Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/449

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ORESTES AND PYLADES.
417

CHAP,


of Athene herself acquitted in the court of Areiopagos. Of this myth there were, as we might expect, many variations: and among these we may notice the story which speaks of him and his friend Pylades as slaying Helen when Menelaos refused to rescue them from the angry Argives, and lastly, the legend that Orestes himself, like Eurydike, died from the bite of a snake, the throttling serpent of Vedic mythology.