"Haste then, O king,
Take chains and gyves with thee; for if the flood
Subside not to a calm, there is no hope
Of safety for the strangers."
Thoas needs no prompter. He calls to the people of Tauri to avenge this insult to their goddess:—
"Harness your steeds at once: will you not fly
Along the shore, to seize whate'er this ship
Of Greece casts forth, and, for your goddess roused,
Hunt down these impious men? Will you not launch
Instant your swift-oared barks by seas, on land
To catch them, from the rugged rock to hurl
Their bodies, or impale them on the stake?"
To the Chorus he hints that, inasmuch as they have known all along and concealed the dark designs of the recreant priestess and her two confederates in this sacrilegious crime, he will, at more leisure, "devise brave punishments" for them.
The capture of the fugitives is unavoidable; and if they are once more in his grasp, the pious and wrathful king will leave no member of Agamemnon's family alive except the sad and solitary Electra. Euripides now settles the matter by his usual device, an intervening deity. Pallas Athene appears above the temple of Diana, and apprises Thoas that it is her pleasure that both the priestess and the image shall be carried to Greece by Orestes, where the worship of the Taurian Artemis, purged of its sanguinary rites, shall be established at Halæ and Brauron in Attica. Thoas is satisfied. Agamemnon's children are free to depart; and
