Page:Frogs (Murray 1912).djvu/136

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128
ARISTOPHANES

and love in Aeschylus is on the v/hole treated with reserve and stiffness. There was, however, a famous speech of Aphrodite in the Danaïdes, explaining herself as a world-force. And Euripides would probably have shrunk from writing such lines as Myrmidons, fr. 135, 136, and from representing Semelê's pregnancy as Aeschylus seems to have done in the play called by her name (see Nauck), a great deal more than Aeschylus would have shrunk from the delicate psychology of Euripides' Phaedra. In the dramatic treatment of female character Aeschylus was really the pioneer who opened the road for Euripides. The Clytaemnestra of the Agamemnon probably differs from the women of earlier poets in just the same way as Phaedra differs from her, and to a far greater degree.

P. 78, l. 1046, Once . . . left you flat on the ground.]—The allusion is entirely obscure.

P. 78, l. 1051, To gratify Bellerophontes.]—That hero, in a fury, had wished that all women might poison themselves.

P. 79, l. 1058, The language of men.]—Euripides, as represented, agrees with Wordsworth. The general voice of poetry is clearly against both.

P. 80, l. 1074, And spit on the heads, &c.]—One of the passages which show that Aristophanes could see the other side when he chose. Your stout, ignorant pre-sophistic farmer or sailor was a bit of a brute after all!

P. 80, l. 1080, Goes into shrines.]—Augê.

P. 80, l. 1081, Her own brother's wife.]—Canacê in the Aeolus.