Page:Eumenides (Murray 1925).djvu/81

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NOTES

P. 28, ll. 576 ff. Apollo appears both as a witness and as a patron or sympathizer: quite an important character in ancient justice.

P. 29, l. 589. The three bouts: of an ordinary wrestling match.

P. 31, l. 610. "I can no more": Orestes is at the end of his forces. He can speak no more, and merely longs to have his fate settled somehow. Cf. his words to Athena, p. 23, l. 468.

P. 32, l. 632. A marble bed, etc. The text seems defective here. The same kind of marble vessel served both as a bath and as a sarcophagus.

P. 32, l. 641. Did he not bind his father and his king: There is often an awkward clash between the Zeus of Aeschylus' exalted conception and the Zeus of accepted mythology. Still, it is quite in consonance with Aeschylus' conception that Zeus should have done violence, and then learned better and made amends.

P. 33, l. 660. Cf. p. 30, l. 606 above. This theory of generation was largely held in antiquity, and has only been disproved in recent times. See Aristotle, De Gen Anim., Book 4. Eur., Orestes, 552 ff.

P. 34, l. 682. What none before hath given: i.e. hitherto they have only gone by mechanical tests and ordeals; now they have tried to find the full truth. The Council of the Areopagus was a Council of Elders, of the type usual in ancient Indo-European Societies, reinforced, like the Roman Senate, by the co-optation of all ex-magistrates ("Archontes"). It exercised a general supervision over the state, especially in matters of religious pollution. At the time of the Persian

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