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Horestes's bones

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

A strange thing happened in ancient Greece: The Lacedemonians always lost their wars against the Tegeans, but did never desist: They only wanted to understand why. Thus they sent an embassy to Delphis and asked to the Pythia the reason of this. To this the priestress answered that they would never beat their enemies if they didn’t bring back home the bones of Orestes, Agamemnon’s son. The Lacedemonian didn’t have any idea of where his tomb was, thus they sent another embassy to ask where he had been buried. Then the god answered:

“In the Arcadian plain there is a place at Tegea,
Where forced by a strong urge two winds always blow.
Gust over gust, agony over agony,
There in the mother earth the body of Agamemnon’s son is buried.
Bring him back and you’ll lord over your enemies country (Erodoto,I. 67).

As puzzle’s maker oracles of the ancient Greece did not joke.
For the time being the Lacedemonians couldn’t understand the response of the oracle and so the things went on until when a certain Lycias, a man who belonged to the category of the Benefactors, worthy personages of the government, went to Tegea and there he had to go in the forge of a smith who, while the stranger looked at him working the iron and was interested in what he did, told him that to shape the hard metal was not something to marvel about. He narrated to him the he himself had found something really fantastic. Once, he told him, when he was digging a pit in his courtyard he had found a coffin 3,50 meters long in which stood a body of the same length. Licias realized that only a hero like Orestes could have such a size and immediately he understood the prophecy: The gusts that in opposing directions went out of the bellows were the two winds; blow over blow was the smith’s hammering, and the iron shaped over the anvil was agony over agony. Having heard this Lycias went back to his country and explained everything to his fellow citizens, then, in agreement with them, he pretended to have been banished, and went back to the smith with whom he had become friend. Of course he did not have any difficulty in renting his courtyard. At last having recovered Orestes’s bones he took them back to his country and from this moment the Lacedemonians were never defeated by the Tegeans (Herodotos, I. 68).