is the wisdom of old Nestor with regard to this subject and this very case: and the wise goddess Athena, the daughter of the Supreme Councillor, in whom “all her father lives,” stamps her distinct approval on the deed of Orestes, by which Clytemnestra was murdered, and holds him up as an illustrious example to Telemachus, by which his own conduct was to be regulated in reference to the insolent and unjust suitors who were consuming his father’s substance.
“This when thou hast done, and well accomplished, as the need demands,
Then behoves thee in thy mind with counsel rife to ponder well
How the suitors that obscenely riot in thy father’s halls
Thou by force or fraud may’st slay: for surely now the years are come,
When too old thou art to trifle like a child with childish things.
Hast not heard what fair opinion the divine Orestes reaped
From the general voice consenting to the deed, then when he slew
The deceitful false Ægisthus, slayer of his famous sire.”
Odyssey i. 293.