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."
If the reader thinks this a bold phrase, he must bear in mind that it is Cassandra who speaks, and Æschylus who writes. The translation, indeed, is not literal, but the word "θερμόνους," as CON. says, "has all the marks of genuineness," and I was more afraid of weakening it in translation than of exaggerating it. Other translations are--