Then the King cried to his people that they should bring bars wherewith to loosen the doors of the sepulchre, and hasted with them to the place.  But coming on their way to the body of Prince Polynices, they took it up, and washed it, and buried that which remained of it, and raised over the ashes a great mound of earth.  And this being done, they drew 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, persuaded me so that I consented to it.  Now, therefore, hearken to this, for what I am about to tell thee three men only know, namely, Calchas the