Clytæmnestra sees now the important of the dream referred to in vv. 518-522. Footnote 457: The words must be left in their obscurity. Commentators have conjectured Orestes and Pylades, or the deaths of Agamemnon and Iphigeneia, or those of Ægisthos and Clytæmnestra, as the “two lions,” spoken of. The first seems most in harmony with the context. Footnote 458: The Eternal Justice which orders all things is mightier than any arbitrary will, such as men attribute to the Gods. That will, even if we dare to think of it as changeable or evil, is held in restraint. It cannot, even if it would, protect the evildoers. Footnote 459: The Chorus feel that they have been too long silent; now, at last, they can speak. As slaves dreading punishment they had been gagged before; now the gag is removed. Footnote 460: Or, “Once more for those who wail.” Footnote 461: It is not clear with what form of animal life the _myræna_ is to be identified. The ideal implied is that of some sea-monster whose touch was poisonous, but this does not hold good of the “lamprey.” Footnote 462: As the text stands, Orestes says that at last he can speak of the murder over which he had long brooded in silence. Another reading makes him speak of the oscillations in his own mind— “Now do I praise myself, now wail and blame.” Footnote 463: Comp. vv. 270-288. Footnote 464: Delphi was to the Greek (as Jerusalem was to mediæval Christendom) the centre at once of his religious life and of the material earth. Its rock was the _omphalos_ of the world. Consecrated widows watched over the sacred and perpetual fire. Once only up to the time of Æschylos, when the Temple itself was desecrated by the Persians, had it ceased to burn. Footnote 465: Once again we have the thought of the third cup offered as a libation to Zeus as saviour and deliverer. The Chorus asks whether this third deed of blood will be true to that idea and work out deliverance. EUMENIDES DRAMATIS PERSONÆ PYTHIAN PRIESTESS APOLLO ATHENA _Ghost of Clytæmnestra_ ORESTES HERMES _Chorus of the Erinnyes_ _Athenian Citizens, Women, and Girls_ _ARGUMENT.—The Erinnyes who appeared to Orestes after the murder of Clytæmnestra made his life miserable, and drove him without rest from land to land. And he, seeking to escape them, had recourse to the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, believing that he who had sent him to do the work of vengeance would also help to free him from this wretchedness. But the Erinnyes followed him there also, and took their places even within the holy shrine of the Oracle, and while Orestes knelt on the central hearth as a suppliant, they sat upon the seats there, and for very weariness fell asleep._