MEN. O palace, in some respect indeed I behold thee with pleasure, coming from Troy, but in other respect I groan when I see thee. For never yet saw I any other house more completely encircled round with lamentable woes. For I was made acquainted with the misfortune that befell Agamemnon, [and his death, by what death he perished at the hands of his wife,][6b] when I was landing my ships at Malea; but from the waves the prophet of the mariners declared unto me, the foreboding Glaucus the son of Nereus, an unerring God, who told me thus in evident form standing by me. "Menelaus, thy brother lieth dead, having fallen in his last bath, which his wife prepared." But he filled both me and my sailors with many tears; but when I come to the Nauplian shore, my wife having already landed there, expecting to clasp in my friendly embraces Orestes the son of Agamemnon, and his mother, as being in prosperity, I heard from some fisherman[7] the unhallowed murder of the daughter of Tyndarus. And now tell me, maidens, where is the son of Agamemnon, who dared these terrible deeds of evil? for he was an infant in Clytæmnestra's arms at that time when I left the palace on my way to Troy, so that I should not know him, were I to see him. ORES. I, Menelaus, am Orestes, whom thou seekest, I of my own accord will declare my evils. But first I touch thy knees in supplication, putting up prayers from my mouth, not using the sacred branch:[8] save me. But thou art come in the very season of my sufferings. MEN. O ye Gods, what do I behold! whom of the dead do I see! ORES. Ay! well thou sayest the dead; for in my state of suffering I live not; but see the light. MEN. Thou wretched man, how disordered thou art in thy squalid hair! ORES. Not the appearance, but the deeds torment me. MEN. But thou glarest dreadfully with thy shriveled eyeballs. ORES. My body is vanished, but my name has not left me. MEN. Alas, thy uncomeliness of form which has appeared to me beyond conception! ORES. I am he, the murderer of my wretched mother. MEN. I have heard; but spare a little the recital of thy woes. ORES. I spare it; but in woes the deity is rich to me. MEN. What dost thou suffer? What malady destroys thee? ORES. The conviction that I am conscious of having perpetrated dreadful deeds. MEN. How sayest thou? Plainness, and not obscurity, is wisdom. ORES. Sorrow is chiefly what destroys me,-- MEN. She is a dreadful goddess, but sorrow admits of cure. ORES. And fits of madness in revenge for my mother's blood. MEN. But when didst first have the raging? what day was it then? ORES. That day in which I heaped the tomb on my mother. MEN. What? in the house, or sitting at the pyre? ORES. As I was guarding by night lest any one should bear off her bones.[9] MEN. Was any one else present, who supported thy body? ORES. Pylades, who perpetrated with me the vengeance and death of my mother. MEN. But by what visions art thou thus afflicted?