Eumenides

Aeschylus

Aeschylus, Volume 2. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1926.

  1. you sit clinging to my image near my hearth, as a sacred suppliant, like Ixion.[*](Ixion, king of the Lapiths, murdered the father of his bride, and was given purification by Zeus after having been denied by the other gods. Cp. 718.) To all this give me a plain answer.
Orestes
  1. Lady Athena, first of all I will take away a great anxiety from your last words.
  2. I am not a suppliant in need of purification, nor did I sit at your image with pollution on my hands. I will give you strong proof of this. It is the law for one who is defiled by shedding blood to be barred from speech until he is sprinkled with the blood of