[328]. Sc., Agamemnon, by the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, had induced his troops to persevere in an expedition from which, in their inmost hearts, they shrank back with strong dislike. A conjectural reading gives,
“By the sacrifice he offered
Giving death-doomed men false boldness.”
[329]. The tone of ambiguous irony mingles, it will be seen, even here, with the praises of the Chorus.
[330]. Possibly an allusion to Pandora's box. Here, too, Hope alone was left, but it only came up to where the curve of the rim began, not to its top. The imagery is drawn from the older method of voting, in which (as in Eumenides, v. 678) the votes for condemnation and acquittal were cast into separate urns.
[331]. The lion, as the symbol of the house of Atreus, still seen in the sculptures of Mykenæ; the horse, in allusion to the stratagem by which Troïa had been taken.
[332]. At the end of autumn, and therefore at a season when a storm like that described by the herald would be a probable incident enough.
[333]. So in Sophocles, Philoctetes (v. 1025) taunts Odysseus:—
“And yet thou sailedst with them by constraint,
By tricks fast bound.”