Electra
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 6: The Electra. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1894.
- oh, yes, my life is so wondrously fine.
- It would be, if only you learned good sense.
- Do not teach me to betray my friends.
- I do not, but to bend before the strong.
- Keep your flattery to yourself; it is not in my character.
- Regardless, it brings no honor to fall through senselessness.
- I will fall, if need be, while honoring my father.
- But our father, I know, pardons me for this.
- It is for cowards to commend such sentiments.
- So you will not be persuaded to agree with me?
- No, indeed; may I not yet be so devoid of intelligence.
- Then I will move on to where I was sent.
- And where is it that you go? For whom do you take these offerings to be burned?
- Mother sends me with funeral libations for our father.
- What are you saying? For her deadliest enemy?
- Whom she herself killed, no doubt you wanted to say this as well.
- What friend persuaded her? Whose idea was it?
- The cause, I think, was fear induced by some vision in the night.
- My father’s Gods! Stand with me now at last!
- Do you find something heartening in this terror?