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.
- no prophet of the future. But his accomplice, the Phocian villain, was off on other business: Out of my way! Well, Phrygians always were cowards. So he shut them up in different parts of the house, some in the stables, others in the halls,
- one here, one there, disposing of them severally at a distance from their mistress.
- What happened next?
- Mother of Ida, great, great mother!
- Oh! the murderous scenes and lawless wickedness that I saw, I saw, in the palace! They drew forth swords from hiding under their purple-bordered cloaks, each darting his eye a different way, lest anyone should be near. Like boar of the hills,
- they stood opposite the woman and said: You will die, you will die; your cowardly husband is killing you, because he betrayed his brother’s son to death in Argos.
- She screamed, oh, oh! she screamed, and brought down her white arm upon her breast and beat her poor head; then turned her golden-sandalled steps in flight, in flight; but Orestes got before her in his Mycenean boots and clutched his fingers in her hair,
- and, bending back her neck on to her left shoulder, was on the point of driving the black sword into her throat.
- Where were you Phrygians in the house to help her?
- With a loud cry from the house we battered down with bars the doors and doorposts where we had been,
- and ran to her assistance from every direction, one with stones, another with javelins, a third with a drawn sword; but Pylades came to meet us, undaunted, like
- Hector of Troy or Ajax triple-plumed, as I saw him, saw him, in Priam’s gateway; and we met at sword’s point. But then it was very clear how the Phrygians were,
- how much less we were in battle strength to the Hellene might. There was one man gone in flight, another slain, another wounded, yet another pleading to stave off death; but we escaped under cover of the darkness; while some were falling, some were about to fall, and others were lying dead.
- And just as her unhappy mother sank to the ground to die, the luckless Hermione came in. Those two, like Bacchantes when they drop the thyrsus for a mountain cub, rushed and seized her; then turned again to the daughter of Zeus to slay her; but she had vanished from the room,
- passing right through the house, O Zeus and Earth and light and night! whether by magic spells or wizards’ arts or heavenly theft.
- What happened afterwards I do not know; for I stole out of the palace, a runaway.
- So Menelaus endured his painful, painful suffering to recover his wife Helen from Troy to no purpose.
- And look, here is a strange sight succeeding others; for I see Orestes sword in hand before the palace,
- advancing with excited steps.
- Where is the one who fled from the palace to escape my sword?