The transmitted wording of the first verse of Euripides' Electra has long been considered corrupt, with philologists going to great lengths to make it sound. The results can be found in the Appendix to Prinz-Wecklein edition. The recent years saw a renewal of interest on the part of the Italian philologists G. Basta Donzelli, who also edited Electra for Teubner in 1995, and C. De Stefani who wrote exhaustively on the subject and proposed new emendations. Both mentioned G. Murray's attempt to justify the currently obelised ms. reading , but his translation "old gleam", supporting Kirchhoff's had been sadly neglected. This article seeks to bridge this gap.