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144 All doubts that remain about the truth of the beacon-message are now dispelled by the arrival of a herald, who comes from the army itself. He is the forerunner of Agamemnon, and all that he says is intended to enhance the greatness of the king's arrival. He salutes, in touching words, his country and her gods, and the palace of Agamemnon, which now shines its best to welcome its monarch, who comes like dawn out of darkness.

The leader of the Chorus tells the herald how the army has been ruined, and speaks of some undefined fear. And the herald says, "All suffer in turn, but it is well at last." He describes most graphically the sufferings of the besieging host:—

Our beds were strewn under the hostile walls;

And from the skies, and from the fenny land,

Came dripping the chill dews, rotting our clothes,

Matting our hair, like hides of shaggy beasts.

Our winters shall I tell, when the bleak cold

Intolerable, down from Ida's snows