Orestes
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.
- I am looking everywhere in turn along the road.
- Oh, Pelasgian Argos! I am being foully murdered.
- Did you hear? The men have put their hand to the slaughter.
- It is Helen screaming, at a guess.
- O eternal might of Zeus, of Zeus, only come to help my friends!
- Menelaus, I am dying, but you do not help me, though you are near.
- Slay her, kill her, destroy her! Stab with your twin double-edged swords
- the woman who left her father, left her husband, and killed so many of the men of Hellas, slain beside the river-bank, where tears rained down, by the iron darts
- all round the eddies of Scamander.
- Hush! hush! I caught the sound of a foot-fall on the road near the house.
- My dearest friends, it is Hermione advancing into the middle of the bloodshed; let our clamor cease.
- For she comes headlong into the meshes of the net. The prey will be good, if it is caught. Take up your places again with looks composed and faces not betraying what has happened; I too will have a gloomy look,
- as if I knew nothing of what has been done. Addressing Hermione as she approaches. Ah! maiden, have you come from wreathing Clytemnestra’s grave and pouring libations to the dead?
- Yes, I have returned after securing her favor; but I was filled with some alarm about a cry I heard from the palace
- as I was still at a distance.
- But why? Our present lot gives cause for groans.
- Oh, don’t say so! What is your news?
- Argos has sentenced Orestes and me to death.
- Oh no! not my own relatives!
- It is decreed; we have put on the yoke of necessity.