O friends! I am being ill-treated. This man is keeping me from the tomb, and is eager to take and give me to his master, whose wooing I was seeking to avoid.

No robber I, or minister of evil.

At any rate the garb wherein thou art clad is unseemly.

Stay thy hasty flight; put fear aside.

I do so, now that I have reached this spot.

Who art thou? whom do I behold in thee, lady?

Nay, who art thou? The self-same reason prompts us both.

never saw a closer resemblance.

Great God! Yea, for to recognize our friends is of God.

Art thou from Hellas, or a native of this land?

From Hellas; but I would learn thy story too.

Lady, in thee I see a wondrous likeness to Helen.

And I in thee to Menelaus; I know not what to say.

Well, thou hast recognized aright a man of many sorrows.

Hail! to thy wife’s arms restored at last!

Wife indeed! Lay not a finger on my robe.

The wife that Tyndareus, my father, gave thee.

O Hecate, giver of light, send thy visions favourably!

In me thou beholdest no spectre of the night, attendant on the queen of phantoms.

Nor yet am I in my single person the husband of two wives.

What other woman calls thee lord?

The inmate of yonder cave, whom I from Troy convey.

Thou hast none other wife but me.

Can it be my mind is wandering, my sight failing?

Dost not believe thou seest in me thy wife?

Thy form resembles her, but the real truth robs me of this belief.

Observe me well; what need hast thou of clearer proof?

Thou art like her; that will I never deny.

Who then shall teach thee, unless it be thine own eyes?

Herein is my dilemma; I have another wife.

To Troy I never went; that was a phantom.

Pray, who fashions living bodies?

The air, whence thou hast a wife of heaven’s workmanship.

What god’s handiwork? Strange is the tale thou tellest.

Hera made it as a substitute, to keep me from Paris.

How then couldst thou have been here, and in Troy, at the same time?

The name may be in many a place at once, though not the body.

Unhand me! the sorrows I brought with me suffice.

What! wilt leave me, and take that phantom bride away?

For thy likeness unto Helen, fare thee well.

Ruined! in thee I found my lord only to lose thee.

The greatness of my troubles at Troy convinces me; thou dost not.

Ah, woe is me! who was ever more unfortunate than I? Those whom I love best are leaving me, nor shall I ever reach Hellas, my own dear native land.

The FIRST MESSENGER enters in haste.
MESSENGER

At last I find thee, Menelaus, after an anxious search, not till I have evandered through the length and breadth of this foreign strand; I am sent by thy comrades, whom thou didst leave behind.

What news? surely you are not being spoiled by the barbarians?

A miracle hath happened; my words are too weak for the reality.

Speak; for judging by this haste, thou hast stirring news.

My message is: thy countless toils have all been toiled in vain.

That is an old tale of woe to mourn! come, thy news?

Thy wife hath disappeared, soaring away into the embracing air; in heaven she now is hidden, and as she left the hollowed cave where we were guarding her, she hailed us thus, “Ye hapless Phrygians, and all Achaea’s race! for me upon Scamander’s strand by Hera’s arts ye died from day to day, in the false belief that Helen was in the hands of Paris. But I, since I have stayed my appointed time, and kept the laws of fate, will now depart unto the sky that gave me birth; but the unhappy daughter of Tyndareus, through no fault of hers, hath borne an evil name without reason.”

Daughter of Leda, hail to thee, so thou art here after all! I was just announcing thy departure to the hidden starry realms, little knowing thatthou couldst fly at will. I will not a second time let thee flout us thus, for thou didst cause tiki lord and his comrades trouble all for naught in Ilium.

This is even what she said; her words are proved true; O longed-for day, how hath it restored thee to my arms!

O Menelaus, dearest husband, the time of sorrow has been long, but joy is now ours at last. Ah, friends, what joy for me to hold my husbandin a fond embrace after many a weary cycle of yon blazing lamp of day!

What joy for me to hold my wife! but with all that I would ask about these years, I now know not where I may first begin.

O rapture! the very hair upon my head starts up for joy! my tears run down! Around thy neck I fling my arms, dear husband, to hug my joy to me.

O happy, happy sight! I have no fault to find; my wife, he daughter of Zeus and Leda, is mine again, she whom her brothers on their snow-white steeds, whilst torches blazed, made my happy bride, but gods removed her from my home. Now is the deity guiding us to a new destiny, happier than of yore.

Evil into good transformed hath brought us twain together at last, dear husband; but late though it be, God grant me joy of my good luck!

God grant thee joy! I join thee in the self-same prayer; for of us twain one cannot suffer without the other.

No more, my friends, I mourn the past; no longer now I grieve. My own dear husband is restored to me, whose coming from Troy I have waited many a long year.

I to thee, and thou to me. And after these long, long years I have at last discovered the fraud of the goddess. But these tears, in gladness shed, are tears of thankfulness rather than of sorrow.

What can I say? What mortal heart could e’er have had such hope? To my bosom I press thee, little as I ever thought to.

And I to mine press thee, who all men thought hadst gone to Ida’s town and the hapless towers of Ilium.

Ah me! ah me! that is a bitter subject to begin on.

Tell me, I adjure thee, how wert thou from my home conveyed?

Alas! alas! ’tis a bitter tale thou askest to hear.

Speak, for I must hear it; all that comes is Heaven’s gift.

I loathe the story I am now to tell.

Tell it for all that. ‘Tis sweet to hear of trouble past.

I ne’er set forth to be the young barbarian’s bride, with oars and wings of lawless love to speed me on my way.

What deity or fate tore thee from thy country, then?

Ah, my lord! ’twas Hermes, the son of Zeus, that brought and placed me by the banks of Nile.

A miracle! Who sent thee thither? O monstrous story!

I wept, and still my eyes are wet with tears. ‘Twas the wife of Zeus that ruined me.

Hera? wherefore should she afflict us twain?

Woe is me for my awful fate! Woe for those founts and baths where the goddesses made brighter still that beauty, which evoked the fatalverdict!

Why did Hera visit thee with evil regarding this verdict?

To wrest the promise of Cypris-

How now? Say on.

From Paris, to whom that goddess pledged me.

Woe for thee!

And so she brought me hither to Egypt to my sorrow.

Then she gave him a phantom in thy stead, as thou tellest me?

And then began those woes of thine, ah, mother! woe is me!

What meanest thou?

My mother is no more; my shameful marriage made her fix the noose about her neck.

Ah me! is our daughter Hermione yet alive?

Still unwed, childless still, she mourns my fatal marriage.

O Paris, who didst utterly o’erthrow my home, here was thy ruin too and theirs, those countless mail-clad Danai.

From my country, city, and from thee heaven cast me forth unhappy and accursed, because I left,-and yet not I,-home and husband for unionof foul shame.

If haply ye find happiness in the future, it will suffice when to the past ye look.

Menelaus, grant me too a portion of that joy which, though mine own eyes see, I scarcely comprehend.

Come then, old friend, and share with us our talk.

Was it not then in her power to decide all the trouble in Troy?

It was not; I was tricked by the gods into taking to my arms a misty phantom-form, to my sorrow.

How so? was it then for this we vainly toiled?

‘Twas Hera’s handiwork, and the jealousy of three goddesses.

Is this real woman, then, thy wife?

This is she; trust my word for that.

Daughter, how changeful and inscrutable is the nature of God! With some good end doth he vary men’s fortune-now up, now down; one suffers; another who ne’er knew suffering, is in his turn to awful ruin brought, having no assurance in his lot from day to day. Thou and thy husband have had your share of trouble-thou in what the world has said, he in battle’s heat. For all the striving that he strove, he got him naught; while now, without an effort made, every blessing fortune boasts is his. And thou, in spite of all, hast brought no shame upon thy aged sire, or those twin sons of Zeus, nor art thou guilty of those rumoured crimes. Now again do I recall thy wedding rites, remembering the blazing torch I bore beside thee in a four-horsed chariot at full gallop; while thou with this thy lord, a new-made bride, wert driving forth from thy happy home. A sorry servant he, whoso regardeth not his master’s interest, sympathizing with his sorrows and his joys. Slave though I was born, yet may I be numbered amongst honest servants; for in heart, though not in name, I am free. For this is better far than in my single person to suffer these two evils, to feel my heart corrupt, and as the slave of others to be at my neighbour’s beck and call.

Come, old friend, oft hast thou stood side by side with me and taken thy full share of toil; so now be partner in my happiness. Go, tell my comrades, whom I left behind, the state of matters here, as thou hast found them, and the issue of my fortunes; and bid them wait upon thebeach and abide the result of the struggle, which I trow awaits me; and if mayhap we find a way to take this lady from the land by stealth, tellthem to keep good watch that we may share the luck and escape, if possible, from the barbarian’s clutch.

It shall be done, O king. Now I see how worthless are the seers’ tricks, how full of falsehood; nor is there after all aught trustworthy in the blaze of sacrifice or in the cry of feathered fowls; ’tis folly, the very notion that birds can help mankind. Calchas never by word or signshowed the host the truth, when he saw his friends dying on behalf of a phantom, nor yet did Helenus; but the city was stormed in vain. Perhaps thou wilt say, ’twas not heaven’s will that they should do so. Then why do we employ these prophets? Better were it to sacrifice to the gods, and crave a blessing, leaving prophecy alone; for this was but devised as a bait to catch livelihood, and no man grows rich by divination if he is idle. No! sound judgment and discernment are the best of seers.

The MESSENGER departs.
LEADER

My views about seers agree exactly with this old man’s: whoso hath the gods upon his side will have the best seer in his house.

Good! so far all is well. But how camest thou, poor husband, safe from Troy? though ’tis no gain to know, yet friends feel a longing to learn all that their friends have suffered.