P. 53, l. 793, Then quickly spake Orestes.]—­If Orestes had washed with Aegisthus, he would have become his xenos, or guest, as much as if he had eaten his bread and salt.  In that case the slaying would have been definitely a crime, a dishonourable act.  Also, Aegisthus would have had the right to ask his name.—­The unsuspiciousness of Aegisthus is partly natural; it was not thus, alone and unarmed, that he expected Orestes to stand before him.  Partly it seems like a heaven-sent blindness.  Even the omens do not warn him, though no doubt in a moment more they would have done so.

P. 56, l. 878, With guile he hath slain.]—­So the MSS.  The Chorus have already a faint feeling, quickly suppressed, that there may be another side to Orestes’ action.  Most editors alter the text to mean “He hath slain these guileful ones.”

P. 58, l. 900, It shames me, yet God knows I hunger sore.]—­To treat the dead with respect was one of the special marks of a Greek as opposed to a barbarian.  It is possible that the body of Aegisthus might legitimately have been refused burial, or even nailed on a cross as Orestes in a moment of excitement suggests.  But to insult him lying dead would be a shock to all Greek feeling. ("Unholy is the voice of loud thanksgiving over slaughtered men,” Odyssey xxii. 412.) Any excess of this kind, any violence towards the helpless, was apt to rouse “The sleeping wrath of the world.”  There was a Greek proverb, “Even an injured dog has his Erinys”—­ i.e., his unseen guardian or avenger.  It is interesting, though not surprising, to hear that men had little love for Electra.  The wonderful speech that follows, though to a conventional Greek perhaps the most outrageous thing of which she is guilty, shows best the inherent nobility of her character before years of misery had “killed her soul within.”

P. 59, ll. 928 f., Being in falseness one, &c]—­The Greek here is very obscure and almost certainly corrupt.

P. 61, l. 964, ’Tis my mother comes.]—­The reaction has already begun in Orestes.  In the excitement and danger of killing his enemy he has shown coolness and courage, but now a work lies before him vastly more horrible, a little more treacherous, and with no element of daring to redeem it.  Electra, on the other hand, has done nothing yet; she has merely tried, not very successfully, to revile the dead body, and her hate is unsatisfied.  Besides, one sees all through the play that Aegisthus was a kind of odious stranger to her; it was the woman, her mother, who came close to her and whom she really hated.

P. 63, l. 979, Was it some fiend of Hell?]—­The likeness to Hamlet is obvious. ("The spirit that I have seen May be the Devil.”  End of Act II.)

P. 63, l. 983, How shall it be then, the same stealthy blow?...]—­He means, I think, “the same as that with which I have already murdered an unsuspecting man to-day,” but Electra for her own purposes misinterprets him.