“O life of mortal men! If that it fareth well, ’Tis like a painting sketch’d, but, comes adversity, The wet sponge, blurring, touches and the picture’s gone! And this than that I count more piteous by far.” Two solitary outcries from Agamemnon, struck down within the palace, float out on the waiting silence as the chorus ceases its chant. To the elders in their consternation appears Clytemnestra, exultant, glorified by success, standing over the dead Agamemnon and Cassandra. One might reconstruct the scene from the palace bathroom uncovered at Tiryns. She speaks:— “Here stand I where I struck him, o’er the finished work, And so I managed—no denial will I make— That there was no escape nor warding off of fate. A netlike wrap without an outlet, as for fish, I stake around, the evil bounty of a robe. And thereupon I strike him twice and with two groans He straight relaxed his limbs and, for him lying thus, I add a third blow, thereunto, as votive thanks To Hades underground, the corpses’ saviour god.” A lyrical dialogue between the Queen and the chorus follows: exultation and execration; justification and lamentation. Clytemnestra, to the indignant question of the chorus, “Who is to bury him?” replies that he is her dead and adroitly takes refuge once and again in the necessity of avenging Iphigeneia. The climax of bitterness is reached when she flings forth the taunting suggestion that the murdered child will most appropriately welcome her dear father as he disembarks at Charon’s ferry. The chorus, bemoaning him “laid low in the bath, on his pallet bedding of silver,” asks again:— “Praises and requiem who shall be singing, Loyal heart to the labour bringing, And shower the godlike man with tears?” And Clytemnestra replies:— “It becomes not you for this duty to care. At my hands he fell down and he lies—down there! And ’tis I that shall bury him—down below! And ’tis not with laments of his house he shall go, But his Iphigeneia with welcoming grace, As ’tis just to require, the daughter her sire By the swift-flowing Ferry of Groans shall face And with locked arms kiss and embrace him!”