oor captive
Cassandra wailed aloud, and would not cross the threshold, saying it
streamed with blood, and that this was a house of slaughter. No one
listened to her, and Agamemnon was led to the bath to refresh himself
after his journey. A new embroidered robe lay ready for him, but the
sleeves were sewn up at the wrists, and while he could not get his hands
free, AEgisthus fell on him and slew him, and poor Cassandra likewise.

His daughter Electra, fearing that her young brother Orestes would not be
safe since he was the right heir of the kingdom, sent him secretly away
to Phocis, where the king bred him up with his own son Pylades, and the
two youths loved each other as much as Achilles and Patroclus had done.
It was the bounden duty of a son to be the avenger of his father's blood,
and after eight years, as soon as Orestes was a grown warrior, he went
with his friend in secret to Mycenae, and offered a lock of his hair on
his father's tomb. Electra, coming out with her offerings, found these
tokens, and knew that he was near. He made himself known, and she
admitted him into the house, where he fulfilled his stern charge, and
killed both Clytemnestra and AEgisthus, then celebrated their funeral
rites with all due solemnity.

This was on the very day that Menelaus and Helen returned home. They had
been shipwrecked first in Egypt, where they spent eight years, and then
were held by contrary winds on a little isle on the coast of Egypt, where
they would have been starved if Menelaus had not managed to capture the
old sea-god Proteus, when he came up to pasture his flock of seals on the
beach, and, holding him tight, while he changed into every kind of queer
shape, forced him at last to speak. By Proteus' advice, Menelaus
returned to Egypt, and made the sacrifices to the gods he had forgotten
before, after which he safely reached Sparta, on the day of
Clytemnestra's obsequies. Just as they were ended, the Furies, the
avengers of crime, fell upon Orestes for having slain his mother. He
fled in misery from Mycenae, which Menelaus took into his own hands,
while the wretched Orestes went from place to place, still attended and
comforted by faithful Pylades, but he never tried to rest without being
again beset by the Furies. At last Apollo, at the oracle at Delphi, sent
him to take his trial at the court of justice at Athens, called
Areopagus, Ares' (or Mars') Hill, after which the oracle bade him fetch
the image of