So they that were appointed to this took the pebbles forth from the urns and counted them.  And lo! the votes were equal on this side and on that.  And Athene stood forth and said, “The man is free.”

Thus was accomplished the loosing of Orestes.

THE STORY OF IPHIGENIA AMONG THE TAURIANS.

It has been told in the story of King Agamemnon that the Goddess Artemis, being wroth with him because he had slain a hart which she loved, suffered not the ships of the Greeks to sail till he had offered his daughter Iphigenia for a sacrifice.  But when the King consented, and all things had been made ready for slaying the maiden, the goddess would not that her blood should be shed, but put a fair hind in her place, and carried away the maiden to the land of the Taurians, where she had a temple and an altar.  Now on this altar the King of the land was wont to sacrifice any stranger, being Greek by nation, who was driven by stress of weather to the place, for none went thither willingly.  And the name of the King was Thoas, which signifieth in the Greek tongue, “swift of foot.”

Now when the maiden had been there many years she dreamed a dream.  And in the dream she seemed to have departed from the land of the Taurians and to dwell in the city of Argos, wherein she had been born.  And as she slept in the women’s chamber there befell a great earthquake, and cast to the ground the palace of her fathers, so that there was left one pillar only which stood upright.  And as she looked on this pillar, yellow hair seemed to grow upon it as the hair of a man, and it spake with a man’s voice.  And she did to it as she was wont to do to the strangers that were sacrificed upon the altar, purifying it with water, and weeping the while.  And the interpretation of the dream she judged to be that her brother Orestes was dead, for that male children are the pillars of a house, and that he only was left to the house of her father.

Now it chanced that at this same time Orestes, with Pylades that was his friend, came in a ship to the land of the Taurians.  And the cause of his coming was this.  After that he had slain his mother, taking vengeance for the death of King Agamemnon his father, the Furies pursued him.  Then Apollo, who had commanded him to do this deed, bade him go to the land of Athens that he might be judged.  And when he had been judged and loosed, yet the Furies left him not.  Wherefore Apollo commanded that he should sail for the land of the Taurians and carry there the image of Artemis and bring it to the land of the Athenians, and that after this he should have rest.  Now when the two were come to the place, they saw the altar that it was red with the blood of them that had been slain thereon.  And Orestes doubted how they might accomplish the things for the which he was come, for the walls of the temple were high, and the gates not easy to be broken through.