Euripides' ELECTRA Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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Electra: And may not I, mother, take that highly-favoured hand of
thine? I am a slave like them, an exile from my father's halls in
this miserable abode.

Clytemnestra: See, my servants are here; trouble not on my account.

Electra: Why, thou didst make me thy prisoner by robbing me of my
home; like these I became a captive when my home was taken, an orphan
all forlorn.

Clytemnestra: True; but thy father plotted so wickedly against those
of his own kin whom least of all he should have treated so. Speak
I must; albeit, when woman gets an evil reputation, there is a feeling
of bitterness against all she says; unfairly indeed in my case, for
it were only fair to hate after learning the circumstances, and seeing
if the object deserves it; otherwise, why hate at all? Now Tyndareus
bestowed me on thy father not that I or any children I might bear
should be slain. Yet he went and took my daughter from our house to
the fleet at Aulis, persuading me that Achilles was to wed her; and
there he held her o'er the pyre, and cut Iphigenia's snowy throat.
Had he slain her to save his city from capture, or to benefit his
house, or to preserve his other children, a sacrifice of one for many,
could have pardoned him. But, as it was, his reasons for murdering
my child were these: the wantonness of Helen and her husband's folly
in not punishing the traitress. Still, wronged as I was, my rage had
not burst forth for this, nor would I have slain my lord, had he not
returned to me with that frenzied maiden and made her his mistress,
keeping at once two brides beneath the same roof. Women maybe are
given to folly, I do not deny it; this granted, when a husband goes
astray and sets aside his own true wife, she fain will follow his
example and find another love; and then in our case hot abuse is heard,
while the men, who are to blame for this, escape without a word. Again,
suppose Menelaus had been secretly snatched from his home, should
I have had to kill Orestes to save Menelaus, my sister's husband?
How would thy father have endured this? Was he then to escape death
for slaying what was mine, while I was to suffer at his hands? I slew
him, turning, as my only course, to his enemies. For which of all
thy father's friends would have joined me in his murder? Speak all
that is in thy heart, and prove against me with all free speech, that
thy father's death was not deserved.

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