310
pay for an evil word!”—and she
exacts the debt herself;
“For a bloody stroke let a bloody
stroke be the penalty! Let the wrongdoer suffer wrong!”
So goes the saying; again and again it has grown old among us.
strophe 1
ORESTES: Father, father of misery, what can I say,
what can I do to give you a good wind
for the voyage from that far place*10
and the bed of death that is your home?
The light is counter to the darkness,
320
but all the same, a lament recalling glory
brings joy, they say, to the sons
of Atreus in their palace courtyard.
strophe 2
CHORUS: My child, the fire’s greedy jaws*11
don’t tame a dead man’s pride;
long afterward, his rage shows.
Wailing comes at his death—
but the light falls on the guilty, too.
The righteous groaning of fathers,
330
of parents, their uproar is the way
to the hiding-place of vengeance.
antistrophe 1
ELECTRA: So listen, Father! This is our rightful share
of tear-soaked mourning.
Over your grave the loud song of your loss
rises from your brace of children.
We are suppliants and refugees alike
at your tomb; it must take us in.
What trace of good is here outside it? What is only free from evil?
Is ruin not left wholly undefeated?
340
CHORUS: Even so, the god, if he wishes,
could make this a happier clamor:
not dirges at a grave,
but the triumph song in the royal halls
ushering in the cherished cup of celebration.
strophe 3
ORESTES: If only, Father, under Ilium’s walls
some Lycian warrior with a slashing spear
had made a quick, clean end of you.
Your fame would linger in your house;
all through our lives, the streets would turn
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their gaze at us, your children.
A generous heap of earth would be your home
in that country across the sea,
and your house here could have endured it.
antistrophe 2
CHORUS: Others you loved, who had their own fine deaths at Troy,
would have looked, with love and awe and honor,
to their illustrious lord beneath the ground,
who marshaled the processions
of the greatest rulers in the Underworld—
360
yes, since as long as you lived, you were king,
and held in your hands the appointed, the doomed,
the dooming scepter other mortals must obey.*12
antistrophe 3
ELECTRA: No, Father, not that—I wouldn’t have
you dead beneath Troy’s walls and buried
by Scamander’s path of water
with the mass of men the spear took.
Instead, I wish your murderers
had been brought down so viciously
[…]*13 that their destiny in death
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came to the ears of everyone, no matter how far off,
no matter that our sufferings had never touched him.
CHORUS: This is worth more than gold, child;
greater than great good fortune; better than earthly
paradise is what you speak of—since you can have it.
Two voices, like a double whip as it lands,
have thudded through: under the earth they rally
to this side already, but the powers here—
how we loathe them—have defiled their hands.
The children are gaining ground!*14
strophe 4
380
ORESTES: Your words have shot clear through
my hearing, like an arrow.
Zeus, Zeus, send up from below
the penalty that takes its time, send ruin
to mortals in their gall, their limitless
violence. Parents, come what may, will be paid out.
strophe 5
CHORUS: May my song of triumph
be a piercing shriek over the man
struck to the ground, and the woman
lying lifeless. Why should I hide this?
Though I might try, it hovers
390
out in front of my mind. And at my heart’s prow
blasts this keen rage,
this malignant hatred.
antistrophe 4
ELECTRA: When will Zeus in his flourishing strength
move his hand against them
and cleave—oh—and cleave their skulls?
Let the land have a pledge of this!
I demand justice from the destroyers of justice!
Listen, Earth, and the powers below that we honor!
400
CHORUS: Yes, because this is the law, that the trickles of blood
let onto the ground demand more,
more blood. Havoc shouts for a Fury,*15
who follows ruin with new ruin
once someone has fallen.
strophe 6
ORESTES: I cry to those who rule below, unchallenged!
You overpowering Curses of the fallen, look!
See what is left of Atreus’ line: defenseless,
despised and robbed of its home!
Zeus, where can we turn?
antistrophe 5
410
CHORUS: I am shaken deep, to the heart,
to hear your pitiful wailing.
Now my hope fails;
darkness fills my body
as your words reach my ear—
but once again stout defiance
[…] overthrows the pangs;
its beauty comes before my eyes.*16
antistrophe 6
ELECTRA: What can we tell of to hit the mark? The grief
we have suffered—at the hands of our own parent?
420
What if she tries to fawn on him? There is no charming the pain away.
Inconsolable, a raw-minded wolf
is the soul our mother gave him.
strophe 7
CHORUS: I pummeled out the beat of an Arian dirge, like a Kissian
woman with her wailing music.*17
Picture my blood-spattered hands, clenched hard for pounding,
and my arms stretched high to fall in steep blows
running almost together—and the echoing thudding
as they land, the torture of my skull.
strophe 8
ELECTRA: Oh, you are monstrous,
430
Mother, endlessly reckless! Monstrous the burial
you gave him, a ruler without his people
to wail for him. Brazenly, you put
your husband in the ground unmourned.
strophe 9
ORESTES: No outrage, no outrage was missing in what you did,
but for degrading my father you will pay
at the hands of the spirits,
at my own hands;
then I can die, when I’ve cut the life from you.
antistrophe 9
CHORUS: His arms and legs, hacked off—you ought to know it—
440
were buried hanging from his neck.*18 The one who did it
was keen to make his death a weight
your life would buckle under.
Your father’s shameful agony is yours to hear.
antistrophe 7
ELECTRA: You can say how my father died; I was shoved aside,
despised, degraded,
locked in a hole like a vicious dog.
Was I laughing there, where I was stashed,
/> or more inclined to wailing, to gushing rivers of tears?
(addressing the grave)
450
Listen to what I tell you […];*19 write it in your mind!
antistrophe 8
CHORUS: Write it, and let your mind stand fast and calm
as our story, like a spike, runs through your ears.
All of these things are true,
and more wait for your zealous grasp.
You are bound to face this battle; face it with unbending rage.
strophe 10
ORESTES: Father, I call on you: stand with your own.
ELECTRA: My voice falls in with his—I’m choking on my tears.
CHORUS: All of our company seconds them in a single shout.
Hear us and come to the light!
460
Stand with us against our enemies!
antistrophe 10
ORESTES: War god will clash against war god, Justice against Justice.
ELECTRA: Gods, bring the ending we beg you for—it is a just one.
CHORUS: A tremor creeps over me as I hear their pleading.
From long before, what is destined waits—
let it come! We are praying for it!
strophe 11
Suffering bred in this race!
Hideous sound
of ruin’s bloody stroke!
Troubles no one could endure, heartsickness,
470
anguish we cannot lay to rest!
antistrophe 11
The house must keep its wounds open;
the people inside it—not strangers,
not outsiders—must draw out the poisons and cure it
through this raw and bleeding rift.
It is the gods below the earth we call on, singing.
You, the blessed in the Underworld,
have mercy, send the aid we beg
for the children and their victory.
ORESTES: Father, you met your death as no king should!
480
Grant what I claim from you, to rule your household.
ELECTRA: Father, I beg for what I need as well:
to settle with Aegisthus, and escape […]*20
ORESTES: Do this to earn the ritual feasts that mortals
offer, or let earth’s rich and redolent gifts
burn here while you sit by, unfed, unhonored.
ELECTRA: And I will bring libations for my wedding
from my restored inheritance, your house.
Your tomb will have the first rank in my worship.
ORESTES: Earth, send my father up to view this battle.
490
ELECTRA: Persephone,*21 give me triumph in its beauty.
ORESTES: Think of the bath where you were murdered, Father.
ELECTRA: Think of the strange new net that wrapped you there.
ORESTES: Woven, not forged, your snaring shackles, Father!
ELECTRA: The shameful plot that veiled and netted you!
ORESTES: The insult in our words won’t wake you, Father?
ELECTRA: Won’t you unbend the head we love so much?
ORESTES: Send Justice as our ally, since you love us,
or let them feel the headlock that you felt.
You’re beaten—will you pay them back with victory?
500
ELECTRA: Now, Father, hear this final, straggling cry:
see how your nestlings huddle by your tomb,
the male, the female keening—pity both!
ORESTES: Don’t cut the stock of Pelops from the earth:
it is through us you live, though you are dead.
ELECTRA: Children are saviors, heralds of a man
who’s died. They’re corks that lift the net and rescue
the cord he wove from sinking to the bottom.
ORESTES: Listen! Our grief and grievance is for you.
Honor our words, and you will save yourself.
510
CHORUS: So many words, but faultless: you have given
this unlamented tomb its compensation.
Now, since your plans are driving toward success,
see them clear through and see what fortune brings you.
ORESTES: I will. But I can’t be off track in asking
why, on what rationale, she sent these offerings,
her late redress for pain that can’t be cured.
For a dead man unaware of it, the favor
is a petty one—I can’t work out the meaning
of the gift—which isn’t worth the wrong she did.
520
To pour out all you own to pay for one life
is wasted effort, as the saying goes.
But if you can explain, I want to hear.
CHORUS: I know it at first hand, my child. Her nightmares,
that labyrinth of fears, have jolted her
to send drink-offerings—the godless woman.
ORESTES: What was the dream? Can you precisely tell me?
CHORUS: She dreamed a snake was born from her—her own words.
ORESTES: With what result? How did the story end?
CHORUS: She nested it on blankets, like a baby.
530
ORESTES: What was the food the newborn monster craved?
CHORUS: She offered it her own breast, in the dream.
ORESTES: How could the hateful thing not wound a breast?
CHORUS: It sucked a clot of blood out with the milk.
ORESTES: That’s not a vision granted for no reason!
CHORUS: She started from her sleep, shrieking in terror,
and many lamps that had sat blind in darkness
blazed in the palace for the lady’s sake,
and then she sent libations for the dead—
she hopes this surgery will ease her pangs.
540
ORESTES: I pray to Earth, then, and my father’s tomb
to see this dream accomplished in my favor.
It fits without a single gap, I think.
Given the snake came out from where I came,
and then was wrapped, like me, in baby blankets,
and sucked, wide-mouthed, the breast that fed me, too,
and mixed a clot of blood with that kind milk,
and she howled out her horror as it happened,
then—since she fed that ghastly visitation—
she must die violently. I am a snake now
550
in killing her—that’s what the dream relates.
CHORUS: I choose you as the signs’ interpreter.
Let them unfold! Now tell your various friends
the rest: what some should do, what others shouldn’t.
ORESTES: It’s simple. First, Electra will go in—
and I entrust her to conceal our pact,
so those who lured an honorable man
to his death will be lured into that same snare
and die, as Loxias, our lord Apollo,
promised—who never was a lying prophet.
560
In all my traveling gear, I’ll play a stranger
arriving at the gates here with Pylades,
this foreign guest and ally of the house.
We’ll both speak the Parnassus dialect—
I’ll mimic how the Phocian language sounds.
Granted no cheerful welcome from the keepers
of the gates into this house possessed by wrong,
we’ll wait, and someone passing by the palace
will judge from our appearance there and speak:
“A suppliant’s at the gates. Why does Aegisthus—
570
if he’s at home to know this—lock him out?”
And if that gets me past the courtyard threshold
to find that person on my father’s throne—
or surely, if he comes back home, he’ll summon
me before him. Then, before he asks,
“Where is the stranger from?” I’ll
make a corpse
of him, a skewer of my quick bronze weapon,
and the Fury, so well entertained with slaughter,
will raise a toast—the third—of blood at full strength.
(to Electra) You, now, keep your eyes open in the house,
580
so all this comes together, piece by piece.
(to the Chorus) And I rely on you, too: think how much
silence can help, and careless words can hurt us.
(indicating the tomb) In what remains, I ask for him to guard me
and guide me in this contest of the sword.
(Orestes, Pylades, and Electra exit in the direction of the palace.)
strophe 1
CHORUS: The earth fosters many afflictions,
monstrous things, engines of terror;
and the arms of the sea are teeming
with creatures who are enemies
of humankind. High in the air, between
590
the armies of earth and heaven, flaming wraiths
prey on the winged and the striding races; we hear as well
of hurricanes’ roaring anger.
antistrophe 1
But a man’s reckless pride—
who can describe it?
Or women’s scheming arrogance,
their passions at the pitch of recklessness—
a herd cropping itself full […] of human folly?*22
The loathsome love that is a female’s power
600
perverts the yoked pair, the stable-mates—
beasts, and ourselves no less.
strophe 2
Who, with a mind on solid ground,
would deny the evidence of legend?
Of Thestius’ wretched daughter*23—plotting her own child’s
destruction that was forecast—
incendiary woman, who turned
her son’s blood-glowing log to ashes?
It was his same age, born with the howl he gave
610
in coming from his mother; its life’s hours were his
till the day his destiny found its fulfillment.
The Greek Plays Page 16
