near to
the place of the sepulchre; and as they approached, the King heard
within a very piteous voice, and knew it for the voice of his son. Then
he bade his attendants loose the door with all speed; and when they had
loosed it, they beheld within a very piteous sight. For the maiden
Antigone had hanged herself by the girdle of linen which she wore, and
the young man Prince Haemon stood with his arms about her dead corpse,
embracing it. And when the King saw him, he cried to him to come forth;
but the Prince glared fiercely upon him and answered him not a word, but
drew his two-edged sword. Then the King, thinking that his son was
minded in his madness to slay him, leapt back, but the Prince drave the
sword into his own heart, and fell forward on the earth, still holding
the dead maiden in his arms. And when they brought the tidings of these
things to Queen Eurydice, that was the wife of King Creon and mother to
the Prince, she could not endure the grief, being thus bereaved of her
children, but laid hold of a sword, and slew herself therewith.

So the house of King Creon was left desolate unto him that day, because
he despised the ordinances of the Gods.

THE STORY OF IPHIGENIA IN AULIS.

King Agamemnon sat in his tent at Aulis, where the army of the Greeks
was gathered together, being about to sail against the great city of
Troy. And it was now past midnight; but the King slept not, for he was
careful and troubled about many things. And he had a lamp before him,
and in his hand a tablet of pine wood, whereon he wrote. But he seemed
not to remain in the same mind about that which he wrote; for now he
would blot out the letters, and then would write them again; and now he
fastened the seal upon the tablet and then brake it. And as he did this
he wept, and was like to a man distracted. But after a while he called
to an old man, his attendant (the man had been given in time past by
Tyndareus to his daughter, Queen Clytaemnestra), and said "Old man, thou
knowest how Calchas the soothsayer bade me offer for a sacrifice to
Artemis, who is goddess of this place, my daughter Iphigenia, saying
that so only should the army have a prosperous voyage from this place to
Troy, and should take the city and destroy it; and how when I heard
these words I bade Talthybius the herald go throughout the army and bid
them depart, every man to his own country, for that I would not do this
thing; and how my brother, King Menelaues, p