to gaze upon the light is man’s most cherished gift; that life below is nothingness, and whoever longs for death is mad. Better live a life of woe than die a death of glory!Chorus LeaderAh, wretched Helen! Great is the struggle that has come sons to the of Atreus and their children, thanks to you and those marriages of yours.AgamemnonWhile loving my own children, I yet understand what should move my pity and what should not; I would be a madman otherwise. It is terrible for me to bring myself to this, nor is it less terrible to refuse, daughter; for I must do this.Paley follows Kirchhoff in reading ταὐτὰ. Others retain τοῦτο and render I must do this deed. You see the vastness of that naval army,and the numbers of bronze-clad warriors from Hellas, who can neither make their way to Ilium’s towers nor raze the far-famed citadel of Troy, unless I offer you according to the word of Calchas the seer. The following passage from 1. 1264-75 is regarded by Dindorf as spurious. Hennig thinks 1. 1269 and ll. 1271-75 are genuine.Some mad desire possesses the army of Hellasto sail at once to the land of the barbarians, and put a stop to the rape of wives from Hellas, and they will slay my daughter in Argos as well as you and me, if I disregard the goddess’s commands. It is not Menelaus who has enslaved me to him, child,nor have I followed his wish; no, it is Hellas, for whom I must sacrifice you whether I will or not; to this necessity I bow my head; for her freedom must be preserved, as far as any help of yours daughter, or mine can go; or they, who are the sons of Hellas, must bepillaged of their wives by barbarian robbery. Exit Agamemnon.

ClytemnestraMy child! oh, foreign women! Alas for me, for your death! Your father escapes, surrendering you to Hades.IphigeniaAlas for me, mother! for the samelament has fallen to both of us in our fortune. No more for me the light of day! no more these beams of the sun! Oh, oh! that snow-beat glen in Phrygia and the hills of Ida,where Priam once exposed a tender baby, torn from his mother’s arms to meet a deadly doom, Paris, called the child of Idain the Phrygians’ town. Would that he never had settled Alexander, the herdsman reared among the herds, beside that water crystal-clear, where are fountainsof the Nymphs and their meadow rich with blooming flowers, where hyacinths and rose-buds blow for goddesses to gather! Here one daycame Pallas and Cypris of the subtle heart, Hera too and Hermes messenger of Zeus; Cypris, proud of the longing she causes,Pallas of her prowess; and Hera of her royal marriage with king Zeus; to decide a hateful strife about their beauty; but it is my death,maidens, bringing, it is true, glory to the Danaids, that Artemis has received as an offering, before they begin the voyage to Ilium.Reading μὰν for μὲν and ἐμὸν for ἐμοὶ, also προθύματ᾽ for πρόθυμά σ᾽ in this hopelessly corrupt passage. Monk, rejecting ὄνομα . . . Δαναίδαισιν, assigns the next two lines to the Chorus, merely altering κόραι to κόρα, but this is scarcely likely to be the solution of the difficulty.O mother, mother! he that begot me to this life of sorrow has gone and left me all alone.Ah! woe is me! a bitter, bitter sight for me was Helen, evil Helen! to me now doomed to bleed and die, slaughtered by an impious father!I wish this Aulis had never receivedin its havens here the stems of their bronze-beaked ships, the fleet which was speeding them to Troy; and would that Zeus had never breathed on the Euripus a wind to stop the expedition,Reading πομπᾷ. The whole of this passage (l. 1323-29) is probably more or less corrupt, and the construction suspiciously harsh; possibly the text has suffered from interpolations and glosses on the original. tempering, as he does,