Orestes: On the day I was heaping the mound o'er my poor mother's
grave,
Menelaus: When thou wast in the house, or watching by the pyre?
Orestes: As I was waiting by night to gather up her bones.
Chorus: What news, slave of Helen, creature from Ida?
Phrygian: Ah me for Ilium, for Ilium, the city of Phrygia, and for
Ida's holy hill with fruitful soil! in foreign accents hear me raise
a plaintive strain over thee, whose ruin luckless Helen caused,-that
lovely child whom Leda bore to a feathered swan, to be a curse to
Apollo's towers of polished stone. Ah! well-a-day! woe to Dardania
for the wailings wrung from it by the steeds that bought his minion
Ganymede for Zeus.
Chorus: Tell us plainly exactly what happened in the house, for till
now have been guessing at what I do not clearly understand.
Studies
