Page:Frogs (Murray 1912).djvu/141

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COMMENTARY ON THE FROGS
133

parody contains a few actual Euripidean phrases; cf. I. T. 1089—

"O bird, that wheeling o'er the main
By crested rock and crested sea
Cryest for ever piteously,
O Halcyon, I can read thy pain," &c.

and El. 435 seqq., "Where the tuneful dolphin winds his way before the dark-blue-beaked ships." "The shuttle's minstrel mind" is said by the Scholiast to be from the Meleager.

P. 95, l. 1314, Wi-i-i-ind.]—A musical "shake." This particular word εἱλίσσω is scanned εἱ-ειλίσσω (and actually so written in one MS.) in El. 437, the passage cited above; and a papyrus fragment of the Orestes has ὡς written ὡως with two musical notes above it. Of course the thing is common in lyric poetry, both Greek and English, but decidedly rarer in Aeschylus than in Euripides.

P. 95, l. 1323, That foot.]—The metrical foot, περίβαλλ᾽, an anapaest rather irregularly used: I imitate the effect in "arm-pressúre."

P. 95, l. 1328, Cyrene.]—Not much is known of her, and that not creditable.

P. 96, l. 1331, Thou fire-hearted Night, &c.]—Cf. the solo of Hecuba (Hec. 68 seqq.). The oxymoron ("his soul no soul") and the repetitions are very characteristic of Euripides, though common enough in Aeschylus (e.g. Aesch. Suppliants, 836 ff., where there are seven such repetitions). It is not Euripides, but Greek tragedy in general, that is hit by this criticism.

P. 97, l. 1356, Cretans take up your bows, &c.]—