what glorious state, Orestes, and from how envied a sire's fortune art
thou fallen! But I reproach the devices of the Goddess, who, if any one
work the death of a man, or touch with hands a woman newly delivered, or a
corpse, restrains him from her altars, as deeming him impure, but yet
herself takes pleasure in man-slaying sacrifices. It can not be that the
consort of Jove, Latona, hath brought forth so much ignorance. I even
disbelieve the banquets of Tantalus set before the Gods, [as that they]
should be pleased with feeding on a boy. But I deem that those in this
land, being themselves man-slayers, charge the Goddess with their own
baseness, for I think not that any one of the Gods is bad.

CHOR. Ye dark blue, dark blue meetings of the sea, which Io, hurried along
by the brize, once passed through to the Euxine wave, having changed the
territory of Asia for Europe,--who were they who left fair-watered Eurotas,
flourishing in reeds, or the sacred founts of Dirce, and came, and came to
the inhospitable land, where the daughter of Jove bedews her altars and
column-girt temples with human blood? Of a truth by the surge-dashing oars
of fir, worked on both sides, they sailed in a nautical carriage o'er the
ocean waves, striving in the emulation after loved wealth in their houses.
For darling hope is in dangers insatiate among men, who bear off the weight
of riches, wandering in vain speculation on the wave and o'er barbarian
cities. But to some[58] there is a mind immoderate after riches, to others
they come unsought. How did they pass through the rocks that run together,
the ne'er resting beaches of Phineus, [and] the marine shore, running o'er
the surge of Amphitrite,[59]--where the choruses of the fifty daughters of
Nereus entwine in the dance,--[although] with breezes that fill the sails,
the creaking rudders resting at the poop, with southern gales or the
breezes of Zephyr, to the bird-haunted land, the white beach, the glorious
race-course of Achilles, near the Euxine Sea. Would that, according to my
mistress' prayers, Helen, the dear daughter of Leda, might sometime chance
to come, quitting the city of Troy, that, having been drenched about the
head with the blood-stained lustral dews, she might die by my mistress'
hand, paying in turn an equal penalty [for her death.] Most joyfully then
would we receive this news, if any one came sailing from the Grecian land,
to make the toils of my hapless slavery to cease. And wo