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Aeschylus, agamemnon<br />
With zeal that was not love he feigned to hold<br />
In loyal joy a day of festal cheer,<br />
And bade my father to his board, and set<br />
Before him flesh that was his children once.<br />
First, sitting at the upper board alone,<br />
He hid the fingers and the feet, but gave<br />
The rest--and readily Thyestes took<br />
What to his ignorance no semblance wore<br />
Of human flesh, and ate: behold what curse<br />
That eating brought upon our race and name!<br />
For when he knew what all unhallowed thing<br />
He thus had wrought, with horror's bitter cry<br />
Back-starting, spewing forth the fragments foul,<br />
On Pelops' house a deadly curse he spake--<br />
As darkly as I spurn this damned food,<br />
So perish all the race of Pleisthenes!<br />
Thus by that curse fell he whom here ye see,<br />
And I--who else?--this murder wove and planned;<br />
For me, an infant yet in swaddling bands,<br />
Of the three children youngest, Atreus sent<br />
To banishment by my sad father's side:<br />
But Justice brought me home once more, grown now<br />
To manhood's years; and stranger tho' I was,<br />
My right hand reached unto the chieftain's life,<br />
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