THE CHOËPHOROE
killed his mother's two brethren, she threw the brand into the fire.
Skylla: Skylla, daughter of Nîsos, King of Megara, whose life depended on a magic lock of hair. She fell in love with Minos, who was besieging Megara, and betrayed her father to him. The rings of Cretan gold were apparently a love-gift.
Lemnos: The native women of Lemnos in one night rose and killed their Greek husbands, perhaps because the men had left them for Thracian concubines, perhaps for other reasons. See Rise of the Greek Epic, Ed. 2, p. 77.
P. 47, l. 652, The time is now evening and the scene is in front of the castle of the Atreidae. In Aeschylus' time there was probably no actual change made in the stage arrangements. The back wall represented a palace front, while in the centre of the orchestra was an altar or mound which stood for Agamemnon's tomb. In the first half of the play you attended to the tomb and ignored the back scene: in the second you attended to the castle and ignored the mound.
Observe the delay before the door is opened. This increases the dramatic tension and at the same time makes us feel that the House is "beset with evil." An ordinary great house would be thrown open at the first knock.
P. 48, l. 668, The first entrance of Clytemnestra, about whom we have thought and talked so much, is immensely important. She comes unexpected, standing suddenly in the great doorway where we last saw her, with blood on her brow and an axe in her hands, standing over the dead bodies (Agamem-
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