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And now the conspirators are come, Orestes and Pylades, with attendants. Orestes walks straight up to the great palace-gates, and knocks repeatedly. A servant at length, appears, and goes into the house to fetch some one to hear the stranger's application. Orestes had said,—

It is a woman who comes out to answer, and no less a woman than Clytemnestra. With the same unhesitating courage, the same exultant wickedness, with, which long ago she boasted of her crime as she stood over her husband's corpse, unchanged she comes out now, and behind her comes Electra. The queen receives the messenger with queenly courtesy. He tells his tale shortly and simply, using the Phocian dialect:—

From Phocis I, a Daulian, stranger here.—

What time my home I left, for Argos bound,

Starting on foot, with baggage self-equipped,

A man to me unknown, as I to him,

Met me, inquired my route and told me his.

Strophius, the Phocian, as in talk I learned.