by Aeschylus
now that Agamemnon’s cause is finished?
Father, we are friendless after all!
Betrayed! No hope!
This man was my exit strategy.
Oh but look, here comes Pylades, my dearest friend, a sight as sweet as calm water to sailors.
[Enter PYLADES.]
PYLADES : I raced through the town as soon as I heard of the citizen assembly.
I saw it too.
They mean to kill you and your sister.
What’s going on? How are you faring—dearest, sweetest, best of friends—you know you are all these to me.
ORESTES : Our cause is lost. I’ll tell you briefly.
PYLADES : Then I’m lost too. Friends share such things.
ORESTES : Menelaos is no good.
PYLADES : Not surprising. Look at his wife.
ORESTES : No use to me at all.
PYLADES : He’s actually here?
ORESTES : Yes, he’s finally back. But he’s just no help.
PYLADES : And has he shipped home his profligate wife?
ORESTES : Oh I think she runs the ship.
PYLADES : Where is she, that weapon of mass destruction?
ORESTES : In my house—if you can call it mine.
PYLADES : What did you ask of Menelaos?
ORESTES : To save me from stoning, me and my sister.
PYLADES : God! what did he say?
ORESTES : He got very cautious, as bad friends do.
PYLADES : On what pretext?
ORESTES : Well, Tyndareus came along.
PYLADES : In a rage about his daughter?
ORESTES : You got it. Menelaos took his side.
PYLADES : Scared to shoulder your burden?
ORESTES : Never was much of a warrior. Except with women.
PYLADES : It looks bad for you.
ORESTES : The citizens are casting a vote.
PYLADES : Vote?
ORESTES : Life or death.
PYLADES : Let’s get out of here!
ORESTES : We’re surrounded—guards on every road.
PYLADES : Yes, I noticed the streets are blocked with weapons.
ORESTES : Our house is beset like a town under siege.
PYLADES : Now ask me my story. The fact is, I’m ruined too.
ORESTES : How?
PYLADES : My father drove me out of the house.
ORESTES : On what charge?
PYLADES : That I joined in your mother’s murder and am unholy.
ORESTES : O poor man! My troubles are really your troubles, it seems.
PYLADES : But I’m no Menelaos. I can bear this.
ORESTES : You don’t fear the Argives?
PYLADES : The Argives are not my people.
ORESTES : A mob is a terrible thing when its leaders are corrupt.
PYLADES : But if the leaders are honest, decent deliberations can occur.
ORESTES : What do you say we make a joint plan?
PYLADES : Starting how?
ORESTES : Starting with me going to the Argive assembly to tell them—
PYLADES : that your actions were just—
ORESTES : in avenging my father—
PYLADES : and although they are eager to seize you—
ORESTES : I won’t cower in silence and die—
PYLADES : that would be craven!
ORESTES : So what should I do?
PYLADES : Any chance of staying safe here?
ORESTES : No, none.
PYLADES : And if you flee?
ORESTES : Maybe, with luck.
PYLADES : Well, that’s better than staying.
ORESTES : So I should go?
PYLADES : At least your death won’t be dishonorable.
ORESTES : Right. I’ll avoid looking like a coward—
PYLADES : more than if you stay.
ORESTES : Besides, my cause is just.
PYLADES : Pray that they see this.
ORESTES : And people might pity me—
PYLADES : after all, you are of noble blood!
ORESTES : And indignant at my father’s death.
PYLADES : Obviously.
ORESTES : I must go. Unmanly to die here.
PYLADES : I agree.
ORESTES : Should I tell my sister?
PYLADES : No, for god’s sake!
ORESTES : There would certainly be tears.
PYLADES : A very bad omen.
ORESTES : Surely silence is better.
PYLADES : And you’ll save time.
ORESTES : One last worry—
PYLADES : What?
ORESTES : The ghastly goddesses—they’ll send my wits astray.
PYLADES : I’ll take care of you.
ORESTES : It’s rotten work.
PYLADES : Not to me. Not if it’s you.
ORESTES : Beware the contagion of madness.
PYLADES : Come now.
ORESTES : You won’t shrink back?
PYLADES : A friend does not shrink back.
ORESTES : Then let’s go.
PYLADES : Let’s go.
ORESTES : Take me to my father’s tomb.
PYLADES : Why?
ORESTES : So I can pray for him to save us.
PYLADES : Yes, that would be proper.
ORESTES : My mother’s tomb—I will not look at.
PYLADES : No, she was your enemy.
Okay let’s hurry, in case the Argives are voting.
Lean on me.
I’ll bring you through town, through the crowd, I see no shame in it.
How else would I act, I am your friend!
ORESTES : There’s an old saying—a good friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
CHORUS : Huge wealth, huge virtue, huge Greek pride
has turned away from happiness
for the house of Atreus
because in ancient days
from ancient ways
came strife and hideous feasting,
slaughter of children,
blood for blood
endlessly being paid back.
Atrocity disguised as good—to cut the flesh of kin and show a blacksoaked sword to the sun.
Evil that calls itself virtue
is the paranoia
of men whose minds have broken down.
Klytaimestra screamed out
“Child, your act is unholy!
Don’t make yourself infamous
just to gratify your father!”
What disease, what tears, what pity is worse
than mother blood on your own hands.
You did the deed
and panic struck—
the ghastly goddesses are hunting you!
They spin your eyes, they turn you inside
out!
You wretch,
your mother bared her breast, you sank your
sword in it!
Payback for the father.
[Enter ELEKTRA from the house.]
ELEKTRA : Ladies, has poor Orestes run from the house in a frenzy?
CHORUS : Not at all. He’s gone to address the Argive assembly.
ELEKTRA : Oh no! Whose idea was this?
CHORUS : Pylades’. But look, here’s a messenger to tell us what happened.
[Enter MESSENGER from a side entrance.]
MESSENGER : O poor child, poor child of Agamemnon,
lady Elektra,
hear my sorry news.
ELEKTRA : We are lost!
MESSENGER : The Argives voted death for you and your brother.
ELEKTRA : OIMOI! I knew this would happen.
But tell me how it went, what did they say?
Do we die by sword or stoning?
MESSENGER : Well, I came in from the country for news of you and Orestes
(I’m a poor man, you know, but your father always gave me handouts) and I saw a crowd gathering.
“What’s going on?” I asked someone.
“Look over there,” he said, “Orestes has shown up for trial.”
>
I looked and saw an apparition approaching—Pylades and your brother, the one dropping and fainting with disease, the other lifting him along like a little brother.
So the assembly filled up, the question was put:
Who wishes to speak on whether Orestes should die as a matricide?
Then rose up Talthybios, your father’s old comrade.
But you know he’s a pawn of the ruling regime, so he talked double, glorifying your father, not quite praising your brother, interlacing fine words with foul, alluding to laws and parents and precedent, all the while giving a glad eye to the bosses at the back of the room.
That’s what that breed is like: heralds always side with power.
Next spoke Diomedes. He was for exile, not death, on moral grounds.
Some shouted assent, others objected.
Then rose up a man with no door on his mouth—
a big talker—guy with a talent for abuse (and we know who hired him).
He said to kill you and Orestes by stoning.
Tyndareus seconded.
Then another stood up and spoke on the opposite side.
A manly man, decent, a farmer but intelligent.
He tried to come to grips with the arguments.
Said we should crown Orestes for avenging his father
and putting a godless woman to death.
She was a threat to our whole way of life, he said.
How could we go off to war with wives like that at home, defiling the master’s bed!
Respectable people found this fellow convincing.
No one else spoke. Your brother came forward.
Argives, he said, no less than my father was I fighting for you when I killed her.
If murder of husbands is granted to women who’ll escape death? Should we be their slaves?
It’s all upside down! She was the criminal!
If you put me to death, where are our laws?
Anarchy’s next!
Well, he didn’t persuade the majority,
though some of us thought he made sense.
That other scoundrel won the day.
The vote was for death.
Orestes just barely persuaded the crowd to give up the stoning idea.
Said he would die by his own hand, this day, with you.
Pylades is bringing him here now, they’re both in tears, you’ll see. Bitter spectacle.
So get your sword ready.
Or rope, however you wish to die.
Your noble birth has been no help to you—not to say Apollo on his famous oracle seat!
CHORUS : I begin the lament.
I scratch my cheek
to bloody detriment,
I beat my head
and the sound echoes down to hell.
Let all the land cry out
and shave its head for grief.
Pity comes forward
for those who will die.
There are no more heroes in Greece!
Ruined and gone
is the whole house of Pelops.
Blessedness has flown.
Envy came down from gods
and a bloody vote from citizens.
O you human beings made of tears,
look how your fate goes astray from your hopes.
Grief upon grief,
the life of mortals is a line no ruler can draw.
ELEKTRA : I want to fly!
To the middle of the sky
where (they say) is a rock that swings on a
golden chain—
I will cry aloud
to ancient Tantalos
who fathered generations of ruin,
generations of pure pain.
You know of the horses that ran mad and
crashed in the sea.
You know the prodigies, curses, strife from
which we have never been free.
Death breeding death out of death is the
law of our house.
It all comes down on me.
CHORUS : Here comes Orestes, a man sentenced to death
and trusty Pylades, as good as a brother, guiding him along.
[Enter ORESTES and PYLADES.]
ELEKTRA : Oh sorrow! I groan to see you standing, brother,
at the very gates of death.
I may be looking on you for the last time!
I may be losing my mind!
ORESTES : Quiet now. No female shrieking.
It is a sad business, but still.
ELEKTRA : Quiet! How should I be quiet!
This may be the final daylight you and I will ever see!
ORESTES : Don’t drag me down.
I’m already down! Let it be!
ELEKTRA : I feel such pity for you, for your boyhood, for your poor young life cut off at the roots.
ORESTES : For gods’ sake don’t unman me.
I forbid you to bring me to tears.
ELEKTRA : We’re about to die. I cannot not groan.
To love life is a pitiful thing but all mortals do.
ORESTES : This day is ordained for us.
We must use either rope or sword.
ELEKTRA : You kill me, Orestes. Don’t let some Argive stranger insult Agamemnon’s child.
ORESTES : No, mother blood is enough for me, I can’t kill you.
It must be your own hand. In your own way.
ELEKTRA : So be it. Sword, then.
But I need to put my arms around your neck.
ORESTES : Take your pleasure. If it is pleasure.
ELEKTRA : O most beloved! We share one soul!
ORESTES : You will melt me. I want to embrace you
too—oh why not?
Beloved sister of mine!
This takes the place of marriage and children for both of us, doesn’t it.
ELEKTRA : PHEU! I wish we could die by the same sword
and lie in the same tomb.
ORESTES : That would be sweet. But we’re short of friends to arrange this.
ELEKTRA : So Menelaos did not speak up to save your life, that perfidious coward?
ORESTES : Didn’t show his face. He’s a man with an eye on the throne.
Now come, let’s make a death worthy of Agamemnon.
I’ll show this city I’m noble—I’ll stab right through my liver.
And you, Elektra, match me in courage.
Pylades, be our referee.
Lay us out after death
and bury us in our father’s tomb.
Farewell. I go to it.
PYLADES : Hold on, hold on, I have to protest.
Do you think I would choose to live without you?
ORESTES : Oh but you can’t die too!
PYLADES : Why not?
ORESTES : You didn’t kill your mother.
PYLADES : I shared the deed.
ORESTES : No, don’t do it! You have a city, a house, a father, a fortune—
