that feeble creature, who everyone despises,
a man who fights his battles with the help of women.
But I go on waiting for Orestes to come back
to put a stop to this; I’m dying miserably.
For by putting off his return he has destroyed
the hopes I had and the hopes I did not.
In times like this, my friends, there can be
no restraint or piety. No, the presence of evil
requires in response evil behavior.
310
CHORUS: Now tell us, can you speak like this,
when Aegisthus is around? Is he away from home?
ELECTRA: Of course he is away, do you suppose if he were here
I could be outside? He is now in the farmland.
CHORUS: If that is so, then I am more confident
that I can have a conversation with you.
ELECTRA: He is away, so ask me what you please.
CHORUS: I shall ask you. What can you say about your brother?
Has he come, or will he come? I wish to know.
ELECTRA: He says he is; says it, but does not do it.
320
CHORUS: Men often hesitate to take on a major task.
ELECTRA: When I rescued him I did not hesitate.
CHORUS: Have faith, he is well-born. He will help his friends.
ELECTRA: I trust him, or I would not have lived this long.
CHORUS: Now say nothing more. I see your sister Chrysothemis,
coming from the house, child of the same father
and the same mother, holding in her hands
tomb-offerings for someone beneath the earth.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: What have you come out again to say
before the entrance door, my sister?
330
Not in all this time have you wished to learn
not to indulge yourself in useless anger!
I know myself well enough by now
that I regret the way things are at present.
If I had power, I’d show them how I feel.
But in times of trouble I must furl my sails,
seem to be inactive, not cause pain.
I want you also to do the same.
I know there’s no justice in what I say,
but in what you think right. But if I don’t want to
340
be treated like a slave, I must obey my rulers.
ELECTRA: It’s dreadful that though you are his daughter,
you forget your father, and care for your mother.
It is from her that you learned all the advice
you give to me. There’s nothing there that’s yours.
You choose: either be a fool, or wise up
and forget about your “friends.”*15
You said yourself just now, that if you were strong
You would demonstrate just how much you hate them.
But when I do everything I can to avenge my father
350
you won’t help me, but sabotage my work.
So add cowardice to your other faults!
So tell me, or learn from me, what benefit
might come to me if I stopped my lamentations?
I’m living, miserably, I know, but that’s enough for me.
I give pain to them, and in that way bring honor
to the dead, if in that place there is any consolation.
As I see it, you hate them, but only talk of hating.
In practice you go on living with your father’s killers.
I could never do that, not even if someone brought
360
as gifts to me the luxuries you now enjoy,
could I go along with them. You can have
your rich table, and the easy flow of food.
All the nourishment I need is not to harm myself.
As for your wealth, I’ve no desire to share it,
nor would you, if you had sense. You could
be known as a child of a most noble father,
but instead you’re called your mother’s child.
So most people will regard you as a coward,
a traitor to your dead father and your friends.
CHORUS: (to Electra) By the gods, do not turn to anger. There is benefit
370
in what each of you has said, if you could learn
from what she says, and she in turn could learn from you.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Friends, somehow I have adjusted to her ways
of speaking. But I would not have ever brought this up
if I had not learned that great trouble was coming
to her, that will put an end to her lamentations.
ELECTRA: So tell me about this horror. If you can tell me something
worse than what I have, I won’t argue with you.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Yes, I shall tell you everything I know.
If you do not stop your lamentations, they will send you
380
to a place where you shall never see the sunlight.
You shall be living in a shuttered dwelling
away from here, and sing your sorrows there.
Think about that, and don’t blame me if in the future
you’re imprisoned. Now’s the time for good sense.
ELECTRA: And this is what they have planned for me?
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Yes, as soon as Aegisthus comes home!
ELECTRA: I hope he comes soon, if that’s what they want.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Why have you uttered this curse against yourself?
ELECTRA: So he will come, if he intends to carry out these plans.
390
CHRYSOTHEMIS: What do you want to happen? What are you thinking?
ELECTRA: I want to get as far from you as I can.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Don’t you recall what your present life is like?
ELECTRA: My life is wonderful, beyond amazement!
CHRYSOTHEMIS: It would be, if you knew how to think straight!
ELECTRA: Don’t teach me to betray my friends.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: I don’t teach that; just to respect authority.
ELECTRA: Go ahead and fawn on them. That’s not what I do.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Nothing good comes from dying from stupidity.
ELECTRA: If I must, I’ll die, and bring honor to my father.
400
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Our father, I know, forgives our failure to act.
ELECTRA: Those are words cowards approve of!
CHRYSOTHEMIS: You won’t listen and take my advice?
ELECTRA: No, never. May I never be so devoid of sense!
CHRYSOTHEMIS: Then I shall leave to go where I have been sent.
ELECTRA: You’re heading where? Who’ll get these burnt offerings?
CHRYSOTHEMIS: My mother sent me to pour libations at my father’s tomb.
ELECTRA: What did you say? Offerings to her worst enemy?
CHRYSOTHEMIS: To the man she killed? That’s what you mean to say.
ELECTRA: Did one of her friends advise her? Who wants this done?
410
CHRYSOTHEMIS: She was frightened by a nightmare, I believe.
ELECTRA: Gods of my fathers, now’s the time to stand beside me.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: You’re in some way encouraged by her fears?
ELECTRA: If you tell me what she saw, then I could tell you.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: I don’t know much; I can only say a little.
ELECTRA: Then tell me that, for often it’s the little stories
which sink mortals or set them straight.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: The story is that she saw in a dream
a second encounter with your father and mine,
who had come back to life. And then he took the staff
420
he used to carry, which Aegisthus carries now,
and planted it beside the hearth.*16 And from it
grew a bough with leaves that shaded
all the country of
the Mycenaeans.
I heard this from someone who was there
when she told the Sun about her dream.*17
More than this I do not know, except
it was her fear that made her send me out.*18
431
ELECTRA: Then, dear sister, bring nothing to the tomb
that you hold in your hands. It is not right
or holy to set down burial offerings or libations
to our father from the woman who’s his enemy.
Give them to the winds or hide them deep within
the dust, so that no part of them comes near
our father’s grave. Then when she dies,
they’ll be a keepsake for her down below.
Only the most shameless of all women,
440
would have placed her hostile libations
on the grave of the man she murdered.
Do you suppose that the dead man
in his grave would welcome such a gift
from the woman who mutilated his body,*19
and used the blood from his wounds to rinse away
pollution?*20 Do you think these offerings
will bring her absolution from his murder?
Impossible! No, throw them out. Instead
cut locks of hair from your head
450
and from my sad head, too, a small gift,
but all I have. Give them to him, this dull hair
and my sash, though it has no rich ornament.
Kneel down and ask him to come to us,
a kindly helper from below against our enemies;
ask that his son, Orestes, with his strong arms
be living, on his way to trample on our enemies!
Then in future we can adorn his tomb
and bring him gifts with hands richer than these.
I believe, yes, I believe, that our father still cares
460
and sent her the dreams she could not bear to see.
So, my sister, take on this task both for yourself
and me, to help us, and the dearest of all mortals,
the father whom we share, who lies in Hades.
CHORUS: Your sister speaks words of piety, my dear,
and if you are wise, you will do what she says.
CHRYSOTHEMIS: I shall, for justice does not provide an excuse
for two people to argue; it urges us to act.
But while I dare to carry out this deed,
friends, by the gods I ask that you keep silent,
470
since if our mother learns about this, I am sure
I will regret that I have dared to do this deed.
(Chrysothemis leaves; Electra remains onstage while the Chorus sing the first stasimon.)
strophe
CHORUS: If I am a prophet, not misguided
or lacking in good sense,
an earlier prophet, Justice, is coming,
bringing just power in her hands.
She is coming, my child, in a short time.
Courage supports me
480
now that I have heard
of her dream with its sweet message.
For your father has not forgotten,
the lord of the Greeks,
nor has the old bronze-forged
two-bladed axe
that killed him in shameful savagery.
antistrophe
She is coming, with many feet, many hands,
490
hidden in a cruel ambush,
the Erinys with feet of bronze.*21
For the conflicts from their polluted union,
with its accursed bed, accursed marriage,
has attacked them*22 for their crimes.
Because of this I have courage;
never, never, I think
shall a favorable portent
come to the murderers and their accomplices.
Terrifying dreams or oracles
would have no value
500
as prophecy,
if this night apparition bodes well.
epode
Pelops’ horse-race*23
Long ago, cause of many sorrows,
you came and destroyed
this land:
Myrsilus, laid to rest,
thrown in the sea,
510
hurled headlong
from the gilded chariot,
in miserable savagery.
To this day never
has it left this house,
cause of many sorrows: savagery.
(Clytemnestra enters from the palace.)
CLYTEMNESTRA: I see that you are on the loose again, outside,*24
because Aegisthus is not here. He always keeps you in,
so you won’t run about and disgrace your family.
Now that he is away, you do have no respect for me.
520
You have said many things to many people,
that I am shameless and rule unjustly,
and treat you viciously, and your friends.
I am not vicious, but I must say harsh words
when I hear harsh words from you about me.
Your father, nothing else, is always your pretext,
because I caused his death. I did, I know that well.
I cannot deny that this is what I did.
Yet the goddess Justice killed him, not I alone,
and you would have helped her, if you had sense.
530
Since this father of yours, the one you always mourn,
was the only Greek who dared to sacrifice your sister*25
to the gods. He planted the seed, but did endure
the same pain as I did, who gave birth to her.
So, explain this to me. For whose sake
did he sacrifice her? You say for the Argives?
It was not up to them to kill my child.
If he killed her to help his brother Menelaus,
by dying he should have compensated me!
In any case Menelaus had two children,
540
they should have died instead of her, if
for their parents’ sake the ships had sailed.*26
Did Hades have such a great desire to feast*27
upon a child of mine, instead of one of hers?
Or was there present in your killer father
Some need for my children, rather than Menelaus’?
Isn’t that the thinking of a foolish and evil parent?
I believe it is, even if you do not share my opinion.
The dead girl would say so, if she had a voice.
So I am not disheartened by what happened.
550
If I seem to you to reason wrongly, reason rightly
yourself, before you blame your relatives.
ELECTRA: You cannot say that I was the first to say
something painful, not after what you said.
Now, if you will let me, I would like to speak
the truth about the dead man and my sister, too.
CLYTEMNESTRA: Of course I’ll let you. I would have listened to you,
if you’d ever begun your speech like this.
ELECTRA: Now I’ll tell you. You say you killed my father.
What words could be more disgraceful than these,
560
whether you were justified or not. I’ll tell you,
You did not act justly. Persuasion drove you to it,
from an evil man, the man you live with now!
Ask the hunter goddess Artemis why in Aulis
she made him suffer before she stopped the winds.*28
I’ll explain, since we cannot ask her to tell us.
My father once, so I have been told,
in his leisure time, frightened with his step
a dappled horned stag, and when he killed him,
he happened to throw out some kind of boast.
570
Because of that Artemis, Leto’s daughter
held back the fleet until my father sacrificed
his own daughter in compensation for the stag.
That’s the reason for her sacrifice. There was no other way
to free the army to go home or on to Ilion.
So he was forced to do it, and though he fought it,
he sacrificed her, not for the sake of Menelaus.
But if he had, for I’ll also take up your argument,
and he killed her to help him, because of this
you had to kill him? Under what law?
580
Watch: if you create this law for mortals
that law will bring you suffering and regrets.
For if we kill one person in requital for another
you’d be first to die, if justice was served.
No, watch out: you have invented an excuse!
If you wish, tell me the reason why you now
commit the most shameful of all deeds:
you are sleeping with the murderer
who in the past helped you kill my father.
You bear his children, you’ve cast out
590
your legal children, scions of a legal marriage.
How could I approve of this? Even if you say
you’re owed in payment for your daughter?
So you insist, but it’s still shameful. It is wrong
to marry enemies for your daughter’s sake.
But there’s no way I can advise you,
because you’ll never miss a chance to say
I’m badmouthing you. Indeed, I think of you
more as my master than my mother.
600
My life is hard, because I keep on living
with evils caused by you and your partner.
Elsewhere your other child, the one you almost killed,
poor Orestes, wears away his miserable life.
You’re always accusing me of keeping him alive
to get revenge. You must understand
that if I had the power, I would have done so.
Go ahead, tell everyone, if you need to
that I badmouth you, that I’m so shameful.
If I’ve become an expert in this behavior,
I’d guess that I’ve been emulating you!
CHORUS: (to Clytemnestra)[…]*29
610
I see you breathing rage, but I do not see
you asking if justice is on her side.
CLYTEMNESTRA: What sort of questions should I ask about her,
when she speaks to her mother with such insolence,
though she’s a child. Surely you must realize
that she is without shame, capable of anything.
ELECTRA: You know quite well that I’m ashamed,
Though I don’t act it. What I do is wrong
The Greek Plays Page 42