P. 67, 1. 1161, I unsay that word.—­It was a bad omen for Thoas to say at so critical a moment that a rule was broken.  The priestess declares the word unsaid—­just the opposite of “accepting” an omen.—­Dr. Verrall, however, suggests to me that the line means, “I ask Hosia (the spirit of Holiness) to take in charge what I am going to say”; i.e. all the falsehoods into which she is about to plunge.

This scene of the fooling of Thoas is full of wit and double meanings.  The end of it is rather like the famous scene in Forget-me-not, where the Corsican avenger is induced to turn his back in order to let a lady pass out of the room without being seen and compromised, the lady in question being really the person whom he has sworn to kill.

P. 72, 11. 1203 ff.—­This change of metre denotes increasing tension of excitement.

Each individual invention of Iphigenia seems clearly to have its purpose.  She wants to combine a great appearance of precaution against the escape of the strangers—­hence the soldiers, the bonds, &c.—­with the greatest possible reality of precaution against any one preventing their escape:  hence she takes the soldiers without an officer, the townsfolk are forbidden to follow or even to look, and the King is left at the Temple.  The exact motive of all the veiling I do not see; perhaps it adds to the effect to represent Thoas as deliberately hiding his eyes while he is deceived.  But in any case her precautions all seem sound according to ancient theology.

P. 77, 11. 1235, 1282, Oh, fair the fruits of Leto blow, &c.—­A curious and rather difficult little ritual hymn explaining how Apollo came from Delos to Delphi.  It acts more as an interlude than anything else, to fill the time until we learn the issue of the attempt at escape.

All Delphi originally belonged to Mother Earth.  The oracles were given by her daughter Themis, and the place guarded by an ancient earth-born Dragon.  Apollo came, slew the Dragon, and turned Themis away.  Earth took revenge upon him in a curious manner:  she invented Dreams, which told the future freely, though, it would seem, confusedly, and, so to speak, spoiled the trade of Delphi until Apollo appealed to Zeus for protection.—­The story is not very creditable to the gods, and is expressly denied by Aeschylus on that ground.  According to them there was never any strife; Earth, Themis, Phoebe peacefully succeeded one another at Delphi, and Phoebe gave it as a birth-gift to Phoebus or Apollo.

I think the story is probably a case of the infant Sun slaying the Serpent of darkness.  The ancient identification of Phoebus Apollo with the sun and Artemis Hecate with the moon seems to me to withstand all modern criticisms, though of course there are many other elements combined with the Sun and Moon elements.

P. 79, 1. 1284, Messenger.—­This excited rush upon the stage of a man clamouring for the King is very clever as a next step in the story.  One sees at once the sort of thing that has happened, and wants to know what exactly.