gold and rich in slaughter," as Electra describes it, fronted by the stately "Gate of Lions" which then guarded the statue of Apollo, and built in that stupendous Cyclopæan style which still impresses every traveller. But Agatharchus, or whatever artist Sophocles employed, has given us on this occasion more than the usual architectural background. There is the grove of Io, "the tormented wanderer," and the market-place sacred to Apollo as the "Wolf-god;" on the left is the famous temple of Juno, while in the far distance are seen the towers of Argos.[1] The time is early morning in Athens as well as on the stage, and it is such a morning as Chaucer would have loved, with the hills and greenwood bright and fresh in the sunlight, as one of the speakers describes it,—
"Which wakes the birds to tune their matin song,
And star-decked night's dark shadows flee away.—(P.)
Two young men enter. They are the famous friends, whose names, like those of David and Jonathan, have consecrated all later friendships,—Orestes and Pylades. With them comes an old and faithful servant (perhaps "the watchman" of Æschylus's 'Agamemnon'), who had saved the young Orestes at the time of his father's murder, had reared him up to manhood, and is now
- ↑ Mr Jebb quotes Clark's Peloponnesus (p. 72), with reference to the famous historic localities which Sophocles has thus brought together in one picture, irrespectively of distance, and which Clark compares with a stage direction in Victor Hugo's play of 'Marie Tudor.' "Palais de Richmond: dans le fond à gauche l'Eglise de Westminster, à droite la Tour de Londres."—Jebb's Electra, p. 3.
