AESCHYLUS VOL.II WITH AN ENGLISH TRNSL. BY HERBERT WEIR SMYTH 1926

ARGUMENT
When that Helen had Jied with Paris to Troyland, her
husband Menelaiis and his brother Agamemnon, the sons
of Atreus and two-throned Kings of Argos, sought to
take vengeance on him who had done outrage to Zeus,
the guardian of the rights of hospitality. Before their
palace appeared a portent, which the seer Calchas interpreted
to them : the two eagles were the Kings themselves
and the pregnant hare seized in their talons was the city
,1-^ which held Priam's son a?id Helen and her wealth. But
..^•^. Artemis, she that loves the wild things of the f
eld, was
fvroth with the Kings : and when all their host was
, ,
gathered at Aulis and would sail with its thousand ships,
^ . she made adverse winds to blow ; so that the ships rotted
^^\^\a,nd the crews lost heart. Then the seer, albeit in darkling
J^ V^ords, spake unto Agamemnon " : If thou wilt appease
!r{Jj^ the goddess and so free the fleet, thou must sacrifice with
V1[ thine own hand thy daughter Iphigenia." And he did
J
even so, and the Greeks sailed away in their ships.
Nine years did they lay siege to Troytown, but they
could not take it ; for it was fated that it should%ot be
taken until the tenth year.
Now when King Agamemnon fared forth from Argos,
he left at home his Queen, Clytaemestra, Leda's child
and Helen's sister (though she had for father Tyndareus,
but Helen s was Zeus himself) ; and in her loneliness
and because Agamemnon had slain her daughter, she
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