Libation Bearers

Aeschylus

Aeschylus, Volume 2. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1926.

  1. I judge you victor: you advise me well. To Clytaemestra Come, this way! I mean to kill you by his very side. For while he lived, you thought him better than my father.
  2. Sleep with him in death, since you love him but hate the man you were bound to love.
Clytaemestra
  1. It was I who nourished you, and with you I would grow old.
Orestes
  1. What! Murder my father and then make your home with me?
Clytaemestra
  1. Fate, my child, must share the blame for this.
Orestes
  1. And fate now brings this destiny to pass.
Clytaemestra
  1. Have you no regard for a parent’s curse, my son?
Orestes
  1. You brought me to birth and yet you cast me out to misery.
Clytaemestra
  1. No, surely I did not cast you out in sending you to the house of an ally.
Orestes
  1. I was sold in disgrace, though I was born of a free father.
Clytaemestra
  1. Then where is the price I got for you?
Orestes
  1. I am ashamed to reproach you with that outright.
Clytaemestra
  1. But do not fail to proclaim the follies of that father of yours as well.
Orestes
  1. Do not accuse him who suffered while you sat idle at home.
Clytaemestra
  1. It is a grief for women to be deprived of a husband, my child.