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156 broken by passion, mastered by their own inhibitions and doubts and regrets. In the second place he has no doubt at all about the ethics of the mother-murder. It was an abomination, and the god who ordained it—if any did—was a power of darkness.

After the deed the two murderers come forth as in Sophocles. But this time they are not triumphant and the Chorus does not hail them as having done right. They reel from the door, "red-garmented and ghastly" and break into a long agony of remorse. The Chorus share their horror. Electra's guilt is the greater since she drove her brother to the deed against his will; even while they love her, they can not quite forget that, though they feel that now at last, by this anguish, her heart may be "made clean within." The play ends with an appearance of the gods. The Heavenly Horsemen, Castor and Polydeuces, who were kinsmen of the dead, appear on a cloud, and speak in judgement and comfort. With a definiteness rare in Euripides they pronounce the deed of vengeance to be evil:

"And Phœbus, Phœbus . . . Nay: He is my lord, therefore I hold my peace. But though in light he dwell, not light was this He showed to thee, but darkness."