For he has a woman’s mind, or if not, it will soon be found out.ChorusYou mighty Fates, through the power of Zeus grant fulfilment in the way to which Justice now turns. For a word of hate let a word of hate be said,
Justice cries out as she exacts the debt, and for a murderous stroke let a murderous stroke be paid.
Let it be done to him as he does,
says the age-old wisdom.
OrestesO father, unhappy father, by what word or deed of mine can I succeed in sailing from far away to you, where your resting-place holds you, a light to oppose your darkness?Yet a lament in honor of the Atreidae who once possessed our house is none the less a joyous service.
ChorusMy child, the fire’s ravening jaw does not overwhelm the wits of the dead man,but afterwards he reveals what stirs him. The murdered man has his dirge; the guilty man is revealed. Justified lament for fathers and for parents,when raised loud and strong, makes its search everywhere.
ElectraHear then, O father, as in turn we mourn with plentiful tears. Look, your two children mourn you in a dirge over your tomb. As suppliants and exiles as well they have sought a haven at your sepulchre. What of these things is good, what free of evil? Is it not hopeless to wrestle against doom?
ChorusYet heaven, if it pleases, may still turn our utterance to more joyfully sounding strains. In place of dirges over a tomb, a song of triumph within the royal halls will welcome back a reunited friend.νεοκρᾶτα,newly-mixed. As friendship, when begun, was pledged by a loving-cup, so Orestes, after his long absence, is to be welcomed as a new friend.
OrestesAh, my father, if only beneath Ilium’s walls you had been slain, slashed by some Lycian spearman! Then you would have left a good name for your children in their halls,and in their maturity you would have made their lives admired by men. And in a land beyond the sea you would have found a tomb heaped high with earth, no heavy burden for your house to bear—
Chorus—Welcomed there below by your comradeswho nobly fell, a ruler of august majesty, distinguished even beneath the earth, and minister of the mightiest, the deities who rule in the nether world.Pluto and Proserpine.