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In the name of the perfect justice I have exacted for my daughter, in the name of Ruin and Vengeance, to whom I have sacrificed him, my hopes cannot tread the halls of fear so long as Aegisthus is true to me. There he lies, seducer of this woman, darling of many a Chryseis in Troyland.
He therefore repaired in disguise to Argos, pretending to be a messenger from Strophius, who had come to announce the death of Orestes, and brought the ashes of the deceased in a funeral urn. After visiting his father's tomb and sacrificing upon it, according to the rites of the ancients, he made himself known to his sister Electra, and soon after slew both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra.
All disguise is now thrown off; the murderess avows and triumphs in her deed; she justifies it as vengeance for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and sees in herself not a free human agent but the incarnate curse of the House of Tantalus. And now for the first time appears the adulterer Aegisthus, who has planned the whole behind the scenes.
This serves but to renew the despair of Electra, who recounts to her sister the gloomy tidings which have just arrived, and exhorts her, now that all other hope is at an end, to join with her in the daring deed of putting Aegisthus to death: a proposal which Chrysothemis, not possessing the necessary courage, rejects as foolish, and after a violent altercation she re-enters the house.
Clytemnestra is alone in her house, preparing a caldron for the burial; Electra and the chorus are on the stage; the son the avenger, is within; suddenly the cries of Clytemnestra are heard. Again again! Orestes re-enters a parricide! He retires as Aegisthus is seen approaching; and the adulterous usurper is now presented to us for the first and last time the crowning victim of the sacrifice.
"At first she would have nothing to do with his wicked scheme, for she was of a good natural disposition; moreover there was a bard with her, to whom Agamemnon had given strict orders on setting out for Troy, that he was to keep guard over his wife; but when heaven had counselled her destruction, Aegisthus carried this bard off to a desert island and left him there for crows and seagulls to batten upon after which she went willingly enough to the house of Aegisthus.
Orestes goes to meet Aegisthus is close by sacrificing, and presently returns with the corpse, at which Electra hurls back the taunts and jeers he had heaped on her in his lifetime. She had sent to her mother saying she had given birth to a boy and asking her to come immediately. Orestes quails before the coming murder, but Electra bids him be loyal to his father.
She tells the story of her mother's shame and Aegisthus' insolence which Orestes promises to recount to her brother, "for in ignorant men there is no spark of pity anywhere, only in the learned." The labourer returns and by his speech moves Orestes to declare that birth is no test of nobility.
Lightly might a god, if so he would, bring a man safe home even from afar. Rather myself would I have travail and much pain ere I came home and saw the day of my returning, than come back and straightway perish on my own hearth-stone, even as Agamemnon perished by guile at the hands of his own wife and of Aegisthus.
Their difference of sentiment leads to an altercation between the two sisters, during which Chrysothemis informs Electra that Aegisthus, now absent in the country, has determined to adopt the most severe measures with her, whom, however, she sets at defiance.
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