Tend the loom and the spindle, and give thy maidens the order
Each to her separate work; but leave the bow and the arrows
To the men and to me—for the man in the house is the master.”
Odyssey XXI. 350.
So Telemachus says to his mother; and on other occasions he uses what we should think, rather sharp and undutiful language—but in Greece a woman who left the woman’s chamber without a special and exceptional call subjected herself to just rebuke. With regard to the matter here at issue between Orestes and Clytemnestra, Kl. notes that, though the wandering Ulysses is allowed without blame to form an amorous alliance with Calypso, the same excuse is not allowed for the female sitting quietly in her “upper chamber” (ὑπερώιον, Il. II. 514) as Homer has it. For “in ancient times,” says the Scholiast to that passage, “the Greeks shut up their women in garrets (ὑπερ τοῦ δυσεντεύκτους ἀυτάς (ἐ)ιναι) that they might be difficult to get at.”—How Turkish!
Orestes. I have little doubt that Kl., Peile, Fr., Well., and Pal., are right in giving the line ἦ κάρτα μάντις to Orestes. I should be inclined to agree with Well. and Pal. also, that after this line a verse has dropt out—“in quo instantem sibi mortem deprecata sit Clytemnestra;” but there is no need of indicating the supposed blank in the translation, as the sense runs on smoothly enough without it.
“. . . the eye of this great house, may live.”
An Oriental expression, to which the magnificent phraseology of our Celestial brother who sells tea, has made the English ear sufficiently familiar. He calls our king, or our consul, I forget which, “the Barbarian eye.” Other examples of this style occur in the Persians and the Eumenides.—See [p. 172] above.