Euripides' ORESTES Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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Menelaus: All hail, my home! Some joy I feel on seeing thee again
on my return from Troy, some sorrow too the sight recalls; for never
yet have I beheld a house more closely encircled by the net of dire
affliction.

Concerning Agamemnon's fate and the awful death he died at his wife's
hands I learnt as I was trying to put in at Malea, when the sailors'
seer from out the waves, unerring Glaucus, Nereus' spokesman, brought
the news to me; for he stationed himself in full view by our ship
and thus addressed me. "Yonder, Menelaus, lies thy brother slain,
plunged in a fatal bath, the last his wife will ever give him"; filling
high the cup of tears for me and my brave crew. Arrived at Nauplia,
my wife already, on the point of starting hither, I was dreaming of
folding Orestes, Agamemnon's son, and his mother in a fond embrace,
as if 'twere well with them, when I heard a mariner relate the murder
of the daughter of Tyndareus. Tell me then, good girls, where to find
the son of Agamemnon, the daring author of that fearful crime; for
he was but a babe in Clytemnestra's arms that day I left my home to
go to Troy, so that I should not recognize him, e'en were I to see
him.

Orestes: (staggering towards him from the couch) Behold the object
of thy inquiry, Menelaus; this is Orestes. To the will I of mine own
accord relate my sufferings. But as the prelude to my speech I clasp
thy knees in suppliant wise, seeking thus to tie to thee the prayer
of lips that lack the suppliant's bough; save me, for thou art arrived
at the very crisis of my trouble.

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