Electra

Euripides

Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. II. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891.

  1. No one is willing to have the poor as friends.
Clytemnestra
  1. But I will go to make the tenth-day sacrifice to the gods for the child; and when I have done you this favor, I will go to the field where my husband is sacrificing to the
  2. Nymphs. Take this team away, my attendants, and bring it to the stalls; and when you think that I have finished this sacrifice to the gods, be ready; for I must also please my husband.
Electra
  1. Go into a poor house; but please take care
  2. that my smoke-grimed walls do not smear your robes with soot. For you will make the sacrifice to the gods that you ought to make. Going in to the house. The basket is ready, and the knife sharpened, the same that killed the bull by whose side you will lie, struck down. Even in Hades’ house you will be the bride of the one
  3. whom you slept with in life. This is the favor I will give you, and you will give me retribution for my father. Exit Electra.
Chorus
  1. Requital for evils; the breezes of the house shift and blow. At another time my leader, my own, fell murdered in the bath,
  2. and the roof and stone walls of the house cried aloud, while he said: O cruelty! My wife, why are you murdering me on my return to my dear country in the tenth year? . . .
Chorus
  1. Retribution for straying love has flowed back and brings to judgment the one who killed her wretched husband, when he came at last to his home and to the towering Cyclopean walls; with her own hand she killed him with the sharp-edged weapon,
  2. holding the axe in her hands. Unhappy husband! whatever the curse that possessed that wretched woman. Like a lioness of the hills that ranges through the meadowland woods, she accomplished these things.
within
Clytemnestra
  1. O children, by the gods, do not kill your mother.
Chorus
  1. Do you hear her cries within the house?
Clytemnestra
  1. O God! Ah me!
Chorus
  1. I also wail for you, overpowered by your children. Truly the god deals out justice, whenever it befalls.
  2. You have suffered cruelly, unhappy one, yet you did unholy things to your husband.
Chorus Leader
  1. But here they come from the house, defiled in the newly shed blood of their mother, a triumphal rout, evidence of the pitiable sacrifice.
  2. There is no house more pitiable than the race of Tantalus, nor has there ever been.
Orestes
  1. O Earth, and Zeus who sees all mortal acts, look at these loathsome bloody deeds, these two bodies
  2. lying on the earth at the blow from my hand, atonement for my suffering . . .
Electra
  1. Too many tears, my brother, and I am the cause. Unhappy, that I came to fiery rage against this woman, who was my mother!