The idea of a succession of celestial dynasties proceeding on a system of "development," as a certain class of modern philosophers are fond to express it, is characteristic of the Greek mythology.--(See p. 47 above, Antistrophe I.) The Furies, according to all the genealogies given of them, were more ancient gods than Apollo, with whom they are here brought, into collision. Our poet, as we shall see in the opening invocation of the first grand choral hymn of this piece, makes them the daughters of most ancient NIGHT, who, according to the Theogony (v. 123), proceeded immediately from the aboriginal CHAOS. Hesiod himself makes the Erinyes, along with the giants, to be produced from the blood of Uranus, when his genitals were cut off by Kronos (Theog. 185); a genealogy, by the way, quite in consistency with the Homeric representation given in the Introductory Remarks, of the origin of the Furies from the curses uttered by injured persons, worthy of special veneration, on those by whom their sacrosanct character had been violated. {378} Note 21 (p. 147). "But where beheading, eye-out-digging dooms." In this enumeration of horrors I have omitted κακοῦ τε χλ(ο)υνις, concerning which LIN. says, "_Omnino de hoc loco maximis in tenebris versamur; nam neque de lectione, neque de verborum significatione certi quidquam constat._" Note 22 (p. 147). "She was murdered here, That murdered first her husband." The reasons given by WELL. and HER. (Opusc. vi. 2. 42.) why the two lines, 203-4 W., should not both be given with STAN., SCHÜTZ, and MÜL., to Apollo, have satisfied LIN., PAL., FR., SCHOE., DR., E. P. Oxon., and BUT. Certainly the epithets ὅμαιμος and αυθέντης (which latter the Scholiast interprets μιαρὸς) sound anything but natural in the mouth of Apollo. The emphasis put on ὃμαιμος in this very connection by the Furies, in v. 575, _infra_, noted by Hermann, should decide the question. Note 23 (p. 147). ". . . matrimonial Hera." Literally the _perfect_ Hera, the _perfecting_ or _consummating_ Hera, Ἤρα τελεια, marriage being considered the sacred consummating ceremony of social life, and, therefore, designated among the Greeks by the same term, τέλος, which they used to express initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries. As Jove presides over all important turns in human fate, there is also necessarily a Ζὲυς τελειος. See BLOM. Agam. 946, and Passow _in voce_ τέλειος. Conf. Æn. iii. 605, _Juno pronuba._ Note 24 (p. 147). "The nuptial bed, to man and woman fated." STAN. has remarked that this word _fated_, μορσίμη, so applied, is Homeric (Od. XVI. 392); and, indeed, though we seem to choose our wives, we choose them oft-times so strangely, that a man may be said, without exaggeration, to have as little to do with his marriage as with his birth or his death--but all the three in a peculiar sense belong to that Μοῖρα, or divine lot, which distributes all the good and evil of which human life is made up. Note 25 (p. 149).