Electra

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 602 sections

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Son of him who once commanded our forces at Troy, son of Agamemnon!—now you may survey all that your heart has desired for so long. There is the ancient Argos of your yearning,
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that consecrated land from which the gad-fly drove the daughter of Inachus; there, Orestes, is the Lycean market place, named from the wolf-slaying god; there on the left is Hera’s famous temple; and in this place to which we have come, know that you see Mycenae, the rich in gold,
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and here the house of Pelops’ heirs, so often stained with bloodshed. Long ago from here, away from the murder of your father, I carried you for her whose blood is yours, your sister, and saved you and reared you up to manhood to be the avenger of your murdered father.
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Now, therefore, Orestes, and you, best of allies, Pylades, our plan of action must be quickly laid; for look, already the sun’s bright ray is stirring the birds’ songs into clarity, and the kindly darkness of the stars is spent.
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Before, then, anyone comes out from the house, we must make our plans, since we are at the point where it is no longer opportune to hesitate, but it is the moment for action.
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True friend and follower, how well you prove your loyalty to our house!
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Just as a thoroughbred mount, even if advanced in years, does not lose courage in danger, but pricks up his ears, so you speed us forward and follow in the first ranks. I will tell you, then, what I have determined.
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Listen closely to my words and correct me, if I miss the mark in any way.When I went to the Pythian oracle to learn how I might avenge my father on his murderers,
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Phoebus gave me the commandment which you will now hear: that alone, and by stealth, without the aid of arms or large numbers, I should carry off my right hand’s just slaughters. Accordingly, since I received this divine declaration, you must go into that house there
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when opportunity gives you entrance, and learn all that is happening, so that you may report to us out of sure knowledge. Your age and the lapse of time will prevent them from recognizing you; they will never suspect who you are with that silvered hair. Let your story be that you are a Phocian stranger
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sent by Phanoteus, since he is the greatest of their allies. Tell them, and affirm it with your oath, that Orestes has perished by a fatal chance, hurled at the Pythian games
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from his speeding chariot. Let that be the substance of your message. Meanwhile, we will first crown my father’s tomb as the god ordered with libations and the luxuriant tribute of a severed lock; then we will return here, bearing in our hands an urn of hammered bronze
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—now hidden, as you no doubt know, in the brushwood—so that we may gladden them with the false tidings that this body of mine exists no more, but has been consumed with fire and reduced to ashes. How does it hurt me, when by feigned death
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I find true life and win renown? No word is ill-omened, I trust, if it yields gain. For often before now I have seen clever men die in false report; then, when they return home, they are held in greater honor.
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And so for myself I trust that as a result of this rumor I, too, shall live, shining down like a star upon my enemies.But you, O my fatherland and native gods of my soil, receive me with good fortune in this journey, and you also, house of my ancestors,
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since I come by divine mandate to cleanse you as justice demands. Do not dismiss me from this land in dishonor, but grant that I may rule over my possessions and restore my house!I have said enough. Go now, old one, and take care to watch over your task.
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The two of us will depart; for so opportunity bids, chief ruler of every enterprise for men.
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ah, me, ah, joyless me!
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Listen, my son; from the doors of the house, I think, came the sound of some serving girl moaning inside.
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Can it be my joyless Electra? Shall we remain here and listen to her cries?
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No, no; before all else, let us strive to obey the commands of Loxias and from them make a fair beginning by pouring libations to your father. For such actions bring
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victory within our grasp and give us mastery in all our doings. Exeunt Paedagogus on the spectators left, Orestes and Pylades on the right.
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O you pure sunlight, and you air, light’s equal partner over earth, how often have you heard the chords of my laments
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and the thudding blows against this bloodied breast at the time of gloomy night’s leaving off! My accursed bed in that house of suffering there knows well already how I observe my night-long rites—how often I bewail my miserable
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father, whom bloody Ares did not welcome with deadly gifts in a foreign land, but my mother and her bedfellow Aegisthus split his head with murderous axe, just as woodmen chop an oak.
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And for this crime no pitying cry bursts from any lips but mine, when you, Father, have died a death so cruel and so deserving of pity!
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But never will I end from cries and bitter lamentation,
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while I look on the stars’ glistening flashes or on this light of day. No, like the nightingale, slayer of her offspring, I will wail without ceasing, and cry aloud to all here at the doors of my father.
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O House of Hades and Persephone! O Hermes of the shades! O potent Curse, and you fearsome daughters of the gods, the Erinyes, who take note when a life is unjustly taken, when a marriage-bed is thievishly dishonored,
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come, help me, bring vengeance for the murder of my father and send me my brother. I no longer have the strength to hold up alone against
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the load of grief that crushes me.
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Ah, Electra, child of a most wretched mother, why are you always wasting away in this unsated mourning for Agamemnon, who long ago was godlessly
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ensnared in your false mother’s wiles and betrayed by her corrupt hand? May the one who did that perish, if I may speak such a curse without breaking the gods’ laws.
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Ah, noble-hearted girls,
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you have come to relieve me in my troubles. I know and feel it: it does not escape me. Still I cannot leave this task undone, nor abandon this mourning for my poor father. Ah, friends whose love responds to mine in every mood,
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allow me to rave as I am, oh, please, I beg you!
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But never by weeping nor by prayer will you resurrect your father from the pool of Hades which receives all men.
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No, by grieving without end and beyond due limits you will find cureless misery and your own ruin; in these actions there is no deliverance from evils. Tell us, why do you pursue such suffering?
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Foolish is the child who forgets a parent’s piteous death. No, closer to my heart is the mourner who eternally wails, Itys, Itys, that bird mad with grief, the messenger of Zeus.
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Ah, all-suffering Niobe, you I count divine, since you weep forever in your rocky tomb!
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Not to you alone of mortals, my daughter, has sorrow come,
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though you face it with less restraint than those girls inside, Chrysothemis and Iphianassa, whose parents and blood you share. They still live, as he, too, lives, sorrowing in his secluded youth,
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yet happy in that this famous realm of the Mycenaeans shall one day receive him as a noble lord, if with the blessing of Zeus’s escort he, Orestes, returns to this land.
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Yes, I await him with unwearied longing,
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as I walk my sad path from day to day childless and unwed, bathed in tears, bearing that endless doom of evils. But he forgets all that he has suffered and learned.
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What message comes to me that is not proven false? He constantly desires to be with us, but though he desires it, he does not choose to appear.
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Courage, my daughter, courage; Zeus in the sky
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is still mighty, and he sees and rules all. Leave your oversharp anger to him; be neither excessively hostile to those you hate, nor forgetful of them, since Time is a god who brings ease.
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Neither the son of Agamemnon, who dwells by Crisa’s cattle-feeding shore nor the god who reigns beside Acheron is unmindful of you.
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But the best part of life has passed away leaving me in hopelessness, and I have no strength left. I waste away without children and have no loving husband to champion me, but like some despised foreign slave,
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I serve in the halls of my father, wrapped in shabby garments and standing to eat scanty meals.
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Mournful was the voice heard at his return, and mournful the voice amidst your father’s reclining banquet
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when the straight, swift blow of the bronze-jawed axe was sped against him. Deceit was the plotter, Lust the slayer, two dread parents of a dreadful
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phantom, whether it was god or mortal that did this deed.
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O that hated day, hated beyond all that have come to me; O that night, the terrible grief of that unutterable feast, the shameless death-strokes
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my father saw from their twin hands, hands which took my life captive by treachery, which cast me to ruin! May the great god of Olympus
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create for them sufferings in penalty, and may they never have enjoyment of their splendor since they have committed such crimes!
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Be advised to say no more; do you not see by what actions
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under the present circumstances you plunge so shamefully into self-made miseries? You have far excelled in achieving misfortune, ever breeding wars in your hardhearted soul. But such strife
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should not be pushed into a conflict with the powerful.
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I have been forced to it, forced by a terrible compulsion. I know my own passion; it does not escape me; but, under such terrible compulsion, I will not restrain these disastrous cries of frenzy,
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so long as life is in me. Who indeed, my noble friends, who that keeps what is appropriate in mind, would think any word of comfort right for my ears? Let me be, let me be, my comforters!
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For these ills will be reckoned with those which have no cure; I will never know a respite from my pains, or the sum of this wailing.
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It is nevertheless with goodwill, like a true-hearted mother,
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that I dissuade you from begetting misery upon miseries.
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But what limit has nature begot for my affliction? Tell me, how can it be right to neglect the dead? Has such a seed been sown in any mortal? May I never have such men’s esteem;
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never, when I am close to prosperity, may I dwell in ease, hindering the wings of shrill lamentation so as to deprive my begetter of his honors!For if the dead is to lie a wretch, merely dust and nothingness,
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while his slayers do not pay back to him blood for blood in penalty,
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then shame and reverence will vanish from all humanity.
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I came, my child, mindful of your interests no less than my own. But if what I say is wrong, let your way prevail; for united we will follow you.
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I am ashamed, my friends, if you judge me
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too intolerant with my many laments; but, since rough compulsion forces me to act this way, forgive me. How indeed could any woman of noble nature not act, when she sees her father’s sufferings as I see them day and night continually,
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and flourishing rather than fading? First, everything to do with the mother who bore me has become most hateful towards me; next, in my own home I live with my father’s murderers; they rule over me and from them
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equally I either have or do without.And then think what manner of days I pass, when I see Aegisthus sitting on my father’s throne; when I look on him wearing the very robes which my father wore and
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pouring libations at the hearth where he killed him; and when I see the chief outrage of them all, the murderer in my father’s bed at my wretched mother’s side, if I must call her mother, even though she shares her bed with that man.
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So hardened is she that she joins with this polluter, fearing no Erinys. No, as if laughing at her deeds, having found the day on which in the past she treacherously killed my father,
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she celebrates it with dance and song, and in monthly rites she sacrifices sheep to the gods who worked her deliverance.
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But I, as I joylessly witness it, cry out, waste away in the house and bewail the unholy feast named after my father,
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in solitary weeping. For I cannot even grieve to the full extent which would please my heart, since this lady, who is in fact no lady, loudly reproaches me with such shameless taunts as these: Wicked and hateful girl, have you alone lost your father,and is no one else in the world grieving? May your death be harsh, and may the gods below never free you from your current mourning. Just so she abuses me, except when she gets word that Orestes is coming. Then, infuriated,
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she comes up to me and cries;—Have you not brought this upon me? Is this not your doing, since you stole Orestes from my hands and secretly sent him away? Yes—but rest assured that you will be justly punished. Like this she barks, and in agreement
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her glorious bridegroom by her side urges her on—that total impotent, that utter plague who fights his battles with the help of women. But my heart is broken by my suffering as I constantly wait for Orestes to come and end these troubles.
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For the perpetual imminence of his actions has eradicated every hope that I could conceive. In such a state of affairs, then, friends, there is no room for self-restraint or for reverence. Rather, in these dire straits there is much need to pursue a dire course.
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Tell me, is Aegisthus nearby as you speak these words to us, or has he left the house?
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He is gone, to be sure. Do not think that I would have come to the doors, if he were nearby. He happens now to be in the country.
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Might I converse with you
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more boldly, if this is so?
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He is not here, so question me. What is it you want?
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I ask you, then, what report can you give of your brother? Will he come soon, or is he delaying? I wish to know.
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He says he will come, but although he promises he never does what he says.
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True, a man will hesitate on the verge of a great undertaking.
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And yet I saved him with no hesitation.
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Take heart: he is noble enough to stand by his friends.
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I believe it; otherwise I would not have remained alive so long.
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Say no more now, since I see your sister
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coming from the house, Chrysothemis, offspring of the same father and mother. In her hands are sepulchral offerings, such as are customary for those in the world below.
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What is this speech of yours, sister, which you have come forth yet again to speak at the public doors?
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Will you not learn with any lapse of time to end your vain indulgence in futile anger? Yet this much I know—that I myself am saddened by our present circumstances; indeed so much so that, could I find the strength, I would bare my feelings towards them.
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But now, in these evil times I think it best to navigate with shortened sail so that I may not seem to be on the attack, when I am unable to cause harm. I wish that your own conduct were the same! Nevertheless, right is on the side which you favor, not on that which I advise. But if I am to live the life of the freeborn,
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those in power must be obeyed in all things.
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It is strange, indeed, that you, the daughter of our father from whom you grew, should forget him and instead show concern for your mother! All your admonitions to me have been taught by her; you speak no word of your own.

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0011.tlg005.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.