of the elders she glories in her act—she is the personification of the ancestral curse; and she has avenged the murder of Iphigenia. The altercation has for the moment reached something like calm, when Ægisthus appears. He is the cousin of Agamemnon, but between the two families there is a murderous and adulterous feud; Ægisthus himself is the lover of Clytæmnestra and has shared in the plot. The Argives turn on him in hatred and contempt, which he answers with tyrannical threats. They remind him that Orestes, the king’s young son, is alive and safe abroad. Swords are drawn, but Clytæmnestra insists that the quarrel shall cease; she and Ægisthus must rule with dignity. A novel theory of the plot has been put forward by the late Dr. A. W. Verrall in his edition of the play.[232] He finds the following difficulties in the usual acceptation: (i) Agamemnon lands in Argos on the morning after the night in which Troy was captured, though as a matter of course and a matter of “history” several days (at the very least) must have elapsed before the Greek host so much as embarked; and though a storm has befallen the fleet on its way. (ii) The story given by Clytæmnestra about the beacons is absurd. Why has the arrangement existed for only one year of the ten? Why make an arrangement which would depend so entirely on the weather? How could the beacon on Mount Athos have been seen from Eubœa (a hundred miles away) when a tempest was raging on the intervening sea? (iii) This mystery, that Agamemnon reaches home only two or three hours after his signal, is never cleared up: neither he nor the queen mentions it when they meet. (iv) Thus the whole affair of the beacons is gratuitous as well as incredible. (v) We are not told how Agamemnon was slain. That is, though the poet is precise enough about the details of the actual murder, we are not enlightened as to how a great and victorious prince could be killed with impunity by his wife and her lover, who thereupon, with no difficulty, usurp the government. (vi) What does Ægisthus mean by claiming to have contrived the whole plot? On the face of it he has done nothing but skulk in the background. Dr. Verrall’s explanation, set forth with splendid lucidity, skill, and brilliance, may be briefly summarized thus. For a year Clytæmnestra and Ægisthus have been joined in a treasonable and adulterous league, Ægisthus knows what is happening at Troy and has the first news of Agamemnon’s landing (at night). He lights upon Mount Arachnæus a beacon which tells Clytæmnestra that all is ready. (Her story of the fire-chain is a lie to deceive the watchman and the elders.) Agamemnon thus naturally arrives only an hour or two after the news that Troy has fallen. The assassination-plot succeeds for various reasons. During the ten years’ war many citizens of Argos have been alienated from the king by the enormous loss of Greek lives. Hence the usurpers have a strong body of potential adherents.