Sophocles' ELECTRA Complete

Translated by R. Jebb.

Sophocles Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Sophocles in Print

71 Pages

Page 23

Electra: This time thou canst not say that I have done anything to
provoke such words from thee. But, if thou wilt give me leave, I fain
would declare the truth, in the cause alike of my dead sire and of
my sister.

Clytemnestra: Indeed, thou hast my leave; and didst thou always address
me in such a tone, thou wouldst be heard without pain.

Electra: Then I will speak. Thou sayest that thou hast slain my father.
What word could bring thee deeper shame than that, whether the deed
was just or not? But I must tell thee that thy deed was not just;
no, thou wert drawn on to it by the wooing of the base man who is
now thy spouse.

Ask the huntress Artemis what sin she punished when she stayed the
frequent winds at Aulis; or I will tell thee; for we may not learn
from her. My father- so I have heard- was once disporting himself
in the grove of the goddess, when his footfall startled a dappled
and antlered stag; he shot it, and chanced to utter a certain boast
concerning its slaughter. Wroth thereat, the daughter of Leto detained
the Greeks, that, in quittance for the wild creature's life, my father
should yield up the life of his own child. Thus it befell that she
was sacrificed; since the fleet had no other release, homeward or
to Troy; and for that cause, under sore constraint and with sore reluctance,
at last he slew her- not for the sake of Menelaus.

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