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Hermes is invoked, (1,) as the watcher over the souls of the dead in Hades, and therefore the natural patron of the murdered Agamemnon; (2,) as exercising an authority delegated by Zeus, and therefore capable of being, like Zeus himself, the deliverer and helper of suppliants. So Electra, further on, invokes Hermes in the same character. The line may, however, be rendered,

The three opening lines are noticeable, as having been chosen by Aristophanes as the special object for his satirical criticism (Frogs., 1126–1176,) abounding in a good score of ambiguities and tautologies.

The words point to the two symbolic aspects of one and the same practice. In both there are some points of analogy with the earlier and later forms of the Nazarite vow among the Jews. (1.) As being part of the body, and yet separable from it without mutilation, it became the representative of the whole man, and as such was the sign of a votive dedication. As early as Homer, it was the custom for youths to keep one long, flowing lock as consecrated, and when they reached manhood, they cut it off, and offered it to the river-god of their country, throwing it into the stream, as that to which, directly and indirectly, they owed their nurture. Here the offering is made to Inachos, as the hero-founder of Argos, identified with the river that bore his name. (2.) They shaved their head, wholly or in part, as a token of grief, and then, because true grief for the dead was an acceptable and propitiatory offering, this became the natural offering for suppliants who offered their prayers at the tombs of the departed. So in the Aias of Sophocles (v. 1174) Teucros calls on Eurysakes to approach the corpse of his father, holding in his hands locks of his own hair, his mother's, and that of Teucros. In the offering which Achilles makes over the grave of Patroclos of the hair which he had cherished for the river-God of his fatherland, Spercheios, we have the union of the two customs. Homer, Il. xxiii. 141–151.

After the widespread fashion of the East, the handmaids of Clytæmnestra (originally Troïan captives) had to rend their clothes, beat their breasts, and lacerate their faces till the blood came. The higher civilisation of Solon's laws had forbidden these wild, barbarous forms of grief at Athens. Plutarch, Solon, p. 164.

Purposely, perhaps, obscure. They seem to say that the old reverence for Agamemnon has passed away, and instead of it there is only a slavish fear for Ægisthos. For the more acute, however, they imply that those who have cause to fear are Ægisthos and Clytæmnestra themselves.

The words, in their generalising sententiousness, refer specially to the twofold crime of Ægisthos as an adulterer and murderer. Then, in the Epode, the Chorus justify themselves for their seeming inconsistency in thus abhorring the guilt, and yet acting as instruments of the guilty in their attempts to escape punishment.

A mixture of meal, honey, and oil formed the half-liquid substance commonly used for these funereal libations. The “garlands” may be wreaths of flowers or fillets, or the word may be used figuratively for the libation itself, as crowning the mound in which Agamemnon lay.

The words point to a strange Athenian custom. When a house was cleansed of that which defiled it, morally or physically, the filth was carried in an earthen vessel to a place where three ways met, and the worshipper flung the vessel behind him, and walked away without turning to look at it. To Electra's mind, the libation which her mother sends is equally unclean, and should be treated in the same way. So in Hom. Il., I. 314, the Argives purify themselves, and then cast the lustral water they have used into the sea. Lev. vi. 11, gives us an analogous usage. Comp. also Theocritos, Idyll, xxiv., vv. 92–97.

Partly it is the youth of Electra that seeks counsel from those who have had more experience; partly she shrinks from the responsibility of being the first to utter the formula of execration.

The word “escort” has a special reference to the function of Hermes in the unseen world. As he was wont to act as guide to the souls of the dead in their downward journey, so now Electra prays that he may lead the blessings she asks for upward from the dark depths of Earth.

The Skythian bow, long and elastic, bending either way, like those of the Arabians, (Herod. vii. 69.) The connexion of Ares with the wild, fierce tribes of Thrakia and Skythia meets us again and again in the literature of Greece. He was the only God to whom they built temples, (Ibid., iv. 59.) They sacrificed human victims to an iron sword as his more appropriate symbol, (iv. 62.) The use of iron for weapons of war came to the Greeks from them, (Seven ag. Th. 729, Prom. 714.)

It may be worth while to compare the methods adopted by the three dramatists of Greece in bringing about the recognition of the brother by the sister. (1.) Here the lock of hair in its peculiar colour and texture, resembling her own, followed by the likeness of his footsteps to hers, prepares the way first for vague anticipations, and then the robe she had made for him, leads to her acceptance of Orestes on his own discovery of himself. To this it has been objected, by Euripides in the first instance, (Electra, vv. 462–500), that the evidence of the colour of the hair is weak, that a young man's foot must have been larger than a maiden's, and that he could not have worn as a man the garment she had made for him as a child. It might be replied, perhaps, that there are such things as hereditary resemblances extending to the colour of the hair and the arch of the instep, and that the robe may either have been shown instead of worn, or, being worn, have been adapted for the larger growth. (2.) In the Electra of Sophocles the lock of hair alone convinces Chrysothemis that her brother is near at hand, (v. 900,) while Electra herself requires the further evidence of Agamemnon's seal, (v. 1223.) In Euripides, (v. 527,) all proofs fail till Orestes shows a scar on his brow, which his sister remembers.

The saying is probably one of the wide-spread proverbs which imply parables. The idea is obviously that with which we are familiar in the Gospel, “grain of mustard seed.” Here, as in the “kicking against the pricks” of Acts ix. 5, xxvi. 14, and Agam. v. 1604, we are carried back to a period which lies beyond the range of history as that in which men took note of the analogies and embodied them in forms like this.

So in the Odyssey, (xix. 228,) Odysseus appears as wearing a woollen cloak, on which are embroidered the figures of a fawn and a dog.

An obvious reproduction of the words of Andromache, (Il. vi. 429.)

The words seem to imply that burning alive was known among the Greeks as a punishment for the more atrocious crimes. The “oozing pitch” apparently describes something like the “tunica molesta” of Juvenal. (Sat. viii. 235.) Hesychios (s. v. Κωνησαι) mentions the practice as alluded to in a lost play of Æschylos.

The words are both doubtful and obscure. Taking the reading which I have adopted, they seem to mean that while men in general had means of propitiating the Erinnyes and other Powers for the guilt of unavenged bloodshed, Orestes and Electra had no such way of escape open to them. If they, the next of kin, failed to do their work, these would be exposed to the full storm of wrath. But a conjectural emendation of one word gives us,

Either that old age would come prematurely, or that the hair itself would share the leprous whiteness of the flesh.

By some editors this verse is placed after v. 276, and the lines then read thus:—

Stress is laid here, as in Agam. 1224, on the effeminacy of the adulterer.

The great law of retribution is repeated from Agam. 1564. As one of the earliest utterances of man's moral sense, it was referred popularly among the Greeks to Rhadamanthos, who with Minos judged the souls of the dead in Hades. Comp. Aristot. Ethic. Nicom., v. 8.

The funeral pyre, which consumes the body, leaves the life and power of the man untouched. The spirit survives, and calls on the Gods that dwell in darkness to avenge him. The very cry of wailing tends, as a prayer to them, to the exposure of the murderer.

The Lykians, of whom Glaucos and Sarpedon are the representative heroes in the Iliad, are named as the chief allies of the Troïans.

The words embody the wide-spread feeling that the absence of funereal honours affected the spirit of the dead, and that the souls with whom he dwelt held him in high or low esteem according as they had been given or withheld.

Pindar, (Pyth. x. 47,) the contemporary of Æschylos, had made the name of these Hyperborei well known to all Greeks. The vague dreams of men, before the earth had been searched out, pictured a happy land as lying beyond their reach. There were Islands of the Blest in the far West; Æthiopians, peaceful and long-lived, in the South; and far away, beyond the cold North, a people exempt from the common evils of humanity. The latter have been connected with the old Aryan belief in the paradise of Mount Meru. Comp. also Herod. iv. 421, Prom. 812.

Sc., the beating of both hands upon the breast.

Perhaps, simply “the sharp and bitter cry.” But the rendering in the text seems justified as repeating the wish already expressed (v. 260) that the murderers may die by this form of death.

By some critics this speech and Antistroph. VII. are assigned to Electra, Antistroph. VIII. to the Chorus, with a corresponding change in the pronouns “my” and “thy.” The Chorus, as consisting of Troïan captives, is represented as adopting the more vehement Asiatic forms of wailing. Among these the Arians, Kissians, and Mariandynians (Pers., 920) seem to have been most conspicuous for their skill in lamentation, and as such were in request where hired mourners were wanted. Compare the opening chorus, v. 22.

The practice of mutilating the corpse of a murdered man by cutting off his hands and feet and fastening them round his waist, seems to have been looked on as rendering him powerless to seek for vengeance. Comp. Soph. Elect., v. 437. This kind of mutilation, and not mere wanton outrage, is what the Chorus here refer to.

As in v. 351 the loss of honour among the dead was represented as one consequence of the absence of funeral rites from those who loved the dead, so here the restoration of the children to their rights appears as the condition without which that dishonour must continue. If they succeed, then, and then only, can they offer funeral banquets, year by year, as was the custom. There may be a special reference to an Argive custom mentioned by Plutarch (Quæst. Græc. c. 24) of sacrificing immediately after the death of a relative to Apollo, and thirty days later to Hermes.

Another reference to the third cup of undiluted wine which men drank to the honour of Zeus the Preserver. Comp. Agam. v. 245.

The story of Althæa has recently been made familiar to English readers by Mr Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon. More briefly told, the legend ran that she, being the wife of Œneus, bare a son, who was believed to be the child of Ares—that the Fates came to her when the boy, who was named Meleagros, was seven days old, and told her that his life should last until the firebrand then burning on the earth should be consumed. She took the firebrand, and quenched it, and laid it by in a chest; but when Meleagros grew up, he joined in the chase of the great boar of Calydon, and when he had slain it, gave the skin as a trophy to Atalanta, and when his mother's brothers, the sons of Thestios, claimed it as their right, he waxed wroth with them and slew them. And then Althæa, in her grief, caring more for her brothers than her son, took the brand from the chest, and threw it into the fire, and so Meleagros died. Phrynichos is said to have made the myth the subject of a drama. In Homer (Il. x. 566,) Althæa brings about her son's death by her curses.

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.

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

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.

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.

As in her speeches in the Agamemnon, (vv. 595, 884,) Clytæmnestra'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.”

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

Apollo in the shrine at Delphi.

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

Or “before our eyes.”

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 will, protect the evil-doers.

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.

Or “Once more for those who wail.”

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

Comp. vv. 270–288.

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.

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.