P. 40, l. 713 ff. The quick thrust and parry are sometimes hard to follow in reading, though in acting the sense would be plain enough. Admetus cries angrily, "Oh, live a longer life than Zeus!" "Is that a curse?" says Pheres; "are you cursing because nobody does you any harm?" (i.e. since you clearly have nothing else to curse for). Admetus: "On the contrary I blessed you; I knew you were greedy of life." Pheres: "I greedy? It is you, I believe, that Alcestis is dying for."

P. 42, l. 732. Acastus was Alcestis's brother, son of Pelias.

P. 43, l. 747. It is rare in Greek tragedy for the Chorus to leave the stage altogether in the middle of a play. But they do so, for example, in the Ajax of Sophocles. Ajax is lost, and the Sailors who form the Chorus go out to look for him; when they are gone the scene is supposed to shift and Ajax enters alone, arranging his own death. This very effective scene of the revelling Heracles is to be explained, I think, by the Satyr-play tradition. See Preface.

P. 45, ll. 782-785. There are four lines rhyming in the Greek here; an odd and slightly drunken effect.

P. 46, l. 805 ff., A woman dead, of no one's kin: why grieve so much?]— Heracles is somewhat "shameless," as a Greek would say; he had much more delicacy when he was sober.

P. 48, l. 837 ff. A fine speech, leaving one in doubt whether it is the outburst of a real hero or the vapouring of a half-drunken man. Just the effect intended. Electryon was a chieftain of Tiryns. His daughter, Alcmene, the Tirynthian Kore or Earth-maiden, was beloved of Zeus, or, as others put it, was chosen by Zeus to be the mother of the Deliverer of mankind whom he was resolved to beget. She was married to Amphitryon of Thebes.

P. 49, l. 860 ff. If Heracles set out straight to the grave and Admetus with the procession was returning from the grave, how was it they did not meet? The answer is that Attic drama seldom asked such questions.

Pp. 49-54, ll. 861-961. This Threnos, or lamentation scene, seems to our minds a little long. We must remember (1) that a Tragedy is a Threnos—a Trauerspiel—and, however much it develops in the direction of a mere entertainment, the Threnos-element is of primary importance. (2) This scene has two purposes to serve; first to illustrate the helpless loneliness of Admetus when he returns to his empty house, and secondly the way in which remorse works in his mind, till in ll. 935-961 he makes public confession that he has done wrong. For both purposes one needs the illusion of a long lapse of time.

P. 53, l. 945 ff., The floor unswept.]—Probably the floor really would be unswept in the house of a primitive Thessalian chieftain whose wife was dead and her place unfilled; but I doubt if the point would have been mentioned so straightforwardly in a real tragedy.

Pp. 54-55, l. 966 ff., That which Needs Must Be.]—Ananke or Necessity.— Orphic rune.]—The charms inscribed by Orpheus on certain tablets in Thrace. Orphic literature and worship had a strong magical element in them.

P. 55, l. 995 ff., A grave-mound of the dead.]—Every existing Greek tragedy has somewhere in it a taboo grave—a grave which is either worshipped, or specially avoided or somehow magical. We may conjecture from this passage that there was in the time of Euripides a sacred tomb near Pherae, which received worship and had the story told about it that she who lay there had died for her husband.

Pp. 56-67, ll. 1008-end. This last scene must have been exceedingly difficult to compose, and some critics have thought it ineffective or worse. To me it seems brilliantly conceived and written, though of course it needs to be read with the imagination strongly at work. One must never forget the silent and veiled Woman on whom the whole scene centres. I have tried conjecturally to indicate the main lines of her acting, but, of course, others may read it differently.

To understand Heracles in this scene, one must first remember the traditional connexion of Satyrs (and therefore of satyric heroes) with the re-awakening of the dead Earth in spring and the return of human souls to their tribe. Dionysus was, of all the various Kouroi, the one most widely connected with resurrection ideas, and the Satyrs are his attendant daemons, who dance magic dances at the Return to Life of Semele or Persephone. And Heracles himself, in certain of his ritual aspects, has similar functions. See J.E. Harrison, Themis, pp. 422 f. and 365 ff., or my Four Stages of Greek Religion, pp. 46 f. This tradition explains, to start with, what Heracles—and this particular sort of revelling Heracles—has to do in a resurrection scene. Heracles bringing back the dead is a datum of the saga. There remain then the more purely dramatic questions about our poet's treatment of the datum.

Why, for instance, does Heracles mystify Admetus with the Veiled Woman? To break the news gently, or to retort his own mystification upon him? I think, the latter. Admetus had said that "a woman" was dead; Heracles says: "All right: here is 'a woman' whom I want you to look after."

Again, what are the feelings of Admetus himself? First, mere indignation and disgust at the utterly tactless proposal: then, I think, in 1061 ff. ("I must walk with care" ... end of speech), a strange discovery about himself which amazes and humiliates him. As he looks at the woman he finds himself feeling how exactly like Alcestis she is, and then yearning towards her, almost falling in love with her. A most beautiful and poignant touch. In modern language one would say that his subconscious nature feels Alcestis there and responds emotionally to her presence; his conscious nature, believing the woman to be a stranger, is horrified at his own apparent baseness and inconstancy.

P. 57, l. 1051, Where in my castle, etc.]—The castle is divided into two main parts: a public megaron or great hall where the men live during; the day and sleep at night, and a private region, ruled by the queen and centring in the thalamos or royal bed-chamber. If the new woman were taken into this "harem," even if Admetus never spoke to her, the world outside would surmise the worst and consider him dishonoured.

P. 66, l. 1148, Be righteous to thy guest, As he would have thee be.]— Does this mean "Go on being hospitable, as you have been," or "Learn after this not to take liberties with other guests"? It is hard to say.

P. 66, l. 1152, The feasting day shall surely come; now I must needs away.]—A fine last word for Heracles. We have seen him feasting, but that makes a small part in his life. His main life is to perform labour upon labour in service to his king. Euripides occasionally liked this method of ending a play, not with a complete finish (Greek catastrophe), but with the opening of a door into some further vista of endurance or adventure. The Trojan Women ends by the women going out to the Greek ships to begin a life of slavery; the Rhesus with the doomed army of Trojans gathering bravely for an attack which we know will be disastrous. Here we have the story finished for Admetus and Alcestis, but no rest for Heracles. See the note at the end of my Trojan Women.

THE END