Eschilo, Coefore 969-971

Discussion of the different interpretations of a locus desperatus at the end of the third stasimon, in Aesch. Choeph. 969-71, with a critical proposal. Perhaps the meaning of the text is: "for the metics (μετοίκοις, pl. dat.) of the house (δόμων, pl. gen.) the fates (τύχαι, pl. nom.) will fall again (πεσοῦνται πάλιν) in a favourable way (εὐπροσώπῳ κοίτᾳ). The term "metics" is to be referred to Orestes and Electra: until now, they have been ἄτιμοι in their own house, which has been governed by the tyrannoi Clytemnestra and Aegisthus (for a similar metaphoric use of the polar terms tyrannos and metic, in reference to citizens inhabiting the same land with different rights, see e.g. Isocrates Paneg. 105 ἔτι δὲ κοινῆς τῆς πατρίδος οὔσης τοὺς μὲν τυραννεῖν τοὺς δὲ μετοικεῖν καὶ φύσει πολίτας ὄντας νόμῳ τῆς πολιτείας ἀποστερεῖσθαι). The condition of inferiority and exclusion of the two children of Agamemnon's from the goods and privileges of the house had been underlined by themselves in Choeph. 135 (ἀντίδουλος), 405 ss. (δωμάτων ἄτιμα), 444 s. (ἐγὼ δ' ἀπεστάτουν / ἄτιμος, οὐδὲν ἀξία); the term μέτοικος has here the meaning of the Homeric formula ἀτίμητος μετανάστης (with reference to Achilles in Il. 9, 647 s. and 16, 58): see Eust. Comm. Hom. Il. 781, 19 and 1045, 60: ἀτίμητον δὲ μετανάστην λέγει τὸν ἄτιμον μέτοικον, οἷα τῶν μετοίκων ὡς τὰ πολλὰ οὐκ ἐντίμων ὄντων); and see also Soph. El. 189, where Electra says of herself: ἁπερεί τις ἔποικος ἀναξία / οἰκονομῶ θαλάμους πατρός, and where the Suda comments: ἔποικος ἀντὶ τοῦ μέτοικος (α 1983 and ε 2877 A.). This arrangement of the text allows to maintain the metaphor of the dice game that the Schol. ad loc. recognized in these verses (for this recurrent image see e.g. Menand. Sent. 862 Jakel: ὡς εὐκόλως πίπτουσιν αἱ λαμπραὶ τύχαι). In this moment in which, with the death of Clytemnestra, the chain of murders within the genos of Atreus arrives at its conclusion, the images we met at the beginning of the trilogy are proposed again, according to a typically Aeschylean ring composition: for the metaphor of κύβοι see Agam. 32-33; for the image of metoikoi see the similitude of the two vultures in Agam. 49 ss., with which this passage is in close relation. The participial θρεομένοις (pl. dat.), which Musgrave and Paley corrected in πρευμενεῖς (in connection with τύχαι), can be maintained: In the kommos, Electra and Oreste spoke of themselves as "birds" loudly crying (vv. 500-502): but now they will cease their mourning, because after the liberation of their home from the two tyrants their lot has changed for the better: a reversal that the Chorus had already foreshadowed in the kommos: ἀντὶ δὲ θρήνων ἐπιτυμβιδίων / παιὼν μελάθροις ἐν βασιλείοις (342-43).