The Lyrical Dramas of Aeschylus Translated into English VerseAeschylus
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The Lyrical Dramas of Aeschylus Translated into English Verse
Aeschylus
Aeschylus -- Translations into English; Mythology, Greek -- Drama
"What an earthquake I feel in me!
And on the sudden my whole fabric totters;
My blood within me turns, and through my veins
Parting with natural redness, I discern it
Changed to a fatal yellow."
Even more strongly expressed than in our Greek poet, perhaps a little
too strongly, the words, _I discern it_, certainly not improving the
passage. HARF., as is his fashion, fears to follow the boldness of
his author, and translates--
"The ruddy drop is curdling at my heart."
And in the same spirit FR. gives _dunkelroth_.
Note 74 (p. 74).
"As when in the mortal anguish."
SYM. takes his stand too confidently on a corrupt text, when he says,
"POT. has entirely omitted the fallen warrior bleeding drop by drop,
which is, as it were, introduced into the background by the poet to
aggravate the gloom of the picture." I read καιρία with DIND., CON.,
LINW., and FR., with which single word the fallen warrior
disappears, who comes in, even in SYM.'s version, rather abruptly.
Note 75 (p. 74).
". . . she seizes him
By the strong black horn."
HARF. finds this rough Homeric trait too strong for him. MED. has--
"With her black horn she buts him.
What is that wrapt round his head?"
But, though there is some colour for this translation in the old
Scholiast, I think the reader will scarcely judge very favourably of it,
after considering what PEILE and CON. have judiciously said on the
point. As for authority, {353} all the translators, except MED. and
HUMB., from POT. downwards, English and German, are with me. It is
scarcely necessary to remark against Harford's squeamishness, that the
bull in ancient symbolical language (see poets and coins, _passim_) was
an animal in every respect as noble and kingly as the lion and the eagle
still remain.
Note 76 (p. 75).
"Crieth Itys! Itys! aye."
Procne and Philomele, according to one of the most familiar of old Greek
legends, were daughters of Pandion, king of Athens; and one of them
having been given in marriage to Tereus, a king of the Thracians, in
Daulis, who, after the marriage, offered violence to her sister--the
result was, that the wife, in a fit of mad revenge, murdered her own son
Itys, and gave his flesh to her husband to eat; and, being afterwards
changed into a nightingale, was supposed in her melodious wail
continually to repeat the name of this her luckless offspring.
Note 77 (p. 75).
"The thick blossoms of its woe."
ἀμφιθαλῆ κακοῖς βίον. I hope this expression will not be considered too
strong by those who consider as well the general style of our poet, as
the ὁρῶμεν ἀνθουν πέλαγος Ἀιγᾶιον νεκρ(ο)ις, v. 645 of this play (see
my translation, _supra_, p. 61), and the μανίας δεινόν ὰποστάζει ἀνθηρόν
τε μένος of Sophocles.--Antig. v. 960.
Note 78 (p. 77).
"Soon my reeking heart shall cast."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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