312, 746. Castor and Polydeuces were sons of Zeus and Leda, brothers of
Helen, and half-brothers of Clytemnestra, whose father was the mortal
Tyndareus. They lived as knights without reproach, and afterwards became
stars and demigods. The story is told that originally Castor was mortal
and Polydeuces immortal; but when Castor was fatally wounded Polydeuces
prayed that he might be allowed to give him half his immortality. The
prayer was granted; and the two live as immortals, yet, in some mysterious
way, knowing the taste of death. Unlike the common sinners and punishers
of the rest of the play, these Heroes find their "glory" in saving men
from peril and suffering, especially at sea, where they appear as the
globes of light, called St. Elmo's fire, upon masts and yards.
Pp. 64-71, ll. 998 ff.]--Clytemnestra. "And what sort of woman is this
doomed and 'evil' Queen? We know the majestic murderess of Aeschylus, so
strong as to be actually beautiful, so fearless and unrepentant that one
almost feels her to be right. One can imagine also another figure that
would be theatrically effective--a 'sympathetic' sinner, beautiful and
penitent, eager to redeem her sin by self-sacrifice. But Euripides gives
us neither. Perhaps he believed in neither. It is a piteous and most real
character that we have here, in this sad middle-aged woman, whose first
words are an apology; controlling quickly her old fires, anxious to be as
little hated as possible. She would even atone, one feels, if there were
any safe way of atonement; but the consequences of her old actions are
holding her, and she is bound to persist.... In her long speech it is
scarcely to Electra that she is chiefly speaking; it is to the Chorus,
perhaps to her own bondmaids; to any or all of the people whose shrinking
so frets her." (_Independent Review, l.c._)
P. 65, l. 1011, Cast his child away.]--The Greek fleet assembled for Troy
was held by contrary winds at Aulis, in the Straits of Euboea, and the
whole expedition was in danger of breaking up. The prophets demanded a
human sacrifice, and Agamemnon gave his own daughter, Iphigenîa. He
induced Clytemnestra to send her to him, by the pretext that Achilles had
asked for her in marriage.
P. 66, l. 1046, Which led me to the men he hated.]--It made Clytemnestra's
crime worse, that her accomplice was the blood-foe.
Pp. 65-68. As elsewhere in Euripides, these two speeches leave the matter
undecided. He does not attempt to argue the case out. He gives us a flash
of light, as it were, upon Clytemnestra's mind and then upon Electra's.
Each believes what she is saying, and neither understands the whole truth.
It is clear that Clytemnestra, being left for ten years utterly alone, and
having perhaps something of Helen's temperament about her, naturally fell
in love with the Lord of a neighbouring castle; and having once committed
herself, had no way of saving her life except by killing her husband, and
afterwards either killing or keeping strict watch upon Orestes and
Electra. Aegisthus, of course, was deliberately plotting to carry out his
blood-feud and to win a great kingdom.
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 Cyclôpes; 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.).
P. 80, l, 1295, I also, sons of Tyndareus.]--Observe that Electra claims
the gods as cousins (cf. p. 22, l. 313), addressing them by the name of
their mortal father. The Chorus has called them "sons of Zeus." In the
same spirit she faces the gods, complains, and even argues, while Orestes
never raises his eyes to them.
P. 80, l. 1300.]--Kêres. The death-spirits that flutter over our heads, as
Homer says, "innumerable, whom no man can fly nor hide from."
P. 82, l. 1329, Yea, our peace is riven by the strange pain of these that
die.]--Cf. the attitude of Artemis at the end of the _Hippolytus_.
Sometimes Euripides introduces gods whose peace is not riven, but then
they are always hateful. (Cf. Aphrodite in the _Hippolytus_, Dionysus in
the _Bacchae_, Athena in the _Trojan Women_.)
P. 82, l. 1336, O faithful unto death.]--This is the last word we hear of
Electra, and it is interesting. With all her unlovely qualities it remains
true that she was faithful--faithful to the dead and the absent, and to
what she looked upon as a fearful duty.
* * * * *
Additional Note on the presence of the Argive women during the plot
against the King and Queen. (Cf. especially p. 19, l. 272, These women
hear us.)--It would seem to us almost mad to speak so freely before the
women. But one must observe: 1. Stasis, or civil enmity, ran very high in
Greece, and these women were of the party that hated Aegisthus. 2. There
runs all through Euripides a very strong conception of the cohesiveness of
women, their secretiveness, and their faithfulness to one another. Medea,
Iphigenia, and Creusa, for instance, trust their women friends with
secrets involving life and death, and the secrets are kept. On the other
hand, when a man--Xuthus in the _Ion_--tells the Chorus women a secret,
they promptly and with great courage betray him. Aristophanes leaves the
same impression; and so do many incidents in Greek history. Cf. the
murders plotted by the Athenian women (Hdt. v. 87), and both by and
against the Lemnian women (Hdt. vi. 138). The subject is a large one, but
I would observe: 1. Athenian women were kept as a rule very much together,
and apart from men. 2. At the time of the great invasions the women of a
community must often have been of different race from the men; and this
may have started a tradition of behaviour. 3. Members of a subject (or
disaffected) nation have generally this cohesiveness: in Ireland, Poland,
and parts of Turkey the details of a political crime will, it is said, be
known to a whole country side, but not a whisper come to the authorities.
Of course the mere mechanical fact that the Chorus had to be present on
the stage counts for something. It saved the dramatist trouble to make his
heroine confide in the Chorus. But I do not think Euripides would have
used this situation so often unless it had seemed to him both true to life
and dramatically interesting.