Electra

Sophocles

Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 6: The Electra. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1894.

  1. But never by weeping nor by prayer will you resurrect your father from the pool of Hades which receives all men.
  2. No, by grieving without end and beyond due limits you will find cureless misery and your own ruin; in these actions there is no deliverance from evils. Tell us, why do you pursue such suffering?
Electra
  1. Foolish is the child who forgets a parent’s piteous death. No, closer to my heart is the mourner who eternally wails, Itys, Itys, that bird mad with grief, the messenger of Zeus.
  2. Ah, all-suffering Niobe, you I count divine, since you weep forever in your rocky tomb!