Aeschylus -- Translations into English; Mythology, Greek -- Drama
Kissia was properly the name of the district in which Susa stood; but
here, and in v. 123, it is treated as if it belonged to a separate
city. Throughout the play there is, indeed, a lavish use of Persian
barbaric names of persons and places, without a very minute regard to
historical accuracy.
Footnote 6:
Here, as in Herodotos and Greek writers generally, the title, “the
King,” or “the great King,” was enough. It could be understood only of
the Persian. The latter name had been borne by the kings of Assyria (2
Kings xviii. 28). A little later it passed into the fuller, more
boastful form of “The King of kings.”
Footnote 7:
The inhabitants of the Delta of the Nile, especially those of the
marshy districts near the Heracleotic mouth, were famed as supplying
the best and bravest soldiers of any part of Egypt.—Comp. Thucyd. i.
110.
Footnote 8:
The epithet was applied probably by Æschylos to the Lydians properly
so called, the barbaric race with whom the Hellenes had little or
nothing in common. They, in dress, diet, mode of life, their distaste
for the contests of the arena, seemed to the Greeks the very type of
effeminacy. The Ionian Greeks, however, were brought under the same
influence, and gradually acquired the same character. The suppression
of the name of the Ionians in the list of the Persian forces may be
noticed as characteristic. The Athenian poet would not bring before an
Athenian audience the shame of their Asiatic kinsmen.
Footnote 9:
Tmôlos, sacred as being the mythical birth-place of Dionysos.
Footnote 10:
“Spear-anvils,” _sc._, meeting the spear of their foes as the anvils
would meet it, turning its point, themselves steadfast and immovable.
Footnote 11:
So Herodotos (vii. 74) in his account of the army of Xerxes describes
the Mysians as using for their weapons those darts or “javelins” made
by hardening the ends in the fire.
Footnote 12:
Helle the daughter of Athamas, from whom the Hellespont took its name.
For the description of the pontoons formed by boats, which were moored
together with cables and finally covered with faggots, comp. Herod,
vii. 36.
Footnote 13:
“Gold-born,” _sc._, descended from Perseus, the child of Danaë.
Footnote 14:
Syrian, either in the vague sense in which it became almost synonymous
with Assyrian, or else showing that Syria, properly so called,
retained the fame for chariots which it had had at a period as early
as the time of the Hebrew Judges (Judg. v. 3). Herodotos (vii. 140)
gives an Oracle of Delphi in which the same epithet appears.
Footnote 15:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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