with the flute, while I perish by thy hands.  Hades in truth was Achilles, not the son of Peleus, whom thou didst name as my husband, and in the chariot didst pilot me by craft unto a bloody wedding.”  But I, casting mine eye through my slender woven veil, neither took up with mine hands my brother who is now dead, nor joined my lips to my sister’s,[57] through modesty, as departing to the home of Peleus; and many a salutation I deferred, as though about to come again to Argos.  Oh wretched one, if thou hast died! from what glorious state, Orestes, and from how envied a sire’s fortune art thou fallen!  But I reproach the devices of the Goddess, who, if any one work the death of a man, or touch with hands a woman newly delivered, or a corpse, restrains him from her altars, as deeming him impure, but yet herself takes pleasure in man-slaying sacrifices.  It can not be that the consort of Jove, Latona, hath brought forth so much ignorance.  I even disbelieve the banquets of Tantalus set before the Gods, [as that they] should be pleased with feeding on a boy.  But I deem that those in this land, being themselves man-slayers, charge the Goddess with their own baseness, for I think not that any one of the Gods is bad.

CHOR.  Ye dark blue, dark blue meetings of the sea, which Io, hurried along by the brize, once passed through to the Euxine wave, having changed the territory of Asia for Europe,—­who were they who left fair-watered Eurotas, flourishing in reeds, or the sacred founts of Dirce, and came, and came to the inhospitable land, where the daughter of Jove bedews her altars and column-girt temples with human blood?  Of a truth by the surge-dashing oars of fir, worked on both sides, they sailed in a nautical carriage o’er the ocean waves, striving in the emulation after loved wealth in their houses.  For darling hope is in dangers insatiate among men, who bear off the weight of riches, wandering in vain speculation on the wave and o’er barbarian cities.  But to some[58] there is a mind immoderate after riches, to others they come unsought.  How did they pass through the rocks that run together, the ne’er resting beaches of Phineus, [and] the marine shore, running o’er the surge of Amphitrite,[59]—­where the choruses of the fifty daughters of Nereus entwine in the dance,—­[although] with breezes that fill the sails, the creaking rudders resting at the poop, with southern gales or the breezes of Zephyr, to the bird-haunted land, the white beach, the glorious race-course of Achilles, near the Euxine Sea.  Would that, according to my mistress’ prayers, Helen, the dear daughter of Leda, might sometime chance to come, quitting the city of Troy, that, having been drenched about the head with the blood-stained lustral dews, she might die by my mistress’ hand, paying in turn an equal penalty [for her death.] Most joyfully then would we receive this news, if any one came sailing from the Grecian land, to make the toils of my hapless slavery to cease.  And would that in my dreams