Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/237



Enter Peasant from the cottage.

, ancient Argos, streams of Inachus,

Whence, with a thousand galleys battle-bound,

To Troyland's shore King Agamemnon sailed,

And, having slain the lord of Ilian land,

Priam, and taken Dardanus' burg renowned,

Came to this Argos, and on her high fanes

Hung up unnumbered spoils barbarian.

In far lands prospered he; but in his home

Died by his own wife Klytemnestra's guile,

And by Aegisthus' hand, Thyestes' son.

So, leaving Tantalus' ancient sceptre, he

Is gone, and o'er the realm Aegisthus reigns,

Having the king's wife, child of Tyndareus.

Of those whom Troyward bound he left at home,

The boy Orestes and the maid Electra,

One his sire's foster-father stole away,

Orestes, doomed to die by Aegisthus' hand,

And Phocis-ward to Strophius sent, to rear:

But in her father's halls Electra stayed,

Till o'er her mantled womanhood's first flush,

And Hellas' princes wooing asked her hand.