“If they have sinned.”
ἀμπλακητος. In defence of this reading, which, with Well., I prefer, Con. has a very excellent note, to which I refer the critical reader. Fr., following Ahrens (as he often does), makes a bold transposition of the lines, but the sense remains pretty much the same. As to the guilt incurred by the Greeks, spoken of here and in the previous lines, the poet has put it, as some palliation of her own contemplated deed, into the mouth of Clytemnestra, but in perfect conformity also with the Homeric theology, which supposes that suffering must always imply guilt. Thus in the Odyss. III. 130-135, old Nestor explains to Telemachus:—
“But when Priam’s high-perched city by the Greeks was captured, then
In their swift ships homeward sailing, they were scattered by a god;
To the Greeks great Jove had purposed in his heart a black return,
For not all had understanding, and not all observant lived
Of Justice.”
“The gods are blind.”
I cannot here forbear recalling to the reader’s recollection a similar passage in Milton:—