Epitome

And when they came to Troy they were chased by the natives and took refuge in the sanctuary. And they did not approach the goddess, but swept and sprinkled the sanctuary; and they did not go out of the temple, and their hair was cropped, and they wore single garments

And when the first maidens died, they sent others; and they entered into the city by night, lest, being seen outside the precinct, they should be put to the sword; but afterwards they sent babes with their nurses. And when the thousand years were passed, after the Phocian war they ceased to send suppliants.[*](The story of the custom of propitiating Athena at Troy by sending two Locrian virgins to her every year is similarly told by Tzetzes, who adds some interesting particulars omitted by Apollodorus. From him we learn that when the maidens arrived, the Trojans met them and tried to catch them. If they caught the maidens, they killed them and burned their bones with the wood of wild trees which bore no fruit. Having done so, they threw the ashes from Mount Traron into the sea. But if the maidens escaped from their pursuers, they ascended secretly to the sanctuary of Athena and became her priestesses, sweeping and sprinkling the sacred precinct; but they might not approach the goddess, nor quit the sanctuary except by night. Tzetzes agrees with Apollodorus in describing the maidens during their term of service as barefoot, with cropped hair, and clad each in a single tunic. He refers to the Sicilian historian Timaeus as his authority for the statement that the custom was observed for a thousand years, and that it came to an end after the Phocian war (357-346 B.C.). See Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 1141. The maidens were chosen by lot from the hundred noblest families in Locris (Polybius xii.5); and when they escaped death on landing, they served the goddess in the sanctuary for the term of their lives (Plut. De sera numinis vindicta 12), or, at all events, till their successors arrived (Suidas, s.v. κατεγήρασαν ). For other references to this very remarkable custom, which appears to be well authenticated, see Strab. 13.1.40; Scholiast on Hom. Il. xiii.66; Iamblichus, De Pythagorica vita, viii.42; Suidas, s.v. ποινή (quoting Aelian); Serv. Verg. A. 1.41. Servius, in contradiction to our other authorities, says that only one maiden was sent annually. Strabo appears to affirm that the custom originated as late as the Persian period (τὰς δὲ λοκρίδας πεμφθῆναι περσῶν ἤδη κρατούντων συνέβἠ. This view is accepted by Clinton, who accordingly holds that the custom lasted from 559 B.C. to 346 B.C.(Fasti Hellenici, i.134ff.).)

After Agamemnon had returned to Mycenae with Cassandra, he was murdered by Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra; for she gave him a shirt without sleeves and without a neck, and while he was putting it on he was cut down, and Aegisthus reigned over Mycenae.[*](As to the murder of Agamemnon, see Hom. Od. 3.193ff.; Hom. Od. 303-305; Hom. Od. 4.529-537; Hom. Od. 11.404-434; Hagias, Returns, summarized by Proclus, in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 53; Aesch. Ag. 1379ff.; Aesch. Eum. 631-635; Soph. Elec. 95-99; Eur. El. 8-10; Eur. Or. 25ff.; Paus. 2.16.6; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 1108, 1375; Hyginus, Fab. 117; Seneca, Agamemnon 875-909; Serv. Verg. A. 11.268; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 47, 126, 141ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 147; Second Vatican Mythographer 147, 202); Dictys Cretensis vi.2. According to Homer and the author of the Returns, with whom Pausanias agrees, it was Aegisthus who killed Agamemnon; according to Aeschylus, it was Clytaemnestra. Sophocles and Euripides speak of the murder being perpetrated by the two jointly. The sleeveless and neckless garment in which Clytaemnestra entangled her husband, while she cut him down, is described with tragic grandiloquence and vagueness by Aeschylus, but more explicitly by later writers (Tzetzes, Seneca, Servius and the Vatican Mythographers).) And they killed Cassandra

But Electra, one of Agamemnon's daughters, smuggled away her brother Orestes and gave him to Strophius, the Phocian, to bring up; and he brought him up with Pylades, his own son.[*](Compare Pind. P. 11.34(52)ff.; Soph. Elec. 11ff.; Eur. El. 14ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 117. Pindar tells how, after the murder of his father Agamemnon, the youthful Orestes was conveyed to the aged Strophius at the foot of Parnassus; but he does not say who rescued the child and conveyed him thither. According to Sophocles and Euripides, it was an old retainer of the family who thus saved Orestes, but Sophocles says that the old man had received the child from the hands of Electra. Hyginus, in agreement with Apollodorus, relates how, after the murder of Agamemnon, Electra took charge of (sustulit) her infant brother Orestes and committed him to the care of Strophius in Phocis.) And when Orestes was grown up, he repaired to Delphi and asked the god whether he should take vengeance on his father's murderers.