CHAPTER VII.
THE STORY OF ORESTES.
From the story of Thebes we pass now to Pelops' line, to contemplate there again the terrible course of divine displeasure once provoked against a family. Atreus, the son of Pelops, being wronged by his brother Thyestes, revenged himself by an act of treachery and impiety. He invited Thyestes to a banquet, in which the flesh of his own children was set before the unconscious father. The sun turned back in his course to avoid a sight so horrible, and from this time calamity never departed from that house, till an expiator was found in the person of Orestes. Agamemnon, who led the Greeks to Troy to revenge the injury of his brother Menelaus, was son of this impious Atreus. While he was waging war for ten years in Asia, his wife, Clytemnestra, was unfaithful to him, and admitted into his palace one Ægisthus, the son of the outraged Thyestes, who was destined bitterly to avenge his father's wrong upon the house of Atreus. The guilty pair determined to murder Agamemnon on his return, for both were afraid to
