ORES.  Lay thy side by my side, and remove the squalid hair from my face, for I see but imperfectly with my eyes.

ELEC.  O wretched head, sordid with ringlets, how art thou disordered from long want of the bath!

ORES.  Lay me on the couch again; when my fit of madness gives me a respite, I am feeble and weak in my limbs.

ELEC.  Behold, the couch is pleasant to the sick man, an irksome thing to keep, but still a necessary one.

ORES.  Again raise me upright—­turn my body.

CHOR.  Sick persons are hard to be pleased from their feebleness.

ELEC.  Wilt thou set thy feet on the ground, putting forward thy long-discontinued[5] step?  In all things change is sweet.

ORES.  Yes, by all means; for this has a semblance of health, but the semblance is good, though it be distant from the truth.

ELEC.  Hear now therefore, O my brother, while yet the Furies suffer thee to have thy right faculties.

ORES.  Wilt thou tell any news? and if good indeed, thou art conferring pleasure; but if it pertain at all to mischief—­I have enough distress.

ELEC.  Menelaus has arrived, the brother of thy father, but his ships are moored in the Nauplian bay.

ORES.  How sayest?  Is he come, a light in mine and thy sufferings, a man of kindred blood, and that hath received benefits from our father?

ELEC.  He is come; take this a sure proof of my words, bringing with him Helen from the walls of Troy.

ORES.  Had he been saved alone, he had been more blest.  But if he brings his wife, he has arrived with a mighty evil.

ELEC.  Tyndarus begat an offspring of daughters, a conspicuous mark for blame, and infamous throughout Greece.

ORES.  Do thou then be unlike the bad, for it is in thy power.  And not only say, but also hold these sentiments.

ELEC.  Alas! my brother, thine eye rolls wildly; quick art thou changed to madness, so late in thy senses.

ORES.  O mother, I implore thee, urge not on me those Furies gazing blood, horrid with snakes, for these, these are leaping around me.

ELEC.  Remain, O wretched man, calmly on thy couch, for thou seest none of those things, which thou fanciest thou seest plainly.

ORES.  O Phoebus, these dire Goddesses in the shape of dogs will kill me, these gorgon-visaged ministers of hell.

ELEC.  I will not let thee go, but, putting my arm around thee, will stop thy starting into those unfortunate convulsions.

ORES.  Loose me.  Thou art one of my Furies, and seizest me by the middle, that thou mayest hurl me into Tartarus.

ELEC.  Oh! wretched me! what assistance can I obtain, since we have on us the vengeful wrath of heaven!

ORES.  Give me my bow of horn, the gift of Phoebus, with which Apollo said I should repel the Fiends, if they appalled me by their maddened raging.

ELEC.  Shall any God be wounded by mortal hand? (Note [B].)