Part 17 (2/2)
Pp. 47-50, 11. 827-900.--In this scene Iphigenia simply abandons herself to one emotion after another, while Orestes, amid all his joy, keeps his head and thinks about the danger that still surrounds them. When he reminds her that they are ”not yet fortunate,” she thinks only of Aulis and her old wrong. At last Orestes gets in the word, ”Suppose you had murdered me to-day,”
and she is recalled by a rush of horror at her own conduct: she has nearly killed him, and he is still in imminent danger. She tries pa.s.sionately and despairingly to think of ways of escape, but it needs the intervention of Pylades (which she rather resents) to bring her into a mood for sober thinking.
P. 51, 1. 915, A wife and happy.--The last we heard of Electra was that she lived ”unmated and alone” (1. 562, p. 31). But that was said when Pylades was regarded as practically a dead man. Electra was apparently betrothed to Pylades, but was not actually his wife.--There is no mention of the Peasant husband of the Electra.
P. 52, 1. 818.--Anaxibia (?), sister of Agamemnon, was wife to Strophios. See genealogical table.
P. 53, 11. 930 ff., That frenzy on the sh.o.r.e!--It is only now that Iphigenia fully realises her brother's madness. His narrative immediately following makes her feel it the more, and it is evidently in her mind while she speaks 11. 989 ff.
P. 54 f., 11. 940 ff., Orestes' Trial at Athens.--According to one legend Orestes was finally purified of his guilt by a trial at the Areopagus, in which Apollo championed him, and Athena, as President, gave a casting vote for mercy. (This is the story of Aeschylus' Eumenides.) By another, he was healed when he had brought this Image of Artemis to Attica. Euripides combines the two.--It must often have happened in a blood-feud that some of the kindred of the slain man would accept the result of a trial and obey the law, while some cared for no law but clung to their vengeance. Euripides makes the Furies do the same. Some accept the judgment and stay as ”Eumenides” in Athens; others know no law nor mercy.
P. 55, 11. 949-960, Mine evil days are made a rite among them.--At the Feast of the Anthesteria, each family summoned its ghosts from the grave and after the feast sent them back again. While they were about, it was very important that each man should keep his ghosts to himself: there must be no infection of strange or baleful ghosts. Hence a rite in which each man ate and drank his own portion, holding no communication with his neighbour. The story then went that this was done in commemoration of Orestes'
visit to Athens with the stain of blood upon him. (See Miss Harrison's Prolegomena, chap, ii.) There was a similar feast in Aegina.
P. 56, 11. 990-1006.--Iphigenia's speech. We must realise that Iphigenia has been suddenly confronted by a new and complicated difficulty. She was prepared to make some plot to save her brother's life. She now realises that he is on the verge of madness; that he is determined to commit an act of what will be considered desperate sacrilege by stealing the image of Artemis; and that he expects her to help him to get the image to his s.h.i.+p.
--She might hope to send him away safe and be forgiven by the King: if she helps him to steal the image, she cannot possibly be forgiven. Again, she might very possibly fly with him secretly, if she went alone; but to steal the statue and fly seems impossible.
Confronted with this problem, she deliberately abandons both her thoughts of vengeance and her hope of escape, and agrees to give her life for Orestes.
P. 59, 1. 1029, I think I dimly see.--Compare Electra, translation, p. 42, where Electra suddenly solves the difficulty of slaying Clytemnestra.
P. 63, 11. 1075 ff., Be of good heart, sweet Mistress.--The women of the Chorus are indeed ”true of heart and faithful found,” as Athena says later. And one feels that Iphigenia, after her first gush of grat.i.tude, does not think of them much. She will save her brother, and they will be left with very little hope of ever seeing Greece, if indeed they are not fatally compromised by their share in the plot.--One can hardly blame Iphigenia; but it is like her.
P. 64, 1. 1089, Bird of the sea rocks.--A wonderful lyric, as spoken by these exiles waiting on the sh.o.r.e.--In their craving for home the island of Delos becomes the symbol for all that is Greek. Delos, the birth-place of Apollo and of a kinder Artemis than that which they now serve, was the meeting-place of all the Ionians. The palm-tree, the laurel, the olive, and the Orbed Lake of Delos were all celebrated in ritual poetry. The singing Swan is not a myth; it is a migratory swan, with a bell-like cry, which comes in the winter down from South Russia to Greece.
Isle of Pain and Love.--Literally, ”Beloved birth-pang of Leto.”
When Leto was about to give birth to her twin children and no land would receive her, the little rock of Delos pitied her and gave her a resting-place.
P. 64, 11. 1106 ff., Ah the old tears.--The singer's mind goes back to her old grief, when her city was taken and she sold as a slave from market to market till she reached Thoas. Then comes the thought of Iphigenia's happy voyage to Greece and freedom; then a dream-like longing to fly home, to watch the dances where once she danced for the prize of beauty.
P. 67, 1. 1156, Iphigenia enters, carrying the Image.--It would probably be a sort of Palladion--a rough figure with a s.h.i.+eld (originally typifying the moon?), not very large. She would probably hold it in a robe of some sort, that her bare hand might not touch a thing so holy. At sight of Thoas she would probably cover it up altogether. It is not quite clear when she puts the image down.
P. 67, 1. 1161, I unsay that word.--It was a bad omen for Thoas to say at so critical a moment that a rule was broken. The priestess declares the word unsaid--just the opposite of ”accepting” an omen.--Dr. Verrall, however, suggests to me that the line means, ”I ask Hosia (the spirit of Holiness) to take in charge what I am going to say”; i.e. all the falsehoods into which she is about to plunge.
This scene of the fooling of Thoas is full of wit and double meanings. The end of it is rather like the famous scene in Forget- me-not, where the Corsican avenger is induced to turn his back in order to let a lady pa.s.s out of the room without being seen and compromised, the lady in question being really the person whom he has sworn to kill.
P. 72, 11. 1203 ff.--This change of metre denotes increasing tension of excitement.
Each individual invention of Iphigenia seems clearly to have its purpose. She wants to combine a great appearance of precaution against the escape of the strangers--hence the soldiers, the bonds, &c.--with the greatest possible reality of precaution against any one preventing their escape: hence she takes the soldiers without an officer, the townsfolk are forbidden to follow or even to look, and the King is left at the Temple. The exact motive of all the veiling I do not see; perhaps it adds to the effect to represent Thoas as deliberately hiding his eyes while he is deceived. But in any case her precautions all seem sound according to ancient theology.
P. 77, 11. 1235, 1282, Oh, fair the fruits of Leto blow, &c.--A curious and rather difficult little ritual hymn explaining how Apollo came from Delos to Delphi. It acts more as an interlude than anything else, to fill the time until we learn the issue of the attempt at escape.
All Delphi originally belonged to Mother Earth. The oracles were given by her daughter Themis, and the place guarded by an ancient earth-born Dragon. Apollo came, slew the Dragon, and turned Themis away. Earth took revenge upon him in a curious manner: she invented Dreams, which told the future freely, though, it would seem, confusedly, and, so to speak, spoiled the trade of Delphi until Apollo appealed to Zeus for protection.--The story is not very creditable to the G.o.ds, and is expressly denied by Aeschylus on that ground. According to them there was never any strife; Earth, Themis, Phoebe peacefully succeeded one another at Delphi, and Phoebe gave it as a birth-gift to Phoebus or Apollo.
I think the story is probably a case of the infant Sun slaying the Serpent of darkness. The ancient identification of Phoebus Apollo with the sun and Artemis Hecate with the moon seems to me to withstand all modern criticisms, though of course there are many other elements combined with the Sun and Moon elements.
P. 79, 1. 1284, Messenger.--This excited rush upon the stage of a man clamouring for the King is very clever as a next step in the story. One sees at once the sort of thing that has happened, and wants to know what exactly.
P. 80, 1. 1302, ”This good messenger.”--There is nothing to tell us what the good messenger is. Probably a large sacred knocker, such as were often on temple doors. (They served for suppliants to catch hold of as well as for summoning the people inside.) But it may be a gong or a horn hanging by the door, or the like.
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