Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/115

 THE GREEK HEROES 101 seduced Clytaemnestra, who was angry at her husband on account of the attempted sacrifice of Iphigenia ; and the guilty pair finally murdered the king when he returned ten years later, after the conquest of Troy. In Laconia, Chaeronea, and Clazomenae, however, Agamemnon was worshiped in later times as a Zeus of the lower world, under the name of Zeus Agamemnon (cf. Z. Basileus), in the form of a scepter, the symbol of dominion. At the murder of her father, the elder daughter of Agamemnon, Electra, rescued her youthful brother Orestes, and took him to Strophius, king of Phocis, with whose son Py lades he formed a close friendship. When grown up to young manhood he hastened back to Mycenae to take vengeance on his father's two murderers. In the Electra of Sophocles, and still more in Euripides's play of the same name, Electra, whom her mother has so wronged, herself goads her brother on to the dread- ful murder, when he hesitates at the sight of his mother. Clytaemnestra falls first, pierced by her son's sword; afterwards, Aegisthus also. But Orestes has scarcely shed his mother's blood before the Erinyes start in his pursuit. Eestless and miserable, he wanders about until at the bidding of the Delphic oracle he goes to Tauris, for the purpose of taking the image of Artemis which was there to Greece. Being caught in the attempt to carry this off, he is about to be slain as an offering to the goddess. But there he finds in the temple his sister Iphi- genia as a priestess ; and by her assistance he escapes, carrying with him his sister and the image of the god- dess. Pylades, who has accompanied him everywhere, now marries Electra, while Orestes himself weds the beau- tiful Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen.