MEN.  O hail! old man, who sharest thy bed with Jove.

TYND.  O hail! thou also, Menelaus my dear relation,—­ah! what an evil is it not to know the future!  This dragon here, the murderer of his mother, glares before the house his pestilential gleams—­the object of my detestation—­Menelaus, dost thou speak to this unholy wretch?

MEN.  Why not? he is the son of a father who was dear to me.

TYND.  What! was he sprung from him, being such as he is?

MEN.  He was; but, though he be unfortunate, he should be respected.

TYND.  Having been a long time with barbarians, thou art thyself turned barbarian.

MEN.  Nay! it is the Grecian fashion always to honor one of kindred blood.

TYND. Yes, and also not to wish to be above the laws.

MEN.  Every thing proceeding from necessity is considered as subservient to her[13] among the wise.

TYND.  Do thou then keep to this, but I’ll have none of it.

MEN. No, for anger joined with thine age, is not wisdom.

TYND.  With this man what controversy can there be regarding wisdom?  If what things are virtuous, and what are not virtuous, are plain to all, what man was ever more unwise that this man? who did not indeed consider justice, nor applied to the common existing law of the Grecians.  For after that Agamemnon breathed forth his last, struck by my daughter on the head, a most foul deed (for never will I approve of this), it behooved him indeed to lay against her a sacred charge of bloodshed, following up the accusation, and to cast his mother from out of the house; and he would have taken the wise side in the calamity, and would have kept to law, and would have been pious.  But now has he come to the same fate with his mother.  For with justice thinking her wicked, himself has become more wicked in slaying his mother.

But thus much, Menelaus, will I ask thee; If the wife that shared his bed were to kill him, and his son again kills his mother in return, and he that is born of him shall expiate the murder with murder, whither then will the extremes of these evils proceed?  Well did our fathers of old lay down these things; they suffered not him to come into the sight of their eyes, not to their converse, who was under an attainder[14] of blood; but they made him atone by banishment; they suffered however none to kill him in return.  For always were one about to be attainted of murder, taking the pollution last into his hands.  But I hate indeed impious women, but first among them my daughter, who slew her husband.  But never will I approve of Helen thy wife, nor would I speak to her, neither do I commend[15] thee for going to the plain of Troy on account of a perfidious woman.  But I will defend the law, as far at least as I am able, putting a stop to this brutish and murderous practice, which is ever destructive both of the country and the state.—­For what feelings of humanity hadst thou, thou wretched