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Bound hand and foot, I lie on the Moriah of fashionable life; but the grim fact stares me in the face, that no ram will be forthcoming when the slaughter begins! No relenting hand will stay the uplifted knife. Diana will not snatch me into Tauris, and mamma cannot sail prosperously from the Aulis of Erle Palma's charity until I am sacrificed. Ah! the pitying tenderness of maternal love!"
"I will tell thee what hath been written in the tablet; and if it perish, thou shalt tell them again; but if not, then thou shalt give it as I bid thee." "And to whom shall I give it?" "Thou shalt give it to Orestes, son of Agamemnon. And that which is written therein is this: 'I that was sacrificed in Aulis, even Iphigenia, who am alive and yet dead to my own people, bid thee "
And when she yet doubted, he told her of certain things by which she might know him to be Orestes how that she had woven a tapestry wherein was set forth the strife between Atreus and Thyestes concerning the golden lamb; and that she had given a lock of her hair at Aulis to be a memorial of her; and that there was laid in her chamber at Argos the ancient spear of Pelops, her father's grandsire, with which he slew Œnomaüs and won Hippodamia to be his wife.
So a message was sent to her mother, Clytemnestra, to send her, on pretence that she was to be married to Achilles, and when she came to Aulis she found that it was only to be offered up.
Already now nine weary years have passed. Not long ago, when ships of Greece were met at Aulis charged with evil freight for Troy. Then there are the causes, in which he shows why something is coming to pass or has come to pass.
The leaders of the army did not even know where Troy was, and landed in the wrong locality, where they had a battle with the people. Embarking again, they were driven by a storm back to Greece. Adverse winds now kept them at Aulis until Agamemnon appeased the hostile gods by sacrificing to them his daughter Iphigenia, one of the ways which those old heathens had of obtaining fair weather.
That very night the wind veered, and enabled the mediaeval Agamemnon to quit his Aulis. With full sails, and a following southern breeze, the Norman armada left the French shores and steered for England. The invaders crossed an undefended sea, and found an undefended coast.
On the day of the ascent, the opera of "Iphigenia in Aulis" was given, and the theatre was thronged by a vast assemblage, attracted thither in the hope of seeing the illustrious experimentalists. The curtain had risen when M. and Madame de Flesselles entered their box, accompanied by Montgolfier and Roziers. At sight of them the enthusiasm of the house rose to fever pitch.
Their ships remained chained an entire year in the harbor of Aulis and, through fear of the hostility of the wind and in order to placate the divinity of the Mediterranean, they sacrificed the life of a virgin. All was danger and mystery in the kingdom of the waves.
Menelaus was weak of body, but as brave as the best, or more brave, for he had a keen sense of honour, and would attempt what he had not the strength to do. Diomede and Ulysses were great friends, and always fought side by side, when they could, and helped each other in the most dangerous adventures. These were the chiefs who led the great Greek armada from the harbour of Aulis.
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