Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/247

TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKENÆ captive mistress of Agamemnon, and, according to tradition, warned him against returning to Mykenæ. In the Odyssey, the story of his death is told and retold at different stages of the poem. Ægisthos had been left in "horse-pasturing Argos," by the king, as his viceroy, during the war. As years rolled on the treacherous cousin succeeded in gaining the guilty love of Klytæmnestra, wife to Agamemnon, and the pair seized upon the kingdom as their own. Fearing the wrath of the injured chieftain, they conspired to murder him upon his return. Of this tragedy we have two accounts—the epic and the dramatic. According to Homer, Ægisthos, when notified of Agamemnon's arrival with but a handful of his troop, went forth to welcome him, and to invite him to his mansion. There he fell upon him at a banquet, and slaughtered him and all his companions, including the royal captive, Kassandra. The fullest Odyssean version is to be found in the Eleventh Book, wherein Odysseus relates to Alkinoös the story of his wanderings subsequent to the war. He recounts his visit to the ghostly land of the Kimmerii, and the incantations which brought to him the souls of the dead.

This passage I translate from the text of Dindorf (somewhat hastily, but with due regard to literalness), into that English measure of six feet, which, although very different from the classical and quantitative hexameter, is thought by Matthew Arnold to be the one which most nearly imitates the unceasing rapid current of the Homeric song, and in which we can best preserve the stress of minor words and particles, and [233]