ÆGISTHUS. O blessed light! O happy day proclaiming The justice of the gods! Now may I say The Olympians look from heaven sublime, to note Our woes, and right our wrongs, seeing as I see In the close meshes of the Erinnyes tangled This man--sweet sight to see!--prostrate before me, Having paid the forfeit of his father's crime. For Atreus, ruler of this Argive land, This dead man's father--to be plain--contending About the mastery, banished from the city Thyestes, his own brother and my father. In suppliant guise back to his hearth again The unhappy prince returned, content if he Might tread his native acres, not besprent With his own blood. Him with a formal show Of hospitality--not love--received The father of this dead, the godless Atreus; And to my father for the savoury use Of festive viands gave his children's flesh To feed on; in a separate dish concealed {90} Were legs and arms, and the fingers' pointed tips,[n97] Broke from the body. These my father saw not; But what remained, the undistinguished flesh, He with unwitting greed devoured, and ate A curse to Argos. Soon as known, his heart Disowned the unholy feast, and with a groan Back-falling he disgorged it. Then he vowed Dark doom to the Pelopidae, and woes Intolerable, while with his heel he spurned[n98] The supper, and thus voiced the righteous curse: THUS PERISH ALL THE RACE OF PLEISTHENES! See here the cause why Agamemnon died, And why his death most righteous was devised By me; for I, Thyestes' thirteenth son, While yet a swaddled babe, was driven away To houseless exile with my hapless sire. But me avenging Justice nursed, and taught me, Safer by distance, with invisible hand To reach this man, and weave the brooded plot, That worked his sure destruction. Now 'tis done; And gladly might I die, beholding him, There as he lies where Vengeance trapped his crimes. CHORUS. Ægisthus, that thou wantonest in the woe Worked by thy crime I praise not. Thou alone Didst slay this man, and planned the piteous slaughter With willing heart. So say'st thou: but mark well, Justice upon thy head the stony curse Shall bring avoidless from the people's hand. ÆGISTHUS. How? Thou who sittest on the neathmost bench, Speak'st thus to me who ply the upper oar? 'Tis a hard task to teach an old man wisdom, And dullness at thy years is doubly dull; But chains and hunger's pangs sure leeches are, And no diviner vends more potent balms To drug a doting wit.[n99] Have eyes, and see, Kick not against the pricks, nor vainly beat Thy head on rocks. CHORUS. (_to_ CLYTEMNESTRA) Woman, how couldst thou dare, On thine own hearth to plot thy husband's death; First having shamed his bed, to welcome him With murder from the wars?