Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/277



''It came to pass that when Agamemnon led the host of the Achæans against Troia, his wife, Clytemnestra, the daughter of Tyndareus, fell away from her faithfulness, partly because she was wroth, or feigned to be so, with her husband, for having sacrificed their daughter Iphigeneia to turn aside the wrath of Artemis, and obtain a favouring breeze for the ships of the Achæans; and partly because Ægisthos, son of Thyestes, the brother of Atreus, father of Agamemnon, had gained her to his will. And when Agamemnon returned from Troia to Mykenæ, Ægisthos and Clytemnestra slew him, and reigned over the Argives in his place, but Electra, his daughter, saved her brother Orestes, and sent him secretly in charge of a faithful servant to Strophios of Phokis, his father s friend. And when eight years had passed, and Electra had sent and received from, him many secret messages, Orestes at last came, with his faithful friend Pylades, the son of Strophios, and the servant who had watched over him, to Mykenæ, that he might do as the God at Delphi had bidden him, and take vengeance on his father's murderers. And it chanced that when he came, his mother, Clytemnestra, had had a vision, which filled her with fear, and she sent her younger daughter, Chrysothemis, with funereal offerings to the tomb of Agamemnon. Electra meanwhile had never ceased to bewail her father's death, and because of this, her mother and Ægisthos had dealt harshly with her''.