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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 January 2019
Page 60 note 1 This is based on a paper read to the Cambridge Philological Society on 16 January 1969.1 am much indebted to Dr Roger Dawe for criticism and advice on earlier drafts.
Page 60 note 2 Prof. Fraenkel, whose Commentary contains the füllest discussion of the passage (pp. 656-9), declines to assert that the article is indispensable, but he takes strong objection to 
depending on 
.
Page 60 note 3 On the connection between 1397, 8 and the lines which precede them see p. 67.
Page 60 note 4 Actually Schütz construes the passage in a fashion of his own, taking 
as equivalent to 
.
Page 62 note 1
Frag. 161, the only other example in Aesch., 
, leaves the dative unexpressed,’ pouring libations on things'; the line gives a compendious expression for the two kinds of ritual offering; cf. Aristoph. Nub. 578 
.
Page 62 note 2 Vol. x of the Headlam Collection of Aeschylus Tracts in the Library of King's College, Cambridge.
Page 62 note 3 Themostimportant are P. Stengel, Griech. Kultusaltertümer p. 149, Opferbraücher, pp. 36, 143, and articles in Pauly-Wissowa s.w. Opfer, Bestattung, and Trankopfer.
Page 62 note 4 One of Blaydes's suggestions was to read here 
.
Page 63 note 1 H. J. Rose drew attention to.the distinetion in his Commentary on the Surviving Plays of
Aeschylus (1958), and by implication to the restriction of 
. Like Eustathius on Od. 10. 518 
he made the distinetion a little too rigid. The Olympians, it is true, had no use for 
but 
were on occasion offered to 
, at the taking of oaths, at the libations to the heroes and to Zeus Soter and, more to the point, on such an occasion as is described at Eur. El. J I I , where the Old Man who was bringing provisions for Electra's unexpected guests turned aside to visit Agamemnon's tomb, at which he poured 
from the skin of wine he was carrying 
. This was less formal than the offering of 
, which probably could have been fitringly sent only by the family.
For flowing into the grave see Paus. x. 4. 10, Kaibel Ep. Gr. 646. Dodds, Greeks and the
Irrational, p. 158.
Page 63 note 2 First in J. Phil. (1895), p. 312. The note is repeated in his Translation, in the posthumous ed. of the Agamemnon, and in Headlam-Thomson.
Page 63 note 3 2.485 in Cougny's Appendix to the Gk. Anth. (Didot), CIG 1030, no. 131 in Ancient Gk. Inscr. in the British Museum.
Page 63 note 4 Eur. Erechtheus 65. 83 ff. (Austin) is no exception to my principle, 
since 
refers directly to the wine which would have been contained in the if offered.
Page 64 note 1 Of course Greek drama was largely indifferent to time, and if Aeschylus had shown the funeral procession taking place within minutes of Agamemnon's death (like that of Alcestis in Euripides) no one would have been troubled. But in the absence of any indication to the contrary I doubt if the audience would have taken the offering of to be anything but a future event.
Page 64 note 2 So J. de Fritze, De Libationibus Veterum Graecorum (Berlin, 1893), p. 71.
Page 64 note 3 It may be relevant that the usual Order of events seems to be disturbed, since the games follow directly after the cremation, and the funeral feast, unlike Hector's, is put before the funeral. The offering of x°af too may have been shifted.
Page 64 note 4 Some confusion arises from the Statement in the Piatonic Minos 315c that in olden times there was a preliminary sacrifice (
) before the 
. However in tragedy the πρо - of 
usually, and perhaps always, loses the force of ‘preliminary', as in the case of the sacrifice of Polyxena after Achilles’ death ﹛Hec. 41, 265; TV. 628; cf. IT 243, 458). In the funeral regulations from Ceos (S/G 1218 of the late fifth Century) 
comes after instructions for the and cannot refer to preliminary proceedings. W. L. Lorimer (C.R. 45 [1931], 211) understood E. Alc. 845, where Heracles says he will find Thanatos drinking the blood from the 
by Alcestis’ grave, to refer to a preliminary sacrifice which had taken place there before the ; it is surcly more likely that it was the normal sacrifice which concluded the burial. See also Rohde, Psyche, Eng. trans. p. 164.
Page 65 note 1 These were discussed by J. D. Denniston ‘Pauses in the iambic Senarius', CQ xxx (1936), 73. His tables show Aeschylus as having 41 pauses at the end of the fifth foot with a run on of sense into the following line (17 of them in the PV), but rather misleadingly he treated all pauses in terras of punctuation. The beginnings and ends of short participal clauses or appositional phrases, though marked by commas, were probably feit as less strong breaks than the beginnings of subordinate clauses or the division, as here, between protasis and apodosis. In fact, if we leave out of account the PV, which is Sophoclean in its treatment of this pause, and the far lighter pauses which mark the end of a parenthesis, as 
, Sept. 369 or the beginning of a participial phrase in apposition, as 
Sept. 50, the only remotely comparable case is Choe. 258 
. Accordingly it is very unlikely that we have another case here, but in view of Pers. 486, where , oö is the last syllable of the line, though there is no other pause in the play later than the caesura of the fourth foot, it cannot be called impossible. There are four or five pauses with heavier stops, such as Supp. 769 or Eum. 663, but there is no case of a subordinate clause introduced by a conjunction in this Position outside the PV (iv four times, 
once).
Page 66 note 1 Whether 
applied to Agamemnon at 972 has a secondary meaning’ unblemished victim’ is at least questionable.
Page 66 note 2 Implied, for instance, by Herod. 4. 60. 2 
, points at which the Scythian procedure at a sacrifice differs from the Greek.
Page 66 note 3 It must be admitted that the old rendering’ if it were one among fitting things to pour libation on a corpse’ would better suit the sense here. It was suggested in the course of the discussion which followed the reading of the paper that 
might be a gloss on some word conveying more precisely the notion of ‘victim', e.g. 
; but it is essential that it should imply a dead victim.
Page 66 note 4 4. 60. 2 quoted in n. 2 above. Roman practice was similar; cf. Verg. Aen. 4. 6o, 6. 244.
Page 66 note 5 According to Schol. Aristoph. Pax 968 
with prayers accompanied the sacrifice. The most lucid discussion of normal procedure is given in Denniston's note on Eur. El. 792.
Page 67 note 1 The main source is Eur. HF 926-30 supplemented by El. 791-802; with reference to human sacrifice, IT 53-8, 622, JA 955. For purity of the water cf. Thuc. 4. 97. 3 
.
Page 67 note 2 Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, pp. 78, 124-31, Hanneil in P-W s.v. Trankopfer, VIA 2133. It is doubted by Nilsson, Geschichte der griech. Religion, 1, 148.
Page 67 note 3 So Stengel, Opferbraüche, p. 36, Kultusaltertümer, p. 109.
Page 67 note 4 On this interpretation it is preferable to take 
in the sense ‘utter imprecations’ with Denniston-Page, since the effect of 
is to consecrate the victim to the infernal powers, continuing the idea of imprecation. There is some doubt about the use of 
in sacrifices of this type; cf. Stengel, Opferbraüche, p. 99. But the rules for human sacrifice were vague, and in any case there were many exceptions: see A. D. Nock, ‘The Cult of Heroes',Harv. Theol.Rev.x-x.xvn (1944), 141-
Page 67 note 5 Editors before Tyrwhitt and Hermann all put a heavy stop after 
and no stop after 
at the end of 1396; all editors for the last Century have put the heavy stop after .
Page 67 note 6 Lucian, De Luctu 19. For x o a ‘ see Persae 609-18; mixing was not entirely out of place for 
is actually menrioned in this connection IT 160. At OC 472 
for the Eumenides seem to be poured from small 
held in the hand. But the associations of the 
are entirely with 
. No one would drink from a containing or offer 
from it.
Page 68 note 1 Cf. Choe. 1073.
Page 68 note 2 Continuity of theme in these and other passages is discussed by Froma I. Zeitlin in’ The Theme of the Corrupted Sacrifice in the Oresteia', TAPA xcvi (1965), 463; I am indebted to Mr A. D. Fitton Brown for calling my attention to this article.