Yates, J., Textrinum Antiquorum: An account of the art of Weaving among the ancients. Part I. On the raw materials used for weaving. London, 1843. 8vo. WORKS RECENTLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONTINENT. Abeken W. Mittel-Italien vor den Zeiten der röm. Herrschaft, nach seinen Denkmalen dargestellt. 8vo. Stuttg. Ahrens H. L. de Græcæ linguæ dialectis. 2 vols. 8vo. Götting. Anecdota Delphica. Edidit Ernestus Curtius. Acced. Tabulæ II. Delphicæ. Berlin. 4to. Antike Marmorwerke, zum ersten Male bekannt gemacht, von Emil Braun. I u. II Decade. folio. Leipzig. Bartsch, H. de Cheremone poeta tragico. 4to. Mogunt. Böcking, Dr. E., Institutionen. Ein Lehrbuch des Römischen Privatrechts, &c. nebst Einleitung in das Studium des Röm. Rechts. Vol. I. Bonn. 8vo. Böhnecke. K. G. Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Attischen Redner u. der Geschichte ihrer Zeit. I' Band I u. II° Abthlg. 8vo. Berlin. Chrestomathia Latina in usum auditorum philosophiæ anni I. et II. Ed. emend. et correct. 8vo. Vindobon. Democriti Abderitæ operum fragmenta, colleg. recens. vert. explic. ac de philos. vita, scriptis et placitis comment. est F. G. A. Mullach. Svo. Berlin. Döderlein, Dr. L. Reden u. Aufsätze. Ein Beitrag zur Gymnasialpädagogik u. Philologie. Svo. Erlangen. 4to. Erlang. -Aristologie für den Vortrag der Poetik u. Rhetorik. Minutia Sophocleæ. 4to. Erlang. Gellii, Auli, quæ ad jus pertinent. Recognov. commentarioque critico instruxit. D. J. de Gloeden. Series I. tres priores libros Gellii complexa. 8vo. Rostockii. Gerhard, E. Phrixos der Herold. Programm zum Winkelmann's Fest. 4to. plate. Berlin. Gräfenhan, Dr. A. Geschichte der Klassischen Philologie im Alterthum vol. I. royal 8vo. Bonn. Gregorii Bar Hebræi, qui et Abulpharag, Grammatica linguæ Syriacæ in metro Ephraemeo. Textum e cod. bibl. Gottingensis edid. vertit. annot. instr. E. Bertheau, Dr. 8vo. Gotting. Hamaker, H. G. Quæstiones de nonnullis Lysia Orationibus. 8vo. Lugd. Batav. Neu Horatius Flaccus, des, Satiren, erklärt von L. F. 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Hellenische Alterthumskunde, 2te. 1 to 5. 8vo. Halle. Auflage. Heft Weichert, A. lectionum Venusinarum libellus. 8vo. Grimm. Archaeologische Mittheilungen aus Griechenland, nach C. O. Müller's Papieren herausg. von A. Schöll. Vol. I. Athen's Antikensammlungen. Part I. 4to, and Atlas in folio. THE CLASSICAL MUSEUM. XXIV. ON THE CHORUS OF THE EUMENIDES. Of all the plays of Æschylus that remain to us, none surpasses the Eumenides in respect of the gloomy grandeur of its conceptions. Between two and three thousand years have elapsed since they were embodied; yet notwithstanding the changes in manners, and more particularly in religion, which those centuries have brought in their train, it is still scarcely possible to peruse the songs of the σepvaì deal without some feeling of supernatural awe. What, then, must have been their effect upon an audience that regarded those dread goddesses as the most awful and mysterious in their mythology, and the part they acted in the drama as representing, not only the occasion and manner of their reception among the deities of Athens, but also the solemn erection and first judicial act of the purest and most sacred of Attic tribunals, the timehonoured Areopagus? In this respect the Furies of Æschylus possessed an advantage over Shakespeare's witches, as to their hold upon the spectator's mind. The latter belonged, indeed, to the popular superstitions of the time, and were even recognized by the statutes; yet they formed no part of the religion of the state, nor were they identified with any of its institutions. Even the vulgar belief in them was of a mixed nature, half jest, half earnest. He who shuddered at the thoughts of them whilst crossing a barren heath or tangled wood at night, could muster courage enough to ridicule them in the open face of day. The weird sisters, at once terrible and grotesque, represent exactly this motley feeling. But the Furies, yet unappeased, were environed with an unmixed horror. Notwithstanding this difference, however, there are several points of resemblance between the witches of Macbeth and the Furies of the Athenian tragedy. Their number is the same; they are both invested with power over human destinies; and even their songs run frequently in the same metre, the Trochaic dimeter catalectic. cause. 31 When the hurly burly's done Round about the cauldron go, In the poison'd entrails throw, &c.1— Not that these resemblances should be considered as more than accidental, since it is scarcely possible that Shakespeare was acquainted with Eschylus; whose writings were probably little studied even by Milton, the most learned of our poets, with the exception, perhaps, of Ben Jonson. The circumstances of the time, too, in which the play of the Eumenides was produced, must have thrown an additional interest over the scene of the Areopagus, in which the terrible goddesses are represented as pleading their The foundations of that venerable court were trembling under the assaults of the demagogues, and threatened to overwhelm the laws and liberties of Athens in their fall. All these circumstances must have come home to every Attic bosom, and when we reflect that they were here set forth and heightened with all the charms of poetry and music, and all the means and appliances of theatrical effect, it is easy to believe that the performance occasioned some extraordinary sensation, such as tradition vaguely intimates. This tells us of platforms sinking under the weight of spectators-of the deaths of children and premature deliverance of women caused by the horror of the scene, where fifty furies shook their brands—of the banishment of the magicianpoet who had conjured up these visions, either for overstepping the legitimate bounds of terror, or for revealing some awful and mysterious secret with which only the initiated ear was worthy to be trusted. Stories, indeed, which have in a great measure crumbled away at the touch of modern criticism, and whose very diversity argues their improbability; yet from which, as in all similar cases, we may safely infer the existence of some seeds of truth to which they owe their origin. Of these stories, as none has been the subject of more critical discussion, so none has come out from the process more reduced 1 Compare Eumenides 507 seqq. μηδέ τις κικλησκέτω Eνμрорa тεтνμμévos, &c., also 997 seqq. &c. in its dimensions than that which relates to the number of the Furies. In the admitted impossibility of ascertaining, incontrovertibly, the number of which a tragic chorus might be composed, critics have indulged themselves in a great latitude of opinion respecting that of the Eumenides. The notions most generally entertained at present are two. Of these the more liberal one, and which is held almost universally by German scholars, whether of the æsthetic or philological school, assigns fifteen performers to the chorus. The other, which is more prevalent in England, limits them to the scanty complement of three. It is the purpose of the following pages to examine these opinions, and to inquire which is better supported by the internal evidence of the play. First of all, however, it may be proper to advert for a moment to a theory of M. Boeckh2, in which he attributes a chorus of fifty to an earlier edition of the Eumenides. He thinks it was this which produced the alarming effects above alluded to; and that the later edition, in which the chorus consists of fifteen, was prepared by the poet during a residence in Sicily, and performed whilst he was absent there. Boeckh, who would seem to belong to that class of reasoners who rely upon the multitude rather than on the clearness and consistency of their arguments, adopts all the above-mentioned stories without the least inquiry or discrimination. Thus the author of the Life of Eschylus is cited for the deaths of the children and the mishaps of the women; Pollux, for the terror inspired by the number of the Furies and the consequent reduction of the chorus by a legislative enactment3; Suidas, for the falling of the platforms; and Elian, for the accusation of impiety brought against the poet on the occasion of this play. Here are reasons plentiful enough. Could a drama which contained all these atrocities, and caused all these misfortunes, have succeeded? Impossible! But as the Didascalia assure us that Eschylus gained the tragic prize with the Orestea, Olymp. 80. 2, it follows that the play which failed must have been an earlier edition, though nobody ever heard of its existence. This being so established, he proceeds to settle the date of this first edition. Now 2 In his book de Tragicis Græcis, cap. 4, p. 35, (Heidelberg 1808.) 3 τὸ δὲ παλαιὸν ὁ τραγικὸς χορὸς πεντήκοντα ἦσαν ἄχρι τῶν Εὐμενίδων Αἰσχύλου, πρὸς δὲ τὸν ὄχλον αὐτῶν τοῦ πλήθους ἐκπτοηθέντων, συνέστειλεν ὁ νόμος εἰς ἐλάττω ἀριθμὸν τὸν χορόν. iv. 15. A silly story; because, if the number had hitherto been fifty, it was not that, but some other circumstance which frightened the people, and which should have been the object of the law. |