Æschylos Tragedies and Fragments. Aeschylus
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and the eloquence of Pericles.
131
Here, and perhaps throughout, we must think of Antigone as addressing and looking on the corpse of Polyneikes, Ismene on that of Eteocles.
132
Perhaps
“Unless some God had stood against the spear
This chief did wield.”
133
The speech of the Antigone becomes the starting-point, in the hands of Sophocles, of the noblest of his tragedies. The denial of burial, it will be remembered, was looked on as not merely an indignity and outrage against the feelings of the living, but as depriving the souls of the dead of all rest and peace. As such it was the punishment of parricides and traitors.
134
The words are obscure enough, the point lying, it may be, in their ambiguity. Antigone here, as in the tragedy of Sophocles, pleads that the Gods have pardoned; they still command and love the reverence for the dead, which she is about to show. The herald catches up her words and takes them in another sense, as though all the honour he had met with from the Gods had been defeat, and death, and shame, as the reward of his sacrilege. Another rendering, however, gives —
“Yes, so the Gods have done with honouring him.”
135
The words are probably a protest against the changeableness of the Athenian
136
The scene seems at first an exception to the early conventional rule, which forbade the introduction of a third actor on the Greek stage. But it has been noticed that (1) Force does not speak, and (2) Prometheus does not speak till Strength and Force have retired, and that it is therefore probable that the whole work of nailing is done on a lay figure or effigy of some kind, and that one of the two who had before taken part in the dialogue then speaks behind it in the character of Prometheus. So the same actor must have appeared in succession as Okeanos, Io, and Hermes.
137
Prometheus (
138
The generalised statement refers to Zeus, as having but recently expelled Cronos from his throne in Heaven.
139
Hephæstos, as the great fire-worker, had taught Prometheus to use the fire which he afterwards bestowed on men.
140
Perhaps, “All might is ours except o'er Gods to rule.”
141
The words indicate that the effigy of Prometheus, now nailed to the rock, was, as being that of a Titan, of colossal size.
142
The touch is characteristic as showing that here, as in the
143
The silence of Prometheus up to this point was partly, as has been said, consequent on the conventional laws of the Greek drama, but it is also a touch of supreme insight into the heroic temper. In the presence of his torturers, the Titan will not utter even a groan. When they are gone, he appeals to the sympathy of Nature.
144
The legend is from Hesiod (
145
The ocean nymphs, like other divine ones, would be anointed with ambrosial unguents, and the odour would be wafted before them by the rustling of their wings. This too we may think of as part of the “stage effects” of the play.
146
The words are not those of a vague terror only. The sufferer knows that his tormentor is to come to him before long on wings, and therefore the sound as of the flight of birds is full of terrors.
147
By the same stage mechanism the Chorus remains in the air till verse 280, when, at the request of Prometheus, they alight.
148
Here, as throughout the play, the poet puts into the mouth of his
149
The words leave it uncertain whether Themis is identified with Earth, or, as in the
150
The generalising words here, as in v. 35, appeal to the Athenian hatred of all that was represented by the words
151
The state described is that of men who “through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage.” That state, the parent of all superstition, fostered the slavish awe in which Zeus delighted. Prometheus, representing the active intellect of man, bestows new powers, new interests, new hopes, which at last divert them from that fear.
152
The home of Okeanos was in the far west, at the boundary of the great stream surrounding the whole world, from which he took his name.
153
One of the sayings of the Seven Sages, already recognised and quoted as a familiar proverb.
154
See note on
155
In the mythos, Okeanos had given his daughter Hesione in marriage to Prometheus after the theft of fire, and thus had identified himself with his transgression.
156
In the
157
The volcanic character of the whole of Asia Minor, and the liability to earthquakes which has marked nearly every period of its history, led men to connect it also with the traditions of the Titans, some accordingly placing the home of Typhon in Phrygia, some near Sardis, some, as here, in Kilikia. Hesiod (
158
The words point probably to an eruption, then fresh in men's memories, which had happened B.C. 476.