Electra

1Electra Hasten your step, it is time; go onward, onward, weeping! Ah me! I am Agamemnon’s child, and Clytemnestra, hated daughter of Tyndareus, bore me; the citizens call me unhappy Electra. Alas for my cruel pain and hateful life! O father, Agamemnon, you lie in Hades, by the butchery of your wife and Aegisthus.

1Electra Hasten your step, it is time; go onward, onward, weeping. Ah me! In what city and what household do you wander about, my wretched brother, leaving your pitiable sister in our ancestral home, to great pain? Come to me, the unhappy one, as a deliverer from this pain, oh Zeus, Zeus, and as a defender for my father against his most hateful bloodshed; bring the wanderer to shore in Argos.

2Electra Take this pitcher from my head and put it down, so that I may cry aloud the night-time laments for my father. A wail, a song of death, of death, for you, father, under the earth, I speak the laments in which I am always engaged, day by day, tearing my skin with my nails, and striking my cropped head with my hand, for your death.

2Electra washed by the very last bath, in the most piteous bed of death. Oh, me, your bitter cleaving by the axe, father, the bitter plans of the way from Troy! Your wife welcomed you with no victor’s garlands or crowns, but with a two-edged sword, making you the mournful victim of Aigisthus, she got a treacherous bed-fellow.

3Chorus O Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, I have come to your rustic courtyard. A milk-drinker from Mycenae has come, he has come, a mountain walker; he reports that the Argives are proclaiming a sacrifice for the third day from now, and that all maidens are to go to Hera’s temple. Electra My unhappy heart beats fast, friends, but not at adornment or gold; nor will I set up choruses with the maidens of Argos and beat my foot in the mazes of the dance. By tears I pass the night; tears are my unhappy care day by day. See if my filthy hair, and the rags of my dress, will be fit for a princess, a daughter of Agamemnon, or for Troy, once taken, which remembers my father.

3Chorus Mighty is the goddess; come then, and borrow from me thick-woven clothes to wear, and gold—as a favor to me—accessories to adornment. Do you think to rule over your enemies by tears, if you do not revere the gods? Honoring the gods not by lamentation but by prayers, you will have good fortune, child. Electra No god attends to the voice of the ill-fated one, or to the slaying of my father long ago. Alas for the dead, and for the living vagabond, who dwells in another land somewhere, miserably wandering to a slave’s hearth, yet born of that renowned father. I myself live in a poor man’s house, wasting my life away, an exile from my father’s house, on the mountain crags. But my mother, with a new husband, makes her home in a bed stained by blood.

1Chorus O famous ships, you that once with countless oars went to Troy, conducting dances with the Nereids, where the music-loving dolphin leapt and rolled at your dark-blue prows, bringing Achilles, the son of Thetis, light in the leap of his foot, with Agamemnon to the banks of Trojan Simois.

1Chorus The Nereids, leaving Euboea’s headlands, brought from Hephaestus’ anvil his shield-work of golden armor, up to Pelion and the glens at the foot of holy Ossa, the Nymphs’ watch-tower... where his father, the horseman, was training the son of Thetis as a light for Hellas, sea-born, swift-footed for the sons of Atreus.

2Chorus I heard, from someone who had arrived at the harbor of Nauplia from Ilium, that on the circle of your famous shield, O son of Thetis, were wrought these signs, a terror to the Phrygians: on the surrounding base of the shield’s rim, Perseus the throat-cutter, over the sea with winged sandals, was holding the Gorgon’s body, with Hermes, Zeus’ messenger, the rustic son of Maia.

2Chorus In the center of the shield the sun’s bright circle was shining on winged horses, and the heavenly chorus of stars, Pleiades, Hyades, bringing defeat to the eyes of Hector; and upon his gold-forged helmet were sphinxes, bearing in their talons prey from singing. On his breast-plate a lioness, breathing flame, was eager in flight, with her claws, seeing the colt of Pirene.

1Chorus The story remains in old legends that Pan, the keeper of wild beasts, breathing sweet-voiced music on his well-joined pipes, once brought from its tender mother on Argive hills a lamb with beautiful golden fleece. A herald stood on the stone platform and cried aloud, To assembly, Mycenaeans, go to assembly to see the omens given to our blessed rulers.... and they honored the house of Atreus.

1Chorus The altars of beaten gold were set out; and through the town the altar fires of the Argives blazed; the flute, handmaid of the Muse’s song, sounded its note sweetly, and lovely songs of the golden lamb swelled forth, saying that Thyestes had the luck; for he persuaded Atreus’ own wife to secret love, and carried off to his house the portent; coming before the assembly he declared that he had in his house the horned sheep with fleece of gold.

2Chorus Then, it was then that Zeus changed the radiant paths of the stars, and the light of the sun, and the bright face of dawn; and the sun drove across the western back of the sky with hot flame from heaven’s fires, while the rain-clouds went northward and Ammon’s lands grew parched and faint, not knowing moisture, robbed of heaven’s fairest showers of rain.

2Chorus It is said, but I have small belief in it, that the sun turned round his glowing throne of gold, changing it to the misfortune of mankind, for the punishment of mortals. But tales that frighten men are profitable for service to the gods; of whom you had no thought, when you killed your husband, you who are the relative of famous brothers.

1Orestes O Earth, and Zeus who sees all mortal acts, look at these loathsome bloody deeds, these two bodies lying on the earth at the blow from my hand, atonement for my suffering... Electra Too many tears, my brother, and I am the cause. Unhappy, that I came to fiery rage against this woman, who was my mother! Chorus Alas for your fate; you gave birth to unbearable pain, and you suffered it, miserably and beyond, from your children. Yet you have rightly paid for their father’s murder.

1Orestes Ah, Phoebus! you proclaimed in song unclear justice, but you have brought about clear woes, and granted me a bloody destiny far from the land of Hellas. To what other city can I go? What host, what pious man will look at me, who killed my mother? Electra Ah me! Where can I go, to what dance, to what marriage? What husband will receive me into the bridal bed? Chorus Again, again your thought changes with the breeze; for now you think piously, though you did not before, and you did dreadful things, my dear, to your unwilling brother.

2Orestes Did you see how the unhappy one threw off her robe and showed her bosom in the slaughter, alas, hurling to the ground the limbs that gave me birth? And her hair, I— Chorus I know it well; you passed through agony, hearing the mournful wail of the mother that bore you.

2Orestes She uttered this cry, putting her hand to my chin: My child, I entreat you! And she clung to my cheeks, so that the sword fell from my hand. Chorus The unhappy one! How did you endure to see the blood of your mother, breathing her last before your eyes?

3Orestes I threw my cloak over my eyes, and began the sacrifice by plunging the sword into my mother’s throat. Electra And I urged you on and put my hand to the sword together with you. Chorus You have done the most dreadful of deeds.

3Orestes Take and hide the limbs of our mother beneath a robe, and close the wounds. Turning to the corpse Ah! You gave birth to your own murderers. Electra Covering the corpse There, I am putting this cloak over the one loved and not loved. Chorus An end of great troubles for the house.