Electra, By Euripides

soon as thy lord had started from his home, wert combing thy golden tresses at thy mirror. That wife who, when her lord is gone from home, sets to beautifying herself, strike off from virtue's list; for she has no need to carry her beauty abroad, save she is seeking some mischief. Of all the wives in Hellas thou wert the only one I know who wert overjoyed when Troy's star was in the ascendant, while, if it set, thy brow was clouded, since thou hadst no wish that Agamemnon should return from Troy. And yet thou couldst have played a virtuous part to thy own glory. The husband thou hadst was no whit inferior to Aegisthus, for he it was whom Hellas chose to be her captain. And when thy sister Helen wrought that deed of shame, thou couldst have won thyself great glory, for vice is a warning and calls attention to virtue. If, as thou allegest, my father slew thy daughter, what is the wrong I and my brother have done thee? How was it thou didst not bestow on us our father's halls after thy husband's death, instead of bartering them to buy a paramour? Again, thy husband is not exiled for thy son's sake, nor is he slain to avenge my death, although by him this life is quenched twice as much as e'er my sister's was; so if murder is to succeed murder in requital, I and thy son Orestes must slay thee to avenge our father; if that was just, why so is this. Whoso fixes his gaze on wealth or noble birth and weds a wicked woman, is a fool;

his gaze on wealth or noble birth and weds a wicked woman, is a fool; better is a humble partner in his home, if she be virtuous, than a proud one. LEADER OF THE CHORUS Chance rules the marriages of women; some I see turn out well, others ill amongst mankind. CLYTEMNESTRA Daughter, 'twas ever thy nature to love thy father. This too one finds; some sons cling to their father, others have a deeper affection for their mother. I will forgive thee, for myself am not so exceeding glad at the deed that I have done, my child. But thou,-why thus unwashed and clad in foul attire, now that the days of thy lying-in are accomplished? Ah me, for my sorry schemes! I have goaded my husband into anger more than e'er I should have done. ELECTRA Thy sorrow comes too late; the hour of remedy has gone from thee; my father is dead. Yet why not recall that exile, thy own wandering son? CLYTEMNESTRA I am afraid; 'tis my interest, not his that I regard. For they say he is wroth for his father's murder. ELECTRA Why, then, dost thou encourage thy husband's bitterness against us? CLYTEMNESTRA 'Tis his way; thou too hast a stubborn nature. ELECTRA Because I am grieved; yet will I check my spirit. CLYTEMNESTRA I promise then he shall no longer oppress thee. ELECTRA From living in my home he grows too proud. CLYTEMNESTRA Now there! 'tis thou that art fanning the quarrel into new life. ELECTRA I say no more; my dread of him is even what it is.

ELECTRA I say no more; my dread of him is even what it is. CLYTEMNESTRA Peace! Enough of this. Why didst thou summon me, my child? ELECTRA Thou hast heard, I suppose, of my confinement; for this I pray thee, since I know not how, offer the customary sacrifice on the tenth day after birth, for I am a novice herein, never having had a child before. CLYTEMNESTRA This is work for another, even for her who delivered thee. ELECTRA I was all alone in my travail and at the babe's birth. CLYTEMNESTRA Dost live so far from neighbours? ELECTRA No one cares to make the poor his friends. CLYTEMNESTRA Well, I will go to offer to the gods a sacrifice for the child's completion of the days; and when I have done thee this service, I will seek the field where my husband is sacrificing to the Nymphs. Take this chariot hence, my servants, and tie the horses to the stalls; and when ye think that I have finished my offering to the gods, attend me, for I must likewise pleasure my lord. (She goes into the hut.) ELECTRA Enter our humble cottage; but, prithee, take care that my smoke grimed walls soil not thy robes; now wilt thou offer to the gods a fitting sacrifice. There stands the basket ready, and the knife is sharpened, the same that slew the bull, by whose side thou soon wilt lie a corpse; and thou shalt be his bride in Hades' halls whose wife thou wast on earth. This is the boon I will grant thee, while

wife thou wast on earth. This is the boon I will grant thee, while thou shalt pay me for my father's blood. (ELECTRA follows her into the hut.) CHORUS (chanting, strophe) Misery is changing sides; the breeze veers round, and now blows fair upon my house. The day is past when my chief fell murdered in his bath, and the roof and the very stones of the walls rang with this his cry: "O cruel wife, why art thou murdering me on my return to my dear country after ten long years?" (antistrophe) The tide is turning, and justice that pursues the faithless wife is drawing within its grasp the murderess, who slew her hapless lord, when he came home at last to these towering Cyclopean walls,-aye, with her own hand she smote him with the sharpened steel, herself the axe uplifting. Unhappy husband! whate'er the curse that possessed that wretched woman. Like a lioness of the hills that rangeth through the woodland for her prey, she wrought the deed. CLYTEMNESTRA (within) O my children, by Heaven I pray ye spare your mother. CHORUS (chanting) Dost hear her cries within the house? CLYTEMNESTRA O God! ah me! CHORUS (chanting) I too bewail thee, dying by thy children's hands. God deals out His justice in His good time. A cruel fate is thine, unhappy one; yet didst thou sin in murdering thy lord. (ORESTES and ELECTRA come out of the hut, followed by attendants who are carrying the two corpses. The following lines between ELECTRA, ORESTES and

the two corpses. The following lines between ELECTRA, ORESTES and the CHORUS are chanted.) But lo! from the house they come, dabbled in their mother's fresh-spilt gore, their triumph proving the piteous butchery. There is not nor ever has been a race more wretched than the line of Tantalus. ORESTES O Earth, and Zeus whose eye is over all! behold this foul deed of blood, these two corpses lying here that I have slain in vengeance for my sufferings. ELECTRA Tears are all too weak for this, brother; and I am the guilty cause. Ah, woe is me! How hot my fury burned against the mother that bare me! ORESTES Alas! for thy lot, O mother mine! A piteous, piteous doom, aye, worse than that, hast thou incurred at children's hands! Yet justly hast thou paid forfeit for our father's blood. Ah, Phoebus! thine was the voice that praised this vengeance; thou it is that hast brought these hideous scenes to light, and caused this deed of blood. To what city can I go henceforth? what friend, what man of any piety will bear the sight of a mother's murderer like me? ELECTRA Ah me! alas! and whither can I go? What share have I henceforth in dance or marriage rite? What husband will accept me as his bride? ORESTES Again thy fancy changes with the wind; for now thou thinkest aright, though not so formerly; an awful deed didst thou urge thy brother against his will to commit, dear sister. Oh! didst thou see

brother against his will to commit, dear sister. Oh! didst thou see how the poor victim threw open her robe and showed her bosom as smote her, sinking on her knees, poor wretch? And her hair I- ELECTRA Full well I know the agony through which thou didst pass at hearing thy own mother's bitter cry. ORESTES Ah yes! she laid her band upon my chin, and cried aloud, "My child, I entreat thee!" and she clung about my neck, so that I let fall the sword. ELECTRA O my poor mother! How didst thou endure to see her breathe her last before thy eyes? ORESTES I threw my mantle o'er them and began the sacrifice by plunging the sword into my mother's throat. ELECTRA Yet 'twas I that urged thee on, yea, and likewise grasped the steel. Oh! I have done an awful deed. ORESTES Oh! take and hide our mother's corpse beneath a pall, and close her gaping wound. (Turning to the corpse) Ah! thy murderers were thine own children. ELECTRA (covering the corpse) There! thou corpse both loved and loathed; still o'er thee I cast robe, to end the grievous troubles of our house. CHORUS See! where o'er the roof-top spirits are appearing, or gods maybe from heaven, for this is not a road that mortals tread. Why come they thus where mortal eyes can see them clearly? (THE DIOSCURI appear from above.) DIOSCURI Hearken, son of Agamemnon. We, the twin sons of Zeus, thy mother's sisters, call thee, even Castor and his brother Polydeuces.

mother's sisters, call thee, even Castor and his brother Polydeuces. 'Tis but now we have reached Argos after stilling the fury of the sea for mariners, having seen the slaying of our sister, thy mother. She hath received her just reward, but thine is no righteous act, and Phoebus-but no! he is my king, my lips are sealed-is Phoebus still, albeit the oracle he gave thee was no great proof of his wsdom. But we must acquiesce herein. Henceforth must thou follow what Zeus and destiny ordain for thee. On Pylades bestow Electra for his wife to take unto his home; do thou leave Argos, for after thy mother's murder thou mayst not set foot in the city. And those grim goddesses of doom, that glare like savage hounds, will drive thee mad and chase thee to and fro; but go thou to Athens and make thy prayer to the holy image of Pallas, for she will close their fierce serpents' mouths, so that they touch thee not, holding o'er thy head her aegis with the Gorgon's head. A hill there is, to Ares sacred, where first the gods in conclave sat to decide the law of blood, in the day that savage Ares slew Halirrothius, son of the ocean-king, in anger for the violence he offered to his daughter's honour; from that time all decisions given there are most holy and have heaven's sanction. There must thou have this murder tried; and if equal votes are given, they shall save thee from death in the decision, for Loxias will take the blame upon

thee from death in the decision, for Loxias will take the blame upon himself, since it was his oracle that advised thy mother's murder. And this shall be the law for all posterity; in every trial the accused shall win his case if the votes are equal. Then shall those dread goddesses, stricken with grief at this, vanish into a cleft of the earth close to the hill, revered by men henceforth as a place for holy oracles; whilst thou must settle in a city of Arcadia on the banks of the river Alpheus near the shrine of Lycaean Apollo, and the city shall be called after thy name. To thee I say this. As for the corpse of Aegisthus, the citizens of Argos must give it burial; but Menelaus, who has just arrived at Nauplia from the sack of Troy, shall bury the, mother, Helen helping him; for she hath come from her sojourn in Egypt in the halls of Proteus, and hath never been to Troy; but Zeus, to stir up strife and bloodshed in the world, sent forth a phantom of Helen to Ilium. Now let Pylades take his maiden wife and bear her to his home in Achaea; also he must conduct thy so-called kinsman to the land of Phocis, and there reward him well. But go thyself along the narrow Isthmus, and seek Cecropia's happy home. For once thou hast fulfilled the doom appointed for this murder, thou shalt be blest and free from all thy troubles. (The remaining lines of the play are chanted.) CHORUS Ye sons of Zeus, may we draw near to speak with you?

CHORUS Ye sons of Zeus, may we draw near to speak with you? DIOSCURI Ye may, since ye are not polluted by this murder. ORESTES May I too share your converse, of Tyndareus? DIOSCURI Thou too! for to Phoebus will I ascribe this deed of blood. CHORUS How was it that ye, the brothers of the murdered woman, gods too, did not ward the doom-goddesses from her roof? DIOSCURI 'Twas fate that brought resistless doom to her, and that thoughtless oracle that Phoebus gave. ELECTRA But why did the god, and wherefore did his oracles make me my mother's murderer? DIOSCURI A share in the deed, a share in its doom; one ancestral curse hath ruined both of you. ORESTES Ah, sister mine! at last I see thee again only to be robbed in moment of thy dear love; I must leave thee, and by thee be left. DIOSCURI Hers are a husband and a home; her only suffering this, that she is quitting Argos. ORESTES Yet what could call forth deeper grief than exile from one's fatherland? I must leave my father's house, and at a stranger's bar he sentenced for my mother's blood. DIOSCURI Be of good cheer; go to the holy town of Pallas; keep a stout heart only. ELECTRA O my brother, best and dearest! clasp me to thy breast; for now is the curse of our mother's blood cutting us off from the home of our fathers. ORESTES Throw thy arms in close embrace about me. Oh! weep as o'er my grave when I am dead. DIOSCURI Ah me, that bitter cry makes even gods shudder to hear.

Yea, for in my breast and in every heavenly being's dwells pity for the sorrows of mankind. ORESTES Never to see thee more! ELECTRA Never again to stand within thy sight! ORESTES This is my last good-bye to thee. ELECTRA Farewell, farewell, my city! and ye my fellow-countrywomen, long farewell to you! ORESTES Art thou going already, truest of thy sex? ELECTRA I go, the tear-drop dimming my tender eyes. ORESTES Go, Pylades, and be happy; take and wed Electra. DIOSCURI Their only thoughts will be their marriage; but haste thee to Athens, seeking to escape these hounds of hell, for they are on thy track in fearful wise, swart monsters, with snakes for hands, who reap a harvest of man's agony. But we twain must haste away o'er the Sicilian main to save the seaman's ship. Yet as we fly through heaven's expanse we help not the wicked; but whoso in his life loves piety and justice, all such we free from troublous toils and save. Wherefore let no man be minded to act unjustly, or with men foresworn set sail; such the warning I, a god, to mortals give. (THE DIOSCURI vanish.) CHORUS Farewell! truly that mortal's is a happy lot, who can thus fare, unafflicted by any woe. THE END