Libation Bearers
Aeschylus
Aeschylus, Volume 2. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1926.
- I judge you victor: you advise me well. To Clytaemestra Come, this way! I mean to kill you by his very side. For while he lived, you thought him better than my father.
- Sleep with him in death, since you love him but hate the man you were bound to love.
- It was I who nourished you, and with you I would grow old.
- What! Murder my father and then make your home with me?
- Fate, my child, must share the blame for this.
- And fate now brings this destiny to pass.
- Have you no regard for a parent’s curse, my son?
- You brought me to birth and yet you cast me out to misery.
- No, surely I did not cast you out in sending you to the house of an ally.
- I was sold in disgrace, though I was born of a free father.
- Then where is the price I got for you?
- I am ashamed to reproach you with that outright.
- But do not fail to proclaim the follies of that father of yours as well.
- Do not accuse him who suffered while you sat idle at home.
- It is a grief for women to be deprived of a husband, my child.
- Yes, but it is the husband’s toil that supports them while they sit at home.
- You seem resolved, my child, to kill your mother.
- You will kill yourself, not I.
- Take care: beware the hounds of wrath that avenge a mother.
- And how shall I escape my father’s if I leave this undone?