[382] So we must say, in conformity to the ideas of antiquity: compare Homer, Iliad, xvi. 176 and Herodot. vi. 53.
[383] Hom. Odyss. iii. 280-300; iv. 83-560.
Far different is the fate of the king of men, Agamemnôn. During his absence, the unwarlike Ægisthus, son of Thyestês, had seduced his wife Klytæmnêstra, in spite of the special warning of the gods, who, watchful over this privileged family, had sent their messenger Hermês expressly to deter him from the attempt.[384] A venerable bard had been left by Agamemnôn as the companion and monitor of his wife, and so long as that guardian was at hand, Ægisthus pressed his suit in vain. But he got rid of the bard by sending him to perish in a desert island, and then won without difficulty the undefended Klytæmnêstra. Ignorant of what had passed, Agamemnôn returned from Troy victorious and full of hope to his native country; but he had scarcely landed when Ægisthus invited him to a banquet, and there with the aid of the treacherous Klytæmnêstra, in the very hall of festivity and congratulation, slaughtered him and his companions “like oxen tied to the manger.” His concubine Kassandra, the prophetic daughter of Priam, perished along with him by the hand of Klytæmnêstra herself.[385] The boy Orestês, the only male offspring of Agamemnôn, was stolen away by his nurse, and placed in safety at the residence of the Phokian Strophius.
[384] Odyss. i. 38; iii. 310.—ἀνάλκιδος Αἰγίσθοιο.
[385] Odyss. iii. 260-275; iv. 512-537; xi. 408. Deinias in his Argolica, and other historians of that territory, fixed the precise day of the murder of Agamemnôn,—the thirteenth of the month Gamêliôn (Schol. ad Sophokl. Elektr. 275).
For seven years Ægisthus and Klytæmnêstra reigned in tranquillity at Mykênæ on the throne of the murdered Agamemnôn. But in the eighth year the retribution announced by the gods overtook them: Orestês, grown to manhood, returned and avenged his father by killing Ægisthus, according to Homer; subsequent poets add, his mother also. He recovered the kingdom of Mykênæ, and succeeded Menelaus in that of Sparta. Hermionê, the only daughter of Menelaus and Helen, was sent into the realm of the Myrmidons in Thessaly, as the bride of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, according to the promise made by her father during the siege of Troy.[386]
