Chorus
For with a hair-raising shriek, Terror, the diviner of dreams for our house, breathing wrath out of sleep, uttered a cry of terror in the dead of night from the heart of the palace, [35] a cry that fell heavily on the women's quarter.1 And the readers of these dreams, bound under pledge, cried out from the god that those beneath the earth cast furious reproaches [40] and rage against their murderers.
1 The language of the passage is accommodated to a double purpose: (1) to indicate an oracular deliverance on the part of the inspired prophetess at Delphi, and (2) to show the alarming nature of Clytaemestra's dream: while certain limiting expressions (as ἀωπόνυκτον, ὕπτου) show the points of difference. “Phoebus” is used for a prophetic “possession,” which assails Clytaemestra as a nightmare (cp. βαρὺς πίτνων); so that her vision is itself called an ὀνειρόμαντις.
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