The later history of the Pelopids

²³When Agamemnon arrived back at Mycenae with Cassandra, he was killed by Aigisthos and Clytemnestra;* for she gave him a tunic without sleeves or a neck, and he was struck down as he tried to put it on. Aigisthos became king of Mycenae, and they killed Cassandra too.* ²⁴But Electra, one of the daughters of Agamemnon, stole away her brother Orestes, and entrusted him to Strophios the Phocian to rear; and he brought him up with his own son, Pylades. On reaching manhood, Orestes went to Delphi to ask the god whether he should take vengeance on his father’s murderers. ²⁵When this was authorized by the god, he left Mycenae in secret, accompanied by Pylades, and killed his mother and Aigisthos.* Not long afterwards, he was struck by madness, and pursued by the Furies, he went to Athens, where he was put on trial in the Areiopagos. According to some, he was indicted by the Furies, or according to others, by Tyndareus, or again, by Erigone, the daughter of Aigisthos and Clytemnestra, and when the votes at his trial were evenly divided, he was acquitted.*

²⁶When Orestes asked the oracle how he could be delivered from his affliction, the god replied that this would be achieved if he fetched the wooden statue that lay in the land of the Taurians.* Now the Taurians are part of the Scythian race, who murder strangers and cast their bodies into the sacred fire. The fire lay in the sanctuary and rose up from Hades through a certain rock. ²⁷So when Orestes arrived with Pylades in the land of the Taurians, they were discovered, captured, and taken in chains to Thoas, the king, who dispatched the pair of them to the priestess. But Orestes was recognized by his sister, who was performing the rites amongst the Taurians, and he fled with her, taking the wooden statue with him. It was brought to Athens, where it is now called the Tauropolos Statue; but it is said by some that Orestes was driven by a storm to the island of Rhodes, [where the statue remained] and was dedicated in a defensive wall in obedience to an oracle. ²⁸Returning to Mycenae, he united his sister Electra to Pylades, while he himself married Hermione, or according to some, Erigone, and became the father of Tisamenos.* He died from a snake-bite at Oresteion in Arcadia.

²⁹Menelaos, with a total of five ships under his command, put in at Sounion, a headland of Attica; and when he was driven away from there by the winds towards Crete, he was carried a great distance, and wandered along the coasts of Libya, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt collecting a wealth of treasure.* ³⁰According to some accounts, he discovered Helen at the court of Proteus, king of Egypt; for until that time, Menelaos had possessed only a phantom* of her, fashioned from clouds. After wandering for eight years, he sailed back to Mycenae, where he found Orestes, who was there after avenging his father’s murder. From there, he went to Sparta and recovered his own kingdom; and after he had been made immortal by Hera, he went to the Elysian Fields with Helen.*

The return of Odysseus (a summary of theOdyssey,)

¹Odysseus, according to some accounts, wandered to Libya,

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or according to others, to Sicily, or again around the Ocean and the Tyrrhenian Sea.

²After putting to sea from Ilion, he called in at Ismaros, a city of the Ciconians, and seized it by force of arms and pillaged it, sparing only Maron, who was a priest of Apollo. When the Ciconians who lived on the mainland came to hear of this, they armed themselves and advanced against him. Losing six men from each ship, he put to sea and fled.

³Landing at the country of the Lotos-Eaters, he sent some of his men to discover who the inhabitants were. But they tasted the lotos and remained where they were; for in that land, there grew a delicious fruit called the lotos, which caused those who tasted it to forget all else. When Odysseus learned of this, he kept the others back, and dragged the men who had tasted the lotos back to the ships by force. And he set sail for the land of the Cyclopes and approached its shore.

⁴Leaving the rest of his ships at the neighbouring island, he approached the land of the Cyclopes with only a single ship, and disembarked with twelve companions. Close to the sea there was a cave, which he entered, taking with him the wineskin that Maron had given him. This cave was owned by Polyphemos, who was a son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa; he was a man of enormous size, a savage man-eater with a single eye on his forehead. ^sLighting a fire, Odysseus and his companions sacrificed some of the kids and began to feast; but the Cyclops arrived, and after he had driven his flocks into the cave and placed a huge stone at its entrance, he caught sight of the men and devoured some of them. ⁶Odysseus gave him some of Maron’s wine to drink. He drank it down and asked for more, and then, when he had drunk for a second time, he asked Odysseus to tell him his name. Odysseus replied that he was called Nobody, and the Cyclops promised that he would kill Nobody last and the others before him: such was the gift of friendship that he promised him in return for the wine. And overcome by drunkenness he fell asleep.

⁷Odysseus found a club lying in the cave, and helped by four of his comrades, he sharpened its point, and then, after heating it in the fire, blinded the Cyclops with it. Polyphemos cried out to the neighbouring Cyclopes and they came to help; but when they asked who was hurting him, and he replied, ‘Nobody,’ they went away again, believing him to mean that he was being injured by nobody. ⁸When the flocks sought to leave for their usual pasture, he opened up the cave, and standing at the entrance, stretched out his hands to feel the sheep [as they passed]. But Odysseus tied three rams together and slipping beneath the largest of them, he hid under its belly and left with the sheep; and then, after releasing his companions from their sheep, he drove the animals to the ships, and as he was sailing away, shouted to the Cyclops that he was Odysseus and had escaped from his hands. ⁹Now the Cyclops had been warned by a diviner that he would be blinded by Odysseus, and when he heard the name, he tore rocks from the ground and hurled them into the sea; and the ship only just escaped them. It was these events that gave rise to Poseidon’s anger against Odysseus.

¹⁰Sailing to sea with all [his ships], he came to the island of Aiolia, where Aiolos was king. He had been appointed controller of the winds by Zeus, with power both to calm them and send them forth. After entertaining Odysseus as his guest, he gave him an oxhide bag in which he had imprisoned the winds, and when he had shown him which he should use on the voyage, he attached the bag securely to the ship. By making use of the appropriate winds, Odysseus had a successful passage, but when he drew close to Ithaca and could already see the smoke rising from the town, he fell asleep; ¹¹and his companions, thinking that he was carrying gold in the bag, untied it, and released the winds. Swept away by the winds, they travelled back the way they had come. Odysseus went to Aiolos and asked him for a favourable wind, but Aiolos drove him from the island, saying that he was unable to save a man if the gods were working against him.

¹²So he sailed on until he arrived at the land of the Laistrygonians, [where he put in,] mooring his own ship last in the line. The Laistrygonians were cannibals and their king was Antiphates. Wanting to learn about the inhabitants, Odysseus sent some of his men to investigate; and the king’s daughter met with them and took them to her father. ¹³He grasped hold of one of them and swallowed him down, but the others fled, and he chased after them, shouting out to summon the rest of the Laistrygonians. And the Laistrygonians rushed down to the sea, where they broke up the vessels by hurling rocks at them, and devoured the men. Odysseus cut the cable of his ship and made his way out to sea, but all the other ships were lost together with their crews.