αἳ τοὺς εὐνὰς ὑποκλεπτομένους: for the acc. with the pass. verb, cp. Aesch. P. V. 171“σκῆπτρον τιμάς τ᾽ ἀποσυλᾶται”: so “ἀφαιροῦμαί τι, ἀποστεροῦμαί τι”. Libanius has a reminiscence of this verse in the phrase “εὐνὴν κακῶς ὑποκλέπτειν” (4. p. 598. 24). These much-impugned words appear genuine. The murder has been prompted by the guilty love: “δόλος ἦν ὁ φράσας, ἔρος ὁ κτείνας” (197). In Electra's thought, they are inseparable. The allusion to the love follows the reference to the murder, because she regards it as the crowning outrage (271 “τὴν τελευταίαν ὕβριν”) that Clytaemnestra still lives with Aegisthus. Bloodshed was not the only sin which the Erinyes punished. They were the embodied sanctions of natural law, and every crime against the family came within their cognisance. (See Introd. to Homer, p. 51, § 13.) Indeed, Electra herself speaks of the unhallowed union as a special provocation to those Avengers: 275 f. “ἡ δ᾽ ὧδε τλήμων ὥστε τῷ μιάστορι” | “ξύνεστ̓, Ἐρινὺν οὔτιν᾽ ἐκφοβουμένη”.
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Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part VI: The Electra. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1894.
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