to bring you the news, and didn’t know
how foolish I was being. But now I’m here,
I find old troubles and new ones besides.
ELECTRA: That’s how things are. But if you listen to me
you’ll lift the burden of our present sorrow.
940
CHRYSOTHEMIS: How will I ever bring the dead to life?
ELECTRA: I didn’t say that. I am not that foolish.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: What do you tell me to take part in?
ELECTRA: To let me do what I shall recommend.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: If I can be of any help, I won’t refuse.
ELECTRA: You know nothing goes well without a struggle.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: I know. I’ll lift any weight that I can carry.
ELECTRA: Now listen: here’s what I’ve planned to do.
You and I both know that we have no friends
here to help us. No, Hades has taken them
950
away from us and we two are left alone.
So long as I had word that my brother
was still alive and well, I had hope
that he’d come to avenge our father’s murder.
Now since he’s dead, I must look to you,
not to be afraid along with me your sister
to kill our father’s murderer, Aegisthus.
I must no longer hide anything from you.
How can you stay passive, if you can see
one hope still standing? You can lament
960
that you’ve been cheated of your father’s wealth.
You can complain that during all this time
you’ve been growing old, unwed, unmarried.
And all of this you can never hope to have,
not ever. Aegisthus is not such a fool,
he won’t allow offspring to grow from you
or me; clearly they would bring him grief.*46
But if you go along with what I plan,
first you’ll win the rewards of piety
from both our father and our brother.
970
And then in the future you’ll be free,
as you were born to be, and win the marriage
you deserve. Every man admires the best!
Don’t you see how much glory we’d amass
both you and I, if you listen to me,
natives and foreigners would look at us
and welcome us with praise like this:
“My friends, look at this pair of sisters.
Those two rescued their ancestral home.
Their enemies were prospering, but those two
980
risked their lives and avenged a murder.
We must love them; all must revere them.
All must honor them for their courage
in feasts and in public gatherings.”
Everyone will speak of us like that while we’re alive,
and fame won’t leave us when we’re dead.
No, my dear, listen, work for your father,
fight for your brother, save me from suffering,
save yourself, and realize this: living in disgrace
disgraces anyone who’s nobly born.
990
CHORUS: In such matters forethought’s an ally
for a speaker and a listener both.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: My friends, before she spoke, if she’d had
good judgment, she’d have used
restraint, but she did not use it.
(to Electra) What do you seek when you arm yourself
With rashness and ask me to join you?
Don’t you see? You are a woman, not a man.
You have less power than your enemies.
Day by day they have good fortune;
1000
ours drains away and comes to nothing.
Who could plan to kill a man like that
and get away untouched by pain or harm?
Look out: things are bad, but we’ll take on
more troubles for ourselves, if anyone hears us talking.
It won’t stop our suffering or help us at all
if we win renown by dying miserably.
and then not to be able to do that.>*47
I beg you, before we all are destroyed
1010
totally, and our family obliterated,
restrain your rage. And I shall regard
your words as unsaid and unfulfilled.
Be sensible, at least as time goes on,
and yield to rulers when you have no power.
CHORUS: Listen to her. It’s best for humans to take
advantage of forethought and wise counsel.
ELECTRA: Nothing you’ve said surprises me. I realized
that you’d reject whatever I proposed.
No, with my own hand alone I must do
1020
this deed. I won’t leave it unattempted.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Oh!
I wish you’d the same determination
when our father died. You’d have won out.
ELECTRA: I’m the same person now; then I didn’t understand.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Try not to understand throughout your life!
ELECTRA: So you advise, because you will not work with me.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: No, because if we try, we shall also fail.
ELECTRA: I admire your sense, but I despise your cowardice.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: I can endure your blame, as well as your kind words.
ELECTRA: Kind words are what you’ll never hear from me.
1030
CHRYSOTHEMIS: The long time to come will determine that.
ELECTRA: Go away! You cannot be of help to me.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: I can, but you cannot learn from me.
ELECTRA: Go and tell all this to your mother.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: I do not hate you quite enough for that.
ELECTRA: You don’t understand that I’m now dishonored.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: I don’t seek to dishonor, but to care for you.
ELECTRA: Must I go along with your idea of justice?
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Yes, if you’re sensible; then you can lead us.
ELECTRA: It’s dreadful that you speak well and are wrong.
1040
CHRYSOTHEMIS: That describes the trouble you are in!
ELECTRA: What? Don’t you think I say what is right?
CHRYSOTHEMIS: There is a point when being right does harm.
ELECTRA: I do not wish to live under such laws.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: If you do this, you’ll applaud my advice.
ELECTRA: Indeed, I’ll do it, and not be scared by you.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: So it’s true! You won’t think again?
ELECTRA: Nothing’s more hateful than bad thinking.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: You seem not to understand anything I say.
ELECTRA: I thought of this long ago; nothing is new.
1050
my words; I won’t appreciate your ways.
ELECTRA: Yes, go away. I shall never follow you,
not even if you eagerly desire it.
A hunt for nothing is great foolishness.>*48
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Yes, if you suppose you make some sense,
you do that! But then when you land
in trouble, you’ll appreciate my words.
(Chrysothemis goes into the palace. Electra remains onstage while the Chorus sing the second stasimon.)
strophe 1
CHORUS: We see that the wise birds above
think and care and feed
1060
their parents, in return
for the support they gave them.*49
Why don’t we do the same?
No, by Zeus’ lightning
and Themis*50 above,
we shall soon be punished!
Word that goes beneath the earth
>
tell this sad tale to the Atreidae,*51
bring my joyless message of disgrace.
antistrophe 1
1070
Tell them their house is sick
between their children strife is
two-faced, still not balanced
in a loving existence.
One daughter betrayed, alone,
is sea-tossed, poor thing
always mourning her father’s fate.
Like the nightingale, always grieving.
She does not care about death.
She is ready to leave the light,
1080
and bring the two Erinyes.*52
Who else has been so loyal to her father?
strophe 2
No noble person seeks to soil
his reputation by a wretched life
without glory, my dear, dear friend.
So you, too, have chosen
a glorious life, lamentable,
arming a sharp remedy,*53
and win double praise in a single speech
a daughter both wise and best.
antistrophe 2
1090
May you live as high above
your enemies in might and wealth
as you now dwell below them.
Since I have found you
enduring an evil fate,
but winning top prize
in the highest duty,
in your piety to Zeus.
(Orestes enters, carrying an urn, accompanied by Pylades and their attendants, pretending to be the Phocians sent by the magistrates of Delphi to bring Orestes’ ashes to Argos.)
ORESTES: Ladies, have we heard the right information,
and made our journey to the land we seek?
1100
CHORUS: What are you looking for? What do you want here?
ORESTES: For some time I’ve been asking where Aegisthus lives.
CHORUS: This is the right place and your informant accurate.
ORESTES: Could one of you inform those inside the house
of the welcome presence of our two pairs of feet.*54
CHORUS: She can, if the nearest person must announce it.
ORESTES: Come, lady, go inside and inform them
that some men of Phocis seek Aegisthus.
ELECTRA: oimoi, misery. We have heard the story.
Have you come to bring the evidence?
1110
ORESTES: I don’t know what you heard. But the old man
Strophius*55 told me to tell you about Orestes.
ELECTRA: What is it, stranger? Now fear comes over me.
ORESTES: We have come to bring the few remains
of the dead man, as you see, in a small urn.
ELECTRA: Oh, me, misery, it’s clear that this is it,
I see, it seems, a burden for my hands.
ORESTES: If your tears are for what Orestes suffered,
know that this urn covers his body.
ELECTRA: Stranger, by the gods, place it in my hands,
1120
if it is true that this urn holds him,
so that I can weep and start the lamentation
for myself and all my family with these ashes.
ORESTES: (to his attendants) Bring it here and give it to her, whoever she is,
since she asks for it not in enmity,
but as one of his friends, or blood relations.
ELECTRA: Last memorial of the man dearest to me,
Orestes, I welcome you home, but without
the hopes with which I sent you forth.
Now I hold you in my hands and you are nothing,
1130
yet I sent you off in glory from your home.
I wish that I had left this life before I sent you
with these hands forth to a foreign land,
stole you away and rescued you from death,
you could have died then on that day
and been buried, to share your father’s grave.
Now far from home, an exile in another land,
you perished cruelly, without your sister.
So sad that with my loving hands I did not wash
your body and place it in the blazing fire
1140
as I should have done, a painful burden.
No, you were cared for by foreign hands
and come here, a little weight in a little urn.
Oh, I weep for the care I gave you long ago,
now wasted, a labor of love. For you were not
so dear to your mother as you were to me.
It was not the servants, it was I,
your sister that you called your nurse.
Now everything is lost in a single day,
1150
dead along with you. You’ve swept everything away,
like a whirlwind, and gone. Our father’s dead.
I’ve died with you. You’ve died and gone away.
Our enemies mock us; she’s mad with joy,
our mother who is no mother. You often told me
in secret messages that you would come
and get revenge. But now your unlucky fate
and mine have taken everything away,
the fate that instead of your dearest self
sent these ashes and a useless shadow.
1160
(chanting) oimoi moi.
Your pitiful body. Pheu pheu.
You were sent, oimoi moi
on a cruel path, my dearest. You have killed me,
you have killed me, yes, my own brother.
So now take me into this your house,
my nothing to your nothing, so that with you
I’ll live below forever. For when you were above,
I shared everything with you. And now I wish
to die and to be with you in your tomb.
1170
For I see that the dead do not feel pain.
CHORUS: Remember, Electra, your father was a mortal.
Orestes was a mortal. So do not grieve too much.
Every one of us must pay this debt.
ORESTES: pheu pheu. What can I say? Words fail me.
I’ve lost the power to control my speech.
ELECTRA: What pains you? Why are you saying this?
ORESTES: Yours is Electra’s renowned beauty, this?
ELECTRA: This is what it is, and a most wretched thing.
ORESTES: oimoi, for this miserable disaster!
1180
ELECTRA: Stranger, surely you’re not mourning over me?
ORESTES: Your body wasted dishonorably, impiously!
ELECTRA: Your cruel words suit no one else but me, stranger.
ORESTES: pheu, your condition, unmarried, miserable—
ELECTRA: Stranger, why do you stare at me and lament?
ORESTES: I did not know the measure of my sorrows.
ELECTRA: What did I say that made you understand?
ORESTES: I saw that you were singled out for suffering.
ELECTRA: But you have only seen some of my troubles.
ORESTES: Could there be troubles worse to see than these?
1190
ELECTRA: Yes, because I’m living with the murderers.
ORESTES: Whose murderers? What killing do you mean?
ELECTRA: My father’s. And I’m forced to be their slave!
ORESTES: Who on earth torments you with this task?
ELECTRA: My mother in name, but nothing like a mother.
ORESTES: What does she do? Attack you; wreck your life?
ELECTRA: Attack and wreck and every other crime.
ORESTES: And no one comes to help you or hinder them?
ELECTRA: No. There was, but you’ve brought me his ashes.
ORESTES: Poor thing. Since I first saw you I have pitied you.
1200
ELECTRA: You’re the only man on earth who’s pitied me.
ORESTES: The only one to come and suffer for your misery.
<
br /> ELECTRA: You can’t be a relative of mine from somewhere!
ORESTES: I could say I am, if these women are your friends.
ELECTRA: They are, and can be trusted when you speak.
ORESTES: Put down that urn, so you can learn everything.
ELECTRA: No, please, by the gods, don’t ask that, stranger.
ORESTES: Listen to what I say, you won’t go wrong.
ELECTRA: No, by your beard,*56 don’t take my beloved away.
ORESTES: I won’t let you keep it.
ELEC.: Oh, misery, Orestes,
1210
your tomb has been taken from me.
ORESTES: Watch your tongue. There’s no reason to mourn.
ELECTRA: No reason for me to weep for my dead brother?
ORESTES: It’s not appropriate to speak of death.
ELECTRA: So I’m kept from my rights over the dead?
ORESTES: You’re being kept from nothing. This isn’t yours.
ELECTRA: I do, if this is Orestes’ body that I hold.
ORESTES: It’s not Orestes’, except as dressed in words.
ELECTRA: But where is that poor man’s tomb?
ORESTES: There isn’t one. The living have no tombs.
ELECTRA: Friend, what are you saying?
1220
ORE.: Nothing I’ve said is false.
ELECTRA: Then Orestes is alive.
ORE.: Yes, if I draw breath.
ELECTRA: And are you he?
ORE.: Look at my father’s seal ring! See if I speak the truth.
ELECTRA: Oh, dearest light!
ORE.: Dearest, I, too, can swear.
ELECTRA: Voice, have you come?
ORE.: Don’t ask for any other.
ELECTRA: Do I hold you in my arms?
ORE.: As you may hold me from now on!
ELECTRA: Dearest friends, women of my city,
Look, this is Orestes, dead through deception
now through deception saved from death.
1230
CHORUS: We see, my dear, and for your good fortune
a tear of joy comes from my eyes.
ELECTRA: (singing, while Orestes continues speaking in recitative meter)
strophe
iō son, son
of those dearest to me
now you have arrived!
You have found and come and seen those you have longed for.
ORESTES: Here I am! But keep quiet and wait!
ELECTRA: What’s wrong?
ORESTES: Best to keep quiet, so no one inside hears us.
ELECTRA: No by the virgin goddess Artemis,
I do not think it right to fear
1240
the women who live in there,
a vain burden on the earth.
ORESTES: Look, even women can wage war.
You know that well. You’ve tried it.
The Greek Plays Page 44
