by Aeschylus
CHORUS
[14] How then shall we rightly address you?
DIKE
[15] By the name of Dike, her who is greatly revered in heaven.
CHORUS
[16] And of what privilege are you the mistress?
DIKE
[17] As for the just, I reward their life of justice.
[CHORUS?]
[18] . . . this ordinance among mortals.
DIKE
[19] But in the reckless I implant a chastened mind.
CHORUS
[20] By Persuasion’s spells, or in virtue of your might?
DIKE
[21] I write their offences on the tablet of Zeus.
CHORUS
[22] And at what season do you unroll the list of crimes?
DIKE
[23] When the proper time brings the fulfilment of what is theirs by right.
CHORUS
[24] Eagerly, I think, should the host welcome you.
DIKE
[25] Much would they gain, should they receive me kindly.
(Two lines unintelligible).
. . . no city of people or private man, since such is the god-sent fortune she enjoys. And I will tell you a proof which gives you this clearly. Hera has reared a violent son whom she has borne to Zeus, a god irascible, hard to govern, an one whose mind knew no respect for others. He shot wayfarers with deadly arrows, and ruthless hacked . . . with hooked spears . . . he rejoiced and laughed . . . evil . . . scent of blood. . . .
(Two lines unintelligible) . . . is therefore justly called . . . just.
1. Perhaps “the people.”
2. Clearly this passage contained one of those etymologisings of proper names which are not rare in Aeschylus. Lobel suggests that he name “Ares” may have been derived from arê, “bane,” “ruin.”
UNKNOWN PLAY (III)
FRAGMENT 283
Ed. pr. Lobel, P. Oxy., vol. 20, no. 2253, with Plate III.
This looks very like the beginning of a prologue of a play; it recalls Eum. 1 ff. Clearly it comes from a play “about the matter of Troy.” The word sunallagê (l. 7) can mean “relations”, “dealings”, “visitation” or it can mean “reconciliation”; in this context, it is likeliest to have the latter meaning. At what stage of the Trojan war can a Greek have prayed for “friendly reconciliation”? If reconciliation with the Trojans is meant, we think of the early stages, of the time before and just after the arrival of the Greeks at Troy: Stark ahs suggested that the play may be the Iphigeneia, but without adducing any substantial evidence. P. Oxy. 2254 seems to come from a play that dealt with the fight at Tenedos which preceded the siege, and it is possible that both come from the Iphigeneia or from some play unknown to us which described an early stage in the history of the war: e.g., Aeschylus may have written a Cycnus, and the Cycnus in question may have been the king of Tenedos killed by Achilles.
But the “reconciliation” may easily have been a reconciliation between the Greek chiefs themselves. A famous Aeschylean trilogy (Myrmidones, Nereides, Phryges or Hektoros Lytra) is known to have dealt with the most notorious of their quarrels. The speaker seems to be praying for a friendly reconciliation “for the chieftains of Greece”. This might mean “a reconciliation with the Trojans”; but it more probably means “a reconciliation with each other.” It is therefore likelier than not to come from the Achillean trilogy; and the likelihood is strengthened by the fact that very minute scraps, proved by a coincidence with a quotation (fr. 59) to come from the Myrmidones and probably by the same copyist as the Aeschylean fragments in vol. 20, have already been published (vol. xviii, 2163; Snell, l.c., has shown that another small fragment in vol. 20 – 2256, fr. 55 – probably coincides with a quotation, fr. 65 in this book). Further, the formal stateliness and the impression which it gives of introducing the audience to a new situation makes somewhat in favour of it belonging to the first play of the trilogy; though here the similarity with the opening of Eum. should put us on our guard. And who is the speaker likely to be? Maas has thought of Calchas; but Agamemnon has at least as good a claim. The range of possibilities is very wide; and the supplements are more than usually uncertain.
To Zeus’ majesty I first do reverence, and with supplication I beseech him that this day’s light may see us exchange our labours for prosperous fortune; and for the chieftains of the land of Greece, who with Menelaus demand vengeance of Paris, son of Priam, for the violent rape of Helen, I pray for a friendly reconciliation of their grievous quarrel.
UKNOWN PLAY (IV)
FRAGMENT 284
Ed. pr. Lobel, P. Oxy., vol. 20, no. 2256, fr. 71, with Plate VIII.
“The subject of this fragment of a chorus is evidently the death of Ajax consequent on the award of the arms of Achilles”: Lobel. This was the subject of Aeschylus’ Ajax-trilogy; and Lobel suggests that this may come from the Hoplôn Krisis, Mette preferring the Salaminiai. But the lines contain a summary account of the end of Ajax, not at all what we should expect to find in a play of which this formed the main subject, but very much what might be given if the story of Ajax is being cited as a parallel to a similar episode that ahs occurred or seems likely to occur in some different play. This impression is strengthened by the occurrence of hôster kai at the beginning of l. 16. As Snell (l.c., 440) has noticed, this can hardly introduce a theme for comparison; for a mention of Ajax follows, and Ajax has been the subject of the preceding stanza. The obvious inference is that after briefly narrating the death of Ajax the Chorus said: “Just as the noble son of Telamon perished by his own hand . . . so will (someone else) perish.”
In what lost play of Aeschylus might this have happened? Several of them may have contained characters who threatened suicide (the Oedipus, for example, comes to mind); but there are slight indications in favour of the Philoctetes. Philoctetes threatens suicide in Sophocles’ play; his suicide and that of Ajax would have had this in common, that in both cases Odysseus was responsible; and among the Aeschylean fragments in P. Oxy., vol. 20, is a fragmentary hypothesis to the Philoctetes (no. 2256, fr. 5). But these indications do not amount to anything like proof.
I will dissolve in tears (?) . . . who . . . these . . . sufferings . . . receive. . . . He, the city-guarding chieftain of the seagirt land, was brought to ruin by the shepherds of the people, the chieftains and commanders of the host, after he had set his heart upon the arms. And in the judgment the generals connived with Odysseus, with no impartial mind . . guide . . . his mind cloaked in darkness . . contrivance of the fatal sword.
Even as the noble son of Telamon perished by his own hand.
HÊRAKLEIDAI
FRAGMENT 285
Ed. pr. Lefebvre, Bulletin de la société royale d’archéologie d’Alexandrie, no. 14, 191, 192, with Plate IX, 3.
Körte assigned this fragment to Aeschylus on the score of his supplement amphimêt[ores in l. 4. This adjective occurs in extant literature only at Eur., Andr. 466; but Hesychius says that Aeschylus used it in his Heracleidae (fr. 76 Nauck). Page (l.c.) has pointed out that this supplement is far from certain, since in l. 4 amphi mêt[era is an obvious possibility. And even if it were certain, it would not prove that this fragment came from Aeschylus’ Heracleidae; since we have no reason to assume that the word occurred only in that play. We know that it occurred also in the Andromache; and it may easily have occurred elsewhere also. We must therefore recognise at the outset that it is very doubtful whether this fragment is from the Heracleidae or is by Aeschylus at all.
But several scholars have maintained that the action which the fragment describes can be shown to be one likely to have been described in the Heracleidae. If this is true, the possibility that this fragment belongs to that play becomes greater; and this claim must therefore be investigated.
Körte, Fritsch and Mette all assume that the Heracleidae of Aeschylus, like the play of the same name by Euripides, dealt with the persecution of the Heraclids, after their father’s death, by Eurystheus. They take amphimêtores
to mean “children by different mothers”, as it does in the Andromache and as Hesychius says it meant in Aeschylus; this description, they say, is true of the children of Heracles. They think this passage came from part of the play in which Eurystheus or one of his adherents (perhaps the herald Copreus) is threatening the Heraclids with burning, and supplement accordingly.
Lycus threatens to burn the children of Heracles by Megara in the Heracles of Euripides; but we are nowhere told that Eurystheus did the same. Heracles certainly had children by many different mothers (though it is doubtful whether the description amphimêtores applies to the children who survived to be persecuted by Eurystheus; according to the usual legend, all these were his children by Deianeira). In l. 3, Körte and his followers read th[lam]ouchoi[s domois, but [lam] is too long for the gap; and in l. 6 they presumably take pharmakou to refer to fire, which it can scarcely do.
This attempt to show that the fragment fits the plot of the Heracleidae scarcely stands up to examination. Stebrny has made another on quite different lines. He calls attention to the bold attempt of Zielinsky (Eos 25, 57; cf. Tragodumenon libri tres, 3, 90) to show that Aeschylus’ Heracleidae dealt with the same subject as Sophocles’ Trachiniae, the death of Heracles. Zielinski’s arguments fall a long way short of proving his case; but they certainly show that it is just as likely that the play was about this as that it was about the same subject as Euripides’ play of the same name. Accepting his thesis, Srebrny offers a restoration of this fragment based upon it. In itself, this restoration is less open to objection that are those of Körte and his followers. In l. 3 the word tha[mn]ouchoi[s (for which cf. the sense of druocha at Eur., Electra 1163), though it occurs nowhere else, seems to be the only conceivable word that will fit the space; and in l. 6 pharmakou can refer to the poison in the blood of Nessus. Leaving aside any considerations based on the conjecture amphimêt[ores, Srebrny’s hypothesis seems to explain the fragment more satisfactorily than any other assumption I have been able to think of, and after considerable hesitation I have decided to print the text with supplements along the lines he indicates. But the considerations I have set out above oblige us to recognise that any such hypothesis is anything but certain.
Suppose Srebrny is right, the fragment seems to describe the circumstances of Heracles’ death in too summary a manner for it to be the principal account given in the play of an important episode in the action; contrast the elaborate instructions which Heracles gives to Hyllus in the Trachiniae. The tense of ên in l.2 is surprising. Can the whole narration have been in the past tense? If so, the fragment teaches us nothing about the plot of Aeschylus’ Heracleidae, even if we suppose Srebrny’s whole argument to be correct; for even a play that dealt with the same subject as Euripides’ Heracleidae, or with a different subject altogether, might have included a description of the death of Heracles in the past tense.
The possibility that this is so is somewhat strengthened if one considers the problem of the letter missing in l. 4 between oide and the A of amphimêtores or amphi. Only a vertical stroke is preserved; G, M, N are possible. No supplement seems suitable except ge or a pronoun; and ge neither suits the sense nor fits the psace. What would fit the space would be this writer’s broad M.
For in those parts was visible a place designed by Nature for a pyre, in the lofty, bush-covered country of Oeta. To this did [?my] children by different mothers raise [?me] aloft, encompassed with trees for fuel, flesh swollen and skin peeling beneath the strong poison.
MYRMIDONES
FRAGMENT 286
Ed. pr. Vitelli-Norsa, Mélanges Bidez, Annuaire de l’institut de philogogie et d’histoire orientales, ii, 1934, 968, with Plate.
Page rightly points out that earlier writers were over-confident in their assignation of this fragment to Aeschylus’ Myrmidones. The only expression in the fragment which they were able to claim was peculiarly Aeschylean was diai in l. 8; and even this piece of evidence has no value, as these forms of the disyllabic preopositions occur in Sophocles and in para-tragedic passages of comedy (see Page, l.c.). Further, the style of the fragment is simpler and plainer than that of Aeschylus commonly is; though I do not think this argument can be pressed. Page also contends that the Achilles of this piece is “psychologically more advanced, more sophisticated and argumentative, more interested in himself and his own motives and actions, than we expect in Aeschylus”. I cannot share this opinion; to me this Achilles seems very like Homer’s and therefore very like the Achilles we might expect from Aeschylus.
It is true that the content of the scene is what we might expect to have occurred somewhere in Aeschylus’ Achilles trilogy, and that there is nothing in it that we can positively state to be unaeschylean: it is also true that we do not know Sophocles or Euripides to have written on this theme. But, as Page points out, Achilles was the hero of plays by Astydamas, Carcinus and others; and there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that this must be Aeschylean. The writing of the exiguous fragments printed in P. Oxy. 2163, and shown by coincidence with a quotation (fr. 59) to be from the Myrmidones is like that of P.S.I. 1208-10 (Lobel, P. Oxy., vol. 19, p. 23), but not like that of this piece. Neither does the writing of P. Oxy. 2256, fr. 55 (plausibly assigned to the Myrmidones by Snell, Gnomon 25, 1953, 437) nor that of fr. 283 resemble the writing of this fragment.
The situation in which the speech is delivered must be quite clear to anyone who knows the Iliad; the Greeks are suffering grievous losses through Achilles’ refusal to fight, and Achilles is being unsuccessfully implored to return to the battle.
ACHILLES
. . . they will stone me! The torturing of Peleus’ son with stones will prove no blessing – never think it! – to the Greeks in the land of Troy. No, then the Trojans could sit at their ease and win the victory without a fight; and you would more easily meet . . the healer of mortal sorrows. Shall fear of the Achaeans force me to lay my hand upon my spear, a hand now quivering with anger through the doing of a cowardly leader? Why, if I alone by my absence from the battle caused this great rout, as my comrades say, am I not all in all to the Achaean host? Respect forbids me not to utter such words; for who could say such chieftains, such commanders of the army, were nobler than I? . . . one man has stricken you . . . shaken and scattered you . . . armour on youthful shoulders . . .
(Fragments of nineteen more lines.)
HYPOTHESIS I
FRAGMENT 287
Ed. pr. Lobel, P. Oxy., vol. 20, no. 2257, fr. 1, with Plate IX.
This seems likely to come from a hypothesis of the play mentioned in Vita Aeschyli, ch. 9, p. 371, Murray: elthôn toinun es Sikelian, Hierônos tote tên Aitnên ktizontos, epedeixato tas Ainas oiôizomenos bion agathon tois sunoikizousi tên polin. Ll. 6-7 seem to refer to the Eumenides; the Achilleôs erastai, mentioned in l. 8, was a satyr-play of Sophocles (see Pearson, Fragments of Sophocles, I, 103 f.). The Eumenides contains a change of scene from Delphi to Athens, and it is therefore likely that these two plays are cited as containing changes of scene, and so helping to render less surprising the numerous changes of scene that are attributed to the play in question. Lobel suggests that the letters trôi in l. 7 may indicate a reference to another Sophoclean play, the Troilus (see Pearson, op. cit., II, 253 f.). “I could reconcile the remaining ink in l. 7,” he writes, “with ]dum . . . trôi . kephal.” The Troilus may have been cited as nother instance of a change of scene; though Snell thinks this line may have described the Achilleôs erastai as containing a change of scene from some unknown place (]dum) to Troy and again to another unknown place ](.) . . phal(). On the suggestion that frs. 281-2 may belong to this play, see the Summary prefixed to fr. 282.
. . . is transferred from Delphi to Athens . . . the Lovers of Achilles. For during the first act the scene is Aetna, in the second Xuthia, in the third Aetna again; then it shifts from here to Leontini and the scene is Leon . . ., and after that it is Syracuse and the rest is concluded at . . ., which is a place . . .
1. This is the name of hê peri
Leontinous chôra, according to Diodorus 5. 8.
2. Pfeiffer suggests that in l. 13 we might read [en tôi Temeni]têi (cf. Thuc., vi 75. 1).
The Greek Texts
The site of the Battle of Marathon. In 490 BC, Aeschylus and his brother Cynegeirus fought to defend Athens against Darius I’s invading Persian army at the Battle of Marathon.
LIST OF GREEK TEXTS
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CONTENTS
Πέρσαι – THE PERSIANS
Ἑπτὰ επὶ Θῆβας – SEVEN AGAINST THEBES
Ἱκέτιδες – THE SUPPLIANTS
Ἀγαμέμνων - AGAMEMNON
Χοηφόροι - THE LIBATION BEARERS
Εὐμενίδες - THE EUMENIDES
Προμηθεὺς Δεσμώτης - PROMETHEUS BOUND
FRAGMENTS
Πέρσαι – THE PERSIANS
ΧΟΡΟΣ
Τάδε μὲν Περσῶν τῶν οἰχομένων
Ἑλλάδ’ ἐς αἶαν πιστὰ καλεῖται,
καὶ τῶν ἀφνεῶν καὶ πολυχρύσων
ἑδράνων φύλακες, κατὰ πρεσβείαν
5 οὓς αὐτὸς ἄναξ Ξέρξης βασιλεὺς
Δαρειογενὴς
εἵλετο χώρας ἐφορεύειν.
ἀμφὶ δὲ νόστῳ τῷ βασιλείῳ
καὶ πολυχρύσου στρατιᾶς ἤδη
10 κακόμαντις ἄγαν ὀρσολοπεῖται
θυμὸς ἔσωθεν.
πᾶσα γὰρ ἰσχὺς Ἀσιατογενὴς
