Electra
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
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Clytemnestra
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These slaves are here; take no trouble on my account.
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Electra
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What? You sent me away from home, a captive; I was taken when my home was taken, like these,
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all of us orphaned of a father.
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Clytemnestra
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Well, your father laid such plots against those whom least of all he should have, his own family. I will tell you; although when a woman gets an evil reputation, her tongue is bitter.
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In my opinion, not rightly; but it is correct for those who learn about the matter to hate, if it deserves hatred; if not, why hate at all? Now Tyndareus gave me to your father not so that I or any children I might bear should die.
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But that man went from the house, taking my child, with the persuasion of a marriage with Achilles, to Aulis which held the fleet; and there he stretched Iphigenia over the pyre, and cut her white cheek. And if, as a cure for the capture of the city,
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or as a benefit to his house, or to save his other children, he had killed one on behalf of many, I would have pardoned him. But, because Helen was lustful and the one who had her as a wife did not know how to punish the betrayer—for these reasons he destroyed my child.
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Well, although I was wronged, I would not have been angry at this, nor would I have killed my husband. But he came back to me with a girl, raving and possessed, and put her in his bed, and had two brides at once in the same house.
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A woman is a foolish thing, I don’t deny it; but, this granted, whenever a husband goes astray and rejects his own bed, the woman is likely to imitate her husband and find another love. And then in us the blame shines clearly,
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while the men, who caused this, are not badly spoken of. Now if Menelaus had been secretly snatched from his home, should I have killed Orestes to save Menelaus, my sister’s husband? How would your father have endured this? And so isn’t it right for him to die
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when he had killed what was mine, since I would have suffered at his hands? I killed him, I turned where indeed it was possible to go—to his enemies. For which one of your father’s friends would have joined me in his murder? Speak, if you want to say anything, and make your retort with frankness,
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in what way your father died unfairly.
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Chorus Leader
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Justly spoken, but this justice is shameful. For a woman should yield to her husband in all things, if she has sense; anyone who does not agree does not come within the scope of what I say.
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Electra
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Remember, mother, those last words of yours, giving me frankness towards you.
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Clytemnestra
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I say it again, and I do not deny it, child.
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Electra
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Then will you treat me badly, when you hear it?
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Clytemnestra
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No, no, I will give some pleasure to your heart.
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Electra
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I will speak, and this is the beginning of my preface: oh, mother, I wish that you had a better heart. For though your beauty, and Helen’s, is worthy to bring you praise, yet you two were born true sisters, both frivolous, not worthy of Castor.
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She was carried off, willingly ruined; and you have destroyed the bravest man in Greece, putting forward the excuse that you killed a husband for the sake of a child; for they don’t know you so well as I do. You who, before your daughter’s death was decided,
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as soon as your husband had started from home, were adorning the golden locks of your hair at the mirror. A wife who decks herself out for beauty, when her husband is gone from home—strike her off the list as worthless.
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There is no need for her to show her pretty face out of doors, unless she is seeking some mischief. Of all the women in Hellas you were the only one I know to be joyful when Troy was fortunate, and with a clouded face when it was weaker, since you did not want Agamemnon to return from Troy.
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And yet it was in your power to be chaste, and rightly; you had a husband, no worse than Aegisthus, whom Hellas chose to be its commander; and when your sister Helen had done her work, it was possible for you to achieve great fame,
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for the bad gives a standard of comparison to the good and provides a spectacle. But if, as you say, my father killed your daughter, what is the wrong I and and my brother have done you? How was it that after you had killed your husband, you did not assign to us our father’s home,
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but you brought the goods belonging to another to bed, buying your marriage with wages? And how is it that your husband is not exiled in the place of your son, nor has he died in my place, although he has killed me, alive, twice as much as my sister? If murder, giving judgment, requites murder, your
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son Orestes and I must kill you to avenge our father. For if that was just, then so is this. Whoever marries a wicked woman, looking to wealth or noble birth, is a fool; for humble wives, if chaste, are better in the home than great ones.
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Chorus Leader
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Chance is in the marriages of women; among mankind, I see some fall out well, others not.
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Clytemnestra
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Child, it was always your nature to love your father. This is what happens: some children are for their fathers, others in turn love their mothers more than a father.
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I will forgive you; for I do not rejoice so very much at what I have done, child.
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You, a woman who has just given birth—why is your body so unwashed and meanly clad? Alas for my schemes!
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I drove on in anger against my husband more than I should have.
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Electra
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You sigh too late, when you have no remedy. My father is dead; but why do you not recall that exile, your own wandering son?
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Clytemnestra
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l am afraid; I am looking to my interests, not his.
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For he is angry, they say, over the murder of his father.
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Electra
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And why do you cause your husband to be cruel to me?
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Clytemnestra
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Such are his ways. You have a stubborn nature also.
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Electra
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Yes, for I am in distress. Yet I will cease from my anger.
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Clytemnestra
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And then he will no longer be harsh to you.
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Electra
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He is proud; for he lives in my home.
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Clytemnestra
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You see? Again you are rekindling new quarrels.
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Electra
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I am silent; I fear him—as I fear him.
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Clytemnestra
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Stop this talk! But why did you summon me, child?
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Electra
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You have heard, I suppose, that I have given birth;
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in thanks for this, please sacrifice—for I do not know how—on the tenth day, as is the custom for the child. For I have no experience, being childless before.
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Clytemnestra
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This is work for another, the one who delivered you.
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Electra
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I was all alone in my labor and at the baby’s birth.
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Clytemnestra
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Is this household situated with no friends as neighbors?
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Electra
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No one is willing to have the poor as friends.
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Clytemnestra
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But I will go to make the tenth-day sacrifice to the gods for the child; and when I have done you this favor, I will go to the field where my husband is sacrificing to the
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Nymphs. Take this team away, my attendants, and bring it to the stalls; and when you think that I have finished this sacrifice to the gods, be ready; for I must also please my husband.
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Electra
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Go into a poor house; but please take care
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that my smoke-grimed walls do not smear your robes with soot. For you will make the sacrifice to the gods that you ought to make. Going in to the house. The basket is ready, and the knife sharpened, the same that killed the bull by whose side you will lie, struck down. Even in Hades’ house you will be the bride of the one
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whom you slept with in life. This is the favor I will give you, and you will give me retribution for my father. Exit Electra.
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Chorus
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Requital for evils; the breezes of the house shift and blow. At another time my leader, my own, fell murdered in the bath,
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and the roof and stone walls of the house cried aloud, while he said: O cruelty! My wife, why are you murdering me on my return to my dear country in the tenth year? . . .
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Chorus
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Retribution for straying love has flowed back and brings to judgment the one who killed her wretched husband, when he came at last to his home and to the towering Cyclopean walls; with her own hand she killed him with the sharp-edged weapon,
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holding the axe in her hands. Unhappy husband! whatever the curse that possessed that wretched woman. Like a lioness of the hills that ranges through the meadowland woods, she accomplished these things.
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Clytemnestra
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O children, by the gods, do not kill your mother.
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Chorus
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Do you hear her cries within the house?
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Clytemnestra
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O God! Ah me!
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Chorus
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I also wail for you, overpowered by your children. Truly the god deals out justice, whenever it befalls.
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You have suffered cruelly, unhappy one, yet you did unholy things to your husband.
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Chorus Leader
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But here they come from the house, defiled in the newly shed blood of their mother, a triumphal rout, evidence of the pitiable sacrifice.
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There is no house more pitiable than the race of Tantalus, nor has there ever been.
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Orestes
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O Earth, and Zeus who sees all mortal acts, look at these loathsome bloody deeds, these two bodies
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lying on the earth at the blow from my hand, atonement for my suffering . . .
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Electra
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Too many tears, my brother, and I am the cause. Unhappy, that I came to fiery rage against this woman, who was my mother!
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Chorus
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Alas for your fate; you gave birth to unbearable pain, and you suffered it, miserably and beyond, from your children. Yet you have rightly paid for their father’s murder.
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Orestes
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Ah, Phoebus! you proclaimed in song unclear justice, but you have brought about clear woes, and granted me a bloody destiny far from the land of Hellas. To what other city can I go?
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What host, what pious man will look at me, who killed my mother?
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Electra
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Ah me! Where can I go, to what dance, to what marriage? What husband will receive me
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into the bridal bed?
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Chorus
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Again, again your thought changes with the breeze; for now you think piously, though you did not before, and you did dreadful things,
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my dear, to your unwilling brother.
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Chorus Leader
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Divine forms are seen above the house. But see the ones who are appearing over the top of the house—spirits or gods from heaven?
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For this path does not belong to men. Why ever do they come into the clear sight of mortals?
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Dioskouroi
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Son of Agamemnon, listen; the twin sons of Zeus, your mother’s brothers,
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Castor and his brother Polydeuces, are calling you. Having just now calmed the swell of the sea, terrible for ships, we have come to Argos when we saw the slaying of our sister, your mother. Now she has her just reward, but you have not acted justly,
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and Phoebus, Phoebus—but I am silent, for he is my lord; although he is wise, he gave you oracles that were not. But it is necessary to accept these things. As to what remains, you must do what Fate and Zeus have accomplished for you. Give Electra to Pylades as his wife to take to his home;
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but you leave Argos; for it is not for you, who killed your mother, to set foot in this city. And the dread goddesses of death, the one who glare like hounds, will drive you up and down, a maddened wanderer. Go to Athens and embrace the holy image of Pallas;
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for she will prevent them, flickering with dreadful serpents, from touching you, as she stretches over your head her Gorgon-faced shield. There is a hill of Ares, where the gods first sat over their votes to decide on bloodshed,
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when savage Ares killed Halirrothius, son of the ocean’s ruler, in anger for the unholy violation of his daughter, so that the tribunal is most sacred and secure in the eyes of the gods.
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You also must run your risk here, for murder.
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An equal number of votes cast will save you from dying by the verdict; for Loxias will take the blame upon himself, since it was his oracle that advised your mother’s murder. And this law will be set for posterity, that the accused will always win his case if he has equal votes.
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Then the dread goddesses, stricken with grief at this, will sink into a cleft of the earth beside this hill, a holy, revered prophetic shrine for mortals. You must found an Arcadian city beside the streams of Alpheus near the sacred enclosure to Lycaean Apollo;
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and the city will be called after your name. I say this to you. As for this corpse of Aegisthus, the citizens of Argos will cover it in the earth in burial. But as for your mother, Menelaus, who has arrived at Nauplia only now after capturing Troy,
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will bury her, with Helen helping him; for she has come from Proteus’ house, leaving Egypt, and she never went to Troy; Zeus, to stir up strife and bloodshed among mortals, sent a phantom of Helen to Ilium. Now let Pylades, having one who is both a virgin and a married woman,
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go home from the Achaean land, and let him conduct the one called your brother-in-law to the land of Phocis, and give him a weight of riches. But you set out along the narrow Isthmus, and go to Cecropia’s blessed hill.
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For once you have completed your appointed lot of murder, you will be happy, freed from these troubles.
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Chorus
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Sons of Zeus, is it right for us to draw near to speak with you?
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Dioskouroi
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It is right, for those not polluted by this murder.
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Electra
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May I too share your conversation, sons of Tyndareus?
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Dioskouroi
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You too; to Phoebus I will attribute this bloody deed.
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Chorus
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How was it that you, being gods and the brothers of this murdered woman,
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did not keep the death-goddesses away from her house?
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Dioskouroi
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Necessity’s fate led to what must be, and unwise speech from the mouth of Phoebus.
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Electra
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But what Apollo, what sort of oracles, ordained for me to be my mother’s murderer?
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Dioskouroi
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The deeds were shared, the fates were shared; one ancestral curse has ground down both.
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Orestes
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Ah, my sister, seeing you after a long time, at once I am robbed of your affection,
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and I must abandon you, abandoned by you.
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Dioskouroi
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She has a husband and a home; she does not suffer pitiably, except that she leaves the city of the Argives.