The words touch upon the psychological fact that in dreams, as in other abnormal states of the mind, the usual measures of time disappear, and we seem to pass through the experiences of many years in the slumber of a few minutes. Footnote 338: The rhetoric of the passage, with all its multiplied similitudes, fine as it is in itself, receives its dramatic significance by being put into the lips of Clytæmnestra. She “doth protest too much.” A true wife would have been content with fewer words. Footnote 339: The last three lines of the speech are of course intentionally ambiguous, carrying one meaning to the ear of Agamemnon, and another to that of the audience. Footnote 340: There is obviously a side-thrust, such as an Athenian audience would catch at, at the token of homage which the Persian kings required of their subjects, the prostration at their feet, the earth spread over with costly robes. Of the latter custom we have examples in the history of Jehu (2 Kings ix. 13), in our Lord's entry into Jerusalem (Mark xi. 8), in the usages of modern Persian kings (Malcolm's _Persia_, i. 580); perhaps also in the true rendering of Ps. xlv. 14. “She shall be brought unto the king _on_ raiment of needle-work.” In the march of Xerxes across the Hellespont myrtle-boughs strown on the bridge of boats took the place of robes (Herod. vii. 54). To the Greek character, with its strong love of independence, such customs were hateful. The case of Pausanias, who offended the national feeling by assuming the outward state of the Persian kings, must have been recalled to the minds of the Athenians, intentionally or otherwise, by such a passage as this.e bridge of boats took the place of robes (Herod. vii. 54). To Footnote 341: The “old saying, famed of many men,” which we find in the _Trachiniæ_ of Sophocles (v. 1), and in the counsel of Solon to Crœsos (Herod. i. 32). Footnote 342: He who had suffered so much from the wrath of Artemis at Aulis knew what it was to rouse the wrath and jealousy of the Gods. Footnote 343: An echo of a line in Hesiod (_Works and Days_, 763)— “No whispered rumours which the many spread Can ever wholly perish.” Footnote 344: Here, too, we may trace a reference to the Oriental custom of recognising the sanctity of a consecrated place by taking the shoes from off the feet, as in Exod. iii. 5, in the services of the Tabernacle and Temple, through all their history (Juven., _Sat._ vi. 159), in all mosques to the present day. Agamemnon, yielding to the temptress, seeks to make a compromise with his conscience. He will walk upon the tapestry, but will treat it as if it, of right, belonged to the Gods, and were a consecrated thing. It is probably in connection with this incident that Æschylos was said to have been the first to bring actors on the stage in these boots or buskins (Suidas. s. v. άρβύλη).