The scene is laid outside the Royal Palace at Mycenæ, before that tomb of Agamemnon which archæologists within recent years have brought to light on the ancient site of the city. The time is morning, and two young men, who have evidently travelled far, approach the tomb. One is Orestes, the son of Agamemnon whom Clytemnestra had sent away as a child. The other is his dear friend Pylades. Orestes has returned secretly to Argos, bidden by the oracle of Apollo to avenge his father’s death. But he has no army: he does not know that he has a single friend in Mycenæ; and his purpose is fraught with extreme danger. How he will accomplish it he cannot yet imagine; but he must first try to discover if there are any in the palace who will befriend him. As they reach the tomb, Orestes calls upon Hermes, the god who guides the shades of the dead, and invokes his father’s spirit. “_O Hermes of the Shades, that watchest over My buried father’s right, be now mine aid. I come from exile to this land. Oh save me!_ · · · · · _Father, here standing at thy tomb I bid thee Hear me! Oh hear!_“[16] Then, according to a solemn custom of the heroic age, Orestes begins to clip the locks of hair from his head and place them upon the tomb as a votive offering. As he is thus engaged, a train of mourning women slowly emerge from the palace, carrying vessels in their hands with libations for the dead. They are slaves, captive Trojan women whom the poet uses as the Chorus of his Drama; and they are followed at a little distance by the drooping figure of a girl, whom Orestes rightly believes to be his sister Electra. They are coming to pour offerings at the tomb of the king. This in itself is a sign of encouragement to Orestes. But he dare not show himself until he is assured that they are friendly to his cause; and he and Pylades hastily withdraw, where they may hear and see the ceremony without being seen. The women are singing; and as their lovely parodos rises and falls, we learn why they are coming thus early to the neglected tomb of the murdered king. The astounding fact reveals itself that they are sent by Clytemnestra. Clearly, the awakening has come to her at last. In the night that has just passed she had been visited by a dream that seemed to her a dreadful portent. She had started from her bed, screaming with horror, and had called for lights. But the crowding women with their lamps could not drive away the vision of the fearful serpent-birth that had turned and rent her breast. And Clytemnestra, her conscience suddenly shaken into life, had sent for the interpreters. They had no comfort for her, however, in their reply: _They cried, aloud, by heavenly sureties bound,— “One rages there beneath Menacing death for death....”_