"What shall this wretch now do? Should I return
To my own house?—sad desolation there
I shall behold, to sink my soul with grief.
Or go I to the house of Capaneus?
That was delightful to me, when I found
My daughter there; but she is there no more.
Oft would she kiss my check, with fond caress
Oft soothe me. To a father, waxing old,
Nothing is dearer than a daughter! Sons
Have spirits of higher pitch, but less inclined
To sweet, endearing fondness. Lead me then,
Instantly lead me to my house; consign
My wretched age to darkness, there to pine
And waste away.
Old age,
Struggling with many griefs, O, how I hate thee!"
But to return to Iphigenia,—how infinitely melting is her appeal to Orestes, whom she holds in her robe!
"My brother, small assistance canst thou give
Thy friends; yet for thy sister with thy tears
Implore thy father that she may not die.
Even infants have a sense of ills; and see,
My father! silent though he be, he sues
To thee. Be gentle to me; on my life
Have pity. Thy two children by this beard
Entreat thee, thy dear children; one is yet
An infant, one to riper years arrived."
The mention of Orestes, then an infant, though slight, is of a domestic charm that prepares the mind to feel the tragedy of his after lot. When the queen says,
"Dost thou sleep,
My son? The rolling chariot hath subdued thee;
Wake to thy sister's marriage happily."
we understand the horror of the doom which makes this cherished child a parricide. And so, when Iphigenia takes leave of him after her fate is by herself accepted,—
"Iphi. To manhood train Orestes.
Cly. Embrace him, for thou ne'er shalt see him more.
Iphi. (To Orestes.) Far as thou couldst, thou
didst assist thy friends,"—
we know not how to blame the guilt of the maddened wife and mother. In her last meeting with Agamemnon, as in her previous expostulations and anguish, we see that a straw may turn the balance, and make her his deadliest foe. Just then, came the suit of Aegisthus,—then, when every feeling was uprooted or lacerated in her heart.
Iphigenia's moving address has no further effect than to make her father turn at bay and brave this terrible crisis. He goes out, firm in resolve; and she and her mother abandon themselves to a natural grief.
Hitherto nothing has been seen in Iphigenia, except the young girl, weak, delicate, full of feeling, and beautiful as a sunbeam on the full, green tree. But, in the next scene, the first impulse of that passion which makes and unmakes us, though unconfessed even to herself, though hopeless and unreturned, raises her at once into the heroic woman, worthy of the goddess who demands her.