Eumenides
Aeschylus
Aeschylus, Volume 2. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1926.
- You must, however, say how you killed her.
- I will say it: with drawn sword in hand, I stabbed her in the throat.
- By whom were you persuaded and on whose advice?
- By the oracles of this god here; he is my witness.
- The prophet directed you to kill your mother?
- Yes, and to this very hour, I do not blame my fortune.
- But if the jury’s vote catches hold of you, you’ll soon speak differently.
- I have good confidence. My father will send protection from his grave.
- Put your confidence in the dead now, after you have killed your mother!
- I do, for she was twice afflicted with pollution.
- How so? Teach the judges this.
- By murdering her husband, she killed my father.
- And so, although you are alive, she is free of pollution by her death.[*](She is freed from blood-guiltiness because her blood has been shed.)
- But why did you not drive her into exile, while she lived?
- She was not related by blood to the man she killed.
- Then am I my mother’s kin by blood?
- How else could she have nurtured you, murderer, beneath her belt? Do you reject the nearest kinship, that of a mother?
- Apollo, give your testimony now. Explain, on my behalf,
- whether I was justified in killing her. For I do not deny that I did it, as it is done. But decide whether this bloodshed was, to your mind, just or not, so that I may inform the court.
- I will speak justly before you, Athena’s great tribunal,—