“These words of evil imprecation dire.”
This is said to avoid the bad omen of mingling a curse with a blessing. The ancients were very scrupulous as to the use of evil words in religious services, and, when such were either necessary, or had accidentally crept in, they always made a formal apology. This I have expressed more largely than my text warrants in the next line, where I follow Schütz in reading καλῆς for κακῆς; a correction which, though not absolutely necessary, is sufficiently plausible to justify Blom., Schol., and Pal. in their adoption of it.
Chorus. This chorus seems hopelessly botched in the first half, and all the attempts to mend it are more or less unsatisfactory. If any one think “plashing torrents” a strong phrase, he must know that it is no stronger than καναχὲς in the original, a word familiar to every student of Homer. The ἐρυμα (or ἐρμα—Herm.), I agree with every interpreter, except Klausen, in applying to the tomb of Agamemnon; of the κακῶν κεδνῶν τε, I can make nothing, beyond incorporating the Scholiast’s gloss, ἀπότροπον των ἠμετέρων κακῶν.
Electra. The reader will find in Pot. a somewhat amplified translation of the line here—
κήρυξ μεγιστε των άνω τε καὶ κάτω,
mentioned above as having been thrown back by Hermann to the commencement of Electra’s address over the tomb of her father, immediately preceding the short choral ode. It is literally translated by E. P., Oxon.—
“O mightiest herald of the powers above and below,”