Arch. jahrb. At/1. Mill.

Jahrbuch des Dcutschcn Archlologischen Instituts. :Mitteilungen des Deutschen ArchiologiSchen Instituts: Athcnische Abteilung. Sitzungsberichte dcr Preussischcn Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berl. Sitqsb. phil.·bist. Klasse. Buck and Petersen, A Reverse Index. C. D. Buck and W. Petersen, A R~se Imlex of Greek Notms and Adjediues. Chicago 1944. Collitz-Bechtcl. Sammlung der grieehiselrm DialeAt·lnschriftm, hemusgcgcbcn von H. Collitz und F. Bechtel. G6ttingen 1884-1915. C.Q. Classical Quarterly. C.R. Classical Review. D. nddcd to the number of o. lyric fragment refers to Anthologia Lyriea Graeca ed. E. Diehl, vol. i, 2nd ed., vol. ii, 1st ed. Daremberg-Saglio. Ch. Darcmberg et Edm. Saglio, Dicti4nnaire des arrtiq11ills grecq11es d romaines. Paris 1877-1919. Dllubc. B. Daubc, Z11 den Rechtsproblemerr irr AischyloJ' Agamemnon. ZQrich 1938. Dittenbcrger Syll. Sylloge J1isaipti1mm11 Graeearmn, ed. Wilh. Dittenbcrger; ed. tertia. Lipsiae 1915-19. Ferrari, L4 parodos. W. Ferrari, 'IA parodos dell' "Agamcnnone'", A11nali dtlla

R. Sc11olaNtmnak S11periore di Pisa, l.ellere,Sloria e Filosojia, Serie I I, Vol. vii, Fasc. IV, 1938, pp. 355 IT. Ed. Fr., Kol011 u. Satz:, ii. Eduard Fracnkel, 'Kolon und Satz, Bcobachtungcn zur Glicderung des antiken Satzcs, II', Nachrichln1 wn der Guellschaft tier Wisscnsch. sii G6llinge111 phil.·hist. Klasse :r9331 Fachgruppe I, Nr. 19. Ernst Fracnkel, Denomitzatitla. Ernst Fracnkel, Griedriselre Det11J1ninaliM in ihrer guchichtlichen Entroidl1mg 11nd Verbreit1mg. GOttingcn 1906. Ernst Fraenkel, Nomi11a agenlis. Ernst Fracnkel, Guehielrte t1er griecl1. Nomirza agmtis a1if --rifp, --T~p, ~ (..,...). Sttnssburg 1910 and 1912. FGrHist Die Fragmente da Griechischet1 Historiker, von F. Jacoby. BcrlinLeidcn 1923-. Furtwilnglcr-Reichhold. A. Furtwlnglc\' und K. Reichhold, Griechische Vasmmalerei. MQnchen 1904-32· Goodwin. W. W. Goodwin, Syntax of IJre Moods a11d Terisu of /he Gruk Verb; rewritten and enlarged. Boston 189o. G611. gel. Anz. Gattingischc gclehrtc Anzeigcn unter Aufsicht der Gcscllschnft dcr Wissenscha£ten. Idg. Forselr. Indogcnnanische Forschungen. JG Inscriptioncs Graccac. Bcrolini. }.Ph. Journal of Philology. K. added to the number of a comic fmgment refers to Comicon1111 Altieorum Fragmn1la, ed. T. Kock. Kuhns Zeitschr. Zeit.schrift !Qr vcrglcichende Sprachforschung e.uf dem Gcbiete dcr indogermanischen Sprachcn. Kllhner-Blass. AusfiJhrliclze Grammalik der griech. Sprache von R. KQhner. I. Elementar· und Fonnenlehre. 3. AuJI. von F. Blass. Hannover 189o and 1892.

vi

A SELECT LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS l(nhncr-Gerth. AiujUhrliehe Grammatik kl' grieeh. Spraehe von R. Kahncr. II. Sa.tzlebre. 3. Aufl. von B. Gerth. Hannover 1898 and 1904. C. F. Kumaniecki, 'De clocutionis Acschylcae naturo.', Arehiwum J~ n&vwv. Again, it is certain that tt(l0$ cannot mean 'which has lasted for many (or for several) years' (Ahrenshis full discussion of the word on pp. 219 ff. shows that his interpretntion is impossible-Karsten, Mazon), but only (since the sense 'retuining year by year' is out of the question) 'lasting one year'. As Wilhelm Schulze observes (Zur Gescnidde laJ. Eigennamen, 50 n. 3), 'the singular does not as a rule require a special expression ... the word atmus by itself means "one year''; therefore anniculus means "one year old"'. Cf. annt1us. The detail of the watch that lasts a year comes from the Ody~ (8 526 ;v.\a,,,,e 8' o y' els &~vr&11),~ as does the figure of the Watchman.> It only remains to explain f''iKos. Here too an impartial balancing of the alternatives leads to the conclusion that the obvious meaning is the right one: 'ab his laboribus, a vigilia sc., quae longitudine annua est' (Wellauer). Hermann rejected this interpretation with contempt, quite wrongly. The right view is found e.g. in Heinrich Voss ('Gebt, Gatter, fleh' ich, dieser MOhe Erledigung, der Hut, ein Jahr an Unge'), Conington, Franz Beckmann, Bema-kungen zu Prol. u. Parodos ~ eusch. Ag. (Braunsberg 1867), 13, B. Risberg, De nonn1dlis locis Ag. Aesch. (Diss. Upsala 1891), l ff., PlQss ('+povpO.$ betas- in apposition to n&11(.IJ11; and f''iKos ••• goes with be/as'). It is wholly unprofitable to compare the difficult passage S. Am. 857 f. l1/1twaas cUye&VOTU'TCU" lf'Ol JUplp.YOS na.,~s .,puro.\&a'Tov or.,o.,, which is cited with quite different interpretations by Hermann (cf. also his OJ>il#Ula, i. 169 f.) and Wilamowitz (Verskuml, 519) independently. The latter, both there and again in Hennes, lxi, 1926, 279, repeats the assertion already made in his Isyllos wn Epidauros (1886), p. 186, that the accusative, to put it bluntly, stands in pb.ce of a genitive: p.~Kow would be demanded by strict grammar, but is altered because there are so many other genitives. In reality, the combination betas- p.fjKos is on the lines of a very ancient and well-established usage, and only the particular meaning of beios and the function that 14fjKos derives from it give the expression any peculiar character. In ~ 312 we read (of Otus and Ephialtes) ~amj­ xccs ... cJpos, a'Tcip f''iK&r ye ymoOr,11 lwc&pyvu", and in Ar. Ach. 909 f"l.ltaTO (ac 554 f.) and KlplC'll'f a· h l'cy0poH ICG:roA/y"oor nA. (A 62).

3

II.Do 3

COMMENTARY

4ytca8cv: it is excusable that ancient grammarians should misinterpret a rare word (1. 1::zo8 b n) 1C1Jtl&r 110T~ cM 10lv~? We must grant that in Stanley's translation it looks simple enough: 'cognovi ..• principes claros, eminentes in coelo stellas, occasus et ortus ipsarum.' Very similar are the renderings of e.g. Headlam, Mazon ('dont je sais et les levers et les d~clins), and Pasquali, Stud. It. N.s. vii, x930, 227 ('quando spuntano e quando trarnontano'); Pasquali very neatly points out how Aeschylean is the juxtaposition of O.,a.v ;etvwu&v and civro~4s-, but like most of the other crities he devotes no attention to the O.,a.v. Several commentators have attempted to support the conventional view with a grammatical explanation, e.g. Schole.field : '1JpoV1'a.s K'T~.; so Franz Beckmann, Bemerk. z. Prowg . •. dts Ag. (Braunsberg 1867), x4, Plilss (with marks of parenthesis before and it{tor 6), and G. Thomson (to judge by his translation). This interpretation, which apart from anything else compels us to take 4VTo~4r .,., .,.a;., = 1ecii OT"cw 1lvaT~01, was branded as 'absurdum' by Karsten; it assumes that in •1>lte of its position &rciv +8lvJpoVTCl$ X''f«I IC'T~ •• which produces chaos in the syntax, nl a. kind unheard of in Greek at any rate of this period (for the principle, .r.o on n27). Others, perhaps involuntarily, have slightly distorted the meanJng of the verb in order to provide a connexion for OT"civ f,8lvt1X1w. Thus Ahrens translates (p. 227): 'und die den Sterblichen Sommer und Winter hrlngenden glllnzenden FUrsten habe ich kennen gclemt, wenn sie im Aether immgen und wenn sie in Unsichtbarkeit [he a:Iters d.a-rif'Cl$ to ®rrol 81 1Chwindcn und ihren Aufgang.' This is extremely ambiguous; looking to th~ 1111d of the translation, one is inclined to understand 'I have learnt to know tho time of their disappearance', which as we have seen would do violence lo tho Greek; from the beginning one would•suppose it to mean 'I have Jr.nmt to Jmow them at the time when they disappear'. This, however, would 1lr5troy the parallelism with &V'r~4r .,., .,.6),,, What the Watchman says is this: One whole long year have I been lying here night after night, and now I know all the stars. Taken by itself it would make good sense to say: I u~cognize the stars as they rise, i.e. when such-and-such a star appears above tho horizon, I say to myself 'There is Sirius' and so on. But (x) this idea suits 1111ly the rising, and not tl1e setting, (2) 1echowa. does not mean this, 1 (3) this Interpretation like the other abandons the patallelism. with .o.r, the preceding line is unknown. Of other proper names colloco.tcd in the same way I will quoto from one Sophoclean play the follo\Ying instnnces: Aj. 462 f., 574 f., 859 f. To the Aeschylean instances we may confidently add At. 88o f. Md Clrtl. 677 ff., where we find not a mere nartic but.LT~~ d ~c.11ea1s--the arrangement, apart from this, corresponding exactly to that of the other l>am.ges. The reason, then, why Aeschylus and Sophocles admitted •JIN.~, •H.\Jc :it the bcgmning of trimeters lies probably in the unwillingness of the poets to part with a favourite syntactical pattern. It would apparently not have satisfied them to put the proper name in a different place, although by doing so they could have a.voided an unusual Conn of the first foot. , This is adopted by G. Thomson. He is unwilling to credit an interpolator even with d~s (or dra.TOMr, although it is the quite normal poetic Corm. • For the meaning of this term sec c.i. Monro, Homme Grammar, 2nd ed., p. :ns

'"°"

"'""°"'•

8

&rr,,f

COMMENTARY

line8

In any case it would be rash to inferfrom the fact tfiat anaphoric .,Doyyov, lvavrlov rij' Wxfi'· oil y&p1'4'CO. 11a.\im&vo&S' avrwpo11pa1 a remedy".' Against this Kennedy rightly says (at the end of his translation) : 'this cannot be proved from any passage of any author..•.."Shredding in" is a mere guess invented to account for the word in this place.' His own unlucky conjecture 0, won the approval of Paley and is printed by A. Y. Campbell in his text. Kennedy's survey of the meanings of mll'v"' (like that in L-S) omits the evidence which for our passage is decisive; he might have found it in Dindorf's Thesaurus (right at the beginning of the article lvrlµvw) or in Ahrens's careful discussion (p. 228) of Ag. 17. Jv.rl,,.wiv with the root of a plant as its object means 'tapping it' to get the sap out, cf. Theophr. Gaus. planl. 6. 11. 14 11apaa1e,\C1J8lv, E. Suppl. 1205 -r~'~ .f>&vov. Among these phrases 4KoS' lvrl,,..,cw, 'to produce a remedy by incision', falls perfectly into place. The phrase is bold enough, and when mo11 ciVTlf'O.\wov is added, the expression becomes even further removed from simple speech. A certain tendency to the 8'811pal'fJ(.i)8cs is noticeable elsewhere in this prologue (cf. 11, 12 f. wK:TlTt'M.yK:To" ••• ~lli amjv, 33) : in style it is as much the '"7.\a"Y611p&a""'o" of the majestic trilogy as the solitary utterance of a man of the common people. . 19. 8iawovou11evou: although the word seems not to occur elsewhere in poetry, it should not be tampered with, as it gives an excellent sense. ~' ow TO 11c8lov tf>Jcm 1eal {Jaa&Uwv 110,\,\a)v lv ,,a,\,,\@, }(P&>'"'' 8icnnr&Vfl'To, says Plato

"''l"V"'"

.mo

14

COMMENTARY

(Crilias n8 b) of land which in addition to its natural qualities had been 'o.dmirably husbanded' by a long process of the appropriate o&aJC0aµ71uis. The toilsome, unending, and successful activity that. goes to foster the wellbeing of land or household could not be more accurately indicated; it was this fostering care that in the house of th~. Atridae had given place .to heedlessness and neglect. · , · :.· . . ' 20 repeats verbatim th~ emphatic expression ·qf x, apd marks thereby the conclusion of this part of the speech. For this.-manner of enclosing as it were fn a frame see Wilamowitz, A.rist. 11. A.Ihm, ii. J3s, and in his commentary on tho"Choej>ho1oe p. 149; cf. also on n¢ below and on 16n. . · 21. &~..,a.ios occurs in Homer (only in the Doloneia and opce in the Odyssey) oxclusively in the formula WIC'Ta. 3,• &~WJ.l71v, and elsewhere too is always an apiClet of night or something dark. Here, on the other hand, it ~ boldly uecd of the beacon that appears in the darkne:sS. Cf. Schu~, 39,'. 168. Between 2x ancj\22 stands a scholion1 Sci 8ccumff14TOS"cJ.>Jyou, elm clvcucpa.'1flv, clJs 8caol.p.&oii .,.~.., m1p.J,, p. :xliv: 'Ocopo and its plural BcGrc ••• are imperatives'), x304 cla icoo;a. ,,.~..,. To the same class belong }lll.SSQges like E. Cyd .. 52 ihray• w emciy•·w Kindorf accentuate Q) against the ~ of the MSS, and the u.m.e b huo o! Lys. 177r and other passages. This arbitrary practice is perhaps partly responsible !11r tho (CLCt that the article ~ in L-S gives no idea how widespread is the usaee under 1ll":11sslon.

and

IS

COMMENTARY

line 22

life is the insertion of a formula of adjuration between '1J and the imperative: S. Aj. 37x w1rpOS' 8t:G"' w1.~t:, Oed. R. 646 w1rpOS' 8cwv .,,fu.r~uov, OlSlnoiJr, TdSc, 1037 w-rrp(>r 8c6lv ••• 1'pduov, Ar. Eccl. 970 ~ 8J f'O'• #).-ra:rov, '1J lKttcJcu (equivalent to a -rrp0s 81:6Jv), Civo&tov. 1 Instead of -rrp~ 8t:wv we find quite a long adjuration inserted in front of the imperative in E. Hypsipyle fr. 6o, col. 1. 25 ff. w-rrp&t etc ,..ovc£-r"'v lK~'S' 'Ap.1'ul.pccu ,,,{.,,,"' Kal frpOr yt:V1.lo11 rijs .,.• :.4-rr&~vos 'Tl')(V'l1t' 1 '"POs -rwv 0«»v. Whether in A. CJw. 942 bro>.o>.:JEa-r' w(rightly separated by Seidler) and in the similar passage E. T1'o. 335 fJo&.aa8' 'Yµlvcuov wthe wis to be taken with the preceding imperative or, as seems to me more likely, should be regarded as the exclamation it is hard to·say. The fact that wcan be used in e."'.aJ.L'IM'fip: this word does not occur in true Attic (Comic Poets, Orators, and inscriptions); cf. Ernst Fraenkel, Idg. Forsch. xxxii, 1913, I12. Tragedy probably took it over from the Odyssey. As the agent noun of >.&p.ncw it is a general word for anything that gives light. In the Odyssey it is probably a brazier or pan filled with dry wood and used as a 'lamp', as it is explained, after the ancient le.xicographers, by e.g. Ebeling, Lex. Honre.ricum, 969, and Daremberg-Saglio, i. 873; it can also denote the lamp in a house (A. CJw. 537), a watch-fire in a camp (S. Aj. 286), a lantern (as early as Empedocles

w

w,

"'°'"°

I Similarly Ar. Birds 661 ~ p.ln°' lo'!} JJr cunoioc• tr18oO, where Coulon and 0. Schroeder wrongly print a Wrongly rendered e.g. by Chrcsticn {'Florens Christianus'; his translation is reprinted in KOstefs edition): 'Dii vostram fidem', and by J. G. Droyscn: 'wirklich? 01'; similarly Wilamowitz: 'Er spricht zweifelnd, wie die Antwort lchrt.' Rather differently, but equally wide of the mark, Rogers: 'The words are Ill\ ejaculation of love and pleasure drawn from his excited passions by Lysistrata's gratifying intelligence.' On the other hand, Bothe, whom Rogers attacks, qu_ite rightly saw that what K.inesias is going to say when Lysistrata interrupts him is something like tZ wp~t Tel>" 8,cl).,. ll(J(D.,oo• o~. > We may compare E. Hi~/" 219, where TrpOs must not be connected with the fol· lowing affinnative sentence (Wilamowitz's translation is wrong), but takes up the request of 215 dr &pot.

w.

s,@.

"'""CT' , .

16

COMMENTARY

Uno 2~

Ir. 84. 3; this is later the commonest meaning, so much so that it was taken over by the Romans before the beginning of extant literature, perhaps through the medium of the Etruscans, cf. Walde-Hofmann, LaJ.. etymol. W6rlerln1cl1, 761, G. Devoto, Storia tklla litsgua di Roma, 128). Here no specinllzcd meaning is intended, as for instance Headlam's 'Thou blessed lantern.I' 'fhis does not suggest the picture of a beacon with its leaping flames. Less lno.ppropriate, but still not right, is the translation current since Stanley, fax, 'torch', 'Fackel'. That is of course the correct rendering of >.ap.Trt/.s (used by the Watchman in 8 and 28) ; but >.ap.'1TT'1fp is not a mere synonym n! >..aµTrcls, but rather an alternative to it with the double advantage of a more lofty sound, as a non-Attic word, and a meaning not limited to any Hpccific light-giver. The German word 'Leuchte' with its poetical colouring r.ombines both advantages in the same way. In what follows there are two ways of construing vvJCT&s. The paraphrase In the scholia (MF), which may go back to antiquity, runs: lK vvJCToS' (for this Idiomatic e.xpression cf. L-S s.v. wf i. 2) ~µlfXU' ~p.'t11 8'8oifS' (so rightly F, 8o0c7w 'M). 11111CT&s is here taken with Tr«/>aVuK"'" as meaning 'by night'. On the other hand, the o;x&>.ca. '71'aACUcl in Tr, ~ >.ap:~p rijS' VVICTOr xatp, Bill, Transace. aml Proud. Amer. Philol. Assoc. I.xi, 1930, 114 ff., has 1111clcrtaken the thankless task of showing that when Aeschylus speaks of Argos he means not Argos but Mycenae. Wtlamowitz, on E. Her. 15, takes 11111 view that 'Aeschylus in the Oresteia avoided the name Mykenai because Athens was then on friendly terms with Argos [cf. the pertinent utterances .a7J•l c 17

a

lino 2.f

COMMENTARY

Eum. 289 ff., 670 ff., 762-?4), and the destruction of her famous rival [Mykenai1 had taken place only a few years before'. ouM>op&, in itself neither good nor bad but used most frequently of unfavourable events, is not very rare in a favourable sense. In the Oresteia Aeschylus so uses it five times. 26. lo~ 106·: on the accentuation of the MSS here and elsewhere, cf. L-S s.v.; Kijrte, Hermes, lxviii, 1933, 273 n. 4. 26. OTIJ&a(vw M: O'r/J'4VW rell. The continuation in 31 ath-&$ .,.• (ywyc ••• xopdooµc.t. seems at .first glance to support O'r/P.a.vGJ, which for this reason is read by Hermann, Wecklein, Wilamowitz, and others (e.g. G. Pasquali, Swria ddla tradizione, 27). But the passage undeniably gains in force if he says 'with this loud cry of mine (lot> loiS) I give Agamemnon's lady a clear sign to arise .. .' (so rightly Peile and Paley). If we take it in this way, the asyndeton is given its full force. A confirmation may be found in the precisely parallel passage 1315 f, lw flvo,, OVrO' 8vuo{,CIJ, 8cp.vov s opv&S, ,µp"", where Cassandra's passionate outcry is immediately followed by the explanation, like the Watchman's lot> loiS here. Another close parallel is the explanation of the cry in Prom. 66 ala,, Ilpoµ.118cO, O'@v ~~P vrlv"' TrOvC1Jv. The clause culT&$ .,.• cywyc 1'polfUOv xopc&oop.cu is not attached to 26 but to 27 ff.; see on 31. For the corruption to O'r/fU»'G> cf. 1267. 27. On braJ1TcO.aoav the scholia have C:,$ hl G..o-rpov ~ O'c.\~VTj$. One can see how this explanation is suggested by the predominant use of the verb. On E. Phoen. 105 .CTrO K>i.&p.dxCIJV Tro8~$ rxvo$ bravrl».cuv there is a similar scholion 4no Toii -,)Mou ,; µ.era1'op&.; on this Wecklein rightly remarks that the transitive use of the word does not support this interpretation, and in fact one can say without hesitation that it is impossible. Similarly here it is quite arbitrary to suppose an astronomical sense. In Aeschylus this sense is not inseparable from the word, as may be seen from Cho. 282, where braJ1Tl>J..cw is used just like cb-rl.\>i.'1u«>v iµ.0$ .,,,tf>a.Jo1o.ylv-ra are found here and there. Karsten rightly says: '80p.o&$ • • • domui, ut domum quasi participem faciat gaudii sui. . . . Dativus >i.ap.n&.8, pendet a praepositione verbi h-op8c4Cetv.' So van Heusde and Verrall. 28. &>i.o>i.uyµ~ is found as a cry of good omen in association with c~p.ctv in 595 f. and Ar. Peace ¢ f. On this and on &M>i.uy~ in general see S. Eitrem's article (cited on 597), p. 47.

18

COMMENTARY

l9. It goes without saying that the true reading here is· brop8,&.C,011 found in two other passages of Aeschylus, not the brop8pi.J.t«cv of MV, which is found nowhere else. op8pr.ov is read for op8r.ov by two MSS in Pers. 389. 30. l&>.w1.d"cvo' 87} Olatlru KT.\. To 1

N".

20

COMMENTARY

Uno 33

nnc makes one's moves according to what one has thrown oneself. In the Watchman's case it is his masters' throw, but as he is compelled to share in tho game and the result has a decisive effect on his own position, it is possible !or him to speak in language used elsewhere by the player himself. His own 1:uncern in the matter appears also in the µo' of 33. The move he proposes to 1111\ke (B~aop.af.) is to go at once to Clytemnestra and give her news of the ll(lpearance of the beacon. Then he will receive a handsome reward (though 11robably not such an enormous one as his prototype in Homer, S 525 f ., tire hireling of Aegisthus, was at any rate promised). His most valuable recomJM1nsc, however, will be the certainty that never again need he undertake hltt bated watch. This lucky throw enables him to make a move on the board which he is quite sure will win the game (cf. on 33). Some corrunentalnrs have found deliberate ambiguity in the sentence, so e.g. van Heusde nml in a different sense A. Platt (note to his translation) : 'This phrase is 1h-slgnedly ambiguous; the Watchman means the success of Agamemnon, hut the words may also mean the success of the plot of Clytemnestra.' E. Med. 54 f. XPTJ'TTO'Uti 8ou'Ao,s tuJU!>opO. T4 8c>."4r· For the formation of these and similar filth-century words see R. McKenzie, C.Q. xiii, x919, 148. 35. &vaKTOS oticwv: cf. on x225 (8e:cm&n]r). IJaOT6.0"Q&: the mistake, fashionable down to our own time ('touch' L-S, following Passow), of misinterpreting the word in this and similar passages can be traced back to Schutz and Blomfield ad loc. They, and others in their train, e.g. Ellendt, Lexicon Sopl:ockum, Jebb on Oed. C. xxo5, mutilated the explanation preserved by Suidas: {Ja.crr&.aa, ov -r6~S,,~oi11ap4 Toir !.4nucoir, Ulla -r6 "'1J~a.' Kal SUW7JK&a., Kal Sr.au1el.paatla, '"i' x1epl n}v oNnfv, by quoting only as far as ""1~#a,, If one takes the interpretation of the lexicographer as a whole, it is quite adequate: /JaOTdtcw means not a desultory· touching, grasping, or taking hold of an object (here of the hand and forearm) but the holding and poising of it, e.g. for careful examination, as in Homer t/> 405 brd pol-ya. -r&Eov l{JdOTaq~ 1ec:U r& '"&vrri,:~ The Watchman describes the 8~ffuJa,r, the affectionate gesture at the moment of greeting a friend, after a long absence, when one holds his right hand and does not quickly let it go. This is not the same as 'shaking hands' (Wilamowitz 'zum Willkomm schiitteln'). Admetos (E . .A.k. 9x7) on his wedding day enters his ~ouse t/>c).'4.r cU&xav xlpo. Pa.cn&{CA>v. Attic grave-reliefs show what is meant. Stanley was right then in translating ftl 1'eduds . . . manum domini . . . hac st4Slineam manu,, No passage in Tragedy makes it necessary to assume the supposed 1 When Vemll, while accepting Hcnnann'a -~d, maintained that 1eo1~•f wu 'not impossible' and that 'it would be formed correctly from 1COCr'&s and ~'Mr', he forgot that it ought to be "°'~' see Wackemagel, Dehmmgs1uek1 p. 50. s On Plril. 656 f. ap' lOTlY cWr( dyyJI& 8lG'I' >.aJWW ICGl /faOTQ04' (the bow) Radermacher rightly refers to the Odyssey passage, but none the JC$S glosses . /fa.vrG.o"' with ">.a~o"'. From the sense 'to hold an object while examining and weighing it', the extension to abstract things follows without any difficulty, as in A. Prom. 888 h ~J'G4 .,.~· J/fdOTGOf (where the scholiast oomments J3oiclµGo& and very intelligently quotes ~ 405), Ar. Tlrmn. 438 (with the scholion in Suidas s.v. lµOTo.o&, voJ. ii. 189 Adler: d'l'Fl T'OO laolclf14o&)1 Eupolis lr. 73, 303 K., Polyb. 8. 16. 4 (with the gloss in Suidas s.v. /fap!J3alpow, i. 45$ Adler: d'l'Fl TOO &•odnnro), J Rightly undentood also by F. A. Wolf, d. W. von Humboldt to Hermann, 17.xii.1815

s.

22

COMMENTARY

mcnning of mere conlrecJare; Philoctetes' bow of destiny is no pocket pistol, nnd for the meeting of Oedipus and Antigone (Oed. C. nos) we may well horrow Goethe's words 'dich halten dieser Anne Schranken' (cf. too Prom. 1019 TrCTpa.fu 3' ciyKd>.71 {Jatrr&.cm). Lines 34 f. are the more moving because the spectator knows, or at least 1111epects, that in spite of the master's homecoming the wish is destined not to be fulfilled. :'6 f, ~Os (,,l y>.Wo-cni, ~eya.s PiP11Kcv: the parallels were collected long ago: 'l'hcognis 815 {JoGs J.n.2 y..\waa71' Kpa:r«p/iJc. Tro8l ,\~ br&{Ja1t1C1Jv rax,, 1eW'Tru(w 1-afJ•'iv, Plato, Prot. 316 a Kal J.'O' So1e•i 1]µ.a{JoGaa. tf>w~v clTrc. It is possible that ./>wvf/v .\a{Jciv is the regular phrase developed in the realm of fairy story and folk-tale for miraculous happenings of this kind. [Cf. Teles p. 6. 8 f. Hense1.] For a similar notion cf. E. Hee. 836 ff. er J.'O' ,,1vo,'To 4>0&yyos b fJpa.xlors, 1ea.1 Xv h>.lwv fUf'V1JJ.'lvoS' brc.\av8&.veTo). These passages make it quite clear that in the passage in the Agamemnon, as we should have inferred from the word-order and the symmetrical arrangement, J1ewv must be connected with ').~80µ.o.' as well as with a.V&>. The expression J1ewv (br,-) >.~80µ.o.i preserves a valuable piece of early psychology. If the question is (as in Hdt. 4. 43. 7 already quoted) how far a man's silence can be trusted, one has a far stronger guarantee if he knows the perilous secret and deliberately 'forgets' it than if he is merely unwilling to utter it or by chance cannot call it to mind. (Cf. Aeschin. 1. 158, 3. 85; Cic. Fam. 1. 9. 20.] The last sentence (36-9) is compact of emphatic C.".~8oµo.' see above; the forceful personification of ol1eos 8' ®ToS' cl tj>8oytY/v 1 Stanley's translation 'non intelligentcs Jateo'-!ollowed by e.g. Schatz, W. v. Hum-

s

boldt, F. A. Wolf (reprinted in W. v. Humboldt's Gts. Schriften, Akadcmic-Ausgabe, viii. 230), Hermann, Op1uc. v. 342-SUrvivcs in astonishing fashion in Wilamowitz's ren· dering: 'den nicht Wissenden ein Rlt.scl ist'. Verrall quite arbitrarily ~ys: ·~~ol'cu is here the passive Answering to the active ~4"" ~< Toro, "I do not observe this".' A. Platt, too, is very much open to question: 'for of mine own will ate my dal'k sayings dark to the unlearned'.

THE PROLOGUE AS A WHOLE

>i.&{Jo,, ua.t/>Jcrra-r• 4., Alf«&«., stands on the same level. The man's excitement, his resentment at the doings of which he has so long been a mute and reluctant spectator, and at the same time his fear of landing himself in trouble by o. thoughtless word against the ruling powers-all these find utterance in expressive images and turns of phrase. The syntactical form of the four concluding lines is in remarkable contrast to all the speech that has gone before. Down to 35 there is a broad and even flow of sentences, some of them built into periods and e.xpanded by subordinate clauses; in the last lour lines the ear is arrested by brief KOffa-ra, fired off as it were in suppressed passion. There is no question of rhetoric here, even in the antithesis and echo o{ the concluding line; all is perfectly natural. It is worth noticing that at this early stage of Attic literature the poet shows himself capable of expressing strong emotions not only through the words but also by the form of his sentences.

THE

PROLOGUE AS A WHOLE

Each play of the Orestm begins with a prayer by the .,,po>.oyl{ow (in the

Supplia11ts it is the Chorus who recite the opening prayer). During Orestes' prologue in the Cho~horoe Pylades is on the stage. The prologues of the Agamemnon and the Emneuide.s, on the other hand, are real soliloquies. It is t~ha.racteristic of the Aeschylean conception of a monologue (cf. Prom. 88 ff.) tho.t the speaker does not address his own heart or mind but turns to the r,ods or to divine beings; cf. F. Leo, Der Ms, Jvavrfus) with a colourless rendering ('meaning 1lmply antagonist' Sidgwick, 'generally (as opposed to the technical sense] appo1ient, adversary' L-5), but to grasp the unimpaired force of the legal tcnn (so rightly W. Sewell, at the end of his translation, with the excellent r.omment 'the legal metaphors, so profusely employed in this play, must be 11trlcUy attended to', Wecklein 'Prozessgegner', Headlam 'Priam's great llCCusing peer'; cf. also Daubc 97). The word must have sounded strange to tho nudience in this context, for it was by no means an accepted idea, nor fnclced a particularly obvious one to regard the war against Priam as an action at law. But that is exactly what Aeschylus did, and he pursued the consequences of his view into the most unexpected details (534 ff., 813 ff.). So he uses the juristic word in a prominent place, right at the beginning of tho entry-song of the Chorus, to give the whole play the colouring which wcntially belongs to it.2 As the legal claim is in the first instance the eoncern uC the man who has been primarily wronged, Menelaus is put first here. But 1 'Ibat the play began with the anapaests of the Chorus (Cr. 131 N., Pap. Oxy. 2163,

tr.

z) Td&

,.n. Mdooc&s '"'.\. is certain; that these anapaests were followed

by the lyrics

(Cr. 13:1) ~81Gir0 :..fxc.\>.cO ~.\. has been made hightr probable by G. Bennann, Opuse. v. 137· • The frequent oocuncnoc of 8/q in the Orutaa (CLS compattd with the rest of Aeschylus 11Jaya) wa.s pointed out by Peretti, Stul. II. N.S. v, 1928, 202.

27

lino 41

COMMENTARY

the apposition to flp,&µ.o11 p.iy«~ clvr/Sucos is twofold, MM>.«os ~ ~a· :A.yaµlµvwv, so that dn/Sucos assumes a 'collective' meaning, or, to put it differently, takes the place of a dual (see on u5). That Agamemnon is to be regarded as a 'claimant at law' against Priam to the full e.xtent, no less than Menelaus, is a leading theme of the play, expressed with special clarity in the first speech of the Herald and the King's own words on entry. 43 f, Sl8p0vou Ause.... KGt Slcnc1\11"Tpou Tl ...~S oxupbv tcuyos •ATpuSav: both genitives depend on {Wyos-, and both are in different ways epexegetical; first the {diyos, the 'pair', is identical with the Atridae, and secondly the {ciiyos, the 'two coupled together', constitute the double kingship, the 8{8povos iccil 8laic117rrpos TCf''1· On two genitives with one noun, cf. Wilamowitz on E. Her. 170. 44. oxu,,Ov: for the variation in the spelling of the first syllable, ox- and q-, see the dictionaries. While in Pers. 78 there is equally strong MS authority for q11pow' and ox11powc, in Pers. 89 the testimony of the MSS is perhaps slightly in favour of l')(llpois. Therefore Dindorf, Lex. Aesch., suggested that in Ag. 44, too, we might write l;{llP4v. This was put in the text by Wilamowitz. It does not seem possible to make out which was the spelling of Aeschylus. O')(ll~ is considered by Gustav Meyer, Griech. Gramnralik, 3rd ed., 40, to be the older fonn. That :4.T~W&v should not be altered to :4.Tpcl8aw is shown by Wackernagel, U11lel's. m Homer, 57, who points out that in the language of the older post-Homeric poets the two brothers are invariably referred to with the plural of the patronymic; the change had already been rejected by Ahrens (p. ~34), H. W. Smyth, Harvard Studies in Class. Phiwl. vii, 1896, 148, and A. Cuny, u Nombre duel en grec (Paris, 1906), p. 134 n. 2. For the ending -a., of a proper name in anapaests see on 1569. 45. xc>.covcWn]r' 'consisting of a thousand ships' may well have been invented by Aeschylus, but is just as likely to have occurred in post-Homeric epic; cf. Pers. 83 1To.\W.c&vallS', which is found several times in Euripides; cf. W. Schulze, Quae.st. ep. 445 n. 1; Ernst Fraenkel, Nomina agentis, i. 24. The commentators observed long ago (cf. Schol. E. Or. 353 and Schol. E. Andi'. 1o6, Eustathius on B 76o, p. 338. 35) that in Euripides and elsewhere in the poets (e.g. Lycophr. 210, Plaut. Bauh. 928) 1,000 is the usual number for the Greek fieet that went to Troy, while the figure derived from the Homeric Catalogue of Ships is 1,186, for which Thucydides (x. xo. 4) gives 1,200 as an approximation. Varro, mst. :::. x. 26 tmnurtlS tum est ftt sit ad amussim, ut non est cum ·dicimus tnille naves isse ad Troiam (quoted by Stanley). 47. ~pav: OT&>.ov ai~w here and Pers. 195 is probably best taken like -rar vciOs aipcw (Thuc. x. 52. 2, &.1Tal~w Hdt. 8. 57. 2); .,,&.\tµ.ov «ipca8«i seems to be not quite so close (middle in A. Suppl. 338, Hdt. 7. 132. 2, Thuc. 4. 6o. 2, Plato com. fr. 107 K., but active in E. El. 2 0801 1ToT• .iy&s et cipwyij vocabula iuris', referring to Hom. E 502, IJI 514; 'dicitur OTpaTW¥rtr &~ Mehelai, qui Priami dnl8"cos erat.' Cf. more recently Ferrari, La parod'ol)' {Lipsius, D. alt. Redlt i. 4, cf. also G. Glotz, La Solidari/J de la Jami~, 293); Leaf, ad loc., and R. J. Bonner and G. Smith, The Admfoistralion of justice, ii. x89, take the word in a sense rather more definitely technical. Similarly in 1J1 574 dpwy7j is used half technically of taking sides in an arbitration. Aeschylus was familiar with the special meaning of 'support given in o. court of law', as is shown by Suppl. 726 (yw 8' 0.pwyoi)s- f11118l1eous 8' ~Ew >.a[Jwv. Here in Ag. 46 we have both the military conception and the idea of o. lawsuit; the expedition is at the same time a demand for legal redress. C7Tpcm~nv opwyfiv is in apposition to the sentence or (what comes to the same thing) to the action of the verb (so Hermann, Schneidewin, Paley, PlGss). The syntax of this has been well explained by G. Bemhardy, WissetJ.sch. Syntax du Griuh. Sprache, 127, and is discussed at length by A. Matthil, Griull. Gramm. 970 f., who puts in its proper setting Ag. 226 (which shows the same use of O.P"'Y&v), and by Wilamowitz on E. Her. 59. 48 ft. The editors have rightly remarked the inftuence on Aeschylus here or two Homeric similes, n 428 f. Ws- .,.· aly1nnoi ••. ~4).a, ic>.&{oVTC J'&.xwl'Ta.t nnd 'fr :n6 ff. ~(ov 8~ >.tylws;, a8wWTOftowi y' a.Wd11 Jf~).uo-&.µ.7111. As regards the meaning of tlCTta.Tlo,s, in spite of all the acumen expended on the passage, we cannot get beyond pure conjecture. But it would be irresponsible to cut the knot and replace the strange word by a familiar one (Blomfield conjectured bcm£y..\ois-). The adjective is found nowhere else; for the adverb there is evidence (already adduced here by Henr. Stephanus) in Erotian, p. 41. 16 Nachmanson (as a variant on the reading JimO.y..\ws in Hippocrates tk mul. aff. 2. 171, viii, p. 352. 1 Littr~ ~ d.~1 ~ al8oi4 l1CTT&.y>.c,,s a.&'Dttcu ICT~.) l1CTta.T"°s' l1CTp&.,,~ 1ea1 ( •••)> O&G A)'llOOmcr. S~ ypl4>o1X1w i1ttr&.y..\cur. This seems to indicate for (KTrcfri~ the meaning enormis (so Dindorf, Lex. .Aesch., though he withdrew it in his Addenda, p. 426, and adopted the spatial meaning), excessive (L-S). The scholiut (in Mand Tr), on the other hand, glosses our passage with 'Tois lft» rijr oSo0,4

'P'I"''

"''°'

1 Virgil, Aus. 7. ~Marton ••• faJi1onJ is rightly explained by Servius as proilium eum dotMre u~seunl. . . . ~ littp!,•t»f, which is called ~ niltili in Dindorf's Thesaunu, is quoted only from this passqe by L-S. · · i For the way in which the lacuna may be filled see Nachmanson. Gregory or Corinth, who in the third part (•'fl Tt)r •r4aot l1oM'"'°u) of his compilation on dialect makes use o( Erotian from § 163 onwards (cl. Koen, ad loc.), had a. more complete text of Erotian's elOSS&tY at his disposal than we possess (cl. Nachmanson, Praej. xvii) : his version (§ 18s) Of the elem IUDS T~ ll('rphf»t ICal trapcMtO>t' llCfloTIOOt, • In F the glcm has this form: bttro-rlotr ~'X'""'' darrl nO lfc. T1Jr &wQr obtlo.r.

30

COMMENTARY

liDo

.so

cf. Hesychius l1mO.Tco.,,· TO lf"' 114Tou. The connexion with 110.Tor can hardly be doubted; the formation has been compared with ~wr, which is used several times by Sophocles. Is the proper spatial meaning adequate here? 114Tor 'the trodden path, the beaten track' seems to have disappeared from the· living language ~ter Homer. Homeric expressions like Y 136 f. ICcO'l'TC$ J1e 11CTOU Jr 0'1.ycu,, is very harsh', says Sewell). Wilamowitz felt this; though he adopts the interpretation lKTr4Tcor = lfw 110.Tou, 'solitary, remote', in his translation he separates the epithet ('im Frieden des Gebirges') completely from. ci>.y.t:xlwv depend not on waToi but (and this can hardly be defended) on vrpoo0wofivTai: ofTlJ.16'$ waToi OllTCt ••• J7"1 -r6111 >.1:xlw11 .uir. 'Stl'jJra cubilia, durissima constructio', says Blomfield in his neat fashion. No even partially adequate parallel has yet been produced; most editors compare completely unrelated expressions like Prom. 846 lax&.TrJ x8o..Or. Others treat the passage as though we were principally concerned here with the so-called use of superlative instead of comparative. None of the suggested alterations or deletions is convincing. Headlam's wa.'"1>.fxlwv is beyond discussion. >.cx,wv is vouched for by s. Ant. 423 ff. KUYavo11 p>.liy,,, >.Jxos where apart from the Homeric motif common to both poets there may well be a reminiscence of this passage of Aeschylus. >.lxos in this application is rare; the use of a word borrowed from human life performs the same function as 7"a~w11 above (cf. also Sept. 291 ff. 8p&1eoYTa.r Ws- -r'r -r/1C11C1J11 6rr€p8l8o'""" >.~alwv (this is what the reading of the MSS comes to, cf. on 1653) ••• 17'€>.t:&&s-). While admitting the syntactical boldness of the expression iJrra.-roi >-~wo°'1TQ.1.1 he is re~ modelling the first element of C1Tpcr/>f8w«w8°"' on the analogy of the noun atoms' (Ernst Fraenkel, loc. cit.; cf. Wilamowitz on this passage). A slight variation of the Homeric fSUn]Ocv S' ol oout! occurs in Prom. 882 "Poxcr 8&YCt'TCU s· oµµa8' Aly&,11. .,J lS2. ~P'Tf.Lo'law: a word extendS from the .first anapaestic metron into the ne.xt, ns in 6.J, 75, 84, 95 (i.e. with unusual frequency in the parodos of this play); ulsewhere 7CJC>, 793, IJ39, IJ4I; x555, x557, Cho. 340, 859, I073, Eum. Ioio, and cf. Suppl. 625, .dumJ011).,c