Libation Bearers (670-685)

and the presence of honest faces. But if there is another matter requiring graver counsel, that is the concern of men, and we will communicate with them.

I am a stranger, a Daulian of the Phocians. As I was on my way, carrying my pack on business of my own to Argos,

just as I ended my journey here,[*] a man, a stranger to me as I to him, fell in with me, and inquired about my destination and told me his. He was Strophius, a Phocian (for as we talked I learned his name), and he said to me,

Stranger, since in any case you are bound for Argos, keep my message in mind most faithfully and tell his parents Orestes is dead, and by no means let it escape you. Whether his friends decide to bring him home or to bury him in the land of his sojourn, a foreigner utterly forever,

convey their wishes back to me. In the meantime a bronze urn contains the ashes of a man rightly lamented. This much I tell you as I heard it. Whether by any chance I am speaking to those with whom the question rests and whose concern it is,