by Aeschylus
where your deep bed holds you fast?
The sphere of darkness stands opposed
to the sphere of light. And yet the lament
that glorifies brings joy, they say,
to the sons of Atreus who lie
here before the palace door.
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CHORUS My son, the dead man’s spirit is not
devoured
Strophe 2
by the fierce jaws of the fire;
no, later on he lets his anger spring—
the dead man is lamented,
the avenger brought to light, and the just dirge
owed to forebears and
to fathers, stirred to action on every side,
hunts the guilty down.
ELECTRA So hear us, father, as each one
Antistrophe 1
cries out for grief with many tears:
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now we, your children, sing this dirge
for you over your tomb, this tomb
that’s welcomed us as suppliants
as well as exiles. What here is well?
What here is free of evil? Who here
can wrestle Ruin to a third fall?
CHORUS But, bad as things are now, a god,
if he wills it,
still could alter all our crying
to a happier key, and then
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instead of keening by a grave
a paean in the royal halls
will usher in the much-
loved mixing bowl full of new wine.
ORESTES If only, father, you had fallen
Strophe 3
at Troy, run through by a Lycian spear,
you would have left behind such glory
in your halls! You would have left your children
such a life that men would turn
to look at them with admiration
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when they walked; you would have had
a great tomb heaped with earth, a burden
easier for your house to bear.
CHORUS A friend to the friends who died at Troy
so nobly,
Antistrophe 2
greatest and most revered
among the heroes there below the earth,
and minister to those
who rule the dark! For while he lived he was
a king of kings, a king
over those who wield in their hands the awesome
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power that destiny
allots, the sceptre citizens obey.
ELECTRA Not even there at Troy, father,
Antistrophe 3
would I have wanted you to die
and be buried by Scamander’s stream
with all the other spear-fallen host!
If only your killers could have been killed
first, killed in the same way; if only—
far off in Argos—we could have heard
the news of their death, and never had
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to know the troubles we know now!
CHORUS These things you speak of, child, are better
than gold, yes, better even
than the great good fortune of
the blessed race that lives
beyond the North Wind’s lair. For there’s
no end to wishing, you
can do it all you want. But come now—
since the sharp snap of this
double lash strikes home—our side
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already has its allies
underground, and the hateful ones
in power have unclean hands.
Time now for you to act, his children.
ORESTES This pierces straight through my ear like an
arrow:
Strophe 4
Zeus, Zeus, you deliver late-
avenging devastation from below
to the over bold and reckless, and
it will be paid at last, one way
or other, the debt that’s owed to parents!
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CHORUS May it be mine—the shrill triumphant cry
Strophe 5
when the man at last
is cut down, and the woman slaughtered! Why?
Why do I try to hide
what nevertheless flies around and sets
my mind to shaking; so my heart’s prow
pushes hard against the wrath
that blows back in against it
just as hard, heavy with all my hatred.
ELECTRA And when will Zeus, all flourishing,
Antistrophe 4
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bring his hand against them and at last
cut off their heads? Now let a pledge
be given to this land: I demand
justice from the unjust! Hear me,
Earth, and the dark lords underground!
CHORUS But it is law: that each and every
drop of blood spilled
on the ground calls out for more blood spilled.
Yes, murder cries for the Erinys
who rise from those who died before
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to bring ruin on the heels of ruin.
ORESTES POPOI! Look at us now, you powers
Strophe 6
who rule the underworld, great curses
of the dead, behold the last remnants
of the Atreidae, dishonored, helpless,
cast out from their very home!
Where, Zeus, which way can we now turn?
CHORUS My heart in its turn is shaken as I listen
Antistrophe 5
to this keening
so that I’m stripped of hope, my mind all darkened
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by these words I hear;
but when its strength renews, hope brightens till,
all pain eclipsed,
it suddenly shines before me in its sheer
loveliness.
ELECTRA What do we say to prevail? Must we
Antistrophe 6
tell over again the miseries
we’ve suffered, yes, at our mother’s hands?
Fawn all she wants, it won’t soothe us,
not ever. For from all she’s done
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my heart’s become a savage wolf,
enraged, and unappeasable.
CHORUS I mourned him the way a Mede would do,
I beat
Strophe 7
my breast in the strains
of a wailing woman from Susa. You would have seen
wave after wave
of blows that my outstretched arms, my two hands,
striking
now, now clutching,
brought down from above, from high above, blood
splattering
all over me
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as my battered head resounded with the sound
of pummeling.
ELECTRA IO! IO! Cruel, shameless mother!
Strophe 8
Cruel burial, burying a king
without his people, without the dirges
he deserved, a husband you had
the heart to bury and not mourn!
ORESTES Everything in your story tells dishonor.
Strophe 9
But I swear
with god’s help, with the help of my own hand,
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she’ll pay for having
done this to my father. Just let me kill her,
then I can die myself!
CHORUS And he was mutilated, did you know
that?
Antistrophe 9
Cut apart,
disfigured? And she who buried him like that
did it to make
his death impossible for you to bear.
Your father died
horribly dishonored. Now you know.
ELECTRA You speak about my father’s death; that
day,
Antistrophe 7
&nbs
p; though, I was far
away, humiliated and ignored,
locked up inside
a dark room like a vicious dog, crying
great streams of grief
as readily as someone else might laugh. Hear this
and write it in your hearts!
CHORUS Write it, and let the words pierce
Antistrophe 8
through your ears to where your mind is quiet.
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All we have told you up to now
is true; now burn to know the rest!
Keep your heart clenched tight
with anger for the fight ahead!
ORESTES Father, listen to me! Come to your loved
ones!
Strophe 10
ELECTRA Drenched in tears, I join my voice to his!
CHORUS Our band cries out, too, in one voice:
come back into the light!
Hear us now my king, side with us
against our enemies!
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ORESTES Now force will battle force, and justice
justice!
Antistrophe 10
ELECTRA O gods, answer my just prayer with your justice!
CHORUS I shiver as I listen to them pray!
Though it’s waited long,
let what is destined find its way at last
to those who pray for it.
O trouble bred in the bloodlines,
Strophe 11
and blood-drenched stroke
striking discordant notes of ruin!
Ah, the festering wound,
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the hideous cry, unbearable,
the pain no one can soothe!
Only the house and no one else
Antistrophe 11
outside it, none, can stop
the festering; only the children can
do this bloody healing!
We sing this harsh hymn to the gods
alive below the earth!
So hear us now, you blessed ones
beneath the ground,
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answer our prayer, and send the strength
we need to bring triumph to these children.
ORESTES Father, who didn’t die a king’s death, grant me
the power to be the ruler of your house!
ELECTRA I, too, father, ask your help in this:
to cut Aegisthus down, and get away.
ORESTES This way you’ll have the customary feasts;
If not, among the richly feted dead,
as offerings steam and burn, you’ll get no honor.
ELECTRA And I will bring wine from my cherished store,
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my bridal wine from your house, father, and
of all tombs I will honor your tomb most.
ORESTES O earth send up my father to guide the battle!
ELECTRA Persephone, grant us his transfigured power!
ORESTES Remember the bath in which they killed you, Father!
ELECTRA Remember the strange net they cast to catch you in!
ORESTES You were tangled in chains forged by no blacksmith,
father!
ELECTRA Shrouds made to shame you as they held you fast!
ORESTES Don’t these taunts rouse you to awaken, father?
ELECTRA Now won’t you lift up your beloved head?
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ORESTES Send Justice to fight beside us, those you love,
or help us catch them in the same grip—
if you’d like to see the ones who threw you thrown.
ELECTRA Father, hear this too, my final cry:
Look at your nestlings at your tomb, and pity
our sorrows, the woman’s and the man’s alike.
ORESTES Don’t wipe away the seed of Pelops. So long
as we live, you yourself can’t die, though dead.
For children keep a man’s fame living on
after he dies; like corks that buoy a net up,
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saving the flaxen meshes from the deep.
ELECTRA Hear us! This keening has been all for you.
You save yourself by honoring our words.
CHORUS LEADER Surely, no one would reproach you for a drawnout
prayer that compensates the tomb for tears
unwept before. But now it’s time to act,
since you’re poised to act. It’s time to test your luck.
ORESTES And we will, too. But I don’t think it’s straying
from our path to ask why she would send libations.
What made her try, too late, to cure a sickness
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long past curing? Such puny solace now
to send to the dead who hates her. What was she
thinking?
The gift is so much less than the offense.
Besides, a man who pours out everything
he owns to make atonement for a life
he’s taken only throws his wealth away,
or so the saying goes. So tell me why
she’s acted as she has. I want to know.
CHORUS LEADER I know, child, I was there. I saw her shaken
by dreams and terrors that would wake her, keep her
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wandering through the house all night. That’s why
the godless woman sent libations here.
ORESTES Do you know the dream? Can you tell me what it
was?
CHORUS LEADER She gave birth to a serpent. That’s what she said.
ORESTES What happened next? How did her story end?
CHORUS LEADER She swaddled it like a baby, and laid it down.
ORESTES What did it want to eat, the little monster?
CHORUS LEADER She gave it, in the dream, her breast to suck.
ORESTES How could the creature’s fangs not tear her nipple?
CHORUS LEADER They did. And the beast sucked blood in with the
milk.
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ORESTES No idle dream, this vision means a man.
CHORUS LEADER And scared to death she screamed herself awake,
and torches the dark had blinded now were kindled
everywhere through the palace for the queen’s sake.
It was after that she sent libations here,
hoping some sharp cure could cut away her panic.
ORESTES Then, I pray to the dark earth, and to my father’s
tomb,
that this dream will be realized for me.
Look how I read it, and make it all cohere:
for if the snake slipped out of her, as I did,
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and lay there swaddled in the very bands
that swaddled me, and opened its big jaws
wide for the nipple I was nurtured from,
and sucked in blood clots with the loving milk,
and she cried out in terror, then it follows:
just as she gave suck to this violent sign,
by violence she’ll die. I am the serpent.
I am her killer. That’s what this dream predicts.
CHORUS LEADER I make your reading of this dream my own.
Let it come true! Now tell your friends just what
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their roles are, what they should and shouldn’t do.
ORESTES The plan is simple: Electra, you go inside,
and keep what we’ve arranged to do a secret,
so that the ones who killed an honored lord
by treachery, will by treachery be killed,
caught in the tangling net they caught him in,
just as lord Apollo promised, seer
who’s never said a false word in the past.
Disguised as a stranger, with a traveler’s gear,
I’ll go to the gate of the courtyard with Pylades,
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this man here—a friend and ally to the house.
And we’ll both speak a Parnassian accent,
copying the way they talk in Phoc
is.
Then if no one at the door should welcome us
(given the curse that’s blackening the house)
we’ll wait till people passing back and forth
before the gate have noticed us, and start
to wonder why we’re kept outside and say,
“Why does Aegisthus shut the suppliant out,
if he’s at home, and knows the man’s been waiting?”
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Now listen: if I step through the courtyard gates
and find him on my father’s throne, or if
when he returns he meets me face-to-face,
before he can so much as look away,
before he can say, “Where do you come from,
stranger?”
know that I’ll strike him dead, ensnare him here
along the quick edge of my sword. And then
the Erinys, full as she is with blood, will still
guzzle his unmixed gore, poured out in a third,
a last libation.
You, Electra, keep
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a careful eye on everything inside,
so everything turns out the way we want;
and all you women, watch what you say: say nothing
when nothing need be said, and only speak
what words will suit our plans. As for the rest,
I pray to the god who stands there at the door,
watch over me, and guide this sword of mine
straight home in the struggle I’m about to face.
ELECTRA enters the palace. ORESTES and PYLADES move to one side.