man, when she bared her breast in supplication, thy mother?  I indeed, though I witnessed not that scene of misery, melt in my aged eyes with tears through wretchedness.  One thing however goes to the scale of my arguments; thou art both hated by the Gods, and sufferest vengeance of thy mother, wandering about with madness and terrors; why must I hear by the testimony of others, what it is in my power to see?  That thou mayest know then once for all, Menelaus, do not things contrary to the Gods, through thy wishes to assist this man.  But suffer him to be slain by the citizens with stones, or set not thy foot on Spartan ground.  But my daughter in dying met with justice, but it was not fitting that she should die by him.[16] In other respects indeed have I been a happy man, except in my daughters, but in this I am not happy.

CHOR.  He is enviable, who is fortunate in his children, and has not on him some notorious calamities.

ORES.  O old man, I tremble to speak to thee, wherein I am about to grieve thee and thy mind.  But I am unholy in that I slew my mother; but holy at least in another point of view, having avenged my father.  Let then thine age, which hinders me through fear from speaking, be removed out of the way of my words, and I will go on in a direct path; but now do I fear thy gray hairs.  What could I do? for oppose the facts, two against two.  My father indeed begat me, but thy daughter brought me forth, a field receiving the seed from another; but without a father there never could be a child.  I reasoned therefore with myself, that I should assist the prime author of my birth rather than the aliment which under him produced me.  But thy daughter (I am ashamed to call her mother), in secret and unchaste nuptials, had approached the bed of another man; of myself, if I speak ill of her, shall I be speaking, but yet will I tell it.  AEgisthus was her secret husband in her palace.  Him I slew, and after him I sacrificed my mother, doing indeed unholy things, but avenging my father.  But as touching those things for which thou threatenest that I must be stoned, hear, how I shall assist all Greece.  For if the women shall arrive at such a pitch of boldness as to murder the men, making good their escape with regard to their children, seeking to captivate their pity by their breasts, it would be as nothing with them to slay their husbands, having any pretext that might chance; but I having done dreadful things (as thou sayest), have put a stop to this law, but hating my mother deservedly I slew her, who betrayed her husband absent from home in arms, the generalissimo of the whole land of Greece, and kept not her bed undefiled.  But when she perceived that she had done amiss, she inflicted not vengeance on herself, but, that she might not suffer vengeance from her husband, punished and slew my father.  By the Gods, (in no good cause have I named the Gods, pleading against a charge of murder,) had I by my silence praised my mother’s