Clytem. What say'st thou, stranger? What? . . . Heed not her words.
Attend. Orestes. . . . He is dead—I say again.
Elec. Ah me! I perish utterly. All's lost.
Clytem. Look thou to what concerns thee. But do
thou, [To Attendant of Orestes.]
Ο stranger, tell us truly how he died.
Attend. For this end was I sent; and I will tell680
All as it happened. He then journeyed forth
To those great games which Hellas counts her pride,
To join the Delphic contests;[1] and he heard
The herald's voice, with loud and clear command,
Proclaim, as coming first, the chariot race:
And so he entered radiant, every eye
Admiring as he passed. And in the race
He equalled all the promise of his form
In those his rounds, and so with noblest prize
Of conquest left the ground. And, summing up
In fewest words what many scarce could tell,
I know of none in strength and act like him;
But one thing know, for having won the prize
In all the five-fold forms of race which they,[2]
The umpires, had proclaimed for those that ran690
The ground's whole length and back, he then was hailed,
Proclaimed an Argive, and his name Orestes,
- ↑ Historically there is an anachronism here. The earlier contests at Delphi were confined to music, and the date given for the first Pythian games is, Ol. 47. 2, (B.C. 586.) So, too, the four-horsed chariot, and the presence of Greeks from Libya, belong to the poet's own time rather than to the Homeric period.
- ↑ The order of the Delphic games was as follows:—Early in the morning the umpires (Hellanodikæ) sent the herald to proclaim their opening. They began with foot races, long and short; about noon came the pentathlon, (leaping, foot-race, discus, spear-throwing, wrestling,) later the chariot-race. The "five-fold forms of race" (if the reading be correct) refer to variations in the rules or length of the course, not to the pentathlon, strictly so called.
