NOTES
before Aeschylus and after. The asps of Libya and divers other serpent things were "matricides"; at birth they tore and killed their mother. See Herodotus 3, 109; Euripides' Orestes 479.
P. 43, l. 563, "An accent of Parnassian speech": It is interesting to note that there is no trace of Phocian dialect in Orestes' actual language later on. To make him talk broad Phocian would, according to convention, have made him "comic," like certain Boeotians, Spartans, and Scythians in Aristophanes. On the other hand, an oriental colour is often allowed in tragic language, especially in lyric passages, e.g. in Aeschylus' Persae.
P. 43, l. 574, The reading is doubtful. I read μ᾽ οἱ for μοι and καλεῖν for βαλεῖν.
P. 44, l. 583, "One Below": i.e. Agamemnon.
P. 44, l. 585, Chorus: The sense of this chorus is often difficult and the text apparently corrupt, especially the end. "There are many terrible things, but none so terrible as a woman's passion; for instance (602), Althaea, daughter of Thestios, who slew her son Meleâger; or (612) Skylla of Megara who betrayed her father Nîsos; or (631) the Lemnian women, who slew their husbands; and, after all (623—a stanza has been transposed) have we not an example here in Clytemnestra?"
Althaea: See Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon. When her son Meleâger was born she saw in the room the three Fates, one of whom foretold that Meleâger should die when a red brand then burning in the fire was consumed. Althaea leapt out of bed and saved the brand. Afterwards, when Meleâger fell in love with Atalanta, and in a feud on her behalf
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