[73] The Cambridge editor would read εστ' ουτις λογος.
[74] But χαριν, as Matthiæ remarks, is taken in two senses; as a preposition with γυναικος, ob improbam mulierem, and as a substantive, with αχαριν added. Cf. Æsch. Choeph. 44. Lucretius uses a similar oxymoron respecting the same subject, i. 99. "Sed casta inceste nubendi tempore in ipso Hostia concideret mactatu mæsta parentis."
[75] This passage is very corrupt. The Cambridge editor supposes something lost respecting the fortunes of Orestes. Hermann reads ‛εν δε λυπεισθαι μονον, ‛ο τ' ουκ αφρων ων. But I am very doubtful.
[76] These three lines are justly condemned as an absurd interpolation by Dindorf and the Cambridge editor.
[77] This seems the easiest way of expressing και συ after συ δ'.
[78] I am partly indebted to Potter's happy version. The Cambridge editor is as ingenious as usual, but he candidly allows that conjecture is scarcely requisite.
[79] i.e. thou seemest reckless of life.
[80] προστροπη, this mode of offering supplication, i.e. this duty of sacrifice.
[81] Diodorus, xx. 14. quotes this and the preceding line reading χθονος for πετρας. He supposes that Euripides derived the present account from the sacrifices offered to Saturn by the Carthaginians, who caused their children to fall from the hands of the statue εις τι χασμα πληρες πυρος. Compare Porphyr. de Abst. ii. 27. Justin, xviii. 6. For similar human sacrifices among the Gauls, Cæsar de B.G. vi. 16, with the note of Vossius. Compare also Saxo Grammaticus, Hist. Dan. iii. p. 42, and the passages of early historians quoted in Stephens' entertaining notes, p. 92.
[82] Cf. Tibull. i. 3, 5. "Abstineas, mors atra, precor, non hic mihi mater, Quæ legat in mæstos ossa perusta sinus; non soror, Assyrios cineri quæ dedat odores, et fleat effusis ante sepulchra comis."