Erectheus, who, as his name signifies (ἔραζε, Eretz, Heb., Erde, Teut., Earth), was the earth-born, or Adam of Attic legend, had a temple on the Acropolis, beside the temple of the city-protecting (πολιάς) Pallas, of which the ruins yet remain. The cave of the Furies was on the Hill of Mars, directly opposite.—See Introductory Remarks.

It was a principle with the Romans that no victory in a civil war should be followed by a triumph; and, accordingly, in the famous triumph of Julius Cæsar, which lasted three days, there was nothing to remind the Roman eye that the conqueror of Pharsalia had ever plucked a leaf from Pompey’s laurels. In v. 826, I read with Mül. ὀυ δόμοις παρων, the present reading, μόλις, being clumsy any way that I have seen it translated.

This designation is given to Athens with special reference to the Persian wars; for the Persians destroyed everywhere the temples of the Greek gods (only in the single case of Delos are they said to have made an exception), and the Athenians, in conquering the Persians, saved not only their own lives, but the temples of the gods from destruction.

Well., as usual, is too cautious in not changing μὴ κύρσας into δὴ κύρσας with Pauw and Mül., or μὴν with Lin. and Schoe.

“The sins of the fathers, as in the Old Testament, so also among the Greeks, are visited on the children even to the third and fourth generation; nay, even the idea of original sin, derived from the Titanic men of the early ages, and exhibiting itself as a rebellious inclination against the gods more or less in all—this essentially Christian idea was not altogether unknown to the ancient Greeks.”—Schoemann.

What we call a “god-send,” or a “wind-fall,” was called by the Greeks ἓρμαιον, or a thing given by the grace of Hermes. In his original capacity as the patron god of Arcadian shepherds, Hermes was, in like manner, looked on as the giver of patriarchal wealth in the shape of flocks.—Il. xiv. 490.

There is no small difficulty in this passage, from the state of the text; but, unless it be the Furies themselves that are spoken of, as Kl. imagines (Theol. p. 45), I cannot think there are any celestial powers to whom the strong language of the Strophe will apply but the Fates. If the former supposition be adopted, we must interrupt the chaunt between Athena and the Furies, putting this Strophe into the mouth of the Areopagites, as, indeed, Kl. proposes; but this seems rather a bold measure, and has found no favour. It remains, therefore, only to make such changes in the text as will admit of the application of the whole passage to the Fates, who stand in the closest relation to the Furies, as is evident from Strophe III. of the chorus (p. 146 above). This Mül. has done; and I follow him, not, however, without desiring some more distinct proof that ματροκασιγνῆται, in Greek, can possibly mean sisters.—See Schoe.’s note.

Ζεὺς ἀγορᾶιος. The students of Homer may recollect the appeal of Telemachus to the Ithacans in council assembled (Odys. II. 68). Jove, as we have already had occasion to remark, has a peculiar right of presidency over every grand event of human life, and every important social institution; so that, on certain occasions, the Greek Polytheism becomes, for the need, a Monotheism—somewhat after the same fashion as the aristocratic Government of the old Roman Republic had the power of suddenly changing itself, on important occasions, into an absolute monarchy, by the creation of a Dictator.

The Furies were called Ευμενίδες, or gracious, to propitiate their stern deity by complimentary language. Suidas says (voc. Ευμενίδες) that Athena, in this play, calls the Furies expressly by this name; but the fact is, that it does not occur in the whole play. Either, therefore, the word ἔυφρων, which I have translated “gracious-minded” in the play, must be considered to have given occasion to the remark of the lexicographer (which seems sufficient), or, with Hermann and Schoe., we must suppose something to have fallen out of the present speech.

On p. 132, after the dramatis personæ, I perceive that I have stated that the scene of this piece changes from Delphi to the Hill of Mars, Athens. This is either inaccurate, or, at least, imperfect; for the first change of scene is manifestly (as stated p. 148), to the temple of Athena Pallas, on the Acropolis; and, though the imagination naturally desires that the institution of the Court of the Areopagus should take place on the exact seat of its future labours, yet the construction of the drama by no means necessitates another change of scene, and the allusion to the Hill of Mars in p. 162 is easily explicable on the supposition that it lies directly opposite the Acropolis, and that Pallas points to it with her finger.

NOTES TO PROMETHEUS BOUND

“The ancient Greek writers called all the Northern tribes (i.e. all who dwelt in the Northern parts of Europe and Asia) generally by the name of Scythians and Celto-Scythians; while some even more ancient than these make a division, calling those beyond the Euxine, Ister, and Adria, Hyperboreans, Sarmatians, and Arimaspi; but those beyond the Caspian Sea, Sacæ and Massagetæ.” Strabo, Lib. XI. p. 507.—Stan.

λεωργὸν, a difficult word; “evil-doer”—Med. and Prow.; Bösewicht—Toelp.; Freveler—Schoe. The other translation of this word—“artificer of man” (Potter)—given in the Etym. was very likely an invention of Lexicographers to explain this very passage. But the expounders did not consider that Æschylus through the whole play makes no allusion to this function of the fire-worker. It was, I believe, altogether a recent form of the myth.—See Weiske. “The precise etymology of the word is uncertain.”—Lin.

“A fellow deity”—Med. But this is not enough. Vulcan, as a smith, and Prometheus were kindred in their divine functions, for which reason they were often confounded in the popular legends, as in the case of the birth of Pallas from the brain of Jove, effected by the axe, some say of Hephaestus, some of Prometheus—Apollodor. I. 3-6. Euripid. Ion. 455; from which passage of the tragedian Welcker is of opinion that Prometheus, not Hephaestus, must have a place in the pediment of the Parthenon representing the birth of Pallas.—Class. Museum, Vol. II. p. 385.

Not Clymene according to the Theogony (V. 508) or Asia, one of the Oceanides according to Apollodorus (I. 2), which parentage has been adopted by Shelley in his Prometheus Unbound. That Æschylus in preferring this maternity meant to represent the Titan as suffering in the cause of Right against Might, as Welcker will have it (Trilog. p. 42), is more than doubtful. One advantage, however, is certainly gained, viz., that Prometheus is thus brought one degree further up the line of ascent in direct progress from the two original divinities of the Theogony—Uranus or Heaven, and Gee or the Earth; for, according to Hesiod, Themis is the daughter, Clymene only the grand-daughter, of these primeval powers (Theog. 135, 315). Thus, Prometheus is invested with more dignity, and becomes a more worthy rival of Jove.

I entirely agree with Schoe. that in the indefinite expression—(ο) λωφήσων γὰρ ὀυ πέφυκέ πω any allusion, such as the Scholiast suggests, to Hercules, the person by whom salvation did at length come, would be in the worst possible taste here, and quite foreign to the tone of the passage.

This character of harshness and inexorability belongs as essentially to Jove as to the Fates. Pallas, in the Iliad, makes the same complaint—

We must bear in mind that Jove represents three things—(1) that iron firmness of purpose which is so essential to the character of a great ruler; (2) the impetuous violence and resistless power of the heavenly elements when in commotion; (3) the immutability of the laws of Nature.

Ἅπαντ ἐπράχθη πλὴν θε(ο)ισι κοιρανεῖν—literally, all things have been done, save commanding the gods. I do not know whether there is any philological difficulty in the way of this translation. It certainly agrees perfectly well with the context, and has the advantage of not changing the received text. Schoe., however, adopting Herm.’s emendation of ἐπαχθῆ translates—

On the theological sentiment, I would compare that of Seneca—“In regno nati sumus; Deo parere libertas est” (Vit. Beat. 15)—and that of Euripides, where the captive Trojan queen, finding the king of men, Agamemnon, willing to assist her, but afraid of the opinion of the Greeks, speaks as follows:—

This is merely translating Prometheus (from προ before, and μῆτις counsel) into English. These allusions to names are very frequent in Æschylus—so much so as to amount to a mannerism; but we who use a language, the heritage of years, a coinage from which the signature has been mostly rubbed off, must bear in mind that originally all words, and especially names, were significant. See the Old Testament everywhere (particularly Gen. c. xxix. and xli., with which compare Homer, Odyssey xix. 407). And, indeed, in all original languages, like Greek or German, which declare their own etymology publicly to the most unlearned, no taunt is more natural and more obvious than that derived from a name. Even in Scotland, a man who is called Bairnsfather will be apt to feel rather awkward if he has no children. “In the oldest Greek legend,” says Welcker (Tril. p. 356), “names were frequently invented, in order to fix down the character or main feature of the story”—(so Bunyan in the Pilgrim’s Progress)—a true principle, which many German writers abuse, to evaporate all tradition into mere fictitious allegory. But the practice of the Old Testament patriarchs shows that the significancy of a name affords of itself no presumption against its historical reality.

Prometheus. The critics remark with good reason the propriety of the stout-hearted sufferer observing complete silence up to this point. It is natural for pain to find a vent in words, but a proud man will not complain in the presence of his adversary. Compare the similar silence of Cassandra in the Agamemnon; and for reasons equally wise, that of Faust in the Auerbach cellar scene. So true is it that a great poet, like a wise man, is often best known, not by what he says, but by what he does not say—(και τῆς ἂγαν γάρ έστί που σιγῆς βάρος, as Sophocles has it). As to the subject of the beautiful invocation here made by the Titan sufferer, the reader will observe not merely its poetical beauty (to which there is something analogous in Manfred, act I. sc. 2—

but also its mythological propriety in the person of the speaker, as in the early times the original elementary theology common to the Greeks with all polytheists, had not been superseded by those often sadly disguised impersonations which are represented by the dynasty of Jove. Ocean and Hyperion (ὑπερίων—he that walks aloft) are named in the Theogony, along with Themis and Iapetus, as the first generation of gods, directly begotten from Heaven and Earth.—(Theog. 133-4.) In the natural progress of religious opinion, this original cosmical meaning of the Greek gods, though lost by anthropomorphism to the vulgar, was afterwards brought out by the natural philosophers, and by the philosophical poets; of which examples occur everywhere among the later classics. Indeed, the elemental worship seems never to have been altogether exploded, but continued to exist in strange confusion along with the congregation of fictitious persons to which it had given birth. So in Homer, Agamemnon prays—

ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα. I must offer an apology here for myself, Mr. Swayne, and Captain Medwyn, because I find we are in a minority. The Captain, indeed, has paraphrased it a little—

but he retains the laugh, which is the stumbling-block. Swayne has

also a little paraphrased, but giving due prominence to the characteristic idea. E. P. Oxon. has

with a reference to Stanley’s note, “Refertur ad levem sonum undarum ventis exagitatarum qui etiam aliquantulum crispant maris dorsum quasi amabili quadam γελασιᾳ,” in which words we see the origin of Pot.’s—

Prow. has—

And Schoe.’s—

And so Blom. in a note, emphatically—

But why all this gentleness? Does it agree either with the strength of the poet’s genius, or with the desolation of the wild scene around his hero? I at once admit that γελάω is often used in Greek, where, according to our usage, smile would be the word; but in the Old Testament we find the broad strong word laugh often retained in descriptions of nature; and I see not the least reason for walking in satin shoes here.

νάρθηξ—“still used for this purpose in Cyprus, where the reed still retains the old Greek name”—Welcker, Tril. p. 8, who quotes Walpole’s Memoirs relative to Turkey, p. 284, and Tournefort, Letter 6. I recollect at school smoking a bit of bamboo cane for a cigar.

The increased agitation of mind is here expressed in the original by the abandonment of the Iambic verse, and the adoption of the Bacchic—τίς ἀχὼ, etc., which speedily passes into the anapæst, as imitated by my Trochees. Milton was so steeped in Greek, that I think he must have had this passage in his mind when he wrote the lines of Samson Agonistes, v. 110, beginning “But who are these?” Altogether, the Samson is, in its general tone and character, quite a sort of Jewish Prometheus.

The ancient sea-goddess, sister and wife of Oceanus, daughter of Heaven and Earth. The reader will observe that the mythology of this drama preserves a primeval or, according to our phrase, antediluvian character throughout. The mythic personages are true contemporaries belonging to the most ancient dynasty of the gods. For this reason Ocean appears in a future stage of the play, not Poseidon. Tethys, with the other Titans and Titanesses are enumerated by Hesiod, Theog. 132-7, as follows—

As for the epithet prolific applied to Tethys, the fecundity of fish is a proverb in natural history; but I suppose it is rather the infinite succession of waves on the expanded surface of Ocean that makes his daughters so numerous in the Theogony (362)—

Here we have distinctly indicated that contrast between the old and the new gods, which Æschylus makes so prominent, not only in this play, but also in the Furies. The conclusion has been drawn by various scholars that Æschylus was secretly unfavourable to the recognised dynasty of Jove, and that his real allegiance was to these elder gods. But the inference is hasty and unauthorised. His taste for the sublime led him into these primeval ages, as it also did Milton: that is all we can say.

The new-forged counsels were of Jove’s own devising—viz., that he should marry Thetis; of which marriage, if it should take place, the son was destined to usurp his father’s throne.—Scholiast.

Inexorability is a grand characteristic of the gods.

And so Homer makes Nestor say of Agamemnon, vainly hoping to appease the wrath of Pallas Athena, by hecatombs—

And of Jove, in particular, Hera says to Themis, in the council of the gods—

Æschylus does not and could not confound these two distinct persons, as Pot. will have it.—See Eumenides, 2. Schoe. has stated the whole case very clearly. Pot. remarks with great justice, that a multiplicity of names “is a mark of dignity;” it by no means follows, however, that Themis, in this passage, is one of those many names which Earth receives. In illustration we may quote a passage from the Kurma Ouran (Kennedy’s Researches on Hindoo Mythology; London, 1831; p. 208)—“That,” says Vishnu, pointing to Siva, “is the great god of gods, shining in his own refulgence, eternal, devoid of thought, who produced thee (Brahma), and gave to thee the Vedas, and who likewise originated me, and gave me various names.” Southey, in the roll of celestial dramatis personæ prefixed to the Curse of Kehama, says “that Siva boasts as many as one thousand and eight names.”

“Nam regibus boni quam mali suspectiores sunt, semperque his aliena virtus formidolosa est.”—Sall. Cat. VII. “In princes fear is stronger than love; therefore it is often more difficult for them to tear themselves from persons whom they hate than to cast off persons whom they love.”—Richter (Titan).

This is one of the passages which has suggested to many minds a comparison between the mythical tortures of the Caucasus and the real agonies of Calvary. The analogy is just so far; only the Greek imagination never could look on Prometheus as suffering altogether without just cause; he suffered for his own sins. This Toepel. p. 71, has well expressed thus—“Prometheus deos laesit ut homines bearet: Christus homines beavit ut suae, Deique patris obsecundaret voluntati.”

ἀνηλεῶς ἐῤῥύθμισμαι—“so bin ich zugerichtet.”—Passow. A sort of studious malignity is here indicated. So we say allegorically to trim one handsomely, to dress him, when we mean to punish. The frequent use of this verb ρυθμίζω is characteristic of the Greeks, than whom no people, as has been frequently remarked, seem to have possessed a nicer sense of the beauty of measure and the propriety of limitation in their poetry and works of art. So Sophocles, Antig. 318, has ρυθμίζειν λύπην.

A striking phrase, meaning, however, nothing more, I imagine, according to the use of the Greek writers (and also of the Latins with caecus) than dim, indistinct; neither, indeed, is the phrase foreign to our colloquial English idiom—“The swearing to a blind etcetera they (the Puritans) looked upon as intolerable.”—Calamy’s Life of Baxter. In the well-known story of Pandora, Hesiod relates that, when the lid of the fatal box was opened, innumerable plagues flew out, only Hope remained within.—Works and Days, 84.

Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, in his account of New South Wales (London, 1804), mentions that the wild natives produced fire with much difficulty, and preserved it with the greatest care. The original inhabitants of New Holland, and the wild African bushmen described by Moffat, the missionary, are among the lowest specimens of human nature with which we are acquainted. As for Æschylus, it is evident he follows in this whole piece the notion of primitive humanity given in his introductory chapters by Diodorus, and generally received amongst the ancients, viz., that the fathers of our race were the most weak and helpless creatures imaginable, like the famous Egyptian frogs, as it were, only half developed from the primeval slime.

Enter Ocean. “This sea god enters,” says Brunoy, quoted by Pot., on “I know not what winged animal—bizarrerie inexplicable.” Very inexplicable certainly; and yet, as the tragedian expressly calls the animal a bird, I do not see why so many translators, both English and German, should insist on making it a steed. The bird certainly was a little anomalous, having, as we learn below, four feet (τετρασκελὴς ὀιωνός, v. 395—a four-footed bira); but it was a bird for all that, and the air was its element. If the creature must have a name, we must even call it a griffin, or a hippogriff, notwithstanding Welcker’s remarks (Tril. p. 26). Those who wish to see its physiognomy more minutely described may consult Aeliean. hist, animal. IV. 27, in an apt passage quoted from Jacobs by Both. There is an ambiguity in the passage which I have translated—

some applying γνώμῃ not to the animal, but to the will of the rider. So Prow.—

But for the poetical propriety of my translation I can plead the authority of Southey—

and of Milton—

and what is much more conclusive in the present instance, that of Homer, whose τιτυσκόμεναι φρεσὶ νῆες (Odyssey VIII. 556), or self-piloted ships of the Phœnicians, belong clearly to the same mythical family as the self-reined griffin of old Ocean.

i.e., in the far West, extreme Atlantic, or “ends of the earth,” according to the Homeric phrase.

says Hera in the Iliad (XIV. 200).

The reader will see by referring to the old editions and to Pot. that the following description of the miseries of Atlas and Typhon is, in the MS., given to Ocean; and, it must be confessed, there seems a peculiar dramatic propriety in making the old sea god hold up the fate of the Cilician Blaster as a warning to the son of Iapetus, whom he saw embarked in a similar career of hopeless rebellion against the Thunderer. But philological considerations, well stated by Schoe., have weighed with that editor, as with his predecessors Blom. and Well., whose authority and arguments I am for the present willing to follow, though not without some lingering doubts. The alteration of the text originally proceeded from Elmsley, and the original order of the dialogue is stoutly defended by Toepel. in his notes.

If the reader is a curious person, he will ask how Atlas when standing on the Earth—in the extreme west of the Earth—could bear the pillars of Heaven and Earth? and the question will be a very proper one; for the fact is that, as Hesiod distinctly states the case, he bore the pillars of Heaven only (Theog. 517). This is, indeed, the only possible idea that could be admitted into a mythology which proceeded on the old principle that the Earth was a flat solid platform in the centre of the Universe, round which the celestial pole (πόλος) wheeled. The phrase “pillars of Heaven and Earth” is, therefore, to a certain extent an improper one; for the Earth, being the stable base of all things, required no pillars to support it. In one sense it is true that the pillars of Atlas are the pillars of Heaven and Earth, viz., in so far as they have Heaven at one end and Earth at the other, which is what Homer means when he says (Odyssey I. 54), that these pillars “γᾶιάν τε καὶ ὀυρανὸν ἀμφὶς ἔχουσιν.” And that this is the idea of Æschylus, also, is plain, both from the present passage, and from the Epode of the next following Chorus, where, unless we force in one conjecture of Schütz, or another of Hermann into the text, there is no mention of anything but the celestial pole. In all this I but express in my own words, and with a very decided conviction, the substance of the admirable note in Schoe. to v. 426, Well.

The idea of Typhon is that of a strong windy power, δεινόν ὑβριστήν τ ἄνεμον, according to the express statement of Hesiod (Theog. 307). The Greek word Typhon, with which our typhus fever is identical, expresses the state of being swollen or blown up; with this, the other idea of heat, which belongs also to Typhon (Sallust, περὶ θεῶν, c. 4), is naturally connected. According to the elementary or physical system of mythology, therefore, Typhon is neither more nor less than a simoom or hot wind.

The reader may like to see Cicero’s version of these four lines—

Here, and in the epithet of the rivers in the Epode (compare Homer’s Odyssey X. 351, ἱερων ποταμων, and Nägelsbach, Homer, Theologie, p. 85), the original word is ἁγνος, a term to be particularly noted, both in the heathen writers and in the Old Testament, as denoting that religious purity in connection with external objects and outward ceremonies which the Christian sentiment confines exclusively to the moral state of the soul. I have thought it important, in all cases, to retain the Greek phrase, and not by modernizing to dilute it. The religious sentiment in connection with external nature is what the moderns generally do not understand, and least of all the English, whose piety does not readily exhibit itself beyond the precincts of the church porch. The Germans, in this regard, have a much more profound sympathy with the Greek mind.

Arabia certainly comes in, to a modern ear, not a little strangely here, between the Sea of Azof and the Caucasus; but the Greeks, we must remember, were a people whose notions of barbarian geography (as they would call it) were anything but distinct; and, in this play, the poet seems wisely to court vagueness in these matters rather than to study accuracy.

With regard to the origin of the human race there are two principal opinions, which have in all times prevailed. One is, that man was originally created perfect, or in a state of dignity far transcending what he now exhibits; that the state in which the earliest historical records present him is a state of declension and aberration from the primeval source; and that the whole progress of what is called civilization is only a series of attempts, for the most part sufficiently clumsy, and always painful, whereby we endeavour to reinstate ourselves in our lost position. This philosophy of history—for so it may most fitly be called—is that which has always been received in the general Christian world; and, indeed, it seems to flow necessarily from the reception of the Mosaic records, not merely as authentic Hebrew documents, but as veritable cosmogony and primeval history—as containing a historical exposition of the creation of the world, and the early history of man. The other doctrine is, that man was originally created in a condition extremely feeble and imperfect; very little removed from vegetable dulness and brutish stupidity; and that he gradually raised himself by slow steps to the exercise of the higher moral and intellectual faculties, by virtue of which he claims successful mastery over the brute, and affinity with the angel. This doctrine was very common, I think I may safely say the current and generally received doctrine, among the educated Greeks and Romans; though the poets certainly did not omit, as they so often do, to contradict themselves by their famous tradition of a golden age, which it was their delight to trick out and embellish. In modern times, this theory of progressive development, as it may be called, has, as might have been expected, found little favour, except with philosophers of the French school; and those who have broached it in this country latterly have met with a most hot reception from scientific men, principally, we may presume, from the general conviction that such ideas go directly to undermine the authority of the Mosaic record. It has been thought, also, that there is something debasing and contrary to the dignity of human nature in the supposition that the great-grandfather of the primeval father of our race may have been a monkey, or not far removed from that species; but, however this be, with regard to Æschylus, it is plain he did not find it inconsistent with the loftiest views of human duty and destiny to adopt the then commonly received theory of a gradual development; and, in illustration, I cannot do better than translate a few sentences from Diodorus, where the same doctrine is stated in prose: “Men, as originally generated, lived in a confused and brutish condition, preserving existence by feeding on herbs and fruits that grew spontaneously. * * * Their speech was quite indistinct and confused, but by degrees they invented articulate speech. * * * They lived without any of the comforts and conveniences of life, without clothing, without habitations, without fire (Prometheus!), and without cooked victuals; and not knowing to lay up stores for future need, great numbers of them died during the winter from the effects of cold and starvation. By which sad experience taught, they learned to lodge themselves in caves, and laid up stores there. By-and-by, they discovered fire and other things pertaining to a comfortable existence. The arts were then invented, and man became in every respect such as a highly-gifted animal might well be, having hands and speech, and a devising mind ever present to work out his purposes.” Thus far the Sicilian (I. 8); and the intelligent reader need not be informed that, to a certain extent, many obvious and patent facts seemed to give a high probability to his doctrine. “Dwellers in caves,” for instance, or “troglodytes,” were well known to the ancients, and the modern reader will find a historical account of them in Strabo, and other obvious places. The Horites (Gen. xiv. 6) were so called from the Hebrew word Hor, a cave—(see Gesenius and Jahn, I. 2-26). But it is needless to accumulate learned references in a matter patent to the most modern observation.—Moffat’s “African Missions” will supply instances of human beings in a state as degraded as anything here described by the poet; and with regard to the aboriginal Australians, I have preserved in my notes the following passage from Collins: “The Australians dwell in miserable huts of bark, all huddled together promiscuously (ἔφυρον εικῆ πάντα!) amid much smoke and dirt. Some also live in caves.” I do by no means assert, however, that these creatures are remnants of primeval humanity, according to the development theory; I only say they afford that theory a historic analogy; while, on the other hand, they are equally consistent with the commonly received Christian doctrine, as man is a creature who degenerates from excellence much more readily in all circumstances than he attains to it. These Australians and Africans may be mere imbecile stragglers who have been dropt from the great army of humanity in its march.