P. 43, l. 747.  It is rare in Greek tragedy for the Chorus to leave the stage altogether in the middle of a play.  But they do so, for example, in the Ajax of Sophocles.  Ajax is lost, and the Sailors who form the Chorus go out to look for him; when they are gone the scene is supposed to shift and Ajax enters alone, arranging his own death.  This very effective scene of the revelling Heracles is to be explained, I think, by the Satyr-play tradition.  See Preface.

P. 45, ll. 782-785.  There are four lines rhyming in the Greek here; an odd and slightly drunken effect.

P. 46, l. 805 ff., A woman dead, of no one’s kin:  why grieve so much?]—­ Heracles is somewhat “shameless,” as a Greek would say; he had much more delicacy when he was sober.

P. 48, l. 837 ff.  A fine speech, leaving one in doubt whether it is the outburst of a real hero or the vapouring of a half-drunken man.  Just the effect intended.  Electryon was a chieftain of Tiryns.  His daughter, Alcmene, the Tirynthian Kore or Earth-maiden, was beloved of Zeus, or, as others put it, was chosen by Zeus to be the mother of the Deliverer of mankind whom he was resolved to beget.  She was married to Amphitryon of Thebes.

P. 49, l. 860 ff.  If Heracles set out straight to the grave and Admetus with the procession was returning from the grave, how was it they did not meet?  The answer is that Attic drama seldom asked such questions.

Pp. 49-54, ll. 861-961.  This Threnos, or lamentation scene, seems to our minds a little long.  We must remember (1) that a Tragedy is a Threnos—­a Trauerspiel—­and, however much it develops in the direction of a mere entertainment, the Threnos-element is of primary importance. (2) This scene has two purposes to serve; first to illustrate the helpless loneliness of Admetus when he returns to his empty house, and secondly the way in which remorse works in his mind, till in ll. 935-961 he makes public confession that he has done wrong.  For both purposes one needs the illusion of a long lapse of time.

P. 53, l. 945 ff., The floor unswept.]—­Probably the floor really would be unswept in the house of a primitive Thessalian chieftain whose wife was dead and her place unfilled; but I doubt if the point would have been mentioned so straightforwardly in a real tragedy.

Pp. 54-55, l. 966 ff., That which Needs Must Be.]—­Ananke or Necessity.—­ Orphic rune.]—­The charms inscribed by Orpheus on certain tablets in Thrace.  Orphic literature and worship had a strong magical element in them.

P. 55, l. 995 ff., A grave-mound of the dead.]—­Every existing Greek tragedy has somewhere in it a taboo grave—­a grave which is either worshipped, or specially avoided or somehow magical.  We may conjecture from this passage that there was in the time of Euripides a sacred tomb near Pherae, which received worship and had the story told about it that she who lay there had died for her husband.