NOTES
Line 51. Read ἔγνωκα· τοῖσδε᾽ γ᾽ οὐδὲν ἀντειπεῖν ἔχω.— W. Headlam.
Line 90. The celebrated ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα refers both to the sound and to the sparkling of the sea, as is shown by the use of ελᾶν for the glittering of armour in Homer, and of ἐκγελᾶν for the explosion of a wave (Plato). There lay in the words a suggestion of the whole effect of the moving water, both sound and light.
Line 113. Reading προυσελούμενος.
Line 331. Commentators, who have taken this line with grave literalness, have tried to explain it by the fact that Okeanos gave his daughter in marriage to Prometheus, or has now come to condole with him; but see Introduction page xxix.
Line 349. That Atlas is himself the pillar of heaven and earth is shown (1) by common sense, which does not allow us to think of an upright pillar being supported by any one's shoulders; (2) the representations of earlier and contemporary art; (3) the words of Aeschylus himself in lines 424 f. Whether the existing text in lines 349 f. can be reconciled with this meaning, or requires emendation, this is not the place to discuss.
Lines 351 f. Typhon or Typhōeus, as he is called in Hesiod, is, of course, simply the volcano-fiend. The myth therefore connects him both with the volcanic country of Cilicia and Northern Syria, and with Etna. In the case of Etna an alternative explanation of the volcanic phenomena—that it is Hephaistos at his forge-work—is here superimposed. The description of Typhon follows closely that in Hesiod, Theog. 820 f.
Line 367. The eruption of Etna referred to is that of B.C. 479/8.
Line 420. It seems ingenuity misplaced to emend this passage to bring it into closer conformity with real geography. There was a great mountain called Caucasus in the East, there were people called Arabs in the East; that was quite enough for Aeschylus. As a matter of fact, we must remember that the uncultivated land to the South of the Armenian mountain-system (whose foot-hills constitute Mesopotamia) was part of the Arab domain, and that the term Caucasus might easily have been extended over Armenia.
Line 431. The description of the mourning of inanimate nature is usually connected with the reference to Atlas. It seems more naturally to follow on the description of the mourning of mankind for Prometheus. Hence Ribbeck was for transposing the last strophe and antistrophe. A more satisfactory method, suggested by the way in which Mr. W. Headlam deals with Supplices, 80 f., is to suppose that the part of the Chorus which sings the parenthesis referring to Atlas, is not the same as that which sang the passage before, and continues the theme of the mourning in βοᾷ δὲ πόντιος κλύδων κτλ.
Line 558. Tradition was rather hazy as to the wife of Prometheus. It was generally agreed that she was a daughter of Okeanos. Her name, here Hesione, is given by Herodotus in the form Asia, made familiar to the English by Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.
Line 574. For the reference in this passage (generally missed by commentators) see Introduction, page xxxv.
Line 636. See Introduction, page xxxiii.
Lines 706 f. The geography of Aeschylus is, of course, not the geography of the real world. Themiskyra, for instance, is on the Southern, and Salmydessos on the Western, shore of the Black Sea: the Caucasus is to the South-east, not to the North, of the Straits of Kertch (the Kimmerian or Meotic Bosporos). The general track of Io is from the Northern shores of Europe across Russia and the Caucasus into Central Asia (the Arimaspians), and thence to the source of the Nile in the land of the Asiatic Ethiopians. The Red Sea and Indian Ocean are ignored: the Nile, according to a current belief in antiquity is thought to rise in Asia and thence curve round to the West and turn North from the place of the cataract (line 810), where, indeed, it begins to be called Nile. Aeschylus confuses the Stairway, Katabathmos, which was a place on the Western border of Egypt towards Cyrene, with the Cataract of the Nile.
Line 789. The stream is, of course, the Straits of Kertch, see line 736. In the Prometheus Unbound Aeschylus made the Phasis (Rion) the frontier of Europe and Asia. A deliberate inconsistency in the same trilogy is improbable. He is therefore probably confusing the Phasis and the Tanaïs (Don), whose mouth was approached through the Straits of Kertch. This would explain why he puts the Straits of Kertch South of the Caucasus.
Line 882. The meaning of ἀκραγεῖς is quite uncertain. It cannot mean "not barking," since κράζειν is not the distinctive noise of dogs. It might mean "not making any noise," but there would then be no point in it. I believe it contains some reference to the eagle element in the Gryphons as against the quadruped element denoted by κύνας.
Line 1027. The legend alluded to is that, at the freeing of Prometheus, Zeus made it a condition of his liberation that some other god should surrender his immortality. This Cheiron the Centaur was willing to do, because of his agony from the wound inflicted by the poisoned arrow of Herakles.