THE PERSIANS AND OTHER PLAYS

AESCHYLUS (born at Eleusis, near Athens, c. 525 BC; died at Gela, Sicily, 456 BC) was the dramatist who first made Athenian tragedy one of the world’s great art forms, though in his epitaph he (or his family) preferred that he should be remembered as one of those who fought the Persians at Marathon. In a career of more than forty years he wrote about eighty plays, and two-thirds of his productions won first prize in the City Dionysia tragic competition. Seven plays attributed to him have survived, one of which – Prometheus Bound – may actually be by his son. Aeschylus, who visited Syracuse more than once at the invitation of Hieron I, was recognized as a classic writer soon after his death, and special privileges were decreed for his plays.

ALAN H. SOMMERSTEIN has been Professor of Greek at the University of Nottingham since 1988. He has written or edited more than thirty books on Ancient Greek language and literature, especially tragic and comic drama, including Aeschylean Tragedy (1996), Greek Drama and Dramatists (2002), and a complete edition of the comedies of Aristophanes with translation and commentary (1980–2003). For Penguin Classics he has also translated six plays by Aristophanes in the volumes Lysistrata and Other Plays (2002) and The Birds and Other Plays (1978).

AESCHYLUS

The Persians and
Other Plays

The Persians
Seven Against Thebes
The Suppliants
Prometheus Bound

Translated with an Introduction by
ALAN H. SOMMERSTEIN

PENGUIN BOOKS

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This edition first published in Penguin Classics 2009

Translation and editorial material copyright © Alan H. Sommerstein, 2009

All rights reserved

The moral right of the translator and editor has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-195589-6

Contents

Preface

Chronology

General Introduction

Further Reading

A Note on the Translation

Preface to The Persians

THE PERSIANS

THE PERSIAN WAR TETRALOGY

Preface to Seven Against Thebes

SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

THE THEBAN TETRALOGY

Preface to The Suppliants

THE SUPPLIANTS

THE DANAID TETRALOGY

Preface to Prometheus Bound

PROMETHEUS BOUND

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

Notes

Preface

This book is based on my three-volume edition with translation of the plays and fragments of Aeschylus in the Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press in 2008; I am most grateful both to the Trustees of the Press and to Penguin Books for making it possible for me to bring out my translation of four of the seven surviving plays (together with the fragments of other plays which are known, or which can be assumed with reasonable confidence, to have been produced on the same occasions) in a form more likely to appeal to a broader and less specialized readership. The translation itself is identical with that which appeared in the Loeb volumes. May it help to spread the understanding and appreciation of one who was both a great dramatist and a great democrat.

A.H.S.

Chronology

Dates given in the form 525/4, 508/7 etc. refer to the Athenian calendar year, which began and ended in the summer. Surviving plays of Aeschylus are shown in capitals.

Year BC

525/4 Traditional date of Aeschylus’ birth at Eleusis, west of Athens

514 Hipparchus, brother of the autocrat (‘tyrant’) Hippias, assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogeiton

510 Hippias expelled with Spartan aid

508/7 Cleisthenes establishes democracy at Athens

499 (?) Aeschylus’ first tragic production

490 First Persian invasion; battle of Marathon, in which Aeschylus takes part and his brother Cynegeirus is killed

485/4 Aeschylus wins the tragic competition for the first time

483–480 Themistocles creates great Athenian navy

480 Second Persian invasion, and sack of Athens; battles of Thermopylae (land), Artemisium (sea) and Salamis (sea); Xerxes leaves Mardonius to winter in Greece. Carthaginian offensive in Sicily defeated by Gelon of Syracuse at Himera

479 Persians defeated at Plataea (land) and off Mycale in Asia Minor (sea), and lose control of the Asian Greeks

479/8 Xanthippus (Pericles’ father) captures Sestos on the Hellespont; brings Xerxes’ bridge-cables to Athens

478/7 Foundation of Athenian-led alliance (often called the Delian League) comprising most Greek states of the northern and eastern Aegean and its islands

477/6 Phrynichus wins tragic competition with Themistocles as his sponsor (choregos), probably with a play or plays about the Persian War

473 (?) Death of Phrynichus

473/2 Aeschylus victorious with Phineus, THE PERSIANS, Glaucus of Potniae and Prometheus the Fire-Bearer; Pericles, aged twenty-three, is his choregos

c. 470 Themistocles ostracized (exiled without charge by popular vote). Aeschylus visits Sicily at invitation of Hieron of Syracuse (Gelon’s brother); produces The Women of Aetna there, and restages The Persians (and perhaps Glaucus of Potniae as well?)

469/8 Sophocles victorious for first time, perhaps defeating Aeschylus

468/7 Aeschylus victorious with Laius, Oedipus, SEVEN AGAINST THEBES and The Sphinx (Sophocles not competing)

464/3 (?) Aeschylus defeats Sophocles with The Egyptians, THE SUPPLIANTS, The Danaids and Amymone.

462/1 After Cimon’s army, sent to aid Sparta against rebellious subjects, is dismissed by the Spartans, Athens ends its alliance with Sparta and makes a new one with Sparta’s enemy Argos. Cimon is ostracized. Ephialtes carries laws drastically reducing constraints on powers of democratic institutions but is assassinated shortly thereafter; Pericles begins to emerge as leading figure in his place

460 Athens makes alliance with Megara, which is already at war with Sparta’s ally Corinth

459 Outbreak of open war with Sparta and her allies (which lasts, with intervals, until 446). Major expedition to Cyprus (against Persians) diverted to Egypt, where Athenians and allies will be engaged for five years

459/8 (winter) State funeral for between fifteen hundred and two thousand Athenians (out of a total citizen population unlikely to have exceeded two hundred thousand) killed in year’s fighting in Europe, Asia and Africa

459/8 (spring) Aeschylus wins the last of his thirteen lifetime first prizes with the Oresteia (AGAMEMNON, THE LIBATION-BEARERS, THE EUMENIDES and Proteus)

456/5 Death of Aeschylus at Gela (Sicily)

456/5 Euripides’ first production

432/1 Aeschylus’ son Euphorion wins one of several first prizes he gained by producing his father’s plays (though some of them may have been his own), defeating Sophocles and Euripides (Euripides’ production included Medea); the latest plausible date for the production of PROMETHEUS BOUND and Prometheus Unbound. Outbreak of Peloponnesian War

General Introduction

Aeschylus is traditionally thought to have been born in 525/4 BC, at Eleusis in western Attica, a town famous as the home of the immensely popular Mystery cult of Demeter and Persephone. His father, Euphorion, is reported to have been of aristocratic birth, and it is at any rate certain that in later years the family followed the lifestyle of the leisured class: about a dozen surviving vase inscriptions, datable in or around the 440s, proclaim, in the traditional manner of Greek upper-class homoeroticism, the beauty of Aeschylus’ younger son Euaeon.

Aeschylus made his debut in the tragic competition at the annual City Dionysia festival sometime between 499 and 496. Three outstanding practitioners, Pratinas, Choerilus and Phrynichus, were already active, and the newcomer was not to win first prize for another twelve or fifteen years. It is uncertain whether any plays from this early period of his activity were preserved for posterity to read: of the work of Phrynichus, far more popular at the time, only some late plays seem to have survived into later generations. Perhaps it was not until a few years later, possibly in the early or middle 480s, that the scripts of tragic dramas began to be copied and preserved.

Before then, and before Aeschylus at last reached the top rank of his profession in 484, when he won the City Dionysia tragic competition for the first time, had come what he himself seems to have regarded as the defining event of his life: the defeat of the Persians at the battle of Marathon in 490. Aeschylus fought in the battle, and one of the 192 Athenian dead was his brother: ‘In this struggle… Cynegeirus son of Euphorion seized hold of an enemy ship by the sternpost, and fell when his hand was severed by an axe’ (Herodotus, Histories 6.114). Aeschylus is also reported to have taken part in the battles of Salamis and Plataea in 480/79; this is plausible enough, since Athens put forth its maximum effort in both campaigns, and his presence at Salamis is confirmed by a contemporary who knew him personally, Ion of Chios. This gives his account of the battle in The Persians, produced eight years later, a unique status: there is perhaps no other battle in ancient history of which we possess a substantial eyewitness account written down so soon after the event for the ears of an audience most of whom had been eyewitnesses themselves.

From 484 to the end of his career, Aeschylus won first prize thirteen times in all;[1] especially after the death of Phrynichus, he may have been victorious almost every time he competed. By now tragedy was becoming prestigious enough for an embryo reading public to have come into existence, perhaps at this stage mainly confined to other literary artists in Athens and elsewhere, so that some scripts of plays from this period survived for later generations. We cannot, however, identify the plays concerned, since with one possible exception[2] we have no information that could enable us to date, even approximately, any particular Aeschylean play produced before 472.

It may well have been in 473 that Phrynichus died, after a career of some forty years; at any rate Aeschylus, feeling himself Phrynichus’ successor, began his Persians, produced in the spring of 472, with a salute to Phrynichus’ memory in the form of a near-quotation of the opening line of his play of a few years earlier on the same theme. This production by Aeschylus, financed by the young Pericles, won first prize.

There is ancient evidence, going back to Eratosthenes (third century BC), that The Persians was produced again at Syracuse under the auspices of its ruler Hieron; there is reason to believe that this visit took place in 470 and that it also featured the production of The Women of Aetna. This was the year when Hieron, on winning the chariot race at the Pythian Games, caused his name to be proclaimed not as ‘Hieron of Syracuse’ but as ‘Hieron of Aetna’ – Aetna being the name (taken from that of the volcano) he had given to the city of Catana (now Catania) when he had refounded and repeopled it five or six years before. The lyric poet Pindar, celebrating Hieron’s success in the ode now known as the First Pythian, recalled the victories achieved over the Persians by Athens at Salamis and by Sparta at Plataea and linked them with the almost simultaneous victory of Hieron and his brother Gelon over the Carthaginians at Himera as having ‘pulled Greece back from grievous servitude’.[3] It would chime very well with this publicity campaign on Hieron’s part if he also sponsored productions, by the greatest dramatist of the day, of one play (maybe two) celebrating the recent victories over the ‘barbarians’[4] and another providing the city of Aetna with the prestige of a mythological past. Perhaps one production was put on at Syracuse and the other at Aetna itself.

At about the same time, a new tragic dramatist, Sophocles, nearly thirty years younger than Aeschylus, was making his debut. Plutarch, in his life of Cimon (8.8–9), tells a story set at the City Dionysia of 468. Sophocles, he says, was putting on his first production; there were quarrels and fierce partisanship among the spectators; the presiding magistrate, instead of selecting judges for the contest by lot as was usual, invited the ten generals (one of whom was Cimon) to act as judges, and they awarded the first prize to Sophocles. Plutarch implies, and the ancient Life of Aeschylus explicitly states, that Aeschylus was one of the defeated competitors. There is independent evidence that Sophocles won his first victory in 468, but the participation of Aeschylus in that contest may be a later ‘improvement’ of the story, as may be the claim that this was Sophocles’ first production: certainly Plutarch does not inspire our confidence here when he ascribes Aeschylus’ final departure from Athens (which did not occur till a decade later) to pique at this defeat! At any rate, in the following year, 467, Aeschylus won first prize with Laius, Oedipus, Seven Against Thebes and The Sphinx, defeating two sons of famous fathers, Aristias son of Pratinas (who competed with his father’s plays, Pratinas having presumably died not long before) and Polyphrasmon son of Phrynichus; and in an uncertain year, probably also in the 460s, he won with The Egyptians, The Suppliants, The Danaids and Amymone,[5] defeating Sophocles and Mesatus. One play has survived from each of these two productions.

In the late 460s, substantial alterations seem to have been made both in the rules of the dramatic competition and in the physical environment in which it took place (see below, pp. xviii–xix), including the introduction of a third speaking actor.[6] These changes are reflected in the Oresteia, produced in 458, and also in Prometheus Bound, whether that is a late play of Aeschylus or a work of another hand falsely ascribed to him.

The Oresteia, which won first prize at the City Dionysia in the spring of 458, appears to have been Aeschylus’ last production in Athens; it is also the only connected suite of Aeschylean plays to survive complete.[7] Not long afterwards he again travelled to Sicily. As he was never to return, legends later grew up about his having become estranged from his Athenian public, but no credence need be given to these. We do not know who invited him to Sicily (Hieron was now dead), nor how many cities he visited, nor what plays he produced, nor what plays he had prepared for production at Athens after his anticipated return; only that he died and was buried at Gela in 456/5. An epitaph is preserved which the ancient biographer of Aeschylus ascribes to ‘the people of Gela’, though another tradition held it to be by Aeschylus himself. It may be translated thus:

At Gela, rich in wheat, he died, and lies beneath this stone:

Aeschylus the Athenian, son of Euphorion.

His valour, tried and proved, the mead of Marathon can tell,

The long-haired Persian also, who knows it all too well.

One is entitled to be sceptical about the authenticity of ancient poets’ epitaphs (all the more so when they are said to have written them themselves), but in this case there is cause to be sceptical about scepticism. It is hard to believe that anyone at a later date would have concocted an epitaph for Aeschylus that made not even the most distant allusion to his art.[8] Aeschylus, to be sure, can hardly have himself composed an epitaph that specified the place of his death; but it will probably have been commissioned by the Geloans from a member of his family, and its wording will have been in accordance with what his family knew had meant most to him, commemorating him not as a poet but as a loyal and courageous Athenian who had fought that Athens might still be free.

Scepticism is rather more in order about a number of other anecdotes, mostly undated, that figure in Aeschylus’ ancient biography. Only one of these is worth recording here, mainly because of its early attestation; it is referred to casually by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics (1111a8–10) as if already well known: ‘[The doer of an act] may not realize what he is doing; as people say they were “carried away while speaking”, or “did not know it was a secret” (as in the case of Aeschylus and the Mysteries).’ This implies that Aeschylus was at some time accused, formally or informally, of having divulged secrets, connected with the Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis, that were supposed to be concealed from all except initiates of the cult. An ancient commentator on Aristotle specifies five plays (none of which have survived) in which Aeschylus ‘seems’ to have done this, and quotes from Aristotle’s contemporary Heracleides Ponticus a sensational story of how Aeschylus narrowly escaped being put to death on stage for revealing such secrets, took refuge at the altar of Dionysus, and was eventually put on trial and acquitted, ‘mainly because of what he had done in the battle of Marathon’.

Eleusis was both Aeschylus’ home town and the home of the Mysteries, and Aristophanes in The Frogs exploits this connection to good effect: the Chorus of the play is composed of initiates enjoying a blissful afterlife in a privileged region of Hades, and Aeschylus’ prayer before his contest with Euripides is ‘Demeter who nurtured my mind, may I be worthy of thy Mysteries’ (Frogs 886–7). Some of the imagery in the Oresteia has been thought, probably rightly, to derive from this cult,[9] though none of it is signalled as such (neither the Mysteries nor Eleusis nor even Demeter is mentioned anywhere in the trilogy), and none of it could reasonably be regarded as illicit divulgation, since no non-initiate could even be aware of its connotations. To judge by what Aristotle’s commentator says about the five other plays, their sole connection with the Mysteries, so far as later scholars could discover, consisted in some more than passing references to Demeter.

There is thus no reason to believe that Aeschylus was guilty of what he is said to have been accused of. It does not follow, however, that the story of the accusation is pure legend. It has been well said that ‘the adage that there is no smoke without fire is not applicable to the Athenian law courts’.[10] There is good reason to believe that Aeschylus was a politically committed dramatist and a supporter successively of Themistocles, Ephialtes and Pericles;[11] in the tense atmosphere of, say, the middle and late 460s, when Ephialtes and Pericles were seeking to undermine the ascendancy of Cimon through prosecutions,[12] it is not inconceivable that Cimon or one of his associates tried to attack his rivals indirectly through a prosecution of a man in the public eye who was well known to be an associate of theirs, as twenty-five or thirty years later Pericles was attacked through prosecutions of friends of his who were well known to the public but not active in politics (the sculptor Pheidias, the philosopher Anaxagoras, Pericles’ mistress Aspasia).[13] If so, Aeschylus was acquitted; had he been convicted, the penalty would certainly have been death, as it was in later cases in which similar charges were brought. It will not have taken long for the story to acquire the legendary embroidery found in later accounts.

Various ancient sources preserve sayings ascribed to Aeschylus, of varying degrees of credibility. The best attested is one that has no connection with his art: ‘When Aeschylus was watching a boxing contest at the Isthmian Games, and the spectators shouted out when one of the boxers was hit, he nudged Ion of Chios and said “Do you see what training does? The man who was struck is silent, and the spectators cry out!” ’ (Plutarch, Moralia 79e). Ion was a versatile fifth-century writer (of tragedy, among much else) who published a collection of reminiscences of famous people he had met; he was probably born in the late 480s and first visited Athens in the 460s.[14] Our story implies that he and Aeschylus were visiting the Isthmian Games together, which suggests that they had become close friends.

The other sayings attributed to Aeschylus all relate to his art. Some of them are commonplaces that might fit any poet, but two have a degree of individuality. One tells of his polite refusal to compose a paean for the people of Delphi:

He said that there already existed an excellent one composed by Tynnichus, and that to put one of his own beside it would be like comparing a modern cult statue with an ancient one. The old images, crudely made as they were, were reckoned divine; the new ones, made with great artistry, were admired but did not give the same impression of divinity (Porphyry, On Abstinence 2.18).

The other is the only substantive comment he is recorded as having made on his tragedies: that they were ‘slices of fish taken from the great banquets of Homer’ (Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 8.347d). Both of these may perhaps likewise come from Ion of Chios. A small point in favour of their authenticity is that they share a tone of good-humoured self-deprecation. We do not know whether Aeschylus ever actually wrote paeans or other free-standing lyric poems, but in the Hellenistic period there circulated under his name at least two elegiac epitaphs and also a longer elegy in honour of those who died at Marathon. Different sources give figures ranging from seventy to ninety for the number of plays that Aeschylus composed. We know of eighty titles of plays attributed to him. It is sometimes uncertain whether two of these titles may not really be alternative names for the same play, and there is some evidence that there were one or two other Aeschylean plays whose titles happen not to be mentioned in our sources; all things considered, there appear to have been seventy-seven or seventy-eight plays known to scholars of the Hellenistic age which they regarded as the work of Aeschylus.[15] One or two of these, notably The Women of Aetna, may never have been produced at Athens; the remaining seventy-six would be enough to make up nineteen four-play productions to compete at the City Dionysia festival, and, as we would expect from the regular practice of that competition (see below, p. xix), precisely nineteen out of the seventy-six appear to have been satyr plays and the remainder tragedies (that is, serious dramas, not necessarily ending in disaster).

THEATRE, PERFORMANCE,
COMPETITION

Aeschylus’ earlier plays, including The Persians, Seven Against Thebes and The Suppliants, were performed under very simple conditions. The performing area consisted mainly of a dance floor (orchestra) large enough to accommodate comfortably the chorus (then consisting of twelve members, who normally marched and danced in a rectangular formation), the two actors playing individual roles, and any mute extras who might be needed. Somewhere in, or at the edge of, the orchestra there seems to have been an elevated mound, identified in The Persians as the tomb of Darius, in the other two plays as a sanctuary. The impression of an indoor scene could be given, when necessary, by setting out furniture, as apparently at the beginning of The Persians and also, we are told, in an earlier play by Phrynichus on the same subject. At each side of the orchestra was a passage by which performers could enter and leave.

In Prometheus Bound there are three actors (though only in the opening scene), and the theatrical arrangements are significantly more elaborate – though this does not in itself prove that the play is post-Aeschylean, since most if not all of the innovations are already to be found in the Oresteia. Some of the details are obscure and controversial, especially as regards the movements of the Chorus and the final cataclysm, but the evidence of many other plays makes the essentials clear. There was now a building (skene) behind the orchestra, which could be decorated with painted panels so as to represent a palace, a private house, a cave and so on; in Prometheus it represents the cliff to which Prometheus is bound. There were also two ‘special effects’ devices; one of these, the ekkyklema for the display of indoor scenes, is probably not used in Prometheus, but the other, the mechane, or flying-machine (also called, significantly, the geranos, or ‘crane’), was certainly used for the arrival and departure of Oceanus on his ‘four-legged bird’.

The performers, all of whom were male,[16] were so attired that no part of their bodies was visible: they wore headpieces (combinations of masks and wigs) suited to the sex, status, age and so on of the characters they were impersonating, and close-fitting bodysuits over which they put on appropriate costumes. Aeschylus had, at least in later generations, a reputation for grandeur in costuming (Aristophanes, Frogs 1060–2), but he was quite capable of dressing a king in rags if the situation so demanded, as in the case of Xerxes.

It was regular in the fifth century for each dramatist competing for the tragic prize at the City Dionysia to produce four plays, normally three tragedies followed by a satyr drama, and Aeschylus and his contemporaries seem often to have composed for this purpose connected ‘tetralogies’ consisting of three tragedies presenting successive episodes of a single story and a satyr drama based on another part of the same or a very closely related myth. Thus in addition to the Oresteia, on the story of the murder of Agamemnon and the revenge taken by his son Orestes, Aeschylus composed a tetralogy based on the Iliad, one based on the Odyssey and at least eight others. Two of the four plays in this volume, Seven Against Thebes and The Suppliants, are known to have formed part of such tetralogies; Seven Against Thebes was the third play of its suite and therefore the last in the sequence of tragedies, but The Suppliants came either first or second in its production, so that its ending is more like the end of an episode in a serial than the end of a complete drama. The three plays produced with The Persians had, on the face of it, no connection in plot or theme either with The Persians or with each other, but it is arguable that at least two of them, perhaps all three, looked forward to the great recent conflict to which the central play was devoted. With only one play surviving complete from each of these three productions, we cannot hope to capture their full artistic impact, but I have translated the surviving fragments of the lost plays from these productions and tried to give some idea of what else they are likely to have contained.

Many passages in Prometheus Bound make predictions, promises or threats about the future, and the surviving fragments of Prometheus Unbound show that most if not all of what the former play had foreshadowed came to pass in the latter; moreover the two plays show many similarities of style and technique. It is thus almost certain that they were produced together, but there are no plausible candidates for the remaining slots in a connected tetralogy.[17] I have translated the fragments, and discussed the likely content, of Prometheus Unbound. Thus this volume contains altogether four complete plays and the fragments of ten others.[18]

AESCHYLUS’ FAMILY AND HIS
LATER REPUTATION

Aeschylus had two sons, Euphorion and Euaeon, both of whom themselves became tragic poets; Euphorion may indeed have been the real author of some of the plays that came to be attributed to his father (see below, pp. 159–60). The family’s professional tradition was thereafter continued by Aeschylus’ nephew Philocles (who defeated Sophocles when the latter produced Oedipus the King) and his descendants; one of these, Astydamas (II), was probably the most successful tragic dramatist of the mid-fourth century, and another, also named Astydamas (III), was a leading member of the Athenian actors’ guild as late as 278/7.

After Aeschylus’ death, a state decree was passed permitting anyone who wished to do so to produce his plays at the major dramatic festivals in competition with the works of living authors, and he may also, by the late fifth century, have become a school text.[19] Before the fourth century was far advanced, however, Aeschylus had largely lost his popularity both in the theatre and with readers,[20] though he was still regarded as a classic, and when in the 330s an official text of the major Athenian tragic poets was deposited in the state archives, Aeschylus was included along with Sophocles and Euripides.

In subsequent centuries Aeschylus continued to be recognized as a major author but more as a pioneer than a supreme master, Sophocles and especially Euripides being far more popular; a typical judgement is that of the first-century Roman rhetorician and educationist Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria 10.1.66), who described Aeschylus as ‘elevated, solemn and grandiloquent – sometimes even to a fault – but on the whole primitive and uncouth’. Papyrus fragments show that a wide range of Aeschylean plays was still being read in Egypt towards the end of the second century AD, but it is surely significant that almost all those we have, outside of the seven plays that survive complete, seem to come from one man’s library in Oxyrhynchus. Two centuries later there can have been few collections like his in existence anywhere, and only the seven plays – the four in this volume, and the three tragedies of the Oresteia – survived into the early Middle Ages, and thence to our own time.

NOTES

1.   Each production comprised four plays, so that fifty-two of Aeschylus’ plays (perhaps about two-thirds of his total output) formed part of victorious productions.

2.   This is the suite of plays (The Myrmidons, The Nereids and The Phrygians) based on the Iliad. These plays have often been thought to have inspired a series of vase paintings showing Achilles sitting muffled up in his cloak, as he is known to have done in at least one of the three plays. The paintings themselves cannot be precisely dated, but they tend to suggest that this was a fairly early production; indeed, it may well have been with this audacious series of dramas, aspiring to rival Homer himself, that Aeschylus won his first victory in 484.

3.   See pp. 5–6, 49–52 on the possibility that Aeschylus worked into one of his other plays of 472, Glaucus of Potniae, a prophetic reference to the victory of Himera; if this is correct, of course, it is an almost inevitable inference that on this visit to Sicily Aeschylus produced Glaucus of Potniae too.

4.   In an ancient Greek context ‘barbarian’ (barbaros) means ‘non-Greek’ or ‘non-Greek-speaking’.

5.   On the questions of the dating and sequence of the Danaid plays, both of which are disputed, see pp. 109–14.

6.   Aristotle in the Poetics (1449a15–17) regards Aeschylus as having been responsible for the introduction, much earlier, of a second speaking actor.

7.   Except for its final part, the satyr drama Proteus. The Oresteia is translated in this series by Robert Fagles, with an introduction and notes by Fagles and W. B. Stanford (1977).

8.   In addition, the epitaph contains a feature of vocabulary (the use of alsos, which normally means ‘grove’ or ‘sacred precinct’, in the sense of ‘level expanse’) which is not found either before or after the fifth century BC and is particularly characteristic of Aeschylus.

9.   See A. M. Bowie, ‘Religion and Politics in Aeschylus’ Oresteia’, Classical Quarterly 43 (1993) pp. 10–31, at pp. 24–26, with references to earlier literature.

10. K. J. Dover, Aristophanes: Clouds (Oxford 1968), p. xx; Aristophanes: Frogs (Oxford 1993), p. 3.

11. See p. 6, and my fuller discussion in Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996), pp. 391–421.

12. See Aristotle, Constitution of Athens 23.2; Plutarch, Cimon 14.3–5.

13. Plutarch, Pericles 31–2.

14. See M. L. West, ‘Ion of Chios’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 32 (1985), pp. 71–8; K. J. Dover, The Greeks and their Legacy (Oxford 1989), pp. 1–12.

15. Some of these may not in fact have been his work; see pp. 159–60; also M. L. West, Studies in Aeschylus (Stuttgart 1990), pp. 51–72, and ‘Iliad and Aethiopis on Stage: Aeschylus and Son’, Classical Quarterly 50 (2000), pp. 338–52.

16. It must often have been the case that the same actor took a male and a female part in the same play; thus in Prometheus Bound the actor who plays Io must earlier have played either Hephaestus or Power.

17. One might think of the satyr play usually referred to as Prometheus the Fire-Kindler, but that was part of the Persians production (see pp. 52–6).

18. These fragmentary remains of otherwise lost plays are of very varying extent. Of Prometheus Unbound we have in all, in Greek or in Cicero’s Latin, some 330 words of text; of The Egyptians, one single word.

19. In Plato’s discussion in the Republic (376c–398b) of the use and abuse of poetry in education, Aeschylus is the only individual poet other than Homer who is named or quoted; he can hardly have entered the school curriculum for the first time in the early fourth century, when he had gone almost completely out of fashion, so he is likely to have done so already in the fifth.

20. Aristotle’s Poetics naturally mentions Aeschylus in its potted history of the tragic genre (1449a 15–18) but otherwise almost ignores him.

Further Reading

GENERAL

G. G. A. Murray, Aeschylus: The Creator of Tragedy (Oxford 1942)

W. B. Stanford, Aeschylus in His Style: A Study in Language and Personality (Dublin 1942)

H. Lloyd-Jones, ‘Zeus in Aeschylus’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 76 (1956), pp. 55–67

A. Lesky, ‘Decision and Responsibility in Aeschylus’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 86 (1966), pp. 78–86; reprinted in E. Segal, ed., Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1983), pp. 13–23

A. J. Podlecki, The Political Background of Aeschylean Tragedy (Ann Arbor 1966)

B. H. Fowler, ‘Aeschylus’ Imagery’, Classica et Mediaevalia 28 (1967 (1971)), pp. 1–74

P. E. Easterling, ‘Presentation of Character in Aeschylus’, Greece and Rome 20 (1973), pp. 3–19

M. Gagarin, Aeschylean Drama (Berkeley 1976)

O. P. Taplin, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus: The Dramatic Use of Exits and Entrances in Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1977)

T. R. Gantz, ‘Divine Guilt in Aischylos’, Classical Quarterly 31 (1981), pp. 18–32

T. G. Rosenmeyer, The Art of Aeschylus (Berkeley 1982)

A. Lesky, Greek Tragic Poetry, trans. M. Dillon (New Haven 1983), pp. 37–114

R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Studies in Aeschylus (Cambridge 1983)

———, ‘Aeschylus’, in P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox, eds, The Cambridge History of Classical Literature I (Cambridge 1985), pp. 281–95 (bibliography, pp. 761–4)

C. J. Herington, Aeschylus (New Haven 1986)

S. Ireland, Aeschylus (Greece and Rome: New Surveys in the Classics 18) (Oxford 1986)

C. Meier, The Political Art of Greek Tragedy, trans. A. Webber (Cambridge 1993), pp. 62–165

D. J. Conacher, Aeschylus: The Earlier Plays and Related Studies (Toronto 1996)

A. H. Sommerstein, Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996)

———, ‘Aeschylus’, in S. Hornblower and A. J. S. Spawforth, eds, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (third edn, Oxford 1996; revised 2003), pp. 26–9

J. Barrett, ‘Aeschylus’, in I. J. F. de Jong et al., eds, Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden 2004), pp. 235–54

S. Saïd, ‘Aeschylean Tragedy’, in J. Gregory, ed., A Companion to Greek Tragedy (Oxford 2005), pp. 215–32

M. L. West, ‘King and Demos in Aeschylus’, in D. L. Cairns and V. Liapis, eds, Dionysalexandros: Essays on Aeschylus and His Fellow Tragedians in Honour of Alexander F. Garvie (Swansea 2006), pp. 31–40

M. Lloyd, ed., Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Aeschylus (Oxford 2007) (an anthology of articles 1960–98, with an introduction by the editor)

THE PERSIANS

Commentaries

H. D. Broadhead (Cambridge 1960)

A. J. Podlecki (second edn, Bristol 1991)

E. M. Hall (Warminster 1996)

Books and Articles

S. M. Adams, ‘Salamis Symphony: The Persae of Aeschylus’, in M. White, ed., Studies in Honour of Gilbert Norwood (Toronto 1952), pp. 46–54; reprinted in E. Segal, ed., Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1983), pp. 34–41

H. D. F. Kitto, Poiesis: Structure and Thought (Cambridge 1966), pp. 74–106

R. P. Winnington-Ingram, ‘Zeus in the Persae’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 93 (1973), pp. 210–19; revised in idem, Studies in Aeschylus (Cambridge 1983), pp. 1–15

W. G. Thalmann, ‘Xerxes’ Rags: Some Problems in Aeschylus’ Persians’, American Journal of Philology 101 (1980), pp. 260–82

A. N. Michelini, Tradition and Dramatic Form in the Persians of Aeschylus (Leiden 1982)

J. F. Lazenby, ‘Aeschylus and Salamis’, Hermes 116 (1988), pp. 168–85

S. Saïd, ‘Tragedy and Reversal: The Example of the Persians’ (originally published in French in 1988), in M. Lloyd, ed., Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Aeschylus (Oxford 2007), pp. 71–92

E. M. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian (Oxford 1989), pp. 62–100

———, ‘Asia Unmanned: Images of Victory in Classical

Athens’, in J. W. Rich and G. Shipley, eds, War and Society in the Greek World (London 1993), pp. 107–33

D. J. Conacher, Aeschylus: The Earlier Plays and Related Studies (Toronto 1996), pp. 3–35

A. H. Sommerstein, Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996), pp. 71–96

C. B. R. Pelling, ‘Aeschylus’ Persae and History’, in idem, ed., Greek Tragedy and the Historian (Oxford 1997), pp. 1–20

A. F. Garvie, ‘Text and Dramatic Interpretation in Persae’, Lexis 17 (1999), pp. 21–40

T. E. H. Harrison, The Emptiness of Asia: Aeschylus’ Persians and the History of the Fifth Century (London 2000)

S. Saïd, ‘Herodotus and Tragedy’, in E. J. Bakker et al., Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden 2002), pp. 117–47

L. McClure, ‘Maternal Authority and Heroic Disgrace in Aeschylus’s Persae’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 136 (2006), pp. 71–97

D. Rosenbloom, Aeschylus: Persians (London 2006)

A. F. Garvie, ‘Greek Tragedy: Text and Context’, in P. J. Finglass et al., eds, Hesperos: Studies… Presented to M. L. West (Oxford 2007), pp. 170–88, esp. 174–9

A. H. Sommerstein, ‘The Persian War Tetralogy of Aeschylus’, in J. Davidson and D. Rosenbloom, eds, Greek Drama IV (London), forthcoming

SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

Commentaries

C. M. Dawson (Englewood Cliffs, 1970); G. O. Hutchinson (Oxford 1985)

Books and Articles

L. Golden, ‘The Character of Eteocles and the Meaning of the Septem’, Classical Philology 59 (1964), pp. 79–89

A. J. Podlecki, ‘The Character of Eteocles in Aeschylus’ Septem’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 95 (1964), pp. 283–99

H. D. Cameron, Studies on the Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus (The Hague 1971)

A. L. Brown, ‘Eteocles and the Chorus in Seven against Thebes’, Phoenix 31 (1977), pp. 300–318

R. P. Winnington-Ingram, ‘Septem contra Thebas’, Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977), pp. 1–45; revised in idem, Studies in Aeschylus (Cambridge 1983), pp. 16–54

W. G. Thalmann, Dramatic Art in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes (New Haven 1978)

P. Vidal-Naquet, ‘The Shields of the Heroes’, in J. P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece, trans. J. Lloyd (Brighton 1981), pp. 120–49

F. I. Zeitlin, Under the Sign of the Shield: Semiotics and Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes (Rome 1982)

A. A. Long, ‘Pro and contra Fratricide: Aeschylus Septem 653–719’, in J. H. Betts et al., eds, Studies in Honour of T.B.L. Webster I (Bristol 1986), pp. 179–89

E. Jackson, ‘The Argument of Septem contra Thebas’, Phoenix 42 (1988), pp. 287–303

D. J. Conacher, Aeschylus: The Earlier Plays and Related Studies (Toronto 1996), pp. 36–74

A. H. Sommerstein, Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996), pp. 97–134

L. Byrne, ‘Fear in the Seven against Thebes’, in S. Deacy and K. F. Pierce, Rape in Antiquity (London 1997), pp. 143–62

E. Stehle, ‘Prayer and Curse in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes’, Classical Philology 100 (2005), pp. 101–22

D. W. Berman, Myth and Culture in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes (Rome 2007)

I. C. Torrance, Aeschylus: Seven against Thebes (London 2007)

N. J. Sewell-Rutter, Guilt by Descent: Moral Inheritance and Decision Making in Greek Tragedy (Oxford 2007)

THE SUPPLIANTS

Commentaries

H. Friis Johansen and E. W. Whittle (Copenhagen 1980)

P. Sandin (1–523 only) (Göteborg 2003 / Lund 2005)

Books and Articles

R. P. Winnington-Ingram, ‘The Danaid Trilogy of Aeschylus’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 81 (1961), pp. 141–52; revised in idem, Studies in Aeschylus (Cambridge 1983), pp. 55–72

H. Lloyd-Jones, ‘The “Supplices” of Aeschylus: The New Date and Old Problems’, Antiquité classique 33 (1964), pp. 356–74

A. F. Garvie, Aeschylus’ Supplices: Play and Trilogy (Cambridge 1969; second edn with addenda, Exeter 2005)

P. Burian, ‘Pelasgus and Politics in Aeschylus’ Danaid Trilogy’, Wiener Studien 8 (1974), pp. 5–14; reprinted in M. Lloyd, ed., Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Aeschylus (Oxford, 2007), pp. 199–210

S. Ireland, ‘The Problem of Motivation in the Supplices of Aeschylus’, Rheinisches Museum 117 (1974), pp. 14–29

T. R. Gantz, ‘Love and Death in the Suppliants of Aeschylus’, Phoenix 32 (1978), pp. 279–87

J. K. Mackinnon, ‘The Reason for the Danaids’ Flight’, Classical Quarterly 28 (1978), pp. 74–82

S. des Bouvrie, Women in Greek Tragedy: An Anthropological Approach (Oxford / Oslo 1990), pp. 147–66

W. Rösler, ‘The End of the Hiketides and Aischylos’ Danaid Trilogy’ (originally published in German in 1993); trans., with an update, in Lloyd, Oxford Readings, pp. 174–98

A. H. Sommerstein, ‘The Beginning and the End of Aeschylus’ Danaid Trilogy’, in B. Zimmermann, ed., Griechischrömische Komödie und Tragödie (Stuttgart 1995), pp. 111–34

———, Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996), pp. 135–68

S. Scullion, ‘Tragic Dates’, Classical Quarterly 52 (2002), pp. 81–101

S. Murnaghan, ‘Women in Groups: Aeschylus’s Suppliants and the Female Choruses of Greek Tragedy’, in V. Pedrick and S. Oberhelman, eds, The Soul of Tragedy: Essays on Athenian Drama (Chicago 2005), pp. 183–98

L. G. Mitchell, ‘Greeks, Barbarians and Aeschylus’ Suppliants’, Greece and Rome 53 (2006), pp. 205–23.

F. S. Naiden, Ancient Supplication (Oxford 2006), esp. pp. 84–6

PROMETHEUS BOUND

Commentaries

G. Thomson (Cambridge 1932)

M. Griffith (Cambridge 1982)

A. J. Podlecki (Oxford 2005)

Books and Articles

B. H. Fowler, ‘The Imagery of the Prometheus Bound’, American Journal of Philology 78 (1957), pp. 173–84

A. D. Fitton Brown, ‘Prometheia’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 79 (1959), pp. 52–60

C. J. Herington, The Author of the Prometheus Bound (Austin 1970)

E. R. Dodds, ‘The PV and the Progress of Scholarship’, in The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief (Oxford 1973), pp. 26–44

M. Griffith, The Authenticity of Prometheus Bound (Cambridge 1977)

———, ‘Aeschylus, Sicily and Prometheus’, in R. D. Dawe et al., eds, Dionysiaca: Nine Studies… Presented to Sir Denys Page on His Seventieth Birthday (Cambridge 1978), pp. 105–39

M. L. West, ‘The Prometheus Trilogy’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 99 (1979), pp. 130–48; reprinted with postscript in M. Lloyd, ed., Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Aeschylus (Oxford 2007), pp. 359–96

D. J. Conacher, Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound: A Literary Commentary (Toronto 1980)

R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Studies in Aeschylus (Cambridge 1983), pp. 175–97

M. Griffith, ‘The Vocabulary of Prometheus Bound’, Classical Quarterly 34 (1984), pp. 282–91

W. C. Scott, ‘The Development of the Chorus in Prometheus Bound’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 117 (1987), pp. 85–96

A. L. Brown, ‘Prometheus Pyrphoros’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 37 (1990), pp. 50–56

M. L. West, Studies in Aeschylus (Stuttgart 1990), pp. 51–72

J. M. Mossman, ‘Chains of Imagery in Prometheus Bound’, Classical Quarterly 46 (1996), pp. 58–67

A. H. Sommerstein, Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996), pp. 297–327

S. White, ‘Io’s World: Intimations of Theodicy in Prometheus Bound’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 121 (2001), pp. 107–40

H. Lloyd-Jones, ‘Zeus, Prometheus, and Greek Ethics’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 101 (2003), pp. 49–72

C. Dougherty, Prometheus (London 2005)

S. R. West, ‘Revolutionary Prometheus’, in A. Kolde et al., eds, Koruphaio Andri: Mélanges offerts à André Hurst (Geneva 2005), pp. 311–19

J. Bollack, ‘Prometheus Bound: Drama and Enactment’, in D. L. Cairns and V. Liapis, eds, Dionysalexandros: Essays… in Honour of Alexander F. Garvie (Swansea 2006), pp. 79–89

J. M. Marston, ‘Language of Ritual Cursing in the Binding of Prometheus’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 47 (2007), pp. 121–33

A Note on the Translation

On the literary and dramatic qualities of Aeschylean tragedy, the plays can be allowed to speak for themselves; but a few words are in order about the conventions of my translation.

The verse of Aeschylus’ plays can be divided into four categories according to metre and mode of delivery:

(1) Iambic trimeters (lines of six feet, normally twelve syllables), the normal metre of dialogue, spoken without any musical accompaniment;

(2) Trochaic tetrameters (lines of eight feet, normally fifteen syllables), spoken or chanted in a stricter rhythm and accompanied (as were (3) and (4) below) by a single musician playing the double reed-pipe (aulos). In the plays contained in this volume, this type of verse occurs only in The Persians (lines 155–75, 215–48, 697–9, 703–58); it then disappeared almost completely from tragedy for over half a century (except for a short passage at the end of Agamemnon) but was extensively revived by Euripides from about 417 onwards;

(3) Anapaests, with a strong and very strict 4/4 rhythm; these are often called ‘marching anapaests’ and in Aeschylus are regularly used by the Chorus at its first entrance (though not in Seven Against Thebes, where they enter in a panic and probably in no regular formation);

(4) Sung lyrics, most often performed by the Chorus but sometimes taking the form of a lyric dialogue (amoibaion) between the Chorus and one or more actors (as with Xerxes at the end of The Persians); in Prometheus Bound Prometheus and Io both have solo songs (‘monodies’), a feature that has often been regarded as indicating a late date. A very wide range of metrical patterns can be used, and in principle every song is metrically (and, one presumes, musically) unique. Lyrics are usually organized in paired stanzas, the two stanzas in each pair (the strophe and antistrophe, meaning ‘turn’ and ‘counterturn’) being metrically identical and, if their names are any guide, mirror-images of each other in their choreography. Compared with all the other modes, lyrics were delivered in a different form of Greek, with some vowels pronounced differently (in what is conventionally called ‘choral Doric’[1]) and a higher proportion of rare and archaic vocabulary.

In this translation, iambic trimeters and trochaic tetrameters are both rendered as prose, while anapaests and lyrics are both rendered as free verse. It should also be noted that where lines that I have rendered as prose are assigned to ‘Chorus’, they were probably in fact spoken or chanted by the leader of the Chorus alone, who thus functioned in effect as an additional actor. Like David Raeburn in his recent Penguin Classics translation of four plays of Sophocles, I have usually simply transliterated, rather than attempting to translate, the semi-articulate cries of sorrow or distress which abound in Greek tragedy and mostly have no natural English equivalent.

The stage directions inserted in the translation are not found in the Greek text; the movements and actions they specify are inferred from the words of the text and from the other information we possess about classical Athenian theatrical performance. To take two examples from early in The Persians: (1) A direction I give at the beginning of the play states that ‘twelve chairs are set out for a meeting of the royal council’. There is no mention of these chairs in the Greek text; but (a) the Chorus later decide to ‘sit down in this ancient building’ (141), (b) we know that in the early theatre a character who was to be imagined as sitting indoors could be seen seated on stage,[2] and (c) according to the ancient headnote (‘Hypothesis’) to The Persians, in a play by Phrynichus on the same theme the opening speaker had been a eunuch preparing chairs for a meeting of the state council. (2) The stage direction (after line 149) that the Queen arrives in a carriage, ‘magnificently attired and attended’, is based not on anything in that passage itself but on the Queen’s own statement, when she returns later in the play (607–8), that this time she has come ‘without my carriage and without my former luxury’. None of my stage directions, therefore, should be regarded, or cited, as if they were primary-source evidence.

Line numbers are given in the margin at every fifth line of the Greek text, and also to indicate when a section of text has been editorially transposed because it appears to have become displaced in the manuscript tradition. Sometimes, because of the requirements of English word and phrase order, the translation cannot render the lines sequentially; in such cases the marginal numbers are placed at the beginning of a stretch of two or three lines that has been translated as a unit (e.g. at Persians 4–5).

NOTES

1.   Actually the vowel qualities in question were common to most dialects of Greek other than that of Athens (Attic) and its close cousin Ionic.

2.   Aristophanes, Frogs 911–12 (Achilles); several vase paintings show a seated, muffled Achilles approached by envoys from the Greek army (compare General Introduction note 2). Later, after the creation of the skene, a character could be shown sitting indoors only by means of the ekkyklema (e.g. Ajax sitting among the beasts he has slaughtered, in the Sophoclean play bearing his name).

Maps

THE PERSIANS

Preface to The Persians

According to the ancient headnote (‘Hypothesis’), The Persians was produced in 472 BC, as the second play in a four-play production that won first prize; it is thus, if the currently accepted dating of The Suppliants to the 460s is correct, the earliest surviving European drama. The sponsor (choregos) who financed the production was none other than Pericles, later to be the greatest political leader of democratic Athens and then about twenty-three years old. Pericles’ father, Xanthippus, had played a notable role in the Persian war. In 479, as Athenian naval commander (in succession to Themistocles), he had led the Athenian contingent at the victorious battle of Mycale. His Peloponnesian allies had then abandoned the campaign, but Xanthippus had gone on to capture Sestos on the Hellespont, and from there he had brought home to Athens, for dedication in a sanctuary, the cables of the bridge of boats by which Xerxes’ army had crossed the straits.[1] It is doubtless no coincidence that our play has a great deal to say about this bridge.[2]

The Persians was not the first tragedy to take its subject from recent events instead of from those of heroic times. Aeschylus’ great predecessor Phrynichus had done the same thing at least twice. In 493 or 492 he had produced The Capture of Miletus, highlighting the calamity that had befallen this famous Ionian city, a calamity for which many Athenians felt Athens was partly to blame, having withdrawn its support from the Ionians rebelling against Persian rule; for this Phrynichus was fined, and all further performance of the play was prohibited.[3] Much later, probably in 476, Phrynichus had staged a production at least part of which was devoted to the Graeco-Persian war;[4] he had invited his audience to view the war from the enemy’s standpoint, not as a triumph for the Greeks but as a disaster for the Persians (and their subject nations). The plays, especially The Phoenician Women, were long remembered for the beauty of their lyrics.[5] It is likely that Phrynichus’ choregos for this production had been Themistocles, the hero of Salamis and creator of the fleet that had gained victory there.[6]

Phrynichus probably died not very long before the production of The Persians. The opening words of Aeschylus’ play are a near-quotation from the opening of the corresponding play of Phrynichus’ production; it is unlikely that Aeschylus would have chosen to pay such a compliment to a living rival, and there is no evidence of Phrynichus being alive at any later date. Aeschylus thus was advertising that he was following in Phrynichus’ footsteps, but we can be sure that his treatment of the theme was very different from that of his older contemporary.

In particular, whereas Phrynichus had spread the story over at least two (possibly three) plays,[7] Aeschylus concentrated it into one. In the play of Phrynichus’ production (probably The Righteous Men)[8] whose opening line Aeschylus imitated, ‘the defeat of Xerxes’ – this must mean Salamis, the only Greek victory over the Persians at which Xerxes was present in person – was already known about in the Persian capital and was mentioned in the prologue speech; it is plausible therefore to suppose that The Phoenician Women came first, and that in the course of that play the Chorus learned of the disaster of Salamis and of their own widowhood. The depth of their grief, and the poignancy of its expression, can well be imagined. Perhaps in the following play, as Persia struggled to recover from Salamis (and with Xerxes now back home?), word may have arrived of the crowning catastrophe of Plataea.

Aeschylus ingeniously reshaped these elements into a new and much tauter package. He took from Phrynichus’ second play the Chorus of Persian councillors, with a council meeting (140–45) as the first significant event, but like Phrynichus’ first play, this one begins with the fate of Xerxes’ expedition still unknown, and the shattering news of Salamis[9] arrives in the course of the play. Few will then have expected to hear of Plataea too, but Aeschylus contrived to include it by having the ghost of Darius summoned up from below and making him deliver a precise prophecy of the coming defeat, even though he is represented as at first knowing nothing of what has happened at Salamis. Then, and only then, a humiliated Xerxes returns home, apparently in rags – in the sharpest contrast to the elaborate, costly robes of his councillors, and those in which we have just seen his father clad;[10] the feminine laments with which The Phoenician Women so abounded are put in the mouths of the male Xerxes and the male Chorus – for, as Edith Hall has shown, the image of the Persian male has been systematically feminized all through the play.[11]

But although Aeschylus thus concentrated the substance of Phrynichus’ two (or three) plays into one, he may nevertheless have suffused his entire production with the glow of the great Greek victory over the barbarian. The production of 472 is the only one by Aeschylus[12] that is known to have consisted of four plays whose stories were, on the face of it, unrelated – indeed, they were not even placed in proper chronological order. The first play was Phineus, about an episode in the saga of the Argonauts. This was followed by The Persians; then, jumping back to the heroic age, by Glaucus of Potniae, about a man who subjected his horses to an unnatural training regime[13] and was devoured by them after crashing in a chariot race; and then by a satyr play about Prometheus (Prometheus the Fire-Bearer or Fire-Kindler).[14] Repeated efforts have been made to find method behind the apparent madness of this arrangement, so far with little success.

I have recently suggested[15] that the unifying feature of this production, or at least of its first three plays, was nothing other than the Persian war itself. In the first play, Phineus, a famous prophet, may have foretold the providential storm that wrecked much of the Persian fleet shortly before the simultaneous battles of Artemisium and Thermopylae in 480;[16] that storm was the work of the North Wind (Boreas), and it was the sons of Boreas who saved Phineus from starvation by chasing away the Harpies who had constantly been snatching his food from his very lips. The third play, Glaucus of Potniae, seems to have included a reference to the town of Himera in Sicily; this place had nothing whatever to do with the story of Glaucus but had been the scene of a famous victory by the Sicilian Greeks over the Carthaginians in 480,[17] so this play too may have contained a prophecy about a distant future which to its audience was the recent past.[18] Thus each of the first three plays of this production would have narrated and/or foretold an important episode or episodes in the defeat of the great barbarian invasions of 480/ 79.[19] We do not know enough about the fourth play to be able to determine whether it too followed this pattern.

The production of a tragedy (indeed, if the suggestion made above is correct, of a whole trilogy) about events of a war that was still in progress – a play, moreover, which, while it did not mention any individual Athenian, alluded clearly enough to the exploits of Xanthippus and especially of Themistocles (353–63, not to mention the whole great narrative of his victory at Salamis) – has inevitably caused speculation as to whether it might have been designed to have some political impact, particularly in light of the earlier production by Phrynichus on the same subject. It is known that Themistocles was banished by ‘ostracism’ at some time in the late 470s, but it is not known precisely when; all the same, even if this occurred later than 472, it was probably not his enemies’ first attempt to get rid of him.[20] Both Themistocles and (when he entered politics) Pericles were opponents of the other outstanding political figure of this period, Cimon,[21] who had gained great prestige in the previous few years by the capture of Eion and Scyros and the restoration to Athens of the bones of Theseus.[22] So it is certainly not impossible that there was some political motivation behind the production of this particular play at this particular time.

There was certainly political motivation behind the restaging that took place at Syracuse, probably a year or two later, at the invitation of its tyrant Hieron.[23] Hieron had taken part in the victory of Himera alongside his brother Gelon (who had been the ruler of Syracuse at that time), and it is reasonable to suppose – though we have no actual evidence – that Aeschylus was asked to, and did, produce Glaucus of Potniae in Sicily as well.

The Persians is not, however, primarily a play about a Greek triumph; it is a play about a Persian disaster. The empire, so we are given to understand, has lost almost the whole of its young manhood, and the horrors are piled on: the bodies floating in the waters around Salamis or lying on its beaches (272–7, 306–17, 419–21, 568–78, 595–7, 965–6, 977), the helpless swimmers clubbed to death ‘as if they were tunny or some other catch of fish’ (424–8), the Persian élite corps hacked down to the last man (459–64), the ravages of hunger and thirst on the retreat (482–91), the drowning masses in the freezing-cold Strymon (504–7), the ‘heaps of corpses’ at Plataea (818) – and so far as we (or the Persians back home) are told, all these thousands of dead were left unburied.[24] But while full credit is given to the courage and patriotism of the Greeks,[25] the defeat is not presented as being due to any inherent Persian or ‘barbarian’ inferiority. When the ghost of Darius advises the Persians not to march against Greece again, his reason is not that Persians cannot match Greeks in fighting qualities, but that ‘their country itself fights as their ally… by starving to death a multitude that is too vastly numerous’ (792–4); even at Salamis the Persian fleet is defeated only because it is caught in narrow waters when the crews are tired from a futile all-night patrol. The two characters of whom we see the most, the mother of King Xerxes and the ghost of his deceased father, are both presented positively. The Queen is as loving a mother as can be found anywhere in the tragic corpus, and Darius, both when he is present on stage and when his past achievements are remembered, appears as a wise and glorious ruler, his notorious failures, especially the invasion of Scythia,[26] being ignored; all his predecessors likewise are presented in either favourable or neutral terms (765–73) – except the ‘disgrace[ful]’ Mardus, who was quickly removed (774–9). The Persian catastrophe is not due to the inherent characteristics of Persians but exclusively to the rashness of Xerxes and the advisers to whom he chose to listen. That, in turn, is largely due to Xerxes’ youth (782), which Aeschylus considerably exaggerates[27] – though also to the Persian political system, in which the King was an absolute ruler who could not be held to account for any failure (213–14) and who (so the play assumes) was regarded by his subjects as a god (157, cf. 80; this special status of Persian royalty is signalled in this translation by the frequent capitalization of ‘king’ and ‘queen’). The Athenians, in contrast, ‘are not called slaves or subjects to any man’ (242) and function as a collectivity throughout: none of their leaders is named, not even Themistocles, whereas we are treated to three long catalogues of Xerxes’ subordinate commanders (21–59, 302–28, 957–99) containing about fifty different names.

Absolute monarchy, of course, was not unknown in the Greek world, and Aeschylus himself had grown up in an Athens ruled by the tyrant Hippias. And there are various indications that his audience were not expected to sit back and reflect smugly that this kind of catastrophic folly was only possible among benighted barbarians. In the Queen’s dream (181–99), the two women representing Greece and Persia are sisters (185–6), apparently equal in stature and beauty, differing only in their clothing and their willingness to submit to servitude: that one of them is ‘Greek’ and the other ‘barbarian’ is due merely to the ‘fall of the lot’ (186–7). We have already been reminded that Xerxes himself is actually of Greek ancestry, a descendant of Perseus ‘begotten of gold’ (79–80). And the sonorous list of territories gained by Darius and lost by Xerxes (868–903) corresponds almost exactly[28] to the regions whose Greek cities, by 472, had become members of an alliance (now often called the ‘Delian League’) under the hegemony of Athens. If Athens was now following Persia’s path to glory, might it later follow Persia’s path to disaster?

The answer might seem obvious. Xerxes – as his mother, his father and the Chorus agree – had committed an act of mad foolishness when, disregarding his father’s instructions, he had invaded Europe when Persia’s destiny was to rule over Asia. But neither in actual history, nor in the edited version of history with which Aeschylus presents us was it obvious to anyone without the blessings of hindsight. In the catalogue of lost territories just mentioned, sixteen of the twenty areas named are across the sea from Asia – either on islands or on the European mainland – and three more are partly so;[29] in other words, and even ignoring the Scythian expedition, most of what Xerxes had done Darius had done also. Nor could any Athenian forget – and Aeschylus reminds them several times (236, 244, 287–9, 475) – that Darius had sent an expedition against Athens too, the expedition that had been defeated at Marathon. How was Xerxes to know that his attempt to conquer Greece was against the will of the gods? We hear of no warning they had given him, only of his father’s advice, and he knew as well as we do that his father was not infallible. The gods tempt men to overreach themselves, to their ultimate ruin (93–100), and they give men no sure way of knowing what is, and what is not, overreaching.[30] Any individual, or any community,[31] with Xerxes’ power might find themselves making Xerxes’ error, if the gods were so minded. With at least some of his audience, Aeschylus may well have succeeded in the seemingly impossible feat of inducing them to feel compassion and pity for the man who had sacked and burned Athens, and for the great nation which, in the play,[32] he brings to ruin.

NOTES

1.   Herodotus 8.131.3; 9.90–106, 114, 120–21 (the dedication of the cables is the very last event in his main narrative).

2.   Persians 65–73, 112–13, 130–31, 722–5, 745–50.

3.   Herodotus 6.21.2. Presumably the prohibition referred to possible performances at local festivals; it was to be many years before anyone thought of producing the same play a second time at the City Dionysia itself.

4.   Our sources, including the ‘Hypothesis’ to The Persians, mostly refer in this connection to Phrynichus’ Phoenician Women, but the list of his plays in the medieval lexicon, the Suda, also mentions another play for which it offers three alternative titles – The Righteous Men, The Persians and The Committee (lit. ‘men sitting together’). Probably the title The Phoenician Women, being that of the best-known play in the production, was sometimes applied to the whole of it.

5.   Cf. Aristophanes, Wasps 219–20 (produced in 422).

6.   It is known that Phrynichus won a victory, with Themistocles as choregos, in this year (Plutarch, Themistocles 5.5); there is no proof that this victory was gained with his Persian war plays, but the parallel with Pericles’ sponsorship of Aeschylus’ production, and the unlikelihood that a shrewd politician like Themistocles would miss the opportunity for self-promotion that such a production on such a subject would provide, raise a strong presumption that it was.

7.   That our sources tell us of only two relevant plays of his is of no significance: we only know the titles of ten plays of Phrynichus altogether, from a career that may have lasted nearly forty years.

8.   The ‘Hypothesis’ says it was The Phoenician Women, but the scene it describes, with a eunuch ‘spreading <fleeces or textiles over> chairs for the assessors of the ruling power’, is clearly one of preparation for a meeting of Persian councillors and surely therefore must come from the play that was named after them.

9.   All the more shattering because, up to that point, the Persians at home seem entirely unaware that the Greeks have a navy at all; we have heard of the Persian fleet (19, 39, 55, 76, 83), but the Greeks are thought of simply as spear-fighters (85, 148–9, 240), and the information about Athens which the elders give the Queen (231–44) includes not a word about ships.

10. There has earlier been a similar contrast between the robes of the Queen at her first, vehicle-borne entrance (150ff.) and the simple garb in which she returns, ‘without my carriage and without my former luxury’ (607–8).

11. See E. M. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian (Oxford 1989), pp. 81–6 (cf. pp. 126–9, 209–10 on the effeminacy of the ‘barbarian’ in later Greek tragedy).

12. Though Aristias in 467 put on a production in which a Perseus was followed, with or without another play intervening, by a Tantalus – two heroes who had no mythical connection with each other at all except that both were sons of Zeus.

13. Either by feeding them on human flesh or by not allowing them to mate (the accounts vary).

14. For the principal fragments of these plays, and discussion of their likely content, see pp. 48–56.

15. ‘The Persian War Tetralogy of Aeschylus’, in J. Davidson and D. Rosenbloom, eds, Greek Drama IV (London forthcoming); an Italian version was published earlier in Dioniso n.s. 7 (2008).

16. Herodotus 7.188–92.

17. On the same day, it was believed, as the victory over the Persians at Salamis (Herodotus 7.166). Some contemporary Greeks too may already have believed, as some later Greeks certainly did (Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library 11.1.4–5), that the Persians and the Carthaginians had preconcerted their simultaneous attacks on the independent Greek states of Greece and Sicily respectively.

18. The speaker may have been Poseidon, the god of all things equestrian; his relevance to the story of Glaucus is obvious, and we know that at Himera the Carthaginian commander, Hamilcar, had been killed while making a sacrifice to him – killed, too, by Syracusan cavalry (Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library 11.21.4–22.1).

19. Salamis, Plataea and Himera are likewise mentioned together in Pindar’s First Pythian (75–80), performed before Hieron of Syracuse (brother of the victor of Himera) at his newly founded city of Aetna in 470.

20. Before any particular individual could be ostracized (banished for ten years without loss of property), three hurdles had to be surmounted: (i) the Assembly had to vote that an ostracism be held; (ii) at a special Assembly held some two months later, a total of at least six thousand votes had to be cast; (iii) the person who had the most votes against him would then be ostracized. There may have been one or several attempts at ostracizing Themistocles which failed at the first or second hurdle, before the one that finally succeeded.

21. Who appears to have been a patron of Sophocles (Plutarch, Cimon 8.7–9; Life of Sophocles 5).

22. Thucydides 1.98.1–2; Plutarch, Cimon 8.5–7.

23. We know of this restaging from an ancient commentator on Aristophanes’ Frogs (line 1028) who cites a treatise On Comedies by the great third-century scholar Eratosthenes.

24. This appears to be largely true. In wars between Greeks, it was usual for the winners of a land battle to grant the losers, on request, a truce to enable them to remove their dead for burial; but of Plataea we are told that the Persian dead were left where they lay until their flesh had rotted away or been stripped by animals and birds, after which the bones were ‘brought together to one place’ (Herodotus 9.83.2), with (apparently) the sole exception of their commander Mardonius, who was buried secretly, probably by a loyal Ionian Greek (Herodotus 9.84).

25. And not only the Athenians; the victory of Plataea, in which Aeschylus and many of his audience had fought, is ascribed in the play to ‘the Dorian spear’ (817), i.e. to the Spartans.

26. See Herodotus 4.1–142.

27. If we had no other source of information, we would certainly suppose from Aeschylus’ presentation of Xerxes that he was in his twenties when he invaded Greece; in fact he was the first legitimate son born to Darius after Darius came to the throne in 521 (Herodotus 7.2.2) and cannot have been far short of forty in 480.

28. With the exception of Cyprus (894–6).

29. The regions of the Hellespont, the Propontis and ‘the mouth of the Black Sea’ (876–9), all of which had Greek communities both on the European and on the Asian sides. The only wholly Asian region in the list is Ionia (897–900).

30. Cf. A. F. Garvie, Lexis 17 (1999), pp. 21–40.

31. Aeschylus knew that communities, including democratic communities, are as subject to the temptations and the arrogance of power as individuals are: ‘… what man,’ he makes the Furies sing in The Eumenides (522–5), ‘that does not at all nourish his heart on fear – or what community of men, it makes no difference – will still revere Justice?’

32. In reality, of course, the Persian Empire remained very much a going concern, despite the losses of territory and revenue it had suffered on its western fringes.

Characters

CHORUS of Persian elders of the King’s council

QUEEN, widow of Darius and mother of Xerxes

MESSENGER

GHOST OF DARIUS, the late King of Persia

XERXES, the present King of Persia

[Scene: Susa. Twelve chairs are set out for a meeting of the royal council. A mound (ignored until attention is drawn to it) represents the tomb of Darius. One side-passage is imagined as leading to the city and palace, the other towards the west and Greece. Enter CHORUS from the direction of the city.]

CHORUS:

Of the Persians, who have departed

for the land of Greece, we are called the Trusted,

the guardians of the wealthy palace rich in gold,

4–5

whom our lord himself, King Xerxes

son of Darius, chose by seniority

to supervise the country.

8–10

But by now the spirit within me,

all too ready to foresee evil, is troubled

about the return of the King

and of his vast army of men;

for all the strength of the Asiatic race

has departed, and <in every house

the woman left behind>[1] howls for her young husband;

and no messenger, no horseman,

15

has come to the Persian capital.

They left the walls of Susa and Agbatana[2]

and the ancient ramparts of Cissia[3]

and went, some on horseback,

some on board ship, and the marching infantry

20

providing the fighting masses.

Such were Amistres and Artaphrenes

and Megabates and Astaspes,[4]

marshals of the Persians,

kings subordinate to the Great King,

25

who have sped away – overseers of a great army,

slayers with the bow or riders of the horse,

terrifying to behold and fearsome in battle

in the steadfast self-confidence of their hearts;

and Artembares the charioteer

30

and Masistres, and brave Himaeus

the archer, and Pharandaces,

and Sosthanes, driver of horses.

The great, nurturing stream

of Nile sent others: Susiscanes;

35

the Egyptian-born Pegastagon;

great Arsames, the ruler

of holy Memphis, and Ariomardus

who governs ancient Thebes;

and dwellers in the marshes,[5] rowing ships,

40

formidable and in numbers past counting.

Following them are a mass of Lydians

of luxurious lifestyle, who control every race

born on the mainland;[6] Mitragathes

and brave Arcteus, kingly commanders,

45

and Sardis, rich in gold, urge them forth,

riding in many chariots,

squadrons with two poles and with three,[7]

a fearsome sight to behold;

and those who dwell near holy Tmolus[8] are eager

50

to impose the yoke of slavery on Greece,

Mardon and Tharybis, anvils of the spear,[9]

and the javelin-men of Mysia.[10] And Babylon,

rich in gold, sends forth a mixed multitude

in a long, trailing column, men on board ships

55

and men trusted for their bravery as archers;

and the sabre-carrying host

from all Asia follows

at the awesome summons of the King.

Such is the flower of the men of Persia’s land

60

that has departed,

for whom the whole land of Asia,

which reared them, sighs with a longing that burns,

and parents and wives count the days

and tremble as the time stretches out.

65

The city-sacking[11] army of the King

has now passed over to the neighbour land on the other side of the water,

68–70

crossing the strait of Helle,[12] daughter of Athamas,

by means of a boat-bridge tied together with flaxen cables,

placing a roadway, fastened with many bolts, as a yoke on the neck of the sea.

The bold ruler of populous Asia

75

drives his divine flock over the whole world

on both elements, trusting in commanders stout and rugged,

those who govern the land force and those at sea –

80

a man equal to the gods, from the race begotten of gold.[13]

With the dark glance

of a deadly serpent in his eyes,

with many hands and many ships,

driving a swift Syrian chariot,

85–6

he leads a war-host that slays with the bow

against men renowned for spear-fighting.

No one can be counted on to withstand

this great flood of men

and be a sturdy barrier to ward off

90

the irresistible waves of the sea:

none dare come near the army

92

of the Persians and their valiant host.

102

For Destiny long ago prevailed

by divine decree, and imposed on the Persians

105–6

the fate of conducting wars

that destroy towered walls, clashes

of chariots in battle and the uprooting of cities;

109–11

and they have learned to cross the level expanse

of the sea, when its broad waters

are whitened by rough winds,

trusting in cables made of thin strands

113

and in devices for transporting an army.[14]

93

But what mortal man can escape

the guileful deception of a god?

95

Who is so light of foot

that he has power to leap easily away?

For Ruin begins by fawning on a man in a friendly way

and leads him astray into her net,

100–101

from which it is impossible for a mortal to escape and flee.

114–15

For that reason, my mind

is clothed in black and torn with fear:

‘Woe for the Persian army!’ –

I dread that our city may hear this cry –

‘The great capital of Susiana is emptied of its manhood!’ –

120

and that the city of the Cissians

will sing in antiphon,

a vast throng of women

howling out that word ‘Woe!’

125

and their linen gowns will be rent and torn.

For all the horse-driving host

and the infantry too,

like a swarm of bees, have left the hive with the leader of their army,

130

passing over the projecting spur[15] that belongs to both continents

and yokes them together across the sea.

And beds are filled with tears

because the men are missed and longed for:

Persian women, grieving amid their luxury, every one,

135

loving and longing for her husband,

having sent on his way the bold warrior who was her bedfellow,

is left behind, a partner unpartnered.

140

But come, Persians, let us sit down

in this ancient building[16]

and take good thought and deep counsel –

for there is pressing need to do so.

[They take their seats.]

So how is King Xerxes

145

son of Darius faring?

Is the bent bow victorious,

or has the power

of the spearhead’s point conquered?

[A carriage is seen approaching. Seated in it is the QUEEN, magnificently attired and attended. The CHORUS rise.]

CHORUS:

150

But look, here comes the mother of the King,

my Queen, a light as brilliant as that which shines

in the eyes of the gods! I fall down before her –

[The CHORUS prostrate themselves.]

and it is right that we all address her

with words of greeting.

[The CHORUS rise to their feet, and their leader addresses the QUEEN as she descends from her carriage.]

155

All hail, my Queen, most exalted among the slim-waisted women of Persia, venerable mother of Xerxes and wife of Darius! You were the spouse of one who was a god to the Persians, and you are the mother of their god too, unless our old protecting power has now changed sides against our army.

160  QUEEN: It is for that reason that I have come here, leaving my gold-bedecked palace and the bedchamber I once shared with Darius, and that my heart is torn by anxiety. I will tell you a saying which is not my own creation <but has come down from our ancestors, and which causes me to be> very fearful, my friends: that great wealth may make the dust rise from the ground by tripping up the prosperity[17] that Darius, not

165

without the aid of some god, had built up. For that reason there is in my mind an indescribable anxiety, a twofold one. For those who are without wealth, the light of success does not shine in proportion to their physical power; but neither do men revere and honour an accumulation of wealth without men to defend it.[18] Our wealth is ample, but I fear for

170

our very eye; for I consider the master, when present, to be the eye of his house. In view of this, considering the situation to be as I have said, be my counsellors about this matter, you venerable, trusty Persians; for all the good advice I receive comes from you.

175  CHORUS: Be well assured, Queen of this land, that you do not

have to tell us twice to do any service in word or deed, so far as our ability permits: we on whom you call for advice are your loyal friends.

180  QUEEN: Dreams of the night have been my frequent companions

ever since my son led out his army and departed in order to lay waste the land of the Ionians;[19] but never yet have I had one that was so plain as during the night just past. I will tell you about it. There seemed to come into my sight two finely dressed women, one arrayed in Persian, the other in Doric robes,[20] outstandingly superior in stature to the

185

women of real life, of flawless beauty and sisters of the same stock: one, by the fall of the lot, was a native and inhabitant of the land of Greece, the other of the Orient.[21] I seemed to see these two raising some kind of strife between themselves;

190

my son, perceiving this, tried to restrain and calm them, yoked them under his chariot, and passed the yoke-strap under their necks. One of them, thus arrayed, towered up

194–5

proudly and kept her jaw submissively in harness, but the other began to struggle, tore the harness from the chariot with her hands, dragged it violently along without bridle or bit, and smashed the yoke in half. My son fell out. His father, Darius, appeared, standing beside him and showing pity; but when Xerxes saw him, he tore the robes that clothed his

200

body. That, I say, is what I saw in the night. When I had risen and washed my hands in a fair-flowing spring, I approached the altar with offerings in my hand, wishing to pour a rich libation to the deities who avert evil, for whom

205

such rites are appropriate. Then I saw an eagle fleeing for refuge to the altar of Phoebus[22] – and I was rooted speechless to the spot with terror, my friends. Next I saw a hawk swooping on him at full speed with beating wings and tearing at his head with its talons – and he simply cowered and

210

submitted. This was terrifying for me to behold, and must be terrifying for you to hear; for you know well that if my son were successful he would be a very much admired man, but were he to fail – well, he is not accountable to the community,[23] and if he comes home safe he remains ruler of this land.

215  CHORUS: Mother, we do not wish to say what would make

you either unduly fearful or unduly optimistic. You should approach the gods with supplications and ask them, if there was anything sinister in what you saw, to ensure that it is averted but that what was good should be fulfilled for you, for your children, for the community and for everyone that

219–20

you care for. Secondly, you should pour drink-offerings to Earth and to the dead, and propitiate them with this prayer: that your husband Darius, whom you say you saw in the night, should send up to the light, from beneath the earth, blessings for you and your son, but that whatever is contrary to them be kept under the earth, ineffective, in the darkness. Using my intelligence [24] to prophesy for you, I give you this

225

advice in all good will, and our interpretation of these signs is that things will turn out well for you in every way.

QUEEN: Yes, as the first interpreter of this dream you have

shown yourself loyal to my son and my house in the very definite words you have spoken. May what was good indeed be fulfilled! We shall make all these arrangements as you

230

advise, towards the gods and towards our friends beneath the earth, when we return home. But there is something I wish to learn, my friends. Where in the world do they say that Athens is situated?

CHORUS: Far away, near the place where the Lord Sun declines and sets.

QUEEN: And yet my son had a desire to conquer that city?

CHORUS: Yes, because all Greece would then become subject to the King.

235  QUEEN: Do they have such great numbers of men in their army?

236  CHORUS: And an army of a quality that has already done the Medes[25] a great deal of harm.[26]

239  QUEEN: Why, are they distinguished for their wielding of the drawn bow and its darts?

240  CHORUS: Not at all; they use spears for close combat and carry shields for defence.

237  QUEEN: And what else apart from that? Is there sufficient wealth in their stores?

238  CHORUS: They have a fountain of silver, a treasure in their soil.[27]

241  QUEEN: And who is the shepherd, master and commander over their host?

CHORUS: They are not called slaves or subjects to any man.

QUEEN: How then can they resist an invading enemy?

CHORUS: Well enough to have destroyed the large and splendid army of Darius.

245  QUEEN: What you say is fearful to think about for the parents of those who have gone there.

[A MESSENGER is seen approaching from the west, in great haste.]

CHORUS: Well, it seems to me that you will soon know the

whole story precisely. The way this man runs[28] clearly identifies him as Persian, and he will be bringing some definite news, good or bad, for us to hear.

250  MESSENGER: O you cities of the whole land

of Asia! O land of Persia, repository of great wealth! How all your great prosperity has been destroyed in a single blow, and the flower of the Persians are fallen and departed! [To the CHORUS:] Ah me, it is terrible to be the first to announce terrible news,

255

but I have no choice but to reveal the whole sad tale, Persians: the whole of the Oriental army has been destroyed!

CHORUS:

Painful, painful, unheard of,

calamitous! Aiai, let your tears flow, Persians,

on hearing this grievous news!

260  MESSENGER: I assure you, all those forces are annihilated, and I myself never expected to see the day of my return.

CHORUS:

Truly this old life of ours

has proved itself too long,[29] when we hear

265

this sorrow beyond all expectation!

MESSENGER: And I can also tell you, Persians, what kinds of horrors came to pass; I was there myself, I did not merely hear the reports of others.

CHORUS:

Otototoi! It was all in vain

that those many weapons, all mingled together,

270

went from the land of Asia to the country

271

of Zeus,[30] the land of Hellas!

278  MESSENGER: Yes, our archery was of no avail; the whole host

279

perished, destroyed by the ramming of ships.

CHORUS:

274

Otototoi, you are saying

275

that the dead bodies of our loved ones

are floating, soaked and constantly buffeted by salt water,

277

shrouded in mantles that drift in the waves![31]

272  MESSENGER: The shores of Salamis, and all the region near

273

them, are full of corpses wretchedly slain.

CHORUS:

280

Raise a crying voice of woe

for the wretched fate of <our loved ones>,

for the way <the gods> have caused

total disaster! Aiai, for our destroyed army!

285  MESSENGER: How utterly loathsome is the name of Salamis to my ears! Ah, how I groan when I remember Athens![32]

CHORUS:

She is indeed hateful to her foes:

we can remember well

how many Persian women they caused

to be bereaved and widowed, all for nothing.[33]

QUEEN [to the MESSENGER]: I have been silent all this time

290

because I was struck dumb with misery by this catastrophe. The event is so monstrous that one can neither speak nor ask about the sufferings it involved. Still, we mortals have no choice but to endure the sorrows the gods send us; so

294–5

compose yourself and speak, revealing all that has happened, even if you are groaning under the weight of the disaster. Who has survived, and which of the leaders of the host must we mourn, who after being assigned to hold a staff of command perished and so left his post deserted and unmanned?

MESSENGER: Well, Xerxes himself is alive and sees the light of day –

300  QUEEN: To my house at least your words come as a great relief,

like bright day shining out after a pitch-dark night.

MESSENGER: But Artembares, the commander of ten thousand

horse, is being pounded against the rugged shores of Sileniae;[34] Dadaces, commander of a thousand, was struck

305

by a spear and took an effortless leap out of his ship; and the excellent Tenagon, a noble of the Bactrians,[35] now wanders[36]

308–10

around the wave-beaten island of Ajax. Lilaeus, Arsames and Argestes, these three vanquished men, were beating their heads against the hard rocks round the island where doves breed,[37] as were Pharnuchus, whose home was near the stream of Egyptian Nile, and three who fell from one ship,

314–15

Arcteus, Adeues and Pheresseues, leader of thirty thousand dark-skinned horsemen. Matallus of Chrysa,[38] commander of ten thousand, perished; his full, bushy, reddish beard got a soaking, and a purple dye[39] changed the colour of his skin. And Magus the Arab and Artabes the Bactrian, now a permanent resident in a harsh country, perished there too;

320

and Amistris, and Amphistreus, who wielded a spear that caused much trouble, and brave Ariomardus, who dispensed grief with his arrows, and Seisames the Mysian; and Tharybis, admiral of five times fifty ships, a Lyrnaean by

325

birth[40] and a handsome man, lies wretchedly dead, having enjoyed no very good fortune. And Syennesis,[41] foremost in courage, the leader of the Cilicians, who gave more trouble to the enemy than any other single man, met a glorious end.

330

All this I report about the commanders; but I have mentioned only a small part of the great suffering that there was.

QUEEN: Aiai, this is truly the most towering disaster I have ever

heard of, a cause for shame and for shrill wailing to the Persians! But go back to the beginning and tell me this: how

335

great were the actual numbers of the Greek ships, that they thought themselves capable of joining battle with the Persian fleet and ramming their vessels?

MESSENGER: I assure you that, so far as numbers are concerned,

the fleet of the Easterners would have prevailed. The Greeks had a grand total of about three hundred ships,[42] and ten of

340

these formed a special select squadron, whereas Xerxes – I know this for sure – had a thousand under his command, and those of outstanding speed numbered two hundred and seven.[43] Such is the reckoning; I hardly imagine you’ll consider

345

we were inferior in that respect in the battle! It was some divinity that destroyed our fleet like this, weighting the scales so that fortune did not fall out even: the gods have saved the city of the goddess Pallas.[44]

QUEEN: Then the city of Athens is still unsacked?

MESSENGER: While she has her men, her defences are secure.[45]

350  QUEEN: But tell me how the naval battle began. Who started the

fight? Was it the Greeks or was it my son, proudly confident in the superior numbers of his fleet?

MESSENGER: The start of all our sorrows, mistress, was the appearance from somewhere of an avenging demon or an

335

evil spirit. A Greek man came from the Athenian fleet[46] and told your son Xerxes that when the gloom of black night should come on, the Greeks would not stay where they were but would leap on to the benches of their ships and seek to

359–60

save their lives by taking flight in all directions under cover of the darkness. As soon as he heard this, not understanding the deceit of the Greek or the jealousy of the gods, he proclaimed

364–5

the following order to all his admirals. When the sun ceased to burn the earth with its rays, and darkness took hold of the celestial regions, they were to arrange the mass of their ships in three lines and guard the exits[47] and the surging straits, while stationing others so as to surround the

370

island of Ajax completely;[48] because if the Greeks should escape grim death by finding some means of escaping unnoticed with their ships, it was decreed that all the admirals were to lose their heads. So much he said, speaking from a very cheerful heart, because he did not understand what the gods were about to do; and they, obediently and in good

375

order, prepared their supper, and each crew member fastened his oar by its loop to a thole-pin well designed for good rowing. When the light of the sun disappeared and night

380

came on, every master of the oar and every man-at-arms[49] went on board his ship; one rank encouraged another all along each vessel, and they sailed as each captain had been directed. All through the night, the masters of the fleet kept the whole naval host sailing to and fro. The night wore on, but the Greek force did not attempt a clandestine breakout in any direction at all. Instead, when Day with her white

385

horses spread her brilliant light over all the earth, first of all

389–91

there rang out loudly a joyful sound of song from the Greeks, and simultaneously the echo of it resounded back from the cliffs of the island. All we Easterners were terrified, because we had been deceived in our expectation: the Greeks were now raising the holy paean-song,[50] not with a view to taking

395

flight but in the act of moving out to battle, with cheerful confidence, and the call of the trumpet was setting the whole place ablaze. At once, on a word of command, they all pulled their oars together, struck the deep seawater and made it roar – and then suddenly they were all there in plain sight. First there was the right wing, leading the way with good order

400

and discipline, and then the whole fleet coming on behind, and from all of them together one could hear a great cry: ‘Come on, sons of the Greeks, for the freedom of your home-land, for the freedom of your children, your wives, the

405

temples of your fathers’ gods, and the tombs of your ancestors! Now all is at stake!’ And likewise from our side there was a surge of Persian speech in reply; the time for delay was past. At once one ship began to strike another with its

410

projecting bronze beak; the first to ram was a Greek ship, which sheared off the whole stern of a Phoenician vessel, and then each captain chose a different enemy ship at which to run his own. At first the streaming Persian force resisted firmly, but when our masses of ships were crowded into a

415

narrow space, they had no way to come to each other’s help, they got struck by their own side’s bronze-pointed rams, they had the whole of their oarage smashed, and the Greek ships, with careful coordination, surrounded them completely and went on striking them. The hulls of our ships turned keel-up,

420

and the sea surface was no longer visible, filled as it was with the wreckage of ships and the slaughter of men; the shores and reefs were also full of corpses. Every remaining ship of the Eastern armada was being rowed away in disorderly

424–6

flight; meanwhile the enemy were clubbing men and splitting their spines with broken pieces of oars and spars from the wreckage, as if they were tunny[51] or some other catch of fish, and a mixture of shrieking and wailing filled the expanse of

429–30

the sea, until the dark face of night blotted it out. Our sufferings were so multitudinous that I could not describe them fully to you if I were to talk for ten days on end: you can be certain that never have so vast a number of human beings perished in a single day.

QUEEN: Aiai, what a great sea of troubles has burst upon the

Persians and the whole Eastern race!

435  MESSENGER: Well, be sure of this, the tale of disaster is not yet

even half told: such a calamitous event has occurred, on top of what I have told you, that it outweighs that in the scale fully twice over.

QUEEN: What possible misfortune could be even more hateful

439–40

than the one we have heard of? Tell us what you say is this further disaster that has come upon the army that weighs even more heavily in the scale of evil.

MESSENGER: All those Persians who were in their bodily

prime, outstanding in courage, notable for high birth, and who always showed the highest degree of loyalty to the person of the King, have perished shamefully by a most ignoble fate.

445  QUEEN: Ah wretched me, my friends, this terrible catastrophe! By what kind of death do you say they have perished?

MESSENGER: There is an island in front of Salamis,[52] small and

offering no good anchorage for ships, whose seashore is a

450

haunt of Pan,[53] lover of dances. Xerxes sent these men there so that, when shipwrecked enemy men were trying to reach safety on the island, they could kill the Greek warriors when they were an easy prey while rescuing their own men from the straits of the sea; he was reading the future badly. When

455

god had given the triumph in the naval battle to the Greeks, that same day they clad themselves in stout bronze armour, leaped off their ships and landed all around the island, so that the Persians had no idea which way to turn. They were

460

being heavily battered by hand-thrown stones, and hit and killed by arrows shot from the bowstring, until finally the Greeks charged them in a simultaneous rush and struck them down, hacking the wretched men’s limbs until they had extinguished

465

the life of every one of them. Xerxes wailed aloud when he saw this depth of disaster; he was seated in plain sight of the whole army, on a high cliff close to the sea. He tore his robes, uttered a piercing cry of grief and immediately

470

gave an order to the land army, sending them off in helterskelter flight. Such, I tell you, is the disaster you have to mourn, in addition to the previous one.

QUEEN: O cruel divinity, how I see you have beguiled the minds

474–5

of the Persians! My son has found his vengeance upon famous Athens to be a bitter one; the Eastern lives that Marathon had already destroyed were not enough for him. My son, in the belief that he was going to inflict punishment for that, has drawn upon himself this great multitude of sorrows. But tell me – those of the ships that escaped destruction – where did you leave them? Do you know enough to give us clear information?

480  MESSENGER: The commanders of the remaining ships took to headlong, disorderly flight, running before the wind. The rest of the host[54] suffered continual losses, first of all in the land of the Boeotians, some of them prostrated by thirst when close to a sparkling spring, <others by hunger>, while we survivors, out of breath and panting, passed on into the

485

country of the Phocians and the land of Doris and came to the Malian Gulf, where the Spercheius waters the plain and

488–90

provides drink bountifully. From there the soil of Achaea[55] received us, and then the cities of Thessaly; we were very short of food, and very many died in those parts from thirst and hunger – we had both of them. Then we reached the land of Magnesia[56] and entered the country of the Macedonians,

495

coming to the river Axius,[57] the reed swamps of Lake
Bolbe[58] and
Mount Pangaeum[59] in the land of Edonia. That night the god brought on an unseasonable cold snap and froze the whole stream of holy Strymon; and those who had never before paid any regard to the gods now addressed them with prayers, making obeisance to earth and heaven. When the

500

army had finished its many invocations of the gods, it began to cross the river, now solid ice. Those of us who started across before the Sun god scattered his rays got over safely; for the brilliant orb of the Sun, with his blazing beams, parted

505

the ice in the middle of the channel, heating it with his flames. The men fell one on top of another, and he was lucky, I tell you, who broke off the breath of life soonest. Those who

509–10

were left and had gained safety crossed Thrace and have now, after escaping with difficulty and with much hard toil, returned to the land of their hearth and home – but not many of them; so that the city of the Persians must grieve, longing vainly for the beloved youth of the land. All this is true; and there is much that I have omitted in my speech of the evils that a god has brought down upon the Persians.

[Exit.]

515
CHORUS: O you god who has caused such toil and grief, how
very heavily you have leaped and trampled on the entire
Persian race!

QUEEN: Ah wretched me, our army annihilated! O you clear dream-vision of the night,

how very plainly you revealed these disasters to me – and you [turning to the
CHORUS], in

520

interpreting the dream, took it far too lightly! All the same, since this was your firm advice, I intend first to pray to the gods; then I will return, bringing from my palace a rich

525

libation as a gift to Earth and the dead. I know that this is after the event, but it is in the hope that there may be something better to come in the future. For your part, it is your duty, in the light of these events, to offer trusty counsel to us who trust you; and if my son comes here before I return,

530

comfort him and escort him home, for fear that he may add some further harm to the harm he has suffered.[60]

[She leaves by the way she came.]

CHORUS:

O Zeus the King, now, now by destroying

the army of the boastful

and populous Persian nation

535

you have covered the city of Susa and Agbatana

with a dark cloud of mourning.

Many <mothers in a piteous plight>

are rending their veils with their delicate hands

and wetting the folds of their garments till they are soaked through

540

with tears, as they take their share in the sorrow;

and the soft, wailing Persian women who yearn

to see the men they lately wedded,

abandoning the soft-coverleted beds they had slept in,

the delight of their pampered youth,

545

grieve with wailing that is utterly insatiable.

And I too shoulder the burden of the death of the departed,

truly a theme for mourning far and wide.

For now all, yes all, the emptied land

of Asia groans:

550

Xerxes took them – popoi!

Xerxes lost them – totoi!

Xerxes handled everything unwisely,

he and his sea-
boats.

Why did Darius for his part

555

do so little harm when he was the bowmaster

who ruled over the citizenry,

the dear leader of Susiana?

Land-soldiers and seamen –

the dark-faced, equal-winged[61]

560

ships brought them – popoi!–

ships destroyed them –
totoi!–

ships, with ruinous ramming,

and driven by Ionian hands!

564–5

And the King himself,

so we hear, barely escaped,

over the wide plains

and wintry tracks of Thrace.

But those who were seized – pheu!–

by Necessity and made to die first – ehhh-e!–

570–71

now lie smashed –
o-aaah!–

around the shores of Cychreus’[62] island.
Groan

and bite your lips, and utter a deep cry

of towering woe – o-aaah!–

a terrible, long-drawn-out howl,

575

a screaming voice of sorrow.

Terribly lacerated by the sea – pheu!–

they are being savaged by the voiceless children – ehhh-e!–

of the Undefiled[63] – o-
aaah!

Bereaved houses mourn their men,

580–82

and aged parents,

now childless – o-
aaah!–

lament their god-sent woes

as they hear the news that brings ultimate pain.

584–5

Not long now will those in the land of Asia

remain under Persian rule,

nor continue to pay tribute

under the compulsion of their lords,

nor fall on their faces to the ground

589–90

in awed obeisance; for the strength of the monarchy

has utterly vanished.

Nor do men any longer keep their tongue

under guard; for the people

have been let loose to speak with freedom,

now the yoke of military force no longer binds them.

595

In its blood-soaked soil

the sea-washed isle of Ajax

holds the power of
Persia.

[The QUEEN returns, plainly dressed, on foot and alone, carrying offerings in a tray or basket.]

QUEEN: My friends, anyone who has experience of misfortune

600

knows that in human affairs, when one is assailed by a surge of troubles, one is apt to be afraid of anything; whereas when divine favour is flowing your way, you tend to be sure that the breeze of good fortune will always continue to blow from astern. So for me now, everything is full of fear: before my eyes there appear hostile visions from the gods, and in my

605

ears there resounds a din that is not a song of cheer – such is the stunning effect of these misfortunes that terrifies my mind. That is why I have retraced my path, coming back from my house without my carriage and without my former luxury,

609–10

bringing propitiatory drink-offerings for the father of my child, such as serve to soothe the dead: white milk, good to drink, from a pure[64] cow; the distilled product of the flower-worker,[65] gleaming honey, together with a libation of water

614–15

from a virgin spring; a drink that has come unsullied from its wild-growing mother, this juice of an old vine; and also here are the sweet-smelling produce[66] of the tree whose foliage never ceases to live and flourish, the blond olive tree, and a woven garland of flowers, the children of Earth the bearer

619–20

of all life. Now, friends, accompany these drink-offerings to the nether powers with auspicious songs and call up the divine Darius; meanwhile I will send these honours on their way to the gods below, by letting the earth drink them up.

CHORUS:

Royal lady, first in honour among the Persians, while you send the drink-offerings down to earth’s inner chambers,

625

we in song will beseech

those with power to send up the dead

to be kind to us in their home beneath the earth.

[During the rest of this chant and song by the CHORUS,
the QUEEN is pouring the drink-
offerings at Darius’ tomb, with appropriate ritual actions.]

Now, you holy divinities of the underworld,

Earth and Hermes and you, King of the Shades,[67]

630

send that soul up from below into the light;

for if he knows any further remedy for our troubles,

he, alone of mortals, will tell us how to end them.

Does he hearken to me
– the blessed King, equal to a god –

635

as I send forth clearly in Eastern speech

my variegated, grief-laden

cries that tell of woe?

Let me try to reach him, voicing loudly

our wretched sufferings:

does he hear me from below?

640

I pray you, Earth and you other rulers of the underworld,

consent to this proud divine being

emerging from your abode –

the
Persians’ god, born in Susa –

and send him up here,

645

one like no other

whom Persian soil has ever covered.

Truly we love the man, we love the mound;

for it conceals a man of lovable character.

650

May Aidoneus release him and send him up, Aidoneus –

the godlike ruler
Darian![68]
Ehhh-e!

For he was never one to lose many men

by disastrous slaughters in war;

the Persians called him ‘divine counsellor’, and a divine

655

counsellor

he was, for he guided the people well. Ehhh-e!

[During the next two stanzas the CHORUS are on their knees, beating and furrowing the ground with their hands.]

Ballên, our ancient ballên,[69] come, come to us!

Come to the very summit of your tomb mound,

660

lifting up your feet in their saffron-dyed slippers,

revealing the peak of your royal hat:[70]

come hither, father Darian who never harmed us – oi!–

665

so that you may hear of terrible recent sorrows.

Master, master, show yourself !

A cloud of Stygian gloom hovers over us,

670

for now all of our young men have perished!

Come hither, father Darian who never harmed us – oi!

[The CHORUS rise to their feet.]

Aiai, aiai!

You whose death was so much bewailed by those who loved you,

675

our lord, our lord, what does it mean, what does it mean,

this ever-to-be-
lamented twin failure[71] that has befallen us?

All the triple-oared ships[72] this land possessed have vanished away –

680

they are ships no more, ships no more!

[The GHOST OF DARIUS
appears above his tomb.]

GHOST OF DARIUS: Trusted of the trusted, contemporaries of my youth, elders of Persia, what distress is our state suffering?

The earth is groaning, having been beaten and furrowed; the

685

sight of my wife close by my tomb causes me fear, though I have gladly accepted her drink-offerings; and you are standing round my tomb singing songs of grief, lifting up your voices in wailing to raise my spirit, and calling on me in piteous tones. It has not been easy to gain egress; apart from

690

anything else, the gods below the earth are better at taking people in than at letting them go; nevertheless, holding as I do a position of power among them, I have come here.
But be speedy so that I am not blamed for the time I have taken: What is the heavy recent disaster that has happened to Persia?

[The CHORUS
prostrate themselves.]

CHORUS:

I am too awed to look upon you;

695

I am too awed to speak before you,

because I feared you of old.

GHOST OF DARIUS:

But since it is your laments that have induced me to come up from below, speak now, not in long-winded words but putting it concisely and covering everything, setting your awe of me aside.

CHORUS [rising again to their feet]:

700

I am afraid to gratify your wish;

I am afraid to speak plainly,

saying things that are hard to say to a friend.

GHOST OF DARIUS: Well, since your old fear is standing guard over your mind – [turning to the QUEEN, who seems wrapped up in her grief] I ask you, my noble wife, old companion of

705

my bed, to end this crying and wailing and speak plainly to me. Human beings, you know, are bound to experience human sufferings; there are many evils that befall mortals, both by sea and by land, if their life is prolonged to a great span.

710  QUEEN: You whose fortunate fate surpassed all mortals in bliss, how enviable you were when you saw the light of the sun and led a life of such happiness that Persians looked on you as a god! And now too I envy you, because you died before seeing the depths of our present suffering. It will take you very little time, Darius, to hear the whole story: to all intents and purposes, the fortunes of Persia are utterly ruined.

715  GHOST OF DARIUS: How has it happened? Has our state been stricken by a virulent plague, or by civil strife?

QUEEN: Not at all; what has happened is that our entire army has been destroyed in the region of Athens.

GHOST OF DARIUS: And tell me, which of my sons led the army there?

QUEEN: The bold Xerxes; he emptied the whole expanse of the continent.

GHOST OF DARIUS: And did the wretched boy make this foolish attempt by land or by sea?

720  QUEEN: Both; it was a double front composed of two forces.

GHOST OF DARIUS: And how did a land army of that size manage to get across the water?

QUEEN: He contrived means to yoke the strait of Helle, so as to create a pathway.

GHOST OF DARIUS: He actually carried that out, so as to close up the mighty Bosporus?[73]

QUEEN: It is true. Some divinity must have touched his wits.

725  GHOST OF DARIUS: Ah, it was a powerful divinity that came upon him, to put him out of his right mind!

QUEEN: Yes, one can see by the outcome what a disaster he managed to create.

GHOST OF DARIUS: And what in fact was the outcome for them over which you are grieving so?

QUEEN: The naval force was savaged, and that doomed the land army to destruction.

GHOST OF DARIUS: Was the whole host so utterly and completely destroyed by the spear?[74]

730  QUEEN: So that on account of this, the whole city of Susa is grieving because it is empty of men –

GHOST OF DARIUS: Ah me, our army, our valiant aid and protector!

QUEEN: And the whole community of the Bactrians is perished and gone, with not one survivor.

GHOST OF DARIUS: Poor fellow, what young manhood of our allies he has lost!

QUEEN: And Xerxes himself, they say, alone and forlorn, with only a few men –

735  GHOST OF DARIUS: How did he finish up, and where? Is there any chance of his being safe?

QUEEN: – has arrived, to his relief, at the bridge that joins the two lands together.

GHOST OF DARIUS: And has come safe back to our continent? Is that really true?

QUEEN: Yes, that is the prevalent and definite report; there is no dispute about it.

GHOST OF DARIUS: Ah, how swiftly the oracles have come

739–40

true! Zeus has launched the fulfilment of the prophecies against my son. I used to think confidently, ‘I suppose the gods will fulfil them in some distant future’; but when a man is in a hurry himself, the god will lend him a hand. Now, it seems, there has been discovered a fountain of sorrow for all who are dear to me – and it is my son, by his youthful

745–6

rashness, who has achieved this without knowing what he was doing. He thought he could stop the flow of the Hellespont, the divine stream of the Bosporus, by putting chains on it, as if it were a slave; he altered the nature of its passage,[75] put hammered fetters upon it and created a great pathway

749–50

for a great army. He thought, ill-counselled as he was, that he, a mortal, could lord it over all the gods and over Poseidon. Surely this was a mental disease that had my son in its grip! I am afraid that the great wealth I gained by my labours may be overturned and become the booty of the first comer.

QUEEN: The rash Xerxes, I should tell you, was taught this way of thinking by associating with wicked men. They said that

754–5

whereas you had acquired great wealth for your children by warfare, he, from unmanliness, was being a stay-at-home warrior and doing nothing to increase the riches he had inherited. It was because he had heard taunts like that, over and over again, from these wicked men that he planned this military expedition against Greece.

759–60  GHOST OF DARIUS: And so he has completed an immense, never-to-be-forgotten achievement; nothing else that has befallen this city of Susa has ever emptied it like this, since Lord Zeus first granted us this honour, that one man should be supreme over the whole of sheep-rearing Asia, wielding the sceptre of directive authority. Medus[76] was the first leader

765

of our host, and his son also achieved this position. The third ruler in the succession from him was Cyrus,[77] a man blessed by the gods, who gave peace to all those he cared for, since

770

his intelligence was in control of his fighting spirit; he gained mastery over the peoples of Lydia and Phrygia, and overran all of Ionia by force. God did not hate him, because he was wise. The son of Cyrus[78] was the fourth to direct the host.

775

The fifth ruler was
Mardus,[79] a disgrace to his country and to his ancient throne. He was killed in his palace, by means of a crafty plot, by the admirable Artaphrenes[80] together with some friends who took on this duty, and with myself; and I

780

gained by chance the lot
I desired.[81]
And I invaded many lands with great armies, but I never inflicted on my state such harm as this. My son Xerxes, though, is still a young man, thinking young men’s thoughts, and he has not kept my

785

instructions in mind. I tell you this plainly, my old contemporaries: take all of us together who have held this kingship, and we will not be found to have caused this much suffering.

CHORUS: What then, Lord Darius? To what conclusion do your words lead? After this, how can we, the Persian people, get the best possible outcome for the future?

790  GHOST OF DARIUS: By not invading the land of the Greeks, not even with a Median army still greater than before! Their country itself fights as their ally.

CHORUS:
How do you mean? In what way does it fight as their ally?

GHOST OF
DARIUS: By starving to death a multitude that is too vastly numerous.

795  CHORUS: Well, we’ll raise a picked, well-equipped expedition.

GHOST OF DARIUS: No, not even the army that has now been left in the land of Greece will gain a safe return home.

CHORUS: What do you mean? Hasn’t the whole of the
Eastern army crossed back from Europe over the strait of
Helle?

800 GHOST OF DARIUS: Few out of many, if one is to place any credence in the oracles of the gods, looking at what has now happened – for oracles are not fulfilled by halves. If that is indeed so, Xerxes, seduced by vain hopes, has left behind a

805

large, select portion of his army. They remain where the Asopus[82] waters the plain with its stream, bringing welcome enrichment to the soil of the Boeotians. There the destiny awaits them of suffering a crowning catastrophe, in requital for their outrageous actions and their godless arrogance. When they came to the land of
Greece, they did not scruple

810

to plunder the images of the gods and set fire to temples: altars have vanished, and the abodes of deities have been ruined, uprooted, wrenched from their foundations. Because of this evil they have done, they are suffering evil to match it in full measure, and have still to suffer more: the fountain of

815

suffering has not stopped flowing – more of it is still gushing forth, so great will be the clotted libation of slain men’s blood on the soil of the Plataeans, shed by the Dorian spear.[83] The heaps of corpses will voicelessly proclaim to the eyes of men,

820

even to the third generation, that one who is a mortal should not think arrogant thoughts: outrage has blossomed and has produced a crop of ruin, from which it is reaping a harvest of universal sorrow. Look on the price that is being paid for these actions, and remember Athens[84] and Greece: let no one

825

despise the fortune he possesses and, through lust for more, let his great prosperity go to waste. Zeus, I tell you, stands over all as a chastiser of pride that boasts itself to excess, calling it to stern account.
With this in mind, please advise

830

him to show good sense; warn him, with well-spoken admonitions, to stop offending the gods with his boastful rashness. And you, dear, aged mother of Xerxes, go to your palace, take such attire as is fitting, and go to meet your son. Because

835

of his grief at the disaster, all the threads of his richly decorated garments are torn and in rags around his body. Calm him with kindly words; I know that you are the only person he will be able to endure listening to. For myself, I am going away under the earth, down into the darkness. Farewell to

840

you, old friends, and even amid these troubles, see you give your hearts pleasure day by day: wealth is of no benefit to the dead.

[The GHOST
disappears.]

CHORUS: How it pains me to hear of these many sufferings, present and still to come, of the people of the
East!

845  QUEEN: O god, how many dire sorrows are coming upon me! But the misfortune that stings me most of all is to hear of the dishonourable state of the garments that clothe my son’s body. I am going now, and I will take proper attire from the

850

palace and try to meet my son. We will not fail those who are dearest to us when they are in trouble.

[Exit.]

CHORUS:

O popoi! What a great and good life we enjoyed

in our well-run city, when our old

855

never-failing, never-harming, invincible king,

godlike Darius, ruled the country!

In the first place, we produced armies of proven worth,

860

and high-
towered cities <we put totally to sack>;

and, marching back from war, <our men> came unscathed,

unfatigued, to flourishing homes.

865

And how many cities he took, without crossing the stream of the river Halys[85]

or stirring from his hearth!

869–71

Such were the freshwater dwellings of the Thracians[86]

that neighbour the Strymonian gulf;

and, beyond the lake, the mainland cities, each surrounded by a high wall,

875

obeyed this
King,

as did those spread around the broad strait of
Helle, and the Propontis[87] with its deep bays,

and the mouth of the Black Sea;

880

and the sea-girt islands that lay near this land[88]

by the promontory that runs into the sea,[89]

such as Lesbos, olive-growing
Samos,

885

and Chios; and Paros, Naxos, Myconos

and
Andros, the near neighbour that adjoins Tenos;

890

and he also ruled the sea-lands midway between the two shores,[90]

Lemnos and the habitations of Icaros,

and Rhodes and Cnidus, and the cities of Cyprus,

895

Paphos and Soli and
Salamis[91]
–

whose mother-city is the cause of our present lamentation;

898–900

and the wealthy, populous <cities> of the
Greeks

in the Ionian domain he ruled by his wisdom.

He had available to him the tireless strength of men-at-arms

and of a mixed multitude of allies.

905

But now we are experiencing the decisive reversal of all this by the gods in war,

mightily smitten by blows struck at sea.

[Enter XERXES from the west. He is alone, on foot, his royal robes in rags, and carrying nothing but an empty quiver.]

XERXES:

Ió, ió!

905–10

Hapless that I am, to have met

this dreadful fate, so utterly unpredictable!

How cruelly the god has trodden

on the
Persian race! What am I to do, wretched me?

The strength is drained out of my limbs

when I see these aged citizens.[92]

915

Would to Zeus that the fate of death

had covered me over too

together with the men who are departed!

CHORUS:

Ototoi, my King, for that fine army,

920

and for the great honour of Persian empire

and the men who adorned it,

whom now the god has scythed away!

[They shift from chant to song.]

The land laments its native youth

killed by Xerxes, who crammed
Hades

924–5

with Persians: many men

who were marched away, the flower of the land,

slayers with the bow, thronging

myriads of men, have perished and gone.

Aiai, aiai, for our brave defenders!

King of our country, the land of
Asia

930

is terribly, terribly down on her knees!

XERXES:

Here am I – oioi! – one to grieve for:

wretch that I am, I see I have been a bane

to my nation and my fatherland.

CHORUS:

935

In response to your return

936–40

I shall send forth, send forth with many tears,

the shout of woeful words, the cry of woeful thoughts

of a Mariandynian dirge-singer.[93]

XERXES:

941

Utter words of grief and sorrow,

full of lamentation; for this divinity

has turned right round against me.

CHORUS:

I shall do so indeed, I tell you,

945

honouring the sufferings of the army and the grievous blows struck at sea

to the city and the nation: truly I shall cry forth

the tearful wail of a mourner.

XERXES:

950

It was the Ionian, the
Ionian war spirit,

giving victory to their embattled ships, that robbed us of our men,

cutting a swathe across the night-dark expanse of the sea and the ill-starred shore.

CHORUS:

955

Cry
‘Oioioi!’ and learn it all.

Where are the rest, your multitude of friends?

Where are those who stood beside you,

men such as Pharandaces was,

Susas,
Pelagon and Datamas,

960

and Psammis and Susiscanes

who went from Agbatana?

XERXES:

I left them dead,

fallen out of a Tyrian ship off the shores

965

of Salamis, striking against a rugged cape.

CHORUS:

Cry ‘Oioioi!’
Where did you leave Pharnuchus,

yes, and the brave
Ariomardus?

Where is the lord Seualces

970

or the nobly born Lilaeus,

Memphis, Tharybis and Masistras,

Artembares and Hystaechmas?

I ask you this again!

XERXES:

Ió,
ió, ah me!

975

After setting eyes on ancient
Athens,

hateful Athens, all of them in one stroke
–

[repeated sobs] gasp their life out wretchedly on the shore!

CHORUS:

And what of that flower of Persia,

your ever-faithful Eye,[94]

980

who counted the numberless tens of thousands,[95]

<        >, the favourite son

of Batanochus,[96]

the son of Seisames, the son of Megabates,

and great Parthus and Oebares
–

985

did you leave them, did you leave them? Oh, oh, hapless ones!

You speak of evils beyond evils for noble
Persians.

XERXES:

You do stir up in me

a longing for my brave comrades,

990

speaking of unforgettable, unforgettable things, hateful beyond hatefulness.

My heart cries out, cries out, within my body!

CHORUS:

And there are others too whom we miss,

Xanthes, the commander of ten thousand Mardians,[97]

and Anchares of the Arians,[98]

995

and Diaïxis and Arsaces,

lords of the cavalry,

and Egdadates and Lythimnas

and Tolmus, never surfeited with battle.

1000

I am amazed, amazed, that they are not following

behind your wheeled tent.[99]

XERXES:

Yes, those who were marshals of my army have gone.

CHORUS:

They have gone – oi! – without a name.

XERXES:

Ieh, ieh! Ió, ió!

CHORUS:

1005

Ió, ió, you gods,

you have caused suffering that no one expected

for all to behold! What an evil eye Ruin has cast upon us!

XERXES:

Oi, we have been struck down from our age-old good fortune –

CHORUS:

We have been struck down, that is all too plain –

XERXES:

1010

– by new agony, new agony!

CHORUS:

– by an ill-starred encounter

with Ionian sailors.

The Persian race is luckless in war.

XERXES:

1014–15

Indeed it is: I am stricken to misery

in the loss of this great army.

CHORUS:

You who have brought such great ruin to Persia – what is not lost?

XERXES:

Do you see these remnants of my attire?

CHORUS:

I do, I do!

XERXES:

1020

[displaying his quiver] And this arrow-holding –

CHORUS:

What is this that you say was saved?

XERXES:

– repository for missiles?

CHORUS:

Little indeed, out of so much.

XERXES:

Our defenders have been decimated.

CHORUS:

1025

The Ionian people are not cowardly in battle.

XERXES:

They are all too martial! I have witnessed

a disaster I never expected.

CHORUS:

You mean the rout of our mass of ships?

XERXES:

1030

I ripped my robe at the terrible event.

CHORUS:

Papai,
papai!

XERXES:

No, ‘papai’ is too mild!

CHORUS:

Yes, the disaster was twice and thrice as great.

XERXES:

Painful, and a delight to our enemies!

CHORUS:

1035

Cut short, too, was the strength –

XERXES:

I am denuded of escorts!

CHORUS:

– of our friends, by calamities at sea.

XERXES:

Wet, wet your cheeks in grief, and go with me to the palace.

CHORUS:

I wet my cheeks in mourning.

XERXES:

1040

Cry out now in response to my cries.

CHORUS:

A sad answer of sad sound to sad sound.

XERXES:

Raise a song of woe, joining it together with mine.

XERXES: and CHORUS:

Ototototoi!

CHORUS:

How grievous is this disaster!

1045

Oi, it truly does give me pain!

[Through the next three stanzas the CHORUS successively perform the actions that XERXES prescribes.]

XERXES:

Row, row with your arms, and groan for my sake.

CHORUS:

Aiai, aiai! Sorrow, sorrow!

XERXES:

Cry out now in response to my cries.

CHORUS:

I can take care to do that, master.

XERXES:

1050

Now raise a high-pitched wail.

XERXES: and CHORUS:

Ototototoi!

CHORUS:

And mixed in with my groans will be –

oi! – black, violent blows.[100]

XERXES:

Beat your breasts too, and accompany the action with a Mysian cry.

CHORUS:

1055

Painful, painful!

XERXES:

Now, please, ravage the white hairs of your beard.

CHORUS:

With clenched hands, with clenched hands, very mournfully!

XERXES:

And raise a piercing shriek.

CHORUS:

I shall do that too.

XERXES:

1060

Tear the folds of your robe with your hands.

CHORUS:

Painful, painful!

XERXES:

And pluck your hair, and voice your pity for the army.

CHORUS:

With clenched hands, with clenched hands, very mournfully!

XERXES:

And make your eyes moist.

CHORUS:

1065

I assure you I am moistening them.

[A mournful procession now sets itself slowly in motion, as the CHORUS escort XERXES away towards his palace.]

XERXES:

Cry out now in response to my cries.

CHORUS:

Oioi, oioi!

XERXES:

Go wailing to the palace.

CHORUS:

Ió,
ió!

XERXES:

1070

Let ‘ió’ indeed be heard throughout the city –

CHORUS:

Let ‘ió’ be heard indeed, yes, yes!

XERXES:

– as you lament while you walk delicately.

CHORUS:

Ió, ió, Persian ground is hard to tread on![101]

XERXES:

<          >

CHORUS:

<          >.

XERXES:

Ehhh-ehhh, ehhh-ehhh – the triple-oared –

CHORUS:

1075

Ehhh-ehhh, ehhh-ehhh – boats destroyed them!

XERXES:

<Escort me now to my palace.>

CHORUS:

Yes, I will escort you, with loud wails of grief.

[Exeunt.]

The Persian War Tetralogy[1]

1. PHINEUS

Phineus, the blind prophet of Thrace, was persecuted by the Harpies, who persistently snatched his food from the table or even from his mouth (fr. 258), until they were driven away, and in some accounts killed, by Zetes and Calaïs, sons of the North Wind (Boreas) and of the Athenian princess Oreithyia, when Phineus’ land was visited by the Argonauts; the fullest presentation of the story is by Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 2.176–499. From a passage of Philodemus’ treatise On Piety, it appears that Aeschylus’ version of the story was one of those that ended with the death of the Harpies; there is little more that we can say about its content.

258   And there have been many meals that proved not to be meals, which they pillaged from my [or his] ravenous jaws just when my [or his] mouth was taking its first delight in them.

A description of the Harpies’ depredations, probably but not certainly by Phineus himself.

258a   There is no lack of wailing over my [or his] getting no food.

Perhaps from the same speech.

259   They have ankle-supports[2] inside their well-fitting shoes.

Probably from a description of the swift-footed sons of Boreas.

2. THE PERSIANS

3. GLAUCUS OF POTNIAE

Glaucus of Potniae (a town just south of Thebes) was famous for having been devoured by his own mares during the chariot race at the funeral games for Pelias (the uncle of Jason) at Iolcus. Our sources give various explanations of how this came to happen, which are not necessarily incompatible. The fourth-century scholar Asclepiades, in his Tales Told in Tragedy, says that Glaucus had reared the mares on human flesh, to make them fiercer in war, and that they turned on him when they ran short of this food; Asclepiades’ source was almost certainly Aeschylus’ drama, since no other major tragic dramatist made this story the subject of a play. Virgil, however (Georgics 3.266–8), in a passage on the power of sexual desire in horses and other animals, ascribes the madness of Glaucus’ mares to the influence of Venus/Aphrodite, and his commentator Servius says this was because he had neglected her worship and/or because, in order to increase the mares’ speed, he had not allowed them to mate. In the fragments of the play, we can probably detect Glaucus departing for the games (cf. fr. 36.5–6), perhaps after an attempt to dissuade him (fr. 37 may be his reply to this); the catastrophe will have been narrated in a messenger-speech (frr. 38 and 39, and parts of fr. 36b), apparently to Glaucus’ wife. If fr. 25a is rightly assigned to this play, the god Poseidon (whose sphere of interest included everything to do with horses) appeared in the play – perhaps near the end, to explain why Glaucus had suffered as he did – and during his speech referred to a recent visit he had made to Himera in Sicily, perhaps in order to prophesy the great victory gained there in 480 BC over the Carthaginians by Gelon of Syracuse (see p. 6).

Aeschylus wrote another play about an entirely different mythical character also called Glaucus, and ancient scholars distinguished the two as Glaukos Potnieus (Glaucus of Potniae) and Glaukos Pontios (Glaucus the Sea God). Owing to the similarity of these titles, several fragments are assigned by one source or manuscript to one of the two plays, by another to the other; several more are simply quoted from Glaucus without it being specified which play is meant. It is usually, though not always, possible to assign such fragments to one or the other play on the basis of their content. I have included here all the substantial fragments (and one that is less substantial) that seem likely to belong to Glaucus of Potniae.

Several fragments of the same papyrus copy (frr. 36 and 36a–b) have been discovered at Oxyrhynchus in separate Italian and British excavations; the Italian fragments (PSI 1210) are known to be from Glaucus of Potniae because they contain part of a phrase quoted from the play by an ancient commentator on Aristophanes, the British fragments (Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2160) because they contain the name of Glaucus and several words connected with chariot-racing. Only those papyrus fragments which may give us some significant information about the play are presented or mentioned below.

36

GLAUCUS(?):

… ] having taken [the prize of victo]ry with my horses…

[…]

CHORUS(?):

[S]o may it be; and we pray (?) that you may [… ] because of your excellence (?) first in… [… get a good] omen on [this] journey.

[Singing.]

5–6   First of all we pour from our lips,

all together, our wishes for a good journey[3]…

36b   This ‘fragment’ actually consists of several separate sections of the papyrus. Section 1 possibly narrates a dream (of Glaucus’ wife?) about a chariot race; phrases that can be understood are ‘for he seemed’ (line 1), ‘wearing a garl[and]’ (line 2) and ‘horses’ or ‘horseman’ (line 3). The first column of section 2 contains mostly short lines, doubtless sung or chanted by the Chorus and perhaps commenting on the dream (line 10 contained the word visions) and hoping it would prove to bode well rather than ill (would turn out ‘as is desired’, line 11); in its second column we seem to be well into the ‘messenger-speech’ describing the fatal race (‘with their teeth’, line 2; ‘drag’, line 4; ‘to strike’, line 8; ‘Glaucus’, line 10; ‘at the turning-post(s)’, line 11; ‘and the last [lap]’, line 12; ‘to gain [the glory(?)] of victory’, line 13; ‘of the man’, line 14). It seems as though, as in the fictitious chariot race at Delphi described in Sophocles’ Electra (680–763), the race went well for the central figure until nearly the end: but in section 3 the disaster seems to be happening (‘with their teeth’, line 3; ‘the bit’, line 4; ‘carries’, line 5; ‘striking’, line 6; ‘look(s) at’, line 7; ‘of the contest’, line 8; ‘to heal’, line 9; ‘to the sacrificer’, line 11 – the sacrifice was apparently offered ‘to [the] protecting gods, a[s] is cus[tomary]’ (line 12)). Perhaps the chariot was first overturned (together with, or after, a number of others? Compare fr. 38 and Sophocles, Electra 724–30), and only then did the mares attack their driver; section 4 contains likely traces of this in ‘to ta[ke] in their [j]aws’ (line 3) and ‘charioteer’ (line 4). Section 7, though two or three lines are more than half complete, is enigmatic:

But no [… ] on dry land… [… ]

But in the sea [… ] is fearsome [… ]

What a thing [is] this [that has appeared (?)… ]

like an indigenous (?) mountain [lion (??)]

5  For whence [… ]?

For it is natural (?) that [… ] should beget [… ]

And for myself… […

Little can be gathered from the remaining sections, except that section 8 appears to contain a hymn to Hermes, the ‘messenger of Zeus’ (line 17), and the only intelligible words in section 9 are ‘(of ) the salt waters of the sea’, possibly said in connection with the arrival of Poseidon.

37 For a contest does not wait for men who arrive late

Probably Glaucus, rejecting an attempt (by his wife?) to dissuade him from going to the games.

38
MESSENGER:

For chariot on chariot, corpse upon corpse, horses on horses, were piled in confusion.

39
MESSENGER:

They dragged him up in the manner of wolves, the way a pair of wolves carry off a fawn by the shoulders.

40a   the harbour of Xiphirus (?)

According to the ancient lexicographer who records that Aeschylus in Glaucus of Potniae referred to this harbour, it was near Rhegium at the toe of Italy; it may therefore have been mentioned by Poseidon in his ‘Himera’ speech. Also from this speech may be another fragment (fr. 402), cited by Strabo (Geography 6.1.6) from an unspecified play of Aeschylus; Strabo says that, according to Aeschylus, Sicily was once part of the Italian mainland until it was broken off as the result of an earthquake (Poseidon was the god of earthquakes), ‘whence it is called Rhegium’ (as if from rhēgnunai ‘to break’).

25a   Having thoroughly washed myself in its fair streams,[4] I came to Himera on its high cliffs.

Poseidon speaking about a visit he has made to Sicily?

4. PROMETHEUS THE FIRE-BEARER

Apart from the surviving Prometheus Bound, the considerable information we possess about Prometheus Unbound (see pp. 199–203), and a scattering of quotations ascribed to an unspecified Prometheus play, we have four further packages of evidence about Prometheus plays attributed to Aeschylus. (1) The medieval catalogue of his plays lists a Prometheus Pyrphoros (Prometheus the Fire-Bearer), and we have one quotation attributed to it (fr. 208) and one statement reported from it (fr. 208a). (2) The lexicologist Pollux (9.156) states that there was an Aeschylean play called Prometheus Pyrkaeus (Prometheus the Fire-Kindler), and elsewhere (10.64) he quotes a line from this play (fr. 205); a metrical licence in this line proves that the play must have been a satyr drama, not a tragedy. (3) The ancient headnote (‘Hypothesis’) to The Persians states that in the production of which it formed part, in 472 BC, the fourth play (i.e. the satyr drama) was Prometheus. (4) There are several papyrus fragments (frr. 204a–d; only 204b and 204d have enough intelligible material to justify inclusion in this volume), two quotations (frr. 206 and 207), one other reference (fr. 207a, from the ancient commentary to Hesiod, Works and Days 89), and several vase paintings that connect satyrs with Prometheus and/or with fire.

From this evidence it is clear that there was an Aeschylean satyr play, presumably the one produced in 472, in which Prometheus brought fire to the satyrs, who had never seen it before and were greatly delighted by it (particularly because they hoped its possession would make them more attractive to nymphs: fr. 204b) but who had no idea how to handle it safely (frr. 206 and 207). In exchange for fire, it would seem, they gave Prometheus a gift that he, and the human race, could have done without (see fr. 207a).

It has usually been supposed, on the basis of (2), that Prometheus the Fire-Kindler was the satyr drama, while Prometheus the Fire-Bearer was a serious play forming a trilogy with Prometheus Bound and Unbound. There are, however, two serious objections to this view. On the one hand, there is no possible place for Prometheus the Fire-Bearer in a tragic Prometheus trilogy. It cannot have come first, because the exposition of the initial situation in Prometheus Bound (especially in lines 199–241) is so full and detailed as to preclude the possibility that the audience are being told all this for the second time. It cannot have come second, because Hermes’ prophecy in Prometheus Bound 1014–29 allows for no other events to intervene between Prometheus’ return to the daylight and the beginning of his torment by the eagle. And it cannot have come third, because Prometheus Unbound is known to have wound up the story of Prometheus so completely that there can have been no scope for a further play about him. On the other hand, since epithets were attached to play titles precisely for the purpose of distinguishing between plays of the same name by the same author, it is very unlikely that two different Prometheus plays should be given epithets so similar, in meaning as well as in form, as ‘Pyrphoros’ and ‘Pyrkaeus’. More probably, one of these epithets is a corruption of the other, and all the evidence summarized under (1–4) above relates to the same play, the satyr play of 472. Andrew Brown (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 37 (1990), pp. 50–56) has argued convincingly that the proper title of this play is Prometheus Pyrphoros, and that the epithet ‘Pyrkaeus’, known only to Pollux, is an error caused by the existence of a Sophoclean play entitled Nauplios Pyrkaeus (Nauplius the Fire-Raiser). Nauplius, to avenge the murder of his son Palamedes, lured the Greek ships returning from Troy on to the rocks of Euboea by lighting a fire which they mistook for a harbour beacon; Prometheus, by contrast, never lights a fire – he finds it already burning, steals it and brings it to men or satyrs as the case may be. I have accordingly presented all the fragments attributable to the satyr drama under the title Prometheus the Fire-Bearer, in addition to those actually ascribed to a play so named.

204b

CHORUS OF SATYRS: And friendly [Ny]sian (?) delight[5] will set me dancing:

<I will wear (?)> a g[l]eami[n]g

tunic by the unwearying brilliance of the fire.

And one of the Naiads,[6] when she hears about it from me,

5

will chase me hard by the light that shines at my hearth!

And I am confident, I tell you, that the nymphs

will join in choral dances

because they honour the gift of Prometheus.

9–10

And [I have good hope (?)] that they will chant

a fine song about its giver, saying this –

that Prometheus is to humans

a bringer of life [and] eager to provide gifts.

My hope is that they will dance […

…] of winter chill [… ]

15

And I am confident, I tell you, that the nymphs

will join in choral dances

because they honour the gift of Prometheus.

There follow remains of nine further lines including ‘that it is proper for shepherds (?)’ (line 18), ‘wandering by night’ (lines 19–20), ‘thickly wooded’ (line 24).

204d   A lyric refrain (lines 2–4) containing ‘and, I tell you’

(line 2; cf. fr. 204b.6), ‘near the fire’ (line 3) and ‘drunk (?)’ (line 4); then a new stanza containing ‘snow like the best horses’[7] (line 6) and ‘my (?) head from’ (or ‘in’?) a shower’ (line 7). The satyrs are evidently continuing to exult in the benefits of having a fire in their home in winter (cf. fr. 204b.13–14).

205   Linen plugs and long strips of raw flax

Possibly a recommendation (by Prometheus?) for how to treat a burn.

206   Take care the round drop[8] doesn’t touch your mouth; it’s bitter and very dangerous to the throat (?)

Presumably Prometheus warning Silenus (?), who has never before seen a pot boiling over a fire. Silenus, father of the satyrs, featured as a character in every satyr drama.

207

PROMETHEUS:

Then you’ll be mourning for your beard, like a billygoat!

To a satyr (or Silenus?) who, on first seeing fire, is eager to kiss and embrace it.

207a   He[9] says that Prometheus received the jar of evils from the satyrs and deposited it with Epimetheus,[10] instructing him not to accept any gift from Zeus, but he disregarded the warning and accepted Pandora.

207b  A mortal woman created by the fashioning of clay.

Referring to Pandora (so the ancient commentator who cites the line).

208   Staying silent when appropriate and saying what suits the occasion.[11]

208a   For in the Fire-Bearer he [Aeschylus] says that he [Prometheus] was bound for thirty thousand years.[12]

SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

Preface to Seven Against Thebes

Seven Against Thebes[1] was produced at the City Dionysia of 467 BC as the third part of a four-play production – that is, the last play in a tragic trilogy; it was preceded by Laius and Oedipus, and followed by the satyr drama The Sphinx. The production won first prize. Both the rival dramatists on this occasion were sons of famous tragic poets of the previous generation: Aristias son of Pratinas, and Polyphrasmon son of Phrynichus. Sophocles, who had been victorious the previous year, was not competing.

The story of Laius, Oedipus and the wars for possession of Thebes among members of the latter’s family after his death had long been familiar throughout the Greek world, and was the subject of three early epics, the Oedipodeia, the Thebaid (about the curse of Oedipus, the quarrel between his sons, and the expedition of the Seven) and the Epigoni (about the attack on, and destruction of, Thebes by the sons of the Seven). Sophocles’ treatment of it in Antigone, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus (to name his three plays in the order of their composition) became canonical for later times, but we are not entitled to take it for granted that the stories were used by, or even necessarily known to, Aeschylus in the form in which Sophocles presented them, except where there is positive evidence that this was so. The evidence that we do possess about the content of Laius, Oedipus and The Sphinx – much of which is derived from Seven Against Thebes itself – is discussed later in this volume (see pp. 102–6); briefly, the main event of Laius will have been the death of Laius at the hands (as all will have assumed) of an unknown assailant (in fact, of course, it was his son Oedipus, subsequently to come to Thebes, defeat the Sphinx, be given the vacant throne and marry Laius’ widow), while Oedipus will have included what Sophocles (Antigone 51) called Oedipus’ ‘self-detection’ of his crimes, followed by his self-blinding (cf. Seven 778-84).

The climax of Oedipus is likely to have been the curse of Oedipus on his sons, which seems to have run roughly thus: ‘You will quarrel, and come to a bitter resolution, dividing my inheritance sword in hand’ (cf. Seven 766–7, 785–90). Little if anything of the following phases of the story can have been included in the action of Oedipus, and it appears that the audience were left to infer them from backward references in Seven Against Thebes and from their prior knowledge of the myth. It is not difficult for us to do likewise.

After the death of Oedipus, his sons Eteocles and Polyneices quarrelled over their father’s property and over the kingship of Thebes. The virtuous prophet Amphiaraus thinks that Polyneices had a considerable degree of right on his side (Seven 584), and there is reason to believe that Aeschylus represented him as the elder of the two brothers;[2] but by whatever means, Eteocles was able to gain full control of the city, and Polyneices went into exile. Coming to Argos, he met another exile, Tydeus; the two won the favour of King Adrastus and the hands of his two daughters, and Adrastus, strongly encouraged by Tydeus (cf. Seven 571-5), decided to mount an expedition against Thebes, with seven great warriors (among them Polyneices, Tydeus and Amphiaraus) as its leading figures. Polyneices’ objective was of course to gain for himself the Theban throne, the property of Oedipus and revenge on his brother, but with the exception of Amphiaraus, a most reluctant participant in the expedition,[3] all his colleagues seem to be set on the destruction of the city.[4]

When the surviving play begins, Thebes has been under siege for some time, and the prophet Teiresias[5] has declared that the day now commencing will see a major enemy assault on the city. The audience, knowing the story well and knowing that this is the final play of the tragic trilogy, will be certain that this will be the day when Eteocles and Polyneices kill each other. Eteocles too can guess that the time has come for the ‘bitter resolution’ of which his father’s curse had spoken, but not what form this will take (cf. 70–72); if the words of the curse were approximately as suggested above, he has no reason to suppose that he will fight his brother one-to-one. Indeed it is likely that at this stage he has no intention of personally taking part in the battle at all, and that (unlike the citizenry whom he harangues in the opening scene) he is not in armour.[6] He is the helmsman of the city (2–3, 62), whereas the champions at the gates are described as oarsmen (283, 595) – and one man cannot do both these jobs.

What changes Eteocles’ mind is the panic of the young women (who form the Chorus), which brings him back in a hurry (at 182) from his task of organizing the defences (cf. 62–5). He calms them down (with difficulty, and not very effectively – as their songs, full of fear and alarm, make evident throughout the next phase of the play) and, apparently to reassure them further, undertakes (282–4) that he will post seven champions including himself to guard the city’s seven gates: there had been no previous mention of any such plan. We begin to see where this is leading. It is likely that Polyneices and Tydeus, as Adrastus’ sons-in-law, were always assumed to have been prominent figures in the attacking army, and most lists of the Seven include both of them; so we expect Polyneices to be attacking one of the gates, and expect too that Eteocles will post himself to defend that same gate. But will he do so by design or in ignorance?

To that question, it will prove, the best answer is ‘both’, as eventually emerges from the extraordinary scene (375–676) commonly known as ‘the shield scene’ or ‘the seven Redepaare [pairs of speeches]’. Eteocles, having gone off apparently to make his postings, has returned to hear the Scout report who is attacking each gate. Six times, working sequentially round the walls in a clockwise direction, the Scout names the man attacking a gate – every one of them, except for Amphiaraus, a physical monstrosity, or a moral one, or both – describes the device on his shield (again always boastful and arrogant, except for Amphiaraus, who has none at all) and asks who can oppose him; six times Eteocles names a man who will defend the gate, and is always able to find something about the attacker, or the defender, or both, which can be taken as a good omen for a successful defence. It has long been disputed whether Eteocles is actually making the postings during this scene, or whether he has made some or all of them already (during his absence between 286 and 369); but the non-random sequence of the verbal tenses referring to the postings strongly points to the conclusion, with which nothing in the text is inconsistent, that he has made three, probably four, of the seven postings already, and that only those at the sixth, seventh and first gates, which are fairly close together (cf. 570–89), remain to be made.[7] The audience, of course, cannot know this at the outset, and will have no idea how fateful is Eteocles’ decision not to take on himself the defence of the first gate against Tydeus.[8]

After that, four times in succession, the defender turns out to have been posted already, and by now most spectators will have guessed that Polyneices will be attacking the last gate. Eteocles thus now has only one chance to avoid disaster, and that proves to be no chance at all, for the sixth attacker is Amphiaraus, and Eteocles knows that according to an oracle Amphiaraus will be swallowed by the earth before he can attack the city (615–19; cf. 587–8) and therefore that the task of opposing him is a purely nominal one to which he cannot honourably assign himself. And then we hear what we were expecting, and Eteocles hears what he never expected: the seventh attacker, assigned by lot (55) to the seventh gate, is Polyneices, and this is the gate which Eteocles has reserved himself to defend. The curse of Oedipus has come true in the worst possible way.

Or has it? The Scout, in his last words before his final exit (650–52), takes it for granted that Eteocles will send someone else to fight Polyneices and reminds him, and us, that his proper role is to be ‘captain’ of the city; and the Chorus (677–82) cannot understand why he does not nominate a substitute and insist that this would not be dishonourable (698–9). But to Eteocles’ mind it is futile to resist the storm-force winds and currents of divine hostility (689–91; cf. 705–9). And there is also another factor, which finds ghastly expression in the epigram (four Greek words) which he puts in the mouth of the Curse (697): ‘The gain comes before the death that comes after’. To Eteocles it is a gain, a benefit, to have the opportunity of personally killing his brother, even at the cost of his own life; he wants to fight him and thinks it right to do so (673). Whether this is the Curse taking possession of his mind, or whether it is the bursting out of a deep hatred long suppressed, we cannot tell; perhaps we are meant to suppose it is both.

At any rate it is effectively the end of the trilogy. Eteocles, fully armed, leaves the scene for the last time; the Chorus reflect (720–91) on the disastrous history of the royal house; a messenger reports that the city is saved, but the two princes are dead; presently the two bodies are brought back, mourned over (with virtually no distinction being made between the brother who fought to defend the city and the one who fought alongside those who aimed to destroy it) and finally taken off for burial. The disturbance that began when Laius defied an oracular warning to beget no heir (742–51) has reached its end in the annihilation of his heirs.

Towards the end of Seven there are several passages of highly suspect authenticity. The final scene, in which a Herald forbids the burial of Polyneices, Antigone defies him, and the Chorus divide in two, half escorting the body of one brother and half that of the other, ruins an ending which till then had stressed, over and over again, the equality of the brothers in death, and leaves the action of the play, and therefore of the trilogy, lacking any closure; at one point, moreover (1039 and note), the text can hardly be understood without prior acquaintance with Sophocles’ Antigone. It is overwhelmingly probable, therefore, that this scene was added for a restaging of Seven, at a time when Sophocles’ play had made it impossible to think of the mutual slaughter of Eteocles and Polyneices without also thinking of the tragic heroism of their sister.

If that is the case, it becomes unlikely that Antigone and her sister Ismene (862) originally figured at all in a play whose later scenes otherwise emphasize the complete destruction of the house of Laius,[9] and this is confirmed by the very clumsy way in which they are introduced in 861–74, with the Chorus saying that the sisters have evidently come to sing a lament and immediately adding, without any reason given, that they themselves, the Chorus, ought to sing one first. Clearly the interpolator wanted to have the sisters sing the antiphonal lament 961–1004 (which Aeschylus doubtless wrote for sections, or section leaders, of the Chorus[10]) but did not want to bring them on immediately before it and so break up the continuous sequence of lyric lament. The removal of 861–74 allows the Chorus’ lament over the bodies of the two brothers to begin immediately they have been brought on stage (a movement covered by 848–60).

The short anapaestic passage 822–31 may well also be an interpolation; it contributes nothing to the reshaping of the ending consequent on the introduction into the play of Antigone and Ismene, and need not (though it may) have been composed at the same time as the other additions.

As a result of these changes to the ending of Seven, we seem to have lost a few lines from the very conclusion of the play – though probably no more than that: already in the last surviving genuine lines the question has been raised (1002) of where the brothers shall be buried, and it has been pointed out (1004) that it would be cruel to lay them near the father who had cursed them; once an alternative suggestion has been made and accepted, the Chorus – all of it, not two halves separately as in the altered ending – can escort the two corpses to their final home, the only share of their father’s possessions that has in the end been allotted to them (731–3).

NOTES

1.   This title, though already current in the late fifth century (Aristophanes, Frogs 1021), is unlikely to have been given to the play by Aeschylus, since nowhere in it are Thebes or the Thebans referred to under those names; they are always called the city and people of Cadmus. Probably the component parts of closely connected trilogies like this one originally had no separate titles of their own.

2.   An Etruscan hand-mirror of the fourth century shows two warriors labelled Eutucle and Phulnice about to stab each other in the left breast (cf. Seven 888–90); Polyneices has a beard, Eteocles does not. In Seven too Polyneices is said to be bearded (666), and though we are not told in the text that Eteocles is beardless, it is significant that a Chorus of very young women can address him as ‘child’ (686) and that he, unlike Polyneices, is unmarried (clearly implied by 187–8).

3.   See note on Seven 612.

4.   Cf. Seven 42–8 (the oath of the Seven – we cannot at that stage be sure that Polyneices is among them), 427 and 434 (Capaneus), 467 (Eteoclus), 531 (Parthenopaeus). The uncomfortable position of Polyneices, attacking his own city in such company, may have reminded many spectators of that of the ex-tyrant Hippias and his family accompanying the Persian expeditions against Athens in 490 and 480 respectively (Herodotus 6.102, 107, 109.3; 8.52.2).

5.   See note on Seven 24. It is, of course, possible that Teiresias had been seen on stage in one or both of the preceding plays.

6.   I have argued this more fully in Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996), pp. 107–9.

7.   See further Aeschylean Tragedy, pp. 103–7.

8.   8. As H. D. F. Kitto pointed out (Greek Tragedy, third edn (London 1961), pp. 48–9), for more than ten lines (397–407a) – over half of Eteocles’ speech – Aeschylus makes it seem as though he is going to post himself at this gate!

9.   Cf. 691, 720, 813, 877, 881–2, 951–5.

10. Except for 996–7 (see note on 995); these two lines, which suit only the sisters, were probably inserted by the interpolator.

Characters

ETEOCLES, ruler of Thebes

SCOUT CHORUS of Theban maidens

MESSENGER

[ANTIGONE and ISMENE, daughters of Oedipus HERALD[1]]

[Scene: The citadel of Thebes. A mound represents a shrine to the major gods of the city. One side-passage is imagined as leading to the lower town, the other to the walls and the battlefield. A crowd of armed Theban citizens is present. ETEOCLES (not in armour) enters, attended, from the town, to address them.]

ETEOCLES: Citizens of Cadmus’ land, he who guards the city’s fortunes, controlling the helm at its stern,[2] never letting his eyes rest in sleep, has to give the right advice for the situation. For if we should be successful, the responsibility would be

5

god’s; but if on the other hand disaster were to strike (which may it not!) then Eteocles’ name alone would be repeatedly harped on by the citizens throughout the town amid a noisy surge of terrified wailing – from which may Zeus the

10

Defender, true to his title, defend the city of the Cadmeans! This is the time when every one of you – including both those who have not yet reached the peak of young manhood and those whom time has carried past it, and who are feeding abundant bodily growth – must have a care for your city, as

14–15

as is right and proper, must come to its aid, to the aid of the altars of its native gods so as never to let their rites be obliterated, to the aid of your children and to the aid of your Motherland, your most loving nurse; for when you were children crawling on her kindly soil, she generously accepted all the toil of your upbringing, and nurtured you to become

20

her shield-bearing inhabitants and be faithful to her in this hour of need. And thus far, up to this day, god has inclined to the right side: we have been besieged within our walls all this time, but for the most part, thanks to the gods, the war is turning out well for us. But now, as the prophet[3] states –

25–6

that shepherd of fowl,[4] who with infallible skill observes birds of augury with his ears and his mind, without using fire[5] – this man, the master of this kind of prophecy, says that a great plan for an attack by the Achaeans[6] upon the city is

30–31

being discussed this night. So get moving, all of you, to the battlements and gates of the walls – hurry, with your full armour! Man the parapets, take your stand on the platforms of the walls, stand firm at the gate entrances, have good

34–5

confidence, and don’t be too afraid of this horde of foreigners. God will bring success!

[Exeunt citizens, making for the walls.]

I have also acted, sending scouts to spy on the army, and I am sure they are not wasting time on their way. When I have heard from them, I will certainly not be caught by deception.

[Enter SCOUT from the direction of the battlefield.]

40   SCOUT: Eteocles, most excellent king of the Cadmeans, I come bringing definite news from the army out there; I was myself an eyewitness to what they were doing. Seven men, bold leaders of companies, slaughtered a bull, let its blood run

45–6

into a black-rimmed shield, and, touching the bull’s blood with their hands, swore an oath by Ares, Enyo[7] and blood- loving Terror that they would either bring destruction on the city, sacking the town of the Cadmeans by force, or perish

49–51

and mix their blood into the soil of this land; and with their own hands, shedding tears, they were adorning the chariot of Adrastus[8] with mementos of themselves[9] to take home to their parents. But no word of pity passed their lips: there breathed within them a steel-hearted spirit, blazing with courage, like that of lions with the light of war in their eyes. You have not been delayed in learning this by any slowness

55

of mine: I left them drawing lots, so that according to the fall of the lot each should lead his company against a gate. In view of this, you should speedily post men of excellence, the pick of the city, at the entrances of the gates; for the Argive 60 army, fully equipped, is already coming close, raising the dust, and white foam from the horses’ lungs is dripping and staining the soil. Be like a good ship’s captain and make the city tight, before the squalls of war assail her – for this army is like a roaring land-wave – and take the very quickest

65

opportunity of doing this. For my part, from now on, I will keep a faithful daytime scout’s eye out,[10] and through my clear reports you will know what is happening outside and not come to harm.

[Exit SCOUT by the way he came.]

70  ETEOCLES: O Zeus, and Earth, and you gods of the city, O mighty Curse and Fury of my father,[11] do not let my city be captured by its foes, do not extirpate it from Greece, root

74–5

and branch, in utter destruction! Never bind this free land and this free city of Cadmus with the yoke-strap of slavery! Be its defence! I believe I am speaking in our common interest; for when a city enjoys success, it honours its gods.

[Exit ETEOCLES towards the walls. The CHORUS of Theban maidens enter, from the town, in terror and confusion.]

CHORUS:

<Ah, ah,> I cry for great, fearful sufferings!

The army has been let loose, it has left its camp!

80

This great host of horse is pouring forward at the gallop!

The dust I see in the air shows me it is so,

a voiceless messenger but true and certain!

The soil <of my land>,

struck by hooves, sends the noise right to my ear!

85

It’s flying, it’s roaring like an irresistible

mountain torrent!

Oh, oh, you gods and you goddesses, keep off

the surge of evil!

The noise <of a war cry comes> over the walls:

90

the army with their white shields rise

plain to see, coming swift<-footed> against the city![12]

Who, who of the gods or goddesses

will protect us, who will ward them off?

95

Should I, then, fall down before

the <ancestral> images of our gods?

O blest ones, in your fair abode!

Now is the moment to clasp the images: why do we wait

and moan to no purpose?

100

Do you hear, or do you not, the clatter of shields?

When, when, if not now, shall we be able <to adorn

the gods> with robes and garlands as prayer-offerings?

I see the noise[13] – it is the clatter of many spears!

104–5

What do you mean to do, Ares, ancient god

of this land?[14] Betray your own country?

God of the golden helmet, watch over, watch over the city

which you once held worthy of your love!

[They approach the shrine, prostrate themselves and embrace the images.]

Gods who dwell in this city and land, come hither, all of you,

109–10

behold this company

of maidens supplicating you to save them from slavery.

A wave of men, their crests at an angle,[15] breaks loudly

115

over the city, raised up by the blasts of war.

Father Zeus, you who have supreme power over all,

at all costs defend us from capture by our foes!

120

The Argives are surrounding the city

of Cadmus, and terror of their warlike arms

throws us into confusion; the bits in the horses’ cheeks

give forth a piercing whine that tells of slaughter;

125

and out of the army seven distinguished leaders of men,

assigned by lot, are taking their stand

against the seven gates,

fully armed, brandishing their spears.

O powerful daughter of Zeus, lover of battle,

130

be the protector of our city,

Pallas! And the lord of horses and ruler of the sea,[16]

with <the mighty strength of> his fish-spearing weapon –

135

give release, give release from our terror!

And you, Ares – ah, ah! – guard the city

that bears Cadmus’ name, and make manifest your care for it!

140

And Cypris,[17] you who are the ancestress of our race,

keep them away from us! For we are born

144–5

of your blood, and we approach you with cries

and prayers that deserve a divine hearing.

And you, Wolf-god,[18] make yourself a wolf

to the enemy army; and you, maiden

born of Leto,[19] make ready your bow.

150

[They utter sharp cries of terror.]

I hear the rattle of chariots round the city!

O Lady Hera!

The sockets of their heavy-laden axles are squealing!

Beloved Artemis!

155

The air is going mad with the brandishing of spears!

What is happening to our city? What will become of it?

What is the ending that god has yet to bring?

[They again utter sharp cries of terror.]

Now comes the bombardment of stones on the battlements!

160

Beloved Apollo!

Clashing of bronze-rimmed shields at the gates!

Child of Zeus,[20] from whom

comes the clean[21] conclusion to battle that decides a war,

and you, blest Queen Onca, dwelling before the city,[22]

165

protect your seven-gated home.

O gods, you almighty defenders,

O gods and goddesses with decisive power

to guard the walls of this land,

do not betray this city in the toils of battle

170

to an enemy of alien speech![23]

Do not fail to hear, to hear the prayers

of maidens with uplifted hands!

O beloved gods,

175

stand over our city to liberate it

and show how you love it,

take heed of the people’s worship,

take heed, and defend them;

180–81

and be mindful, I beg you,

of the city’s loving sacrificial rites.

[ETEOCLES re-enters.]

ETEOCLES: I ask you, you insufferable creatures, is this the best policy, does it help save our city, does it give confidence to

185

our beleaguered population, to fall down before the images of the city’s gods and cry and howl in a way any sensible person would abhor? Whether in trouble or in welcome prosperity, may I not share my home with the female gender! When a woman is in the ascendant, her effrontery is impossible

190

to live with; when she’s frightened, she is an even greater menace to family and city. So now, with you running around in all directions like this, your clamour has spread panic and cowardice among the citizens; you are doing your very best to advance the cause of the enemy outside – the city is being

195

sacked by its own people from within! That’s the sort of thing you’ll get if you live with women! Now then, if anyone fails to obey my command, whether a man or a woman or anything in between, a vote of death will be passed against them and there is no way they will escape execution by public

200–201

stoning. Out-of-door affairs are the concern of men; women are not to offer opinions about them. Stay inside and do no harm!

[The CHORUS make no response.]

Did you hear me or not? Or am I talking to the deaf?

CHORUS:

Dear son of Oedipus, I was frightened when I heard

the sound of the rattle, the rattle of chariots,

205

and the noise of the whirling sockets of their wheels,

and when the fire-fashioned bits that are horses’ steering-gear howled in their mouths.

208–10   ETEOCLES: So what? A sailor can’t, can he, when his ship is in distress in heavy seas, find an escape from danger by fleeing from the stern to the bows?

CHORUS:

No, I rushed headlong to the ancient images

of the divine ones, trusting in the gods, when there came the noise

of the deadly blizzard of stones at the gates:

then, then I rose up in fear to pray to the blest ones, that they

215

might spread their protection over the city.

ETEOCLES: You are praying for our walls to keep off the enemy attack? Then that will happen – so far as the gods are concerned. But then it is said that the gods of a captured city leave it.[24]

CHORUS:

219–20

Never while I live may this assembled company

of gods desert us, nor may I behold this city

stormed through by the enemy, and its people

devoured by their fire.

224–5  ETEOCLES: Please don’t call on the gods while behaving imprudently. Obedience is mother of Success and wife of the Saviour[25] – that’s how the saying goes.

CHORUS:

True, but the power of god is even mightier:

often amid troubles he sustains the helpless,

even out of the direst straits when the clouds

are hanging over their eyes.

230  ETEOCLES: This is the business of men, to offer slaughtered sacrifices to the gods[26] when encountering the enemy; your business is to keep quiet and stay in your homes.

CHORUS:

It is thanks to the gods that we dwell in an unconquered city and that our wall keeps off the enemy horde.

235

What kind of resentment can find that offensive?

ETEOCLES: I don’t at all resent your honouring the race of gods. But in order to avoid making our citizens lose heart, be calm and don’t get too excessively frightened.

CHORUS:

As soon as I heard that unprecedented din

240

I came in terrified fear to this citadel,

this glorious divine abode.

ETEOCLES: Well then, if you learn of men wounded or dying, don’t greet the news with wailing. That is what Ares feeds on – the killing of human beings.

245  CHORUS: Listen, I can hear the neighing of horses!

ETEOCLES: Well, if you can hear them, don’t over-publicize the fact.

CHORUS: The city is groaning to its foundations – we’re encircled!

ETEOCLES: I’m capable enough of deciding myself how to deal with this.

CHORUS: I’m frightened! And the clatter at the gates gets louder and louder.

250  ETEOCLES: Will you not keep quiet, instead of talking all about it in public?

CHORUS: Assembled gods, do not betray our walls!

ETEOCLES: Can’t you put up with it in silence, confound you?

CHORUS: Gods of my city, let me not fall into slavery!

ETEOCLES: You’re putting yourself into slavery,[27] and me, and the whole city.

255  CHORUS: Almighty Zeus, direct your bolts against the enemy!

ETEOCLES: Zeus, what a race you’ve given us for company, these women!

CHORUS: A wretched one – just like men when their city is captured.

ETEOCLES: Saying ill-omened words again, are you, while touching the images?[28]

CHORUS: Because of my lack of courage, fear seized hold of my tongue.

260  ETEOCLES: If you could comply with a slight request I have…

CHORUS: Please explain it right away, and I’ll soon understand.

ETEOCLES: Be silent, you poor fool, and don’t terrify your own side.

CHORUS: I’ll be silent; along with the rest I will endure what fate may bring.

265  ETEOCLES: I accept this word of yours, in preference to your earlier words. Now, in addition to that, get away from the images and utter a better prayer – that the gods should fight alongside us.[29] Listen to my prayer, and then utter the sacred,

270

auspicious ululation of triumph, the customary Hellenic cry at sacrifices,[30] to give confidence to our friends and dispel their fear of the foe. I say to the gods who inhabit this land, both those who dwell in the plains and those who watch over the marketplace, and to the springs of Dirce and the waters

275

of Ismenus,[31] that if all turns out well and the city is saved, we will redden the altars of the gods with the blood of sheep, set up monuments of victory, <and fix> the spoils of the enemy, gained by the stroke of the spear, in their holy

280

temples. Make prayers like that to the gods, not mournfully, nor with wild, useless pantings – they won’t make it any less impossible for you to avoid what is fated. For myself, I will go and station six men, with myself as the seventh, to combat[32]

285

the enemy <           >[33] at the seven entrances to the walls, before a messenger comes with a flurry of hasty, noisy words and causes a crisis that sets all ablaze.

[He leaves, making for the walls. The CHORUS leave the shrine and take up their formation in the orchestra.]

CHORUS:

I heed your words, but terror will not let my soul sleep:

close to my heart

thoughts are kindling fear

290

of the host around the walls,

as a dove, all trembling,

fears the snakes that make evil companions

for the chicks sleeping in her nest.

295

For some of them march against the walls

in full strength, in full mass –

what is to become of me? –

298–300

while others hurl

jagged stones at the people of the city,

attacked from all sides.

In every way, you gods

of the family of Zeus, protect the city and people

of the family of Cadmus!

What land on earth can you take in exchange

305

that is better than this, if you abandon

to the enemy this land of deep soil

and the water of Dirce,

the best drink for rearing

310

of all the streams sent forth by Poseidon the Earth-Encircler

and by the children of Tethys?[34]

Bearing this in mind, you gods

of the city, cast

upon those outside the walls

314–15

the cowardice that destroys men, the panic that makes them

throw away their arms, and win

glory for these citizens;[35]

be saviours of the city

and stay in your fair abode

320

in response to our shrill, wailing prayers.

For it is pitiful that so ancient a city

should be cast down to Hades, the enslaved plunder

323–5

of the spear, contemptuously ravaged

and turned to flaky ashes

by an Achaean man, with divine permission,

while the women are taken captive and led away –

ah, ah! – young and old together,

dragged by their hair like horses,[36]

their clothes being torn off, and the city

330

cries out as it is emptied

of this wretched plunder from which rises a mingled clamour.

Grievous indeed is the fate I fear!

And it is lamentable when those just reared[37] are plucked unripe

and traverse, before the lawful time,

335

a hateful path away from their homes:

I declare that even the dead

fare better than they do.

For a city when it is conquered –

ah, ah! – suffers many disasters.

340

One man leads another captive, or slays,

or ravages with fire; the whole city

is besmirched with smoke,

and over it blows the blast of the raging subduer of hosts,

Ares, defiling piety.

345

There is tumult throughout the town; it is enclosed all round

as if by a solid wall;[38] man is slain

by man with the spear;

loud, bloody screams

349–50

rise up from infants

fresh from the nourishing breast.

And Pillage is there, sister to Rampage:

plunderer meets plunderer

and plunderless calls to plunderless

wanting to have him as a colleague –

355

they desire neither a lesser nor an equal share.

What sufferings may one guess will follow that?

Grain of every sort, spilled on the ground,

pains the eye, having acquired

unfriendly store-keepers;[39]

360–61

and the earth’s rich gifts

in mingled confusion are blown about

in gusts of worthless trash.

Slave-girls new to suffering

<will soon be enduring> a captive coupling

365

with a lucky man, for

they can expect to come to a nocturnal consummation

with the dominating enemy,

the climax of their utterly wretched afflictions.

[The SCOUT is seen returning in haste.]

A VOICE FROM THE CHORUS: It seems to me, you know, my

369–70

dears, that the scout is bringing us fresh news of the army: he is forcing the sockets of his feet to move him rapidly.

[ETEOCLES is seen returning in haste from the opposite direction; attendants follow, carrying his armour.]

ANOTHER VOICE: And here is the king himself, the son of Oedipus, just at the precise time to learn what the messenger has to say: speed is making his gait uneven too.

375  SCOUT: I can state from accurate knowledge the dispositions of the enemy, and how each has received his allotted station at the gates. Tydeus is already growling near the Proetid Gate, but the prophet[40] is not allowing him to cross the

380

river Ismenus, because the sacrifices are not giving good signs. Tydeus, lusting madly for battle, is screaming like a snake hissing at midday,[41] and is belabouring the wise prophet, the son of Oecles, with insults, saying that he is cringing before death and battle through cowardice. As he utters these cries, he

385

shakes three crests casting long shadows, the mane of his helmet, and on the underside of his shield bells of beaten bronze make a terrifying clang. Fashioned upon his shield he bears this proud device: a blazing firmament full of stars. Conspicuous

390

in the centre of the shield is a brilliant full moon, the greatest of the stars, the eye of night. Raving thus, in his boastful armour, he screams by the banks of the river, longing for battle, like a horse panting against the force of bit and bridle

395

and impatiently awaiting the sound of the trumpet. Whom will you station to oppose this man? Who can be relied on to stand before Proetus’ Gate when its bolts are undrawn?

ETEOCLES: I would not tremble at the accoutrements of any man; and shield devices cannot inflict wounds, nor can crests

400

or bells hurt without a spear. As for this ‘night’ which you say is on his shield, glittering with the stars of heaven – well, perhaps someone’s folly[42] may prove prophetic. For if the night of death should fall on his eyes, then this boastful device

405

would prove to be rightly and properly true to its name for its bearer, and he will have made this arrogant prophecy against himself. I will post against Tydeus, as defender of this

410

gate, the brave son of Astacus, a man of very noble birth and one who honours the throne of Modesty and hates arrogant words; for he never does a shameful deed, and to be cowardly is not his way. He is a scion arising from the Sown Men whom Ares spared,[43] and a man of this land through and through: Melanippus. Ares will decide the issue with his dice;

415

but it is very much the just duties of kinship that send him forth to protect the mother that bore him[44] from the enemy’s spear.

CHORUS:

May the gods grant good fortune to him who contends

on my behalf, for he is standing up

to be a righteous defender of the city! But I tremble

420

to see the bloody deaths of men who perish

fighting for their dear ones.

SCOUT: So indeed may the gods grant him good fortune! Capaneus has been allotted the position at the Electran Gate.

424–5

This second one is a giant,[45] bigger than the man previously mentioned,[46] and his boasts show a pride beyond human limits; for he says that he will sack the city, god willing or unwilling, and that not even the weapons of Zeus crashing down to earth will stand in his way or hold him back – he

430

compares the lightnings and thunderbolts to the heat of the noonday sun. As his device he bears a naked man carrying fire: the torch with which he is armed blazes in his hands, and in golden letters he declares, ‘I will burn the city’. Against

435

such a man you must send – but who can stand against him? Who will await without panic the onset of this braggart man?

ETEOCLES: Now our first gain has given birth to yet another:[47] men’s foolish pride, you see, finds a truthful accuser in their

440

own tongues. Capaneus is voicing threats against men who are ready to act. With contempt for the gods he takes a foolish joy, mortal as he is, in exercising his mouth by sending up to heaven loud, seething words against Zeus: I am certain that he will get his deserts, when something comes to him

445

‘carrying fire’ – the thunderbolt,[48] and not a mere image of it either. Excessively loud-mouthed he may be, but a man has been posted against him who is fiery in spirit: powerful Polyphontes,

450

who will be a reliable defender with the goodwill of Artemis the Protectress[49] and the aid of the other gods. Name another man who has been allotted to another gate.

CHORUS:

May he perish, he who makes these great boastful threats against the city!

May the thunderbolt stop him

454–6

before ever he leaps upon my house

and plunders me by arrogant armed force

from my maiden abode!

SCOUT: I will name him. The third man, for whom the third

460

lot sprang out of the upturned helmet of fine bronze, to lead his company against the Neïstan Gate, is Eteoclus. He is circling with his horses, who are snorting in their harness, eager to fall upon the gate; their muzzles, filled with the breath of their proud nostrils, are whistling a barbarian

465

music. His shield is decorated in no petty style. A fully armed soldier is climbing a scaling ladder to the top of the enemy’s wall, aiming to sack the city; and he too is crying out in written syllables, saying that not even Ares can throw him

470

off the wall. Against this man too you must send someone who can be relied on to save this city from the yoke of slavery.

ETEOCLES: He has been sent already, bearing his boast in his hands[50] – Megareus, son of Creon,[51] of the race of the Sown

475

Men. He will not be terrified into retreating from the gate by the noise of horses’ wild neighing: he will either, by his death, pay his full debt of nurture to this land, or else will adorn his father’s house with booty after conquering two men[52] and

480

the city on the shield. Brag about another one;[53] don’t be grudging about informing me.

CHORUS:

Truly I pray that fortune may be with you,

O defender of my home, and may not be with them:

as they bluster loudly against the city

484–5

with maddened heart, so may an indignant

Zeus look upon them with wrath!

SCOUT: Another, the fourth, assigned to the neighbouring Gate

489–90

of Athena Onca, is standing near it uttering loud cries, the vast figure and form of Hippomedon. I shuddered, I won’t deny it, to see him brandish his great round threshing-floor of a shield. And it can’t have been a cheap artist who gave him that device on the shield, Typhon[54] emitting dark smoke, the many-coloured sister of flame, from his fire-breathing

495

lips; the round circle of the hollow-bellied shield is floored with coiling snakes.[55] The man himself raised a great war cry; he is possessed by Ares, and he rages for a fight like a maenad,[56] with a fearsome look in his eye. You need to guard

500

well against the attack of a man like this: Terror itself is now vaunting at the gate.

ETEOCLES: In the first place, Pallas Onca, close neighbour to our city’s gate, hates this man’s arrogance and will keep him off, like a mother bird protecting her nestlings from a hostile

504–5

serpent. And a man has been chosen to face this man: Hyperbius, the brave son of Oenops, ready to learn his fate in this crisis of fortune, faultless in form, in spirit, and also in the handling of arms. And Hermes[57] has brought them together appropriately: the man is an enemy of the man he will face,[58]

510

and on their shields they will bring together two antagonistic gods. One of them has the fire-breathing Typhon, and on

515

Hyperbius’ shield resides Father Zeus, standing with his flaming bolt in his hand. Such are their alliances with gods; and we are on the side of the winners, they of the losers – that is if Zeus is Typhon’s superior in battle. It is to be expected that the human opponents will fare likewise, and

520

by the logic of Hyperbius’ emblem the Zeus he has on his shield should become his Saviour.[59]

CHORUS:

I am confident that he who has on his shield

the adversary of Zeus, the unlovely form of an earth-born

divinity, an image hateful to mortals

and to the long-lived gods,

525

will lose his head before the gates!

527–8  SCOUT: So may it be. Now I tell you of the fifth, assigned to the fifth gate, the North Gate, right by the tomb of

536–7

Amphion,[60] son of Zeus. He stands there with a savage pride, not at all in keeping with his maidenish name,[61] and a fierce

529–30

eye. He swears by the spear he holds, resolved to revere it more than a god and more highly than his eyes, that he will sack the city of the Cadmeans by force. He who says this is the offspring of Ares by a mountain-dwelling mother,[62] a

534–5

fair-faced man, little more than a boy: the down is just growing

538

thick and spreading over his cheeks as he comes to the prime of beauty. But he does not stand before the gate without

539–42

a boastful emblem: on his shield of beaten bronze, the circular protector of his body, he wielded our city’s disgrace, the Sphinx, eater of raw flesh, her bright form beaten out and fastened on with rivets, and under her she bears a man, one of the Cadmeans – so that a great many weapons may

545

be thrown at that man.[63] Having come here, he is not likely to fight on a petty scale, nor to show himself unworthy of the long journey he has made: Parthenopaeus the Arcadian. This man, such as I have described – an immigrant, paying back to Argos the debt due for his fine upbringing[64] – is making threats against these walls which may god not fulfil!

550  ETEOCLES: May they receive from the gods a fate that matches their own intentions, they and those unholy boasts of theirs; then they would surely perish utterly and wretchedly! But for this man too, the Arcadian you speak of, there is a man who

555

does not boast but whose hand can see what needs to be done – Actor, brother of the last-mentioned. He will not allow a tongue with no deeds to its credit to flood in through the gates[65] and breed trouble, nor that hateful, hurtful beast

560

to pass from the outside to the inside. She will blame her bearer when she gets an intense pounding below the city walls! If the gods are willing, what I speak will be the truth.

CHORUS:

Their words pierce through my breast,

and each lock of my hair stands up on end

565

when I hear the loud boasts of these loud-mouthed,

impious men. If the gods are really gods,

may they destroy them in this land!

SCOUT: The sixth man I have to speak of is a man of the highest virtue and an excellent fighter, powerful Amphiaraus, the

570

prophet. Stationed before the Homoloïd Gate, he is casting many reviling words at powerful Tydeus – ‘murderer’,[66] ‘wrecker of your city’, ‘Argos’ great instructor in evil’, ‘arouser of a Fury’,[67] ‘high priest of Carnage’, ‘Adrastus’

575

counsellor in these crimes’. And then again he loudly addresses your brother, turning his name inside out and

580

dwelling on its significance,[68] and these are the words he utters from his lips: ‘Is an act like this really smiled on by the gods, is it an honourable thing for posterity to hear and tell of, to devastate one’s fatherland and its native gods by bringing a foreign army to invade it? What claim of justice can quench the mother-source, and if your fatherland is conquered

585

by the spear thanks to your incitement, how can you expect it to be your ally? For my part, I will enrich this land by becoming a prophet buried in the soil of the enemy.[69] Let

590

us do battle: I expect an honourable death.’ So the prophet spoke, wielding calmly his shield all of bronze. On its circle there was no image; for he desires not the appearance of excellence but the reality, harvesting a deep furrow in his

595

mind from which good counsels grow.[70] Against him I advise you to send brave and skilful opponents: formidable is he who reveres the gods.

ETEOCLES: Alas for the fate that visits mortals and links a righteous man with his impious inferiors! In every activity

600

there is nothing worse than evil company; it is a crop best not reaped. Either a virtuous man boards a ship together with sailors engaged in some headstrong villainy and perishes along with that god-detested set of men, or else an honest

605

man in the company of fellow-citizens, men who hate foreigners and are unmindful of the gods, is caught unjustly in the same net as they, and is lashed and laid low, together with them all, by the scourge of god. So too this seer, the son

610

of Oecles, a virtuous, upright, courageous and pious man, a great prophet, has joined together against his will[71] with impious men of arrogant speech, who are marching one after another down a road on which it’s a long journey to come back;[72] and, Zeus willing, he will be dragged down with

615

them. Indeed, I do not think he will attack the gate at all – not because he is lacking in spirit or cowardly in character, but he knows that he is destined to die in the battle, if the oracle of Loxias[73] is to bear fruit (and his habit is to be either

620

silent or accurate). Nevertheless we shall post a man against him: powerful Lasthenes, a gatekeeper hostile to intruders, who has developed a mature mind but youthful flesh; his eye is swift, and in action he is not slow to seize with his spear on a spot exposed by a movement of the shield – but mortals’

625

good fortune is the gift of god.

CHORUS:

Hear, you gods, our righteous prayers,

and fulfil them, that the city may prosper,

turning the evils of the armed struggle against

629–30

the invaders of our land: may Zeus strike them, outside the walls,

and slay them with his thunderbolt!

SCOUT: Now this is the seventh, at the Seventh Gate:[74] your

635

own brother. I will tell what a fate and curse he prays may befall this city,[75] sounding out a jubilant paean for its capture: to join battle with you, kill you and die beside you, or else, if you survive, to punish you, as the one who degraded him

639–41

and drove him out, in the same manner – by banishment. Such is the cry of powerful Polyneices, and he is calling on the ancestral gods of his fatherland to look favourably on his prayers in every way. He has a new-fashioned, well-rounded shield, and a double device cunningly worked upon it: one

645

beholds a man-at-arms, made of gold, led by a woman who walks ahead of him with modest gait. And, as the writing proclaims, she says that she is Justice, ‘and I will bring this man back from exile, and he will possess his father’s city and

649, 651

the right to dwell in his home’. Such are the devices of those men – for you will never have reason to criticize me for my reports; now you yourself must decide how to command[76] the city.

[He departs.]

ETEOCLES: O my family, driven mad and greatly hated by the gods, my family so full of tears, the house of Oedipus! Ah

655

me, my father’s curse is truly now fulfilled! But it is not proper to cry or lament, lest that give birth to grief even harder to bear. For this man so well named[77] – Polyneices, I mean – we shall soon know where that blazon will end up,

660

whether those letters worked in gold, blathering insanely on his shield, are really going to bring him home. If Justice, the virgin daughter of Zeus, were actually present in his actions and his mind, that might possibly have been the case. But in

665

fact, neither when he escaped the darkness of the womb, nor when he was growing, nor when he reached adolescence, nor when his chin was gathering hair, did Justice ever set eyes on him or hold him in any honour; nor now, surely, when he does harm to his own fatherland, is she standing close by

670

him, I imagine. Truly Justice would be utterly false to her name if she consorted with a man with so utterly audacious a mind. Trusting in this, I will go and stand against him myself: who else has a better right to? I will stand as ruler

675

against ruler, brother against brother, enemy against enemy. [To one of his attendants:] Give me my greaves at once, to protect me against spear and shaft.

[During the following exchanges, ETEOCLES, with the help of his attendants, is putting on his armour.]

CHORUS: No, dearest of men, son of Oedipus, do not let your passions make you like that utterer of evil words! There are

679–80

enough Cadmean men to go to battle with the Argives; such blood purifies itself.[78] But the death of two men of the same blood killing each other – that pollution can never grow old.

ETEOCLES [who has meanwhile put on his greaves]:

If one must suffer evil, let it not be shameful; that is the only

685

profit the dead can gain. You can never speak of a good reputation arising from a disaster which is also a disgrace.

CHORUS:

Why this mad passion, child?[79] You must not let yourself be carried away by this spear-mad delusion that fills your heart.

Cast out the root of this evil desire!

ETEOCLES [who has meanwhile put on his corslet]: Since the

690

god is plainly hastening things to their conclusion, let it run before the wind, the whole house of Laius, hated by Phoebus and consigned to the waves of Cocytus.[80]

CHORUS:

An all too harshly stinging lust is provoking you

to perpetrate a homicide, shedding unlawful blood,

that will bear bitter fruit.

ETEOCLES [who has meanwhile buckled on his sword]: Yes,

695

for the hateful <black(?)> Curse of the father who should have loved me sits close by me with dry, tearless eyes,[81] saying, ‘The gain comes before the death that comes after.’

CHORUS:

Don’t be provoked! You will not be called a coward

699–700

if you find an honourable way to stay alive; the Fury’s black squall

will leave your house, once the gods

receive a sacrifice at your hands.

ETEOCLES [who has meanwhile put on his helmet]: The gods, it seems, have already abandoned us, and will they honour any gift from us, doomed as we are? Why then should we still cringe before the fate of death?

CHORUS:

705

Stay, while you have the chance! For the controlling power may perhaps, given time, change the wind of your spirit and blow with a gentler breath;

but at present it is still seething.

ETEOCLES [who has meanwhile taken up his shield and spear]:

710

Yes, for the curse of Oedipus has made it seethe: it was too true, what I saw in those dream-visions about the dividing of our father’s property.[82]

CHORUS: Listen to us women, even if you don’t like doing so.

ETEOCLES: You can say what’s helpful, but don’t make it lengthy.

CHORUS: Don’t make this journey to the Seventh Gate.

715  ETEOCLES: I am whetted, and your words will not blunt me.

CHORUS: Yet god respects even an inglorious victory.

ETEOCLES: That’s not an expression that a man-at-arms should tolerate.

CHORUS: You want to shed the blood of your own brother?

ETEOCLES: When the gods send evil, one cannot escape it.

[He departs.]

CHORUS:

720

I shudder at that destroyer of families,

that goddess unlike the gods,

that all-too-true prophet of evil,

the Fury of the father’s curse,

725

that it has fulfilled the angry imprecations

of Oedipus’ warped mind:

this strife that will destroy his children is hastening it on.

And a foreigner is dividing their inheritances,

a Chalybian migrant from Scythia,[83]

729–30

a harsh distributor of property,

cruel-hearted Iron,

allotting them land to dwell in,

as much as is given to the dead to possess,[84]

with no share of the broad plains.

734–5

And when they die in kindred slaughter,

killed by one another, and the dust of earth

drinks up their dark red, clotted blood,

who can provide purification,

who can release them?[85] O

739–40

new troubles for the house

mingling with its old woes!

For I speak of the transgression

744–6

born long ago, punished swiftly but remaining to the third

generation, when Laius, defying

Apollo, who had told him thrice[86]

at the central navel of earth,

the oracular sanctuary of Pytho, to die

without issue and so save his city,

750

mastered by his own cherished, unwise counsels,

begot his own death,

Oedipus the father-slayer,

who sowed the sacrosanct soil

of his mother, where he had been nurtured,

755

and suffered a blood-stained progeny:

it was mindless madness

that brought that bridal couple[87] together.

Now the sea, as it were, is bringing waves of trouble;

the first one subsides, but it raises up another

760

of triple strength, which breaks loudly

around the very poop of the city;

and for protection, in between,

stretches the slim breadth of this wall.

I fear lest together with the princes

765

the city may be laid low.

Fulfilled is the grievous reconciliation

spoken of in the curse long ago:[88]

destruction does not pass by.

769–71

Among men who earn a living,

prosperity grown too fat

leads to the cargo being thrown overboard from the stern.

For what man was so much admired

by the gods in their shared abode[89]

and by the much-trodden meeting place of mortals[90]

775

as in those days they admired Oedipus

who removed from the land

the man-snatching demon?[91]

But when he became aware,

wretched man, of his appalling marriage,

780

enraged by grief,

with maddened heart,

he perpetrated two evils:

by his own father-slaying hand

he was robbed of his <           > eyes,[92]

785

and, angered with his sons

for their wretched maintenance of him,[93] he let fly at them

(ah, ah!) the curses of a bitter tongue,

788–90

that they would actually one day

divide his property between them

with iron-wielding hand. And now I tremble

lest the swift-footed Fury may fulfil this.

[A MESSENGER enters from the direction of the battlefield.]

MESSENGER: Have no fear, you daughters born of <noble Cad-mean> mothers: this city has escaped the yoke of slavery. The boasts of mighty men have fallen to the ground, and, as

795

in fair weather, so too when much buffeted by the waves, the city has let no water into her hull. The wall has held, and the champions with whom we reinforced the gates proved reliable in single combat. Things are well for the most part –

800

at six gates; but at the Seventh the victor was the awesome Master of Sevens,[94] Lord Apollo, wreaking the consequences of Laius’ old act of unwisdom upon the offspring of Oedipus.

CHORUS: What further untoward thing has happened to the city?

805  MESSENGER: The men have died at each other’s hands.

CHORUS: Who? What are you saying? Your words are frightening me out of my mind.

MESSENGER: Collect yourself, and listen. The sons of Oedipus –

CHORUS: Ah, wretched me! I can foresee the worst!

MESSENGER: <           >

CHORUS: <           >[95]

MESSENGER: – nor is there any doubt that they were smitten down –

810  CHORUS: And lie there? It is grievous news, but all the same, say it.

MESSENGER: They killed each other with hands that all too truly shared the same blood. Thus the controlling power was one and the same for both, and he has himself utterly destroyed that ill-fated family. Such are the things we have

815

to rejoice and to weep over: the city is faring well, but its chiefs, the leaders of the two armies, have had the whole possession of their inheritance divided between them by hammered Scythian iron: they will have so much of the land as

819

they will take in burial, having been swept away to an evil fate in accordance with their father’s curse.

[He departs.]

CHORUS:[96]

822

{O great Zeus and you gods of the city,

who <have shown your concern> to save

these walls of Cadmus,

825

shall I hail with shouts of joy

the unharmed salvation of the city,

or shall I weep for the wretched, ill-starred,

childless warlords

who have verily perished in a manner appropriate to their names –

830

with ‘true glory’ and with ‘much strife’[97] –

because of their impious thoughts?}

O black, fulfilled curse

of the family and of Oedipus!

A terrible chill descends about my heart.

835–6

In maenad-like frenzy I fashion

a song for their tomb, having heard

about these blood-dripping corpses that die

so wretchedly: truly ill-omened

was this spear-duet!

840

It took full effect, it did not fail,

the father’s cursing word;

the disobedient decision of Laius has been a lasting force.

There is lamentation throughout the city:

oracles do not lose their edge.

845

O much-mourned pair, this thing you have done

is <atrocious>! Sufferings have come

that cannot be talked about, only bewailed.

[The bodies of ETEOCLES and Polyneices are brought on and laid down side by side.]

Here it is, plain to see; the messenger’s words are visible reality;

with double lamentation <I now behold(?)> this twin disaster;

the sad event is fulfilled, a double death by kindred hands.

850

What shall I say?

What else but that suffering is a resident in the house?

Friends, with the wind of lamentation in your sails

855

ply in accompaniment the regular beating of hands on head,[98]

which is for ever crossing the Acheron,[99]

propelling on a sacred mission from which there is no return[100]

the black-sailed ship,

on which Apollo Paeon never treads[101] and the sun never shines,

860

to the invisible shores that welcome all.

{[Enter ANTIGONE and ISMENE.[102]]

But here come Antigone and Ismene

to fulfil a bitter duty.

863–5

I think they will undoubtedly utter

a lament for their brothers from their lovely

deep bosoms; their grief merits it.

But it is right that we, <having heard> the news first,

should raise the unpleasing sound

of the Fury’s hymn, and sing

the hateful paean of Hades.

870

Oh,

you most unhappy in your brothers of all

who bind a sash round their garments!

I weep, I groan, and there is no deceit about it –

I am raising my voice sincerely from the heart.}

FIRST SEMICHORUS:[103]

Oh, oh, foolish ones,

875

who ignored friendly advice, whom disaster could not deter,

wretched ones, who captured

your own father’s house with the point of the spear!

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Wretched ones indeed, who found themselves

wretched deaths, to the ruin of their house!

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

880

Oh, oh, you who sent crashing in ruin

the walls of your home, who found a bitter end

to your dreams of sole rulership, now

884

you are reconciled – by steel.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

886

And the mighty Fury of your father Oedipus

fulfilled itself in very truth.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Stricken through your left sides,

yes, stricken, through

890

the ribs moulded in the same womb

<           >.

Alas, you possessed ones!

Alas, the curse that doomed you to mutual death!

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

895

You speak of them as being struck a blow

that was fatal for their house as well as their bodies,

struck by the silent power

and the unambiguous doom

of their father’s curse.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

900

Grieving has spread right through the city:

the walls groan, and so

does the soil that loved these men; their property

awaits <new owners>,

that property over which a dreadful fate came to them,

905

over which came strife and death as its end.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

With whetted hearts they parted

their possessions, so as to gain equal lots;

but their friends do not see

their reconciler[104] as free of blame,

910

or Ares as pleasing.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

By the stroke of iron they are as they are now,

and there await them, one might well say,

portions of their father’s sepulchre

dug by the stroke of iron.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

915–17

They are accompanied to the grave

by the loud-sounding, heart-rending

wailing of a house that grieves for itself, that feels its own pain,

the wailing of a miserable heart that rejects all joy,

truly pouring tears

920

from a heart that withers as I lament

over these two princes.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

One can say over these unhappy men

that they did much to their fellow-citizens

and to the ranks of foreigners brought from abroad,

925

many of whom were destroyed in battle.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Unhappy is she who bore them

beyond all women

who are called mothers of children:[105]

929–30

she made her own child

her husband and bore these sons, and they

have perished thus at each other’s

fraternal, slaughtering hands.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Fraternal indeed, but utterly destroyed

by a parting[106] that was not friendly

935

in an insane conflict

that put a stop to their strife.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Their hatred is ended, and their life-strength

939–40

is mingled in the earth

as it flows with gore: truly they are of one blood!

A harsh resolver of disputes is the visitor

from the sea,[107] who comes out of fire,

944–5

whetted Iron, and harsh too is Ares,

that evil divider of property, who has made

the father’s curse come true.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

They have received their allotted portion, the wretched pair,

through suffering sent by Zeus;

under their bodies there will be

950

a limitless wealth of land.[108]

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

O you who have adorned your family –

with many sorrows!

954–5

Over your deaths the Curses[109] have shrilled

their high-pitched cry of triumph, having put the family

to flight in utter rout.

Ruin’s trophy stands at the gate

959–6

at which they were struck down, and the controlling power

has defeated two men and ended its work.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:[110]

You struck after being struck.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

You were killed after killing.[111]

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

You killed with the spear.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

You died by the spear.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Having striven grievously –

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Having suffered grievously –

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

965

You lie dead.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

You have killed.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Let lamentation flow.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Let tears flow.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Aiee!

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Aiee!

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

My mind is mad with grief.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

My heart groans within me.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Oh, oh, you are utterly to be bewailed!

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

970

And you, for your part, are in utter wretchedness!

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

You died at kindred hands.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

You slew a kindred man.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Double to speak of –

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

And double to behold –

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Are the sufferings of these <two (?)> close together here.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Like brothers these brothers have fallen.

CHORUS:

975

O Destiny, grievous dispenser of heavy fate,

and mighty shade of Oedipus!

O black Fury, truly you are powerful!

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Aiee!

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Aiee!

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Suffering hard to look on –

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

He made me see, caused by his banishment.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

980

He did not come back after he had killed.[112]

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

He came, and lost his life.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

982

Yes, he lost it indeed.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

And slew this other.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

993

Terrible to speak of –

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

And terrible to behold –

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

984

Are these lamentable kindred sorrows –

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

985

These still-fresh, thrice-hurled[113] sufferings.

CHORUS:

O Destiny, grievous dispenser of heavy fate,

and mighty shade of Oedipus!

O black Fury, truly you are powerful!

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

You know about it[114] for sure, having experienced it –

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

990

And you too, having learned not a moment later –

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

When you came back to the city –

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

992

To combat this man with the spear.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

983

Wretched race –

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

That has suffered wretchedly!

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

994

Oh, the toil –

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Oh, the trouble –

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

995

– for the house –

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

– and the land![115]

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

998

Oh, oh, my prince, your lamentable sufferings!

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

<Oh, oh, !>

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

1000

Oh, both so much afflicted in every way!

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Oh, both possessed by the spirit of Ruin!

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Oh, where in the land shall we inter them?

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

Oh, in the place of greatest honour.

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Oh, oh, a pain to their father, if they sleep where he does![116]

[The last few lines of the original text have been lost; the two SEMICHORUSES must have agreed on where ETEOCLES and Polyneices should be buried, and escorted the bodies off stage.]

{[Enter a HERALD.[117]]

1005  HERALD: I have to announce the opinion and the decision of the people’s council of this city of Cadmus. It has been resolved that Eteocles here, on account of his loyalty to his country, shall be buried in the loving recesses of the earth;

1010

for he found death while keeping out the enemy at the gates, and in pious defence of the temples of his fathers he has died blamelessly where it is honourable for the young to die. That is what I have been instructed to say about him; but his brother, the dead Polyneices here, is to be cast out unburied,

1015

a prey for the dogs, as one who would have been the destroyer of the land of Cadmus, had not some god stood up to hinder his armed attack. Even in death he shall bear the pollution and curse of his ancestral gods, whom he insulted when he

1020

tried to capture the city, bringing a foreign army to attack it. So it is decided that he should get his due reward by receiving a dishonourable funeral from the flying birds; that he should neither lie under a laboriously raised burial mound nor be dignified with high-pitched musical wailings; and that he

1025

should not have the honour of a funeral procession from his family. Such is the decision of the aforementioned Cadmean authorities.

ANTIGONE: And I say to the leaders of the Cadmeans: if no one else is willing to join in burying this man, I will bury him; I will brave the danger of burying my brother, and I will

1030

not be ashamed to display such disobedient insubordination to the city. The power of the common womb from which we are sprung, children of a wretched mother and a miserable father, is a formidable thing. Therefore, my soul, with a sister’s heart, living with dead, share willingly in the sufferings

1035

that he endures unwillingly. His flesh <shall not be eaten by dogs or birds> nor torn by hollow-bellied wolves – let no one think it will; for I shall myself, woman though I am, contrive to provide him with a funeral and burial, carrying

1040

it[118] in the fold of my fine linen robe, and myself cover him up – and let no one think otherwise. Courage will find a means to do it.

HERALD: I tell you not to flout the city’s will by doing this.

ANTIGONE: I tell you not to make useless proclamations to me.

HERALD: But a people that has escaped danger can be brutal.

1045  ANTIGONE: Be brutal! But this man is not going to remain unburied.

HERALD: This man whom the city hates, you are going to honour him by burial?

ANTIGONE: Yes, if his rights are not dishonoured by the gods.

HERALD: They weren’t, until he cast this country into danger.

ANTIGONE: He was retaliating with harm for the harm he had suffered.

1050  HERALD: But he retaliated against the whole people for the act of just one.

ANTIGONE: Contentiousness always wants the last word! I’m going to bury him; don’t argue any more.

HERALD: Well, be self-willed! But I forbid it.

[He leaves.]

FIRST SEMICHORUS [now grouped, with ANTIGONE, around Polyneices’ body]:

Alas, alas!

1055

O you vaunting destroyers of families,

Keres, Furies,[119] who have thus annihilated

the family of Oedipus, root and branch!

What can I let happen, what can I do, what plan can I devise?

How can I bring myself neither to bewail you

nor to escort you to a funeral?

SECOND SEMICHORUS [now grouped, with ISMENE, around ETEOCLES’ body]:

1060

I am afraid, and shun conflict

with the fearsome citizenry.

You will find many mourners;

but he, wretched man, will go unlamented

with only the single-voiced dirge of his weeping sister.

1065

Now who could believe that?

FIRST SEMICHORUS:

Let the city do or not do what it likes

to those who mourn Polyneices:

we here will go and join

1069–70

in escorting him to his burial. For the loss

is the loss of all the race <of Cadmus>,

and the city approves different things

as right at different times.

SECOND SEMICHORUS:

And we will go with this man, as both the city

and justice join in approving:

for, next after the blest ones and the strength of Zeus,

1075

he did most to prevent the city of the Cadmeans

being destroyed and overwhelmed

by the human wave of foreigners.

[ANTIGONE and the FIRST SEMICHORUS go out in one direction, escorting the body of Polyneices; ISMENE and the SECOND SEMICHORUS in the other direction, escorting the body of ETEOCLES.]}

The Theban Tetralogy

1. LAIUS

Our direct evidence for the first play of the tetralogy is very scanty. There is a tiny scrap of a papyrus headnote (‘Hypothesis’) stating that Laius was the opening speaker; two one-word quotations, one of them (fr. 122) relating to the practice of exposing unwanted newborn infants in pots; a lexicon entry mentioning that in this play there was a reference to a murderer who tasted and spat out his victim’s blood (fr. 122a); and a three-line quotation (fr. 387a; see below) which looks like part of a messenger’s narrative of the murder of Laius – though it is also possible that this comes from the following play, Oedipus. The murder, if that is what is being related, took place, in Aeschylus’ treatment, not (as in Sophocles) in Phocis on the way to Delphi but at Potniae, a mile or two to the south of Thebes. In addition to this direct evidence, some further inferences can be made from what is said in Seven Against Thebes, especially in the choral song 720–91.

Since we know of no other murder but that of Laius to which fr. 122a could reasonably be taken to refer in a play that bore his name, we can safely assume that Laius’ death (off stage, of course) was the main event of the first play. Since he was killed while on a journey (fr. 387a), he must have been given some reason for leaving Thebes. In Euripides’ Phoenician Maidens (35–7) he is on his way to Delphi, and this version was not a new one, since Sophocles in Oedipus the King seems to presuppose it; but Aeschylus cannot have used it, since he makes Laius head southwards – towards Plataea, beyond which lie Megara and Corinth. We know that the exposure of Laius’ infant son was mentioned in the play (fr. 122) and so probably had some relevance to its plot: in Euripides, Laius went to Delphi to ask whether his son was still alive, and perhaps in Aeschylus the motive for his journey was the same, but he was making for Corinth, having maybe heard a rumour that his son had been rescued and taken there. Meanwhile that son was himself on the way from Corinth to Thebes; we do not know the reason for his journey, and we cannot be sure that Aeschylus troubled to provide him with one. And they met at Potniae.

Since Laius contained a reference to Laius’ killer tasting his blood (fr. 122a), it is more likely than not that there was a full narrative of his murder – in other words, that the messenger-speech from which fr. 387a comes belonged to this play rather than to the next. The news will have triggered lamentations, in the midst of which the body of Laius was probably brought back – much as in Seven the bodies of the two brothers are brought back from the battlefield at 848 after the Chorus have already begun singing laments for them.

According to Apollonius Rhodius (Argonautica 4.475–9), the tasting and spitting of a murder victim’s blood was particularly associated with treacherous killings such as the ambush-murder (as Apollonius tells it) of Medea’s brother Apsyrtus; and the same source that tells us that Aeschylus mentioned this custom in Laius tells us that he mentioned it also in The Perrhaebian Women, a play whose central event was the exceptionally treacherous murder by Ixion of his father-in-law. If Laius’ killer was indeed said to have tasted his blood, the murder must have been presented very differently from any other version known to us – unless, as we hear retrospectively in Sophocles (Oedipus the King 118–23, 836–50), the survivor’s tale of the murder was in crucial respects false (doubtless to exonerate himself for having failed to protect his master), and he pretended that Laius had been ambushed by a gang of brigands.

It is not likely that either the arrival of Oedipus at Thebes, or the menace of the Sphinx from which he saved the city (Seven 775–7), featured in Laius, since they provided the main plot features of the satyr drama The Sphinx (see below).

387a   On our journey we were approaching the junction of three wagon tracks where the road forks, where we were passing the meeting of the three ways at Potniae.

From an account by a survivor of Laius’ last journey.

2. OEDIPUS

With the possible exception of fr. 387a (see above) and maybe of fr. 236 (see below), nothing survives of the text of this play. There are, however, several passages in Seven Against Thebes which seem to presuppose that the audience have been informed about certain previous events, notably the curse of Oedipus and its motivation, and a dream that Eteocles had about the division of his father’s property (Seven 710–11; cf. 727–33); It is also possible that when Sophocles – particularly in the earliest of his three Theban plays, Antigone – alludes to an episode of the story in a way that presupposes previous knowledge of it, he is assuming that his audience will fill in the gaps by recalling the fairly recent, and famous, production by Aeschylus.

From the Chorus of Seven (778–90) we hear the following account of the curse of Oedipus and what led up to it:

But when he became aware,

wretched man, of his appalling marriage,

enraged by grief,

with maddened heart,

he perpetrated two evils:

by his own father-slaying hand

he was robbed of his < > eyes,

and, angered with his sons

for their wretched maintenance of him, he let fly at them

(ah, ah!) the curses of a bitter tongue,

that they would actually one day

divide his property between them

with iron-wielding hand.

The statement that Oedipus perpetrated ‘two [literally “twin”] evils’ when he learned the truth about his marriage (and, presumably, learned more or less at the same time that he had killed his father) suggests that in Aeschylus’ imagining of the story, the discovery and the self-blinding were followed quite closely by Oedipus’ curse on his sons. Moreover, Eteocles’ dream, in which apparently a ‘Scythian stranger’ cast lots between the brothers (Seven 727–33; cf. 816–19, 906–9, 941–50), ought to precede the curse: coming at that stage, the dream would be enigmatic and ambiguous; coming after the curse it would tell Eteocles nothing that he had not been told already. This tends to suggest that dream, discovery, self-blinding and curse, probably in that sequence, all formed part of Oedipus, though the dream, like that of the Queen in The Persians or of Clytaemestra in The Libation-Bearers, will most likely have taken place shortly before the action of the play began. We may add that if Oedipus was angry with his sons ‘for their wretched maintenance of him’, he must already have been an old man who had ‘retired’ from active life and entrusted the management of his household and city to his sons; and they were failing to treat him with proper filial respect, even at a time when his reputation was still unblemished. We cannot tell how the discovery was effected, and we have no way of knowing what role, if any, Oedipus’ mother-wife played in the action.

If this outline reconstruction of Oedipus is correct, it leaves little if any space in the play for events subsequent to Oedipus’ curse. Rather, the death of Oedipus, the quarrel between Eteocles and Polyneices, the expulsion of the latter from Thebes, his arrival at Argos and the raising of Adrastus’ expedition against Thebes must all be taken to fall in the undramatized interval between the actions of Oedipus and of Seven.

3. SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

4. THE SPHINX

The subject of this satyr drama will have been the defeat of the Sphinx by Oedipus, who must surely be the ‘stranger’ of fr. 235. A contemporary vase painting (the Fujita Hydria) probably throws light on the role of the satyrs in the play: it shows five of them, white-bearded, richly robed and carrying long sceptres, sitting on high-backed, cloth-draped chairs looking at, and apparently listening to, the Sphinx seated on a rock. They seem to have usurped the role of Theban councillors, perhaps in the hope of securing the reward offered by Creon to whoever should solve the Sphinx’s riddle and so save the Thebans from destruction; they will have failed to do so, and perhaps found themselves in danger of making a meal for the Sphinx, until rescued by Oedipus. A few other, later vase paintings also bring satyrs and the Sphinx together, but there is no particular reason to associate them specifically with Aeschylus’ play (the overcoming of a monster was a common theme of satyr drama).

235   And for the stranger a garland,[1] the ancient <mark of honour (?)>, the best of bonds according to the tale of Prometheus.[2]

236[3]

The Sphinx, the bitch[4] that presided over days of ill-fortune From a choral song.

THE SUPPLIANTS

Preface to The Suppliants

It has long been universally accepted that The Suppliants was part of a sequence of plays that also contained The Danaids, which likewise had the daughters of Danaus as its Chorus and which, as fr. 43 showed (see pp. 154–5), presented a later stage of their story, being set on the day after their marriage to their cousins, the sons of Aegyptus, and the murder of all but one of the bridegrooms by their unwilling brides. The other play of the tragic trilogy has almost always been identified as The Egyptians; whether it preceded or followed The Suppliants was, and is, disputed (see pp. 152–4). The satyr drama that wound up the production, if (as was normal) it dealt with another section of the same myth, had to be Amymone, whose title character was one of the Danaids, but until 1952 it was not known for certain whether Amymone was a satyr drama at all.

Until 1952, also, it was generally taken as all but certain that The Suppliants was the earliest of Aeschylus’ surviving plays and therefore the oldest known European drama: the active role of the Chorus, the dominance of song (more than half the text is sung or chanted), the apparent presence of two singing subsidiary choruses (Egyptians in 825–65, Argive soldiers or the Danaids’ maidservants in 1034–61), the scant use made of the second actor, and the simplicity and slightness of the plot all seemed to point in that direction.

In 1952, Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2256 was published. One of its many fragments (fr. 3) comes from a headnote (‘Hypothesis’) giving information about the result of the City Dionysia tragic competition in a particular year (we cannot identify the year for sure). In this year, Aeschylus was victorious with a production that included, as its third and fourth plays, The Danaids and the satyr drama Amymone; Sophocles was second, and one Mesatus was third. Mesatus’ name was followed by a series of play titles, some of which are enclosed in brackets in the papyrus; the likeliest explanation is that these bracketed titles belong to Sophocles (the brackets indicating that they are out of place) and the remainder to Mesatus.

Now, unless we resort to some desperate suppositions,[1] this evidence proves that the Danaid tetralogy was written to be performed at a festival at which Sophocles was also competing. Sophocles won his first victory in 468;[2] according to Plutarch[3] this was the first time he had competed, but another source (the chronicle of Eusebius) says he first came before the public in the second year of the 77th Olympiad – which would mean the City Dionysia of 470 – and Plutarch, or his source, is under considerable suspicion of having improved the story to make Sophocles’ defeat of the established master Aeschylus a more sensational event. We can say, then, that the Danaid plays were almost certainly produced between 470 and 459 inclusive, but probably not in the last few years of this period in view of the absence from the setting of Suppliants of any house, cave etc. which could be represented by a skene.[4] The date is often given as 463 because the name of that year’s archon (chief magistrate), Archedemides, matches the scanty remnants of the date rubric on the papyrus; but so does the word archon itself, which in year-dates sometimes precedes the archon’s name, sometimes follows it and sometimes is omitted altogether.

The story of the Danaids exists in dozens of variants.[5] Their common core is that a quarrel between the brothers Danaus and Aegyptus, great-grandsons of Zeus and of Io of Argos, leads to Danaus and his fifty daughters[6] fleeing from Egypt to Argos, their ancestral home, pursued by their cousins, the fifty sons of Aegyptus (in many accounts accompanied by Aegyptus himself), who desired to take the Danaids in marriage regardless of their wishes or their father’s. The conflict is seemingly resolved when Danaus agrees to the marriages taking place, but he secretly supplies weapons to his daughters, and all but one of them kill their bridegrooms on the wedding night. The survivor, Lynceus, in many versions seeks and gains revenge upon Danaus; at any rate, he and his wife, Hypermestra, regularly become the founders of a new royal line of Argos and the ancestors of such heroes as Perseus and Heracles. Hypermestra’s sisters are in some versions punished (sometimes eternally), while in others new husbands are found for them.

Of the three plays in the Aeschylean corpus that are surviving fragments of closely connected suites of dramas, The Suppliants is the one that has suffered most by the loss of its companion plays. It only covers one small section of the Danaid story – the arrival and reception of the Danaids and their father at Argos, and the Argive refusal of a demand for their surrender, resulting in a declaration of war by the Herald speaking in the name of the sons of Aegyptus; its references to earlier events are scanty and vague (we are told far more about Io than we ever are about the past history of Danaus, his brother and their families), and while some things said in The Suppliants are clearly designed to foreshadow the coming mass murder,[7] hardly any further information about Aeschylus’ treatment of the later part of the story can be safely inferred from the text of the surviving play. We are fortunate, at least, to have part of a speech of Aphrodite from the third play (fr. 44), which clearly harks back to the warning given to the Danaids by the Secondary Chorus[8] in The Suppliants (1034–42) that they should not slight her power.

The scantiness of our evidence for the rest of the trilogy has made it hard to resolve certain important issues in the interpretation of The Suppliants itself. Two that are particularly crucial – and related to each other – are the motivation of the Danaids and their father, and the extent to which we are being invited to sympathize with their position and plight.

It is obvious that the Danaids are determined not to accept marriage to their cousins, and obvious too that the cousins deserve most if not all of the invective that is flung at them in the play; the words and actions of the Aegyptiads’ representatives (the Herald and the Egyptians accompanying him) leave it in no doubt that they regard the Danaids as their property – in effect, as runaway slaves – and are likely to treat them as such,[9] just as the Danaids themselves had feared (335). No Greek would have accepted this equation of marriage with slavery, and no Greek would have tolerated anyone claiming the right to take his daughter as a wife without his consent.[10] But the Danaids’ words throughout leave it less than entirely clear whether they are simply seeking to avoid being forcibly claimed in marriage by these particular unwelcome suitors, or whether their aim is actually to avoid marriage altogether. The latter objective would seem to any Greek male bizarre and anti-social; the only women Greeks had heard of who lived in that way were the Amazons (cf. 287), the mythical enemies of Heracles, Theseus and Greek civilization generally.

Which is it? The answer is given, I think, by the emphasis placed, at crucial moments in the trilogy, on the power of Aphrodite, and by the clear implication of the words of the Secondary Chorus, at the end of The Suppliants, that the Danaids are slighting her. Now it is in no way a slight to Aphrodite for a woman, or her father, to reject a disagreeable suitor, much less one who displays as much arrogance, insolence and violence as the Aegyptiads do. But it is most certainly an offence against her if a woman, or a man for that matter, rejects absolutely all relationships with the opposite sex; it is precisely for that offence that Aphrodite engineers the destruction of Hippolytus in Euripides’ play of that name. That, therefore, is the Secondary Chorus’ perception of the Danaids’ attitude – and the Danaids, when they respond (1052–73), give no indication that it was a mistaken perception. That permanent virginity is indeed the Danaids’ aim is also indicated by the implication of Danaus’ speech shortly before (996–1013) that it was to avoid the effects of Aphrodite’s power that the family had fled from Egypt, and by the Danaids’ invocations of the virgin goddess Artemis both near the beginning of the play (144–53) and near its end (1030–31); relevant too, no doubt, is their great fondness for reminding Zeus of the unusual reproductive technique which he used to beget Epaphus (17–18, 40–47, 170–71, 535, 574–89, 592, 1064–7). And it appears that Danaus not only has no objection to this determination of his daughters, but has actually inspired it; just before they go into Argos he reminds them, with what many have found unnecessary insistence, of the importance of their preserving their chastity, and at the outset they describe themselves as the pawns on his gameboard (11ff.).

It is hardly surprising that the Danaids avoid making all this clear to the Argives – at least until they have ensured that Argos is firmly committed to support them even at the cost of war with Egypt. The Argives are willing to take on that grave risk because of the greater danger of offending the gods if they refuse; they might well not have been willing had they been aware that they were aiding and abetting a serious offence against Aphrodite (and against the Greek way of life). What is surprising is that it is not made clear to the audience before the Argives appear; even towards the end of the play, where the evidence is stronger, the matter is not made explicit. This has some weight as an argument in support of the view that The Suppliants was the second play of the trilogy, not the first as usually supposed; if Danaus’ intentions and motives were made clear in a preceding play (which would have to be The Egyptians), the audience would not need to have them spelt out again. (On the question of what those motives may have been, see pp. 153–4.)

To any Greek it was the duty of every father to see to it that his daughters were given to appropriate husbands, and a father who neglected this duty, let alone one who deliberately kept his daughters unmarried for selfish reasons – as Acrisius did with his daughter Danaë, or Aegisthus with his stepdaughter Electra – was a social criminal.[11] At the same time, many spectators will have wondered what they would have done if they had been told by an oracle (as Danaus may have been; see pp. 153–4) that they would be killed by a son-in-law. As for Danaus’ daughters, the audience will probably have regarded them as innocent parties, obeying their father either because they were given no choice or because they assumed, as every decent son or daughter was expected to assume, that their father was always right. In The Suppliants, Danaus at first stays very much in the background, putting forward his daughters – much more likely to win compassion – as the seekers of asylum and protection. Against such men as the sons of Aegyptus, they fully deserve it.

Many attempts have been made to find contemporary political relevance in the Danaid trilogy, but in view of our uncertainty as to its precise date none of them can be regarded as compelling. It is, however, worth recording that The Suppliants contains the earliest evidence for the existence of the word dēmokratia ‘democracy’: the word itself does not appear in the play, but thinly disguised equivalents are found in two passages.[12]

NOTES

1.   Such as that the ‘Hypothesis’ refers to a posthumous production, or that the tetralogy was not produced until many years after it was written.

2.   Parian Marble (Fragmente der griechischen Historiker [Jacoby] 239 A 56); Plutarch, Cimon 8.8–9.

3.   Cimon 8.8.

4.   The years 468 (when Sophocles was victorious) and 467 (the date of the Theban tetralogy) are also excluded.

5.   Set out in full by H. Friis Johansen and E. W. Whittle in the introduction to their edition (Copenhagen 1980), pp. 40–55; see also T. R. Gantz, Early Greek Myth (Baltimore 1993), pp. 198–208.

6.   When The Suppliants was thought to be a very early play, it was often suggested that its Chorus actually numbered fifty. There was never any justification for this. If in a Euripidean play of the 420s (coincidentally of the same name) a conventional tragic Chorus of fifteen can represent a group who are repeatedly described as the mothers of the Seven against Thebes (Euripides, Suppliants 12–13, 100–102 etc.) and even as ‘seven mothers of seven sons’ (ibid. 963–4), it cannot seriously be doubted that several decades earlier it would have been possible for a conventional Chorus of (as it then was) twelve to represent a group of fifty.

7.   For example, the reference to the Danaids’ suppliant-boughs as encheiridia (21), literally ‘things held in the hand’ but in ordinary usage ‘daggers’; or their father’s injunction to them to ‘value… chastity more than life itself’ (1013), not specifying whose life they should value less.

8.   Assumed in this translation to consist of the Argive soldiers assigned by King Pelasgus to escort the Danaids into the city; for other views see note on 1034.

9.   Suppliants 838–40, 918; see also notes on 873 and 920.

10. The woman’s own consent was in principle not required, though it is striking that in our play (940–41) King Pelasgus says that the Herald, on behalf of the Aegyptiads, may take the Danaids provided that they (not their father) are willing, that the Secondary Chorus name Desire and Persuasion as the daughters and assistants of Aphrodite (1038–40), and that Aphrodite herself in The Danaids (fr. 44.1–2) lays stress on the mutual desire of the primal couple Heaven and Earth. It should be added that the question of endogamy versus exogamy, sometimes thought to be at issue in this trilogy, is entirely irrelevant; marriage between cousins, and indeed between even closer relatives (uncle and niece, half-brother and half-sister), was very common at Athens, was often regarded as the option of choice, and in some circumstances (where a father died leaving a daughter or daughters but no son) could actually be compulsory (the daughter had to marry the closest relative who claimed her).

11. Though, so far as we know, there was no way to compel him legally to take action, or punish him legally if he did not.

12. Suppliants 604 (dēmou kratousa cheir ‘the people’s sovereign vote’) and 699 (to damion, to ptolin kratunei ‘the people, which rules the city’); see V. Ehrenberg, ‘Origins of Democracy’, Historia 1 (1950), p. 522.

Characters

CHORUS of the daughters of Danaus

DANAUS, the fugitive ex-king of Egypt

PELASGUS, king of Argos

SECONDARY CHORUS OF EGYPTIANS

Egyptian HERALD

SECONDARY CHORUS OF ARGIVE SOLDIERS

[Scene: The sea-coast near Argos. A mound represents a shrine (with altars) to the major gods of the city. One side-passage is imagined as leading to the city, the other to the sea. Enter CHORUS from the seaward direction. They are followed by DANAUS, who goes to the shrine and keeps a lookout towards the city.]

CHORUS:

May Zeus, god of suppliants, look graciously upon

our band, which set forth by ship

from the fine sands at the mouth

of the Nile. We have left the land of Zeus,[1]

5

which borders on Syria, as fugitives,

not through public banishment for bloodshed

after condemnation by state decree

but of our own accord, in flight from men,

9–10

abhorring marriage with the sons of Aegyptus

and their impious <thoughts>.

Danaus, our father, the originator of our plan,

the leader of our band,[2] surveying the situation like a gameboard,[3]

ordained this as the most honourable of painful options,

to flee headlong over the waves of the sea

15

and put in to the land of Argos, from whence

originates our race, which claims to derive

from the touch and breath of Zeus

on the gadfly-driven heifer.[4]

So to what more friendly land

20

than this could we come

with these hand-held emblems[5] of the suppliant,

these wool-wreathed olive branches?

<O ancestral gods of Argos>

to whom belong the city, the land and its clear waters –

24–5

both the gods above, and the chthonic gods

inhabiting their highly honoured abodes,

and, thirdly, Zeus the Saviour,[6] protector of the houses

of pious men – receive as suppliants

this female band, and may the country show them

a spirit of respect. As for the numerous,

30

wanton male swarm of the sons of Aegyptus,

before they set foot on this marshy

shore, send them to the open sea,

them and their swift-oared vessel; and there may they meet

the battering of storm and squall, thunder and lightning,

35

and the rain-bearing winds

of the savage sea, and perish,

before ever mounting the beds from which Right bars them,

appropriating us, who belong to their father’s brother,

against our wills!

40

Now let me invoke

the calf of Zeus, the vindicator[7]

from beyond the sea, the child

of our ancestress the flower-browsing cow, conceived by a breath,

the fruit of Zeus’ touch[8] – and the destined time

45

appropriately fulfilled

the name derived from that touch,[9] and she gave birth to Epaphus;

and now, by making mention of him

50

here in the ancient grazing-grounds

of his mother, and recalling

her long-past sufferings, I shall now produce

reliable proof, which, unexpected as it is, the land’s

55

inhabitants will find clear;

it will be recognized, once explained at length.

If there happens to be any native nearby

skilled in augury who hears my lament,

60

he will think he is hearing a voice like that

of Tereus’ wife, whose cunning schemes brought her misery,[10]

the nightingale whom the hawk pursues,

who, shut off from her green river-banks,

utters a grieving lament for her familiar haunts

65

and sings the story of her son’s death, how he perished

by her own kindred hand,

experiencing her unmotherly anger.[11]

So I too, fond of lamenting in Ionian strains,[12]

70

rend my soft, sun-baked cheek

and my heart unused to tears;

I cull the flowers of grief,

in apprehension whether these friendless exiles

75

from the Land of Mists[13]

have any protector here.

O ancestral gods, hear us with favour, and see where justice lies:

80

by not giving our youth to be possessed in marriage against what is proper,

by showing you truly hate outrageous behaviour,

you will act justly < >.

Even for distressed fugitives from war

84–5

an altar is a defence against harm

that gods respect.[14]

May Zeus make all be well in very truth!

87

The desire of Zeus is not easy to hunt out:

93

the paths of his mind

stretch tangled and shadowy,

95

impossible to perceive or see clearly.

91

It falls safe, not on its back,[15]

92

when an action is definitively ordained by the nod of Zeus.

88

It blazes everywhere,

even in darkness, with black fortune

90

for mortal folk.

96

He casts humans down

from lofty, towering hopes to utter destruction,

without deploying any armed force.

100

Everything gods do is done without toil:

he sits still and nevertheless somehow

carries out his will directly

from his holy abode.[16]

104–5

Let him look on this human

act of outrage, on the kind of youthful stock that is sprouting:[17]

the prospect of marriage with me makes it bloom

with determination hard to dissuade;

it has frenzied thoughts

110

that goad it on implacably,

having had its mind transformed <to love a ruinous delusion>.

Such are the sad sufferings that I speak and cry of,

grievous, keening, tear-falling sufferings –

115

ié, ié! – made conspicuous by loud laments:

I honour myself with dirges while I still live.

I appeal for the favour of the hilly land of Apia[18] –

you understand well, O land, my barbaric speech[19] –

120–21

and I repeatedly fall upon my Sidonian[20] veil,

tearing its linen to rags.[21]

But unclean rites,[22] even when things are going well, are vulnerable

to divine intervention – so long as death keeps away.[23]

125

Ió, ió, ió, troubles hard to gauge!

Where will these waves carry us?

I appeal for the favour of the hilly land of Apia –

130

you understand well, O land, my barbaric speech –

and I repeatedly fall upon my Sidonian veil,

tearing its linen to rags.

134–5

The oar blade and the flax-sewn house

of wood[24] that keeps out the sea

have brought me here without storms

and with good winds, and I have no complaint;

138–40

now may the all-seeing Father

in time bring about

a propitious end,

so that the offspring of a most august mother[25]

may escape the beds of men – ah, ah! –

unwedded and unsubdued.

144–5

May the chaste daughter of Zeus[26]

likewise watch over me, with a willingness matching mine,[27]

she who dwells behind august, secure

temple façades:[28] with all her might,

aggrieved by the pursuit,

149–50

let her, the Untamed One,

become the rescuer of us, the untamed ones,[29]

so that the offspring of a most august mother

may escape the beds of men – ah, ah! –

unwedded and unsubdued.

And if not, this dark-skinned,

155

sun-beaten race

will supplicate the underworld Zeus,

the ever-hospitable Zeus of the departed,[30]

159–60

in death, with nooses

instead of olive branches,

if we have not secured the aid of the Olympian gods.

Ah, Zeus! Ió, the divine wrath

that hunted Io! I know the jealousy

165

of the wife of heaven-conquering Zeus:

after a stiff wind a storm will come.[31]

And then will not Zeus be liable

to merited censure

170

for dishonouring the child of the cow, whom

he himself once begot and caused to be,

by now turning his face away

when we pray to him?

175

May he hear us with favour from on high when we call!

DANAUS: Children, you must show good sense. This trusty old man, your father, with whom you have reached this place, has been a sensible ship-master; now I have likewise taken thought regarding the situation on land, and I advise you to

180

record my words on the tablets of your mind and keep them safe. I can see a dust cloud, the voiceless harbinger of an army; the sockets of wheels are not silent as the axles drive them round; and now I see a mass of men bearing shields

184–5

and spears, together with horses and curve-fronted chariots. Perhaps the ruler of this land <and his followers may be coming> to us <to> view for themselves <what is happening here>, after getting word from messengers. But whether he has set out on this mission with no harmful intent or whetted with raw anger, it is best from every point of view, girls, to

190

sit at this rock sacred to the Assembled Gods:[32] an altar is an unbreakable shield, stronger than a city wall. But come as quickly as you can; hold reverently in your left hands[33] your white-wreathed suppliant-branches, sacred emblems of Zeus

194–5

the enforcer of respect,[34] and answer the natives in words that display respect, sorrow and need, as it is proper for aliens to do, explaining clearly this flight of yours which is not due to bloodshed. Let your speech, in the first place, not be accompanied by arrogance, and let it emerge from your disciplined faces and your calm eyes that you are free of

200

wantonness. And be neither forward nor sluggish in speech: the people here are very ready to take offence. Remember to be yielding – you are a needy foreign refugee: bold speech does not suit those in a weak position.

CHORUS: Father, you speak sensibly to sensible listeners. I shall

206

take care to remember this good advice of yours. May our ancestor Zeus watch over us!

210 DANAUS: May he do so indeed, with kindly eye!

208 CHORUS: I would like now to take my seat close to you.

207 DANAUS: Then do not delay; and may our stratagem be successful!

[The CHORUS move close to the shrine.]

209 CHORUS: Zeus, look on us and pity us before we perish!

211 DANAUS: If he is willing, all this will end well. Now call also on this bird of Zeus.[35]

CHORUS: We call upon the rays of the Sun, which bring salvation.

DANAUS: And holy Apollo, the god exiled from heaven.[36]

215 CHORUS: Knowing what such a fate is like, he will sympathize with mortal exiles.

DANAUS: May he indeed do so, and may he stand by us as a willing helper.

CHORUS: Who else of these divinities should I call upon?

DANAUS: I see this trident, symbol of a god.[37]

CHORUS: He gave us a good voyage; may he give us a good reception in this land.

220 DANAUS: This other one is Hermes, according to the Greeks’usage.[38]

CHORUS: May we receive proclamations of good news from him[39] in freedom.

DANAUS: Now honour this common altar of all the Lords, and sit in this holy place like a flock of doves in fearful flight from

225

hawks, their fellow-birds, hostile kindred who defile their race. How could a bird eat of another bird and not be polluted? How could a man marry the unwilling daughter of an unwilling father and not become unclean? After doing such a thing he will surely not escape the punishment of his folly,

230

even in Hades after death: there too, so they say, there is another Zeus who pronounces final judgement on the dead for their sins. [Looking off towards the city, as if the armed party whose approach he had announced is now close at hand:] Be careful to reply in the way I spoke of, so that this action may end well and victoriously for you.

[By now the CHORUS are all seated close to the altar, on which they have laid some of their suppliant-branches. PELASGUS enters from the direction of the city, in a chariot, escorted by soldiers.]

234–6 PELASGUS: From what place does this company come that I am addressing, in un-Greek garb, wearing luxurious barbarian robes and headbands? The dress of these women is not from the Argive region, nor from any place in Greece. And how

238–40

you dared to come to this land so fearlessly, under the protection neither of heralds nor of native sponsors,[40] and without guides – that is astonishing. And yet suppliant-branches are lying beside you, before the Assembled Gods, in accordance with our customs: only in that respect would ‘Greece’ be a reasonable guess.[41] About other things, too, it would be proper to make many more conjectures, if there were not a

245

person here with a voice to explain to me.

CHORUS: What you have said about our attire is perfectly true; but how should I address you – as a private individual, or a temple warden carrying a sacred staff, or the leader of the city?[42]

250 PELASGUS: So far as that is concerned, you can answer and speak to me with confidence. I am Pelasgus, ruler of this city, son of earth-born Palaechthon; and this land is cultivated by the race of the Pelasgians, appropriately named after me

254–5

their king. I am master of all the land[43] through which flows the holy Strymon, on the side of the setting sun,[44] and I mark as my boundary the land of the Paeonians,[45] and the parts beyond Pindus near the Perrhaebians,[46] and the mountains of Dodona;[47] the limit that cuts it short is the watery sea. I rule what is on the hither side of these. The soil

260

of this land itself, Apia, received its name long ago in honour of a healer. Apis the healer and seer, son of Apollo, came from the land of Naupactus across the sea[48] and cleansed

265–6

this land of the man-destroying creatures which the angry earth, stained by the pollution of old bloodshed, had sent up from below, a hostile horde of serpents sharing our home. From these Apis effected, beyond all cavil, a decisive, liberating

270

cure for the Argive land and in return won as his reward the right to be remembered in prayers. Now you have the evidence from me, you can declare what race you are of, and tell me more. However, our city does not love long speeches.[49]

275–6 CHORUS: Our statement is brief and clear. We declare that we are Argive by race, the offspring of the cow that bore a fine child; and to show that this is true, we will add proofs to what we have said.

PELASGUS: What you say, strangers, is unbelievable for me to hear, that this group of yours is of Argive descent. You

279–80

bear more resemblance to the women of Libya – certainly not to those of this country. The Nile too might nurture such a crop; and a similar stamp is struck upon the dies of Cyprian womanhood by male artificers.[50] I hear too that

284–6

there are nomad women in India, near neighbours to the Ethiopians,[51] who saddle their way across country on camels that run like horses; and then the man-shunning, meat-eating Amazons – if you were equipped with bows, I’d be very inclined to guess that you were them. If you explain to me, I

290

may understand better how your birth and descent can be Argive.

CHORUS: They say that once upon a time a certain Io was keyholder[52] of the temple of Hera in this land of Argos.

PELASGUS: She certainly was; that is the general and dominant tradition.

295 CHORUS: Is there perhaps also a story about Zeus making love to a mortal?

PELASGUS: Yes, and their embraces did not remain concealed from Hera.

CHORUS: <Two of my arrows have already hit the mark.>

PELASGUS: How, then, did this quarrel between the royal pair[53] end?

CHORUS: The Argive goddess turned the woman into a cow.

300 PELASGUS: So did Zeus couple again with this cow with the beautiful horns?

CHORUS: They say he did, mounting her in the shape and likeness of a bull.

PELASGUS: And what did the powerful consort of Zeus do in response to that?

CHORUS: She set over the cow a watchman who could see everything.[54]

PELASGUS: Who is this all-seeing lone cowherd you speak of?

305 CHORUS: Argus, child of Earth, whom Hermes slew.

PELASGUS: What else, then, did she contrive against the unfortunate cow?

CHORUS: <She sent a winged> cattle-driver.

PELASGUS: <Do you mean> the gadfly that forces <cattle> to keep moving?

308 CHORUS: Those who dwell near the Nile call it oistros.[55]

310 PELASGUS: This too that you have said matches my information perfectly.

311 CHORUS: And in fact she came to Canobus and Memphis.[56]

309 PELASGUS: Is that where it drove her to, in her long flight from this land?

313 CHORUS: Yes, and Zeus the Toucher begot a child for her by the touch of his hand.

PELASGUS: So what does the cow’s Zeus-begotten calf claim to be called?

315 CHORUS: Epaphus, rightly named after her deliverance.

PELASGUS: <And who was Epaphus’ child?>

CHORUS: Libya, who reaped the fruits of a vast <portion> of land.[57]

PELASGUS: Well, who else do you now name as her offspring?

CHORUS: Belus, who had two children and was the father of my father here.

320 PELASGUS: Now tell me his wise and apt name.

CHORUS: Danaus; and he has a brother with fifty sons.

PELASGUS: Do not begrudge revealing his name too.

CHORUS: Aegyptus. Now you know my ancient lineage, you can act so as to accept the supplication of this Argive band.

325 PELASGUS: You seem to me to have an ancient stake in this land. But what made you bring yourselves to leave your father’s home? What misfortune fell upon you?

CHORUS: Lord of the Pelasgians, human sufferings are ever-changing, and wherever you look you will never see trouble

330

showing the same face. Who ever supposed that I would take to flight like this, against all expectation, and land at Argos, rejecting with disgust a marriage tie with my close kindred through loathing of the marital bed?

PELASGUS: Why do you say you are supplicating me in the name of these Assembled Gods, holding these fresh-plucked, white-wreathed boughs?

335 CHORUS: So that I may not become a slave to the sons of Aegyptus.

PELASGUS: Is this because of hatred, or are you talking about something wrongful?[58]

CHORUS: Who would love someone whom she was buying as an owner?[59]

PELASGUS: That is how people increase their strength.[60]

CHORUS: Yes, and when they fall into misfortune they’re easily got rid of.[61]

340 PELASGUS: Well then, how can I act piously towards you?

CHORUS: By not giving us back into the hands of Aegyptus’ sons when they demand us.

PELASGUS: That’s a hard thing you’re asking – to provoke an outbreak of war.

CHORUS: But Justice stands by those who fight for her.

PELASGUS: She will, if she was a partner in your cause from the beginning.

345 CHORUS: Respect the poop of the ship of state, garlanded as it is.[62]

PELASGUS: I shudder to see this divine abode in shadow:[63] the wrath of Zeus, god of suppliants, is certainly heavy.

CHORUS:

Son of Palaechthon, hear me

with a gracious heart, lord of the Pelasgians.

350

See me, the suppliant, the wandering fugitive,

like a heifer chased by a wolf up

the steep rocks, where,

trusting to their protection, she lows loudly,

letting the herdsman know of her peril.

354–5 PELASGUS: I see this company, shaded by fresh-plucked boughs, supplicating in the name of these Assembled Gods. May the business of these citizen-strangers[64] not prove ruinous, and may this event, never expected or planned for, not bring strife to the community: the city doesn’t need that!

CHORUS:

359–60

May the Right that protects suppliants, servant[65] of Zeus Klarios,[66]

indeed see that our flight does not prove ruinous!

But, old and wise as you are, learn from one later born:

if you respect one who turns to you for succour, you will not

<ever have a life of> want:

the gods are disposed to accept the offerings

of a man pure of stain.

365 PELASGUS: You are not sitting at the hearth of my house.[67] if the city as a whole is threatened with pollution, it must be the concern of the people as a whole to work out a cure. I cannot make a binding promise beforehand, but only after making this matter known to the whole citizen body.

CHORUS:

370

You are the city, I tell you, you are the people!

A head of state, not subject to judgement,

you control the altar, the hearth of the city,

by your vote and nod alone;

374–5

with your sceptre alone, on your throne, you determine

every matter. Guard against pollution!

PELASGUS: As for pollution, may it befall my enemies! But I

cannot aid you without causing harm; yet it is also not wise to disregard these prayers. I am at a loss – fear grips my mind

380

– whether to act, or not to act and to take my chances.

CHORUS:

Look out for him who looks down from above,

the guardian of toil-worn mortals

who sit to supplicate others

and do not get the justice that custom dictates.

385

The wrath of Zeus, god of suppliants, is enduring

and not to be placated by the laments of its victim.

PELASGUS: If the sons of Aegyptus have power over you by the law of your state, saying they are your nearest kin,[68] who would be willing to oppose that claim? You must plead your

390

case, you see, under the laws of your home country, to show that they have no authority over you.

CHORUS:

May I never in any way become subject

393–5

to the power of males! To avoid

a hateful marriage, I am prepared to flee

right up to the stars! Choose Justice as your ally,

make the judgement that the gods approve.

398–400 PELASGUS: The judgement is not easy to judge: don’t choose me to judge it. I have already said I am not prepared to do this without the people’s approval, even though I have the power, lest (if something not too good should happen) the people may end by saying, ‘By giving privileges to foreigners you destroyed our city.’

CHORUS:

Zeus, god of kindred, watches over these things

in both directions, ready to lean either way, appropriately assigning

to the wicked their wrongs, to the law-abiding their acts of piety.

405

If these things are weighed fairly, how could you come to regret it

if you do what is right?

PELASGUS: Deep thought is certainly needed to save us: the eye, like that of a diver, must scan right to the bottom – a clear-sighted eye, not one unduly fogged by wine – so that

410

this matter may in the first place not prove ruinous to the city and may also end well for me myself, and that neither may Battle seize her booty[69] nor may we, by surrendering you after you have thus established yourselves in this abode

414–15

of the gods, cause a vexatious lodger to dwell with us, the god of Vengeance, whose devastating power does not leave free even the dead in Hades. Does it not indeed seem that thought is needed to save us?

CHORUS:

Think, and become wholeheartedly

our pious sponsor:[70]

420

do not betray the fugitive

who comes from afar, set in motion

by an impious expulsion,[71]

and do not look on while I am seized as plunder

from this abode of so many gods,

425

you who hold all power in this land!

Recognize the men’s outrageous behaviour,

and guard against wrath.

Do not tolerate seeing the suppliant

430

dragged away from the divine images, in defiance of justice,

by the headband, like a horse,

and grabbed by my richly woven robes.

434–5

Know this: whichever decision you make

will hereafter affect your children and your house: matching justice

must be paid in full.

Ponder that. Justice prevails by the will of Zeus.

PELASGUS: I have indeed pondered, and this is where my thoughts have run aground. There is absolutely no way to

439–40

avoid provoking a great war, either against these or against those.[72] The ship has been bolted together, and only restraining cables, one might say, are keeping it at the shore;[73]

443–5

nowhere is there an outcome free from pain. Even goods <taken> from a ransacked house can <eventually> be <replaced>, by the grace of Zeus, god of possessions, by other goods in excess of what was lost, and he can replenish its stores; and a tongue that has loosed off words that are out of season – painful darts that stir anger – well, speech can soothe the hurt speech has caused. But to ensure that kindred

450

blood shall not be spilt,[74] one should make ample offerings, and many victims should fall in sacrifice to many gods to avert such a scourge. I declare I have completely stepped aside from this dispute; I would rather be ignorant than knowledgeable about these troubles. May all be well – but that is not my expectation.

455 CHORUS: Listen to the conclusion of my many respectful words.

PELASGUS: I am listening. Speak on; it will not escape me.

CHORUS: We have girdles and belts to hold our robes together.

PELASGUS: I suppose that is appropriate for women to have.

CHORUS: Well, these, I tell you, give us a fine method –

460 PELASGUS: Say what words these are that you are going to utter.

CHORUS: If you don’t make a promise to our band that we can rely on –

PELASGUS: What is your girdle-method meant to achieve?

CHORUS: To adorn these images with votive tablets of a novel kind.

PELASGUS: Those words are a riddle. Speak plainly.

465 CHORUS: With all speed – to hang ourselves from these gods.

PELASGUS: I hear words that flay my heart.

CHORUS: You understand! I have opened your eyes to see more clearly.

PELASGUS: Truly this business is hard to wrestle with, in all sorts of ways; a host of troubles is coming at me like a river

470

in spate. This is a bottomless sea of ruin, certainly not easily crossable, that I have stepped into, and nowhere is there a safe haven from trouble. If I do not perform this thing for

474–5

you, you have threatened me with a pollution terrible beyond compare;[75] if, on the other hand, I take my stand in front of the walls and try the issue of battle with your kinsmen the sons of Aegyptus, it will indeed be a bitter loss that the ground should be stained with men’s blood on account of women. All the same, there is no alternative but to respect the wrath of Zeus, god of suppliants; the fear of him is the

480

greatest fear a mortal can have. You now, aged father of these maidens, <approach the altar,> quickly take these boughs in your arms, and place them on the other altars of our native gods, so that all the citizens may see the evidence of this

485

supplication, and no hostile words be thrown out against me – for the people are very inclined to criticize their rulers. Perhaps those who see them will take pity and detest the outrageous behaviour of that band of males, and the people be more friendly towards you. Everyone has kindly feelings for the underdog.

[DANAUS, with the boughs from the altar in his arms, descends from the mound.]

490 DANAUS: We value this very highly, to have secured a respectful, <beneficent> sponsor. But please send with me some attendants

493–5

and guides from among the natives, so that we can find the altars in front of the temples of the gods who dwell in the city and their < > abodes, and so that we may be safe as we walk through the city. Our form and appearance are not at all similar: the Nile does not breed a race resembling that of the Inachus.[76] Take care, in case confidence gives birth to fear.[77] People have been known to kill a friend through ignorance.[78]

500 PELASGUS: Go, men: what the stranger says is right. Take him to the city altars and the abodes of the gods. And you must not be talkative with those you meet while escorting this man who took sanctuary at the gods’ hearth.[79]

[DANAUS departs for the city, escorted by some of the soldiers.]

505 CHORUS: You have spoken to him; he has had his instructions and is on his way. But what shall I do? How will you give me reason to be confident?

PELASGUS: Leave the branches here as a symbol of your distress.

CHORUS [laying their boughs on the altar]: Look, I am leaving them, obedient to your words.

PELASGUS: Now move down to this level meadow.[80]

CHORUS: And how can an unconsecrated meadow protect me?

510 PELASGUS: We will not surrender you to be plundered by those birds of prey.

CHORUS: But what if they are more hostile than malignant serpents?

PELASGUS: May you speak good words when good words are spoken to you![81]

CHORUS: It’s not surprising if my mind is distraught with fear.

PELASGUS: <Women> are always unreasonably frightened.

515 CHORUS: Well then, put heart into us by word and action.

PELASGUS: You won’t be deprived of your father for long. I am <going> to call the people of this country to assembly, so that I can make the public friendly towards you; and I shall

520

instruct your father what he should say. In view of that, stay here and appeal in prayer to the gods of the country to gain what you desire. I will go to put these plans into action: may persuasion, and the fortune of success, go with me!

[He departs for the city, accompanied by his men. The CHORUS descend from the mound.]

CHORUS:

O King of Kings, O most blest

525

of the blest, O power most perfect

of the perfect, Zeus giver of prosperity,

listen to us, and in thorough loathing

of those vicious men keep them away from your descendants:

cast into the purple-coloured sea

530

the black ship on whose thwarts sits our ruin!

Look favourably on the woman’s point of view,

and renew the tale told long ago

of your kindness to the woman you loved,

the ancestress of our race.

535

Toucher of Io, remember it all!

We claim to be of the race of Zeus,

springing from an inhabitant of this land.

I have come and halted on the old tracks,

the place where my mother was watched[82] as she browsed on the flowers,

540

the cattle-pasture meadow, from whence Io,

driven by the gadfly,

fled in frenzy,

passing through many tribes

544–6

of men; and < > she cleaved

the waves of the strait, in accordance

with destiny, and thus defined the boundary

of the land on its distant side;[83]

and she rushed through the land of Asia,

from end to end of sheep-rearing Phrygia,

and passed through the Mysian city of Teuthras[84]

550

up the vales of Lydia

and through the mountains of Cilicia,

speeding across the land of the Pamphylians,[85]

its ever-flowing rivers

554–5

and its deep, rich soil, and the land

of Aphrodite[86] abundant in wheat.

And she arrived, while the winged cowherd

was still piercing her with its sting,

in the plain of Zeus,[87] rich in all kinds of pasture,

the snow-fed meads[88] over which flows

560

the might of the Nile

and the water untouched by the plagues of Typhos,[89]

maddened by undeserved sufferings

and agonies inflicted by the hurtful sting,

a maenad of Hera.[90]

565

And the men who then dwelt in that land

felt their hearts leap with green fear[91]

at the unaccustomed sight,

beholding a half-human beast that their minds could not handle,

with some features of a cow

570

and some of a woman, and the monstrosity astounded them.

And who then was it who applied a healing charm

to her who had wandered so far in misery,

the gadfly-tormented Io?

It was he who rules for his eternal lifetime,

575

<Zeus, who restrained her with his hand>.[92]

By the force of his painless strength

and by his divine breath

she was stopped,[93] and in tears she wept away

the grief of her shame.

580

And, receiving what can truly be called a Zeus-given burden,

she bore a perfect child,

destined to unbroken good fortune through his long lifetime.

And so the whole land cried,

‘Truly this is the offspring

584–5

of Zeus, the begetter of life!’

Who else could have put a stop

to the sufferings caused by Hera’s plotting?

It was the act of Zeus. And if you say that our race

springs from Epaphus, you will hit the mark.

590

On what god could I appropriately call

on account of actions that give me a juster claim?

The Lord and Father himself, with his own hand, was my engenderer,

the great, wise, ancient artificer of my race,

the all-resourceful one, Zeus who grants fair winds.[94]

595

He does not speed at the bidding of another,

exercising power inferior to some mightier lord:

there is no one seated above him whose power he reveres,

and he can hasten the deed as fast

as the word. What of all this can the mind of Zeus not bring to pass?

[DANAUS returns from the city.]

600 DANAUS: Take courage, children: all is well so far as the natives are concerned. A most decisive decree has been passed by the people.

CHORUS: Welcome, old father; you bring me splendid news. Tell us what the final decision is that has been reached, and in what direction the majority of the people’s sovereign vote went.

605 DANAUS: The Argives have resolved, with no divided voice,[95] but in such a way that my aged heart felt young again – for the air bristled with their aptly named right hands[96] as the entire people ratified this proposal – that we shall have the

610

right of residence in this land in freedom, with asylum and protection from seizure by any person; that no one, whether inhabitant or foreigner, may lay hands upon us; and that if force be applied, whoever among these citizens fails to come to our aid shall lose his civic rights and be driven into exile

615

from the community. The king of the Pelasgians persuaded them to make this decision by delivering a speech about us, in which he declared how great could be the wrath of Zeus, god of suppliants, who might at a future time bring it heavily to bear against the city, and saying that the double pollution, in relation both to foreigners and to citizens,[97] which the city

620

would be bringing into being, would be an irremediable breeder of grief. Hearing this, the Argive people resolved, without waiting to be called,[98] that the motion should be carried. The Pelasgian people had heard and obeyed the guidance of the orator, and Zeus had brought about the decisive outcome.

[DANAUS goes up to the shrine and again begins to keep a lookout, this time towards the sea.]

CHORUS:

625

Come now, let us utter prayers of blessing

for the Argives, in return for their good deed;

and may Zeus, god of strangers, watch over

the words of our foreign lips as we honour them for putting an end

to our wandering, <so that we speak in a manner no one will censure>.

630

Now <come>, you gods

of the family of Zeus, pray hear me

as I pour forth my wishes for my kin:[99]

633–6

never may lustful Ares, insatiable of appetite for the cries of battle,

who reaps harvests of men in fields that are not arable,[100]

cause this Pelasgian land to be wasted by fire –

because they took pity on us

640

and cast a kindly vote,

and because they respect the suppliants of Zeus,

this pitiable flock;

nor did they cast their vote

with the males, and so spurn

645

the struggle of the women –

they heeded Zeus’ avenger,[101] ever on the watch,

649–50

hard to combat; what house would be pleased

to have him on its roof? where he perches, he brings grievous doom –

for they revere their kinsfolk

who were suppliants of holy Zeus;

654–5

therefore they will be propitiating the gods

at pure altars.

So from our shaded lips[102]

let words of prayer fly

with love and honour.

659–60

Never may plague empty

this city of men,

nor may <war> bloody

the soil of the land with its fallen natives;

may the flower of its youth

not be plucked, and may Aphrodite’s

665

man-destroying bedfellow Ares

not mow down their finest.

And for their elders

may the sacred hearths where they gather[103]

teem <with offerings>:

670

so may the city be well governed,

because they honour great Zeus –

most especially in his capacity as god of strangers –

Zeus who guides destiny aright according to age-old law.

674–5

We pray that there may always be born

new guardians of the land,

and that Artemis Hecate[104]

may watch over the women giving birth.

And may no man-slaying destruction[105]

680

come upon this city and ravage it,

arming Ares the breeder of tears, with whom is no dance and no lyre,

and intestine violence in the community.

684–5

And may the cheerless flock of sicknesses

perch far from the citizens’ heads,

and may the Wolf god[106] be kind

to all their young men.

And may Zeus make the land bring crops to perfection,

690

bearing them in every season;

may the best of their grazing flocks bear many young;[107]

may they, through the gods’ grace, thrive in every way.

694–5

And may their singers make

auspicious music at their altars,

and let there rise from pure lips

a voice in amity with the lyre.

And may the people, which rules the city,

protect well the citizens’ privileges,[108]

700

a government acting with craft and foresight for the common good;

and to foreigners may they offer

painless justice under fair agreements[109]

before arming the god of war.

704–5

And may those who dwell in the land

always honour its native gods

with ancestral rites, carrying laurel boughs and sacrificing oxen;

for the honouring of parents

is written third

in the statutes of Justice the highly honoured.[110]

710 DANAUS: I praise you, dear daughters, for these wise prayers. Now do not be afraid when you hear from your father this unexpected and untoward news. From this lookout post, which received you as suppliants, I can see the boat. It is

715

unmistakable. I cannot fail to observe the ship’s sailing gear,[111] its side-screens,[112] and the prow that scans the way ahead with eyes,[113] obeying all too well the guiding helm at the very stern of the ship, as if unfriendly to us; and the men

720

on board the ship are conspicuously visible, their black limbs set against white garments. Now the other ships and all the assisting forces are plain to see, and the leading vessel herself is close inshore, has furled her sail and is rowing in with all

724–5

oars. Now you must look at this matter in a calm and disciplined way, and not forget these gods.[114] I will come back with helpers and defenders, since perhaps some herald or embassy may come here, wanting to seize their booty and take you away. Nothing will come of that – don’t be afraid

730

of them; but all the same it’s best, in case we should be slow in calling for help, at all costs never to forget your protection here.[115] Have courage: sooner or later, you know, on the destined day, any mortal who shows contempt for the gods will pay the penalty.

735 CHORUS: Father, I’m afraid, because the swift-winged ships

have come, and there is hardly any time remaining.

Terrified fear grips me: has my fleeing

so great a distance really done me any good?

Father, I am beside myself with fright!

739–40 DANAUS: Take courage, children; remember, the vote of the Argives was decisive. They will fight for you, I know it for sure.

CHORUS: The crazed family of Aegyptus are abominable, their appetite for battle insatiable. And I am speaking to one who knows that.

With timber-built, black-eyed ships

they have sailed here in wrathful haste,

745

with a great black army!

DANAUS: Well, they’ll find plenty of men here whose arms have been made good and leathery by the midday heat!

CHORUS: Don’t leave me alone, I beg you, Father! A woman on her own is nothing: there is no fight in her.

750

They’re murderous, full of cunning deceit;

in their impure minds, like ravens,

they care nothing for the sanctity of altars.[116]

DANAUS: That would be very helpful to us, children, if they should make enemies of the gods as well as you.

755–6  CHORUS: Father, they certainly won’t keep their hands off us for fear of these tridents or the awesomeness of the gods.

They’re so arrogant, maddened

by their unholy rage, as shameless as dogs,

turning a deaf ear to the gods.

760 DANAUS: Well, rumour has it that wolves[117] are stronger than dogs; and papyrus fruit[118] can’t beat ears of corn.

CHORUS: Their tempers are like those of wanton, impious beasts: we must take care they do not get control of us!

765 DANAUS: You can’t send out a naval expedition quickly, and you can’t bring one in quickly either. Nor is it a speedy job running stern cables ashore to keep the ship safe,[119] and their custodians don’t immediately feel secure when they’ve dropped anchor, especially when they’ve come to a harbourless coast as the sun is departing and night approaching

770

– night tends to breed travail in the mind of an expert helmsman. So even to land an army[120] would not be a good idea until the fleet was secure in its anchorage. But as you’re afraid, be sure not to forget the gods; <I will come back from town as soon as possible,> having secured assistance. The

775

city will find no fault with a messenger who is old in years but young in his eloquent intellect.

[DANAUS departs for the city.]

CHORUS:

O hilly land that we rightly revere,[121]

what is going to happen to us? Where in the land of Apia

can we flee in the hope that there is somewhere a dark hiding place?

O to become black smoke

780

up among the clouds of Zeus,

to fly up without wings, invisible, imperceptible,

like dust, and end my existence altogether!

The evil will no longer be escapable;

785

my heart within is shaken, its flesh turned black.[122]

My father’s lookout has trapped me – I am perishing with terror!

I would wish to meet my fate

in a plaited noose

790

before an abominated man could touch this flesh!

Before that, may I die and Hades become my lord!

Where can I find a seat in the sky,

near where the moist clouds turn into snow,

or a slippery crag, where no goat climbs,

795

lonely, overhanging, impossible to point out,[123]

the haunt of vultures, which could testify

to my long fall,

before, against the determination of my heart,

I meet a killer marriage?

800–801

Thereafter, I do not refuse to become

prey for the dogs, a dinner for the native birds:

for he who dies is freed

from evils that cry to be bewailed.

Let death come and get me

805

before the marriage bed does!

What path of escape can I yet cleave

that will release me from wedlock?

Raise a crying voice, send words of prayer

to heaven, to the gods and goddesses –

810

but how can they be fulfilled for me?

< >[124] Look on us, Father,

viewing violence with unfriendly eyes,

as is right: respect

815

your suppliants, almighty Zeus, possessor of the earth!

For the offspring of Aegyptus <are advancing on us,>

intolerable in their male wantonness!

819–20

I fled, but they run after me in pursuit

and in their clamorous lust

seek to seize me by force.

The beam of the balance[125] is yours, all yours:

what in mortals’ destinies is decided without you?

[A band of EGYPTIANS rushes in, led by a HERALD. The text of the one manuscript is badly defective, but the EGYPTIANS’ first utterance appears to be a cry of triumph – ‘ho ho ho, ha ha ha!’ (825) – on finding their prey; from the following lines there survive the words ‘I am the seizer’ (826), ‘on the ship’ (826a) and ‘on the land’ (826b), after which there was probably another line in which they declared their intention of taking the Danaids to their ship. The CHORUS reply, ‘Before that, seizer, may you wear away – yugh!’[126] (827). Of their next line (828) there survive two letters which may be part of the word for ‘eye’ and, after a gap, the phrase ‘going down straight away’; possibly they are telling the Egyptians to get out of their sight and go straight back down to their ship. They then (829) say something which the ancient commentator interprets as ‘No longer as having heard from my father, but seeing with my own eyes, I shout’; what remains of the line in the manuscript suggests that it began with ‘now’, and its end can be plausibly restored as ‘with knowledge I raise a cry’. The next line (830) is syntactically incoherent but must mean something like ‘I see this is a prelude to violent sufferings’. From here, although the text remains very corrupt until 902, it becomes possible again to offer some sort of continuous translation.]

CHORUS:

Aaah-eh! Aaah-eh!

Go, fly to protection!

[They flee to the shrine.]

<These> grim-hearted <beasts> are showing their wantonness,

intolerable at sea or on land!

835

Lord of the land,[127] array yourself in our defence!

EGYPTIANS:

Off, off, to boat, fast as your feet!

[On receiving no response:] Then won’t, then won’t you have hair torn, hair torn, and tattoos,

840

very bloody gory chopping off head?[128]

Off, off, to barge,[129] damn you!

CHORUS:

If only, in the many eddies

of the briny sea you voyaged over,

845

together with your arrogant masters

and your bolt-bound timbers,[130] you had perished!

EGYPTIANS:

You’ll be running with blood when I seat you on the barge.

Want a thump, do you? You must be off.

I tell you, give over your shouting; <quench>

850

your longing – it’s a mental sickness.

< >

Leave where you’re sitting, go to the ship,

you who are not respected in a city of pious men![131]

CHORUS:

May you never again see

855

the water that rears cattle,[132]

the water that causes the blood that propagates life[133]

to increase and flourish in men.

EGYPTIANS:

I am a warrior of long pedigree,

860

possessor of powerful hands.

You will quickly board the ship, the ship,

willing or unwilling!

Force compels much. <Your hopes> are gone.

864–5

Go, <you damnable, helpless wretches

of girls with broad girdles!>

CHORUS:

Ah, ah!

I wish you perish helplessly,

across the flowing expanse of the salty sea,

870–1

drifting before the winds blowing from Syria

on to the piled sands of Sarpedon’s bank![134]

882 HERALD: I order you to go with all speed to the curved boat;

884

let no one make any delay, or you will be dragged by the hair without the least scruple.

CHORUS:

876

Oh, oh!

I wish you would be uttering your insults beneath the earth!

<Your desire is> swelling

<with great vanity>. May great Destiny avert the monstrous outrage

880

that you are committing![135]

872 HERALD: Cry and howl and call on gods – you won’t jump out

875

of the Egyptian boat.[136] You’ll soon be uttering an even bitterer song of anguish.

[The HERALD and his men begin to advance steadily towards the shrine.]

CHORUS:

885

Oh, oh, Father, the protection of your image

is failing me! He is taking me by force to the sea,

coming step by step, like a spider –

a dream, a black dream!

Ototototoi!

890

Mother Earth, Mother Earth, avert

the fearsome <assailant>!

O Father Zeus, child of Earth![137]

HERALD: I do not fear the divinities of this country. They did not rear me to manhood, nor will it be by their nurture that I reach old age.

CHORUS:

895

He is raging close to me, the two-footed snake;

like a viper he <stares at> me.

What noxious beast <do I see

before me? I am in the grip of> agony.

Ototototoi!

900

Mother Earth, Mother Earth, avert

the fearsome <assailant>!

O Father Zeus, child of Earth!

HERALD: If you don’t accept your fate and go to the ship, your finely worked clothes will be ripped without mercy.

[The HERALD and his men approach closer still.]

CHORUS [calling out in the direction of the city]:

905

Help, noble leaders of the city, I’m being overpowered![138]

909–10 HERALD: It looks as though I’ll be dragging you off by the hair, since you aren’t hearing my orders very sharply.

CHORUS:

908

We’re done for! My lord,[139] we’re being treated unspeakably!

906–7 HERALD: You’ll soon be seeing plenty of lords – the sons of Aegyptus. Don’t worry, you won’t be complaining about a lack of authority!

[Enter PELASGUS, from the city, with armed men.]

911 PELASGUS: Here, you, what are you doing? What’s your idea in insulting this land of Pelasgian men? Do you really think you’ve come to a city of women? For a barbarian you are

915

showing an unduly arrogant attitude towards Greeks; you have made a great mistake, and your mind has gone far astray.

HERALD: In what respect have I erred in doing this, or acted without right?

PELASGUS: In the first place, you do not know how an alien should behave.

HERALD: What do you mean? I am finding and taking my own lost property.

PELASGUS: What local sponsor have you spoken to?[140]

920 HERALD: To the greatest of all sponsors – Hermes the Searcher.[141]

PELASGUS: You may have spoken to a god, but you show no respect for the gods.

HERALD: I honour the gods who live by the Nile.

PELASGUS: And those of this land are nothing – that’s what I’m hearing from you.

HERALD: I shall take these women, unless someone formally asserts they are free.

925 PELASGUS: If you should lay a finger on them, you’ll howl – and soon.

HERALD: I hear what you say; it’s far from hospitable.

PELASGUS: I don’t extend hospitality to those who rob the gods.

HERALD: I shall go and report this to the sons of Aegyptus.

PELASGUS: That does not cause my mind any concern.

930 HERALD: Well, so that I can speak to them with more definite knowledge – for it is right that a herald should bring back a full and clear report – when I go back without this band of women who are their close cousins, by whom and by what

934–6

right should I say I was deprived of possession of them? Ares will be the judge of this matter, and not on the basis of witnesses’ evidence; he does not settle quarrels by a payment of silver – no, before that many men must fall to the ground and end their lives in convulsions.

PELASGUS: Why need I tell you my name? You will learn it and know it in time, you and your fellow-travellers. You may

940–5

take these women so long as they consent with friendly heart, if pious words of yours should persuade them; <but you may not take them against their will>. That is the unanimous vote that has been passed and enacted by the people of the city, never to surrender this band of women by force. This decision

944–5

has been nailed down with a nail that has pierced right through, so that it stays fixed. These words are not written on tablets, nor sealed up in a folded sheet of papyrus: you hear them plainly from the lips and tongue of a free man. Now get out of my sight at once.

950 HERALD: You take pleasure in provoking an outbreak of war. May victory and mastery go to the males!

PELASGUS [as the HERALD and his men depart]: Well, I tell you, you’ll find that the inhabitants of this land are masculine

954–5

all right – they don’t drink barleycorn brew![142] [To the CHORUS:] Now, all of you, take courage and go, with a friendly escort, to our well-fortified city, enclosed by high,

957, 959

well-crafted walls. There is plenty of public housing, where

960–6

you can live in well-prepared accommodation with many others; or, if it pleases you better, you may also live in

958

separate dwellings,[143] since I myself too am housed on no

962

mean scale. Choose from these options whatever is best and

965

pleases you most. I am your patron,[144] as are all the citizens who have made and enacted this decree. Why need you wait for anyone with more authority than these?

CHORUS:

In return for these blessings may you teem with blessings,

glorious leader of the Pelasgians!

But be so kind as to send here

our father, Danaus, feeling confident,[145] to take forethought

970

and form a plan. He should first

971

consider wisely where we should reside

975

so as to be well reputed, and spoken of

976

without anger, by the native population:

972

even if a country is friendly, everyone

is ready to speak ill

974

of people of alien language.[146] May all be for the best!

[PELASGUS departs for the city with some of his men, leaving the remainder to guard and escort the Danaids. The transmitted text here continues:]

977

Arrange yourselves, dear maids, in the way

in which Danaus allotted you to each of us

979

as a dowry in the form of a servant.

There is, however, no other clear evidence in the text for the existence of these maidservants: they can hardly have only just come on stage (where could they have been before?), and, had they been with their mistresses from the start, one would have expected some notice to be taken of them, especially by Pelasgus. Moreover, Pelasgus is still apparently being addressed in 973–4 and can hardly leave the scene before then, and it would be clumsy (and unparalleled) to have Danaus arrive from the same direction almost immediately afterwards. It is therefore likely that the maids, and the three lines addressed to them, were added to the play by a later producer, perhaps in place of a short choral song. The CHORUS probably descended from the mound before singing the song.]

[Enter DANAUS from the city, with an armed escort.]

980 DANAUS: Children, we ought to pray, sacrifice and pour libation to the Argives as if to the Olympian gods, for they have unquestionably been our saviours. They gave a hearing to my news of what had happened which was friendly to their

985

kin[147] and bitter towards your cousins; and they assigned to me these spearmen as attendants, so that I might have an honourable mark of distinction, and so that I might not perish unwitnessed by the surprise stroke of a weapon, thus loading the country with a burden it will never cast off,[148] <and so that no one except the king might have a more

989–90

honourable status than me>. Having received such favour, <it is right that we> should give them respect, gratitude <and honour> from the bottom of our hearts. Now inscribe this[149] in addition to the many other pieces of wise advice from your father that you have already inscribed: an unknown group is tested and proved by time;[150] and in regard to immigrants,

995

everyone has an evil tongue ready to use, and it is rather easy to utter words of disgust. I urge you not to put me to shame, having the youthful beauty that you have which makes men turn their heads. Tender fruit is not at all easy to guard:

1000

beasts and men alike devour it, do they not? In the case of animals, winged or walking, Cypris advertises the availability of juicy fruits before they are ripe, preventing them <from resisting> desire; and likewise with the charms of a maiden

1004–5

fair of form, every passer-by is vanquished by desire and shoots a glance of the eye at her that can melt her heart. Bearing that in mind, let us not suffer what we endured long sorrow and ploughed a long sea-furrow with our keel to avoid; let us not cause disgrace to ourselves and pleasure to

1010

my enemies. We have two kinds of housing available – one set offered by Pelasgus, another by the city – to live in free of rent. That is easy. Only keep in mind these precepts of your father’s, and value your chastity more than life itself.

1015  CHORUS: In all else may the Olympian gods give us good fortune – but so far as my ‘fruit’ is concerned, Father, you can have confidence: unless the gods have decided on some new plan, I will not deviate from the track my mind has followed till now.

Go[151] now to the town, glorifying

the blessed lords, the gods,

1020

both those of the city and those who dwell round

the ancient stream of Erasinus.[152]

Accept our song,

you escorts, and let praise enfold this city

of the Pelasgians; no longer let us

1025

sing in honour of the mouths of the Nile,

but of the rivers that pour their tranquil waters

through this land, to drink for health

and for fertility, softening the soil of the land

with their oil-smooth streams.

1030

May chaste Artemis watch over

this band in pity, and may Cytherea’s consummation[153]

not come to us by compulsion:

may that prize be won only in Hades!

ARGIVE SOLDIERS:[154]

But it is a wise rule not to ignore Cypris;

1035

for she holds power very close to Zeus, together with Hera,[155]

a goddess of cunning wiles

who is honoured for awesome deeds.[156]

Partners and associates with their dear mother

1039–40

are Desire and the charmer Persuasion,

to whom nothing can be refused,

and also given to Aphrodite as her portion are Union

and the whispering paths of lovemaking.

For the fugitives, I foresee and fear punishments still to come,

dire suffering and bloody wars:

1045

why, why did they[157] get good sailing

in their swift-sped pursuit?

Whatever is fated, you know, that will happen –

the great, unfathomable mind of Zeus

cannot be crossed –

1050

and this outcome, marriage, would be shared

with many women before you.

CHORUS:

May great Zeus defend me

from marriage with the sons of Aegyptus!

ARGIVE SOLDIERS:

That would certainly be best[158] –

CHORUS:

1055

You’re trying to cajole the uncajolable.

ARGIVE SOLDIERS:

And you don’t know the future.

CHORUS:

How can I be expected to see into the mind

of Zeus, gazing into its bottomless depths?

ARGIVE SOLDIERS:

Then make your prayer a moderate one.

CHORUS:

1060

What are you instructing me is the right choice?

ARGIVE SOLDIERS:

Not to ask too much of the gods.

CHORUS:

May Lord Zeus deprive us[159]

of a hateful marriage to men

who are our foes – he who gave Io

1065

a good release from her sufferings,

restraining her with his healing hand,

making force kindly –

and may he give victory

1069–70

to women. I am content to have the better kind

of evil, the two-thirds kind,[160]

and that judgement should go with justice,

according to my prayers,

through divine contrivances that bring freedom.

[All depart towards the city.]

The Danaid Tetralogy

1. THE SUPPLIANTS or THE EGYPTIANS

2. THE EGYPTIANS or THE SUPPLIANTS

Of the fragment of papyrus that preserves information about the first production of the Danaid tetralogy, the part that would have contained the titles of the first two plays has not been preserved; what does survive tells us only that the third play was The Danaids and that it was followed by the satyr drama Amymone. It is almost universally accepted that in addition to these two and to The Suppliants, the other play in this production was The Egyptians; the Danaid story is intimately bound up with Egypt, and no other Aeschylean tragedy is known to have had any significant connection with that country. But only one word of the play’s text survives – the name Zagreus for the underworld god Hades/Pluto; we have no direct information whatever about its content, and as a result it remains in dispute whether The Egyptians preceded or followed The Suppliants.

The majority of scholars have held that The Egyptians was the second play of the production, following The Suppliants. In that case its subject must have been the events leading from the conclusion of the Argive–Egyptian war (in which, it is generally accepted, King Pelasgus must have been killed, with Danaus perhaps being appointed to, or seizing, the vacant throne) to the arrangement and celebration of the marriages between Danaus’ daughters and Aegyptus’ sons.

The alternative view, supported by several nineteenth-century scholars and revived in recent times by Wolfgang Rösler and myself (respectively in Rheinisches Museum 136 (1993), pp. 1–22 (English version, with postscript, in M. Lloyd, ed., Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Aeschylus (Oxford 2007), pp. 174–98) and B. Zimmermann, ed., Griechisch-römische Komödie und Tragödie (Stuttgart 1995), pp. 111–23 (see also A. H. Sommerstein, Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996), pp. 143–7)), is that The Egyptians was the first play of the tetralogy, was set in Egypt (with a chorus of male Egyptians, perhaps elders), and presented the quarrel between Danaus and Aegyptus. The most important, though not the sole, argument in support of this view is that it explains a curious feature of The Suppliants. As is shown above (see pp. 112–13), it is possible to infer from various things said in The Suppliants, especially towards the end, that the Danaids’ objective and desire, supported and apparently inspired by their father, is not merely to avoid marriage with their cousins but to avoid marriage altogether; but this important fact is never made explicit. It is as if it were being assumed that the audience knew it already, though it is certainly not an invariable, let alone a logically necessary, feature of the Danaid myth. Nor is there any explanation within The Suppliants of what Danaus’ motive might be for a determination that his daughters should remain permanent virgins – a determination which to any ancient Greek would be incomprehensible except in very extraordinary circumstances.

In some other surviving accounts, however, we learn of a story element that would provide such an explanation. Ancient commentators on Prometheus Bound (line 853) and on five other passages by various authors speak of an oracle that had told Danaus he would meet his death at the hands of his son-in-law (according to some) or of a son of Aegyptus (according to others). If in Aeschylus’ treatment he was told that he would be killed by the bedfellow of one of his daughters, that would be quite sufficient motivation for him to do his best, or his worst, to ensure that none of them ever had one. There is, however, no hint within The Suppliants itself of the existence of such an oracle, and since not all versions of the myth contained it, the poet cannot simply have assumed that the audience would take it for granted; therefore it must have been mentioned in a preceding play, which can only have been The Egyptians.

The issue remains unsettled. It affects crucially our understanding of the position of Danaus and his daughters in The Suppliants, and of the merits of their plea; it makes, however, relatively little difference to our attempts to reconstruct the course of events in the latter part of the trilogy, except that if Aeschylus did have Danaus receive the oracle mentioned in the previous paragraph, that oracle must of course have been fulfilled and Danaus have ultimately met his death through the action of his one surviving son-in-law, Lynceus (as we shall see, there is some indirect evidence that he did indeed perish in The Danaids).

3. THE DANAIDS

We know two things about The Danaids, apart from the obvious fact that, very unusually, the Danaids themselves formed the Chorus for the second time in the trilogy. One is that it began on the morning after the fatal weddings: fr. 43, while corrupt, clearly refers to the rising of the sun and to the ceremonial, musical ‘awakening’ of the bridal couples. The other is that, doubtless later in the play, Aphrodite appeared and made a speech which contained an eloquent affirmation of the universality of mutual sexual desire in nature with particular reference to the primal union of Heaven and Earth (fr. 44) – clearly with a view to vindicating Hypermestra (who had spared the life of her husband, Lynceus), or to condemning Danaus, or both, but certainly also to condemning the sons of Aegyptus, who, in The Suppliants, are represented – by their own Herald as much as by their enemies – as unilaterally demanding the satisfaction of their desires regardless of anyone else’s. It would be highly fitting if this were followed up by the marriage of the Danaids other than Hypermestra to new husbands with whom they could form a union as true as that of Heaven and Earth; it is likely too that before the end of this play Danaus had met his death (the phraseology of an ancient note on Suppliants 37 strongly suggests that its author knew that Danaus was put to death later in the trilogy). The rest is speculation. I attempted a reconstruction of the play in Zimmermann, Griechischrömische Komödie und Tragödie pp. 123–30 (see also Sommerstein, Aeschylean Tragedy, pp. 147–51).

43 And then will come the brilliant light of the sun, and I will graciously awake the bridal couples, enchanting them with song with a choir of youths and maidens.

Presumably from the prologue of the play, spoken by someone unaware of the plot to murder the sons of Aegyptus.

44

APHRODITE: The holy Heaven passionately desires to penetrate the Earth, and passionate desire takes hold of Earth for union with Heaven. Rain falls from the brimming fountains of Heaven and makes Earth conceive, and she brings forth 5 for mortals grazing for their flocks, cereals to sustain their life and the fruit of trees: by the wedlock of the rain she comes to her fulfilment.[1] Of this, I am in part the cause.

4. AMYMONE

The story behind this satyr drama is told, with some variations, by several later mythographers, notably pseudo-Apollodorus (Library 2.1.4) and Hyginus (Fabulae 169a). Amymone, one of the daughters of Danaus, was sent into the Argive countryside to fetch water and there attracted the attention of a satyr (accounts differ as to how this happened) who attempted to rape her. She called for help to Poseidon, who appeared at once, put the satyr to flight and then himself lay with Amymone; afterwards he created the spring of Lerna for her by striking the ground with his trident. In the play there must of course have been a whole chorus of satyrs, and they can have been driven off (if at all) only at the end of the drama; a series of vase paintings from the late fifth and early fourth centuries suggest that at one stage – as we might expect in this genre – Amymone was besieged lustfully by the whole band, but that eventually Poseidon pacified them and the play ended with them joining in celebration of his union with Amymone. Echoes of the preceding tragic trilogy are evident, as Amymone, like her sisters, is placed by her father in a dangerous situation, is threatened with and resists forcible violation by an arrogant, shameless band of males, and is finally joined in an apparently willing union with an honourable suitor who becomes a benefactor of Argos; it may also be significant that in The Suppliants (1023–9) the Danaids are made to praise the rivers of Argos as givers of both vegetal and human fertility.

13   It is your fate to be wedded and mine to wed.

Evidently spoken to Amymone, either by Silenus or by Poseidon.

14   And I <    >[2] your powders and perfumes.

Since Amymone would hardly have powdered and perfumed herself when going to fetch water, this is probably Silenus (or the Chorus leader, if the two were not one and the same) commenting on the fragrance of Poseidon, god of the aristocratic pursuit of horsemanship, here evidently presented as a luxurious habitué of symposia.

PROMETHEUS BOUND

Preface to Prometheus Bound

In late antiquity and the Middle Ages Prometheus Bound was the most read of the Aeschylean plays, and in subsequent centuries it has remained among the most popular; in particular, its portrayal of a god who endures potentially unending torment, for the sake of humanity, from the agents of a tyrannical Zeus, appealed very powerfully to thinkers, authors and artists of the Revolutionary and Romantic periods, notably Goethe, Byron, Shelley, Marx and Nietzsche.[1] From the mid-nineteenth century, however, doubts began to appear about whether the play was in fact his work. Some of these rested on the inadequate basis of supposed inconsistencies between the theology of this play and that of the rest of the Aeschylean corpus, but increasingly attention has been drawn to important features of style and technique in which Prometheus Bound (as well as its evident sequel, Prometheus Unbound[2]) differ markedly from the undisputed plays of Aeschylus, and to possible echoes of other texts that were not composed until after his death. The issue remains in dispute, and the play’s authenticity continues to find powerful defenders, not least because it was never questioned in antiquity; but at present it would probably be true to say that a majority of scholars would regard it as being by a slightly later hand.[3] Martin West’s suggestion[4] that the hand is that of Aeschylus’ son Euphorion, passing his own work off as that of his father, is a very tempting one, not least because it gives full value to the play’s audacious grandeur of concept, reminiscent of that of the Oresteia and quite unlike anything found in Sophocles or Euripides, which surely suggests Aeschylean inspiration even if the detailed technique may not suggest Aeschylean workmanship.

We have no direct information about when the play was produced. Whether by Aeschylus or not, it can hardly be earlier than The Suppliants, to which it contains (at line 857) a clear reference; and it cannot be later than about 430, since in (probably) 429 its sequel Prometheus Unbound was imitated or parodied in a comedy by Cratinus. It may be significant that Euphorion won first prize at the City Dionysia of 431, defeating both Sophocles and Euripides.[5]

The story of how Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to men, and was cruelly punished by the supreme god but ultimately released by Heracles, had been told by Hesiod (Theogony 507–616), who combined it with the story of the creation of the first woman. Our play ignores this latter myth[6] and instead forges links between the Prometheus/fire story and the great narrative of the successive generations of the gods[7] – how Zeus overthrew his father, Cronus, and how he was himself at risk of being overthrown by a son of his if he did not take great care in choosing mothers for his children. In the Theogony (507–10) he is a son of Iapetus, Cronus’ brother; in our play he is upgraded to be himself at least a half-brother of Cronus, a son of Gaea (Earth) (209–10) who is in turn identified with the prophetic goddess Themis (ibid.; cf. 18). And Themis is able to give Prometheus knowledge – foreknowledge, enabling him to live up to the meaning of his name – of crucial developments in the history of the divine world. She tells him that victory in the war between the generations of gods will go to craft, not to force (209–13), thus enabling him, god of craft as he is, to offer his services to both sides, with only the younger gods accepting them. She, presumably, it also is who tells him[8] the secret which, if he can only keep it safe, gives him ultimate power even over Zeus: the identity of the female who is destined to bear a son mightier than his father, and with whom, therefore, Zeus cannot mate without sealing his own doom. The audience probably know, as soon as they hear the prophecy, that Thetis is meant – and therefore how the confrontation between Prometheus and Zeus will eventually end;[9] Prometheus knows too, of course, but Zeus does not. In the latter part of the play, Prometheus proclaims the coming fall of Zeus more and more loudly, but nothing will make him reveal who the fatal female is; and his punishment and pain, already greater than anything a mortal can even imagine, is increased even further. He is told that (as in Hesiod[10]) Zeus’ eagle will come to gnaw at his liver, but only after he has been thrust beneath the earth to remain in darkness for a long period.[11] With the implementation of this first part of his intensified punishment, Prometheus Bound ends.

The extremely hostile presentation of Zeus in this play has often been thought amazing in its audacity, and has been a significant factor in the play’s appeal to revolutionary and iconoclastic minds. Three things should be remembered. Firstly, Greeks were under no obligation to believe that their gods were good; indeed, Greek myth and poetry were severely criticized by Plato and others for precisely this reason.[12] Secondly, the idea that Zeus in particular was spitefully hostile to mortals for no good reason was one that was enshrined in the poems of the revered Hesiod: in Hesiod’s version of the Prometheus story itself (Theogony 535–612; compare Works and Days 42– 105[13]), when Prometheus deceives Zeus over the division of sacrificial meats, Zeus punishes not Prometheus but humanity, by denying them fire, and then when Prometheus steals fire and gives it to men, Zeus punishes them again by creating the first woman. Thirdly, Prometheus Bound is only the first part of the drama. Emphasis is laid on the newness of Zeus’ rule,[14] and we are reminded that ‘everyone is harsh when new to power’ (35); but already there are foreshadowings of a future mellowing in Prometheus’ prediction of Io’s fate (848–9) and of an eventual friendly reconciliation between Zeus and himself (190–92). We know enough about Prometheus Unbound to be sure that this indeed happened;[15] and we also know that almost the first event in that play was the entry of a Chorus of Titans – whom therefore Zeus must have released from the depths of Tartarus, where they were confined at the time of Prometheus’ binding (219–21). This apparent development in the character of Zeus between earlier and later stages of a story is not unique to the Prometheus plays: it is also found in the Oresteia, where Zeus at first, with the Furies as his agents, implacably enforces a model of retributive justice under which crime can be punished only by the victim’s kin and only by the commission of a further (and usually a worse) crime, and then, against the fierce opposition of the Furies, protects Orestes from automatic retribution (acting through Apollo) and establishes (acting through Athena) a new model of justice in which guilt is judged and punishment administered by a neutral third party (the judicial organs of the polis).[16] The hostile presentation of Zeus in Prometheus Bound may be unusually sustained, but it is not an inexplicable anomaly.

Prometheus Bound is a play of startling spectacle, whose realization has often been thought to stretch the resources of the Athenian theatre. According to the text, Prometheus is bound to the windswept upper part of a high cliff, overlooking a deep ravine.[17] It is highly likely that the cliff, as in Sophocles’ Philoctetes or Aristophanes’ Birds, is represented by the skene (while the orchestra represents the floor of the ravine), and that Prometheus, like a felon being executed by apotympanismos,[18] will be shown suspended in his bonds, his feet not touching the stage platform. If he is bound to a board resting on the skene door (which is never used during the play itself), then at the very end he can be made, by the sudden opening of the door, to fall into the dark interior of the skene – and, in imagination, of the earth.[19]

The Chorus and their father, Oceanus, both arrive by an aerial method of transport – or at any rate Prometheus, before the arrival of the Chorus, hears a ‘rustling sound of birds’ and the ‘light beating of wings’ (123–5), while the Chorus say they have come ‘on swift, striving wings’, sped by ‘the swift breezes… in a winged car’ (128–35), They later speak of leaving ‘this swift-moving car and the pure upper air, the pathway of birds’ (278–80), and Oceanus actually points to the ‘swift-winged bird’ he has guided to the scene (286–7; cf. 394–5) and perhaps never dismounts from it.[20] It seems most likely that the Chorus are first seen, in a vehicle or vehicles, on the roof of the skene,[21] from which they descend, out of sight, between 283 and 396,[22] from which point they take their normal position in the orchestra; while Oceanus’ entrance and exit are a clear case for the use of the flying-machine (mechane). With the central character totally immobilized for almost the entire duration of the play,[23] and with all but one of the dramatis personae being gods,[24] this is arguably the most abnormal Greek drama that we possess.

NOTES

1.   For a review of the reception of this play in ancient, medieval and modern times, see A. J. Podlecki, Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (Oxford 2005), pp. 41–68.

2.   On Prometheus Unbound, see pages 199–203 below. Prometheus the Fire-Bearer, a title cited in various ancient and medieval sources and often thought since to have been that of the first or third play of a Prometheus trilogy, is more likely to be an alternative (and preferable) title for the satyr drama about Prometheus produced together with The Persians in 472 (see pp. 52–4 above).

3.   The linguistic, metrical and other technical arguments against the play’s authenticity are fully set out by Mark Griffith, The Authenticity of Prometheus Bound (Cambridge 1977); see also M. L. West, Journal of Hellenic Studies 99 (1979), pp. 130–48 (reprinted with a postscript in M. Lloyd, ed., Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Aeschylus (Oxford 2007), pp. 359–96), and M. L. West, Studies in Aeschylus (Stuttgart 1990), pp. 51–72. The authenticity of the play has been defended by, among others, H. Lloyd-Jones, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 101 (2003), pp. 49–72, and A. J. Podlecki, Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (Oxford 2005), pp. 195–200.

4.   West, Studies in Aeschylus, pp. 67–72.

5.   Euripides’ production included the surviving Medea.

6.   Which seems, however, to have been used by Aeschylus in the satyr drama Prometheus the Fire-Bearer (or Fire-Kindler); see frr. 207a and 207b of that play on pp. 55–6 above.

7.   There is also a side glance at another evidently well-known myth about Prometheus. At 231–6 we are told that he alone resisted, and frustrated, an attempt by Zeus to ‘obliterate the [human] race altogether and create another new one’; this may refer to his role in the Flood story (Hesiod fr. 2; Epicharmus frr. 113–20 Kassel-Austin, from his comedy Prometheus or Pyrrha) or to another similar tale.

8.   We are never actually told this in this play (though it may have been mentioned in Prometheus Unbound, especially if Gaea– Themis was a character there); but in Pindar (Isthmian 8.29–51) it was Themis who revealed to the gods that Thetis was destined to bear a son mightier than his father, and in a parallel tale in Hesiod (Theogony 886–900) it was Gaea, with Uranus, who advised Zeus to swallow Metis and so prevent her giving birth to ‘a son who should be king of gods and men’.

9.   The revelation of the secret will result in Thetis being given in marriage to the mortal Peleus and fulfilling the prophecy by giving birth to Achilles.

10. Theogony 523–5.

11. The period is thirteen generations (cf. 773–4), since he meets Heracles not long after his return to the surface. In Prometheus the Fire-Bearer (fr. 208a), in contrast, his confinement is said to have lasted thirty thousand years.

12. See especially Plato, Republic 377d–383c.

13. The spitefulness of Zeus towards mortals is also a common theme of classical Athenian comedy, as in Aristophanes’ Peace, Birds and Wealth, in all of which Zeus is defeated by the mortal comic hero (with the aid of other gods – including, in Birds, Prometheus) and in two of which he is deposed from power.

14. See 149–51, 310, 439, 942, 955, 960.

15. And the original audience knew from the start that it was certain to happen; for they lived in a world in which on the one hand Zeus still ruled, and on the other Prometheus was a recipient of cult.

16. See H. D. F. Kitto, Form and Meaning in Drama (London 1956), pp. 66–86; A. H. Sommerstein, Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996), pp. 273–88, 383–90.

17. See 4–5, 15, 20, 31, 142, 157, 269–70, 563, 618, 1016–17.

18. This Athenian method of capital punishment involved clamping the criminal by the neck, wrists and ankles to a large board and standing the board up, perhaps against a wall, in such a way that the condemned man’s feet did not reach the ground; he would be left degradingly and agonizingly exposed, with no one permitted to come near him, probably until sunset, when, if still alive, he would be strangled by tightening the neck clamp. Euripides’ brother-in-law is subjected to this treatment (for sacrilege) in Aristophanes’ play The Women at the Thesmophoria (930–1208) until Euripides rescues and releases him. See L. Gernet, The Anthropology of Ancient Greece (Baltimore 1981), pp. 252–76 (translation of an article first published in 1924). Prometheus, being immortal, will remain thus not for one day but day and night for an indefinite period (19–34) – though for the actor’s benefit a discreet footrest will doubtless have been provided.

19. See note on 1093.

20. He does not mention dismounting or remounting, though his line ‘Your words are plainly meant to send me back home’ (387) – his first single-line speech in the scene – provide a possible occasion for the latter.

21. See notes on 128 and 140.

22. See note on 283/4.

23. And presumably for most of the following play as well.

24. This feature too, it would seem, was shared by this play with Prometheus Unbound – where even the one mortal character, Heracles, is destined to become a god eventually.

Characters

POWER, servant of Zeus

VIOLENCE, servant of Zeus

hephaestus

prometheus

chorus of daughters of Oceanus

OCEANUS

IO, daughter of Inachus, loved by Zeus

HERMES

[Scene: A remote, uninhabited region of Scythia. One of the two side-passages is imagined to lead eventually to Olympus and Greece, the other to further lands at the edge of the world. Enter POWER and VIOLENCE, leading PROMETHEUS prisoner; they are accompanied by HEPHAESTUS, who is carrying his tools.]

POWER: We have reached the land at the furthest bounds of earth, the Scythian marches, a wilderness where no mortals live. Hephaestus, you must attend to the instructions the

4–5

Father has laid upon you, to bind this criminal to the high rocky cliffs in the unbreakable fetters of adamantine bonds; for it was your glory, the gleam of fire that makes all skills attainable, that he stole and gave to mortals. For such an

10

offence he must assuredly pay his penalty to the gods, to teach him that he must accept the autocracy of Zeus and abandon his human-loving ways.

HEPHAESTUS: So far as you two are concerned, Power and Violence,[1] the orders of Zeus have been completely fulfilled, and there is no task still lying before you. But for my part, I

15

can hardly bring myself to take a kindred god and forcibly bind him at this stormy ravine; still, I have no alternative but to endure doing it, for it is dangerous to slight the Father’s word. [To PROMETHEUS:] God of lofty cunning, son of

19–20

Themis[2] of wise counsel, I, under as much constraint as you, am going to nail you, with metal bonds hard to undo, to this rock, remote from men. Here you will hear no mortal voice, see no mortal form; you will lose the bloom of your skin, grilled by the brilliant flames of the sun; welcome to you will

25

be Night of the gaudy apparel when she hides the daylight, but welcome too the return of the sun to disperse the early- morning frost;[3] and you will be continually worn down by the burden of one or another kind of suffering, for he who can relieve it is not yet born.[4] This is what you have gained from your human-loving ways. Though a god, you did not

30

tremble before the anger of the gods, and you gave honours to mortals beyond what is right; in punishment for which you will keep watch on this rock, upright, without sleep, without bending your knee,[5] and will utter many wailing laments, all in vain. The mind of Zeus is implacable – and

35

everyone is harsh when new to power.

POWER: Well, then, why are you waiting and grieving to no purpose? Why do you not loathe this god whom the gods hate so much, who traitorously gave your most prized possession to mortals?

HEPHAESTUS: Kinship is terribly powerful, you know, and so is companionship.[6]

40 POWER: I agree; but how is it possible to disobey the word of the Father? Are you not more in terror of that?

HEPHAESTUS: You are always pitiless and full of ruthlessness.

POWER: Because it does no good to lament over this fellow; so don’t waste effort when it won’t be of any use.

45 HEPHAESTUS: Oh, how I hate my craft skills!

POWER: Why do you hate them? Quite simply, your skills aren’t in any way responsible for the task you now have.[7]

HEPHAESTUS: All the same, I wish someone else had been allotted them.

50 POWER: Everything is burdensome, except ruling over the gods: no one is free but Zeus.

HEPHAESTUS: These things [indicating the bonds he is to fasten on PROMETHEUS] prove to me that that is so, and I have no way to argue otherwise.

POWER: Well, won’t you hurry up and put the bonds on him, so that the Father doesn’t look and see you idling?

HEPHAESTUS: Well, you can see that the harness is ready here.[8]

55 POWER: Then put it round his arms and with all the strength at your command strike with your hammer and nail it to the rock.

HEPHAESTUS [beginning to do so]: The job is being completed, you see, with no dallying.

POWER: Strike harder, squeeze him, don’t leave any slack! He’s very clever at finding ways out of impossible situations.

60 HEPHAESTUS: Well, this arm is fixed so it can hardly be freed.

62 POWER: Then pin down that other one safely too, so that he’ll learn, this intellectual,[9] that Zeus is cleverer than he is.

72 HEPHAESTUS [as he finishes clamping the arms]: I’ve got to do it; you needn’t keep ordering me.

73, 71 POWER: I most certainly shall order you, in fact I’ll hound you on. Now put the armpit-bands around his ribcage.

63 HEPHAESTUS [doing so]: No one could justly find fault with me – except this one here.

64–5   POWER: Now drive the remorseless bite of the adamantine wedge with all your power right through his chest.

HEPHAESTUS [as he reluctantly prepares to do so]: Ah, Prometheus, I groan for your sufferings!

POWER: Hesitating again, are you? Grieving for the enemies of Zeus? Take care you don’t have cause to pity yourself, one of these days!

HEPHAESTUS [having fixed the wedge]: Do you see this sight, hard for eyes to look on?

70, 74  POWER: I see this fellow getting what he deserves. Move down, and hoop his legs strongly.

75 HEPHAESTUS [doing so]: There, the job is done; the work did not take long.

POWER: Now hammer in the pierced fetters[10] with all your strength; for your work is being assessed by a tough appraiser.[11]

HEPHAESTUS: Your tongue tells the same tale as your appearance.

79–80 POWER: You be soft if you want, but don’t make it into a reproach to me that I am implacable and have a harsh temper.

HEPHAESTUS [who has finished his work]:

The trap is around his legs; let us go.

[He leaves; POWER and VIOLENCE remain.]

POWER: There now, practise your impudence here, robbing the gods of their prerogatives and handing them over to beings who live for a day. How are mortals going to be able to bail

85

you out of these sufferings? The gods are wrong to call you Prometheus, ‘the Forethinker’; you now need someone to exercise forethought for you as to how you’re going to wriggle out of this piece of handiwork.

[POWER and VIOLENCE depart.]

89–90  PROMETHEUS: O bright Sky, and you swift-flying winds, and river-springs, and you countless twinkling waves of the sea, and Earth, mother of all, behold what I, a god, am suffering at the hands of the gods!

Look, with what indignities

94–5

I am tormented, to endure

these trials for endless years!

Such a degrading bondage has been invented for me

by the new high commander of the Blest Ones.

Alas, I groan for my present suffering

and for that which is coming: where can one fix

99–100

a limit for these sorrows?

But what am I saying? I have precise foreknowledge of all that will happen: none of my sufferings will come as a surprise. I must bear my destined fate as easily as may be, knowing

105

that the power of Necessity is unchallengeable. And yet it is impossible for me either to keep silence or to speak about my fortunes. I am in this wretchedness, yoked in these constraining bonds, because I gave privileges to mortals: I hunted

109–10

for, and stole, a source of fire, putting it into a fennel stalk,[12] and it has shown itself to be mortals’ great resource and their teacher of every skill. Such is the offence for which I am paying this penalty, pinned in these bonds under the open sky.

[Suddenly] Hey, what is that?

115

What sound, what scent has been wafted to me, unseen,

from gods, from mortals, or from both together?

Has someone come to this rock at the end of the world

to be a spectator of my sufferings – or what do they want?

Behold me, the prisoner, the god in misery,

120

the enemy of Zeus, who incurred

the hostility of all the gods

who enter Zeus’ courts

through being too friendly to mortals!

124–6

Ah, ah, what is this rustling sound of birds

that I now hear close by? The air is whistling

with the light beating of wings.

Whatever approaches me makes me fearful!

[Enter the CHORUS of nymphs, daughters of OCEANUS, seated in a winged vehicle or vehicles.[13]]

CHORUS:

Have no fear: this is a friendly company

129–31

that has come to this rock

on swift, striving wings, having with difficulty

persuaded our father to consent.

The swift breezes have borne and sped me here;

for the sound of stroke on steel penetrated to the depths

of my cave, and shocked my grave-faced modesty out of me;

135

and I hurried here, unshod, in a winged car.

PROMETHEUS:

Ah me, ah me!

Offspring of prolific Tethys,[14]

138–40

children of Father Oceanus,

who rolls round the whole earth

in tireless flood,

look, see in what bonds

I am pinned

to the topmost cliffs of this ravine

to keep an unenviable watch!

CHORUS:

144–5

I see, Prometheus; and fear brings rushing into my eyes

a mist full of tears

on seeing you

left here to wither, bound to this rock

by these degrading bonds of adamant.

New rulers wield the helm on Olympus,

150

and Zeus rules arbitrarily by new-made laws;

what once was mighty he now casts into oblivion.

PROMETHEUS:

Would that he had cast me

below the earth, below Hades who welcomes the dead,

into boundless Tartarus,

155

and cruelly fixed me there with unbreakable chains,

so that no god nor any other being

could gloat over these afflictions!

As it is, I wretchedly endure the buffeting

of the winds high up, to my enemies’ delight.

CHORUS:

160

What god is so hard-hearted

as to take delight in this?

Who does not share the distress

of your sufferings – except for Zeus? He, with constant anger,

making his resolve inflexible,

165

is conquering the sons of Uranus,[15] nor will he stop

till either he has glutted his desires or by some contrivance

another takes his power – which is hard to take.

PROMETHEUS:

I tell you that even though my limbs are held

in these strong, degrading fetters,

the president of the immortals[16] will yet have need of me,

170

to reveal the new plan by which

he can be robbed of his sceptre and his privileges;

and he will not charm me

by the honey-tongued spells

of persuasion, nor will I ever disclose it

in terror of harsh menaces,

175

until he releases me from these savage bonds

and consents to pay compensation

for this degrading treatment.

CHORUS:

You are audacious and unyielding

in the face of these bitter pains,

180

and you speak too freely.

A piercing fear agitates my mind,

and I am afraid what may befall you:

where are you ever to reach harbour and see a limit

184–5

to these sufferings? For the son of Cronus has a character

that is immovable, a heart that is inexorable.

PROMETHEUS:

He is harsh, I know, and makes justice

as he pleases; all the same, I fancy,

his mind will one day

be softened, when he is shattered in the way I spoke of:

190

one day he will calm his stubborn wrath

and come into unity and friendship with me,

as eager for it as I will be.

CHORUS: Tell us everything and reveal the story: on what accusation did Zeus arrest you, to abuse you in such a cruel

195

and degrading way? Explain it to us, if it doesn’t harm you to do so.

PROMETHEUS: It is painful for me even to speak of these things, but it is also painful to keep silent: it is wretched either way. As soon as the gods began to quarrel and mutual strife was

200

stirred up among them, some wishing to depose Cronus from his throne – so that Zeus could reign, forsooth! – while those on the other side were determined that Zeus should never rule over the gods, at that time I gave the best advice to

205

the Titans, the children of Uranus and Gaea, but could not persuade them. They despised ingenious stratagems, and in the pride of their strength they thought they could retain control with ease by brute force. But my mother, Themis,

210

also called Gaea – one person under multiple names[17] – had more than once prophesied to me how the future would come to pass, saying that it was destined that the victors should be those who excelled not in might nor in power but in guile.[18]

215

I spoke to them explaining this, but they simply did not see fit even to look at the idea. Well, it then seemed to me the best of the available options to stand beside Zeus in an alliance that both parties welcomed, taking my mother with

219–20

me; and by my counsels the black depths of Tartarus’ recesses now cover Cronus of ancient birth together with those who fought beside him. Such are the benefits that the autocrat of the gods has received from me, and this is the evil reward with which he has recompensed me! It seems that this malady

225

is built into autocracy, that of not trusting one’s friends. But as to the question you ask – what is the cause of his thus degrading me – I will now explain it. As soon as he took his seat on his father’s throne, he immediately assigned to the

230

various gods their various privileges,[19] and organized his government; but of those wretched creatures, mortals, he took no account at all – on the contrary, he wanted to obliterate the race altogether and create another new one.

235

And no one resisted that plan except me. I had the courage to do it, and rescued mortals from the fate of being shattered and going to Hades.[20] And that, you see, is why I am being racked by these torments, agonizing to suffer and piteous to

239–40

see. I took special pity on mortals but was not held to merit it myself; instead I have been disciplined in this merciless way, a sight to bring disgrace on Zeus.

CHORUS: One would have to be made of stone and have a soul of iron, Prometheus, not to share the distress of your

245

affliction. I would not have wished to see it, and now that I have seen it, I am pained to the heart.

PROMETHEUS: Yes, I certainly am pitiable for friends to behold.

CHORUS: You didn’t, I suppose, go even further than that?

PROMETHEUS: I did: I stopped mortals foreseeing their death.[21]

CHORUS: What remedy did you find for that affliction?

250 PROMETHEUS: I planted blind hopes within them.

CHORUS: That was a great benefit you gave to mortals.

PROMETHEUS: And what is more, I gave them fire.

CHORUS: You mean those short-lived beings now possess flaming fire?

PROMETHEUS: From which they will learn many skills.

255 CHORUS: And those are the offences for which Zeus –

PROMETHEUS: Is degrading me and is not relaxing my suffering in the least.

CHORUS: And has no end been set for your trials?

PROMETHEUS: No end at all, other than ‘when such be his will’.

CHORUS: And how can it possibly ever be his will? What hope is there? Don’t you see you were wrong? To say you were

260

wrong is no pleasure to me, and it’s painful for you. Let us leave that matter: look for some means of release from your torment.

PROMETHEUS: It’s very easy for someone who is standing safely out of trouble to advise and rebuke the one who is in trouble.

265

I knew all that, all along. I did the wrong thing intentionally, intentionally, I won’t deny it: by helping mortals, I brought trouble on myself. But I certainly never thought I would

270

have a punishment anything like this, left to wither on these elevated rocks, my lot cast on this deserted, neighbourless crag. Now stop lamenting my present woes: descend to the ground and hear of my future fortunes, so that you will know

275

it all to the end. Do as I ask, do as I ask. Share the suffering of one who is in trouble now: misery, you know, wanders everywhere, and alights on different persons at different times.

CHORUS:

We receive your call

willingly, Prometheus,

and now with light foot I shall leave

my seat in this swift-moving car

280

and the pure upper air, the pathway of birds,

and approach this rugged earth below:

I want to hear

the tale of your troubles to the end.

[As the CHORUS are descending,[22] OCEANUS enters, flying on a winged steed.[23]]

OCEANUS:

284–85

After traversing a long journey

I have finally reached you, Prometheus;

I steered this swift-winged bird

by mental power, without rein or bit.

I share the pain of your misfortunes, I assure you;

290

our kinship,[24] I feel, compels me to do so,

and, quite apart from that, there is no one to whom

I would pay greater respect than to you.

I will prove to you that this is true, and that it is not

in my nature to speak pleasant but empty words.

295

Come now, tell me what should be done to help you:

you will never say that you have

a firmer friend than Oceanus.

PROMETHEUS: Here, what is this? Have you too come to be a spectator of my sufferings? How did you dare to leave the

300

stream that bears your name, and your self-built, rock-roofed cavern, and come to this land,[25] the mother of iron? Have you come to see what has happened to me and to share my distress? Behold the spectacle, then – me, the friend of Zeus,

305

who helped establish his autocracy, what torments I am now racked with at his hands!

OCEANUS: I see it, Prometheus; and I also want to give you

309–10

advice, the best advice, cunning though you are. Know your self[26] and change to a new pattern of behaviour, because there is also a new autocrat in the gods’ realm. If you go on hurling out such sharp and savage words, Zeus, though he sits far above, may well hear you, with the result that the crowd of miseries you have at present will seem like child’s

315

play. Cast off the temper you have, poor suffering one, and look for a way to escape these troubles. What I am going to say may seem to you rather hackneyed, but these, Prometheus, are the wages of an over-arrogant tongue. Are you still

320

not humbled, not yielding to your troubles? Do you want to get more of them, on top of what you have? Well, if you accept me as your adviser, you won’t kick out against the goad, being aware that we have a harsh monarch holding

325

irresponsible power. Now I will go and try to see if I can get you released from these sufferings. You keep quiet and don’t speak too impetuously; or do you not know very well, exceptionally intelligent as you are, that foolish words lead to punishment being inflicted?

330 PROMETHEUS: I congratulate you on being safe from accusation, not having dared to share in my efforts. Leave the thing alone now too; don’t get involved in it. In any case you won’t persuade him, because he’s not easy to persuade. And look out for yourself, in case your journey brings you some grief.

335 OCEANUS: You’re much better at admonishing others than you are at admonishing yourself: I judge that by facts,[27] not by words. But I am determined to go; don’t drag me back. I tell you, I tell you that Zeus will grant me this boon, so as to release you from these sufferings.

340 PROMETHEUS: I thank you for that, and I shall never cease to be grateful; you are certainly not short of zeal. But don’t make the effort. Any effort you make for me, if you do make one, will be wasted and will do no good. Keep quiet, and

345

keep yourself out of harm’s way. Even if my fortunes are poor, I wouldn’t for that reason want suffering to strike as many others as possible! Certainly not, seeing how distressed I am by the fate of my brother Atlas,[28] who stands in the

350

lands of the west, supporting on his shoulders the pillars of heaven and earth, a grievous burden on his arms. And I have seen and pitied the earth-born inhabitant of the Cilician cave,[29] a fierce monster with a hundred heads, now subdued

355

by force – furious Typhon, who once rose up against the gods,[30] hissing terror from his formidable jaws while a fierce radiance flashed from his eyes, with the intention of overthrowing the autocracy of Zeus by force. But there came against him the unsleeping weapon of Zeus, the downrushing thunderbolt breathing out flame, which struck him out of his

360

haughty boasts – for he was hit right in the centre of his body, and his strength was thundered out of him and reduced

365

to ashes. And now he lies, a sprawled, inert body, near the narrows of the sea,[31] crushed under the roots of Mount Etna; on its topmost peaks Hephaestus sits forging red-hot iron,[32] and from thence one day will burst forth rivers of fire, devouring

370

with their savage jaws the smooth fields of Sicily with their fine crops.[33] Such is the rage in which Typhos will boil over, raining hot darts of fiery breath that no one can touch, even though he has been calcinated by the thunderbolt of Zeus. You are not without experience, and you don’t need

375

me to teach you: save yourself, you know how to. And I will endure my present fate, until the anger in Zeus’ heart is assuaged.

OCEANUS: So, Prometheus, you don’t know that words are the healers of a sick temper?[34]

380 PROMETHEUS: Yes, if one tries to soften the heart at the right moment, and doesn’t try to reduce the swollen spirit against its will when it is still firm.[35]

OCEANUS: And what harm, tell me, can you see determination and courage bringing with them?

PROMETHEUS: Wasted labour and empty-headed naivety.[36]

385 OCEANUS: Allow me to suffer from that affliction: to be sensible while being thought stupid is the best policy.[37]

PROMETHEUS: That shortcoming will be thought to be mine.[38]

OCEANUS: Your words are plainly meant to send me back home.

PROMETHEUS: Yes: by lamenting for me, you risk incurring enmity.

OCEANUS: You mean the enmity of him who has lately come to sit on the almighty throne?

390 PROMETHEUS: Take care that his heart never becomes aggrieved with you.

OCEANUS: Your misfortunes, Prometheus, serve to instruct me.

PROMETHEUS: On your way, then; off you go; maintain your present intentions.

394–5 OCEANUS: As you speak these words, I am already starting off. My four-legged bird is beating the smooth pathway of the air with his wings; he will be glad to have a rest in his home stables.

[OCEANUS flies off.]

CHORUS:[39]

I groan, Prometheus, for your terrible fate:

399–401

I let fall a flow of teardrops

from my tender eyes, and moisten my cheek

with their watery stream;

for Zeus, exercising this unlimited control

under laws of his own making,

404–5

is displaying the arrogance of power

towards the gods of old.

And every land is now crying out in grief,

408–10

lamenting <the destruction of> the privileges,

magnificent and time-honoured,

of yourself and your brethren:

all the mortals who dwell

in the inhabited abodes of holy Asia

suffer together

with your great and grievous sufferings,

415–16

and the maidens, undaunted by battle,

who inhabit the land of Colchis,[40]

and the Scythian host, who dwell

in the most distant region of earth

around Lake Maeotis,[41]

420

and the martial flower of Arabia,[42]

inhabiting a city on a lofty cliff

near the Caucasus,

a savage host who cry clamorously

as they fight with sharp-tipped spears.

Before now I have seen

425

but one other Titan god subdued,

humbled and bound in such weariless toil:

Atlas of mighty, surpassing strength,

who upholds on his back

429–30

the earth and the vault of the sky.

<But for your fate, Prometheus, the earth laments,>

the waves of the sea cry out in unison

<with your sufferings>, the depths groan,

Hades’ dark subterranean recesses rumble in response,

and the flowing streams of holy rivers

435

lament your piteous pain.

PROMETHEUS: Do not think that my silence is due to vanity or arrogance. No, my heart is eaten up with brooding, when I see myself treated so outrageously. After all, who was it but

440

I that did all the distributing of privileges to these new gods? But I will say no more about that, because I would be telling you what you already know. Instead, listen to the miseries of mortals, how infantile they were before I made them intelligent

445

and possessed of understanding. I shall say this, not because I have any desire to criticize humans but to demonstrate the goodwill that inspired my gifts to them. In the beginning, though they had eyes and ears, they could make nothing of what they saw and heard; like dream-figures they

450

lived a life of utter random confusion all their days. They knew nothing of brick-built, sun-warmed houses, nor of wooden construction; they dwelt underground, like tiny ants,

454–6

in the sunless recesses of caves. Nor had they any reliable indicator of winter, or of flowery spring, or of fruitful summer; they did everything without planning, until I showed them the hard-to-discern risings and settings of stars.[43] I also

459–60

invented for them the art of number, supreme among all techniques, and that of combining letters into written words, the tool that enables all things to be remembered and is mother of the Muses.[44] And I was the first to bring beasts[45] under the yoke as slaves to the yoke-strap and the pack-saddle,

465

so that they might relieve humans of their greatest labours; and I brought horses to love the rein and pull chariots, making them a luxurious ornament for men of great wealth. And it was no one other than me who invented the linen-winged vehicles in which sailors roam the seas. Such contrivances have I

470

invented for mortals, yet, wretched that I am, I have no device by which I can escape from my present sufferings.

475 CHORUS: Having been subjected to a painful degradation, you are mentally straying, robbed of your wits; like a bad doctor who has fallen sick, you are in despair and unable to discover by what remedies your own condition is curable.

PROMETHEUS: When you have heard the rest of what I have to say, you will be even more amazed by all the skills and devices that I have contrived. The greatest was this. If anyone fell sick, there was no means of aiding him, neither by food

480

nor ointment nor potion: they withered and decayed for want of remedies, until I showed them how to mix gentle curative drugs, with which they can now defend themselves against all kinds of diseases. I also systematized many kinds of seercraft.

485

I was the first to interpret from dreams what actual events were destined to happen; I made known to them the difficult arts of interpreting significant utterances and encounters on journeys;[46] I defined precisely the flight of crook-taloned birds, which of them were favourable and

489–90

which sinister by nature, the habits of each species and their mutual hatreds, affections and companionships;[47] and the

493–5

smoothness of internal organs,[48] and what colour bile should have if it is to be pleasing to the gods, and the mottled appearance and proper shape of the liver-lobe; I wrapped the thigh bones and the long chine in fat and burnt them,[49] guiding mortals towards a skill of making difficult inferences, and opening their eyes to the signs the flames gave, which till

500

then had been dark to them. So much for that; but as for the things hidden beneath the earth that benefit humanity – copper, iron, silver and gold – who can claim to have discovered them before I did? No one, I know for sure, unless

505

he wanted to spout pointless drivel. To sum up everything in a short sentence: know that all the skills that mortals have come from Prometheus.

CHORUS: Well, don’t benefit mortals beyond the proper measure while neglecting yourself when you are in distress. I

509–10

am confident that you will yet be released from these bonds and be no less powerful than Zeus.

PROMETHEUS: The decisive decree of destiny is not ordained to bring that to pass in that way yet awhile: only after being racked by countless pains and torments am I at last to escape these bonds. Craft is far weaker than Necessity.

515 CHORUS: Well, who is the steersman of Necessity?[50]

PROMETHEUS: The triple Fates and the unforgetting Furies.

CHORUS: You mean Zeus is less strong than these?

PROMETHEUS: Certainly he cannot escape destiny.

CHORUS: And what is Zeus’ destiny, if not to reign eternally?

520 PROMETHEUS: I will not go on to tell you that: do not persist in asking.

CHORUS: It must be something awesome that you are concealing.

PROMETHEUS: Mention some other matter. It is certainly not time to reveal this one – it must be kept as closely hidden as

525

possible, because by keeping it safe I can escape this degrading bondage and pain.

CHORUS:

May Zeus, the disposer of all things,

never set his power in opposition to my will;

nor may I be backward

530

in piously approaching the gods with feasts

of slaughtered oxen beside the immortal stream of my father, Oceanus;

nor may I sin in speech,

but may this abide for me

535

and never melt away:

it is pleasant to pass

the length of one’s life in confident hopes, nourishing

one’s spirit amid bright joys.

540

But I shudder to look on you,

tormented by countless woes < >:

for you do not fear Zeus,

and, following your individual judgement, Prometheus,

you give too much honour to mortals.

545

Come, my friend, what favour has this favour done you?

Tell me, where do you find any support?

What help can there be from creatures of a day? Did you not even consider

549–50

the helpless, dreamlike feebleness by which

the blind race of men is fettered? Never

will the schemes of mortals transgress the ordering of Zeus.

I learned this from seeing

your wretched fortune, Prometheus;

555

and this song that has flown to my lips is very different

from the wedding song I sang in honour of bath[51] and bed

on the occasion of your marriage, when you wooed and won

560

my sister Hesione[52] to be your wife and bedfellow.

[Enter IO, horned like a cow.]

IO:

<Ió!>

What land, what people are these? Who should I say this is

that I see, wind-battered,

harnessed to the rocks?

For what crime are you thus being murdered?

564–5

Tell me where on earth

I have wandered in my misery.

[She begins to dance wildly.]

Oh, oh! Ah, ah!

A gadfly is stinging me again, wretched me! –

[Suddenly changing direction:]

Keep him off! Ah, dah! I <am mad with> fear,

seeing the myriad-eyed cowherd![53]

He is on the move, keeping a crafty eye:

570

even though he is dead, the earth cannot cover him –

he crosses over from the underworld

to hunt me – wretched me! – and makes me wander

starving along the sands of the seashore;

574–5

and in accompaniment the noisy reed-pipe, fashioned with wax,[54]

drones its soporific[55] melody.

Ió, ió, popoi –

where have my far-flung wanderings brought me?

What crime, son of Cronus, what crime is it you have

found me guilty of,

that you have yoked me to these sufferings – ah, ah! –

580–81

and torment me out of my mind like this,

wretched that I am, ever driven by the fearful gadfly?

Burn me with fire, or bury me in the earth,

or give me as prey to the monsters of the sea:

do not begrudge

my prayer, O lord!

585

My far-flung wanderings

have exhausted me utterly, and I cannot tell how

to escape my sufferings.

[To PROMETHEUS:] Do you hear the voice of the maiden with cow’s horns?

590 PROMETHEUS: How could I not hear the gadfly-driven daughter of Inachus, who warmed the heart of Zeus with desire and who now, hated by Hera, has been forced into this lengthy, exhausting flight?

IO:

How are you able to utter the name of my father?

Tell me, miserable that I am, who are you,

595

who are you, suffering one,

that can address me, who suffer too, so correctly,

and can name my god-sent affliction,

which withers me and pricks me with stings that force me to wander – ah, ah?

Starving, with undignified leaps and bounds,

600

I have come here, rushing wildly,

mastered by the wiles of an angry Hera.

Who among the wretched – oi, ah, ah! –

suffer as I do?

605

Give me a clear indication

of what still lies in store for me

to suffer. What means of escape, what cure for my affliction?

Reveal it, if you know it:

speak and tell it to the wretched wandering maiden.

610 PROMETHEUS: I will tell you clearly all that you wish to learn, not weaving it in riddles but in plain speech, in the way that it is right to open one’s lips to friends.[56] You see before you Prometheus, who gave fire to mortals.

IO: Unhappy Prometheus, you who have shown yourself the common benefactor of all humanity! What are you undergoing this punishment for?

615 PROMETHEUS:I have just finished lamenting my sufferings.

IO: Then will you not grant me this boon?

PROMETHEUS: Say what boon you want: whatever it is, you will learn it from me.

IO: Tell me who bound you in this ravine.

PROMETHEUS: The decision of Zeus and the hand of Hephaestus.

620 IO: And for what wrongdoing are you paying the penalty?

PROMETHEUS: By explaining just so much to you, I have done enough.[57]

IO: And in addition to that, reveal to me what time will mark the end of my miserable wanderings.

PROMETHEUS: It is better for you not to learn that than to learn it.

625 IO: Please do not conceal from me what I am destined to suffer.

PROMETHEUS: I do not begrudge you this boon.

IO: Why then are you waiting instead of telling it all to me?

PROMETHEUS: Not from any ill-will, but I am reluctant to disturb your mind.

IO: Do not take more care for my welfare than pleases me.

630 PROMETHEUS: Since you are so eager, I must speak. Listen, then.

CHORUS: Not yet! Give me, too, a share of the pleasure. Let us first ask about her affliction, and let her tell us herself of her disastrous fortunes; as to the trials that still await her, let her be informed by you.

635 PROMETHEUS: It is for you, Io, to do this group a favour, especially since they are sisters of your father.[58] It is something worthwhile to weep and lament thoroughly over one’s misfortunes, in circumstances where one can expect to wring tears from the listeners.

640 IO: I do not know how I can refuse your request. You will learn clearly everything you want to know – though I am ashamed even to speak of the god-sent tempest and the ruin of my appearance, how they swooped into my wretched life. In

645

my maiden chamber I was persistently visited by nocturnal visions which coaxed me in smooth words: ‘Most greatly blessed maiden, why do you remain a virgin so long, when you could have the greatest of unions? Zeus has been struck

650

by a dart of desire coming from you, and wishes to partake of Cypris with you. Do not, my child, spurn the bed of Zeus, but go out to the deep meadow of Lerna, among the flocks and cow byres of your father, so that Zeus’ eye may be

655

assuaged of its desire.’ Every night I was miserably plagued by dreams like that, until I brought myself to tell my father about the dreams that kept coming to me nightly. He sent envoys repeatedly to Delphi and Dodona to consult the

660

oracles, so that he could learn what he should do or say so as to act in a manner pleasing to the gods: they returned reporting ambiguous responses, their expression obscure and hard to interpret. Finally a clear word came to Inachus,

665

plainly telling and enjoining him to thrust me out of my house and my native place, to wander unprotected on the furthest confines of the land; and that if he refused, a fiery thunderbolt would come from Zeus that would annihilate

670

his entire family. Persuaded by these oracles of Loxias, he expelled me and shut me out of his house – as reluctant to do it as I was to go: the bridle of Zeus compelled him against his will to act thus. Immediately my body and mind were

675

twisted. I grew horns, as you now see; I was pricked by the sharp sting of a gadfly; and, with maddened leaps, I rushed off to the stream of Cerchnea,[59] good to drink from, and the spring of Lerna; and my footsteps were dogged by the earth-born herdsman Argus, intemperate in his fierceness, staring with his many eyes. A swift death unexpectedly

680

robbed him of life, but I, harassed by the gadfly as if by a divine scourge, have been driven on from land to land. You hear what has happened to me. If you can say what still

685

remains of my sufferings, tell me. And do not, out of pity, excite me with false tales: I think that concocted stories are a most disgraceful plague.

CHORUS:

Here, here, keep away! Ah,

never, never did I suppose such a strange tale

would come to my hearing,

690

nor that sufferings so painful to see, so painful to bear,

would strike my soul

with a double-pronged goad of terror!

Ió! Destiny, destiny!

695

I shudder when I see what Io is experiencing!

PROMETHEUS: You are groaning, and full of fear, so early? Wait until you have learned the rest as well!

CHORUS: Speak, tell us all. For the afflicted, you know, it is pleasant to understand clearly in advance the pain they have still to suffer.

700 PROMETHEUS: You obtained your previous request from me easily, since you first wanted to learn from her the account of her own trials. Now hear about the future, what sufferings

705

this young woman is destined to endure at Hera’s hands. And you, child of Inachus, take my words to heart, so that you may learn how your journey will end. In the first place, starting from here, turn towards the sunrise and travel over the uncultivated plains.[60] You will come to the nomad Scythians,

710

who dwell in wicker homes, off the ground, on strong- wheeled wagons, armed with far-shooting bows. Do not go near them: go on through and out of their country, keeping your path close to the rocky coast of the groaning sea. Next,

715

on your left hand, dwell the Chalybes,[61] workers in iron: beware of them, for they are savage and not safe for strangers to approach. You will then come to the Violent River,[62] not inaptly named; do not cross it – it is not easy to cross – until

720

you come to Caucasus itself, the highest of mountains, where the river pours its strength out from the very summit. After crossing over those peaks close to the stars, you must take the way to the south, where you will come to the man-hating

725

host of the Amazons, who will one day settle at Themiscyra on the Thermodon, where is the savage cape of Salmydessus, inhospitable to sailors, the stepmother of ships.[63] They will be very glad to guide you on your way. You will then come

729–30

to the Cimmerian isthmus,[64] right at the narrow gateway to the lake; with a bold heart you must leave it and cross the Maeotic channel. Your crossing will in all future time be much spoken of among men, and the channel will be named after it: Bosporus, ‘Strait of the Cow’. Having thus left the

735

land of Europe, you will have come to the continent of Asia. [To the CHORUS:] Do you think that the autocrat of the gods is equally brutal in all his dealings? That god, because he wanted to sleep with this mortal girl, imposed these wanderings

739–40

on her! [To IO:] You found an unpleasant suitor for your hand, young woman; for with all of what you’ve so far heard, you should consider that you’re not yet even at the beginning of things.

IO: Ió, oh, oh! Ah me!

PROMETHEUS: You are crying out and moaning aloud again. What can one imagine you will do when you learn what remains of your troubles?

745 CHORUS: You mean you are going to tell her of sufferings that still remain for her?

PROMETHEUS: A stormy sea of ruinous sorrows.

IO: What good does life do me? Why do I not straight away throw myself from this rugged rock,[65] so that I can crash

750

to the ground and be rid of all my troubles? It is better to die once and for all than to suffer terribly all the days of my life.

PROMETHEUS: You would certainly find it hard to endure my trials. For me, death is not in my destiny: that would have

755

been a release from my sufferings. As it is, no end has been set for my toils, until Zeus falls from his autocratic ruler- ship.

IO: You mean it is possible that Zeus will one day fall from power?

PROMETHEUS: I imagine you’d be pleased to see that event.

IO: Of course, seeing how Zeus has ill-treated me.

760 PROMETHEUS: Well, you can take it that it is so, and rejoice.

IO: By whom will he be robbed of his autocratic sceptre?

PROMETHEUS: By himself – by his own foolish decision.

IO: In what way? Explain, if it doesn’t do any harm.

PROMETHEUS: He will make a marriage that he will come to regret.

765 IO:With a goddess or a mortal? Tell me, if you can.

PROMETHEUS: Why do you ask what marriage? I must not speak or utter it.

IO: Is he to be removed from his throne by his wife?

PROMETHEUS: She will bear a son superior to his father.[66]

IO: And is there no escape for him from that fate?

770 PROMETHEUS: None, unless I were to provide it after being released from my bonds.

IO: And who is going to release you, against the will of Zeus?

PROMETHEUS: It is destined to be one of your offspring.

IO: What are you saying? Is my son going to free you from your sufferings?

PROMETHEUS: He will be the third in birth on top of ten other births.[67]

775 IO: This time the meaning of your prophecy is not easy to guess.

PROMETHEUS: Then don’t expect to learn about all your future troubles, either.

IO: Don’t hold out a benefit to me and then rob me of it.

PROMETHEUS: I will present you with one or the other of two tales.

IO: What tales? Put them before me and give me the choice.

780 PROMETHEUS: I give it to you. Choose: I will tell you plainly either the troubles that remain for you, or the person who will release me.

CHORUS: Please be willing to give one of these favours to her and the other to me. Tell her about the rest of her wanderings,

785

and tell me about your deliverer: I long to hear that.

PROMETHEUS: Since you are so eager, I will not refuse to tell you everything you ask for. First, Io, I shall tell you about the wanderings on which you will be driven: inscribe them

790

on the memory tablets of your mind. When you have crossed the stream that parts the two continents, go on towards the fiery rising of the sun, crossing a waveless sea,[68] until you reach the land of the Gorgons, the plain of Cisthene, where

795

the Phorcides[69] dwell, three ancient maidens of swan-like aspect,[70] owning an eye in common and having only a single tooth, whom neither the sun with his rays, nor the moon by night, ever looks upon;[71] and near them their three winged

800

sisters, the snake-tressed Gorgons, haters of humans, whom no mortal can look on and draw another breath. This is what I tell you as a warning to beware; now hear of another disagreeable sight. You must beware of the sharp-toothed,

804–5

unbarking hounds of Zeus, the griffins, and the one-eyed, horse-riding host of the Arimaspians,[72] who dwell by the stream of the river Pluto,[73] which flows with gold: do not go near them. You will then come to a land at the furthest bounds of earth, to a black tribe that dwells at the sources of

810

the sun,[74] where flows the river Aethiops. Follow the bank of this river until you come to the cataract[75] where the Nile pours down from the Bybline Mountains its holy stream, good to drink from. It will lead you to the three-cornered

815

land of Nilotis,[76] where, Io, you are destined to found a settlement far from home for yourself and your children. If any of this is obscure and hard to understand, please ask again and you will learn it more clearly. I have ample leisure – more than I want.

820 CHORUS: If you have anything still left, or previously omitted, to tell her about her terrible wanderings, tell it. If you have told it all, then give us, in our turn, the favour we ask for – I am sure you remember about it.

PROMETHEUS: She has heard about her journey right to the end. But so that she can know that what she has heard from

825

me is not an empty story, I will tell her about the troubles she has endured before coming here, offering this as the evidence verifying my words. [To IO:] I shall leave out the great majority of the story and go straight to the last part of your wanderings. When you had come to the lands of

830

Molossia and approached the lofty ridge of Dodona, home of the oracular seat of Thesprotian Zeus and of the incredible marvel of the speaking oak trees, by which you were addressed, openly and not in riddling words, as Zeus’ glorious

835

consort that was to be – does any of this strike a chord with you? – from there, in gadfly-driven madness, you rushed on your way along the coast to the great gulf of Rhea,[77] from which you have then had to run, as it were, before the storm,

839–40

wandering in the opposite direction.[78] Know well that for the future that arm of the sea shall be called ‘Ionian’, to be for all mankind a memorial to your journey.[79] You have all this as evidence that my mind can see more than what is manifest. [To the CHORUS:] The rest I shall tell to you and to her

845

alike, going back to the same track my previous words were treading. There is a city called Canobus,[80] on the edge of land and sea, right at the mouth of the Nile where it lays down its silt. There Zeus will restore you to your right mind <and cause you to conceive> simply by touching you and laying

850–51

his hand on you, nothing to be afraid of. And you will bear a black child, Epaphus, named after the manner in which Zeus engendered him;[81] he will reap the fruits of all the

853–5

land that is watered by the broad-flowing Nile. The fifth generation from him, a female brood of fifty children,[82] will come back to Argos, not by choice but in flight from a kindred marriage to their cousins; the cousins, their minds excited by lust, hawks following close behind the doves,[83] will come to hunt marriages that they should not have been hunting, but god will deny them possession of their bodies.

860

The Pelasgian land will be drenched with blood by deadly female violence when the men are audaciously slain in the wakeful night; for each woman will deprive her husband of his life, dipping a two-edged sword in his blood. So may the

865

bridal night be for my enemies![84] But one of the girls[85] will be charmed by desire into refraining from killing her bed- fellow; she will choose the alternative of being called a coward rather than a polluted murderer. She will become the

870

mother of a royal house in Argos. It would take a long narrative to recount it all explicitly, but from her line, at any rate, will be born a brave scion, famous for archery, who will release me from these sufferings. Such is the prophecy that was narrated to me by my mother of ancient birth, Themis

875

the Titaness; but how and in what way it is to happen would take a lengthy narrative to explain, and you would profit nothing by learning it.

[IO begins to dance wildly again.]

IO:

Eleleu, eleleu!

My mind is struck again by hot spasms

879–80

of madness, and I am pricked

by the gadfly’s fiery dart!

In terror my heart is thumping my midriff,

my eyes are rolling in circles,

I am blown off course by the wild winds

of insanity, I cannot control my tongue,

885

and its turbid, random flow of words

dashes against the hateful waves of ruin.

[IO rushes away in the opposite direction to that from which she entered.]

CHORUS:

Truly wise, truly wise was he

who first grasped this in his mind

and expressed it clearly with his tongue,

890

that it is best by far to marry in one’s own station,

and that a poor man should not yearn to wed

either among those who luxuriate in wealth

or among those who glory in their high birth.

Never, never,

895–6

O < > Fates, may you see me

as the sharer of Zeus’ bed,

nor may I be united with any partner from among the heavenly ones:

for I am afraid when I see

Io, the man-shunning virgin, devastated

900

by the terrible, troublous, vagrant wanderings caused by Hera.

For me, when marriage is on my own level,

it inspires no fear; but I do fear

that the eye of a superior god, from which one cannot flee,

may look on me with desire.

Against such a campaign one cannot fight, against such craft one is helpless;

905

there would be nothing I could do with myself:

I cannot see how

I could escape the wiles of Zeus.

PROMETHEUS: I declare to you that Zeus, arrogant though his thoughts are, will yet be brought low: such is the union he is

909–10

preparing to make, which will cast him out of his autocracy and off his throne into oblivion. Then indeed the curse of his father Cronus, which he uttered when he fell from his ancient throne, will be completely fulfilled. None of the gods, except myself, will be able to show him clearly the way to avoid

915

such misery: I know it all, and how it will happen. So let him now sit there feeling secure, trusting in his celestial noise- making and brandishing his fire-breathing weapon in his hands: they will not avail in the least to save him from falling

920

a disgraceful, unendurable fall. Such is the contender that he is even now himself preparing against himself, a monster almost impossible to fight against, who will discover a fire more powerful than the lightning bolt, a mighty crash surpassing the thunder, and a weapon to plague the sea and

925

shake the earth which will shatter to pieces the three-pointed spear of Poseidon. By stumbling into this evil fate, Zeus will learn how far apart are rulership and slavery.

CHORUS: You’re just saying things against Zeus that you would like to be true.

PROMETHEUS: I am saying what will come to pass and also what I desire.

930 CHORUS: You mean it’s actually to be expected that someone will lord it over Zeus?

PROMETHEUS: And he will have to bear an even harsher yoke of suffering than this.

CHORUS: How can you not be afraid to hurl out such words?

PROMETHEUS: Why should I be afraid, when death is not in my destiny?

CHORUS: But he could put you to a trial even more painful than this.

935 PROMETHEUS: Well, let him do so: nothing could take me by surprise.

CHORUS: Those who bow to Necessity[86] are wise.

PROMETHEUS: Revere and pray and truckle to whoever is currently in command! To me, Zeus matters less than nothing.

939–40

Let him rule and act as he likes for this short time: he will not be ruling the gods for long. [HERMES is seen approaching.] But I see Zeus’ message-boy is here, the servant of the new autocrat; he will certainly have something fresh to announce.

945 HERMES: You, the clever fellow,[87] too spiteful for your own good, you who committed a crime against the gods by giving privileges to beings who live for a day, you, the fire-thief – it’s you I’m talking to. The Father orders you to state what this union is about which you are bragging, the one that is to cause his fall from power; and you are to say this not in

950

riddles but plainly and precisely. And do not compel me, Prometheus, to make a second journey; you are aware that Zeus is not softened by such methods.

PROMETHEUS: Haughtily spoken and full of pride, these words are, for a mere menial of the gods! You[88] are young and your

955

rule is young, and you think that you inhabit a citadel that grief cannot enter. Have I not observed two successive autocrats[89] cast out of it? And to the third, the one who reigns now, I shall see it happen too – very shamefully, and very

960

soon. Do I seem to you at all to be afraid of the new gods, and cowering before them? I am very far indeed from that – the furthest possible! You hurry back the way you came; you will learn nothing of what you have asked of me.

965 HERMES: This is just the kind of arrogant behaviour by which you landed yourself in this trouble in the first place.

PROMETHEUS: I can tell you for sure, I wouldn’t exchange my misfortunes for your servitude.

HERMES: Oh, I suppose it’s better to be in servitude to this rock than to be the faithful messenger of my father, Zeus!

970 PROMETHEUS: < >![90] That is how one ought to insult the insolent.

HERMES: You seem to be revelling in your present situation.

PROMETHEUS: Revelling? May I see my enemies revelling like this – and I’m counting you among them!

HERMES: Why, are you accusing me as well on account of what has happened to you?

975 PROMETHEUS: Quite simply, I hate all the gods who are so unjustly harming me after I helped them.

HERMES: From what I can hear, you’ve got a serious mental sickness.

PROMETHEUS: I’m happy to be sick, if it’s a sickness to hate one’s enemies.

HERMES: You’d be quite intolerable if you were prospering.

980 PROMETHEUS: Ah me![91]

HERMES: That is not an expression that Zeus understands.

PROMETHEUS: Well, time, as it grows old, teaches everything! HERMES: Well, you don’t yet understand how to be sensible.

PROMETHEUS: No – if I were, I wouldn’t be speaking to a menial like you.

HERMES: It looks as though you mean to say nothing of what the Father has asked you to say.

985 PROMETHEUS: Well, I’d willingly pay him that favour – if I owed him one.

HERMES: You seem to be making fun of me as if I were a child.

PROMETHEUS: Well, aren’t you a child, or even more senseless than a child, if you expect to get any information from me? There is no ill-treatment, no contrivance, by which Zeus will

990

induce me to reveal this secret, until these degrading bonds have been unloosed. So let him hurl his blazing fire, let him throw everything into turmoil and confusion with his white feathers of snow and his thunders rumbling beneath the

995

earth: none of that will bend me to make me say at whose hands he is destined to fall from his supreme power.

HERMES: Consider whether this attitude seems likely to be to your advantage.

PROMETHEUS: This has all been considered, and planned, long ago.

1000 HERMES: Bring yourself, you fool, bring yourself at long last, in the light of your present sufferings, to take a sensible view.

PROMETHEUS: You are making yourself a nuisance to no purpose, as if you were giving advice to the waves. Let it never enter your thoughts that I might fear the intentions of Zeus, become womanish in mentality and implore the one I hate

1005

so greatly, stretching out my upturned palms as women do, to free me from these bonds. One hundred per cent, no!

HERMES: It looks as though, however much I say, I will say it in vain. My entreaties have made you no softer or more

1009–10

pliable; like a newly harnessed colt, you have taken the bit between your teeth, and you are struggling and fighting against the reins. But it is an unsound strategy that makes you so vehement: for someone who is not thinking sensibly, pure unadulterated obstinacy has no power at all. If you do

1015

not do as I have said, consider what a tempest, what a triple wave of evil, will assail you, from which no escape will be possible. In the first place, the Father will tear this rugged ravine wall into fragments with his thunder and the fire of his lightning bolt, and will bury you under it, gripped in the

1020

embrace of the rocks. After the completion of a vast length of time, you will come back again to the light; and then, I tell you, the winged hound of Zeus, the bloodthirsty eagle, will greedily butcher your body into great ragged shreds,

1025

coming uninvited for a banquet that lasts all day, and will feast on your liver, which will turn black with gnawing.[92] Of such torment expect no end until some god appears to be your successor in suffering and is willing to go down to

1030

rayless Hades and the dark depths of Tartarus.[93] Make your decision in the light of that, because this threat is no invention, it has all too certainly been uttered. For the mouth of Zeus does not know how to lie; he fulfils every word he

1034–35

speaks.[94] So consider and reflect: do not suppose that self-will is ever better policy than prudence.

CHORUS: In our opinion, what Hermes says is not beside the point: he urges you to abandon self-will and to pursue wise prudence. Follow his advice: it is shameful for the wise to err.

PROMETHEUS:

1040–41

When he announced this message to me, I tell you,

I already knew it; and there is no disgrace

in an enemy suffering ill-treatment from his enemy.

So let the double-ended tress of fire[95]

be hurled against me, let the air

1045

be set awhirl by thunder and by a convulsion

of savage gales; let the wind

shake earth from its foundations, roots and all,

and let the waves of the sea with their ferocious surge

1049–51

engulf the paths of the stars

in heaven; let him cast my body

headlong into black Tartarus,

whirling down in cruel compulsion:

come what may, he won’t kill me.

HERMES:

1054–5

That decision, and those words,

sound as though they came from a lunatic.

In what way do this fellow’s boasts

fall short of insanity and mental derangement?

[Addressing the CHORUS:]

But you at least, the sympathizers

1059–60

with his suffering, should quickly

leave this place for some other,

lest the merciless roar of the thunder

strike the wits out of your minds.

CHORUS [moving closer to PROMETHEUS]:

Say something else; give me advice

that will actually persuade me, because that was certainly

1065

not a tolerable suggestion that you trailed past me.

How can you advise me to behave like a coward?

I am willing to stay with him and suffer what I must;[96]

for I have learned to hate traitors,

and there is no plague

1070

that I detest more than that.

HERMES:

Well, remember what I have proclaimed,

and when disaster hunts you down

do not complain about your fate, nor ever say

1074–5

that Zeus cast you into a calamity

that you had not foreseen.

No, indeed; you will have brought it on yourselves,

for knowingly, not by surprise

nor by deception,

you will have been caught up in the inescapable net

of disaster through your own folly.

[Exit HERMES. Wild music begins to play, and thunder is heard.]

PROMETHEUS:

1080

Now in deed, no more in word alone,

the earth is shaking and reeling!

From the depths, in accompaniment, there bellows

the sound of thunder; fiery twists

1084–5

of lightning shine out; the dust

is whirled by whirlwinds; the blasts

of all the winds at once leap at one another

in a raging display of mutual strife,

and sky and sea are blended into one.

1089–90

Such is the tempest that has plainly come

from Zeus upon me, to strike terror.

[As the CHORUS scatter and flee in panic]

O my honoured mother, O Sky

around whom rolls the light that shines on all,

see how unjustly I suffer!

[The rock breaks open, and PROMETHEUS disappears into its interior.[97]]

Prometheus Unbound

Prometheus Unbound was the sequel to Prometheus Bound, and matches it so well in content, theme and technique as to make it safe to say that ‘if ever two plays were composed together, these two were’ (M. L. West, Journal of Hellenic Studies 99 (1979), p. 130).

Prometheus had been told by Hermes (Prometheus Bound 1020–25) that, after a long period beneath the earth, he would be brought back to its surface but would then be persistently tormented by the eagle of Zeus eating at his liver. At the beginning of Prometheus Unbound this prediction has been fulfilled (fr. 193). Prometheus is visited by the Chorus of his brother Titans (frr. 190–93), who have apparently been released by Zeus from their underground imprisonment, and tells them of his sufferings. Then – again as predicted in the previous play – Heracles arrives, having got lost on his way to attempt the most distant of his Labours: the taking of the apples of the Hesperides (cf. Strabo, Geography 4.1.7). He shoots the eagle (fr. 200) and is given directions for his journey (frr. 195–9). Prometheus and Zeus are still at enmity (fr. 201), but there was subsequently a reconciliation between them, with Prometheus revealing the secret with which he might otherwise have caused the overthrow of Zeus – that Thetis, for whom Zeus has conceived a passion, is destined to bear a son mightier than his father. We learn of honours given to Prometheus in memory of his bondage (fr. 202), and it has often been suggested that there may have been mention of the establishment of his Athenian cult. The reconciliation may have been effected through Prometheus’ mother, Gaea-Themis, whose name is wrongly included, together with that of Heracles, in the list of dramatis personae appended to the ancient headnote (‘Hypothesis’) to Prometheus Bound; she had once before been responsible for effecting an alliance between Prometheus and Zeus (Prometheus Bound 209–18), and it would be appropriate if she were to do so again. The seemingly impossible condition set by Hermes (Prometheus Bound 1026–9) for the ending of Prometheus’ affliction must also have been fulfilled (see note on that passage).

Prometheus Unbound appears to have been imitated or parodied by the comic dramatist Cratinus in his play The Wealth-Gods (Ploutoi), probably produced in 429 BC. The ‘Wealth-Gods’ of the Chorus identify themselves as Titans (Cratinus fr. 171.11); they had at one time been imprisoned (ibid. 20, 21), but ‘now that the rule of tyranny [has been dissolved] and the demos is in power’ they have come in search of their ‘old brother… even if he is now rotting away’ (ibid. 22–6). We do not know whether Prometheus himself appeared on stage in Cratinus’ play.

We cannot tell what other plays were produced together with Prometheus Bound and Unbound. It was long believed that the play listed in the medieval catalogue of Aeschylus’ plays as Prometheus the Fire-Bearer was the first or third play of a Prometheus trilogy; but it is more likely to be an alternative (and more accurate) title for the satyr drama of 472 BC cited elsewhere as Prometheus the Fire-Kindler (see above, pp. 52– 54). If Bound and Unbound were presented to the public, long after Aeschylus’ death, with the claim that they were newly discovered plays by him never produced before (see above, pp. 159–60), it is quite possible that they were accompanied by revivals of two genuine Aeschylean plays, not necessarily on related subjects.

190

CHORUS:

We <Titans (?)> have come,

Prometheus, to behold these trials you undergo

and this bondage that you suffer.

These chanted anapaests were probably the opening words of the play.

191

CHORUS:

To (?) the Phasis,[1] the great twin boundary

of the lands of Europe and Asia.

Again from the Chorus’ anapaestic entrance chant, following fr. 190 at a short interval (fr. 192 may have come between them).

192

CHORUS:

And the mighty, crimson-bottomed waters

of the Red Sea,[2]

and the bay beside the Ocean, flashing like bronze (?),

that gives sustenance to the black (?) Ethiopians,

5

where the all-seeing Sun always

refreshes his immortal flesh and his fatigued horses

in its warm flow

of gentle water.[3]

Another extract from the Chorus’ anapaestic entrance chant; logically it should come between frr. 190 and 191 in a description of a journey from the eastern ends of the earth to Prometheus’ rock in furthest Scythia.

193[4]

PROMETHEUS: Seed of the Titans, kin of my own blood, off-spring of Uranus, behold me bound and chained to these rugged rocks, as fearful sailors, terrified of the night, tie up

5

their ship in a roaring strait. It was Zeus, son of Cronus, who thus fixed me here, and the hand of Hephaestus assented to Zeus’ decree. He, with cruel skill, thrust in these wedges, breaking through my body; and, pierced through by his craftsmanship, I dwell in misery in this fortress of the Furies.

10

Now, every other deadly day the agent of Zeus wings its sinister way here, savages me with its curved talons and tears me apart to make its barbarous meal; then, amply stuffed and gorged with the fatness of my liver, it makes a vast racket

15

and, as it flies off into the sky, it licks my blood with its tail feathers. And when the liver on which it has fed has been renewed and reinflated, then it comes back and sets itself greedily again to its cruel feeding. Thus I provide nourishment to this warder of my wretched torture, who defiles my

20

living body with endless misery; for held fast, as you see I am, in Zeus’ chains, I am unable to keep this terrible bird away from my breast. And so, bereaved of my own self, I endure a succession of anguishing torments, ever seeking an end to my suffering, longing for death. But the power of Zeus

25

keeps death far away from me, and this ancient, lamentable atrocity, accumulated through generations of horror, is indelibly imprinted in my body – my body, from which fall drops[5] melted by the heat of the sun, which continually drip on to the rocks of the Caucasus.[6]

195

PROMETHEUS: Keep straight on this way, and first of all you will come to the blasts of the north wind; here beware of its noisy squalls, lest one suddenly snatch you up and whirl you aloft in its stormy vortex. Giving directions to Heracles.

196

PROMETHEUS: And then you will come to the most righteous and most hospitable people of all <mankind>, the Gabians,[7] among whom neither the plough nor the earth-cutting mattock

5

cleaves the soil, but self-sown fields yield men an ample livelihood.

Further instructions to Heracles.

197 [Apollonius of Rhodes] says[8] that the Ister flows down from the land of the Hyperboreans and the Rhipaean Mountains; in saying this he follows Aeschylus, who said it in Prometheus Unbound. This too will have come from Prometheus’ directions to Heracles.

199

PROMETHEUS: Then you will come to the dauntless host of the Ligurians, where, bold as you are, you will not, I know for sure, be eager for battle; for it is fated that there you will run

4–5

out of arrows, and you will not be able to take any stones from the ground,[9] because the whole place is soft soil. But your Father will see your distress and take pity on you: he will bring a cloud over the land and cover it completely with a hail of round stones.[10] With these you will then pelt the Ligurian army and easily put them to flight.

Further instructions to Heracles for his journey to the Hesperides.

200

HERACLES: And may Apollo the Hunter direct my arrow straight!

Heracles’ prayer as he draws his bow to shoot the eagle.

201

PROMETHEUS: This son, my dearest friend, of a father who is my enemy.

Speaking of Heracles.[11]

202 Aeschylus in Prometheus Unbound says clearly that we put garlands on our heads in honour of Prometheus,[12] as recompense for his binding.

Notes

THE PERSIANS

1.     <…> Angled brackets indicate that the words enclosed between them are a tentative restoration of words presumed to have been lost from the transmitted text, or a tentative correction of a passage which the manuscripts present in a badly corrupt form.

2.     Agbatana: The capital of Media, about 300 km north of Susa; usually called Ecbatana by Herodotus and later Greek authors (modern Hamadan).

3.     Cissia: Aeschylus seems to take this as the name of a city (cf. 120); it was in fact the name of the region (today Khuzestan, or al-Ahwaz, in south-western Iran) of which Susa was the chief city.

4.     Such were… Astaspes: Here begins the first of three long catalogues of leaders of the army (the others are at 302–28 and 957– 99). A substantial proportion of them are, certainly or probably, genuine Persian names; most of the others would give a Greek ear the impression of being Persian or at least exotic. There is, however, no reason to believe that the lists are based on any authentic information about the Persian army; it is striking that of the twelve principal commanders named by Herodotus, not one is mentioned in the play.

5.     dwellers in the marshes: Of the Nile delta.

6.     mainland: Here this means (western) Asia Minor, which had once been controlled by the kingdom of Lydia and was now governed from that kingdom’s former capital, Sardis, by a Persian satrap.

7.     with two poles and with three: We are probably meant to assume that, as regularly in Homer, two horses are yoked to each pole, so that these are four- and six-horse chariots. Greeks (who in any case had long abandoned the use of chariots in war) never yoked more than two horses to a chariot, any extra horses being controlled by traces.

8.     Tmolus: A mountain near Sardis.

9.     anvils of the spear: That is, men who no more flinch before the spear than an anvil flinches before the hammer.

10.   Mysia: An inland region of north-western Asia Minor, lying north of Sardis, around the later famous city of Pergamum.

11.   city-sacking: Greek perseptolis, the first of many puns linking the name of Persia with the verb perthein or porthein ‘to sack, devastate’.

12.   strait of Helle: That is, the Hellespont (now the Dardanelles).

13.   race begotten of gold: Alluding to the conception of Perseus when Zeus visited his mother, Danaë, in the form of a shower of gold; the Persians were believed by Greeks to be descended from Perses, son of Perseus and Andromeda.

14.   trusting… army: The first of many references to the bridge by which Xerxes’ army crossed the Hellespont from Asia into Europe. The bridge was later destroyed by a storm, but its cables were captured by the Athenian admiral Xanthippus (whose son Pericles financed the production of The Persians) and taken to Athens, where they were hung in temples.

15.   projecting spur: That is, the bridge, conceived as an artificial promontory which seems at one end like an extension of Asia, and at the other end like an extension of Europe.

16.   this ancient building: The building was probably left to the audience’s imagination, assisted by the presence of chairs.

17.   may make… the prosperity: A metaphor from wrestling; the dust rises because the tripped man has fallen heavily, probably on his back.

18.   For those… defend it: In other words, human and material resources are alike essential to the acquisition and maintenance of political power (cf. Sophocles, Oedipus the King 540–42), and a regime that is strong in only one of these respects may well be in danger.

19.   land of the Ionians: The Persians and many other peoples of western Asia called all Greeks ‘Ionians’, doubtless because the first Greeks with whom they came into contact, those of Asia Minor, mostly belonged to the Ionian branch of the Greek people.

20.   in Doric robes: This does not mean that the second woman is to be thought of as a Dorian Greek (a Spartan, say); both the ‘Doric’ and the ‘Ionic’ styles of dress were in use in contemporary Athens. Aeschylus doubtless chose the Doric style because it was the simpler of the two and would make a more effective contrast with Persian luxury.

21.   of the Orient: Frequently in this play Persians speak of themselves as barbaroi, properly a Greek term for those who did not speak the Greek language; I have translated this throughout as ‘Orient(al)’ or ‘Eastern(er)’ (but in other plays, where the term is used by Greeks, I have retained the traditional rendering ‘barbarian’).

22.   an eagle… altar of Phoebus: The omen is easy to interpret: that the mother of the greatest of human kings, full of anxiety about his fate, sees the ‘king of birds’ (Agamemnon 114) fleeing from a bird of lesser status and submitting without resistance to degrading treatment, speaks for itself. It is less obvious why the eagle is represented as seeking the altar of Phoebus (Apollo) in particular; I suggest that the point is that the eagle is going to the worst possible place – for the eagle was the bird of Zeus, not Apollo, and the latter, though his best-known avian connection was with swans, also had one with hawks (Iliad 15.237; Odyssey 15.526; Aristophanes, Birds 516). Has Xerxes too gone to the most unpropitious place he could have chosen?

23.   he is not accountable to the community: Unlike an Athenian general such as Miltiades, who not long after his victory at Marathon was nearly sentenced to death for failing to capture Paros, and eventually died in prison.

24.   Using my intelligence: Rather than any divine inspiration, or any training in seer-craft.

25.   Medes: The Medes and the Persians were actually distinct (though kindred) peoples, but in ordinary Greek usage, and in this play, the two names are treated as synonymous; what we call ‘the Persian wars’ Greeks normally called ‘the Median affairs’ (ta Mēdika).

26.   great deal of harm: Referring mainly to the capture and burning of Sardis in 498, and the victory of Marathon in 490.

27.   treasure in their soil: Referring to the silver mines of Laureium, where a rich new vein was discovered a few years before the Persian invasion – and exploited, by the advice of Themistocles, for the building of the fleet that won the battle of Salamis.

28.   The way this man runs: This has been seen as a reference to the Persians’ system of fast couriers (Aeschylus alludes to them at Agamemnon 282 – but they were mounted), or as a chauvinistic gibe, from a Greek point of view, at Persians’ alleged cowardice (they run very fast – away from the enemy); more likely it is simply based on observation of the actual running styles of Greeks and Persians respectively. It would not be surprising if these styles tended to differ, given that Greek running techniques had been honed by many generations of athletic competition.

29.   this old life… too long: That is, we wish we had not lived to hear this news.

30.   country of Zeus: Hellen, the eponymous ancestor of the Hellenes (Greeks), was often said to have been a son of Zeus.

31.   shrouded in mantles that drift in the waves: The Persians’ luxurious garments have become their funeral robes – except that they will have no funerals.

32.   when I remember Athens: This passage, and 824, suggest that the tale was already current of how, after the burning of Sardis, Darius ordered a slave to say to him thrice every day before dinner, ‘Master, remember the Athenians’ (Herodotus 5.105).

33.   how many… for nothing: Referring mainly to Marathon (cf. 236, 244).

34.   Sileniae: According to an ancient commentator, this name was given to a part of the coastline of Salamis near ‘Trophy Point’. Probably the reference is to one side of the long peninsula of Cynosura at the eastern extremity of the island.

35.   Bactrians: The region of Bactria corresponded roughly to what is now Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan.

36.   wanders: As a floating corpse.

37.   the island where doves breed: This may be another way of describing Salamis, or may designate a small island in its vicinity.

38.   Chrysa: Possibly the town of this name near Troy is meant, or possibly the place name (‘city of gold’) is an invented one.

39.   purple dye: That of blood.

40.   Lyrnaean: This adjective should derive from a place name, Lyrna; ancient scholars knew of no such place and could only suggest that it was an abbreviated form of Lyrnessus near Troy (cf. note 38 above).

41.   Syennesis: The only member of Xerxes’ expedition named in the play, except the king himself, who can be firmly identified with an actual person. This ‘name’ was the title of all the kings of Cilicia (in south-eastern Asia Minor), and its contemporary bearer led the Cilician contingent of Xerxes’ fleet (Herodotus 7.98).

42.   about three hundred ships: Herodotus gives the total of the Greek fleet as 385, of which 180 were Athenian. The Persian Messenger cannot of course give an exact figure, and Aeschylus rounds down rather than up so as to maximize the disparity between the two fleets.

43.   those of outstanding speed… two hundred and seven: The natural way of understanding this is to take the 207 extra-fast ships to be part of the total of a thousand, just as the ten ships of the Greek élite squadron are part of their total of three hundred. Herodotus seems to have read the passage otherwise, for he gives the total numbers of the Persian fleet, when it first reached Greece, as precisely 1,207; they suffered, however, according to his narrative, severe losses before Salamis (by storm, and in the battle of Artemisium), and at Salamis they did not greatly outnumber the Greeks (8.13 – though in 8.66 he implausibly claims that the losses were made good by reinforcements from subjugated Greek states).

44.   Pallas: Athena.

45.   While… secure: This either alludes to, or else it inspired, the story of Themistocles’ retort to the Corinthian Adeimantus at the Greek council of war which finally decided to stand and fight at Salamis. Adeimantus had tried to silence Themistocles, and prevent his proposal being put to a vote, because Themistocles was ‘a man without a city’, Attica having been evacuated by its population, its territory occupied by the Persians, and the city sacked and burned; to which Themistocles replied, ‘We have a city and a country greater than yours, while we have two hundred ships and their crews’ (Herodotus 8.61).

46.   A Greek man… Athenian fleet: This was the slave Sicinnus, bringing a message from his master Themistocles (Herodotus 8.75).

47.   exits: That is, the exits from the bay of Eleusis north of Salamis, especially the straits at the eastern end of the island (cf. Herodotus 8.76.1).

48.   surround the island… completely: And, in particular, to watch the western exit from the bay, in the direction of Megara (ibid.).

49.   man-at-arms: That is, a soldier serving as a marine.

50.   holy paean-song: A type of hymn (originally to Apollo) customarily sung before battle and on various other occasions.

51.   as if they were tunny: Tunny were caught in huge shoals, and, being a very large fish, had to be killed by clubbing or spearing after being netted.

52.   island in front of Salamis: This was Psyttaleia, on which, according to Herodotus (8.76.1–2), Xerxes stationed ‘many of the Persians’ with the same objective as is stated here; they were killed to the last man by an Athenian hoplite force, led by Aristeides, which crossed over from Salamis while the naval battle was in progress (Herodotus 8.95). In Aeschylus’ treatment, on the other hand, the Greek attack on the island is made immediately after the naval battle, and by the same men who had fought it. Psyttaleia has been identified in modern times, sometimes with the island now officially so named (formerly Lipsokoutali) between Cynosura and the Peiraeus, sometimes with the island of Aghios Georghios in the bay north of Salamis town.

53.   haunt of Pan: Pausanias, Guide to Greece 1.36.2, noted that there were many roughly carved wooden images of Pan on the island.

54.   The rest of the host: That is, the land army. The following passage traces their retreat northwards up the east coast of Greece and then eastwards through Macedonia and Thrace.

55.   Achaea: Not Achaea in the northern Peloponnese but Achaea Phthiotis on the north shore of the Malian Gulf.

56.   Magnesia: The north-eastern coastal region of Thessaly, dominated by Mt Ossa.

57.   river Axius: Flows across Macedonia into the Thermaic Gulf; it marks approximately the point at which the Persians’ line of march turned from north to east.

58.   Lake Bolbe: Formed part of the boundary between the Chalcidic region to the south of it, with its Greek colonies, and the Macedonian kingdom.

59.   Mt Pangaeum: Lies east of the Strymon, so the meaning must be that the army came in sight of it. The Strymon flows into the Aegean near Amphipolis.

60.   add some… suffered: Probably to be taken as a guarded hint that she fears that Xerxes in his humiliation may commit suicide.

61.   dark-faced, equal-winged: The ship’s ‘face’ is her prow, possibly an allusion to the eyes so often painted on ships’ bows; her ‘wings’ are her banks of oars.

62.   Cychreus: A Salaminian hero; during the battle of Salamis he appeared to the Athenians in the form of a serpent (Pausanias, Guide to Greece 1.36.1).

63.   voiceless children… of the Undefiled: A ‘kenning’ denoting fish; the ‘Undefiled’ is the sea, which washes away all ritual pollution and can never become polluted itself (cf. Euripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris 1193).

64.   pure: That is, (probably) never yoked.

65.   flower-worker: The bee.

66.   sweet-smelling produce: Oil, rather than olives.

67.   King of the Shades: Hades / Aidoneus / Pluto (who will be addressed by name at 650).

68.   Darian: Since this form of the king’s name is no closer than the regular Greek form Dareios to the Persian Dārayavahush, it may be based on the form used in some third language (of Asia Minor?); at any rate Aeschylus, in using it here and below, is clearly seeking to give the invocation a particularly exotic air.

69.   ballên: This word for ‘king’ is not Persian but apparently comes from the Phrygian language of north-western Asia Minor (Pseudo-Plutarch, On Rivers 12.3–4); in Sophocles’ Shepherds, whose setting is Troy, the Chorus use it in addressing (Priam or some other prince) (Sophocles fr. 515).

70.   your royal hat: The Persian noble’s headgear (tiara or kyrbasia) was a soft felt hat; the King wore a taller, stiffened, peaked version.

71.   this… twin failure: The loss of the fleet and of the land army.

72.   triple-oared ships: That is, triremes (ships with three banks of oars).

73.   the mighty Bosporus: In poetry, the Hellespont was sometimes referred to as the Bosporus, a name which properly, then as now, belonged to the other strait separating Europe from Asia, at Byzantium (Istanbul), some 240 km to the north-east.

74.   by the spear: Apparently Darius mistakenly supposes that the land army was destroyed in battle.

75.   he altered the nature of its passage: That is, he stopped up a sea-passage and created a land-passage instead.

76.   Medus: Probably to be taken as the (mythical) eponymous founder of the kingdom of the Medes (cf. on 236). Alternatively Mēdos may mean ‘a Mede’; in that case the reference will be to Cyaxares (reigned c. 625–585), the first Median king to extend his rule into Asia Minor, and his son will be Astyages, the maternal grandfather of (and eventually deposed by) Cyrus.

77.   Cyrus: The founder of the Persian Empire (which he ruled c. 550–529), the conqueror of Babylon, western Asia Minor and many other lands, and the first Middle Eastern monarch to rule over large numbers of Greeks. (He was also the father of Darius’ queen, Atossa, and the grandfather of Xerxes, but Aeschylus either was unaware of this or chose to ignore it.)

78.   The son of Cyrus: Cambyses (reigned 529–522), the conqueror of Egypt; Herodotus, relying largely on Egyptian sources, gives a very unfavourable portrayal of him (3.1–38).

79.   Mardus: In Herodotus (3.61–79) he is called Smerdis and is said to have been a usurper impersonating Cambyses’ brother of the same name (in Persian Bardiya); so too Darius himself in the Behistun inscription (sections 11–15; translated in M. Brosius, The Persian Empire from Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I (London 2000), pp. 23–4, 27–40) except that he calls the usurper Gaumata.

80.   Artaphrenes: Herodotus (3.70ff.) calls this man Intaphrenes, which is considerably closer to the Persian Vindafarnā; evidently Aeschylus has confused him with a man much better known to Greeks, Darius’ brother, the governor of Sardis at the time of the Ionian revolt (Herodotus 5.25.1 etc.), whose son of the same name had been joint commander of the Persian forces at Marathon.

81.   I gained… I desired: That is, we (either all the conspirators – so in effect Herodotus 3.84–8 – or Darius and Artaphrenes alone) drew lots for the kingship, and I won.

82.   the Asopus: The principal river of Boeotia, which separates Thebes from Plataea and Mt Cithaeron to the south. Aeschylus is here simplifying the course of events. Mardonius’ army actually wintered further north, in Thessaly (Herodotus 8.113–35), and in the spring he advanced on Athens, which was captured and later burnt for the second time (Herodotus 9.1–3, 9.13.2); only when it was clear that Athens would not come to terms, and that the Spartans were on the march, did he retreat into Boeotia and prepare to meet the enemy there (Herodotus 9.12–15).

83.   shed by the Dorian spear: It is worth noting that the entire credit for the victory of Plataea is here given to the Spartans.

84.   remember Athens: Cf. on 285.

85.   river Halys: Now the Kızılırmak, this river divides northern Asia Minor into an eastern and a western half, and had formerly been the boundary between the Median and Lydian empires.

86.   freshwater dwellings of the Thracians: The lake-villages of the Strymon basin (cf. Herodotus 5.16), which were well known to Athenians in 472 because of Cimon’s recent campaign on the lower Strymon, which included a large-scale clearance of the Thracians in the neighbourhood (Plutarch, Cimon 7.2).

87.   Propontis: Now the Sea of Marmara; the most important Greek cities on its shores were Cyzicus on the Asian side and Perinthus on the European.

88.   this land: Here means Asia as a whole.

89.   promontory that runs into the sea: The Ionian peninsula, which has Chios to its west, Lesbos to its north and Samos to its south. The five other islands mentioned in this stanza are not covered by the description, being in the Cyclades group in the south-western Aegean.

90.   two shores: Those of Europe and Asia; the lands ‘midway between’ them are the first two islands mentioned, Lemnos in the northern Aegean and Icaros in the southern.

91.   Salamis: Salamis in Cyprus (on the east coast, north of modern Famagusta) was traditionally founded by Teucer, Ajax’s half-brother, when he was banished from the other Salamis by his father after returning from the Trojan War without Ajax.

92.   The strength… aged citizens: Because (i) there are virtually no young men left, (ii) he has been responsible for the death of so many, and (iii) some of the victims must be sons of the old men he is facing.

93.   Mariandynian dirge-singer: The Mariandyni were a people of north-western Asia Minor (in the hinterland of the Greek colony of Heraclea Pontica), whose ritual laments were famous.

94.   your ever-faithful Eye: Greeks believed that one of the high officials in the Persian administration was called ‘the King’s Eye’ (cf. Aristophanes, Acharnians 91–125; Herodotus 1.114.2). There is no evidence in Persian sources of the existence of such an official.

95.   who counted the numberless tens of thousands: Possibly alluding to the story (Herodotus 7.60) of the Persian army being counted, ten thousand at a time, at Doriscus in Thrace.

96.   favourite son of Batanochus: The man’s own name is lost.

97.   ten thousand Mardians: The Mardi were a nomadic Persian tribe (Herodotus 1.125.4).

98.   Arians: Another Iranian people (Herodotus 7.66.1) living in what is now north-western Afghanistan (around Herat).

99.   wheeled tent: That is, a carriage with curtains (the normal Greek word was harmamaxa), to Greeks an emblem of Persian luxury (cf. Aristophanes, Acharnians 70). On his westward march to Greece, Xerxes travelled sometimes in a chariot, sometimes in a harmamaxa, with ‘a thousand of the noblest and bravest Persians’ following him, together with other picked troops (Herodotus 7.41.1–2). The Persian elders had expected that he would return in similar style, with his carriage and his escort: he has come back with neither.

100. black, violent blows: Presumably to the head (cf. The Libation-Bearers 427–8), since Xerxes’ next line shows that breast-beating has not yet been mentioned. The blows are ‘black’ because they will be delivered hard enough to raise bruises.

101. Persian ground is hard to tread on: Persia was thought of by Greeks as a land of rugged terrain (e.g. Herodotus 9.122); but why should the elders feel this specially now? Are they perhaps walking barefoot, having cast off their shoes as a further gesture of mourning? After this line, two lines have probably been lost, each of them beginning with yet another cry of woe.

THE PERSIAN WAR TETRALOGY

1.     The Persian War Tetralogy: On possible connections with the Persian war (and the simultaneous Carthaginian war) in the first and third plays, see pp. 5–6.

2.     ankle-supports: Greek pellytra, felt bandages which, according to an ancient lexicographer, ‘were wrapped around the ankles and heels of runners to reduce the risk of dislocations’.

3.     First of all… good journey: This passage (during or after which Glaucus presumably leaves the scene) is imitated by Aristophanes in the sendoff given to Dionysus and Aeschylus by the Chorus at the end of The Frogs (1528–33), when they have been asked to ‘escort [Aeschylus] on his way, hymning his praises with his own lyrics and melodies’ (1525–7).

4.     its fair streams: Those of the river Himeras, which flows past the city.

5.     Nysian delight: That is, euphoria induced by wine (with reference to Mt Nysa, Dionysus’ childhood home).

6.     Naiads: water-nymphs.

7.     like the best horses: That is, white; for the excellence of white horses cf. Pindar, Pythian 9.83; [Euripides], Rhesus 616–21; and the epithet leukippos ‘of the white horses’ applied to many gods and heroes, especially Castor and Pollux.

8.     round drop: Of boiling water, no doubt.

9.     He: The name of the author from whom the Hesiod commentator cites this story has been lost, but the story certainly comes from a satyr drama, and Aeschylus is the only dramatist who is known to have written a satyr play involving Prometheus.

10.   Epimetheus: Prometheus’ brother; whereas Prometheus means ‘Forethought’, Epimetheus means ‘Afterthought’.

11.   Staying… occasion: This line is almost identical with The Libation-Bearers 582, and very similar to Seven Against Thebes 619.

12.   thirty thousand years: In Prometheus Bound and Unbound, the duration of his bondage is much less, being equal to thirteen human generations (from Io to Heracles). The action of Prometheus the Fire-Bearer must be imagined as taking place before Prometheus’ arrest (since Pandora, the first mortal woman, has not yet, or has only just, been created), so Prometheus must have predicted his long ordeal. We cannot tell whether the prediction was meant to be taken as accurate or (as it well might be in a satyr drama) exaggerated; what the author of Bound and Unbound imagined (whether he was Aeschylus or another) is not decisive evidence of what Aeschylus imagined in an unconnected play.

SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

1.     Antigone… Herald: These three characters were added to the play when the spurious ending was created.

2.     controlling the helm at its stern: As often in poetry, the city is imaged as a ship.

3.     prophet: Since this prophet is said to use his ‘ears and mind’, he evidently does not see the flight of the birds, and the audience will readily identify him as the blind Teiresias.

4.     that shepherd of fowl: So called, presumably, because he knows the birds as well as a shepherd does his flock.

5.     without using fire: Contrasting divination by augury with divination from the manner in which sacrifices burn on an altar.

6.     Achaeans: The enemy army are so called again at 324; elsewhere they are ‘the Argives’.

7.     Enyo: A war goddess, mentioned together with Ares in Iliad 5.592–4.

8.     adorning the chariot of Adrastus: Adrastus, the king of Argos, is often himself said to have been one of the Seven (as in Euripides, Phoenician Maidens 1134); but he invariably survives the war, and Aeschylus evidently wanted to have all the Seven perish.

9.     mementos of themselves: Probably locks of hair, as in several vase paintings of the early fifth century.

10.   I will keep… scout’s eye out: Implying that his first scouting expedition had been in darkness or at least twilight.

11.   O mighty Curse and Fury of my father: The Furies (Erinyes) seem in early times to have been identified with curses, especially parental curses; cf. Iliad 9.454, 571; Odyssey 2.135; Hesiod, Theogony 472. In Eumenides 417 the Furies say that ‘Curses’ is their name in their homes beneath the earth.

12.   army… against the city: The enemy infantry have now joined the cavalry (80–84) in the attack.

13.   I see the noise: That is, it creates a vivid picture in my mind’s eye.

14.   Ares, ancient god of this land: Ares played a crucial role in the story of the founding of Thebes by Cadmus (the dragon that Cadmus slew and/or the spring which it guarded being sacred to him); he was the father of Cadmus’ wife Harmonia.

15.   their crests at an angle: The helmet-crests are ‘nodding’ as the warrior moves, a phenomenon that Homer formulaically calls ‘fearsome’ (e.g. Iliad 3.337). The expression is probably also designed to evoke the idea of waves breaking obliquely on the hull of a ship.

16.   lord of horses and ruler of the sea: Poseidon.

17.   Cypris: Aphrodite, who was the mother of Harmonia.

18.   Wolf-god: Apollo’s title Lykeios was popularly connected with lykos ‘wolf’, and Sophocles (Electra 6) calls him ‘the wolf-slaying god’.

19.   maiden born of Leto: Artemis.

20.   Child of Zeus: Most likely Ares; hardly Athena, who is identified with Onca (164) at 487 and 501.

21.   clean: Greek hagnon ‘holy, pure, free of pollution’, possibly hinting at a wish for the god to protect the lives of non-combatants like themselves (the killing of enemies in battle did not count as homicide and involved no pollution).

22.   Onca, dwelling before the city: The sanctuary of this local goddess was just outside one of the city gates (501–2).

23.   enemy of alien speech: The enemy, of course, spoke Greek (though a different dialect or dialects), and worshipped the very same gods; but Aeschylus seems to be inviting the audience to compare Theban fears to their own when facing the Persian invasion of 480.

24.   gods of a captured city leave it: The point seems to be that the gods will not defend a city that makes no real effort to defend itself.

25.   Saviour: That is, Zeus (who had ‘Saviour’ (Sōtēr) as one of his most important cult titles). To the kind of family relationships here posited between Zeus and two personified abstractions there is a close parallel in a fourth-century inscription (Inscriptiones Graecae ii^2 4627), a dedication ‘to Zeus Epiteleios Philios, and the god’s mother Philia [Friendship, Affection], and the god’s wife Agathe Tyche [Good Fortune]’.

26.   to offer slaughtered sacrifices to the gods: The reference is to sacrifices (sphagia) offered immediately before going into battle. However, the fact that such sacrifices, in the nature of the case, could only be offered by men in no way shows that it was not proper for the women of a besieged city to offer collective sacrifice and prayer for its safety; Eteocles in effect concedes this at 265–70.

27.   You’re putting yourself into slavery: That is, you are making defeat, and therefore your enslavement, more likely.

28.   while touching the images: Words gained added force and effectiveness if their speaker was in contact with something sacred (a divine image, an altar, the parts of a sacrificial victim etc.), so ill-omened words uttered in such circumstances might be doubly damaging.

29.   that the gods should fight alongside us: That is, do not speak as if the gods were to do all the fighting themselves.

30.   customary Hellenic cry at sacrifices: The ololygmos, a cry of joy uttered (normally by women) at the slaughter of a sacrificial beast and on other occasions, often to hail a victory (e.g. Agamemnon 28, 1236; The Libation-Bearers 942).

31.   Dirce and… Ismenus: The two rivers of Thebes (which, like all rivers, were worshipped as gods).

32.   to combat: Literally ‘as rowers against’, another of the play’s ubiquitous nautical metaphors.

33.   <         >: The transmitted text means ‘in the big manner’, which gives no suitable sense; it is probably part of a note which has displaced the original text.

34.   children of Tethys: Tethys was the mother of all rivers (Hesiod, Theogony 337–45, 367–70).

35.   win glory for these citizens: This paradoxical expression is based on Iliad 16.84, where Achilles, who is not going out to fight, tells Patroclus, who is, to ‘win glory for me’; similarly here the Chorus expect that the gods will do the work and the Thebans will get the credit.

36.   dragged by their hair like horses: The comparison is to an unharnessed horse being led by its mane.

37.   those just reared: Adolescent girls, forced to leave their homes prematurely as slave-concubines instead of leaving them in due time for a lawful marriage.

38.   as if by a solid wall: This does not refer to the wall of the city itself; the enemy are envisaged as stationing troops to encircle the city after its capture and prevent the escape of survivors.

39.   having acquired unfriendly storekeepers: The new ‘storekeepers’ of the grain are the enemy soldiers – who let it go to waste.

40.   prophet: This must here mean Amphiaraus, of whom we will hear more later (568–619).

41.   snake hissing at midday: Snakes were thought to be most active in the noonday heat.

42.   someone’s folly: He means the folly of Tydeus in choosing such a device for his shield – but the words may eventually come to have an ironic application to himself.

43.   Sown Men whom Ares spared: The ‘Sown Men’ were the warriors who sprang from the dragon’s teeth which Cadmus sowed in the soil of Thebes (hence ‘a man of this land through and through’) at the time when he founded the city; they fought each other (hence the reference to Ares) until only five remained, and these became the ancestors of the noblest families of Thebes. See [Apollodorus], Library 2.4.1.

44.   mother that bore him: That is, the land of Thebes; cf. 16–20.

45.   giant: Implying both ‘of great size’ and ‘an enemy of the gods’.

46.   bigger than the man previously mentioned: Tydeus was a smallish man (Iliad 5.801).

47.   our first gain has given birth to yet another: Meaning that the self-defeating arrogance of Capaneus augurs as well for the Thebans as did its predecessor, the self-defeating arrogance of Tydeus.

48.   thunderbolt: Capaneus was killed by a thunderbolt from Zeus as he tried to scale the walls of Thebes. Cf. Sophocles, Antigone 127–37; Euripides, Phoenician Maidens 1172–86.

49.   Protectress: Greek Prostatēria, a title associated with shrines placed close to doors or gates (cf. Sophocles, Electra 637); Artemis and Hecate (who was sometimes partly or even wholly identified with her) were often worshipped at such spots. Probably there was a well-known sanctuary of Artemis under this title outside the Electran Gate of Thebes.

50.   bearing his boast in his hands: That is, expressing his pride not in words but in action.

51.   Creon: The same Creon (son of Menoeceus and brother of Iocaste) who figures in Sophocles’ three Theban plays and in Euripides’ Phoenician Maidens. In Sophocles, Antigone 1303–5, the death of Megareus is mentioned as if the audience would be familiar with the story, and it is implied that Creon was somehow responsible for it; Aeschylus is evidently not following that version (whatever precisely it was), but it is striking that Megareus is the only one of the defending champions (other than himself) whose death Eteocles mentions as a possibility (477).

52.   two men: Viz. Eteoclus himself and the man portrayed on his shield.

53.   Brag about another one: Eteocles speaks as if the Scout were himself making the boasts that he reports the attackers are making.

54.   Typhon: Typhon, also called Typhoeus or Typhos, was the last opponent whom Zeus vanquished before his rulership of the universe was finally established (Hesiod, Theogony 821–68). He was an earth-born monster, with a hundred fiery serpent-heads, but after a great battle Zeus defeated him with the thunderbolt and hurled him down to Tartarus (in Pindar, Pythian 1.15–28, and in Prometheus Bound 351–72, he lies under Mt Etna).

55.   round circle… coiling snakes: This expression is easily understood in the light of artistic representations of Typhon (including an Argive shield found at Olympia), in which he regularly has one or two coiling snakes where his legs should be.

56.   maenad: An ecstatic female worshipper of Dionysus.

57.   Hermes: Thought to be responsible for unexpected strokes of good luck.

58.   man is an enemy of the man he will face: It is not clear whether this means that the two men are personal enemies (if so, we know nothing of the mythical background) or whether the statement merely serves to point up what follows (‘not only are these two men going to fight each other, they also bear on their shields two gods who fought each other’).

59.   his Saviour: Alluding to one of Zeus’ most familiar titles; cf. on 225.

60.   Amphion: Together with his brother Zethus, Amphion built the walls of Thebes. His tomb was on a hill to the north of the Cadmea.

61.   his maidenish name: Partheno-paeus.

62.   offspring of Ares by a mountain-dwelling mother: Parthenopaeus’ mother was the huntress Atalanta. His father is usually named as Melanion (occasionally Meleager), but [Apollodorus], Library 3.9.2 gives Ares as an alternative.

63.   so that… at that man: When the Thebans throw their spears at Parthenopaeus, they risk hitting the Theban on his shield – a bad omen for their side.

64.   immigrant… his fine upbringing: This remark may be a later interpolation: if Parthenopaeus has travelled further than his colleagues to fight at Thebes (545–6), he can hardly have been brought up at Argos as here implied.

65.   to flood in through the gates: The ship image again.

66.   ‘murderer’: Tydeus had fled from his native Calydon to Argos after killing one or more kinsmen (early accounts vary widely as to the details); like Polyneices, he married a daughter of Adrastus. Amphiaraus’ ensuing words should not be taken to imply that Tydeus alone was the prime mover behind Adrastus’ decision to attack Thebes, since he also blames Polyneices for urging this course on Adrastus (585).

67.   ‘arouser of a Fury’: That is, inciter of an act that will incur certain and terrible vengeance.

68.   turning… its significance: Polyneices means ‘Much-strife’. The passage as transmitted is corrupt, and I suspect that several words that were originally annotations (including Polyneices’ name) have been incorporated into the text; I have omitted these in the translation.

69.   becoming a prophet… soil of the enemy: The oracular shrine of Amphiaraus near Thebes was famous throughout, and beyond, the Greek world (Herodotus 1.46, 49, 52; 8.134).

70.   for he desires not… good counsels grow: Plutarch (Aristides 3.5) says that on hearing this eulogy of Amphiaraus in the theatre, the whole audience turned their eyes to Aristides ‘the Just’; but his anecdote derives much of its point from a misquotation (making Amphiaraus desire not the appearance but the reality of justice – appropriate to Aristides but not to the Aeschylean context) and should be regarded as fictional.

71.   against his will: Amphiaraus’ wife Eriphyle was the sister of Adrastus; after an earlier quarrel with Adrastus, Amphiaraus had sworn that in any future dispute between the two men he would abide by her decision. When he was reluctant to join the expedition against Thebes (knowing through his prophetic power that it was doomed to disaster), Polyneices bribed Eriphyle with the necklace of Harmonia, and she, invoking Amphiaraus’ oath, instructed him to go on the expedition. The story was known in some form to Homer (Odyssey 11.326–7, 15.244–7); it is told consecutively by an ancient commentator on Odyssey 11.326.

72.   road on which it’s a long journey to come back: That is, the road to death.

73.   Loxias: Apollo.

74.   Seventh Gate: Both Aeschylus and Euripides (Phoenician Maidens 1104–40), in listing the Seven and the gates they attacked, give names to the first six gates but call the last simply ‘the seventh’. For Euripides this gate is of no particular importance (in his account no one is killed there), and he clearly regarded ‘Seventh’ as its name. In [Apollodorus], Library 3.6.6, and Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.8.4, what seems to be the same gate is called the Hypsistan; if ‘Seventh’ was an alternative name for it, it may have been due to the presence nearby of a sanctuary of Apollo (cf. 800–801).

75.   what a fate… this city: Polyneices actually wants to rule Thebes (647–8), not to destroy it, and even expects its gods to be his allies (639–41); but the Scout, like Amphiaraus (582–3), evidently assumes that if the enemy are victorious Polyneices will not be able to prevent them from sacking and burning the city (cf. 427, 434, 467, 531, 549).

76.   command: Lit. ‘be ship-captain of’.

77.   this man so well named: See on 577.

78.   such blood purifies itself: Normally anyone who shed another’s blood, intentionally or not, became ritually polluted, but this did not apply to the killing of an enemy in war (Euripides, Ion 1334; Plato, Laws 869d).

79.   child: Compared with their earlier exchanges (180–286), the reversal in the positions of Eteocles and the Chorus is so complete that the young maidens even speak to him as if his superiors in age and wisdom.

80.   Cocytus: One of the rivers of Hades.

81.   with dry, tearless eyes: That is, without pity.

82.   dream-visions… our father’s property: This may refer back to something said by Eteocles in the preceding play, Oedipus; if it does not, its meaning will have been mysterious to many if not most of the audience until elucidated by 727–33 (cf. 788–90, 816–19, 906–9, 941–50).

83.   Chalybian migrant from Scythia: The Chalybians were famous as iron-workers (Prometheus Bound 714–15; Euripides, Alcestis 980–1). They are usually located in Asia Minor (e.g. Herodotus 1.28) rather than in Scythia (the region north of the Black Sea), but the early fifth-century geographer Hecataeus placed them north of the Armenians, and in Prometheus Bound they live between the ‘Scythian nomads’ and the Caucasus.

84.   as much as is given to the dead to possess: That is, just enough for a grave.

85.   who can release them: From pollution.

86.   who had told him thrice: Presumably we are to understand that Laius, being dissatisfied with Apollo’s response, repeated his question twice, only to receive the same answer each time; cf. Herodotus 7.141, where the Athenians force Apollo to modify his response by threatening an indefinite hunger strike in the temple.

87.   bridal couple: The bridegroom here is probably Laius rather than Oedipus: Oedipus had no way of knowing that he was marrying his mother (cf. 778–9; the story of his having been told by Apollo that he was destined to do so is unlikely to predate Sophocles), and ‘mindless madness’ describes not inappropriately an act by Laius which has already been called ill-counselled, a transgression and a defiance of Apollo.

88.   grievous reconciliation… long ago: This too (cf. 710–11) may refer to something said in Oedipus; for the idea of the brothers’ death as their reconciliation, cf. 884–5, 908–9, 941.

89.   their shared abode: Either their joint sanctuary on the Theban acropolis (cf. 93–281) or the palace of Zeus on Olympus where the gods of the Iliad regularly assemble.

90.   by the much-trodden meeting place of mortals: That is, by (those who frequented) the assembly place (agora) of Thebes.

91.   man-snatching demon: The Sphinx.

92.   he was robbed of his <         > eyes: The transmitted text describes his eyes as kreissoteknōn, which could conceivably mean ‘better than children’ but is a word of impossible formation; no proposed correction is convincing.

93.   their wretched maintenance of him: Possibly referring to the story in the epic Thebais (fr. 3 West) that Oedipus cursed his sons when they insulted him by sending him an inferior cut of meat from a sacrifice.

94.   awesome Master of Sevens: This title (hebdomagetas, lit. ‘seventh-leader’) is probably an ad hoc coinage; the number seven was sacred to Apollo because he was born on the seventh day of the month.

95.   <         >: The lost line spoken by the Messenger may have meant something like ‘not hesitating to fight each other’; the Chorus will have interjected another anxious, impatient or horrified comment.

96.   O great Zeus… impious thoughts: Abnormalities of language, metre and sense make it unlikely that Aeschylus was responsible for these lines.

97.   with ‘true glory’ and with ‘much strife’: The etymological meanings of the names Eteocles and Polyneices respectively.

98.   regular beating of hands on head: Head-beating, a common gesture of mourning, is here compared to the rhythmic beat of a ship’s oars.

99.   Acheron: The river, or lake, in the underworld, across which Charon was usually imagined as ferrying the souls of the dead. In the picture created here, it is the words and actions of the mourners that provide the motive power to take souls across the water on that final journey.

100. sacred mission… no return: Alluding to the sacred ship sent annually by the Athenians to Delos in honour of Apollo, in commemoration, it was said, of the ship that Aegeus sent to Crete with seven youths and seven maidens, destined as a tribute for the Minotaur, whom Theseus rescued (cf. Plato, Phaedo 58a–c). On the return voyage Theseus forgot to change the black sail for a red or white one, so that Aegeus thought he was dead and committed suicide. The ship of the dead always has black sails.

101. on which Apollo Paeon never treads: Mourning was abhorrent to Apollo (Agamemnon 1074–9).

102. But here come… from the heart: This passage was inserted, for the purpose of bringing Antigone and Ismene on stage, at the time when the end of the play was reshaped.

103. first semichorus: At certain points (877, 895, 933) the text makes it clear that this lament is sung by two (groups of) voices in alternation, and many manuscripts mark the change points fairly regularly (though none marks them all). Except at one point (933, where most name the singer as Ismene), they assign the lines to ‘Semichorus’ or ‘Chorus’.

104. their reconciler: Iron (cf. 727–33, 816–17, 884–5, 941–3).

105. Unhappy is she… mothers of children: This does not in itself imply that the mother is still alive.

106. parting: Greek diatomais, lit. ‘cuttings-apart’, alluding (i) to the anticipated friendly parting of Hector and Ajax after their duel at Troy (Iliad 7.302, using the related word dietmagen), (ii) to the division of Oedipus’ inheritance, and (iii) to the wounds the brothers inflicted on each other.

107. from the sea: (Greek pontios), or ‘from the Black Sea’ (Greek Pontios).

108. under their bodies… wealth of land: I.e. the real estate they will receive, though in length and breadth it is only so much as suffices for a grave, is of infinite depth!

109. Curses: Equivalent to ‘Furies’ (cf. 70). For the battle at the gates between the Thebans and the Argives there is substituted, in these lines, a battle between the House of Laius and the powers of destruction (the Curses, Ruin and the daimōn or ‘controlling power’) ending in decisive victory for the latter.

110. You struck… where he does: These brief responsive phrases may have been sung by individual voices from the two halves of the Chorus. In the manuscripts they are mostly ascribed to Antigone and Ismene, and this was doubtless the intention of the producer who introduced these characters.

111. You struck after being struck. – You were killed after killing: This implies a scenario like that narrated in Euripides, Phoenician Maidens 1404–22: brother A gives brother B a mortal wound, but B with his last strength kills A.

112. He did not come back… killed: This probably refers to Eteocles, who had gone out of the city to fight his brother; in the next line the reference is to Polyneices’ return from Argos.

113. thrice-hurled: Greek tripalta (which occurs only here) ought etymologically to mean something like ‘thrice brandished’, referring to a weapon; it may possibly refer to the three generations of suffering in the House of Laius (cf. 742ff.), which have been enacted in the three plays of the trilogy.

114. You know about it: That is, about the power of the Fury.

115. and the land: After this, in the transmitted text, come two lines which are appropriate only to Antigone and Ismene: ‘But above all to me. – And even more to me.’ They will have been inserted when the sisters were brought into the play; evidently (and rightly) the adaptor felt that it would be absurd to have them sing a sobbing antiphon like 961–1004 and yet make no reference whatever to their personal grief.

116. pain… where he does: The language irresistibly suggests that to bury Eteocles and Polyneices close to their father would be to inflict on him the same kind of injury that he inflicted on his father (to whom he gave pain, and whose bed he unknowingly usurped). Since the first suggestion as to where the brothers should be buried has thus been (at least provisionally) rejected, Aeschylus’ text cannot have ended here: once the question of their burial place has been raised, the bodies cannot be taken off until it has been settled.

117. I have to announce… city of Cadmus: The remainder of the text, from this point on, is not by Aeschylus; see pp. 63–4

118. carrying it: The text does not make it clear what she will be carrying (strictly interpreted, indeed, it ought to mean she will be carrying the body itself!), but the writer expected his audience to understand that she would bring earth to throw over the body (cf. Sophocles, Antigone 249–56).

119. Keres, Furies: The Keres are usually spirits of death and evil, distinct from the Furies, who are spirits of vengeance; however, in Hesiod, Theogony 217–22, the Keres are presented as spirits of vengeance, and Aeschylus in Eumenides gives his Furies the same pedigree (as children of Night with no father) that Hesiod gives the Keres.

THE THEBAN TETRALOGY

1.     And for the stranger a garland: Linguistic details show that this reward for ‘the stranger’ (Oedipus) is being contrasted with another reward which has apparently just been proposed for someone else. Is the speaker Silenus, suggesting to Creon that Oedipus should be given a token reward while he himself should get the substantive one (presumably the kingship of Thebes and the hand of Iocaste)?

2.     according to the tale of Prometheus: For the connection between Prometheus, bonds and garlands, see Prometheus Unbound fr. 202. Since the Prometheus plays, whether by Aeschylus or not, are almost certainly later than The Sphinx, our fragment shows that this aetiology is of pre-Aeschylean origin.

3.     The Sphinx… ill-fortune: This phrase is quoted by ‘Euripides’ in a parody of Aeschylean lyric in Aristophanes, Frogs 1287. The ancient commentator on that passage explicitly ascribes the words to The Sphinx, in which the most plausible place for them would be in a retrospective song after the monster’s destruction; but it has also been suggested that the ascription is erroneous and that the line actually came from Oedipus.

4.     bitch: The Sphinx is called a dog because she snatched up her prey; so in Seven Against Thebes (776–7) she is ‘the man-snatching demon’, and in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (391) ‘the songstress-bitch’.

THE SUPPLIANTS

1.     land of Zeus: Egypt could be so called because it contained the famous oracle of Zeus Ammon at Siwa; but to the Danaids it is more important that Egypt was the place where Zeus miraculously begot their ancestor Epaphus.

2.     leader of our band: Greek stasiarkhos is also capable of meaning ‘originator of civil strife’ – which Danaus may have been in Egypt and may later prove to be in Argos (see pp. 152–5).

3.     like a gameboard: The game referred to is one of those that went under the generic name pessoi, games of mixed skill and chance based on the moving of pieces on a board according to the fall of dice.

4.     gadfly-driven heifer: Io.

5.     hand-held emblems: Greek enkheiridiois more usually means ‘daggers’ – which the Danaids will be using later in the trilogy.

6.     and, thirdly, Zeus the Saviour: The third libation after a meal was poured to Zeus the Saviour (the first going to the Olympian gods, the second to the heroes), and Aeschylus is fond of linking Zeus the Saviour with the number three (e.g. Agamemnon 245–7, 1386–7; The Libation-Bearers 1075–6; Eumenides 759–60).

7.     the vindicator: In the sense that Argive recognition that Epaphus was the Danaids’ ancestor will compel them to respect the Danaids’ claim to Argive aid.

8.     touch: Greek ephapsis (in line 17 it was epaphē), whence the child’s name Epaphus.

9.     and the destined time… derived from that touch: If the text here is rightly restored and understood, it implies that at the time of Epaphus’ conception Zeus told Io (as Gabriel told Mary) what name should be given to the child she would bear.

10.   Tereus’ wife… misery: The wife of Tereus (with or without the aid of her sister) killed their only child, Itys, and tricked his father into eating his flesh. In early versions of the story, the killing may have been accidental (as in the parallel story of Odyssey 19.518– 23, where the husband is Zethus); in Sophocles’ later Tereus it is a deliberate act of revenge for Tereus’ rape of his wife’s sister; in our passage it could be either. Both husband and wife were transformed into birds, the latter into a nightingale (who continues eternally to lament for Itys), the former into a hawk (in Sophocles a hoopoe). The wife’s name in archaic art, and in the mythographer Pherecydes (a contemporary of Aeschylus), is Aëdon or Aëdona (‘Nightingale’); in Sophocles and later Greek authors it is Procne.

11.   her unmotherly anger: If for Aeschylus the killing of Itys was deliberate, the object of his mother’s anger will have been Tereus; if accidental, then probably (as in Pherecydes) the mother’s (jealous) anger will have been directed against her prolific sister-in-law Niobe (she killed Itys by mistake for one of Niobe’s sons).

12.   lamenting in Ionian strains: The Ionian musical mode was particularly associated with laments.

13.   Land of Mists: A name for Egypt (Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4.267), said to refer to the mist that often concealed its low-lying coastline from the approaching seafarer.

14.   Even for distressed fugitives… that gods respect: Fugitives from war, whose enemies are only trying to assert the accepted rights of the victor, are safe from seizure if they take sanctuary at an altar: how much more should the Danaids be protected, since their enemies are trying to claim something to which (according to the Danaids) they have no right whatsoever!

15.   It falls safe, not on its back: H. Friis Johansen and E. W. Whittle, in their commentary (Copenhagen 1980), plausibly take the metaphor to refer to a leopard (or feline predator of similar habits) springing from a tree and landing on its feet – appropriate here, where the stress is on Zeus’ power to punish and destroy.

16.   Everything gods do… holy abode: Cf. Xenophanes frr. 25, 26 Diels-Kranz: ‘[God] moves everything by mental will, without toil… He always remains in one place, without moving at all.’

17.   the kind of youthful stock that is sprouting: The ‘youthful stock’ consists of the sons of Aegyptus.

18.   hilly land of Apia: Apia was a name for Argos (cf. Agamemnon 256–7), explained in 260–70; by its similarity to the name of Apis, the Egyptian bull god sometimes identified with Epaphus (cf. Herodotus 2.153), it suggests a link between Argos and Egypt, just as bounis ‘hilly land’ suggests a link with the bovine Io.

19.   you understand well… my barbaric speech: Although, in accordance with the conventions of tragedy, the words that actually come out of the Danaids’ mouths are Greek, we are expected to imagine that they are speaking Egyptian (just as e.g. we are expected to imagine that the performers’ linen masks are human faces).

20.   Sidonian: That is, Phoenician; perhaps suggesting ‘richly coloured’; cf. Iliad 6.289–90.

21.   tearing its linen to rags: A gesture of mourning or grief; cf. The Libation-Bearers 27–8.

22.   rites: Greek telea, a word which in appropriate contexts often refers specifically to marriage or its consummation (e.g. Eumenides 835; Sophocles, Antigone 1240–41; cf. proteleia ‘prenuptial sacrifices’).

23.   are vulnerable… so long as death keeps away: That is, our self-mourning (116) is premature: if we do not abandon life, there is hope that the gods may save us from the fate we fear.

24.   flax-sewn house of wood: a poetic kenning for ‘ship’; ‘flax-sewn’ apparently refers to the stitching together of hull timbers, a common practice in south-west Asia and thought by later writers to have been referred to in certain Homeric passages (Iliad 2.135; Odyssey 14.383).

25.   most august mother: Io.

26.   chaste daughter of Zeus: Artemis.

27.   with a willingness matching mine: Artemis’ willingness to protect the Danaids will match their willingness to have her do so.

28.   she who dwells… façades: The point is: Artemis’ virginity is safe from all attack; ours is not; therefore let her protect us!

29.   untamed ones: The virgin female was often imaged as a wild animal, and marriage as taming, breaking-in or yoking.

30.   the ever-hospitable Zeus of the departed: Hades-Pluto; cf. 230–31; Agamemnon 1386–7; Iliad 9.457.

31.   after a stiff wind a storm will come: The Danaids fear that Hera may yet vent her hatred of Io on Io’s descendants. In the end this may have happened in an unexpected way (note the linking of Hera with Aphrodite in 1034–5).

32.   Assembled Gods: Outside this play, this term (Greek agōnioi theoi) is found only at Agamemnon 513 (also referring to Argos) and Plato, Laws 783a; it appears to refer to a common cult of all the major Olympians (cf. 222), like that of the ‘Twelve Gods’ in the Agora at Athens.

33.   in your left hands: The right hand of the suppliant is the one with which (s)he clings to an altar or image, or attempts to touch the person being supplicated (cf. e.g. Euripides, Children of Heracles 844).

34.   enforcer of respect: That is, the god who demands that suppliants be treated with respect.

35.   bird of Zeus: The image of Zeus apparently has an eagle perching on its head or hand (cf. Aristophanes, Birds 514–15); the Egyptian god Amun-Re, whom Greeks identified with Zeus, was often portrayed as, or with the head of, a hawk which represented the sun. Aeschylus and his audience evidently knew about the Egyptian sun-bird, and may well have been misled by the identification of Amun-Re with Zeus into supposing that the bird was an eagle: indeed later sources (Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library 1.87.9; Strabo, Geography 17.1.40) say that in Egyptian Thebes (the greatest centre of Amun’s cult) the eagle was worshipped.

36.   god exiled from heaven: For killing the Cyclopes, Apollo was sentenced to a period of servitude on earth, during which he herded the cattle of Admetus (Euripides, Alcestis 1–8).

37.   symbol of a god: The god is Poseidon.

38.   Hermes, according to the Greeks’ usage: Greeks identified the Egyptian god Thoth with their own Hermes. Danaus means that the image he sees is the Greek way of representing the god he knows as Thoth, but since by convention he is made to speak Greek (cf. on 119), he says not ‘Thoth’ but ‘Hermes’ – just as Latin writers quoting or inventing the words of Greeks make them speak of Hermes as Mercurius.

39.   May we receive proclamations… from him: In his capacity as the divine Herald.

40.   native sponsors: Greek proxenoi, citizens of one state (State A) who were recognized by another state (State B) as standing in a relationship of guest-friendship with State B as a community, and who could normally be relied on to render assistance to citizens of State B residing in, or visiting, State A.

41.   only in that respect… reasonable guess: A clumsy way (even clumsier in the original) of saying, ‘That’s the only thing about you that seems Greek.’

42.   how should I address you… the leader of the city: This is in effect a counter-question about Pelasgus’ attire, which (despite his sceptre, which the Danaids think may be a ‘sacred staff’) is evidently too plain, by their standards, for them to be sure that he is a king.

43.   master of all the land: Pelasgus’ kingdom, as here described, covers almost the whole of modern Greece, extending well beyond the regions inhabited by Greeks in Aeschylus’ time.

44.   on the side of the setting sun: That is, to the west of the river.

45.   Paeonians: A non-Greek tribe living in western Thrace and eastern Macedonia.

46.   Perrhaebians: In the fifth century Perrhaebia was the name of a district in north-eastern Thessaly (Herodotus 7.128.1; Thucydides 4.78.5–6); but in the Iliad (2.749–50) the Per(rh)aebi live ‘near Dodona’, and Sophocles (fr. 271) places them near Mounts Pindus and Lacmus, which separate Thessaly on the east from Epirus on the west and in which rise tributaries of those regions’ major rivers, the Peneus and the Achelous respectively.

47.   Dodona: The famous oracle of Zeus in the north-west of Greece (about 14 km south of modern Ioannina).

48.   land of Naupactus across the sea: On the north side of the Corinthian Gulf, near its western end.

49.   our city does not love long speeches: The Argives, as well as the Spartans, had a reputation for brevity of speech; cf. Pindar, Isthmian 6.58–9; Sophocles fr. 64.

50.   similar stamp… by male artificers: That is, Cyprian fathers, impregnating Cyprian mothers, procreate children whom you resemble.

51.   in India, near neighbours to the Ethiopians: Greeks gave the name Aithiopes not only to the black peoples of inner Africa but also to a people whom they called the ‘eastern Ethiopians’, straight-haired and living near the Indians (Herodotus 7.70). In Prometheus Bound 808–9 the two seem to be identified, as if there were continuous land linking south Asia directly to the upper Nile.

52.   keyholder: That is, priestess.

53.   royal pair: Zeus and Hera.

54.   watchman who could see everything: Because he had eyes all over his body (as often portrayed in contemporary art).

55.   oistros: A Greek, not an Egyptian, word; cf. on 119 and 220.

56.   Canobus and Memphis: Canobus was a town at one of the mouths of the Nile, just east of what was to become the site of Alexandria; in Prometheus Bound 846–9 it is prophesied that Io’s wanderings will end there. Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, was further inland, a little south of modern Cairo.

57.   vast <portion> of land: Presumably the whole of Africa, for the continent took its Greek name from her.

58.   are you talking about something wrongful: That is, are you saying that the Aegyptiads are demanding something to which they have no lawful right?

59.   Who would love… as an owner: For this equation of marriage with slavery cf. Euripides, Medea 232–4: ‘… we have to buy a husband at a high price and take him as absolute master of our person.’

60.   That is how people increase their strength: The Danaids have in effect rejected the principle of Greek social organization that marriage is the transfer of a woman, object-like, from one family to another; Pelasgus replies with the conventional wisdom – that arranged marriages enable families to build up alliances and strengthen their social position.

61.   when they fall… got rid of: That is, a marriage alliance between two families gives no security to the weaker, since the stronger can easily repudiate it.

62.   poop… garlanded as it is: The poop, where the steersman stood, was the most vital part of the ship (cf. Seven 2); and this shrine, claim the Danaids, is the most vital spot in Argos – all the more so now it has been ‘garlanded’ with their suppliant-boughs. There is an allusion to the garlanding of the sterns of ships on sacred missions (cf. Plato, Phaedo 58a–c).

63.   in shadow: Cf. 354–5.

64.   citizen-strangers: The Danaids are foreigners by birth and appearance but citizens by descent.

65.   servant: Or ‘daughter’; the Greek text merely describes Right (Themis) as ‘of Zeus’.

66.   Zeus Klarios: This title of Zeus is otherwise known only from Tegea (Pausanias, Guide to Greece 8.53.9), where, perhaps significantly, it is associated with ‘the elevated place on which stand most of the Tegeans’ altars’.

67.   You are not sitting at the hearth of my house: In other words, by taking sanctuary at a public shrine, the Danaids have made themselves supplicants, not to the individual Pelasgus but to the Argive state.

68.   If the sons… your nearest kin: That is, if it is the case that under Egyptian law a man is entitled as of right to demand a woman in marriage if he is her nearest kinsman. By evading an answer to this point, the Danaids virtually admit that this is indeed the legal position.

69.   neither may Battle seize her booty: This ‘booty’ will consist in Argive lives and possibly the city itself (cf. 401).

70.   sponsor: Greek proxenos (cf. on 239).

71.   impious expulsion: Elsewhere in the play the Danaids make it quite clear that they fled from Egypt by their own and/or their father’s choice; it is an ‘expulsion’ only in the sense that they could not have remained there without accepting the marriages they abhor.

72.   either against these or against those: Either against the gods or against the sons of Aegyptus.

73.   only restraining cables… at the shore: The ship represents Pelasgus’ decision, and its launching, now imminent, represents the moment when that decision will become irrevocable and its consquences unavoidable. The construction of the hull is now complete, but the vessel is still attached by cables to a windlass on shore; once the cables are let go, the ship will be waterborne.

74.   that kindred blood shall not be spilt: At first sight a surprising thing for Pelasgus to say, since the only bloodshed he currently fears is that of a war between Argos and Egypt. The likeliest explanation is that he is implying that in asking him to fight a war on their behalf against their cousins, the Danaids are in effect seeking to commit kindred-murder by proxy. He again stresses the kinship of the two hostile families at 474.

75.   pollution terrible beyond compare: The pollution which the Danaids’ dead bodies would bring upon the shrine.

76.   Inachus: The principal river of Argos.

77.   in case confidence gives birth to fear: Danaus’ apprehension is that if Pelasgus is overconfident of Danaus’ safety, and so fails to provide him with adequate protection, the result may be that Danaus finds himself in fear of his life.

78.   through ignorance: That is, mistaking him for an enemy: Danaus fears the Argives may take him for an enemy because of his alien appearance.

79.   you must not be talkative… at the gods’ hearth: Plainly implying that he wants the escorts to say nothing about Danaus except that he is a suppliant – which will be obvious anyway from the boughs. Pelasgus does not wish any further information about the affair to become public until he presents it himself at the forthcoming assembly meeting.

80.   move down to this level meadow: That is, leave the mound and descend to the orchestra.

81.   May you speak… spoken to you: That is, ‘Please follow my example and avoid speaking words of bad omen.’

82.   where my mother was watched: By Argus; cf. 303–5.

83.   she cleaved the waves… on its distant side: The strait (poros) across which Io swam came to be called the Bosporus (‘Strait of the Cow’) in memory of her passage, and regarded as the boundary between Europe and Asia.

84.   Mysian city of Teuthras: For Mysia, see on Persians 53; the city’s name was Teuthrania.

85.   speeding across the land of the Pamphylians: In classical times the part of southern Asia Minor called Pamphylia lay well to the west of Cilicia, and Io would have come to it first; but Sophocles too (fr. 180a) applied the name Pamphylia to (part of) the later Cilicia.

86.   land of Aphrodite: Phoenicia and Palestine, famous for the worship of Astarte (equated by Greeks with Aphrodite).

87.   plain of Zeus: Egypt (or perhaps, more specifically, the Nile delta); cf. 4–5.

88.   snow-fed meads: It was believed that the Nile’s floods were fed by melting mountain snow.

89.   untouched by the plagues of Typhos: That is, free from storms: Typhos (see on Seven 493) was father of the storm winds (Hesiod, Theogony 869–80).

90.   maenad of Hera: That is, driven into frenzy by Hera as bacchic maenads are by Dionysus.

91.   green fear: The pallor of intense fear was thought to be caused by a flow of bile; cf. The Libation-Bearers 183–4; Theocritus 23.13.

92.   <Zeus, who restrained her with his hand>: Another supplement that has been suggested is ‘<Zeus, who released her from her suffering>’.

93.   she was stopped: In other words, from her mad rushing; the following words further imply that Zeus’ touch changed her back into fully human form.

94.   Zeus who grants fair winds: He gave fair winds, literally, to speed the voyage from Egypt to Argos (134–7), and the Danaids hope he will give fair winds, figuratively, to see them safe hereafter.

95.   with no divided voice: That is, the vote was unanimous.

96.   their aptly named right hands: The point is probably that dexios ‘of the right hand’ also has the meanings ‘of good omen’ and ‘intelligent’.

97.   in relation both to foreigners and to citizens: Because the Danaids can be viewed either as foreigners or as Argives (cf. 356).

98.   without waiting to be called: That is, before the herald could say, ‘All those in favour raise their hands.’

99.   my kin: That is, the Argives.

100. in fields that are not arable: Lit. ‘in other fields’ (than those in which ordinary harvests are reaped).

101. Zeus’ avenger: A being similar, or perhaps identical, to the ‘god of Vengeance’ mentioned at 415. Here he is pictured as a bird who perches on the roof of a house and brings a curse on it.

102. our shaded lips: Probably referring to their veils (cf. 122).

103. sacred hearths where they gather: The reference is to altars at the city’s bouleutērion where its council of elders would meet.

104. Artemis Hecate: One of the functions of Artemis was to protect women in childbirth (cf. Euripides, Hippolytus 166–9). From the fifth century onwards, Hecate, originally a distinct goddess, was often identified with Artemis; the relevance of such an identification here may be that one of Hecate’s roles was as a ‘nurturer of boys’ (kourotrophos; cf. Hesiod, Theogony 450–52).

105. man-slaying destruction: The reference is specifically to civil strife (‘intestine violence in the community’).

106. Wolf god: Apollo Lykeios (cf. Seven 146–7), who is here being begged not to be wolf-like towards the young Argives.

107. may the best… bear many young: With the result that, over the years, the quality of the flocks as a whole will steadily improve.

108. And may the people… citizens’ privileges: That is, may the sovereign people as a collectivity protect the rights that citizens have as individuals.

109. may they offer… agreements: In Greek interstate relations, the phrase dikas didonai, used here, often means ‘go to arbitration’, so the Danaids’ wish is probably that the Argives will always, before resorting to war, seek to resolve the dispute by this means.

110. statutes of Justice the highly honoured: The reference is to a set of fundamental ethical principles sometimes called the ‘unwritten laws’, nearly always three in number; these are variously formulated in our sources, but in Aeschylus (cf. Eumenides 269–72, 538–48), perhaps under the influence of doctrines promoted in the mystery cult of his native Eleusis, they prescribe the giving of due honour to gods (704–6), to xenoi (both ‘foreigners’ and ‘those in a relationship of hospitality’) and to parents. The Danaids have prayed that the Argives may give due honour to xenoi (701–3) and to the gods, but they do not pray for them to respect their parents, and here apparently they are explaining why not – because this is only the third of the ‘unwritten laws’.

111. sailing gear: From a distance the ship’s sail would be its most conspicuous feature.

112. side-screens: These were often fitted on warships for the protection of the crew, especially from enemy missiles.

113. scans the way ahead with eyes: Greek warships regularly had large eyes painted on their port and starboard bows.

114. these gods: The ‘Assembled Gods’ of the shrine.

115. your protection here: That is, the sanctuary offered by the shrine.

116. like ravens… altars: Ravens, kites and other carrion-feeding birds were notoriously liable to ignore the sanctity of altars by stealing sacrificial meat.

117. wolves: The wolf was an emblem of Argos and appeared regularly on its coins.

118. papyrus fruit: It was actually the root and lower stalk of the papyrus plant that (some) Egyptians used as food (Herodotus 2.92.5); the implication in this sentence that they did not eat cereal foods is of course absurd.

119. running stern cables… ship safe: Danaus assumes that the ships will cast anchor in water of sufficient depth and then moor themselves with long cables from the stern.

120. even to land an army: Implying ‘much less to launch an attack’.

121. land that we rightly revere: Because it is the land of our ancestress Io (alluded to by the word bounis ‘hilly land’; cf. 117). There is an unstated implication that just as the land has a right to the Danaids’ reverence, they have a right to have their prayers to it heeded.

122. its flesh turned black: The heart and other internal organs could be spoken of as turning black when affected by powerful emotions (because blood flowed inwards from the surface regions, which went pale?). Cf. Persians 114–15; The Libation-Bearers 413–14.

123. impossible to point out: That is, invisible from any place ordinarily trodden by human feet.

124. <         >: It is tolerably certain, on the evidence of the ancient annotations, that the now corrupt text here had to do with ‘release’ and ‘freedom from troubles’, but its exact wording and syntax cannot be restored.

125. beam of the balance: The balance is that in which Zeus decides the fate of mortals (as in Iliad 22.209–12).

126. yugh: Greek ioph, according to the ancient commentator an onomatopoeic expression of disgust.

127. Lord of the land: Probably meaning Zeus rather than the absent Pelasgus (who is not otherwise mentioned until 905).

128. Off, off, to boat… chopping off head: These three lines, the first surviving full lines sung by the Egyptians, are the only place where it is hard to resist the conclusion that Aeschylus gave them broken Greek to sing.

129. barge: Greek amas; it is not known what kind of vessel this was, but since the word is attested only here and in a fragment of Proteus (fr. 214), a play set in Egypt, it was presumably an Egyptian type.

130. your bolt-bound timbers: That is, your ship.

131. not respected in a city of pious men: The Egyptians (profess to) believe that right is on their side (cf. 916–20) and therefore that the Argives, if they are pious, will not resist them on the Danaids’ behalf.

132. the water that rears cattle: The water of the Nile.

133. the blood that propagates life: The ancient commentator’s note is clumsily expressed, but his source appears to have correctly interpreted this passage to mean that Nile water promotes male fertility. If so, Aeschylus evidently believed (as Aristotle did later) that semen was a derivative of blood.

134. Sarpedon’s bank: At the mouth of the river Calycadnus in Cilicia; the coast at that point faces nearly due east, towards northern Syria, so a wind ‘blowing from Syria’ would drive the ship on to a lee shore. The ship is imagined to have sailed all along the south coast of Asia Minor; it would have continued to Egypt either along the Syrian coast or via Cyprus.

135. May great Destiny… that you are committing: That is (if this heavily emended text is correct), ‘May you perish before you can fulfil your impious plans’.

136. you won’t jump out of the Egyptian boat: It would in fact be perfectly easy, and an obvious move, for the Danaids to avoid the hated marriage by such a leap to a watery grave – unless they are to be chained or tied up during the voyage. Are the Egyptians who have come with the Herald perhaps holding ropes or fetters, which they brandish when the Herald speaks these words?

137. Zeus, child of Earth: Rhea, the mother of Zeus, was identified with the Asiatic mother goddess Cybele, who was in turn sometimes identified with Earth (e.g. Sophocles, Philoctetes 391–4). In the ordinary divine genealogy, Earth was mother of Cronus and grandmother of Zeus.

138. Help… I’m being overpowered: We may be meant to suppose that the Danaids have seen or heard the approach of the rescuing Argive force. It does not appear that the Herald or his men ever actually lay hands on them (cf. 925).

139. My lord: Probably addressed to the approaching Pelasgus.

140. What local sponsor have you spoken to: A foreigner, claiming that property or persons currently in Argos were his and ought to be surrendered to him, should not take the law into his own hands but should approach an appropriate Argive who would negotiate or litigate on his behalf.

141. Hermes the Searcher: ‘Searcher’ (Mastērios) is not otherwise known to have been a cult title of Hermes, but the Herald’s meaning is anyway clear: as a herald, under Hermes’ protection, he claims the right to search for and take ‘his property’ wherever it may be.

142. barleycorn brew: Egyptians drank beer (zythos) made from barley. Many Greeks today still regard beer, in contrast with wine, as a drink for women or the effeminate.

143. in separate dwellings: That is, in accommodation reserved for you alone (rather than being shared ‘with many others’). The Danaids thus have the choice (cf. 1009–11) between (i) non-exclusive accommodation in public dwellings and (ii) exclusive accommodation in the palace or another building owned by the king. No doubt we will discover, later in the trilogy, that Danaus has chosen the latter, which will minimize contact between his daughters and ordinary Argives and, in due course, facilitate the wedding-night murders.

144. I am your patron: At Athens every resident alien (metoikos) had to have a citizen patron (prostatēs); the legal duties of a prostatēs are not altogether clear, but he would no doubt normally in practice befriend the metoikos and help him in any business which a citizen could handle more effectively than a foreigner. The Danaids will be in the unique position of having the king and the entire citizen body as their prostatai.

145. feeling confident: Possibly a hint that Danaus should be sent with an escort (cf. 954–5).

146. even if a country… of alien language: Otherwise put, no country, however welcoming it tries to be to refugees, is free from xenophobia, which can be activated by almost any (real or fancied) misdemeanour by, or special favours conferred on, the incomers.

147. to their kin: That is, to you and me.

148. a burden it will never cast off: The guilt and pollution of having failed to protect the life of a suppliant and guest. The decreeing of an armed personal bodyguard to Danaus is a sinister development; at Athens, as elsewhere, it had in the past been the prelude to the establishment of a tyranny (cf. Herodotus 1.59.4–5).

149. inscribe this: On the tablets of your mind.

150. an unknown group… time: That is, it will take time and experience before the Argives know and esteem you.

151. Go: Grammatical details show that this is addressed by the Danaids to their father and to each other.

152. Erasinus: The Danaids will be crossing this small river en route from the coast to Argos. The other river of Argos, the Inachus (497), flows past the city on the far (north) side.

153. Cytherea’s consummation: ‘Cytherea’, like ‘Cypris’, is a by-name of Aphrodite.

154. Argive Soldiers: The manuscript marks no changes of speaker anywhere in 1018–73, but the text makes it clear that 1018–33 come from one group, 1034–51 from another group (or maybe individual), and 1052–61 is an altercation between the two. The dissenter(s) have been identified as half of the Danaids disputing with the other half, as the maidservants of 977–9, and even as Danaus; the currently favoured candidates are the escort of Argive soldiers. Yet another possibility is that Hypermestra, the future rebel, here for the first time (and in breach of normal tragic convention) takes a stand against her sisters.

155. together with Hera: Hera was a patron of marriage; cf. Eumenides 213–16.

156. awesome deeds: Referring probably to the sway that Aphrodite exercises over the whole living world (cf. 998–1005 and Danaids fr. 44).

157. they: The sons of Aegyptus.

158. That would certainly be best: ‘Certainly’ translates the Greek particle men which signals that a second, contrasting statement is to follow; from this the Danaids, it seems, infer that the Argives are about to urge them to be less uncompromising, and interrupt to insist that such advice will be wasted on them.

159. deprive us: The strained language (one does not normally pray to a god to be deprived of something) draws attention to the fact that the Danaids are praying for what was normally regarded as the worst fate that could befall a woman – to remain unmarried.

160. the two-thirds kind: This expression is based on an interpretation of Iliad 24.527–33 according to which Zeus has two jars of evil and one of good, and humans’ fortunes are either mixed equally from the three jars (and so are two-thirds evil) or else are entirely evil.

THE DANAID TETRALOGY

1.     she comes to her fulfilment: The adjective teleios ‘final, perfect, fulfilled’ was often used in reference to marriage, and, according to the lexicographer Pollux, the word could actually mean ‘married’.

2.     <         >: The verb (something like ‘despise’ perhaps?) will have had to be understood from the preceding line (spoken by someone else, very likely as part of a stichomythia, a dialogue composed of one-line speeches).

PROMETHEUS BOUND

1.     Power and Violence: This pair come from Hesiod, Theogony 385–401, where they are children of Styx who live permanently with Zeus, follow wherever he leads and embody his absolute power over the universe.

2.     son of Themis: This is an innovation; in Hesiod’s Theogony, Prometheus is the son of Cronus’ brother Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene (507–11), while Themis has no children until she bears Dike, the Fates, the Seasons and others to Zeus (901–6).

3.     welcome to you… the early-morning frost: That is, the coming of night will temporarily end one kind of suffering (from the sun) only to bring another (cold) from which, in turn, you will long for relief; and vice versa.

4.     is not yet born: Hephaestus should no doubt be taken to intend this as an understatement for ‘will never be born’; the audience will probably detect an ironic allusion to Heracles (cf. Hesiod, Theogony 526–31), but they will later discover (757–68) that Prometheus knows of another sense in which a being not yet born could end his suffering.

5.     without bending your knee: ‘Bending the knee’ idiomatically means ‘resting’ (396; Iliad 7.118, 19.71); but Prometheus in his bonds will be literally unable to bend his.

6.     companionship: This expression may possibly foreshadow the cultic association in classical Athens between Prometheus and Hephaestus (they shared an altar in the Academy district); but this can hardly be imagined as existing at the time of the play’s action, and the poet may be thinking rather of Prometheus’ alliance with the Olympians in their war against Cronus and the Titans (cf. 214–21).

7.     your skills aren’t… the task you now have: Implying that the responsibility lies with Zeus (who gave the order) and / or with Prometheus (who brought his punishment on himself).

8.     harness is ready here: Prometheus’ ‘harness’ consists of metal bands clamping his arms (55–63), upper body (71) and legs (74– 81) to the rock, plus the wedge ostensibly driven through his chest (64–9).

9.     intellectual: Greek sophistēs ‘one who professes wisdom or expertise’.

10.   hammer in the pierced fetters: That is, drive nails into the rock through the nail-holes in the metal band(s).

11.   tough appraiser: Zeus.

12.   putting it into a fennel stalk: Cf. Hesiod, Theogony 565–7.

13.   Enter… vehicles: How was the Chorus’ entry staged? Not with the flying-machine (mechane): that could not carry a whole chorus, and it will be needed for Oceanus very shortly after the Chorus have left their ‘vehicle’. The car(s) must either have been (i) rolled out on to the flat roof-space of the skene or (ii) simply brought into the orchestra (pushed on by some of the Chorus, while others ride in it them?). Neither alternative is free of difficulties, but (i) makes better sense of 277–83.

14.   prolific Tethys: According to Hesiod, Theogony 364–8, Oceanus and Tethys had three thousand daughters and as many sons.

15.   sons of Uranus: That is, the Titans, children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth). For the statement to have any relevance, Prometheus must himself be one of them, though we are never directly told so in this play (cf. however Prometheus Unbound fr. 193.1–2).

16.   president of the immortals: Cf. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, last paragraph: ‘… the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.’

17.   one person under multiple names: This identification is almost certainly an ad hoc invention (there is no other trace of it before Roman times). The poet wanted Prometheus to be one of the Titans (cf. on 165) but also wanted his mother to be Themis, a prophetic goddess (cf. Eumenides 2–4) who, according to Pindar (Isthmian 8.30–45), alone had knowledge that the son of Thetis was destined to be mightier than his father. Traditionally Themis was daughter of Gaea (and Uranus) (Hesiod, Theogony 135).

18.   saying that it was destined… but in guile: Already in Hesiod (Theogony 626–8) Gaea gives crucial advice to Zeus and the Olympians on how to defeat Cronus and the Titans; but there the advice is given directly (not through Prometheus) and involves the use of force (not guile).

19.   he immediately assigned… various privileges: Cf. Hesiod, Theogony 885.

20.   rescued mortals from… going to Hades: Prometheus was the helper god in the Greek version of the Flood story; his role is first attested in Epicharmus’ comedy Prometheus or Pyrrha but must be older than that (cf. Hesiod fr. 2). Here, however, ‘shattered’ may indicate that we are to assume Zeus to have been planning a cataclysm of some other kind.

21.   foreseeing their death: That is, knowing in advance just when they would die.

22.   descending: If the Chorus have been on the skene roof (see on 128), they must presumably disappear into the skene, to re-enter later (after 396, there being no earlier opportunity) by a side-passage. This is a decidedly artificial arrangement but at least avoids having Oceanus and his daughters together on stage for 113 lines during which he takes no notice of them nor they of him.

23.   winged steed: Oceanus calls his mount a ‘bird’ at 286 and a ‘four-legged bird’ at 395, which suggests that it is not just a winged horse but, as the scholia assume, something like a griffin (gryps), which had the body of a lion and the wings and beak of an eagle.

24.   our kinship: Oceanus was the eldest child of Uranus and Gaea (Hesiod, Theogony 133).

25.   this land: Scythia (cf. 2 and Seven 728–30).

26.   Know yourself: That is (as this famous maxim often implies), ‘Know your limitations.’

27.   I judge that by facts: That is, if you had been ‘good at admonishing yourself’ and had behaved prudently, you would not be where you are now.

28.   my brother Atlas: In Hesiod (Theogony 507–9), Atlas, like Prometheus, is son of Iapetus and Clymene; here, presumably, he has been tacitly transferred to Prometheus’ new parents, Uranus and Gaea.

29.   earth-born inhabitant of the Cilician cave: The whole passage on Typhon (Typhos, Typhoeus) is closely parallel to, and probably based on, Pindar, Pythian 1.15–28, who also mentions a ‘Cilician cave’ as his original home; Homer (Iliad 2.783) had placed Typhoeus ‘in Arima’, and there appears to have been a mountain range called Arima in Cilicia.

30.   who once rose up against the gods: The revolt of Typhoeus (son of Tartarus and Gaea) is narrated in Hesiod, Theogony 821–68.

31.   narrows of the sea: The Strait of Messina (whose narrowest point is actually some 55 kilometres from Mt Etna as the crow flies).

32.   Hephaestus sits forging red-hot iron: For volcanoes as Hephaestus’ smithies, cf. Euripides, Cyclops 599 (Etna); Thucydides 3.88.3 (Hiera, now Vulcano, in the Lipari islands). The idea here is that Typhon breathes or vomits streams of fire (cf. Pindar, Pythian 1.25) which heat Hephaestus’ forge.

33.   from thence one day… with their fine crops: A prophecy (post eventum from the poet’s point of view) of the eruption of Etna which took place in the 470s (Thucydides 3.116; the Parian Marble dates it to 479/8), for only the second time since Greeks first colonized Sicily, and is vividly described by Pindar, Pythian 1.21–8.

34.   words are the healers of a sick temper: Oceanus still hopes that his words can soften the heart of Zeus.

35.   reduce the swollen spirit… when it is still firm: The angry spirit is compared to a tumour, which the doctor should not attempt to reduce until it has ripened and begun to soften of itself (‘Hippocrates’, Aphorisms 1.22).

36.   empty-headed naivety: That is, a reputation for empty-headed naivety.

37.   to be sensible… best policy: That is, I would rather be thought stupid (while actually being sensible) than actually be stupid (while being thought sensible).

38.   That shortcoming… mine: That is, I am determined that I, not you, shall be the one to be ‘thought stupid’. The implication, which Oceanus evidently perceives, is ‘I am determined you shall not intercede with Zeus.’

39.   Chorus: If the Chorus have been out of sight during the Oceanus scene (see on 283/4), they re-enter here and take up their normal position in the orchestra.

40.   maidens… Colchis: The Amazons, who are here unusually placed in Colchis (modern Georgia); similarly in 719–24 they are said to be living south of the Caucasus in Prometheus’ time (though destined to migrate elsewhere in a later generation).

41.   Lake Maeotis: The Sea of Azov, which Herodotus (4.86) believed to be ‘not much smaller’ than the Black Sea, and which he and his contemporaries must therefore have supposed to extend far into the interior of Russia.

42.   Arabia: There is significant though scattered evidence, from Xenophon (The Education of Cyrus 7.4.16, 7.5.14, 8.6.7) to the end of antiquity, that the name ‘Arabia’ was sometimes applied to a territory near the upper Euphrates, in what is now eastern Turkey.

43.   the hard-to-discern… stars: Any given star rises (and sets) four minutes earlier each day, and Greeks used as markers of the seasons the days when prominent stars or star groups (e.g. Sirius, Arcturus, the Pleiades) could first be seen rising (or, six months later, setting) before daybreak. These risings and settings are ‘hard to discern’ because knowledge of them presupposes the ability to pick out the marker stars from the thousands of others in the sky.

44.   is mother of the Muses: That is, facilitates the composition of poetry. There is a word-play on the traditional genealogy of the Muses, who were daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory) (Hesiod, Theogony 915–17).

45.   beasts: Oxen (for ploughing) and asses (for transport); horses will be mentioned separately in 465–6.

46.   significant utterances and encounters on journeys: Words that a person happened to (over)hear, or individuals or animals that he happened to meet, might in certain circumstances be regarded as omens of predictive significance; see for example Aristophanes, Lysistrata 391–7 (women’s laments for the death of Adonis punctuating a speech advocating the despatch of the Sicilian Expedition) and Theophrastus, Characters 16.3 (a polecat crossing one’s path as a sign of bad luck).

47.   their mutual hatreds, affections and companionships: Knowledge of these was important for augury because it enabled the seer to relate the observed behaviour of a bird to (what was believed to be) its normal behaviour. Thus, when Xenophon was setting out from Ephesus to join Cyrus’ expedition, a sedentary eagle screamed on his right side (Xenophon, The Persian Expedition 6.1.23); the seer whom he consulted told him that while this omen foretold greatness and glory, it also betokened suffering (because ‘other birds mostly attack the eagle when it is sedentary’) and did not portend material gain (because ‘the eagle normally gets its food when it is on the wing’).

48.   smoothness of internal organs: This, and what follows as far as 499, refers to the drawing of omens from the appearance of the internal parts of sacrificed animals, and from the manner in which they burned on the altar.

49.   I wrapped the thigh-bones… and burnt them: Prometheus is said by Hesiod (Theogony 535–57) to have been the inventor of this Greek sacrificial practice, but there he does it in an attempt (unsuccessful, and disastrous for humanity) to deceive Zeus, whereas here his object is to enable mortals to use the flames for divination.

50.   who is the steersman of Necessity: Evidently expecting the answer ‘Zeus’.

51.   bath: The ritual bathing of bride and groom was an important preliminary to an Athenian wedding.

52.   my sister Hesione: The wife of Prometheus (and mother of Deucalion, the Flood hero) is variously identified in various sources; the fifth-century mythographer Acusilaus of Argos names her as Hesione the Oceanid, as here.

53.   the myriad-eyed cowherd: Argus; cf. 677–81 and Suppliants 302–5.

54.   noisy reed-pipe, fashioned with wax: The reference is to a herds-man’s pan-pipes, whose reed-stems were held together with wax (cf. Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris 1125–7; Virgil, Eclogue 2.32–3).

55.   soporific: Hermes, in some accounts, played the pan-pipes to lull Argus to sleep before killing him (so probably Bacchylides 19.35– 6; later, Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.682–714).

56.   to open one’s lips to friends: Prometheus regards Io as a ‘friend’, though he has never met her before, either because he is a friend to all mortals (cf. 612, 613) or because her father, the river god Inachus, is a son of Oceanus (cf. 636) and therefore his own nephew.

57.   By explaining… done enough: Implying, apparently, that his promise at 617 was to answer just one question about himself.

58.   sisters of your father: See note on 611.

59.   Cerchnea (later Cenchreae) was a village south-west of Argos (Pausanias, Guide to Greece 2.24.7), not far from Lerna.

60.   travel over the uncultivated plains: Crossing northern Europe towards the Black Sea.

61.   Chalybes: Cf. Seven 728. From here to 728 we are apparently to the north-east and east of the Black Sea, between the Cimmerian ‘Bosporus’ (the Strait of Kerch, to the east of the Crimea) and Colchis (Georgia; cf. note on 415–16); yet it is after passing through this region that Io will cross the ‘Bosporus’ (729–35). This geographical confusion may be accidental or intentional. The poet has retained the tradition of Io’s crossing a strait that was thereafter named the Bosporus (cf. note on Suppliants 546), transferring it from the Thracian to the Cimmerian strait; but he wants this crossing to be a passage from Europe to Asia (734–5) and also from lands more or less known to Greeks (with violent but human inhabitants) to the realm of pure fantasy (populated mainly by monsters) described in 791–809. The boundary between Europe and Asia was sometimes said to lie at the Cimmerian Bosporus, sometimes (as in Prometheus Unbound fr. 191) at the river Phasis (Rioni) in Colchis (cf. Herodotus 4.45): either the poet has been misled into supposing these two watercourses to be one and the same, or he has deliberately shifted the location of the Bosporus in order to present it more strongly as a point of transition into a different and even more terrifying world.

62.   the Violent River: This river, flowing north-west from the Caucasus, may well be the Kuban, which rises on the slopes of Elbruz (the highest peak in the Caucasus) and flows into the Sea of Azov not far from the Strait of Kerch (see previous note).

63.   who will one day… stepmother of ships: This digression on the future abode of the Amazons is irrelevant, unless it foreshadows a mention (not directly attested) in Prometheus Unbound of Heracles’ battle with the Amazons at Themiscyra (cf. pseudo-Apollodorus, Library 2.5.9). It also involves a further geographical confusion. Themiscyra, at the mouth of the river Thermodon, was in northern Asia Minor, nearer the eastern than the western end of the Black Sea; Salmydessus was in Thrace, north-west of Byzantium and the (Thracian) Bosporus, and the danger to ships in that area arose not from a rocky promontory but from extensive shoals (Xenophon, The Persian Expedition 7.5.12). Possibly the poet was thinking of the cape near Themiscyra later called ‘Heracles Point’ (Strabo, Geography 12.3.17).

64.   Cimmerian isthmus: The eastern peninsula of the Crimea, ending at Panticapaeum (Kerch), capital of the Bosporan kingdom.

65.   this rugged rock: It appears that at some point (perhaps at 613) Io has ascended to the stage platform.

66.   She will bear a son superior to his father: This probably identifies the mysterious female, for the audience, as Thetis; cf. Pindar, Isthmian 8.36–8.

67.   the third in birth on top of ten other births: Io has no way of knowing whether this refers to her thirteenth child or (as it in fact does) to a descendant in the thirteenth generation. The descent line is (females in italics): Io, Epaphus, Libya, Belus, Danaus (and Aegyptus), Hypermestra (and Lynceus), Abas, Acrisius, Danaë, Perseus, Electryon, Alcmene, Heracles.

68.   waveless sea: An apt kenning to describe the south Russian steppe: see S. R. West, ‘Alternative Arabia’, Hermes 125 (1997), pp. 377–8.

69.   Phorcides: Also called the Graeae. Like the Gorgons, they belong to the story of Io’s descendant Perseus, who by seizing their shared eye and tooth forced them to tell him how to find the nymphs who possessed the equipment he needed to cut off Medusa’s head.

70.   of swan-like aspect: Presumably meaning ‘white-haired’ (cf. Euripides, Bacchae 1365; Aristophanes, Wasps 1064–5): the Graeae were white-haired from birth (Hesiod, Theogony 271).

71.   whom neither the sun… ever looks upon: The language echoes Odyssey 11.16, describing the Cimmerians, on whom the sun never looks because their country is ‘shrouded in mist and cloud’.

72.   Arimaspians: The poet’s ultimate source here is the epic Arimaspea ascribed to the semi-legendary figure Aristeas of Proconnesus, supposed to have lived in the seventh century. The griffins and Arimaspians were said to be at enmity, the latter trying to steal the gold which was guarded by the former. See Herodotus 3.116, 4.13–14; Pausanias, Guide to Greece 1.24.6.

73.   river Pluto: In this context the name will probably be associated with wealth (ploutos) rather than with the underworld.

74.   at the sources of the sun: That is, at the south-eastern extremity of the world, where Asia and Africa are evidently imagined as being joined together.

75.   the cataract: The First Cataract, near the cities of Syene (Aswan) and Elephantine in Upper Egypt; it was regarded as the boundary between Egypt and Ethiopia (Herodotus 2.17, 2.29). Herodotus (2.28) had heard, but did not take seriously, a story that at this place there were twin mountain peaks and between them two springs from which one river flowed north as the Nile, another south towards Ethiopia: do our poet’s ‘river Aethiops’ and ‘Bybline [i.e. Papyrus] Mountains’ reflect a version of this story?

76.   the three-cornered land of Nilotis: That is, the Egyptian Delta.

77.   the great gulf of Rhea: The Adriatic.

78.   in the opposite direction: That is, inland, crossing Europe towards the remote region where she now is.

79.   shall be called ‘Ionian’… a memorial to your journey: In fact the name was normally applied in antiquity, as now, only to the area of sea south of the narrows between the heel of Italy and what is now Albania.

80.   Canobus: See note on Suppliants 311.

81.   named after the manner in which Zeus engendered him: See notes on Suppliants 45–7.

82.   female brood of fifty children: The Danaids; the passage 853–69 is virtually a résumé of the Danaid trilogy.

83.   hawks following close behind the doves: Cf. Suppliants 223–6.

84.   So may the bridal night be for my enemies: Lit. ‘May such a Cypris come upon my enemies.’

85.   one of the girls: Hypermestra.

86.   Necessity: Greek Adrasteia, lit. ‘inescapability’. ‘I bow to Adrasteia’ was a formula used to apologize for a remark that risked offending some divine power; the apology was usually made in advance (e.g. Plato, Republic 451a; Menander, Samia 503), but sometimes in arrear (e.g. Menander, Perikeiromene 304). The Chorus are thus telling Prometheus that if he is wise, he will apologize at once for his rash remarks about Zeus.

87.   clever fellow: Greek sophistēs (see note on 62).

88.   You: Plural, referring to the whole Olympian family.

89.   two successive autocrats: Uranus and Cronus.

90.   <         >: The lost line must have contained words even more offensive to Hermes than those Prometheus has used to him already.

91.   Ah me: This exclamation by Prometheus seems to be triggered by Hermes’ mention, in connection with him, of the prosperity that is now so far away.

92.   which will turn black with gnawing: ‘Like any half-eaten piece of offal, dark from exposure to the air and from dried blood’ (M. Griffith, Prometheus Bound (Cambridge 1982), p. 267).

93.   until some god… depths of Tartarus: This condition (which Zeus / Hermes evidently suppose to be impossible of fulfilment) will surely have been fulfilled, in some unexpected way, in Prometheus Unbound. It is almost certainly to be linked with the story about the centaur Cheiron told in pseudo-Apollodorus, Library 2.5.4, 2.5.11. Cheiron, who was immortal, having been painfully and incurably wounded by Heracles’ arrow, longed to die but was unable to do so, thus becoming Prometheus’ ‘successor in suffering’ (in kind if not in degree) until ‘Prometheus gave to Zeus one who would become immortal in exchange for him’. The ‘one who would become immortal’ was not, as many have thought, Prometheus himself (who was immortal already) but Heracles: by making Cheiron confer on Heracles his own unwanted immortality, Prometheus, with typical ingenuity, will have enabled Cheiron to die (‘willing[ly]… go[ing] down to rayless Hades’), enabled Heracles to become a god, and himself fulfilled the condition laid down for his release. All this is likely to have occurred, as part of a general settlement, after Heracles had shot the eagle and after Prometheus had revealed the secret concerning Thetis.

94.   this threat is no invention… every word he speaks: The text does not make the structure of Hermes’ argument completely clear: his point is that (though he, Hermes, is a notorious liar and deceiver) the threats he has announced are not an ‘invention’ by him but have ‘all too certainly been uttered’ by Zeus, who never lies, and therefore they cannot be ignored.

95.   the double-ended tress of fire: The thunderbolt, often represented in art with a flame at both ends.

96.   I am willing… what I must: This does not necessarily imply that the Chorus intend to share all Prometheus’ sufferings themselves, only that they are resolved never willingly to desert him. That they do in the end flee (for to have them swallowed up together with Prometheus would be highly inconvenient, both from the theatrical point of view and from that of the story) bears witness not to their cowardice or feebleness but to the staggering display of Zeus’ power, which would numb any mind but that of Prometheus.

97.   The rock… its interior: The staging of this finale must be consistent with the text, must respect the limits of what was possible in the fifth-century theatre, and must avoid the anti-climax that would certainly be felt if, when the words and the music had ended and the Chorus had departed, Prometheus was seen bound to the rock as if nothing had happened. I have elsewhere suggested (Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996), p. 313) that Prometheus ‘is attached to a board directly in front of, and indeed resting on, the central doors of the skene, and these doors are [now] suddenly opened (inwards…) [so that] the board with Prometheus on it will fall back into the dark interior… men [being] in readiness to stop the board hitting the floor and drag it back clear of the doors’.

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

1.     Phasis: Now the river Rioni in Georgia. On inconsistencies and/ or confusions in the definition of the Europe–Asia boundary in the Prometheus plays, see note on Prometheus Bound 715.

2.     Red Sea: For classical Greeks this name denoted the whole Indian Ocean with its gulfs.

3.     the bay beside the Ocean… gentle water: Evidently at the place called in Prometheus Bound 808–9 ‘the sources of the sun’, at the south-eastern extremity of the world, where Asia and Africa are imagined as being joined together.

4.     193: This passage has survived in Latin, not in Greek – in a translation by Cicero, who quotes it in his Tusculan Disputations (2.23–5). Like all Roman writers, he latinizes the names of Greek gods – Uranus, Cronus, Zeus and Hephaestus become Caelum, Saturn, Jupiter and Mulciber (i.e. Vulcan); I have restored the conventional English renderings of the Greek names.

5.     from which fall drops: Drops of blood, or rather of its divine equivalent, ‘ichor’. According to Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 3.845–66, these drops caused a plant to spring up, an ointment extracted from which was later used by Medea to make Jason invulnerable for a day. This tale may well go back to Sophocles’ play The Women of Colchis, which is known to have contained a narrative digression about Prometheus’ sufferings; we cannot tell whether The Women of Colchis was earlier or later than Prometheus Unbound.

6.     Caucasus: Cicero, like most who wrote about Prometheus in antiquity (including at least one ancient commentator on Prometheus Bound), thought that the Caucasus was the scene of his binding; it certainly was not so in Prometheus Bound (cf. lines 719–20 of that play, where Io must travel far to reach the Caucasus), and there is no reason to believe that it was so in Prometheus Unbound either. Cicero has doubtless added the word for metrical and/or stylistic reasons, unaware that he was introducing a geographical error.

7.     Gabians: Evidently the same as the Abioi of Iliad 13.6, who seem there to be envisaged as living somewhere north of the Black Sea.

8.     Apollonius of Rhodes says: Argonautica 4.282–7; Apollonius does not mention the Hyperboreans, so the author of Prometheus Unbound probably did. The Ister is the Danube; the Rhipaean Mountains were (usually) believed to be in the far north Europe, so mention of the Hyperboreans – the dwellers ‘beyond the North Wind’ – would be appropriate.

9.     to take any stones from the ground: For use as emergency weapons.

10.   cover it completely with a hail of round stones: This story provides an aetiology for the existence of the ‘Plain of Stones’ – the stony and arid (now partly irrigated) Plaine de la Crau, stretching east of the Rhône between Arles and the sea and once covering nearly 400 square kilometres, which will have been well known to Greeks through its proximity to the Phocaean colony of Massalia (Marseille).

11.   This son… my enemy: Plutarch (Pompey 1.1), when quoting this line, says that it is spoken by Prometheus ‘after being saved by Heracles’; and we can gather from its text (i) that he is addressing someone other than Heracles and (ii) that he has not yet been reconciled with Zeus. Perhaps then he is telling his mother (see pp. 199–200) about recent events?

12.   In honour of Prometheus: Cf. Sphinx fr. 235.