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AESCHYLUS, PERSIANS 602

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2026

Nicholas Lane Open the ORCID record for Nicholas Lane [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

This note proposes a new solution to the crux at Aeschylus, Persians 602.

Keywords

GreekliteratureAeschylusPersianstextual criticism

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Shorter Notes
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The Classical Quarterly , First View , pp. 1 - 2
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

602 αἰὲν ἄνεμον Weil: αἰεὶ (vel ἀεὶ) δαίμον᾽ codd.Footnote 1

Friends, a person who is experienced in misfortunes understands that, when a wave of misfortunes comes upon mortals, one is accustomed to fear everything, but, when the daimôn flows well, to trust that the same wind of fortune will always blow favourably.Footnote 2

Garvie explains why the transmitted text in 602 cannot stand,Footnote 3 and Weil’s αἰὲν ἄνεμον is generally printed by modern editors, perhaps under the spell of Wilamowitz.Footnote 4 There are reasons for scepticism, however. The first is that elsewhere in tragedy οὐρίζω is transitive.Footnote 5 Here, uniquely, it would need to be intransitive for Weil’s emendation to give the sense of the Loeb’s ‘the breeze of good fortune will always continue to blow from astern’.Footnote 6 The second is that it overdoes the wind metaphor, where οὐριεῖν is sufficient.Footnote 7 The third is that it is quite far from the paradosis and involves altering two words. A simpler remedy would be to change one letter and read τὸν αὐτὸν αἰεὶ δασμὸν οὐριεῖν τύχης, that is, ‘[sc. the daimôn] will always send with a fair wind the same share of fortune’.Footnote 8

References

1 Aesch. Pers. 598–602. The text and apparatus are those of D.L. Page (ed.), Aeschyli fabulae (Oxford, 1972), 24. Weil’s conjecture is printed by M.L. West (ed.), Aeschyli tragoediae cum incerti poetae Prometheo (corr. ed., Stuttgart, 1998), 34, A.H. Sommerstein, Aeschylus: Persians, Seven against Thebes, Suppliants, Prometheus Bound (Cambridge, MA and London, 2008), 80 and A.F. Garvie, Aeschylus: Persae (Oxford, 2009), 26.

2 My translation.

3 Garvie (n. 1), 252: ‘It is the phrase itself [sc. δαίμονα τύχης] that is intolerable. One may speak of τύχη θεῶν or θεοῦ or δαίμονος, but it would be hard to find a parallel for θεὸς or δαίμων τύχης.’

4 U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (ed.), Aeschyli tragoediae (Berlin, 1914), 157.

5 Cho. 317 and Soph. OT 596. At Cho. 317 some consider οὐρίσας intransitive, but see A.F. Garvie, Aeschylus: Choephori (Oxford, 1986), 128, who argues for understanding it as transitive. The compound ἐπουρίζω is also transitive in tragedy (Eum. 137; Soph. fr. 442**.7 TrGF; Eur. Andr. 610). The only outlier appears to be κατουρίζει at Soph. Trach. 827, held by many to be intransitive, but it is just as easy to treat it as transitive and supply the subject from the preceding ὅ (824, i.e. τοὔπος τὸ θεοπρόπον [822]).

6 Sommerstein (n. 1), 81. Garvie (n. 1), 252 contemplates a transitive usage (‘he trusts that the same wind of fortune will always waft him’), but an object then needs to be supplied.

7 Nowhere else in classical literature is ‘wind’ the subject of οὐρίζω or any of its compounds.

8 δασμός occurs within tragedy at Soph. OT 36, OC 635, fr. 730c.15 Radt and [Eur.] Rhes. 435. It does not appear in what survives of Aeschylus, but the compound ἄδασμος is attested at fr. 63 TrGF.