NOTES

AGAMEMNON

p. 42	My tongue’s nailed down. The literal meaning of the Greek is ‘A great ox stands on my tongue’, the ox being proverbial for an immovable weight. It seems necessary to find some different but equally homely metaphor.
p. 43	Zeus, Pan, Apollo. The gods care for the helpless young of animals. Cf. Calchas’ address to Artemis, p. 46. The parallel between these two passages suggests that the rape of Helen and the sacrifice of Iphigenia were both abhorrent to the gods.
p. 45	The evil which has been. Past evil (the killing of Iphigenia) makes them apprehensive of the future. They now proceed to tell the story of the setting-out of the expedition. The first episode, the portent of the eagles and the hare, took place as the two kings left Argos; the sacrifice of Iphigenia took place at Aulis, where they met the rest of the force.
	It was ten years ago – but I was there. I have inserted this line to make the situation clearer. The Elders, too old to join the army, saw them off from Argos; some may even have accompanied them as far as Aulis.
	The body of a pregnant hare. The portent’s primary meaning is the destruction of Troy, with her teeming population, by Agamemnon and Menelaus. This destruction, when accomplished, will be as abhorrent to the gods as the killing of the young in the womb; therefore it behoves the Greek army to be careful to avoid all further offence, such as desecration of temples in the captured city. There is also plainly a secondary allusion to the sacrifice of Iphigenia; as the hare dies before the fulfilment of birth, so Iphigenia dies before the fulfilment of marriage. She was offered to Artemis; but ‘Artemis abominates the eagles’ feast.’ This secondary meaning is mentioned on p. 47, ‘Wreaking vengeance for a murdered child.’
p. 46	The army’s learned Seer. Calchas, who was with the army throughout the ten years. He prescribed human sacrifice again when Troy was captured.
p. 46	Lovely child of Zeus. Artemis. She and Apollo were the twin children of Leto by Zeus.
p. 47	Who is God? I have inserted this question here to make clear the sequence of thought; which is, that ‘Let good prevail’ assumes an understanding of what ‘good’ is; and that question leads back at once to the more fundamental problem of God, and so to the theme of this stanza. It should be noted that while Aeschylus accepts the figures of the various Olympian gods as legend and symbol, as a philosopher he asserts that God is one, and must be the author and centre of the moral universe.
p. 48	Head-winds heavy with past ill. The fatal head-wind at Aulis occupies a central place in the story, and supplies a recurring image throughout the trilogy.
p. 49	Then he put on The harness of Necessity. This is the central paradox of Fate and free-will. Both in the Oresteia and in other plays, notably The Seven Against Thebes, Aeschylus insists that though an inherited curse may make man’s choice desperately hard, it is still his choice.
p. 54	Wakeful anger of the forgotten dead. A returning warrior (see Introduction, p. 32) must guard himself against the vengeance of the spirits of those he has killed, by undergoing a ritual purification as soon as he reaches his home. This remark of Clytemnestra’s is taken by the Elders to refer to this usual precaution; but the ‘forgotten dead’ Clytemnestra is thinking of is Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon on his return seems indeed to have forgotten.
p. 55	Trace that hand. The following stanzas trace the course of Paris’s sin to its final retribution.
p. 56	Thenceforth there is no way to turn aside. Cf. p. 50, ‘Shameless self-willed infatuation Emboldens men,’ etc. As in the story of Faust, there is a point beyond which the sinner cannot turn back, even though forgiveness is still offered. ‘Infatuation’ is in Greek Ate, which has been an English word, if rare, at least since Shakespeare used it of Queen Elinor in King John.
	In that safe dimness. The sinner is thought of as shunning the light, lest God should find him out. Cf. The Choephori, p.105, ‘Yet, though the sinner cower Long years in the half-light, Or flout time’s vengeance safe in total night…’
p. 56	The fiend Temptation. The word is really ‘persuasion’, used here in the sense more often expressed by the English ‘temptation’. But the same power which is here an agent of evil reappears in The Eumenides as an agent of good. See pp. 175–9.
	His fair freshness. The allusion here is to the death of Paris, the accounts of which often mention in detail the spoiling of his effeminate beauty in the gory dust of the battlefield.
p. 57	Guard and groom. The Greek word means ‘chamberlains’, personal servants who would be intimate with their master and mistress.
p. 60	An interval of some days. I follow Professor Campbell in thinking that an interval is certainly indicated here. It is true that the action of most extant Greek plays is contained between dawn and dusk of one day; but this can hardly be maintained of the extant plays of Aeschylus, of which, besides the Oresteia, there are four. Of these The Suppliants and Prometheus are timeless; in The Persians time is irrelevant; only in The Seven Against Thebes is the action in any way related to the passage of a day. In the Oresteia, The Eumenides breaks the unity of place by the distance between Athens and Delphi, and the unity of time probably by several years. In The Choephori time is clearly limited to one day, but there are several changes of scene. So that, on the evidence of the extant work of Aeschylus, there is no reason whatever for thinking it unlikely that he should postulate an interval of anything up to fifteen days between the capture of Troy and the arrival of Agamemnon at Argos. The lines immediately preceding the interval fit the chattering dispersal of the Chorus as exactly as the following lines suit their bustling return to the stage. It is, however, possible that the Interval should come at the end of the Ode, just before the lines, ‘Since the beacon’s news was heard,’ etc.
p. 61	You deities who watch the rising sun. The statues of Zeus, Apollo, and Hermes stand on the eastward or south-eastward façade of the palace, facing the direction from which Agamemnon arrives.
p. 62	Our hearts echo what you felt. Their relief at Agamemnon’s safe arrival is so deep that they could now die happy. The more sombre note of ‘Our hearts were dark with trouble’ naturally escapes the Herald.
p. 64	A wife as faithful as he left. In this and the following lines Clytemnestra uses her characteristic mixture of irony and extravagant lies, designed to baffle and disturb with innuendo.
p. 66	Helen, the Spoiler. The root HELE means ‘destroying’. This does not mean that the name ‘Helen’ originally meant ‘a destroyer’; but fancied derivations were a Greek pastime, and were felt to have dramatic significance.
	To hear the Zephyr breathe Gigantic… The Greek says simply, ‘She sailed by the breath of the giant Zephyr.’ I cannot see any reason why Aeschylus should here mention that Zephyr in legend was a giant, except to suggest by the word the vast height and expanse of the sails of Paris’s ship.
	Bond and pledge. The Greek word KEDOS has two quite unrelated meanings: ‘marriage-kinship’ and ‘grief’. A ‘pledge’ in marriage unites two persons and two families; but a ‘bond’ may be that of captivity or death.
p. 67	The god defied.I.e. Zeus, guardian of the laws of hospitality which Paris broke. A lion’s cub. The gentle young creature is a symbol of Helen as Paris and the Trojans first saw her.
p. 68	When Earth and Time were young. The faith expressed in this stanza gives the poet’s reason for feeling that he must ‘justify the ways of God to man’ in the story of Agamemnon.
p. 70	The urn of death. Cf. the trial scene in The Eumenides, where a different method of voting is used. In the method Agamemnon thinks of, each judge has only one pebble, and drops it into the one urn for acquittal, or into the other for condemnation.
p. 71	The lion rampant. Professor Campbell has collected evidence to show that it was not unknown to have on the surface of a shield a figure of a beast which could be rotated from inside the shield as the warrior charged, thus disconcerting an enemy who was unacquainted with the device.
p. 71	A ranked and ravening litter. Here is another play on words. LOCHOS means both ‘newly-born young’ and a ‘band’ of armed men; and it is here used of the Greek soldiers who emerged from the womb of the wooden horse.
	Life and long observation. Agamemnon is ready to apply the Elders’ warning in any direction but the right one.
	Where disease wants remedy… this body… By ‘this body’ he means the State of Argos. The secondary application, suggested by dramatic irony, is of course to the family of Atreus and to Agamemnon’s own body.
p. 72	Why our child is not here. The name ‘Orestes’ is left till the end of the sentence, for Clytemnestra is thinking not only of him but of Iphigenia. Surely free from all suspicion. Note the skill with which Clytemnestra, by refuting suspicion of Strophius (which was never entertained by anyone) precludes it from herself.
p. 73	The hour that slept with me. No translation can convey the point of this line. The Greek participle meaning ‘that slept with me’ precedes the noun it refers to, ‘hour’ or ‘time’, which is the last word in the sentence. So that, until this last word is pronounced, dispelling all excuse for uneasiness, it seems as if the meaning were going to be, ‘visions of more deaths involving you than the man who slept with me.’
	May Heaven’s jealousy acquit us. She means, for the ears of the Chorus, ‘acquit Agamemnon and me for our abundant happiness in being reunited’; for the ears of the audience, ‘acquit Aegisthus and me for the success we hope to achieve by the removal of Agamemnon.’
	For both were prolonged. The dramatic value of this vicious snub is not merely that it still further whets Clytemnestra’s appetite for revenge; but that it establishes Agamemnon as a formidable person, a worthy antagonist even for Clytemnestra.
p. 74	The praise of fame rings clear, etc. A possible alternative meaning is, ‘Report has other names in use For frills and fancy foot-rugs,’ i.e. report calls them the follies of a braggart.
p. 74	There is the sea. See Introduction, p. 26.
p. 75	Slavery is a yoke ... Yet Agamemnon himself has just now, by his compliance, put the yoke upon himself; as he did at Aulis, where ‘… he put on The harness of Necessity.’ But Cassandra has not, like her master, learnt to bear the yoke; Clytemnestra, who can impose her will on Agamemnon, fails to gain obedience from Cassandra. ‘Thus the slave proves herself superior to the conqueror, the barbarian to the Greek, the woman to the man’ (R. P. Winnington-Ingram).
	Eleleleleu, This cry is not written in the Greek MSS., but Professor Campbell includes it in his text. See Cassandra’s words on p. 85, ‘that cry of triumph’, etc., a passage which makes it almost certain that a stage-direction indicating this cry has disappeared here.
p. 76	Yields her kingdom in the flesh. I.e. spirit should rule in the flesh; but flesh is now running amuck with fear, and spirit loosens the reins, knowing that the instinct of the flesh is right.
p. 81	Prophets find bad news useful. The Elders, really frightened by Cassandra’s last utterance, find a comforting escape in this reflection.
p. 82	Itun, Itun. The accusative case of ITUS, which is usually spelt in English Itys. He was the son of Procne, whom she herself killed to punish her husband Tereus for the rape of her sister Philomela. Philomela was afterwards turned into a nightingale, and Itun, Itun is supposed to represent her song.
p. 83	Cocytus, Acheron. Two rivers of the lower world. The names mean respectively ‘river of wailing’ and ‘river of grief’.
p. 84	A ghastly choir. Cassandra means the Furies, who would naturally haunt a house so steeped in crime. Aeschylus does not trouble to reconcile the older view, that the Furies punished many kinds of crime, with the later view (assumed in The Eumenides) that they are only concerned with the criminal who kills one of his own blood.
	The defiler of his brother’s bed. Thyestes had committed adultery with Atreus’ wife Aerope.
p. 84	The God of Words. A very common name for Apollo was Loxias, which is perhaps connected with LOGOS, ‘a word’, or perhaps with LOXOS, ‘ambiguous’.
p. 86	She vows to drug his dram. For this double meaning of ‘ a safe arrival’ cf. p. 74, ‘safe journey’s end’, and p. 91, ‘thank-offering for safe journey’. A safe arrival would be celebrated both by drinking and by libation to the gods. The cup Cly-temnestra is preparing for Agamemnon is his death, mingled with Cassandra’s.
p. 90	In a silver bath. This is certain enough; see p. 96, ‘Lord of this silver-walled inheritance.’ Zeus, lord of the lower region. Cf. The Choephori, p. 117, ‘Zeus of the lower earth.’
p. 92	Chryseis. The daughter of a priest of Apollo in a small town near Troy, whom Agamemnon took for his concubine.
p. 93	Affronts both ear and heart. This translates a single word which means ‘lawlessly’; but it is used in two senses, both of which apply here: ‘breaking the laws of music’ and ‘breaking the laws of justice’; for the word NOMOS, ‘due measure’, can mean both ‘custom’ and ‘tune’.
p. 94	Dressed in my form, a phantom… I.e. I am but an instrument of the living curse that haunts our house.
p. 95	His ageing days. The word ‘ageing’ is not in the text; but I have felt justified in using it here, because the contrast between the immaturity of Thyestes’ sons and of Iphigenia, and the maturity of Agamemnon, is more than once emphasized. See p. 94, ‘A man for babes should bleed’, and p. 143, ‘Next in succession died a man.’
p. 97	A net the avenging Furies wove. Aegisthus claims all the sanctions of justice; and with some colour. But he omits the provocation given by Thyestes to Atreus when he seduced his wife.
p. 98	House of Tantalus. The Greek text says, ‘House of Pleisthenes’. Pleisthenes was probably a son of Tantalus, but a link in the chain who is not often mentioned and whose name at this point merely confuses the English reader.

THE CHOEPHORI

p. 104	Through the hushed midnight house. The voice was that of Clytemnestra, shrieking in terror at the dream which is described on pp. 122–3.
p. 111	Their measurements Show the same form, the same proportions. This statement, though it has sometimes been derided, is not so foolish as it may seem. Professor Tucker in his edition quotes evidence of primitive tribes even in modern times to whom the shape of the feet is as clear a mark of family resemblance as the face.
p. 112	Behold the eagle’s brood bereaved. In Agamemnon the Atreidae were eagles, first robbed of their young, then tearing the pregnant hare. But Clytemnestra is also a viper in whose coils the victim was ensnared; so Orestes too will soon (p. 123) ‘be viperous in heart and act’. In Agamemnon (p. 86) Clytemnestra was the lioness who mated with a wolf; in Choephori (p. 118) ‘the savage cubs the she-wolf bore Are like their mother.’
p. 113	With prayer and countless offerings. This cannot but recall Agamemnon’s offering of Iphigenia; for the word used here – not a common word – is the same as that used in Agamemnon, p. 50, in the phrase, ‘He endured to offer up his daughter’s life.’
	A hand so liberal. Electra has prayed for ‘clean hands and ways unlike my mother’s’. But this phrase reminds us that the daughter of two parents both guilty of murder is now herself planning murder.
p. 117	Shall like to like give birth? Cf. Agamemnon, p. 69, ‘Like the Powers that give it birth.’
p. 119	His flesh was mutilated. This probably refers to the cutting off of hands and feet and placing them under the armpits; a supposed precaution against the vengeance of the dead.
p. 120	None from outside can help. This thought is repeated on p. 133, ‘Redemption from within.’
p. 123	It was treachery they used to kill him. Cf. Agamemnon, p. 95, ‘The guile I used to kill him.’
p. 125	Three examples of the lengths to which reckless passion will drive women.
	Althaea. When her son Meleager was born she was told that he would live only until the torch that lit her palace hall was burnt out. She quickly extinguished the torch, and kept it in a safe place; but when her brothers were killed by Meleager in a fight, in her rage she lit the torch, and Meleager died.
	Scylla. Daughter of Nisus king of Megara. When Minos besieged Megara, Scylla was bribed by him to cut off a golden hair on her father’s head, on which his life depended.
	The Lemnian massacre. All the women of Lemnos, jealous of their husbands’ concubines, agreed together to kill their husbands, the concubines, and all male Lemnians. Only one woman, Hypsipyle, spared her father, Thoas.
p. 127	The avenging fiend. There is a double meaning here. The fiend is the Curse or Fury that haunts the house; it waits its time and seems to have forgotten; but at last it ‘pays’ or ‘punishes’ the crime. The fiend is also Clytemnestra, whose name can be interpreted to mean ‘renowned for guile’, and who now ‘pays’ her ancient crime, i.e. suffers for it, ‘in blood’.
p. 128	O misery ! Our last defences… It has been argued that these lines would be more suitable in the mouth of Electra; several phrases would thus gain in point or bear a double meaning. But, apart from the fact that no MS. indicates it, a re-entry for Electra here seems to me both circumstantially improbable and dramatically confusing.
p. 136	Down with your sword, my son ! Clytemnestra first tries the voice of authority – when she last saw Orestes he was a little boy. Finding it has no effect, she proceeds at once to the most pathetic appeal possible; but her very words remind her of her dream.

THE EUMENIDES

p. 147	Pythian. The word is applied to Apollo, to his oracle, and to his priestess. It is derived from the Greek word meaning ‘to find out by inquiry’, and refers to Apollo’s oracular function.
p. 147	Earth, Themis. In Prometheus Aeschylus identifies these two -’many names for one person’ – as the mother of Prometheus. See Introduction, p. 10.
	Parnassus. The mountain which rises close to Delphi.
	Hephaestus’ sons. Erichthonius, mythical founder of Athens, was a son of Hephaestus.
p. 148	People and king alike. I.e. the Delphians and their eponymous king Delphos.
	Pallas Pronaia. Pronaia means ‘before the temple’. ‘Pallas of the precincts.’
	Bromius. Another name for Dionysus. The story of his encounter with Pentheus is told in Euripides’ play The Bacchae.
	Fresh olive-leaves twined with white wool. The proper equipment for a suppliant at an altar.
p. 152	Earth’s central sacred stone. There was in the forecourt of the Delphic temple a stone, used as an altar, and said to be the central point of the earth. It was called Omphalos, ‘the navel’.
p. 153	Destiny. Literally, ‘the Fates’. There seems to be an allusion here to the legend that Apollo tricked the three Fates, by making them drunk, into agreeing to postpone the death of Admetus on condition that he found a willing substitute. See Euripides’ Alcestis. The argument of the next stanza seems to be, ‘Orestes shall not, like Alcestis, be rescued from death.’ But the reference is somewhat faintly hinted, and to make it clear in translation would involve considerable expansion. Cf. the allusion to this story in the trial scene, p. 172.
	Some pit of punishments, etc. Apollo abuses the Furies as being barbarous, and the barbarisms he mentions are horrors that Greeks usually associated with Oriental despotism. He means simply that the function of the Furies is ‘un-Hellenic’, in contrast to the Hellenic use of courts and juries.
p. 155	The scene changes. Note that this change is not even covered by a choral Ode, and that the interval implied is a good deal more difficult to imagine than the time-interval in Agamemnon. The speech of Orestes which follows indicates that the interval may have been one of years.
	p. 155 Not unclean now. In the first scene his hands and sword were still wet with blood.
p. 157	She shall gain…myself, my country, etc. The year before the production of this play a treaty had been made between Athens and Argos.
	At rest, at war. The Greek says (according to the probable interpretation), ‘whether standing or sitting’, and refers to statues of Athene, which were made sometimes in the one posture, sometimes in the other. It was a Greek habit to refer to a statue personally, as if it were itself the deity.
	The Phlegraean plain. This is in Chalcidice, in north-eastern Greece; it was the scene of the battle between gods and giants, in which Athene acted as general.
p. 158	Now, by the altar, etc. No English version can do justice to the rhythmical force of this ‘binding-spell’. A producer might well prefer to abandon the stanza printed in italics, and use the Greek. I give a transcription, with the syllables marked short and long. It would be advisable to get someone with a knowledge of Greek to suggest a reasonable pronunciation.
	ěpĭ dě tō těthŭměnō tŏdě mělōs, părăkŏpā, părăphrŏnā phrěnŏdālēs, hūmnŏs ēx ěrīnŭōn, dēsmĭōs phrenon, ăphōr– mīktŏs, aūŏnā biŏtīs.
p. 159	And Hope… lies. This is an attempt to render the ironic understatement of the Greek, which says, literally, ‘And when he dies he is not unduly free.’
p. 160	Zeus, free from taint or question. But the meaning may be rather, ‘Free from taint or the duty of carrying out an enquiry.’ If so, it is significant that Athene, rejecting this safeguard of divine purity, proceeds at once to institute an enquiry: ‘Was there not some compulsive power… ? (p. 162).
	For him our dreaded footfall.… I.e. the punishment of abhorrent crime is a function which deeply concerns Zeus, but the exercise of it might compromise his purity; it is to relieve him that we undertake such duties.
p. 161	Beside Scamander. This is an allusion to a dispute between Athens and Mytilene concerning the possession of some territory near Troy, which took place about the time this play was produced.
p. 162	But he would ask no oath. This passage is based on the form of the preliminary enquiry which an Athenian magistrate would conduct before referring the case to the appropriate court of law. In this enquiry the plaintiff would state on oath that he had suffered injury, and the defendant that he was innocent.
p. 168	The man she kitted was not of her own blood. This is a weak argument, for it plainly dishonours the marriage-bond. Orestes, however, instead of attacking the argument on this ground, himself makes a weak reply by asking, ‘But I am of my mother’s?’ The obvious reply of the Chorus-leader brings the jurors’ sympathy again to her side. Orestes, feeling he is out of his depth, hands over to his advocate. For the whole of this passage see Introduction, p. 34–5.
	For man, woman, or city. The words ‘or city’ will remind the audience that the influence of Delphi had tended to favour the Persians rather than to encourage Greek independence.Whose name has sanctioned it. Zeus was the guardian of oaths.
p. 170	I hare shot every shaft. Most texts attribute this speech to the Chorus and the next but one (‘You have heard…’) to Apollo. The MSS., plainly at fault, give both to the Chorus. Mr Winnington-Ingram has shown quite clearly that the arrangement adopted here is the right one.
	So, do not taint… This line is not in the Greek. It is inserted to make clearer the point of the proverb about pure water, which refers to the warning phrase, ‘while they keep my laws unchanged.’
p. 176	Erechtheus. The first king of Athens.
	To set…man against man. The whole of this passage is plainly a stern warning against political disunity within Athens.
p. 181	A resplendent company. The Panathenaic procession. See Introduction, p. 19.