and Clymene, and Eryphile, who preferred gold before wedlock faith.

But now came a mournful ghost, that late was Agamemnon, son of Atreus,
the mighty leader of all the host of Greece and their confederate
kings that warred against Troy. He came with the rest to sip a little
of the blood at that uncomfortable banquet. Ulysses was moved with
compassion to see him among them, and asked him what untimely fate had
brought him there, if storms had overwhelmed him coming from Troy, or
if he had perished in some mutiny by his own soldiers at a division of
the prey.

"By none of these," he replied, "did I come to my death; but slain at
a banquet to which I was invited by AEgisthus after my return home.
He conspiring with my adulterous wife, they laid a scheme for my
destruction, training me forth to a banquet as an ox goes to the
slaughter, and there surrounding me they slew me with all my friends
about me.

"Clytemnestra, my wicked wife, forgetting the vows which she swore to
me in wedlock, would not lend a hand to close my eyes in death. But
nothing is so heaped with impieties as such a woman, who would kill
her spouse that married her a maid. When I brought her home to my
house a bride, I hoped in my heart that she would be loving to me and
to my children. Now, her black treacheries have cast a foul aspersion
on her whole sex. Blest husbands will have their loving wives in
suspicion for her bad deeds."

"Alas!" said Ulysses, "there seems to be a fatality in your royal
house of Atreus, and that they are hated of Jove for their wives. For
Helen's sake, your brother Menelaus's wife, what multitudes fell in
the wars of Troy!"

Agamemnon replied, "For this cause be not thou more kind than wise to
any woman. Let not thy words express to her at any time all that is in
thy mind, keep still some secrets to thyself. But thou by any bloody
contrivances of thy wife never needst fear to fall. Exceeding wise
she is, and to her wisdom she has a goodness as eminent; Icarius's
daughter, Penelope the chaste: we left her a young bride when we
parted from our wives to go to the wars, her first child suckling
at her breast, the young Telemachus, whom you shall see grown up to
manhood on your return, and he shall greet his father with befitting
welcomes. My Orestes, my dear son, I shall never see again. His mother
has deprived his father of the sight of him, and perhaps will slay him
as she slew his sire. It is now no world to trust a wom