κατανασσαμένη
, middle,
housing in my city.
ll. 932, 933
. The MSS. read
ὁ δὲ μὴ κύρσας βαρέων τούτων
οὐκ οἶδεν ὅθεν πληγαὶ βιότου.
Now τούτων here must refer to the Furies, as αὗται above and τάσδε below: and consequently βαρέων must be wrong, as (1) it is the wrong gender: (2) even if we suppose (with D.) a fem. form βαρεῶν, it clearly is the wrong sense. What Aeschylus means to say is,
He who incurs the wrath of the Furies meets with unexpected calamity: the sins of his fathers bring him into their power.
mvp-sidgwick-430-2-1
We must take therefore some emendation like ἱλαρῶν (Weil.), χαροπῶν (Weck.), τῶνδ᾽ εὐμενέων (Hart.): of which I have preferred the former. βαρέων will perhaps have arisen from confusion of β- and ιλ-: or perhaps from a gloss. Another question arises about the metre. Hermann, followed by most edd. (Lachm. Franz. Pal. Hart. Merkel. Weil.), has assumed that Athena's anapaestic stanzas, which alternate with the lyrics, correspond. There are five such stanzas: the three middle ones (at
ll. 949, 968, 988
) are all the same length: and the first and the last would be exactly equal, if after βιύτου we read some words like προσέπαισαν (H.). The practice is not uniform: thus in the κομμός in the Choephoroi the anapaestic alternating stanzas do not correspond, though roughly about the same length: on the other hand in Agamemnon (11. 1448-1577) the anapaests do correspond.
mvp-sidgwick-430-3-1
It is on the whole more probable that the latter is the case here: and I have accordingly adopted H.'s προσέπαισαν.
mvp-sidgwick-430-4-1
The sense then is,
He who finds them not propitious is stricken with calamities he knows not whence: and μὴ ἱλαρῶν κύρσας is really a euphemism for
offended.
