She asks about Troy, and the fate of Helen: of Calchas, that evil prophet who had bidden her father slay his child: of Achilles, her promised bridegroom, dead long since outside the walls of Troy. And Orestes in his turn begins to wonder who may be this searching questioner, who asks so feelingly of the things that lie closest to his heart. She tells him that she is Greek; and that explains a good deal. But when she comes nearer home, and asks for news of Agamemnon, it is only her evident emotion that wins a reply. Bit by bit she learns that Agamemnon is dead by the hand of Clytemnestra; and a cry escapes her which is full of the sense of the tragedy from the woman’s standpoint:
“O God!
I pity her that slew ... and him that slew!“[[33]]
Orestes, too, is moved, and begs her, shrinking from further questions which he sees are coming, to desist. One word more, she entreats—what of Clytemnestra? And when the youth, in slow words that seem wrung from him in pain, tells that the great queen was slain by her son in vengeance for his father’s death, it is again the woman’s judgment that springs to utterance:
“Alas!
A bad false duty bravely hath he wrought.“[[33]]
So little by little the tragic events that have filled the years of her exile are related in this wonderful dialogue, where every sentence that each speaker utters carries a significance to which the other has no clue. All through the scene the underlying dramatic irony is profoundly felt—the ignorance of each of the other’s identity; and at moments one holds the breath in suspense. At one time the unknown priestess speaks of the Greek king’s daughter who was slain at Aulis; and when the stranger answers that of course nothing more was heard of her, she having died at Aulis, Iphigenia sighs:
“Poor child! Poor father, too, who killed and lied!“[[33]]
Again, remembering her ominous dream, she asks what has become of Agamemnon’s son, and receives the reply:
“He lives, now here, now nowhere, bent with ill.“[[33]]