“The bird that hath been limed in a bush,
With trembling eyes misdoubteth every bush”
[378]. The older reading gives—
“A shadow might o'erturn it.”
[379]. Her own doom, hard as it was, touches her less than the common lot of human suffering and mutability.
[380]. So far the dialogue has been sustained by the Coryphæos, or leader of the Chorus. Now each member of it speaks and gives his counsel.
[381]. The Coryphæos again takes up his part, sums up, and pronounces his decision.
[382]. i.e., He had had his triumph over her when, forgetful of her mother's feelings, he had sacrificed Iphigeneia. She has now repaid him to the full.
[383]. The third libation at all feasts was to Zeus, as the Preserver or Guardian Deity. Clytæmnestra boasts that her third blow was as an offering to a God of other kind, to Him who had in his keeping not the living, but the dead.
[384]. So in the Choëphori (vv. 351, 476), the custom of pouring libations on the burial-place of the dead is recognised as an element of their blessedness or shame in Hades, and Agamemnon is represented as lacking the honour which comes from them till he receives it at the hand of Orestes.