vement, where are
said to be the recesses in the midst of the globe! O Jupiter, what pity is
there? what is this contention of slaughter that comes persecuting thee
wretched, to whom some evil genius casts tear upon tear, transporting to
thy house the blood of thy mother which drives thee frenzied! Thus I
bewail, I bewail. Great prosperity is not lasting among mortals; but, as
the sail of the swift bark, some deity having shaken him, hath sunk him in
the voracious and destructive waves of tremendous evils, as in the waves of
the ocean. For what other[6a] family ought I to reverence yet before that
sprung from divine nuptials, sprung from Tantalus?--But lo! the king! the
prince Menelaus, is coming! but he is very easily discernible from the
elegance of his person, as king of the house of the Tantalidae.

O thou that didst direct the army of a thousand vessels to Asia's land,
hail! but thou comest hither with good fortune, having obtained the object
of thy wishes from the Gods.

MENELAUS, ORESTES, CHORUS.

MEN. O palace, in some respect indeed I behold thee with pleasure, coming
from Troy, but in other respect I groan when I see thee. For never yet saw
I any other house more completely encircled round with lamentable woes. For
I was made acquainted with the misfortune that befell Agamemnon, [and his
death, by what death he perished at the hands of his wife,][6b] when I was
landing my ships at Malea; but from the waves the prophet of the mariners
declared unto me, the foreboding Glaucus the son of Nereus, an unerring
God, who told me thus in evident form standing by me. "Menelaus, thy
brother lieth dead, having fallen in his last bath, which his wife
prepared." But he filled both me and my sailors with many tears; but when I
come to the Nauplian shore, my wife having already landed there, expecting
to clasp in my friendly embraces Orestes the son of Agamemnon, and his
mother, as being in prosperity, I heard from some fisherman[7] the
unhallowed murder of the daughter of Tyndarus. And now tell me, maidens,
where is the son of Agamemnon, who dared these terrible deeds of evil? for
he was an infant in Clytaemnestra's arms at that time when I left the palace
on my way to Troy, so that I should not know him, were I to see him.

ORES. I, Menelaus, am Orestes, whom thou seekest, I of my own accord will
declare my evils. But first I touch thy knees in supplication, putting up
prayers from my mouth, not using the sacred branch:[8