But where am I to make ready the feast for the women?AgamemnonHere beside our gallant Argive ships.ClytemnestraFinely here! but still I must;Reading καλῶς γ᾽, ἀνασκαίως δὲ·, as Paley edits on his own correction. good come of it for all that!AgamemnonDo you know what to do, lady? Then obey me.ClytemnestraIn what matter? for I was ever accustomed to obey you.AgamemnonHere, where the bridegroom is, I will—ClytemnestraWhich of my duties will you perform in the mother’s absence?AgamemnonGive your child away with help of Danaids.ClytemnestraAnd where am I to be then?AgamemnonGo to Argos, and take care of your unwedded daughters.ClytemnestraAnd leave my child? Then who will raise her bridal torch?AgamemnonI will provide the proper wedding torch.ClytemnestraThat is not the custom; but you think lightly of these things.AgamemnonIt is not good for you to be alone among a soldier-crowd.ClytemnestraIt is good that a mother should give her own child away.AgamemnonYes, and that those maidens at home should not be left alone.ClytemnestraThey are well guarded in their maiden bowers.AgamemnonObey.ClytemnestraNo, by the goddess-queen of Argos!Go, manage matters out of doors; but in the house it is my place to decide what is proper for maidens at their wedding.This line is rejected by Monk as spurious; Hermann proposes to read νυμφίοισι παρθένων, and without some such emendation it is diificult to find any meaning in it.AgamemnonWoe is me! my efforts are baffled; I am disappointed in my hope, anxious as I was to get my wife out of sight; foiled at every point,I form my plots and subtle schemes against my best-beloved. But I will go, in spite of all, with Calchas the priest, to inquire the goddess’s good pleasure, fraught with ill-luck as it is to me, and with trouble to Hellas.Lines 746-8 are rejected by Monk, whom most editors follow. He who is wise should keep in his housea good and useful wife or none at all.

ChorusThe Hellenes’ gathered army will come in arms aboard their ships to Simois with its silver eddies,to Ilium, the plain of Troy beloved by Phoebus; where Cassandra, I am told, wildly tosses her golden tresses, wreathed with crown of green laurel,whenever the god’s resistless prophecies inspire her.

ChorusAnd on the towers of Troy and round her walls shall Trojans stand, when sea-borne troopswith brazen shields row in on shapely ships to the channels of the Simois, eager to take Helen, the sister of that heavenly pair whom Zeus begot, from Priam, and bear her back to Hellas by toilof Achaean shields and spears.

ChorusThe son of Atreus, encircling Pergamus, the Phrygians’ town, with murderous war