by Aeschylus
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Well it could be, if you got some sense.
ELEKTRA : Don’t bother telling me to betray those I love.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : I tell you we have masters, we must bend.
ELEKTRA : You bend—you go ahead and lick their boots. It’s not my way.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Don’t ruin your life in sheer stupidity.
ELEKTRA : I will ruin my life, if need be, avenging our father.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : But our father, I know, forgives us for this.
ELEKTRA : Cowards’ talk.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : You won’t listen to reason at all, will you?
ELEKTRA : No. My mind is my own.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Well then I’ll be on my way.
ELEKTRA : Where are you going? Whose offerings are those?
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Mother is sending me to Father’s tomb, to pour libation.
ELEKTRA : What? To her mortal enemy?
CHRYSOTHEMIS : To her “murder victim,” as you like to say.
ELEKTRA : Whose idea was this?
CHRYSOTHEMIS : It came out of a dream in the night, I believe.
ELEKTRA : Gods of my father be with me now!
CHRYSOTHEMIS : You take courage from a nightmare?
ELEKTRA : Tell the dream and I’ll answer you.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : There is little to tell.
ELEKTRA : Tell it anyway.
Little words can mean death or life sometimes.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Well the story is she dreamed of our father and knew him again for he came back into the light.
Then she saw him take hold of his scepter and stick it in the hearth—his own scepter from the old days, that Aigisthos carries now.
And from the scepter sprang a branch in full climbing leaf which cast a shadow over the whole land of Mykenai.
That is as much as I got from one who overheard her telling the dream to the sun.
More I don’t know, except fear is her reason for sending me out today.
So I beg you, by the gods of our family, listen to me.
Don’t throw your life away on plain stupidity. For if you spurn me now, you’ll come begging later when the trouble starts.
ELEKTRA : Oh dear one, no.
You cannot touch this tomb with any of those things you have in your hands.
It breaks the law. It would be unholy to bring that woman’s libations to our father: she is the enemy.
No. Pitch them to the winds or down a dark hole.
They shall come nowhere near his resting place.
But when she dies and goes below, she will find them waiting.
Treasure keeps, down there.
God! Her nerve is astounding.
What woman alive would send gifts to garnish her own murder victim?
And do you imagine the dead man would welcome such honors from the hand of the woman who butchered him—think! To clean her blade she wiped it off on his head!
You astonish me—do you really believe such gifts will cancel murder?
Throw them away.
Here, instead cut a lock from your hair and a lock of mine—meager gifts but it is all I have.
Take this to him, the hair and this belt of mine, though it’s nothing elaborate.
Kneel down there and pray to him.
Pray he come up from the ground to stand with us against our enemies.
Pray that his son Orestes live to trample his enemies underfoot.
And someday you and I will go in better style than this to crown his tomb.
But I wonder. You know I wonder—suppose he had some part in sending her these cold unlucky dreams.
Well, never mind that.
Sister, do this deed.
Stand up for yourself and for me and for this man we love more than anyone else in the world, this dead man. Your father. My father.
CHORUS : The girl speaks for human reverence. And you, if you have any sense, will do what she says.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : I will do it. It is the right thing, why dispute?
But please, my friends, I need silence from you.
If my mother finds out, the attempt will turn bitter for me, I fear.
[Exit CHRYSOTHEMIS.]
CHORUS : Unless I am utterly wrong in my reading of omens unless I am out of my mind Justice is coming with clear signs before her and righteousness in her hands.
She is coming down on us, child, coming now!
There is courage whispering into me when I hear tell of these sweetbreathing dreams.
He does not forget—the one who begot you the king of the Greeks.
She does not forget—the jaw that bit him in two:
ancient and sharpened on both sides to butcher the meat!
Vengeance is coming—her hands like an army her feet as a host.
She will come out of hiding come scorching down on love that is filth and beds that are blood where marriage should never have happened!
Conviction
is strong in me:
visions like these are no innocent sign for killers.
I say no omens exist for mortals to read from the cold faces of dreams or from oracles unless this fragment of death steps into the daylight.
O horse race of Pelops, once long ago you came in the shape of a wide calamity to this land.
And from the time when Myrtilos pitched and sank in the sea his solid gold life sliced off at the roots—never since that time has this house got itself clear of rawblood butchery.
[Enter KLYTAIMESTRA.]
KLYTAIMESTRA : Prowling the streets again, are you?
Of course, with Aigisthos away.
He was always the one who kept you indoors where you couldn’t embarrass us.
Now that he’s gone you pay no heed to me.
Yet you love to make me the text of your lectures:
What an arrogant bitchminded tyrant I am, a living insult to you and your whole way of being!
But do I in fact insult you? No. I merely return the muck you throw at me.
Father, Father, Father! your perpetual excuse—your father got his death from me. From me! That’s right!
I make no denial.
It was Justice who took him, not I alone.
And you should have helped if you had any conscience.
For this father of yours, this one you bewail, this unique Greek, had the heart to sacrifice your own sister to the gods.
And how was that? Did he have some share in the pain of her birth? No—I did it myself!
Tell me:
Why did he cut her throat? What was the reason?
You say for the Argives?
But they had no business to kill what was mine.
To save Menelaos?
Then I deserved recompense, wouldn’t you say?
Did not Menelaos have children himself—in fact two of them, who ought to have died before mine in all fairness?
Their mother, let’s not forget, was the cause of the whole expedition!
Or was it that Hades conceived some peculiar desire to feast on my children instead?
Or perhaps that murdering thug your father, simply overlooked my children in his tender care for Menelaos’.
Was that not brutal? Was that not perverse?
I say it was.
No doubt you disagree.
But I tell you one thing, that murdered girl would speak for me if she had a voice.
Anyway, the deed is done.
I feel no remorse.
You think me degenerate?
Here’s my advice:
perfect yourself before you blame others.
ELEKTRA : At least you can’t say I started it this time;
these ugly remarks are unprovoked.
But I want to get a few things clear
about the dead man and my sister as well.
If you allow me.
KLYTAIMESTRA : Go ahead, by all means. Begin this way more often and we won’t need ugly remarks at all, will we?
ELEKTRA : All right then. Yes.
What admission could bring more shame?
Never mind if it was legal or not—did you care?
Let’s talk facts: there was only one reason you killed him.
You were seduced by that creature you live with.
Ask Artemis, goddess of hunters, why she stopped the winds at Aulis.
No, I’ll tell you:
my father one day, so I hear, was out in the grove of the goddess.
The sound of his footfall startled a stag out from cover and, when he killed it, he let fall a boast.
This angered the daughter of Leto.
She held the Greeks in check until, as payment for the animal, my father should offer his own daughter.
Hence, the sacrifice. There was no other way.
He had to free the army, to sail home or toward Troy.
These were the pressures that closed upon him.
He resisted, he hated it—and then he killed her.
Not for Menelaos’ sake, no, not at all.
But even if—let’s say we grant your claim—he did these things to help his brother, was it right he should die for it at your hands?
By what law?
Watch out: this particular law could recoil upon your own head.
If we made it a rule to answer killing with killing, you would die first, in all justice.
Open your eyes! The claim is a fake.
Tell me:
Why do you live this way? Your life is filth.
You share your bed with a bloodstained man:
once he obliged you by killing my father, now you put him to use making children.
Once you had decent children from a decent father, now you’ve thrown them out.
Am I supposed to praise that?
Or will you say
you do all this to avenge your child?
The thought is obscene—to bed your enemies and use a daughter as an alibi!
Oh why go on? I can’t argue with you.
You have your one same answer ready:
“That’s no way to talk to your mother!”
Strange.
I don’t think of you as mother at all.
You are some sort of punishment cage locked around my life.
Evils from you, evils from him are the air I breathe.
And what of Orestes?—he barely escaped you.
Poor boy.
The minutes are grinding him away somewhere.
You always accuse me of training him up to be an avenger—Oh I would if I could, you’re so right!
Proclaim it to all!
Call me baseminded, blackmouthing bitch! if you like—for if this is my nature we know how I come by it, don’t we?
CHORUS : [Looking at KLYTAIMESTRA.]
Look. Anger is breathing out of her.
Yet she seems not to care about right and wrong.
KLYTAIMESTRA : Right and wrong!
What use is that in dealing with her?
Do you hear her insults?
And this girl is old enough to know better.
The fact is, she would do anything,
don’t you see that?
No shame at all.
ELEKTRA : Ah now there you mistake me.
Shame I do feel.
And I know there is something all wrong about me—
believe me. Sometimes I shock myself.
But there is a reason: you.
You never let up this one same pressure of hatred on my life:
I am the shape you made me.
Filth teaches filth.
KLYTAIMESTRA : You little animal.
I and my deeds and my words draw far too much comment from you.
ELEKTRA : You said it, not I.
For the deeds are your own.
But deeds find words for themselves, don’t they?
KLYTAIMESTRA : By Artemis I swear, you will pay for this when Aigisthos comes home!
ELEKTRA : See? You’re out of control.
Though you gave me permission to say what I want, you don’t know how to listen.
KLYTAIMESTRA : Silence! If you allow me I will proceed with my sacrifice.
You spoke your piece.
ELEKTRA : Please! By all means! Go to it.
Not another word from me.
KLYTAIMESTRA : [To her attendant.] You there! Yes you—lift up these offerings for me.
I will offer prayers to this our king and loosen the fears that hold me now.
Do you hear me, Apollo?
I call you my champion!
But my words are guarded, for I am not among friends.
It wouldn’t do to unfold the whole tale with her standing here.
She has a destroying tongue in her and she does love to sow wild stories all over town.
So listen, I’ll put it this way:
last night was a night of bad dreams and ambiguous visions.
If they bode well for me, Lykian king, bring them to pass.
Otherwise, roll them back on my enemies!
And if there are certain people around plotting to pull me down from the wealth I enjoy, do not allow it.
I want everything to go on as it is, untroubled.
It suits me—this grand palace life in the midst of my loved ones and children—at least the ones who do not bring me hatred and pain.
These are my prayers, Apollo.
Hear them.
Apollo, grant them.
Gracious to all of us as we petition you.
And for the rest, though I keep silent, I credit you with knowing it fully.
You are a god.
It goes without saying, the children of Zeus see all things.
Amen.
[Enter the OLD MAN.]
OLD MAN : Ladies, can you tell me for certain if this is the house of Aigisthos the king?
CHORUS : Yes, stranger, it is.
OLD MAN : And am I correct that this is his wife? She has a certain royal look.
CHORUS : Yes. That’s who she is.
OLD MAN : Greetings, Queen. I have come with glad tidings for you and Aigisthos, from a friend of yours.
KLYTAIMESTRA : That’s welcome news. But tell me who sent you.
OLD MAN : Phanoteus the Phokian. On a mission of some importance.
KLYTAIMESTRA : What mission? Tell me. Insofar as I like Phanoteus, I am likely to like your news.
OLD MAN : Orestes is dead. That is the sum of it.
ELEKTRA : OI ’GO TALAINA. My death begins now.
KLYTAIMESTRA : What are you saying, what are you saying? Don’t bother with her.
OLD MAN : Orestes—dead. I say it again.
ELEKTRA : I am at the end. I exist no more.
KLYTAIMESTRA : [To ELEKTRA.] Mind your own affairs, girl. But you, stranger—tell me the true story:
How did he die?
OLD MAN : Yes I was sent for this purpose, I’ll tell the whole thing.
Well:
he had gone to the spectacle at Delphi, where all Greece turns up for the games.
Things were just beginning to get under way and the herald’s voice rang out announcing the footrace—first contest.
When he came onto the track he was radiant. Every eye turned.
Well, he leveled the competition, took first prize and came away famous.
Oh there’s so much to tell—I never saw anything like his performance!—but let me come straight to the point.
He won every contest the judges announced—single lap, double lap, pentathlon, you name it.
First prize every time.
He was beginning to take on an aura.
His name rang out over the track again and again:
“Argive Orestes,
whose father commanded the armies of Greece!”
So far so good.
But when a god sends harm, no man can sidestep it, no matter how strong he may be.
Came another day.
Sunrise: the chariot race.
He entere
d the lists.
What a pack:
there was one from Achaia, a Spartan, two Libyan drivers, and he in the midst on Thessalian horses stood fifth.
Sixth an Aitolian man, driving bays.
Seventh someone from Magnesia.
An Ainian man, riding white horses, had eighth place and ninth a driver from godbuilt Athens.
Then a Boiotian.
Ten cars in all.
As they took their positions, the judges cast lots to line up the cars.
A trumpet blast sounded.
They shot down the track.
All shouting together, reins tossing—
a hard clatter filled the whole course and a vast float of dust as they all streamed together, each one lashing and straining ahead
