Oresteia

joined in honour of throne and sceptre by grace of Zeus, put forth from this land with an armament of a thousand ships by Argives manned, a warrior force to champion their cause.

Loud rang the battle-cry they uttered in their rage, even as eagles scream, that, in lonely grief for their brood, driven by the oarage of their pinions, wheel high over their eyries, for that they have lost their toil of guarding their nurslings' nest.

But some one of the powers supreme—Apollo perchance, or Pan, or Zeus—heareth the shrill wailing scream of the clamorous birds, these sojourners in his realm, and against the transgressors sendeth vengeance at last though late. Even so Zeus, whose power is over all, Zeus lord of host and guest, sendeth against Alexander the sons of Atreus, that for the sake of a woman of many a lord Menelaüs, Paris, Deïphobus. he may inflict struggles full many and wearisome (when the knee is pressed in the dust and the spear is shivered in the onset) on Danaans and on Trojans alike.

The case now standeth where it doth—it moveth to fulfilment at its destined end. Not by offerings burned in secret, not by secret libations, not by tears, shall man soften the stubborn wrath of sacrifices unsanctified. “Unsanctified,” literally “fireless,” “that will not burn.” A veiled reference either to the sacrifice of Iphigenia by Agamemnon and the wrath of Clytaemestra, or to Paris’ violation of the laws of hospitality that provoked the anger of Zeus.

But we, incapable of service by reason of our aged