end from the country.

CR. God alone can let thee go.

OED. But the Gods long since abhor me.

CR. Thou wilt sooner gain that boon.

OED. Then consent.

CR. 'Tis not my wont to venture promises too soon.

OED. Lead me now within the palace.

CR. Come, but leave thy children.

OED. Nay!
Tear not these from my embraces!

CR. Hope not for perpetual sway:
Since the power thou once obtainedst ruling with unquestioned might
Ebbing from thy life hath vanished ere the falling of the night.

LEADER OF CHORUS.
Dwellers in our native Thebe, fix on Oedipus your eyes.
Who resolved the dark enigma, noblest champion and most wise.
Like a star his envied fortune mounted beaming[6] far and wide:
Now he sinks in seas of anguish, whelmed beneath a raging tide.
Therefore, with the old-world sages, waiting for that final day,
I will call no mortal happy, while he holds his house of clay,
Till without one pang of sorrow, all his hours have passed away.

* * * * *

ELECTRA

THE PERSONS

An Old Man, _formerly one of the retainers of Agamemnon._
ORESTES, _son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra_.
ELECTRA, _sister of Orestes_.
CHORUS _of Argive Women_.
CHRYSOTHEMIS, _sister of Orestes and Electra_.
CLYTEMNESTRA.
AEGISTHUS.

PYLADES _appears with_ ORESTES, _but does not speak_.

SCENE. Mycenae: before the palace of the Pelopidae.

Agamemnon on his return from Troy, had been murdered by his wife
Clytemnestra and her paramour Aegisthus, who had usurped the Mycenean
throne. Orestes, then a child, had been rescued by his sister Electra,
and sent into Phocis with the one servant who remained faithful to his
old master. The son of Agamemnon now returns, being of a full age,
accompanied by this same attendant and his friend Pylades, with whom
he has already concerted a plan for taking vengeance on his father's
murderers, in obedience to the command of Apollo.

Orestes had been received in Phocis by Strophius, his father's friend.
Another Phocian prince, named Phanoteus, was a friend of Aegisthus.

ELECTRA

ORESTES _and the_ Old Man--PYLADES _is present._

OLD MAN. Son of the ki