Electra
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 6: The Electra. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1894.
- You must not keep it.
- Ah, what misery I will have because of you,
- Orestes, if I am robbed of your burial!
- Hush! No ill-omened words! You have no right to grieve.
- How is it not right for me to grieve for my dead brother?
- It is not proper for you to speak of him as you do.
- Am I so without rights in the dead?
- You are without rights in nothing; but this burial is not your concern.
- Yes it is, if these are the remains of Orestes that I hold.
- They are not his, except inasmuch as fiction alone contrives to make them so.He gently takes the urn from her.
- And where is that sufferer’s tomb?
- There is none; the living have no tomb.
- What are you saying, boy?
- Nothing that is untrue.
- The man is alive?
- If there is life in me.
- What? Are you he?
- Look at this signet, once our father’s, and know if I speak the truth.
- O blissful day!
- Blissful, I am your witness!