Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/244

 234 Journal of Philology, we might, it is enough to say that our poet, like bold painters (a Poussin, a Turner, or a Martin), has cast into the shade minor considerations, and concentrated his whole power in the production of one grand and terrible effect "how art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" With this view the admiration and sympathy of the spectators are enlisted in favour of CEdipus as a great and wise king and the father of his people (v. 1) ; and if his self-assertion and confidence, his hot temper and haughty spirit, tend in any degree to diminish our respect, on the other hand they heighten the horror of his fall and the pitiable effect of his sufferings. CEd. R. 3. 'lKTrjplois Kkadoicriv eecrTcp.pevoi. Wunder, in his Excursion on this verse, has assembled many passages, chiefly from tragedy, relating to the u(pii$ of suppliants to the altars, with iK-njpioi or Urrfpes /cXaSoi, called in one word Uea-iau They were boughs, he says, of olive wreathed with wool, hence called artyr) or areppaTa, borne in the hands, laid down on the altars by the suppliants when seated on fiadpa, taken away when they rose with favorable hopes, otherwise left there. Wunder follows the Scholiast in explaining et-fortppevoi to mean no more than KtKoa-p^pivoi (ex 0VTes <^-a8ovs Urripiovs), and this he thinks may be said of the suppliants even when they have laid down their boughs on the altars. Schneidewin, following Matthias (though not citing him), considers t^ecrrfp-pevot = ex6ures eo-Tepptvovs, the wreathing of the boughs being transferred to the suppliants themselves. Of these interpretations I prefer the latter, for, as e((TT(nptvou is afterwards (v. 19) used alone to describe the guise of suppliants, I think it must include the idea of the wreathed boughs. But, after all, have we not here one of those many tantalizing ancient customs, which wc can but imperfectly comprehend in the absence of minute description, or (what would be better still) glyptic representation ? For instance, what was the size and form of these icKdboi? That they were not cumbersome, appears from their being laid in numbers on the altar, and from the fact that Jocasta comes on the stage with several of them in her hands at the same time. ra8' iv ytpoiv ore<pT) Xa/3ov(ri/ nan lOvpia para. 913. In the first book of the Iliad (which Wunder has omitted to