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The tents of Odysseus, as described in the Iliad, (xi. 8.) were in the centre of the crescent-shore, between Sigeion and Rhœteion, those of Aias and Achilles at the two extremities.

The dogs of Sparta, and specially those of Taygetos, were proverbial for their speed and keenness of scent from the days of Pindar (Fr. 83) to those of Virgil, (Georg. iv. 405.)

The Tyrsenians, or Tyrrhenians, (identified here with the Etrurians,) had the repute of being the first inventors of bronze, and the trumpet so named had a wide, bell-shaped mouth. Comp. Æsch. Eumen. 567.

The epithet by which the son of Telamon was distinguished from the other Aias, the son of Oïleus.

It adds to the interest of this and many other passages of the play to remember how closely Salamis was identified by the Athenians with their own history. One of the Attic tribes was named after Aias. Solon or Peisistratos was said to have inserted a verse in the Iliad, (ii. 558,) making him an ally of the Athenians. The noblest families of the Eupatrids claimed descent from him. Before the battle of Salamis the Athenians invoked the help of Aias and Telamon, and, after their victory, dedicated their first-fruits to the former. (Herod. viii. 64, 121.) So, in this tragedy, the sailors of Aias are called sons of Erectheus, i. e., Athenians, (202.) They crave for a sight of Athens, (i. 221.) Aias bids the Athenians, as well as his own people, a solemn farewell.

In two legends of the Homeric cycle Artemis appeared as punishing scorn and slight. She sent the Calydonian boar because Œneus had not sacrificed to her, (Il. ix. 533.) She demanded the sacrifice of Iphigeneia because Agamemnon had slain a consecrated stag. The name Tauropola contained a twofold allusion—to Tauris, as the home of the wild, orgiastic worship paid to her, and to the bulls (tauroi) which were sacrificed in it.

Enyalios, analogous in attributes to Ares, and often identified with him, was one of the tutelary deities of Salamis, and, at Athens, the Polemarch Archon offered an annual sacrifice to him and Artemis.

In the post-Homeric legends Anticleia, the wife of Laertes, or Lartios, had been loved by Sisyphos, the craftiest of all men, before her marriage, and Odysseus was his child and not her husband's.

“Who claim. ...” sc., who are true citizens of Attica.

Æacos, the grandfather of Aias, was the son of Zeus and Ægina.

The irony with which Aias thus finds an omen in his own name becomes all the more bitter when we remember that, in the popular tradition, it was derived from aietos, the kingly eagle, which had appeared to Heracles, as an omen that Zeus had granted his prayer for Telamon, and after which, therefore, Telamon's son was named.

The hymn of the Chorus is addressed, first, to Pan as the God of impetuous, exulting joy, and, afterwards, to Apollo as the giver of a calmer and more spiritual gladness. Another reason for their choice is found in the fact that the island Psyttaleia, between Salamis and the mainland, was sacred to him. Thence, in legends which were fresh in men's memories when Sophocles wrote, he had come forth to help the Athenians at Marathon and Salamis. Kyllene, in Arcadia, was the special home of Panworship.

Nysian, like the dances of the Thiasos at Nysa, the birthplace of Dionysos; Knossian, like those at Knossos in Crete, in honour of the bride of Dionysos, Ariadne.

The Mysian Olympos which the Greek dramatists identified with Ida.

The words of Teucros point prophetically to his later history. He left Salamis, according to the legend, because his father drove him from his presence, went to Kypros, and there founded a city, which he named Salamis, in memory of his fatherland.

Comp. Iliad, vii. 303, xxii. 361. ... Homer, however, makes Achilles drag the corpse of Hector at his chariot-wheels.

In the post-Homeric legends, Tyndareus, the father of Helena, bound all her suitors by an oath that they would, in case of calamity, come to his daughter's help.

In Homer, both Gods and heroes use the bow without any thought of its inferiority to other weapons. Later changes in warfare had, however, thrown it into the background; and in Sparta it was used only by the Periœci; in Athens, by the foreigners (chiefly Scythians and Thracians) who were employed as a home-police.

The words point to what every hearer of the play must have been familiar with. As a homeward ship rounded the point of Sunion, the Acropolis was seen in the distance, and all on board offered their prayers to the two national deities, Athena and Poseidon, whose shrines stood on the promontory.

A slave, or foreigner, according to the laws of Athens and most Greek states, was not allowed to plead personally, but had to be represented by a citizen. Agamemnon taunts Teucros—as the son, not of Eribœa, the wife, but of Hesione, the concubine, of Telamon—with being an alien.

Comp. Iliad, XV. 415.

Sophocles, with a slight anachronism, brings before his Athenian audience what they were always willing to listen to, the story of the fraud by which the Dorian Cresphontes had obtained possession of Messenia.

In one form of the Pelops mythos, Thyestes, the brother of Atreus, was the adulterer, and Atreus drowned the adulteress. Here, however, Sophocles follows the legend which made Aerope, while yet in Crete, guilty of unchastity, and condemned by her father, Cratreus, to die by drowning. The executioner spared her life, and she afterwards married Atreus.

So the text stands, yet the Trojan war was waged, not for the wife of Agamemnon, but for Helen, the wife of Menelaos. There may, perhaps, be a taunt implied in the phrase, implying either (1.) that Agamemnon fought for Helen as if he were her husband, or (2.) that he was urged to the war by his own wife, the sister of Helen.