it with apprising the priestess that she must get all things ready for a sacrifice, for
"Two youths, swift rowing 'twixt the dashing rocks
Of our wild sea, are landed on the beach,
A grateful offering at Diana's shrine.
"At first one of my comrades took them, as they sat in the cavern, for two deities; but another said, they are wrecked mariners: and he was in the right, as soon it proved; for one of the twain was suddenly seized with madness, while the other soothed him in his frenzy,—
"Wiped off the foam, took of his person care,
And spread his fine robe over him.
"The mad one had assailed our herds, mistaking them, it seems, for certain Furies that hunt him; whereupon we, seeing the havoc he was making, blew our horns, called the neighbours to our aid, and at last, after a desperate resistance from these strange visitors, we captured them both,—
"And bore them to the monarch of this land:
He viewed them, and without delay to thee
Sent them, devoted to the cleansing vase
And to the altar."
Hitherto the hand of Iphigenia is unspotted by the blood of human victims. The prisoners are the first Greeks who have landed on this fatal coast. She is still under the influence of her dream. Her conviction that Orestes is dead, her remembrance of the wrong done to her at Aulis, combine to harden her
