Note 131 — Chapter XII · THE LAY AUTHORS

τὸ θηριῶδες τοῦτο καὶ μιαιφόνον, Or. 524. Orestes instead of committing murder himself should have brought his father to justice, Or. 500 f. Agamemnon himself if he could have been asked would not have desired this bloody vengeance, Or. 288 ff. It is only Apollo’s unwise counsel that has led Orestes to the murder of his mother, El. 971 ff., 1296 f.; Or. 276 ff., 416, 591. After the deed Orestes does indeed feel remorse but no religious terrors, El. 1177 (in spite of which there is much about the pursuing Erinyes of his mother). How completely this whole series of ideas, the duty of vengeance, etc., has lost its meaning for the poet, is to be felt more especially in the sophistical frigidity with which the subject is treated in an ἀγών between Tyndareos and Orestes, Or. 491–604, and in the hair-splitting of the speech of Orestes himself, 932 ff.