ARGUMENT

Diana, the
chaste
Goddess of
hunting,
daughter of
Jupiter.

When that Helen had fled with Paris to Troyland, her husband Menelaüs and his brother Agamemnon, the sons of Atreus and two-throned Kings of Argos, sought to take vengeance on him who had done outrage to Zeus, the guardian of the rights of hospitality. Before their palace appeared a portent, which the seer Calchas interpreted to them: the two eagles were the Kings themselves and the pregnant hare seized in their talons was the city which held Priam's son and Helen and her wealth. But Artemis, she that loves the wild things of the field, was wroth with the Kings: and when all their host was gathered at Aulis and would sail with its thousand ships, she made adverse winds to blow; so that the ships rotted and the crews lost heart. Then the seer, albeit in darkling words, spake unto Agamemnon: "If thou wilt appease the goddess and so free the fleet, thou must sacrifice with thine own hand thy daughter Iphigenia." And he did even so, and the Greeks sailed away in their ships. Nine years did they lay siege to Troytown, but they could not take it; for it was fated that it should not be taken until the tenth year.

Now when King Agamemnon fared forth from Argos, he left at home his Queen, Clytaemestra, Leda's child and Helen's sister (though she had for father Tyndareus, but Helen's was Zeus himself); and in her loneliness and because Agamemnon had slain her daughter, she