At last Pylades gave way to the pressing entreaties of his friend, and consented to carry the letters of Iphigenia to Greece. These were addressed to Orestes himself, and, therefore, these circumstances soon led to a total discovery of the connections of the priestess with the man whom she was going to immolate. Iphigenia was convinced that he was her brother Orestes, and, when the causes of their journey had been explained, she resolved, with the two friends, to fly from Chersonesus, and to carry away the statue of Diana. Their flight was discovered, and Thoas prepared to pursue them; but Minerva interfered, and told him that all had been done by the will and approbation of the gods. Some suppose that Orestes came to Cappadocia from Chersonesus, and that there he left the statue of Diana at Comana. Others contradict this tradition, and, according to Pausanias, the statue of Diana Orthia was the same as that which had been carried away from the Chersonesus. Some also suppose that Orestes brought it to Aricia, in Italy, where Diana’s worship was established. After these celebrated adventures, Orestes ascended the throne of Argos, where he reigned in perfect security, and married Hermione the daughter of Menelaus, and gave his sister to his friend Pylades. The marriage of Orestes with Hermione is a matter of dispute among the ancients. All are agreed that she had been promised to the son of Agamemnon, but Menelaus had married her to Neoptolemus the son of Achilles, who had shown himself so truly interested in his cause during the Trojan war. The marriage of Hermione with Neoptolemus displeased Orestes; he remembered that she had been early promised to him, and therefore he resolved to recover her by force or artifice. This he effected by causing Neoptolemus to be assassinated, or assassinating him himself. According to Ovid’s epistle of Hermione to Orestes, Hermione had always been faithful to her first lover, and even it was by her persuasion that Orestes removed her from the house of Neoptolemus. Hermione was dissatisfied with the partiality of Neoptolemus for Andromache, and her attachment for Orestes was increased. Euripides, however, and others, speak differently of Hermione’s attachment to Neoptolemus: she loved him so tenderly, that she resolved to murder Andromache, who seemed to share, in a small degree, the affection of her husband. She was ready to perpetrate the horrid deed when Orestes came into Epirus, and she was easily persuaded by the foreign prince to withdraw herself, in her husband’s absence, from a country which seemed to contribute so much to her sorrows. Orestes, the better to secure the affections of Hermione, assassinated Neoptolemus [See: [Neoptolemus]], and retired to his kingdom of Argos. His old age was crowned with peace and security, and he died in the 90th year of his age, leaving his throne to his son Tisamenes by Hermione. Three years after, the Heraclidæ recovered the Peloponnesus, and banished the descendants of Menelaus from the throne of Argos. Orestes died in Arcadia, as some suppose, by the bite of a serpent; and the Lacedæmonians, who had become his subjects at the death of Menelaus, were directed by an oracle to bring his bones to Sparta. They were some time after discovered at Tegea, and his stature appeared to be seven cubits, according to the traditions mentioned by Herodotus and others. The friendship of Orestes and of Pylades became proverbial, and the two friends received divine honours among the Scythians, and were worshipped in temples. Pausanias, bks. 1, 2, 4, &c.—Paterculus, bk. 1, chs. 1 & 3.—Apollodorus, bk. 1, &c.—Strabo, bks. 9 & 13.—Ovid, Heroides, poem 8; Ex Ponto, bk. 3, poem 2; Metamorphoses, bk. 15; Ibis.—Euripides; Orestes; Andromache, &c. Iphigeneia.—Sophocles, Electra, &c.—Aeschylus, Eumenides; Agamemnon, &c.—Horodotus, bk. 1, ch. 69.—Hyginus, fables 120 & 261.—Plutarch, Lycurgus.—Dictys Cretensis, bk. 6, &c.—Pindar, Pythian, bk. 2.—Pliny, bk. 33.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 3, &c.—Homer, Odyssey, bk. 3, li. 304; bk. 4, li. 530.—Tzetzes, On Lycophron, li. 1374.——A son of Achelaus. Apollodorus.——A man sent as ambassador, by Attila king of the Huns, to the emperor Theodosius. He was highly honoured at the Roman court, and his son Augustulus was the last emperor of the western empire.——A governor of Egypt under the Roman emperors.——A robber of Athens who pretended madness, &c. Aristophanes, Acharnians, li. 1166.——A general of Alexander. Curtius, bk. 4, ch. 108.
[♦] ‘Agememnon’ replaced with ‘Agamemnon’
Oresteum, a town of Arcadia, about 18 miles from Sparta. It was founded by Orestheus, a son of Lycaon, and originally called Oresthesium, and afterwards Oresteum, from Orestes the son of Agamemnon, who resided there for some time after the murder of Clytemnestra. Pausanias, bk. 8, ch. 8.—Euripides.
Orestīdæ, the descendants or subjects of Orestes the son of Agamemnon. They were driven from the Peloponnesus by the Heraclidæ, and came to settle in a country which, from them, was called Orestida, at the south-west of Macedonia. Some suppose that that part of Greece originally received its name from Orestes, who fled and built there a city, which gave its founder’s name to the whole province. Thucydides, bk. 2.—Livy, bk. 31.
Aurelia Orestilla, a mistress of Catiline. Cicero, [♦]Letters to his Friends, bk. 8, ch. 7.
[♦] ‘ad. Div. 7,’ replaced with ‘Letters to his Friends, bk. 8’
Orestis, or Orestida, a part of Macedonia. Cicero, On the Responses of the Haruspices, ch. 16.
Orĕtæ, a people of Asiatic Sarmatia, on the Euxine sea.
Oretāni, a people of Spain, whose capital was Oretum, now Oreto. Livy, bk. 21, ch. 11; bk. 35, ch. 7.
Oretillia, a woman who married Caligula, by whom she was soon after banished.