Sophocles' ELECTRA Complete

Translated by R. Jebb.

Sophocles Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Sophocles in Print

71 Pages

Page 29

Thus far, 'twas well; but, when a god sends harm, not even the strong
man can escape. For, on another day, when chariots were to try their
speed at sunrise, he entered, with many charioteers. One was an Achaean,
one from Sparta, two masters of yoked cars were Libyans; Orestes,
driving Thessalian mares, came fifth among them; the sixth from Aetolia,
with chestnut colts; a Magnesian was the seventh; the eighth, with
white horses, was of Aenian stock; the ninth, from Athens, built of
gods; there was a Boeotian too, making the tenth chariot.

They took their stations where the appointed umpires placed them by
lot and ranged the cars; then, at the sound of the brazen trump, they
started. All shouted to their horses, and shook the reins in their
hands; the whole course was filled with the noise of rattling chariots;
the dust flew upward; and all, in a confused throng, plied their goads
unsparingly, each of them striving to pass the wheels and the snorting
steeds of his rivals; for alike at their backs and at their rolling
wheels the breath of the horses foamed and smote.

Orestes, driving close to the pillar at either end of the course,
almost grazed it with his wheel each time, and, giving rein to the
trace-horse on the right, checked the horse on the inner side. Hitherto,
all the chariots had escaped overthrow; but presently the Aenian's
hard-mouthed colts ran away, and, swerving, as they passed from the
sixth into the seventh round, dashed their foreheads against the team
of the Barcaean. Other mishaps followed the first, shock on shock
and crash on crash, till the whole race-ground of Crisa was strewn
with the wreck of the chariots.

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