. But I will go and fetch the letter from the
shrines of the Goddess. But do thou not bear ill will against me. Guard
them, ye servants, [but] without fetters.[84] Perchance I shall send
unexpected tidings to some one of my friends at Argos, whom I chiefly love,
and the letter, telling to him that she lives whom he thinks dead, will
announce a faithful pleasure.

CHOR. I deplore thee now destined to the gory streams of the lustral
waters.[85]

OR. 'Tis piteous, truly;[86] but fare ye well, stranger ladies.

CHOR. But thee, (_to Pylades_) O youth, we honor for thy happy fortune,
that at some time thou wilt return to thy country.

PYL. Not to be coveted[87] by friends, when friends are to die.

CHOR. O mournful journeying! Alas! alas! thou art undone. Woe! woe! which
is the [victim] to be? For still my mind resolves[88] twain doubtful
[ills,] whether with groans I shall bemoan thee (_to Orestes_) or thee (_to
Pylades_) first.

OR. Pylades, hast thou, by the Gods, experienced the same feeling as
myself?

PYL. I know not. Thou askest me unable to say.

OR. Who is this damsel? With what a Grecian spirit she asked us concerning
the toils in Troy, and the return of the Greeks, and Calchas wise in
augury, and about Achilles, and how she pitied wretched Agamemnon, and
asked me of his wife and children. This stranger lady is[89] some Greek by
race; for otherwise she never would have been sending a letter and making
these inquiries, as sharing a common weal in the well-doing of Argos.

PYL. Thou hast outstripped me a little, but thou outstrippest me in saying
the same things, save in one respect--for all, with whom there is any
communication, know the fate of the king. But I was[90] considering another
subject.

OR. What? laying it down in common, you will better understand.

PYL. 'Tis base that I should behold the light, while you perish; and,
having sailed with you, with you I must needs die also. For I shall incur
the imputation of both cowardice and baseness in Argos and the Phocian land
with its many dells, and I shall seem to the many, for the many are evil,
to have arrived alone in safety to mine home, having deserted thee, or even
to have murdered thee, taking advantage of the sickly state of thine house,
and to have devised thy fate for the sake of reigning, in order that,
forsooth, I might wed thy sister as an heiress[91]. These things, then, I
dread, and hold in shame, and it shall not be but I will breathe