ORES. _Destiny works a different doom to-day...._ CLYTEM. _Oh! Wilt thou kill thy mother? O my son!_ ORES. _I kill thee not. Thy sin destroyeth thee...._ CLYTEM. _Ah!_ _I have borne and reared a serpent for my son._ ORES. _Then is fulfilled the terror of thy dream!_[16] So Clytemnestra falls at the hands of Orestes; but the vengeance has no joy for him. Before his mother’s mighty spirit has taken its way along the road to Hades, a torture of remorse has fallen upon her son. Even while he stands above the murdered body, her avenging Furies come thronging about him “with Gorgon faces and thick serpent hair” and he feels his reason totter. ORES. _Hear me declare:—How this will end I know not. I feel the chariot of my spirit borne Far wide. My soul, like an ill-managed courser, Is carrying me away, while my poor heart To her own music dances in wild fear._[16] He cries in anguish to Apollo to justify him; but there comes no answer from the god; and faster and faster crowd those grizzly spectre forms, rushing upon him in hideous multitudes, and menacing him with ghastly torments. And as the tragedy closes, we see Orestes fleeing before the rout of the Furies to find sanctuary at the shrine of Apollo, while the Chorus wails: “_When shall cease Dread, Atè’s fury? When be lulled to peace?_”[16] We hear no more of Electra from Æschylus. Measured by action, or even by language, the part she plays in his trilogy is quite a small one. It is significant, too, that this her first appearance in Attic Tragedy is not called by her name, but the _Libation-bearers_. Such a title, while it serves to remind us of a stage of Greek Drama when the Chorus was the whole play, indicates also the poet’s conception of the theme. To Æschylus, the religious act at Agamemnon’s tomb, with all that it implies, was of much greater import than the figure of the great king’s daughter. The force of destiny, the amazing mandate of the god and its conflict with filial love and duty, and the pursuit of the matricide by the Furies, constitute for him the essence of the tragedy. The spiritual aspect of the story transcends for him the human interest of it. Hence his characters, though sublimely great, are great in outline only; and hence the brief appearance of Electra.