Electra

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 471 sections

1.1180
lying on the earth at the blow from my hand, atonement for my suffering . . .
1.1182
Too many tears, my brother, and I am the cause. Unhappy, that I came to fiery rage against this woman, who was my mother!
1.1185
Alas for your fate; you gave birth to unbearable pain, and you suffered it, miserably and beyond, from your children. Yet you have rightly paid for their father’s murder.
1.1190
Ah, Phoebus! you proclaimed in song unclear justice, but you have brought about clear woes, and granted me a bloody destiny far from the land of Hellas. To what other city can I go?
1.1195
What host, what pious man will look at me, who killed my mother?
1.1198
Ah me! Where can I go, to what dance, to what marriage? What husband will receive me
1.1200
into the bridal bed?
1.1201
Again, again your thought changes with the breeze; for now you think piously, though you did not before, and you did dreadful things,
1.1205
my dear, to your unwilling brother.
2.1206
Did you see how the unhappy one threw off her robe and showed her bosom in the slaughter, alas, hurling to the ground the limbs that gave me birth? And her hair, I—
2.1210
I know it well; you passed through agony, hearing the mournful wail of the mother that bore you.
2.1214
She uttered this cry, putting her hand to my chin:
2.1215
My child, I entreat you! And she clung to my cheeks, so that the sword fell from my hand.
2.1218
The unhappy one! How did you endure to see the blood
2.1220
of your mother, breathing her last before your eyes?
3.1221
I threw my cloak over my eyes, and began the sacrifice by plunging the sword into my mother’s throat.
3.1224
And I urged you on and
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put my hand to the sword together with you.
3.1226
You have done the most dreadful of deeds.
3.1227
Take and hide the limbs of our mother beneath a robe, and close the wounds. Turning to the corpse Ah! You gave birth to your own murderers.
3.1230
There, I am putting this cloak over the one loved and not loved.
3.1232
An end of great troubles for the house.
1233
Divine forms are seen above the house. But see the ones who are appearing over the top of the house—spirits or gods from heaven?
1235
For this path does not belong to men. Why ever do they come into the clear sight of mortals?
1238
Son of Agamemnon, listen; the twin sons of Zeus, your mother’s brothers,
1240
Castor and his brother Polydeuces, are calling you. Having just now calmed the swell of the sea, terrible for ships, we have come to Argos when we saw the slaying of our sister, your mother. Now she has her just reward, but you have not acted justly,
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and Phoebus, Phoebus—but I am silent, for he is my lord; although he is wise, he gave you oracles that were not. But it is necessary to accept these things. As to what remains, you must do what Fate and Zeus have accomplished for you. Give Electra to Pylades as his wife to take to his home;
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but you leave Argos; for it is not for you, who killed your mother, to set foot in this city. And the dread goddesses of death, the one who glare like hounds, will drive you up and down, a maddened wanderer. Go to Athens and embrace the holy image of Pallas;
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for she will prevent them, flickering with dreadful serpents, from touching you, as she stretches over your head her Gorgon-faced shield. There is a hill of Ares, where the gods first sat over their votes to decide on bloodshed,
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when savage Ares killed Halirrothius, son of the ocean’s ruler, in anger for the unholy violation of his daughter, so that the tribunal is most sacred and secure in the eyes of the gods.
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You also must run your risk here, for murder.
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An equal number of votes cast will save you from dying by the verdict; for Loxias will take the blame upon himself, since it was his oracle that advised your mother’s murder. And this law will be set for posterity, that the accused will always win his case if he has equal votes.
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Then the dread goddesses, stricken with grief at this, will sink into a cleft of the earth beside this hill, a holy, revered prophetic shrine for mortals. You must found an Arcadian city beside the streams of Alpheus near the sacred enclosure to Lycaean Apollo;
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and the city will be called after your name. I say this to you. As for this corpse of Aegisthus, the citizens of Argos will cover it in the earth in burial. But as for your mother, Menelaus, who has arrived at Nauplia only now after capturing Troy,
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will bury her, with Helen helping him; for she has come from Proteus’ house, leaving Egypt, and she never went to Troy; Zeus, to stir up strife and bloodshed among mortals, sent a phantom of Helen to Ilium. Now let Pylades, having one who is both a virgin and a married woman,
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go home from the Achaean land, and let him conduct the one called your brother-in-law to the land of Phocis, and give him a weight of riches. But you set out along the narrow Isthmus, and go to Cecropia’s blessed hill.
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For once you have completed your appointed lot of murder, you will be happy, freed from these troubles.
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Sons of Zeus, is it right for us to draw near to speak with you?
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It is right, for those not polluted by this murder.
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May I too share your conversation, sons of Tyndareus?
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You too; to Phoebus I will attribute this bloody deed.
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How was it that you, being gods and the brothers of this murdered woman,
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did not keep the death-goddesses away from her house?
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Necessity’s fate led to what must be, and unwise speech from the mouth of Phoebus.
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But what Apollo, what sort of oracles, ordained for me to be my mother’s murderer?
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The deeds were shared, the fates were shared; one ancestral curse has ground down both.
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Ah, my sister, seeing you after a long time, at once I am robbed of your affection,
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and I must abandon you, abandoned by you.
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She has a husband and a home; she does not suffer pitiably, except that she leaves the city of the Argives.
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And what other unhappiness is greater
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than to leave the boundary of one’s native land?
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But I shall leave my father’s house, and at a stranger’s tribunal undergo trial for my mother’s murder.
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Have courage; you will go
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to the holy town of Pallas; only hold out.
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Clasp me to your breast, my dearest brother; for the curse of our mother’s blood is separating us from our father’s home.
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Throw your arms in close embrace about me. Lament as if I were dead, over my grave.
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Alas! You have said things terrible even for gods to hear. For in me and in the Olympians there is
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pity for much-suffering mortals.
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I shall no longer see you!
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Nor will I draw near your sight!
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These are my last words to you.
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Farewell, my city!
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And a long farewell to you, my fellow-countrywomen!
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Are you going already, most faithful one?
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I am going, my young eye wet with tears.
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Go, Pylades, and be happy; marry Electra.
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Marriage will be for them to think of. But go towards Athens, seeking to escape these hounds of hell, for they are pursuing you fearfully,
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the dark-skinned ones, with snakes for hands, holding a reward of dreadful pains. But we two must go in haste over the Sicilian sea to rescue the seagoing ships. As we go through the plains of the air,
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we do not come to the aid of those who are polluted; but we save and release from severe hardships those who love piety and justice in their ways of life. And so, let no one wish to act unjustly,
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or set sail with perjurers; as a god, I give this address to mortals.
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Farewell! Any mortal who is able to fare well, and is not worn down by any misfortune, achieves happiness.

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0006.tlg012.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source.