“Weeping because the torches in thy house
No more were lighted as they were of yore.”
Footnote 337:
The words touch upon the psychological fact that in dreams, as in
other abnormal states of the mind, the usual measures of time
disappear, and we seem to pass through the experiences of many years
in the slumber of a few minutes.
Footnote 338:
The rhetoric of the passage, with all its multiplied similitudes, fine
as it is in itself, receives its dramatic significance by being put
into the lips of Clytæmnestra. She “doth protest too much.” A true
wife would have been content with fewer words.
Footnote 339:
The last three lines of the speech are of course intentionally
ambiguous, carrying one meaning to the ear of Agamemnon, and another
to that of the audience.
Footnote 340:
There is obviously a side-thrust, such as an Athenian audience would
catch at, at the token of homage which the Persian kings required of
their subjects, the prostration at their feet, the earth spread over
with costly robes. Of the latter custom we have examples in the
history of Jehu (2 Kings ix. 13), in our Lord's entry into Jerusalem
(Mark xi. 8), in the usages of modern Persian kings (Malcolm's
_Persia_, i. 580); perhaps also in the true rendering of Ps. xlv. 14.
“She shall be brought unto the king _on_ raiment of needle-work.” In
the march of Xerxes across the Hellespont myrtle-boughs strown on the
bridge of boats took the place of robes (Herod. vii. 54). To the Greek
character, with its strong love of independence, such customs were
hateful. The case of Pausanias, who offended the national feeling by
assuming the outward state of the Persian kings, must have been
recalled to the minds of the Athenians, intentionally or otherwise, by
such a passage as this.e bridge of boats took the place of robes
(Herod. vii. 54). To
Footnote 341:
The “old saying, famed of many men,” which we find in the _Trachiniæ_
of Sophocles (v. 1), and in the counsel of Solon to Crœsos (Herod. i.
32).
Footnote 342:
He who had suffered so much from the wrath of Artemis at Aulis knew
what it was to rouse the wrath and jealousy of the Gods.
Footnote 343: