Corrupted Agamemnon’s queen. At first The noble Clytemnestra turned away With horror from the crime; for yet her heart Was right, and by her side there stood a bard With whom Atrides, when he went to Troy, Had left his wife with many an earnest charge. But when the gods and fate had spread a net For his destruction, then Aegisthus bore The minstrel to a desert isle, and there Left him to be devoured by birds of prey, And led the queen, as willing as himself, To his own palace. Many a victim’s thigh Upon the hallowed altars of the gods He offered, many a gift of ornaments Woven or wrought in gold he hung within Their temples, since at length the mighty end For which he hardly dared to hope was gained.
We sailed together from the coast of Troy, Atrides, Menelaus, and myself, Friends to each other.
When the headland height Of Athens, hallowed Sunium, met our eyes, Apollo smote with his still shafts, and slew Phrontis, Onetor’s son, who steered the barque Of Menelaus, holding in his hands The rudder as the galley scudded on— And skilled was he beyond all other men To guide a vessel when the storm was high.
So there did Menelaus stay his course, Though eager to go on, that he might lay His friend in earth and pay the funeral rites.
But setting sail again with all his fleet Upon the dark-blue sea, all-seeing Jove Decreed a perilous voyage. He sent forth His shrill-voiced hurricane, and heaped on high The mountain waves. There, scattering the barques Far from each other, part he drove to Crete, Where the Cydonians dwell, beside the stream Of Jardanus. A