Euripides' ELECTRA Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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Electra: I will tell you, if I may; and surely I may tell a friend
about my own and my father's grievous misfortunes. Now since thou
movest me to speak, I entreat thee, sir, tell Orestes of our sorrows;
first, describe the dress I wear, the load of squalor that oppresses
me, the hovel I inhabit after my royal home; tell him how hard I have
to work at weaving clothes myself or else go barely clad and do without;
how I carry home on my head water from the brook; no part have I in
holy festival, no place amid the dance; a maiden still I turn from
married dames and from Castor too, to whom they betrothed me before
he joined the heavenly host, for I was his kinswoman. Meantime my
mother, 'mid the spoils of Troy, is seated on her throne, and at her
foot-stool slaves from Asia stand and wait, captives of my father's
spear, whose Trojan robes are fastened with brooches of gold. And
there on the wall my father's blood still leaves a deep dark stain,
while his murderer mounts the dead man's car and fareth forth, proudly
grasping in his blood-stained hands the sceptre with which Agamemnon
would marshal the sons of Hellas. Dishonoured lies his grave; naught
as yet hath it received of drink outpoured or myrtle-spray, but bare
of ornament his tomb is left. Yea, and 'tis said that noble hero who
is wedded to my mother, in his drunken fits, doth leap upon the grave,
and pelt with stones my father's monument, boldly gibing at us on
this wise, "Where is thy son Orestes? Is he ever coming in his glory
to defend thy tomb?" Thus is Orestes flouted behind his back. Oh!
tell him this, kind sir, I pray thee. And there be many calling him
to come,-I am but their mouthpiece,-these suppliant hands, this tongue,
my broken heart, my shaven head, and his own father too. For 'tis
shameful that the sire should have destroyed Troy's race and the son
yet prove too weak to pit himself against one foe unto the death,
albeit he has youth and better blood as well.

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