Æschylos Tragedies and Fragments. Aeschylus

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later writers (Quintus Curtius, iv. 7, 22; Lucretius, vi. 848) to the fountain in the temple of Jupiter Ammon in the great Oasis. The “river Æthiops” may be purely imaginary, but it may also suggest the possibility of some vague knowledge of the Niger, or more probably of the Nile itself in the upper regions of its course. The “Bybline hills” carry the name Byblos, which we only read of as belonging to a town in the Delta, to the Second Cataract.

192

Comp. Sophocles, Trachin., v. 1168.

193

The Adriatic or Ionian Gulf.

194

In the Suppliants, Zeus is said to have soothed her, and restored her to her human consciousness by his “divine breathings.” The thought underlying the legend may be taken either as a distortion of some primitive tradition, or as one of the “unconscious prophecies” of heathenism. The deliverer is not to be born after the common manner of men, and is to have a divine as well as a human parentage.

195

See the argument of the Suppliants, who, as the daughters of Danaos, descended from Epaphos, are here referred to. The passage is noticeable as showing that the theme of that tragedy was already present to the poet's thoughts.

196

Argos. So in the Suppliants, Pelasgos is the mythical king of the Apian land who receives them.

197

Hypermnæstra, who spared Lynceus, and by him became the mother of Abas and a line of Argive kings.

198

Heracles, who came to Caucasos, and with his arrows slew the eagle that devoured Prometheus.

199

The word is simply an interjection of pain, but one so characteristic that I have thought it better to reproduce it than to give any English equivalent.

200

The maxim, “Marry with a woman thine equal,” was ascribed to Pittacos.

201

The Euhemerism of later scholiasts derived the name from a king Adrastos, who was said to have been the first to build a temple to Nemesis, and so the power thus worshipped was called after his name. A better etymology leads us to see in it the idea of the “inevitable” law of retribution working unseen by men, and independently even of the arbitrary will of the Gods, and bringing destruction upon the proud and haughty.