Let us place clearly before our eyes the account given by the Shade of Agamemnon, in the Eleventh Odyssey (405-434), of the manner of his death. No darker picture could be drawn. It combined every circumstance of cruelty with every circumstance of fraud. At the hospitable board, amid the flowing wine-cups, he was slain like an ox at the stall, and his comrades like so many hogs for a rich man's banquet; with deaths more piteous than he had ever known in single combat, or in the rush of armies. Most piteous of all was the death of Cassandra, whom the cruel Clytemnestra despatched with her own hand while clinging to Agamemnon; nor did she vouchsafe to her husband the last office of mercy and compassion, by closing his mouth and eyes in death. Singularly enough, Dr. Schliemann assures me that the right eye, which alone could be seen with tolerable clearness, was not entirely shut (see the engraving at p. 297); while the teeth of the upper jawbone (see the same engraving) did not quite join those of the lower. This condition, he thinks, may be due to the superincumbent weight. But if the weight had opened the jaw, would not the opening, in all likelihood, have been much wider? Now, as we are told that Ægisthus reigned until Orestes reached his manhood, we must assume that the massacre was in all respects triumphant. Yet there could hardly fail to be a party among the people favourable to the returning King, who had covered his country with unequalled glory. There might thus be found in the circumstances a certain dualism, a ground for compromise, such as may go far to account for the discrepancies of intention, which we seem to find in the entombments. There was this division of sentiment among the people, in the only case where we know the return of the prince from Troy to have been accompanied with a crisis or conflict, I mean the case of Ithaca. The assassins proceeded in such a way, that the only consistent accomplishment of their design would have been found in casting forth the bodies of the slain like the bodies of enemies. But this may have been forbidden by policy. In the Julius Cæsar of Shakespeare, Brutus says (III. 1.)-- "We are contented Cæsar shall Have all due rites and lawful ceremonies. It shall advantage more than do us wrong." Ægisthus was not Brutus. Even fury was apparent in the incidents of the slaughter. Yet there might be a desire to keep up appearances afterwards, and to allow some semblance of an honourable burial. There is one special circumstance that favours the idea of a double process, namely, that we readily find the agents for both parts of it; the murderers for the first, with necessity and policy controlling hatred; Orestes on his return for the second, with the double motive of piety and revenge.