Diana from Tauris, marry his cousin Hermione, the daughter
of Menelaus and Helen, and recover his father's kingdom.

Pallas Athene came down to preside at Areopagus, and directed the judges
to pronounce that, though the slaying of a mother was a fearful crime,
yet it was Orestes' duty to avenge his father's death. He was therefore
acquitted, and purified by sacrifice, and was no more haunted by the
Furies, while with Pylades he sailed for Tauris. In that inhospitable
place it was the custom to sacrifice all strangers to Diana, and, as soon
as they had landed, Orestes and Pylades were seized, and taken to the
priestess at the temple, that their hair might be cut and their brows
wreathed for the sacrifice. The priestess was no other than Iphigenia,
who had been snatched away from Aulis, and, when she and the brother,
whom she had left an infant, found each other out, she contrived to leave
the temple by night, carrying the image of Diana with her. They went to
Delphi together, and there Iphigenia met Electra, who had heard a false
report that her beloved Orestes had been sacrificed by the priestess of
Tauris, and was just going to tear out her eyes, when Orestes appeared,
and the sisters were made known to each other. A temple was built for
the image near Marathon, in Attica, and Iphigenia spent the rest of her
life as priestess there. Orestes, in the meantime, married
Hermione--after, as some say, killing Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, to
whom she was either promised or married--and reigned over both Mycenae
and Sparta until the hundred years' truce with the Heracleids, or
grandsons of Hercules, had come to an end, and they returned with a party
of Dorians and conquered Sparta, eighty years after the Trojan war.

[Picture: Plain of Sparta, with Mount Taygetus]

This is the last of the events of the age of heroes, when so much must be
fable, though there may be a germ of historical truth which no one can
make out among the old tales that had come from the East, and the like of
which may be found among the folk-lore of all nations. These are the
most famous of the stories, because they joined all Greeks together, and
were believed in by all Greeks alike in their main circumstances; but
every state had its own story, and one or two may be told before we end
this chapter of myths, because they are often heard of, and poetry has
been written about some of them.

At Thebes, in Boeotia, the king, Laius, wa