y what agrees
with your letter.

AG. (reading) "I send to thee, O germ of Leda, besides[7] my former
dispatches, not to send thy daughter to the bay-like wing of Euboea,[8]
waveless Aulis. For we will delay the bridals of our daughter till another
season."

OLD M. And how will not Achilles raise up his temper against thee and thy
wife, showing great wrath at failing of his spouse? This also is terrible.
Show what thou meanest.

AG. Achilles, furnishing the pretext, not the reality, knows not these
nuptials, nor what we are doing; nor that I have professed to give my
daughter into the nuptial chain of his arms by marriage.[9]

OLD M. Thou venturest terrible things, king Agamemnon, who, having promised
thy daughter as wife to the son of the Goddess, dost lead her as a
sacrifice on behalf of the Greeks.

AG. Ah me! I was out of my senses. Alas! And I am falling into calamity.
But go, plying thy foot, yielding naught to old age.

OLD M. I hasten, O king.

AG. Do not thou either sit down by the woody fountains, nor repose in
sleep.

OLD M. Speak good words.

AG. But every where as you pass the double track, look about, watching lest
there escape thee a chariot passing with swift wheels, bearing my daughter
hither to the ships of the Greeks.

OLD M. This shall be.

AG. And go out of the gates[10] quickly,+ for if you meet with the
procession,+ again go forth, shake the reins, going to the temples reared
by the Cyclops.

OLD M. But tell me, how, saying this, I shall obtain belief from thy
daughter and wife.

AG. Preserve the seal, this which thou bearest on this letter. Go: morn,
already dawning forth this light, grows white, and the fire of the sun's
four steeds. Aid me in my toils. But no one of mortals is prosperous or
blest to the last, for none hath yet been born free from pain.

CHORUS. I came to the sands of the shore of marine Aulis, having sailed
through the waves of Euripus, quitting Chalcis with its narrow strait, my
city, the nurse of the sea-neighboring waters[11] of renowned Arethusa, in
order that I might behold the army of the Greeks, and the ship-conveying
oars of the Grecian youths, whom against Troy in a thousand ships of fir,
our husbands say that yellow-haired Menelaus and Agamemnon of noble birth,
are leading in quest of Helen,[12] whom the herdsman Paris bore from
reed-nourishing Eurotas, a gift of Venus, when at the fountain dews Venus
held contest, contest respecting beauty with Juno