Orestes? He is dead. I will tell all as it happened.

He journeyed forth to attend the great games which Hellas counts her
pride, to join the Delphic contests. There he heard the herald's voice,
with loud and clear command, proclaim, as coming first, the chariot
race, and so he entered, radiant, every eye admiring as he passed. And
in the race he equaled all the promise of his form in those his rounds,
and so with noblest prize of conquest left the ground.

Summing up in fewest words what many scarce could tell, I know of none
in strength and act like him. And having won the prize in all the
fivefold forms of race which the umpires had proclaimed, he then was
hailed, proclaimed an Argive, and his name Orestes, the son of mighty
Agamemnon, who once led Hellas's glorious host.

So far, well. But when a god will injure, none can escape, strong though
he be. For lo! another day, when, as the sun was rising, came the race
swift-footed of the chariot and the horse, he entered the contest with
many charioteers. One was an Achaean, one was from Sparta, two were from
Libya with four-horsed chariots, and Orestes with swift Thessalian mares
came as the fifth. A sixth, with bright bay colts, came from AEtolia; the
seventh was born in far Magnesia; the eighth was an AEnian with white
horses; the ninth was from Athens, the city built by the gods; the tenth
and last was a Boeotian.

[Illustration: The Chariot Race.]

And so they stood, their cars in order as the umpires had decided by
lot. Then, with sound of brazen trumpet, they started.

All cheering their steeds at the same moment, they shook the reins, and
at once the course was filled with the clash and din of rattling
chariots, and the dust rose high. All were now commingled, each striving
to pass the hubs of his neighbors' wheels. Hard and hot were the horses'
breathings, and their backs and the chariot wheels were white with foam.

Each charioteer, when he came to the place where the last stone marks
the course's goal, turned the corner sharply, letting go the right-hand
trace horse and pulling the nearer in. And so, at first, the chariots
kept their course; but, at length, the AEnian's unbroken colts, just as
they finished their sixth or seventh round, turned headlong back and
dashed at full speed against the chariot wheels of those who were
following. Then with tremendous uproar, each crashed on the other, they
fell overturned, and Crissa's broad plain was filled with