NOTES
The Chorus naturally shrink away from the house in order not to be involved in imminent danger. This also has the advantage that it leaves the scene empty, and the slave who rushes out in terror crying for help finds no one. I receive the impression that the scene is meant to be dark, which would imply that at the end of the play Orestes stood between men holding torches. There is wonderful power in this scene. There are no men to help; no women even; all the world is dumb and asleep. Then suddenly there is Clytemnestra.
P. 59, l. 886, "The dead are risen": A deliberately riddling line, in the Greek meaning either: "I tell thee the dead are slaying the living man," or "I tell thee the living man is slaying the dead."
P. 59, l. 893, "Aigisthos, my beloved": Up to this moment she has been ready to fight. The death of her beloved unstrings her. One would like to know whether Aeschylus meant her actually to have the axe and drop it, or whether Orestes is intended to come too soon. Note with what intensity even when the fight has gone out of her she fences for her life. Every line of the scene is charged with meaning and feeling. The thing that breaks her is the sudden realization (928) that this is the serpent of her dream. An interesting piece of technique which I have not tried to represent is here found in the original. Orestes' words in 927 are so arranged as to produce almost exactly the word "hisses" (σοὐρίζει for ὁρίζει = συρίζει).
P. 61, ll. 920, "A woman starves": This is her first argument in Agamemnon 862 ff.: "That any woman thus should sit alone," etc.
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