CHOR.  O hapless Iphigenia, with thy brother wilt thou die, again coming into the hands of thy masters.

TH.  O all ye citizens of this barbarian land, will ye not, casting bridles on your horses, run to the shore, and receive the casting on of the Grecian ship?  But hastening, by the favor of the Goddess, will ye not hunt down the impious men, and some of you haul the swift barks down to the sea, that by sea, and by horse-coursings on the land seizing them, we may either hurl them down the broken rock, or impale their bodies upon stakes.  But you women, the accomplices in these plots, I will punish hereafter, when I have leisure, but now, having such a present duty, we will not remain idle.

[MINERVA appears.]

MIN.  Whither, whither sendest thou this troop to follow [the fugitives,] king Thoas?  List to the words of me, Minerva.  Cease pursuing, and stirring on the onset of your host.  For by the destined oracles of Loxias Orestes came hither, fleeing the wrath of the Erinnyes, and in order to conduct his sister’s person to Argos, and to bear the sacred image into my land, by way of respite from his present troubles.  Thus are our words for thee, but as to him, Orestes, whom you wish to slay, having caught him in a tempest at sea, Neptune has already, for my sake, rendered the surface of the sea waveless, piloting him along in the ship.  But do thou, Orestes, learning my commands, (for thou hearest the voice of a Goddess, although not present,) go, taking the image and thy sister.  And when thou art come to heaven-built Athens, there is a certain sacred district in the farthest bounds of Atthis, near the Carystian rock, which my people call Aloe—­here, having built a temple, do thou enshrine the image named after the Tauric land and thy toils, which thou hast labored through, wandering over Greece, under the goad of the Erinnyes.  But mortals hereafter shall celebrate her as the Tauric Goddess Diana.  And do thou ordain this law, that, when the people celebrate a feast in grateful commemoration of thy release from slaughter,[188] let them apply the sword to the neck of a man, and let blood flow on account of the holy Goddess, that she may have honor.  But, O Iphigenia, thou must needs be guardian of the temple of this Goddess at the hallowed ascent of Brauron;[189] where also thou shalt be buried at thy death, and they shall offer to you the honor of rich woven vestments, which women, dying in childbed, may leave in their houses.  But I command thee to let these Grecian women depart from the land on account of their disinterested disposition,[190] I, having saved thee also on a former occasion, by determining the equal votes in the Field of Mars, Orestes, and that, according to the same law, he should conquer, whoever receive equal suffrages.  But, O son of Agamemnon, do thou remove thy sister from this land, nor be thou angered, Thoas.