by Aeschylus
she and her godless spirit preying on her children.
But how, how can I come right out and say it is
the glory of the dearest man I know - Orestes?
Stop, I’m fawning on hope.
Oh, if only
it had a herald’s voice, kind and human-
I’m so shaken, torn-and told me clearly
to throw it away, they severed it from a head
that I detest. Or it could sorrow with me
like a brother, aye,
this splendour come to honour father’s grave.
We call on the gods, and the gods well know
what storms torment us, sailors whirled to nothing.
But if we are to live and reach the haven,
one small seed could grow a mighty tree-
Look, tracks.
A new sign to tell us more.
Footmarks . . . pairs of them, like mine.
Two outlines, two prints, his own, and there,
a fellow traveller’s.
Putting her foot into ORESTES’ print.
The heel, the curve of the arch like twins.
While ORESTES emerges from behind the grave, she follows cautiously in his steps until they come together.
Step by step, my step in his . . .
we meet -
Oh the pain, like pangs of labour - this is madness!
ORESTES:
Pray for the future. Tell the gods they’ve brought
your prayers to birth, and pray that we succeed.
ELECTRA draws back, struggling for composure.
ELECTRA:
The gods - why now? What have I ever won from them?
ORESTES:
The sight you prayed to see for many years.
ELECTRA:
And you know the one I call?
ORESTES:
I know Orestes,
know he moves you deeply.
ELECTRA:
Yes,
but now what’s come to fill my prayers?
ORESTES:
Here I am. Look no further.
No one loves you more than I.
ELECTRA:
No, 220
it’s a trap, stranger . . . a net you tie around me?
ORESTES:
Then I tie myself as well.
ELECTRA:
But the pain,
you’re laughing at all-
ORESTES:
Your pain is mine.
If I laugh at yours, I only laugh at mine.
ELECTRA:
Orestes -
can I call you? - are you really-
ORESTES:
I am!
Open your eyes. So slow to learn.
You saw the lock of hair I cut in mourning.
You scanned my tracks, you could see my marks,
your breath leapt, you all but saw me in the flesh-
Look-
Holding the lock to his temple, then to ELECTRA’S.
put it where I cut it.
It’s your brother’s. Try, it matches yours.
Removing a strip of weaving from his clothing.
Work of your own hand, you tamped the loom,
look, there are wild creatures in the weaving.
She kneels beside him, weeping; he lifts her to her feet and they embrace.
No, no control yourself - don’t lose yourself in joy!
Our loved ones, well I know, would slit our throats.
LEADER:
Dearest, the darling of your father’s house,
hope of the seed we nursed with tears — you save us.
Trust to your power, win your father’s house once more!
ELECTRA:
You light to my eyes, four loves in one!
I have to call you father, it is fate;
and I turn to you the love I gave my mother—
I despise her, she deserves it, yes,
and the love I gave my sister, sacrificed
on the cruel sword, I turn to you.
You were my faith, my brother -
you alone restore my self-respect.
Praying.
Power and Justice, Saving Zeus, Third Zeus,
almighty all in all, be with us now.
ORESTES:
Zeus, Zeus, watch over all we do,
fledglings reft of the noble eagle father.
He died in the coils, the viper’s dark embrace.
We are his orphans worn down with hunger,
weak, too young to haul the father’s quarry
home to shelter.
Look down on us!
I and Electra, too, I tell you, children
robbed of our father, both of us bound
in exile from our house.
And what a father-
a priest at sacrifice, he showered you
with honours. Put an end to his nestlings now
and who will serve you banquets rich as his?
Destroy the eagle’s brood, you can never
send a sign that wins all men’s belief.
Rot the stock of a proud dynastic tree-
it can never shore your altar steaming
with the oxen in the mornings. Tend us-
we seem in ruins now, I know. Up from nothing
rear a house to greatness.
LEADER:
Softly, children,
white hopes of your father’s hearth. Someone
might hear you, children, charmed with his own voice
blurt all this out to the masters. Oh, just once
to see them - five bones crackling in the fire
spitting pitch!
ORESTES:
Apollo will never fail me, no,
his tremendous power, his oracle charges me
to see this trial through.
I can still hear the god-
a high voice ringing with winters of disaster,
piercing the heart within me, warm and strong,
unless I hunt my father’s murderers, cut them down
in their own style - they destroyed my birthright.
‘Gore them like a bull!’ he called, ‘ or pay their debt
with your own life, one long career of grief.’
He revealed so much about us,
told how the dead take root beneath the soil,
they grow with hate and plague the lives of men.
He told of the leprous boils that ride the flesh,
their wild teeth gnawing the mother tissue, aye,
and a white scurf spreads like cancer over these,
and worse, he told how assaults of Furies spring
to life on the father’s blood . . .
You can see them -
the eyes burning, grim brows working over you in the dark-
the dark sword of the dead! - your murdered kinsmen
pleading for revenge. And the madness haunts
the midnight watch, the empty terror shakes you,
harries, drives you on - an exile from your city-
a brazen whip will mutilate your back.
For such as us, no share in the wine-bowl,
no libations poured in love. You never see
your father’s wrath but it pulls you from the altars.
There is no refuge, none to take you in.
A pariah, reviled, at long last you die,
withered in the grip of all this dying.
Such oracles are persuasive, don’t you think?
And even if I am not convinced,
the rough work of the world is still to do.
So many yearnings meet and urge me on.
The god’s commands. Mounting sorrow for father.
Besides, the lack of patrimony presses hard;
and my compatriots, the glory of men
who toppled Troy with nerves of singing steel,
go at the beck and call of a brace of women.
Womanhearted he is - if not, we’ll soon see.
The leader lights the
altar fires. ORESTES, ELECTRA and the chorus gather for the invocation at the grave.
CHORUS:
Powers of destiny, mighty queens of Fate ! -
by the will of Zeus your will be done,
press on to the end now,
Justice turns the wheel.
‘Word for word, curse for curse
be born now,’ Justice thunders,
hungry for retribution,
‘stroke for bloody stroke be paid.
The one who acts must suffer.’
Three generations strong the word resounds.
ORESTES:
Dear father, father of dread,
what can I do or say to reach you now?
What breath can reach from here
to the bank where you lie moored at anchor?
What light can match your darkness? None,
but there is a kind of grace that comes
when the tears revive a proud old house
and Atreus’ sons, the warlords lost and gone.
LEADER:
The ruthless jaws of the fire,
my child, can never tame the dead,
his rage inflames his sons.
Men die and the voices rise, they light the guilty, true -
cries raised for the fathers, clear and just,
will hunt their killers harried to the end.
ELECTRA:
Then hear me now, my father,
it is my turn, my tears are welling now,
as child by child we come
to the tomb and raise the dirge, my father
Your grave receives a girl in prayer
and a man in flight, and we are one,
and the pain is equal, whose is worse?
And who outwrestles death - what third last fall?
CHORUS:
But still some god, if he desires,
may work our strains to a song of joy,
from the dirges chanted over the grave
may lift a hymn in the kings’ halls
and warm the loving cup you stir this morning.
ORESTES:
If only at Troy
a Lycian cut you down, my father-
gone, with an aura left at home behind you,
children to go their ways
and the eyes look on them bright with awe,
and the tomb you win on headlands seas away
would buoy up the house ...
LEADER:
And loved by the men you loved
who died in glory, there you’d rule
beneath the earth - lord, prince,
stem aide to the giant kings who judge the shadows there.
You were a king of kings when you drew breath;
the mace you held could make men kneel or die.
ELECTRA:
No, not under Troy! -
not dead and gone with them, my father,
hordes pierced by the spear Scamander washes down.
Sooner the killers die
as they killed you - at the hands of friends,
and the news of death would come from far away,
we’d never know this grief.
CHORUS:
You are dreaming, children,
dreams dearer than gold, more blest
than the Blest beyond the North Wind’s raging.
Dreams are easy, oh,
but the double lash is striking home.
Now our comrades group underground.
Our masters’ reeking hands are doomed -
the children take the day I
ORESTES:
That thrills his ear,
that arrow lands!
Zeus, Zeus, force up from the earth
destruction, late but true to the mark,
to the reckless heart, the killing hand -
for parents of revenge revenge be done.
LEADER:
And the ripping cries of triumph mine
to sing when the man is stabbed,
the woman dies -
why hide what’s deep inside me,
black wings beating, storming the spirit’s prow-
hurricane, slashing hatred!
ELECTRA:
Both fists at once
come down, come down -
Zeus, crush their skulls! Kill! kill!
Now give the land some faith, I beg you,
from these ancient wrongs bring forth our rights.
Hear me, Earth, and all you lords of death.
CHORUS:
It is the law: when the blood of slaughter
wets the ground it wants more blood.
Slaughter cries for the Fury
of those long dead to bring destruction
on destruction churning in its wake!
ORESTES:
Sweet Earth, how long? - great lords of death, look on,
you mighty curses of the dead. Look on
the last of Atreus’ children, here, the remnant
helpless, cast from home . . . god, where to turn?
LEADER:
And again my pulses race and leap,
I can feel your sobs, and hope
becomes despair
and the heart goes dark to hear you -
then the anguish ebbs, I see you stronger,
hope and the light come on me.
ELECTRA:
What hope? - what force to summon, what can help?
What but the pain we suffer, bred by her?
So let her fawn. She can never soothe her young wolves-
Mother dear, you bred our wolves’ raw fury.
LEADER AND CHORUS:
I beat and beat the dirge like a Persian mourner,
hands clenched tight and the blows are coming thick and fast,
you can see the hands shoot out,
now hand over hand and down - the head pulsates,
blood at the temples pounding to explode !
ELECTRA:
Reckless, brutal mother - oh dear god ! -
The brutal, cruel cortège,
the warlord stripped of his honour guard
and stripped of mourning rites -
you dared entomb your lord unwept, unsung.
ORESTES:
Shamed for all the world, you mean -
dear god, my father degraded so!
Oh she’ll pay,
she’ll pay, by the gods and these bare hands -
just let me take her life and die!
LEADER AND CHORUS:
Shamed? Butchered, I tell you - hands lopped,
strung to shackle his neck and arms!
So she worked,
she buried him, made your life a hell.
Your father mutilated - do you hear?
ELECTRA:
You tell him of father’s death, but I was an outcast,
worthless, leashed like a vicious dog in a dark cell.
I wept - laughter died that day . . .
I wept, pouring out the tears behind my veils.
Hear that, my brother, carve it on your heart !
LEADER AND CHORUS:
Let it ring in your ears
but let your heart stand firm.
The outrage stands as it stands,
you burn to know the end,
but first be strong, be steel, then down and fight.
ORESTES:
I am calling you, my father — be with all you love !
ELECTRA:
I am with you, calling through my tears.
LEADER AND CHORUS:
We band together now, the call resounds-
hear us now, come back into the light.
Be with us, battle all you hate.
ORESTES:
Now force clash with force — right with right !
ELECTRA:
Dear gods, be just - win back our rights.
LEADER AND CHORUS:
The flesh crawls to hear them pray.
The hour of doom has waited long . . .
pray for it once, and oh
my god, it comes.
CHORUS:
Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death
and the stroke that hits the vein,
the haemorrhage none can staunch, the grief,
the curse no man can bear.
But there is a cure in the house
and not outside it, no,
not from others but from them,
their bloody strife. We sing to you,
dark gods beneath the earth.
Now hear, you blissful powers underground -
answer the call, send help.
Bless the children, give them triumph now.
They withdraw, while ELECTRA and ORESTES come to the altar.
ORESTES:
Father, king, no royal death you died -
give me the power now to rule our house.
ELECTRA:
I need you too, my father.
Help me kill her lover, then go free.
ORESTES:
Then men will extend the sacred feast to you.
Or else, when the steam and the rich savour bum
for Mother Earth, you will starve for honour.
ELECTRA:
And I will pour my birthright out to you -
the wine of the fathers’ house, my bridal wine,
and first of all the shrines revere your tomb.
ORESTES: