Page:Prometheus Bound (Bevan 1902).djvu/136

 pians), and thence to the source of the Nile in the land of the Asiatic Ethiopians. The Red Sea and Indian Ocean are ignored: the Nile, according to a current belief in antiquity is thought to rise in Asia and thence curve round to the West and turn North from the place of the cataract (line 810), where, indeed, it begins to be called Nile. Aeschylus confuses the Stairway, Katabathmos, which was a place on the Western border of Egypt towards Cyrene, with the Cataract of the Nile.

Line 789. The stream is, of course, the Straits of Kertch, see line 736. In the Prometheus Unbound Aeschylus made the Phasis (Rion) the frontier of Europe and Asia. A deliberate inconsistency in the same trilogy is improbable. He is therefore probably confusing the Phasis and the Tanaïs (Don), whose mouth was approached through the Straits of Kertch. This would explain why he puts the Straits of Kertch South of the Caucasus.

Line 882. The meaning of is quite uncertain. It cannot mean "not barking," since is not the distinctive noise of dogs. It might mean "not making any noise," but there would then be no point in it. I believe it contains some reference to the eagle element in the Gryphons as against the quadruped element denoted by.

Line 1027. The legend alluded to is that, at the freeing of Prometheus, Zeus made it a condition of his liberation that some other god should surrender his immortality. This Cheiron the Centaur was willing to do, because of his agony from the wound inflicted by the poisoned arrow of Herakles.