¹ See Analecta Euripidea (Berlin, 1875), 205–7Google Scholar. Throughout this paper I cite with author's name only Denniston, J. D., Euripides: Electra (Oxford, 1939)Google Scholar, Diggle, J., Euripidis Fabulae, ii (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar, and Murray, G., Euripidis Fabulae, ii ³ (Oxford, 1913)Google Scholar.

² A solution I have not seen in print but which is fully consistent with the way this passage is usually treated would be to assume a lacuna after 313, fill it exempli gratia as follows:

τί Κάστορ' εἶπον; το⋯δ' ⋯πεμνήσθην ⋯γώ,

ὅτου δ' ἕκατι, το⋯τ' ⋯μηχαν⋯ ɸράσαι,

and translate ‘Why did I mention Castor? Why indeed? I have no notion why’.

³ See Zuntz, G., An Inquiry into the Transmission of the Plays of Euripides (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar. In his discussion of this passage on p. 107 Zuntz assigns the change to Triclinius' second set of corrections, but since he thinks γυναῖκας is correct he posits a MS. source for it, without sufficient reason, as I indicate below.

⁴ See Meillet, A. and Vendryes, J., Traité de grammaire comparée des longues classiques ⁴ (Paris, 1966), p. 530Google Scholar and Schwyzer–Debrunner, , Griechische Grammatik ii. 50 with literature citedGoogle Scholar.

⁵ See Wackernagel, J., ‘Zum homerischen Dual’, KZ 23 (1877), 302–10Google Scholar, rpt. in Kleine Schriften i. 538–46; Page, D., History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley, 1959), 235–8Google Scholar; Chantraine, P., Grammaire Homérique ii. 29Google Scholar; and Merkelbach, R., ‘Αἴαντε’, Glotta 38 (1959), 268–70Google Scholar.

⁶ Cf. also the similar use of the plural, cited by Schwyzer–Debrunner: Δαμάτερσιν (= Demeter and Kore), Δεσποίνησιν (= the Δέσποινα [Kore] and Demeter).

⁷ More than a century ago F. A. Paley complained that Euripidean speeches ‘are often construed without any regard to the logical sequence of one verse with another’.

⁸ See Dale, A. M., Euripides: Alcestis (Oxford, 1954), xxii–xxixGoogle Scholar on the rhetoric of Euripidean speeches.

⁹ See Prinz, R. and Wecklein, N., Euripidis Fabulae (Leipzig, 1878–1902)Google Scholar with appendix. Scaliger's suggestion is quoted in vol. 7, p. 404 of the variorum edition (Glasgow, 1821) published by A. and J. M. Duncan.

¹⁰ Denniston says that γυμνάς cannot mean ‘without festal attire’. I would not disagree. But even though that is not what the word means it may be what the speaker means. It will rarely be of use to reply to a woman's ‘I haven't a thing to wear’, uttered before a closet of dowdy clothes, that this is secundum litteram untrue. It is noteworthy that γυμνός in Greek literature is frequently used to mean something less than total nakedness: Hes. Op. 391, Ar. Nub. 498, X. Anab. 4.4.12, and Pl. Resp. 474a. None of these is an exact parallel, but how often is Electra's situation depicted in our sources?

¹¹ Denniston cites Murray's translation (London, 1908), 22–3:

From all, from all

I am cut off. No portion hath my life

‘Mid wives of Argos, being no true wife.

No portion where the maidens throng to praise

Castor – my Castor, whom in ancient days

Ere he passed from us and men worshipped him,

They named my bridegroom.

He claims that it is impossible to get from the Greek of Murray's text the idea that Electra shuns the worship of the deified Castor. This is probably true. Murray fudges, but it is instructive to see that in fudging he seems to be translating Kirchhoff's παρθένους, the one word which does the most to establish religious festivals as the context for both 311 and 312. Scaliger's Κάστορε also helps.

¹² It should be noted, however, that Euripides shows some fondness for adjectives of one termination (usually feminine) in -άς, -άδος: γυμνάς at Hip. 1134, Tro. 448, fr. 105; δρομάς at Hip. 550, Sup. 1000, Tro. 42, Hel. 1301, Pho. 1125, Or. 317, 837, 1416, Ba. 731; μαινάς at El. 1032, Tro. 173, 307, 349, 415, Ion 552, Pho. 1753, Ba. passim; μηκάς at Cycl. 189; τοκάς at Cycl. 42, Med. 187, Hip. 559, Hec. 1157.

¹³ It has also been urged that a neuter dative plural should not be made to depend on a masculine dative plural because the similarity of endings would cause confusion. If this is really unexampled, which I doubt, there are other remedies. See below, n. 24.

¹⁴ Rhes. 904 ff. can scarcely serve as a parallel to our passage. Yet that is the only prima facie candidate.

¹⁵ Some of these points have already been made by Stoessl, F., ‘Die Elektra des Euripides’, RhM 99 (1956), 82–5Google Scholar and Steidle, W., Studien zum antiken Drama (Munich, 1968), 85–7Google Scholar.

¹⁶ I was unable to consult Arno1dt, named by Diggle as the first to propose this transposition. The conjecture was made again, without mention of Arnoldt, by Winnington-Ingram, R. P., ‘Euripides, Electra 1292–1307’, CR 51 (1937), 51–2Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See my review of Diggle in AJP for an appreciation of his services to Euripides.

¹⁸ I note further that if Orestes speaks 1295, of the three who address the Dioscuri, the first two, who have the least in common, are made formally the most parallel, while of the last two, who have the most in common, the first asks permission to speak while the second does not but simply bursts in.

¹⁹ The satire is exceedingly feeble. The Dioscuri change from the ‘impressive moral frown’ of 1294 to a more indulgent attitude and do not give any justification for it. Are they therefore contemptible? The worst indictment these facts suggest is feeble-mindedness, for this change of heart cannot be treated as evidence of base or unworthy passions in them. Does Euripides' meditation on the gods therefore come to this, that while some of the gods are heartless and unjust, others are simply witless fools who either do not know or do not care if they contradict themselves?

²⁰ Cf. Ba. 1344, where Cadmus, the last person addressed by Dionysus, replies, and Hel. 1680, where Theoclymenus replies to the Dioscuri.

²¹ This fact makes it all the more unlikely that they should say to the chorus θέμις, οὐ μυσαραῖς τοῖσδε σɸαγίοις, a gratuitous insult to Orestes.

²² Electra has as much reason as Orestes to ask permission to speak since she had her hand on the sword: cf. 1225.

²³ There is no contradiction with 1250–1. Orestes must leave Argos because he is going to be pursued by the Keres. They, like the Erinyes in Aeschylus, pursue murderers whether or not they have been cleansed of miasma: cf. Cho. 1059 f. and Eu. 282 f. and see Parker, R., Miasma (Oxford, 1983), 386–8Google Scholar and, on the Orestes passage, p. 311.

²⁴ If the difficulty with the datives mentioned in n. 13 above is a real one, we can read μυσαροῖς τοῖνδε σɸαγίοιν (Musgrave), μυσαροῖν τοῖνδε σɸαγίοις, or, simplest of all, μυσαρῷ. With this last reading only Orestes is explicitly absolved and Electra's question becomes more natural. The corruption in any case is easily explained as an anticipation of the ending of the next word.

* I would like to thank CQ's anonymous reader for helpful references.