¹ Text and apparatus criticus are drawn from Page, D.L. (ed.), Aeschyli septem quae supersunt tragoedias (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar as printed in Garvie, A.F. (ed.), Aeschylus: Choephori (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar. Translations are my own.

² See Citti, V., ‘Aesch. Choe. 152–163’, Eikasmos 12 (2001), 63–76Google Scholar for a discussion of the history of attempts to emend the text.

³ See Page's apparatus criticus on the passage as reprinted in Garvie (n. 1), 9. The scholia on the passage indicate the existence of several competing readings. Schol. ad 154b, for instance, reads ἄγος for M's ἄλγος, an emendation now widely accepted by modern editors; Schol. ad 163a offers ξίφη for M's βέλη to avoid repetition from the preceding line, a reading rejected by Murray, G. (ed.), Aeschyli septem quae supersunt tragoediae (Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar and West, M.L. (ed.), Aeschylus: Tragoediae (Leipzig, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but accepted by Page (n. 1), Sommerstein, A.H. (ed.), Aeschylus: Oresteia (Cambridge, MA, 2008)Google Scholar, and Brown, A.L. (ed.), Aeschylus: Libation Bearers (Liverpool, 2018)Google Scholar. The scholia to the Choephoroi are all drawn from MS M, and so—as Dickey, E., Ancient Greek Scholarship (Oxford, 2007), 36Google Scholar notes—are authentically ancient and perhaps ultimately derive from Didymus’ commentary. For a brief discussion, see Dickey (this note), 35–8.

⁴ Garvie (n. 1), 81 notes the irony of the passage's frame; for more extended commentary on the generic strangeness of the song, see Rutherford, I., ‘Apollo in ivy: the tragic paean’, Arion ³ 3 (1995), 112–35, at 123Google Scholar. For a further Aeschylean example of such a paean, consider the herald's invocation of παιᾶνα τόνδ’ Ἐρινύων, ‘the paean of the Furies’, at Aesch. Ag. 645.

⁵ See Garvie (n. 1), 81. For detailed discussion of the paean, its origins and its development, see Käppel, L., Paian: Studien zur Geschichte einer Gattung (Berlin, 1992), 3–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rutherford (n. 4), 112–18; Schröder, S., Geschichte und Theorie der Gattung Paian (Leipzig, 1999), 1–61Google Scholar; and Rutherford, I., Pindar's Paeans: A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre (Oxford, 2001), 3–136Google Scholar. Rutherford's analysis ([this note], 86), that the paean represents ‘the collective male strength, social cohesion, the assertion of the strength of the community over the forces that threaten it, the world of the living as opposed to the world of the dead, and finally celebration’, seems the most concise yet comprehensive treatment of the genre available. For a thorough and sustained treatment of the generic complications involved in this paean, see de La Combe, P. Judet, ‘Sur le péan d'Agamemnon’, CGITA 10 (1997), 31–40Google Scholar.

⁶ Rutherford (n. 4), 119–23.

⁷ Rutherford (n. 4), 128 argues that there are in fact no sustained paeanic refrains in extant tragedy, and that the closest any passage comes to a refrain is in a monody: Eur. Ion 141–3: ὦ Παιὰν ὦ Παιάν, | εὐαίων εὐαίων | εἴης, ὦ Λατοῦς παῖ, ‘O Paian, O Paian, may you be joyful, joyful, O child of Leto!’

⁸ Pind. Pae. 6 (= fr. 52f S–M). Text and translation of Pindar's Paeans is drawn from Rutherford (n. 5).

⁹ Rutherford (n. 5), 316 offers the possibility that ἰῆτε is the plural imperative of the hypothetical verb ἰῆναι, ‘to cry iē’, formed similarly to αἰάζειν from αἰαῖ. Wackernagel, J., ‘Graeca’, Philologus 95 (1943), 177–92, at 184CrossRefGoogle Scholar (= Kleine Schriften, vol. 2 [Göttingen, 1953], 876–91) argues that the form is simply a pluralization of ἰή, similar to the pluralizing of the interjection τῆ, ‘there!’, to τῆτε, for which he cites Schwyzer, E., Griechische Grammatik ¹ (Munich, 1939), 1.799aGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ U. Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, ‘Pindars siebentes nemeisches Gedicht’, Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1908), 328–52, at 348 n. 2 (= Kleine Schriften, vol. 6 [Berlin, 1972], 286–313) prefers the imperative ἵετε rather than the optative. Rutherford (n. 5), 316–18 concurs, although he favours ἱεῖτε owing to metrical quantity. Strunk, K., ‘Frühe Vokalveränderungen in der griechischen Literatur’, Glotta 38 (1960), 74–89Google Scholar, at 80–2 prefers the optative owing to the equivalence that he notes between the vowel sounds η and ει in fifth-century Doric and Aeolic dialects. If Strunk is correct, this may have rendered the Pythoctonia reference contained in ἰῆτε more immediate to the poem's audience. Such wordplay would in fact be at home in a hymnic genre, pace Radt, S.L., Pindars zweiter und sechster Paian: Text, Scholien, und Kommentar (Amsterdam, 1958), 171Google Scholar, who objects that a cult-hymn by ‘the pious Pindar’ would never have the same linguistic goals as a Callimachean ‘display piece’. Consider e.g. the punning on Δᾶλος/Ἀστερία in Pind. fr. 33c.5–6 S–M and at Pae. 7b.47 (= fr. 52h) noted by Rutherford (n. 5), 318. Pind. Pae. 5.39–42 (= fr. 52e) may also serve as a counterexample.

¹¹ See LSJ s.v. ἵημι I.2 which adduces as an example Aesch. Cho. 563 ἄμφω δὲ φωνὴν ἥσομεν Παρνησσίδα, ‘and we will both utter the Parnassian speech’, perhaps another suggestive instance within the play connecting ἵημι, Delphi and shooting. For traditional associations between Delphi and the paean-cry, see Rutherford (n. 5), 24–7.

¹² Groeneboom, P. (ed.), Aeschylus’ Choephoroi (Groningen, 1949), 40–1Google Scholar suggests an emendation to the text at line 162 that would have restored a second occurrence of ἵημι within the passage in question and so would have rendered the connection between shooting and the verb ἵημι unmistakable: [ἱέντ’] ἐν ἔργῳ βέλη, ‘arrows, shooting in action’. Later editors have not followed his emendation. My thanks to the anonymous referee for suggesting this reference.

¹³ For other late appearances of this etymology, see Ath. Deipn. 701d; Etym. Magn. 469 s.v. Ἱήϊε. Rutherford (n. 5), 27 adduces Eur. IT 1234–82 for a fifth-century example of the Pythoctonia occurring while Apollo was still a child, and so chronologically parallel with Athenaeus’ etymology, Ath. Deipn. 701d: ἵε παῖ. Rutherford (n. 5), 27 n. 15 lists the most important iconographic sources for the youthful Apollo at Delphi dating back to the sixth century.

¹⁴ Although ἵημι is certainly common in Aeschylus, the form ἵετε occurs only twice, and on both occasions within the context of lamentation; see Aesch. Pers. 941–2: ἵετ᾽ αἰανῆ καὶ πάνδυρτον | δύσθροον αὐδάν, ‘send forth an eternal, plaintive, ill-sounding cry!’ The imperative ἵετε does not appear in either Sophocles or Euripides and the optative form ἱεῖτε is absent from all three tragedians. The verb is still too common to argue for a completely specialized, cultic use here, but the rarity of its employment in this form does argue for a careful and pointed use that, along with its similarity to refrains such as Pindar's, could point to a paeanic reference.

¹⁵ See Garvie (n. 1), 82 for uses of καναχέω and καναχή as water sounds at Hes. Theog. 367; Cratinus, fr. 198 K.–A.; Callim. Hymn 4.45; Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.71. The Scholiast's gloss on this line in schol. on 152a reflects Aeschylus’ materialist or synesthetic engagement with sound and song, most strikingly typified within the Aeschylean corpus by the chorus’ remark at Aesch. Sept. 103 κτύπον δέδορκα, ‘I see the sound’. For a discussion of the materialist character of sound in Aeschylean tragedy, see Gurd, S., ‘Resonance: Aeschylus’ Persae and the poetics of sound’, Ramus 42 (2013), 122–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gurd, S., Dissonance: Ancient Greek Sound Culture (New York, 2016), 62–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Porter, J.I., The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2010), 262–75Google Scholar for a discussion of fifth-century materialist aesthetics generally.

¹⁶ West (n. 3) athetizes ὀλόμενον.

¹⁷ For the myth of Apollo and the Hyperboreans in its early form, see Alcaeus, fr. 307c V.

¹⁸ The ambiguously violent nature of this foreshadowed assistance arriving from Delphi chimes with the chorus’ rhetorical question at the play's conclusion, Aesch. Cho. 1073–4: ποθεν σωτήρ | ἢ μόρον εἴπω, ‘whether I should speak of a saviour or of doom’, that will put an end to the curse of Atreus.

¹⁹ Schadewaldt, W., ‘Der Kommos in Aischylos’ Choephoren’, Hermes 67 (1932), 312–54, at 321Google Scholar notes that ὀττοτοῖ is glossed at Hsch. s.v. (ο 1528 Latte) as θρηνῶδες ἐπίφθεγμα, and the chorus in Agamemnon immediately associates such a cry with the θρῆνος (Aesch. Ag. 1074–5): τί ταῦτ’ ἀνωτότυξας ἀμφὶ Λοξίου; | οὐ γὰρ τοιοῦτος ὥστε θρηνητοῦ τυχεῖν, ‘Why do you cry your dirge to Apollo? He is not the type to be involved with wailing.’

²⁰ See Aesch. Ag. 1072–6 for Cassandra's cry. As Alexiou, M., The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge, 1974), 102–3Google Scholar observes, the thrēnos and the related goos were traditionally female song forms, and so this cry may be particularly appropriate to Aegisthus’ characterization throughout the Oresteia. Fraenkel, E. (ed.), Aeschylus: Agamemnon (Oxford, 1950), 3.769–70Google Scholar notes this characterization at Aesch. Ag. 1625, where the chorus addresses Aegisthus as γύναι, ‘you woman’, in addition to Orestes’ description of him at Aesch. Cho. 305 θήλεια γὰρ φρήν, ‘he has a womanly spirit’. Schadewaldt (n. 19), 321 n. 1 reads this death-cry as betraying Aegisthus’ feminized character, for which see Foley, H., Female Acts in Greek Tragedy (Princeton, 2001), 224Google Scholar; Sommerstein, A.H., Aeschylean Tragedy ² (London, 2010), 187Google Scholar.

²¹ Both Sommerstein (n. 3) and Brown (n. 3) print ἰώ.

²² See Power, T., ‘Sophocles and music’, in Markantonatos, A. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Sophocles (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 283–304, at 293–7Google Scholar for an extended discussion of the musical distortion of the chorus’ paean in Soph. Trach. 205–24.

²³ The metre of 152, the opening line of the song, for instance, is composed of entirely short syllables. Garvie (n. 1), 82 describes such a metre as more ‘appropriate for lamentation’. On the distinction between paeanic and dithyrambic music, see Plut. Mor. 389a–b. Paeans, according to Plutarch, were known for their τεταγμένην καὶ σώφρονα μοῦσαν, ‘orderly and moderate music’. Rutherford (n. 4), 118 describes the paean as ‘almost exclusively a male form’ and continues his discussion of the genre's masculine character at Rutherford (n. 5), 85–90.

²⁴ Consider, to take the most celebrated example, Clytemnestra's sacrificial description of Agamemnon's murder at Aesch. Ag. 1384–92 and the analysis of Zeitlin, F.I., ‘The motif of corrupted sacrifice in Aeschylus’ Oresteia’, TAPA 96 (1965), 463–508Google Scholar.

²⁵ C.W. Marshall, Aeschylus: Libation Bearers (London and Oxford, 2017), 35–6 notes that the ritual vessels and the libations themselves would have remained visible throughout the staged action of the play, framing the orchestra as ritual space for the audience.