reappear in their new character, and Electra enters the palace. The time of vengeance is close at hand: who does not tremble? The Chorus gives expression to the universal apprehension in a fine and simple ode. They sing of the terrible extremes to which human guilt, especially woman's, at times has reached.
"Cho. Full many a horror drear
And ghastly, Earth doth rear;—
With direful monsters teems encircling Ocean;
Meteors, with threatening sheen,
Hang heaven and earth between;—
The tempest's wrath still raves with wild commotion;
These, and dire winged things, and things that crawl,
Thou mayst describe them all.
Strophe. But man's audacious might
What words can paint aright,
Or woman's daring spirit who may tell?
Her passion's frenzied throes,
Co-mates of mortal woes?
For love unlovely, when its evil spell
'Mong brutes or men the feebler sex befools,
Conjugal bands o'errules."
Then they recite the past crimes of women—Althæa's, who burnt the brand on which her son Meleager's life depended; and Scylla, who for a golden necklace sold her father's life; and, worse than all, of the Lemnian women who slew their husbands, and made the name of Lemnos a byword for atrocity. But justice, they cry, is unerring in her aim, and her throne is immovable.
