151-215.
mvp-comment-104-1
Outstretched in fear we listen awfully for thy propitious voice, oh sweet-tongued utterance of Heaven. Paean, be our speed! What thing new or old in season due dost thou disclose? Tell us, thou voice, child of bright Hope divine. Athena, Goddess, daughter of the Highest, first hear our cry; thou, Artemis, on thine encircled throne, and archer Phoebus, come in threefold might to save! if ever heretofore ye banished sorrow from our state, now too appear! For, oh! I am overwhelmed; all my host is in disarray; and there is no thought to save; Earth's buds are nipped, and human births prevented by the pains of death: soul after soul takes flight with fearful speed, and poor uncared-for corpses choke with pestilence our unpeopled clime. Wives, mothers, sadly suppliant, at various altars groan; the voice of lamentation mingles with the thrilling hymn. Athena, send us help. and cause yon flaming author of destruction, who with dire noise advances, quickly to reverse his speed and fly our land, whether to Ocean or the restless Pontic sea. Day ruins what night spares. O Father, blast the plague-god with thy lightning. Let thine arrows, O Apollo, be showered to protect us, and Artemis' bright torches from the Lycian hills; and thou, O ruddy crowned Bacchus of the joyous rout, with trooping Maenads, patron of Thebes, draw near. and flash thy brand against the god whom gods disown.' The opening of this parodos is of the nature of a paean (1. 186), or hymn to Apollo as the god of victory or salvation. The stately dactylic measures, corresponding in strophe and antistrophe even to the division of the words (cp. 153, 162, 158, 166), are only once interrupted, as the chorus march towards the altar, by the more meditative iambic rhythm (11. 152, 160), and by the anacrusis in ll. 154, 163. The increasing excitement of the chorus is shown in the second strophe and antistrophe, by iambic and trochaic rhythms with resolution of the arsis, by the union of dactyls and trochees in logaoedic lines, and by the more frequent anacruses. The bright Paean notes give way to tones of sadness, echoing the στονόεσσα γήρυς (11. 186-187). The scheme of στρ. and ἀντ. β'. is the following (ll. 167-178=11. 179-189) :- LÚC CCC CICI lúc Ca CICICCICCICCIK ICC ICC ICC ICC 기 100 100 100 CUCCICCIC CICCICCIC LUCCICCICC ICICII In the concluding strophe and antistrophe (γ'.) there is only one dactylic line, just as there was one iambic in the first. The other rhythms are iambic and trochaic, with occasional syncope of the thesis (or change to the cretic rhythm). The movement, though still full of excitement, becomes more energetic and determined towards the close. The scansion is as follows:- C CCICICICIC- 기 つ つ 기 00 ト KCICICI トー 1くらいCICICII The rhythm of the whole ode, which is unusually wild and full of transitions, shows a progress from flowing dactylic numbers to iambics and trochaics, which are interrupted here and there by syncope of the thesis, or in other words, by an antispastic effect, corresponding to the distraction of the thought.
203.
mvp-comment-139-1
Λύκει᾿ ἄναξ His altar is before their eyes. Cp. 1. 919. Either (1) τε is correlative to re in l. 205, and a new beginning is made with the strophe: or (2) τε is a conjunction ('And') as in supr. 190, and is postponed, like δέ, after the vocative. The former (1) is more probable. For the twofold invocation, cp. Aesch. S. c. Τ. 145-150. ἀγκυλᾶν is poetical plural.
205.
mvp-comment-140-1
βέλεα βελεα, θέλοιμ᾽ ἂν .. ἐν-
205.
mvp-comment-140-2
δατεῖσθαι
I would see showered. ἐνδατεῖσθαι to be taken passively in the sense of distributing or dispensing. So the Scholiast, whose interpretation is confirmed by the prep. ἀπό, which is more naturally explained as dependent on the verb. For the rare passive, see Essay on Language p. 53.
205.
mvp-comment-140-3
ἀδάματα notwithstanding the order, is an epithet, but an emphatic epithet. Cp. infr. 671-672, τὸ γὰρ σόν, οὐ τὸ τοῦδ᾽, ἐποικτείρω στόμα | ἐλεινόν. Essay on Language § 23. p. 37.
206.
mvp-comment-141-1
ἀρωγὰ προσταθέντα ‘Set forth to protect and succour me.' The 1st aorist passive of προΐστημι is rare, but so also is παρεστάθην, which occurs in the senarii,
l. 911
; cp. also Tr. 340, σταθεῖσ᾽ ἄκουσον. This is more probable than either προσ-ταθέντα (προστείνω οςcurs nowhere and would be meaningless here) or προσταχθέντα, which has been conjectured, but is hardly metrical (see ll. 192-193). The arrows of Apollo are spoken of in language properly applicable to persons, as if they were an amy bringing relief. There is also an allusion to Apollo's attribute as προστατήριος, Εl. 637. Cp. Aesch. Theb. 145, Λύκει᾿ ἄναξ, Λύκειος γενοῦ στρατῷ δαΐῳ: ib. 8, Ζεὺς ἀλεξητήριος ἐπώνυμος γένοιτο.
208.
mvp-comment-142-1
Λύκι᾿ ὄρεα (ὄρεα) Echoing Λύκει᾿ ἄναξ, which therefore seems in this passage to be associated with the Lycian worship of Apollo; though differently interpreted in Εl. 6, 7, τοῦ λυκοκτόνου θεοῦ | ἀγορὰ Λύκειος.
208.
mvp-comment-142-2
Μαινάδων 209. τὸν χρυσομίτραν ὁμόστολον] Cp. Lucian. Dial. Deorum, 18. 1, μίτρᾳ ἀναδεδεμένος τὴν κόμην, τὰ πολλὰ δὲ μαινομέναις ταῖς γυναιξὶ συνών. And for the Maenads, cp. Ant. 1122.
210.
mvp-comment-143-1
τᾶσδ᾽ ἐπώνυμον γᾶς
Who bears the name of this land; i. e. who is called Θηβαῖος (ὁ Θήβας ἐλελίχθων Βάκχιος, Bacchus, Thebe's earth-shaking god,' Ant. 154: Καδμείας νύμφας άγαλμα, ib. 1115), rather than (2)
Who gives a surname to Βακχεία Θήβῃ.
211.
mvp-comment-144-1
εὔιον From εὐοῖ,
Author of joy, as ἰήϊος (from in) is
helper in sorrow. The feeling which prompts the cry becomes the attribute of the god to whom it is addressed.
212.
mvp-comment-145-1
The reading μονόστολον, (easily accounted for where the letters µ and ✓ are so frequent as in 11. 209 ff.) has obtained a strong hold of the MSS, but is generally accompanied by glosses which belong to the other reading, e.g. συνόμιλον, συγχορευτάν.
214.
mvp-comment-146-1
A word = πυρφόρῳ is omitted.
215.
mvp-comment-147-1
ἀπότιμον
Dishonoured,
put far from honour. The idea is that expressed in the words addressed by Zeus to Ares, Il. 5. 888 ff., τὸν δ' ἄρ᾽ ὑπόδρα ἰδὼν προσέφη νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς, | μή τί μοι, ἀλλοπρόσαλλε, παρεζόμενος μινύριζε. | ἔχθιστος δέ μοί ἐσσι θεῶν οἱ Ολυμπον ἔχουσιν· | αἰεὶ γάρ τοι ἔρις τε φίλη, πόλεμοί τε μάχαι τε: with which cp. Il. 18.107, ὡς ἔρις ἔκ τε θεῶν ἔκ τ' ἀνθρώπων ἀπόλοιτο. Cp. also the expression about the house of Hades, τά τε στυγέουσι θεοί περ (Il. 20.65), and the hard names given to the Erinnyes by Apollo in Aesch. Eum., esp. 73, μισήματ' ἀνδρῶν καὶ θεῶν Ὀλυμπίων: ib. 191, ἀπόπτυστοι θεοῖς.
215.
mvp-comment-147-2
θεόν θεον: treated in the meter as a single syllable.
215.
mvp-comment-147-3
In the many transitions of this chorus the same deities are addressed more than once. In the spirit of polytheism the same gods are called by different names or surnames according to the attributes which are invoked.
