Euripides' ELECTRA Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

Euripides Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Euripides in Print

66 pages - You are on Page 59

Clytemnestra: O God! ah me!

Chorus: (chanting) I too bewail thee, dying by thy children's hands.
God deals out His justice in His good time. A cruel fate is thine,
unhappy one; yet didst thou sin in murdering thy lord. (Orestes and
Electra come out of the hut, followed by attendants who are carrying
the two corpses. The following lines between Electra, Orestes and
the Chorus are chanted.) But lo! from the house they come, dabbled
in their mother's fresh-spilt gore, their triumph proving the piteous
butchery. There is not nor ever has been a race more wretched than
the line of Tantalus.

Orestes: O Earth, and Zeus whose eye is over all! behold this foul
deed of blood, these two corpses lying here that I have slain in vengeance
for my sufferings.

Electra: Tears are all too weak for this, brother; and I am the guilty
cause. Ah, woe is me! How hot my fury burned against the mother that
bare me!

Orestes: Alas! for thy lot, O mother mine! A piteous, piteous doom,
aye, worse than that, hast thou incurred at children's hands! Yet
justly hast thou paid forfeit for our father's blood. Ah, Phoebus!
thine was the voice that praised this vengeance; thou it is that hast
brought these hideous scenes to light, and caused this deed of blood.
To what city can I go henceforth? what friend, what man of any piety
will bear the sight of a mother's murderer like me?

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