434.  Skylla (not to be confounded with the sea-monster of Messina) was the daughter of Nisos, king of Megaris, who had on his head a lock of purple hair, which was a charm that preserved his life from all danger. And the Cretans under Minos attacked Nisos, and besieged him in his city; and Minos won the love of Skylla, and tempted her with gifts, and she cut off her father's lock of hair, and so he perished. But Minos, scorning her for her deed, bound her by the feet to the stern of his ship and drowned her.

435.  Hermes, i.e., in his office as the escort of the souls of the dead to Hades.

436.  The Chorus apparently is represented as on the point of completing its catalogue of crimes committed by women with the story of Clytæmnestra's guilt. Something leads them to check themselves, and they are contented with a dark and vague allusion.

437.  The story of the Lemnian women is told by Herodotos (vi. 138). They rose up against their husbands and put them all to death; and the deed passed into a proverb, so that all great crimes were spoken of as Lemnian. This guilt is that alluded to in Strophe III.

438.  In every case of which the Chorus had spoken guilt had been followed by retribution. So, it is implied, it will be in that which is present to their thoughts.

439.  Sc., is not forgotten or overlooked, but will assuredly meet with its due punishment.

440.  So in Homer (Il. xxii. 444), the warm bath is prepared by Andromache for Hector on his return from the battle in which he fell.

441.  As in her speeches in the Agamemnon (vv. 595, 884), Clytæmestra's words here also are full of significant ambiguity. The “things that befit the house,” the proposed conference with Ægisthos, her separation of Orestes from his companions, are all indications of suspicion already half aroused. The last three lines were probably spoken as an “aside.”

442.  Suasion is personified, and invoked to come and win Clytæmnestra to trust herself in the power of the two avengers.

443.  An alternative rendering is,

444.  Apollo in the shrine at Delphi.

445.  Hermes invoked once more, as at once the patron of craft and the escort of the dead.

446.  Or “before our eyes.”

447.  The “treasured score” is explained by the words that follow to mean the cry of exultation which the Chorus will raise when the deed of vengeance is accomplished; or, possibly (as Mr. Paley suggests), the funereal wail over the bodies of Ægisthos and Clytæmnestra, which the Chorus would raise to avert the guilt of the murder from Orestes.

448.  As Perseus could only overcome the Gorgon, Medusa, by turning away his eyes, lest looking on her he should turn to stone, so Orestes was to avoid meeting his mother's glance, lest that should unman him and blunt his purpose.

449.  Ægisthos had suffered enough, he says, for his share in Agamemnon's death. He has no wish that fresh odium should fall on him, as being implicated also in the death of Orestes, of which he has just heard.

450.  The word (ephedros) was applied technically to one who sat by during a conflict between two athletes, prepared to challenge the victor to a fresh encounter. Orestes is such a combatant, taking the place of Agamemnon.

451.  So, in Homer (Il. xxii. 79), Hecuba, when the entreaties of Priam had been in vain, makes this last appeal—

452.  The reader will note this as the only speech put into the lips of Pylades, though he is present as accompanying Orestes throughout great part of the drama.

453.  The different ethical standard applied to the guilt of the husband and the wife was, we may well believe, that which prevailed among the Athenians generally. It has only too close a parallel in the ballads and romances of our own early literature.

454.  The line is memorable as prophetic of the whole plot of the Eumenides.

455.  The phrase “wail as to a tomb” seems to have been a by-word for fruitless entreaty and lamentation.

456.  Clytæmnestra sees now the important of the dream referred to in vv. 518-522.

457.  The words must be left in their obscurity. Commentators have conjectured Orestes and Pylades, or the deaths of Agamemnon and Iphigeneia, or those of Ægisthos and Clytæmnestra, as the “two lions,” spoken of. The first seems most in harmony with the context.

458.  The Eternal Justice which orders all things is mightier than any arbitrary will, such as men attribute to the Gods. That will, even if we dare to think of it as changeable or evil, is held in restraint. It cannot, even if it would, protect the evildoers.

459.  The Chorus feel that they have been too long silent; now, at last, they can speak. As slaves dreading punishment they had been gagged before; now the gag is removed.

460.  Or, “Once more for those who wail.”

461.  It is not clear with what form of animal life the myræna is to be identified. The ideal implied is that of some sea-monster whose touch was poisonous, but this does not hold good of the “lamprey.”

462.  As the text stands, Orestes says that at last he can speak of the murder over which he had long brooded in silence. Another reading makes him speak of the oscillations in his own mind—

463.  Comp. vv. 270-288.

464.  Delphi was to the Greek (as Jerusalem was to mediæval Christendom) the centre at once of his religious life and of the material earth. Its rock was the omphalos of the world. Consecrated widows watched over the sacred and perpetual fire. Once only up to the time of Æschylos, when the Temple itself was desecrated by the Persians, had it ceased to burn.

465.  Once again we have the thought of the third cup offered as a libation to Zeus as saviour and deliverer. The Chorus asks whether this third deed of blood will be true to that idea and work out deliverance.