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. that he might win his father’s house. Aegisthus took from a basket a long straight knife, and cutting off some of the calf’s hair laid it with his right hand on the sacred fire, and then cut the calf’s throat when the servants had lifted it upon their shoulders, and said this to your brother:
  2. They boast that this is among the honorable accomplishments for the Thessalians: to cut up a bull rightly and to tame horses; take the knife, stranger, and show us if the report about the Thessalians is true.
  3. Orestes seized in his hands the well-hammered Dorian knife and
  4. threw from his shoulders his graceful buckled robe; he chose Pylades as an assistant in the work and drove back the servants; and taking the calf by the hoof, he laid bare its white flesh, with arm outstretched, and flayed the hide quicker than a runner
  5. finishes the two laps of the horses’ race-course; and then he laid the flanks open. Aegisthus took the entrails in his hands and inspected them. Now the liver had no lobe, while the portal vein and near-by gall-bladder revealed threatening approaches to the one who was observing it.
  6. Aegisthus was angry, but my master asked, Why are you disheartened? Stranger, I fear some treachery from abroad. Agamemnon’s son is the man I hate most, and an enemy to my house. But Orestes said, Do you really fear treachery from an exile,
  7. when you rule the city? Instead of the Dorian knife, let someone bring me a Thessalian axe and let me split the breast-bone, so that we may hold the sacrificial feast. He took the axe and cut. Now Aegisthus took up the entrails, and was inspecting and sorting them out. As he was bending down,
  8. your brother rose on tiptoe and struck him on the spine; his back-bone broke apart; with his whole body he struggled up and down, and cried out, dying hard in his blood. As soon as the servants saw it, they rushed to arms,
  9. many to fight against two; yet Pylades and Orestes in their bravery stood to face them, brandishing their weapons. Then he said: I do not come hostile to this city or to my own servants; I, the unhappy Orestes, have avenged myself on the murderer of my father;