P. 72, l. 1156, For the flying heart too fond.]—­The text is doubtful, but this seems to be the literal translation, and the reference to Clytemnestra is intelligible enough.

P. 73, l. 1157, The giants’ cloud-capped ring.]—­The great walls of Mycenae, built by the Cyclopes; cf. Trojan Women, p. 64, “Where the towers of the giants shine O’er Argos cloudily.”

P. 75, l. 1201, Back, back in the wind and rain.]—­The only explicit moral judgment of the Chorus; cf. note on l. 878.

P. 77, l. 1225, I touched with my hand thy sword.]—­i.e., Electra dropped her own sword in horror, then in a revulsion of feeling laid her hand upon Orestes’ sword—­out of generosity, that he might not bear his guilt alone.

P. 78, l. 1241, An Argive ship.]—­This may have been the ship of Menelaus, which was brought to Argos by Castor and Polydeuces, see l. 1278. Helena 1663.  The ships labouring in the “Sicilian sea” (p. 82, l. 1347) must have suggested to the audience the ships of the great expedition against Sicily, then drawing near to its destruction.  The Athenian fleet was destroyed early in September 413 B.C.:  this play was probably produced in the spring of the same year, at which time the last reinforcements were being sent out.

P. 78, l. 1249.]—­Marriage of Pylades and Electra.  A good example of the essentially historic nature of Greek tragedy.  No one would have invented a marriage between Electra and Pylades for the purposes of this play.  It is even a little disturbing.  But it is here, because it was a fixed fact in the tradition (cf. Iphigenia in Tauris, l. 915 ff.), and could not be ignored.  Doubtless these were people living who claimed descent from Pylades and Electra.

P. 79, l. 1253, Scourge thee as a burning wheel.]—­At certain feasts a big wheel soaked in some inflammable resin or tar was set fire to and rolled down a mountain.

P. 79, l. 1258, There is a hill in Athens.]—­The great fame of the Areopagus as a tribunal for man-slaying (see Aeschylus’ Eumenides) cannot have been due merely to its incorruptibility.  Hardly any Athenian tribunal was corruptible.  But the Areopagus in very ancient times seems to have superseded the early systems of “blood-feud” or “blood-debt” by a humane and rational system of law, taking account of intention, provocation, and the varying degrees of guilt.  The Erinyes, being the old Pelasgian avengers of blood, now superseded, have their dwelling in a cavern underneath the Areopagus.

P. 80, ll. 1276 ff.]—­The graves of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra actually existed in Argos (Paus. ii. 16, 7).  They form, so to speak, the concrete material fact round which the legend of this play circles (cf.  Ridgeway in Hellenic Journal, xxiv. p. xxxix.).

P. 80, l. 1280.]—­Helen.  The story here adumbrated is taken from Stesichorus, and forms the plot of Euripides’ play Helena (cf.  Herodotus, ii. 113 ff.).