♠ Apollonios of Rhodes, Argonautika 2.178-93
There Phineus, son of Agenor, had his home by the sea, Phineus who above all men endured most bitter woes because of the gift of prophecy which Leto’s son had granted him aforetime. And he reverenced not a whit even Zeus himself, for he foretold unerringly to men his sacred will. Wherefore Zeus sent upon him a lingering old age, and took from his eyes the pleasant light, and suffered him not to have joy of the dainties untold that the dwellers around ever brought to his house, when they came to enquire the will of heaven. But on a sudden, swooping through the clouds, the Harpies with their crooked beaks incessantly snatched the food away from his mouth and hands. And at times not a morsel of food was left, at others but a little, in order that he might live and be tormented. And they poured forth over all a loathsome stench; and no one dared not merely to carry food to his mouth but even to stand at a distance; so foully reeked the remnants of the meal. Greek Text
♠ Aischylos, Eumenides 50-51
Once before I saw some creatures in a painting,2 [50] carrying off the feast of Phineus. Greek Text
♠ Sophokles, Phineus fr 704 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, p. 485, ed. S.L. Radt. Göttingen 1977.
♠ Sophokles, Antigone 966-87
And by the waters of the Dark Rocks, the waters of the twofold sea, are the shores of Bosporus and the Thracian city Salmydessus, [970] where Ares, neighbor of that city, saw the accursed, blinding wound inflicted on the two sons of Phineus by his savage wife. It was a wound that brought darkness to the hollows, making them crave vengeance [975] for the eyes she crushed with her bloody hands and with her shuttle for a dagger. [977] Wasting away in their misery, they bewailed their miserable suffering [980] and their birth from their mother stripped of her marriage. But she traced her descent from the ancient line of the Erechtheids, and in far-distant caves she was raised amidst her father’s gusts. She was the child of Boreas, [985] running swift as horses over the steep hills, a daughter of gods. Yet she, too, was assailed by the long-lived Fates, my child. Greek Text
♠ Sophokles fr 636 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, p. 459, ed. S.L. Radt. Göttingen 1977.
♠ Sophokles fr 637 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, p. 459, ed. S.L. Radt. Göttingen 1977.
♠ Sophokles fr 638 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, p. 174, ed. S.L. Radt. Göttingen 1977.
♠ Sophokles fr 645 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, p. 461, ed. S.L. Radt. Göttingen 1977.
♠ Sophokles, Phineus fr 705 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, p. 486, ed. S.L. Radt. Göttingen 1977.
♠ Sophokles, Phineus fr 710 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, p. 487, ed. S.L. Radt. Göttingen 1977.
♠ Philarkos 81F18 – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, ed. F. Jacoby, 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, March 2022.
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