Here commences a series of questions with regard to Attic geography, topography, and statistics, which to the most inexperienced reader will appear to come in here not in the most natural way. That the mother of Xerxes should have actually been so ignorant of the state of Athens, as she is here dramatically represented, seems scarcely supposable. But that she and the mighty persons of the East generally were grossly ignorant of, and greatly underrated the resources of the small state that was rising in the West, is plain, both from the general habit of the oriental mind, and from what Herodotus (V. 105, quoted by Pal.) narrates of Darius, that, when he heard of the burning of Sardes by the Athenians and the Ionians, he asked “who the Athenians were.” On this foundation, a dramatic poet, willing “to pay a pleasant compliment to Athenian vanity” (Buck.), might well erect such a series of interrogatories as we have in the text, though it may be doubted whether he has done it with that tact which a more perfect master of the dramatic art—Shakespere, for instance—would have displayed. There are not a few other passages in the Greek drama where this formal style of questioning ab ovo assumes somewhat of a ludicrous aspect.

As in the quickness of their spirits, the sharpness of their wits, and their love of glory, so particularly in the forward boast of freedom, the ancient Hellenes were very like the modern French. ’Twere a curious parallel to carry out; and that other one also, which would prove even more fertile in curious results, between the ancient Romans and the modern English.

I do not think there can be any doubt as to the meaning of the original here, πλαγκτοῖς (ε)ν διπλάκεσσιν—among the wandering planks—δίπλαξ can mean nothing but a double or very strong plank, plate, or (if applied to a dress, as in Homer) fold. There is no need of supposing any “clinging to the planks,” as Lin., following Butler, does. Nevertheless, I have given, likewise, in my translation, the full force of Blom.’s idea that δίπλαξ means the ebb and flow of the sea. This, indeed, lies already in φέρεσθαι. Conz. agrees with my version. “Wie treiben stürmend umher sie die Planken!”

Pal. asserts confidently that the three following verses are corrupt. One of them sins against Porson’s canon of the Cretic ending, and (what is of much more consequence) connects the name of Ariomardus with Sardes, which we found above (p. 302), connected with Thebes. For the sake of consistency, I have taken Porson’s hint, and introduced Metragathus here, from v. 43.

The apportionment of the last clause of this, and the whole of the following lines, I give according to Well. and Pal., which Buck. also approves in his note. The translation, in such a case, is its own best vindication.

The sending of this person was a device of Themistocles, to hasten on a battle, and keep the Greeks from quarrelling amongst themselves. The person sent was Sicinnus his slave, “seemingly an Asiatic Greek, who understood Persian, and had perhaps been sold during the late Ionic revolt, but whose superior qualities are marked by the fact, that he had the care and teaching of the children of his master.”—Grote.

The word τέμενος, says Passow, in the post-Homeric writers of the classical age was used almost exclusively in reference to sacred, or, as we should say, consecrated property. I do not think, therefore, that Lin. does full justice to this word when he translates it merely “the region of the air”; as little can I be content with Conz.’s “Hallen.” Droysen preserves the religious association to well-instructed readers, by using the word Hain; but surely temple is better in the present connection and to a modern ear. Lucretius (Lib. I. near the end) has “Coeli tonitralia templa.”

Pan, “the simple shepherd’s awe-inspiring god” (Wordsworth, Exc. IV.), was in the mind of the Athenians intimately associated with the glory of the Persian wars, and regarded as one of their chief patrons at Marathon (Herod. VI. 105). This god was the natural patron of all wild and solitary places, such as are seldom disturbed by any human foot save that of the Arcadian shepherds, whose imagination first produced this half-solemn half-freakish creation; and in this view no place could be more appropriate to him than “the barren and rocky Psyttaleia” (Strabo, 395). That he was actually worshipped there, we have, besides the present passage of our poet, the express testimony of Pausanias (I. 36)—“What are called Panic terrors were ascribed to Pan; for loud noises whose cause could not be easily traced were not unfrequently heard in mountainous regions; and the gloom and loneliness of forests and mountains fill the mind with a secret horror, and dispose it to superstitious apprehensions.”—Keightley.

The verse in the original—

—is remarkable for being divided into two equal halves, in violation of the common cæsuras, the laws of which Porson has pointed out so curiously. Whether there was a special cause for this in the present case—the wish, namely, on the part of the poet to make a harsh line suit a harsh subject, I shall not assert, as the line does not fall particularly harsh on my ear; I have at least done something, by the help of rough consonants and monosyllables, to make my English line come up to the great metrician’s idea of the Greek.

It needs hardly be mentioned here that the restless state of the dead body in death by drowning, implied, according to the sensuous metaphysics of the vulgar Greeks, an equally restless condition of the soul in Hades. Hence the point of Achilles’ wrath against Lycaon, in Iliad XXI. 122—

And, in the same book, of another victim of the same inexorable wrath it is said—

I think it right so to translate, because such is actually the colour of the olive; but I must state, at the same time, that the word in the original is ξανθῆς, which has been imitated by Virgil, Æn. V. 309. How the same word should mean both yellow and green, I cannot understand. No doubt the light green of many trees, when the leafage first comes out in spring, has a yellowish appearance; but the ever-green olive is always γλαυκός, as Sophocles has it (O. C. 701). What we call olive-coloured is a mixture of green and yellow; does this come from the colour of the fruit or the oil?

The word δαίμονα here used is that by which both Homer and Æschylus designate the highest celestial beings, from which practice we see what an easy transition there was in the minds of the early Christians to the deification of the martyrs, and the canonization of the saints. Compare Æn. V. v. 47. There is nothing in Popery which is not seated in the deepest roots of human nature.

i.e. Pluto. The reader must not be surprised to see Æschylus putting the names of Greek gods and Greek feelings and ideas generally into the mouths of Persian characters. His excuse lies partly in the fact, that these divine powers and human feelings, though in a Greek form, belonged to the universal heart of man, and partly in the extreme nationality of the old Hellenic culture, which was not apt to go abroad with curiously inquiring eyes into the regions of the barbarian. A national poet, moreover, addressing the masses, must beware of being too learned. Shakespere, in his foreign dramas, though less erudite, is much more effective than Southey in his Epics.

The word in the original here is βαλὴν, a Phœnician word, the same as Baal and Belus, meaning lord.—See Gesenius, voce Baal. This root appears significantly in some Carthaginian names, as Hannibal, Hasdrubal, etc.

This word belongs as characteristically to the ancient kings of the East, in respect of their head-gear, as the triregno or triple crown, in modern language, belongs to the Pope, and the iron crown to the sovereigns of Lombardy. Accordingly we find Virgil giving it to Priam—

See further, Dr. Smith’s Dict. Antiq. in voce tiara, and also φάλαρον, which I translate disc. As for the sandals, the reader will observe that saffron is a colour, like purple, peculiarly regal and luxurious—στολίδα κροκόεσσαν ἀνεῖσα τρυφᾶς.—Eurip. Phœniss. 1491.—Matth.

Here I may say with Buck., “I have given the best sense I can to the text, but nothing is here certain but the uncertainty of the reading.” For a translator, δι ἄνοιαν, proposed by Blom., is convenient enough.

ναες ἄναες (α)ναες—A phraseology of which we have found many instances, and of which the Greeks are very fond. So in Homer, before the fight between Ulysses and Irus, one of the spectators foreseeing the discomfiture of the latter, says—

This is sound morality and orthodox theology, even at the present hour. Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat. Observe here how high Æschylus rises in moral tone above Herodotus, who, in the style that offends us so much in Homer, represents Xerxes, after yielding to the sensible advice of his father’s counsellor Artabanus, as urged on to his ruin by a god-sent vision thrice repeated (VII. 12-18). The whole expedition, according to the historian, is as much a matter of divine planning as the death of Hector by Athena’s cruel deceit in Iliad XXII. 299. Even Artabanus is carried along by the stream of evil counsel, confessing that δαιμονίη τις γίνεται ὁρμὴ, there is an impulse from the gods in the matter which a man may not resist.—See Grote.

The original word for eager here is the same as that translated above impetuous—θούριος, and had a peculiar significancy to a Greek ear, as being that epithet by which Mars is constantly designated in the Iliad; and this god, as the readers of that poem well know, signifies only the wild, unreasoning hurricane power of battle, as distinguished from the calmly-calculated, surely-guided hostility of the wise Athena. With regard to the matter of fact asserted in this line, it is literally true that the son of Darius was not of himself originally much inclined to the Greek expedition (ὲπὶ μεν τὴν Ἑλλάδα ὀυδαμῶς πρόθυμος ᾖν κατ ἀρχὰς στρατέυεσθαι.—Herod. VII. 5), but, like all weaklings in high places, was wrought upon by others; in this case, specially, by his cousin Mardonius, according to the account of Herodotus.—See Grote, Vol. V. p. 4.

Two peculiarities in this enumeration of the early Persian kings will strike the reader. First, Two of the Median kings—Astyages and Cyaxares, according to the common account, are named before Cyrus the Great, who, as being the first native Persian sovereign, is commonly regarded as the founder of the later Persian empire. Second, Between Mardus (commonly called Smerdis), and Darius, the father of Xerxes, two intermediate names—contrary to common account—are introduced. I do not believe our historical materials are such as entitle us curiously to scrutinize these matters.

The Maryandini were a Bithynian people, near the Greek city of Heraclea, Xenoph. Anab. vi. 2; Strabo xii. p. 542. The peasants in that quarter were famous for singing a rustic wail, which is alluded to in the text. See Pollux, Lib. iv. περὶ ᾳσμάτων ἐθνικῶν. The Mysians mentioned, p. 331, below, were their next door neighbours; and the Phrygians generally, who in a large sense include the Mysians and Bithynians, were famous for their violent and passionate music, displayed principally in the worship of Cybele. So the Phrygian in Euripides (Orest. 1384) is introduced wailing ἁρμάτειον μέλος βαρβαρῳ βοᾳ. The critics who have considered this last scene of the cantata ridiculous, have not attended either to human nature or to the customs of the Persians, as Stan. quotes them from Herod. ix. 24, and Curtius iii. 12.

Leader of the Chorus. I have here adopted Lin.’s view, that the Leader of the Chorus here addresses the whole body; and, for the sake of symmetry, have repeated the couplet in the Antistrophe. No violence is thus done to the meaning of ἐκπεύθου. Another way is, with Pal., to put the line into the mouth of Xerxes—“Cry out and ask me!”

I have carefully retained the original phraseology here, as being characteristic of the Greek tragedians, perhaps of the maritime propensities of the Athenians. See in Seven against Thebes, p. 286 above, and Chœophoræ, p. 112, Strophe VII. Euripides, in Iphig. Aul. 131, applies the same verb to the lower extremities, making Agamemnon say to his old servant ερέσσον σὸν πόδα—as if one of our jolly tars should say in his pleasant slang, “Come along, my boy, put the oars to your old hull, and move off!”

I should be most happy for the sake of Æschylus, and my translation, to think there was nothing in the ἁβροβάται. of this passage but the natural expression of grief so simply given in the scriptural narrative, I Kings xxi. 27; and in that stanza of one of Mr. Tennyson’s most beautiful poems—

But there is more in ἁβρός than mere gentleness, and to the Greek ear it would no doubt speak of the general luxuriance and effeminacy of the Persian manners. To put such an allusion into the mouth of Xerxes on the present occasion is no doubt in the worst possible taste; but the Greeks were too intensely national in their feelings to take a curious account of such matters.

[End of Notes]

LIST OF EDITIONS,
COMMENTARIES, AND TRANSLATIONS
USED BY THE TRANSLATOR

Editions of the whole Plays.

Aldus: Venet, 1518.

Victorius: ex officina Stephani; 1557.

Foulis: Glasguæ; 1746.

Schütz: 2 vols. Oxon.; 1810.

Butler: Cantab.; 1809-16, ex editione Stanleii; 4 vols. 4to.

Wellauer: cum. Lexico. Lipsiæ; 1823-31.

Scholefield: Cantab.; 1828.

Paley: Cantab.; 1844-47. 2 vols. 8vo.

Editions of the Separate Plays.

THE AGAMEMNON.

Blomfield: Cantab.; 1822.

Kennedy (with an English version, and Voss, German one). Dublin; 1829.

Klausen: Gothæ et Erfordiæ; 1833.

Peile. London: Murray; 1839.

Connington (with an English poetical version). London; 1848.

Franz: with the Choephoræ and the Eumenides, and a German metrical translation. Leipzig; 1849.

CHOEPHORÆ.

Schwenk: Trajecti ad Rhenum; 1819.

Klausen: Gothæ et Erfordiæ; 1835.

Peile. London: Murray; 1844.

EUMENIDES.

K. O. Müller (with a German translation). Göttingen; 1833: and Anhang; 1834.

Linwood: Oxon.; 1844.

PROMETHEUS.

Bothe: Lipsiæ; 1830.

G. C. W. Schneider. Weimar; 1834.

Schoemann (with a German translation). Greifswald; 1844.

THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES.

Blomfield. Cantab.; 1817.

G. C. W. Schneider. Weimar; 1834.

Griffith. Oxford.

THE PERSIANS.

Blomfield. Cantab; 1815.

G. C. W. Schneider. Weimar; 1837.

Commentaries, Dissertations, Monograms, &c.

Apparatus Criticus et Exegeticus in Æschyli tragædias; continens Stanleii commentarium, Abreschii animadersiones, et Reisigii emendationes in Prometheum. 2 vols. 8vo. Halis Saxonum; 1832.

Linwood: lexicon to Æschylus, 2nd edition. London; 1847.

Blümner: Weber die Idee des Schicksals in den Tragoedien des Æschylus. Leipzig; 1814.

Welcker: Die Æschyleische Trilogie. Darmstadt; 1824.

Hermanni Opuscula: 6 vols. 8vo., Latin and German. Leipzig; 1827-35.

Unger: Thebana Paradoxa. Halis; 1839.

Klausen: Theologoumena Æschyli. Berolini; 1829.

Toepelmann: Commentatio de Æschyli Prometheo (with a German translation). Lipsiæ; 1829.

B. G. Weiske: Prometheus und sein Mythenkreis. Leipzig; 1842.

Schoemann: Vindiciæ Jovis Æeschylei. Gryphiswaldiæ; 1846.

Translations.

Potter: English verse, 4to. Norwich; 1777.

Anon.: English prose (marked in my notes E. P. Oxon), 3rd edition. Oxford; 1840.

Droysen: German verse, 2nd edition. Berlin; 1842.

T. A. Buckley: English prose. London: 1849.

Wilhelm von Humboldt: Agamemnon metrisch übersetzt. Leipzig; 1816.

Symmons: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1824.

Harford: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1831.

Th. Medwyn: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1832.

Sewell: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1846.

Schoemann: die Eumeniden, German verse. Greifswald; 1845.

Th. Medwyn: the Prometheus, in English verse. London; 1832.

Prowett: the Prometheus, in English verse. Cambridge; 1846.

Swayne: the Prometheus, in English verse. London; 1846.

C. P. Conz: die Perser, and die Sieben vor Tüebae. Tübingen; 1817.

FOOTNOTES

FOOTNOTES TO THE PREFACE

Life, Vol. I. p. 192.

Southey requested a Frenchman ambitious of translating his Roderick, to do so in prose, not because he preferred that method in general, but because he believed that “poetry of the higher order is as impossible in French, as it is in Chinese!”—Life, Vol. IV. p. 100.

Life, Vol. III. p. 44.

Southey—Preface to A Vision of Judgment.

As for Klopstock’s Odes, written mostly in classical metres, Zelter, the Berlin musician, said significantly that, when reading them, he felt as if he were eating stones!—See Briefwechsel mit Goethe.

As in the conclusion of the Agamemnon, when the passion of the interested parties has wrought itself up to a climax. So in the passionate dialogue between Eteocles and Polynices, in Eurip. Phœnis. 591. The use of the Trochees in these passages is thus precisely the same as that of the Anapæsts in the finale of the Prometheus. In the Persians, they serve to give an increased dignity to the person of Atossa, and the Shade of the royal Darius.

“Take our blank verse for all in all, in all its gradations from the elaborate rhythm of Milton, down to its lowest structure in the early dramatists, and I believe that there is no measure comparable to it, either in our own or in any other language, for might and majesty, flexibility and compass.”—Southey, Preface to the Vision of Judgment. What Bulwer says to the contrary (Athens and the Athenians, vol. II. p. 43), was crudely thought, or idly spoken, and unworthy of so great a genius.

Eumenides, § 16.

See Aristides and the musical writers; also Dionysius. Consider, also, what a solemnity Plutarch attributes to the ἐμβατηριος παιων of the Spartans (Lycurg. 22), which, of course, was either Dactylic or Anapæstic verse. Altogether, there can be no greater mistake than to imagine that our Dactylic and Anapæstic verse are the æsthetical equivalents of the ancient measures from which their names are borrowed. They are, in many parts of my translation, rather the equivalent of Dochmiac verse; and this, in obedience to the uniform practice of our highest poets, in passages of high passion and excitement.

Mitchell (Aristoph. Ran. v. 1083) has remarked, with justice, that Æschylus is particularly fond of this verse. I was prevented from using it so often as might have been desirable in the choric odes, from having made it the representative of the Anapæsts.

On the Dochmiacs, Ionic a minori, and other rhythmical details, the reader will find occasional observations in the Notes; and those who are curious in those matters will find my views on some points more fully stated in Classical Museum, No. III. p. 338; No. XIII. p. 319, and No. XXII. p. 432. The Dochmiac verse was, in fact, equivalent to a bar of 9/8 in modern music.—See Apel’s Metrik.

The corrupt state of the Æschylean text is no doubt to be attributed mainly to the rhetorical taste which, in the ages of the decadence, prevailed so long at Rome, Athens, Alexandria, and Byzantium, and which naturally directed the attention of transcribers to the text of Euripides, the great master of tongue-fence and the model-poet of the schools.—See Quinctil. X. 1.

FOOTNOTES TO ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF THE GREEK TRAGEDY

There is a prevalent idea that the modern Greek language, or Romaic, as it is called, is a different language from the ancient Greek, pretty much in the same way that Italian is different from Latin. But this is a gross mistake. Greek was and is one unbroken living language, and ought to be taught as such.

Whiston, Article Tragedy in Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities, Second Edition; and Donaldson in the Greek Theatre, Sixth Edition. London: 1849. P. 30.

Γενομένη ἀπ ἀρχῆς ἀυτοσχεδιαστικὴ ἡ τραγῳδία ἀπὸ τῶν ἐξαρχόντων τὸν διθύραμβον κατὰ μικρον ἠυξήθη.—Aristot. poet. 4.—Compare the words of the old Iambic poet Archilochus, given by Athenaeus (XIV. p. 628)—“I know well how to dance the Dithyramb when the wine thunders dizzily through my brain!” The word Dithyramb, according to the best etymology which has come in my way (Donaldson & Hartung), means the revel of the god.

Αρίον τὸν Μηθυμναῖον πρῶτον ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν ποιήσαντα τε καὶ ὀνομάσαντα και διδάξαντα τὸν διθύραμβον ἐν Κορίνθῳ.—Herod. I. 23. Compare Suidas in voce Arion, and Schol. Pindar., Olymp. XIII. 25.

Διθύραμβος (ο)ς ᾖν κύκλιος χορός.—Schol., Pindar, as above.

χορὸς ᾿εστὼς κυκλικῶς.—Tzetzes. Proleg. to Lycophron.

Hartung, on the Dithyramb.—Classical Museum, No. XVIII. p. 373. Mure’s literature of ancient Greece.—Vol. III., p. 85.

The number fifty is mentioned in the Epigram of Simonides, beginning ἠρχεν Αδείμαντος, in the above-mentioned prologue of Tzetzes, and in Pollux, Lib. iv., 15, who says that this number of the Chorus was used even by Æschylus up to the time when the Eumenides was represented. The number twelve is commonly mentioned by other authorities as having been used by Æschylus, while Sophocles is said to have increased it to fifteen, which afterwards became the standard number. Müller (Eumenides) ingeniously supposes that the tragic poets, so long as the exhibition by tetralogies lasted, got the original number of fifty from the public authorities, and divided it among the different pieces of the tetralogy. Blomfield’s notion (Preface to the Persae) that the Chorus to the Eumenides consisted of only three persons, though a kind word has been said in its favour lately (Mason in Smith’s Dict. of Antiq. voce Chorus), deserves, in my opinion, not a moment’s consideration, either on philological or æsthetical grounds. I may mention here further, for the sake of those to whom these matters are strange, that the Chorus holds communication with the other characters in a Greek play generally by means of its Coryphaeus or Leader, which is the reason why it is often addressed in the singular and not in the plural number.

Vit. Philos. III. 34. It will be observed that, if a third actor appears on the stage in some parts of the Orestean trilogy, this is to be accounted for by the supposition that, in his later plays, the poet adopted the improvements which his young rival had first introduced. The number of actors here spoken of does not, of course, take into account mutes or supernumeraries, such as we find in great numbers in the Eumenides, and more or less almost in every extant piece of Æschylus.

Poetics, c. xiii.

Wilson, Vol. I. p. xxvi.

Twining; but the meaning of the Greek is disputed.

“ἡ μελοποίια, μέγιστον τῶν ἡδυσμάτων.”—Poetics, c. vi. The success of the modern Italian opera in England, proves this in a style of which Aristotle could have had no conception.

The position of the old Theban senators, who form the Chorus in this play, has called forth not a little learned gladiatorship lately; Böckh (whose opinion on all such matters is entitled to the profoundest respect) maintaining that the Chorus is the impersonated wisdom of the play as conceived in the poet’s mind, while some of his critics (Dyer in Class. Mus. Vol. II. p. 69) represent them as a pack of cowardly sneaking Thebans, whom it was the express object of the poet to make ridiculous. This latter opinion is no more tenable than it would be to say that it was the object of Æschylus to make his Chorus of old men in that noted scene of the Agamemnon ridiculous; but so much truth there certainly is in it, that from the inherent defect of structure in the Greek tragedy, consisting in the constant presence of the Chorus in the double capacity of impartial moralizers and actors after a sort, there could not but arise this awkwardness to the poet that, while he always contrived to make them speak wisely, he sometimes could not prevent them from acting weakly, and even contemptibly.

On the dramatic imbecility of Euripides, see my article in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. XLVIII. His success as a dramatist is the strongest possible proof of the undramatic nature of the stage for which he wrote.