Electra

By Sophocles.

Translated by Francis Storr.

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Argument

Orestes, admonished by the Delphic oracle to avenge his murdered father, sets forth for Mycenae accompanied by his aged Paedagogus and Pylades. When in sight of the palace they lay their plot. The Paedagogus is to present himself as a Phocian messenger and announce to Clytemnestra that Orestes has been killed in a chariot race at the Pythian games. Meanwhile Orestes and Pylades are to make funeral offerings at the tomb of Agamemnon and then, disguised as Phocians, to carry to the Queen a funeral urn, telling her it holds the ashes of Orestes. Clytemnestra, warned by an evil dream, sends Chrysothemis to pour a libation on the tomb. Electra meets her on the way thither and persuades her to leave these impious offerings and take instead such gifts as the two sisters can make to their father’s ghost. Clytemnestra enters with a handmaid bearing fruits to be laid on the altar of Apollo. She rates Electra for beimg abroad without her leave, and defends her past acts against Electra’s reproaches. The announcement of a messenger ends the altercation, and the Queen hears with feigned sorrow and ill-concealed joy the news of Orestes’ death, and invites the messenger to accompany her to the palace. Chrysothemis returns from the tomb, reporting that someone has been there before her, has wreathed the mound with flowers, and left on the edge a lock of hair. Who can it be but Orestes? Electra disabuses her, repeating the messenger’s sad tale, and entreats her aid in executing the resolve to slay nith her own hands their unnatural mother and her paramour. Orestes joins them with Pylades and attendants bearing the funeral urn. She takes the urn in her hands and makes her moan over her lost brother. As they converse together Orestes by degrees reveals himself and discloses his purpose. With Pylades he enters the palace, and shortly a death-shriek is heard. He comes forth, and in answer to Electra replies that all is well in the house. Aegisthus is seen approaching, exultant at the report he has heard of Orestes’ death. Electra confirms it, and bids him enter the palace and see with his own eyes the corpse. At his bidding the palace doors are thrown open and on a bier is seen a veiled corpse. Aegisthus lifts the face cloth and beholds the corpse of Clytemnestra with Orestes standing hard by. He knows that his fate ts sealed, and is driven at the sword’s point by Orestes to be slain in the hall where Agamemnon was slain. The Chorus of free Mycenean women hail the death of the usurper which ends the curse on the house of Atreus.

Dramatis Personae

Scene: At Mycenae before the Palace of Agamemnon.

Electra

O Child of Agamemnon, who sometime
Was Captain of the host that leaguered Troy,
’Tis thine at last to view before thee spread
The scene thy heart was set on. Yonder lies
Old Argos thou so long hast yearned to see,
Once refuge of the gadfly-driven maid,1
Daughter of Inachus; and, Orestes, here
The market-place from the Wolf-slayer2 named;
There on our left is Hera’s far-famed shrine;
And lo! before us, at our very feet
Thou seest Mycenae of the golden hoard,
And there the palace grim of Pelops’ line,
Deep stained with murder. Thence I bore thee once
Snatched from beside thy father’s bleeding corse
By kindly hands, thy sister’s; rescued thus
I fostered thee till thou hadst reached the age
To be the avenger of thy father’s blood.
But now, Orestes, and thou, Pylades,
Dearest of friends, the hour for you is ripe
To take resolve and that right speedily.
For lo, already the bright beams of day
Waken to melody the pipe of birds,
And black night with her glimmering stars has waned.
So ere a soul be stirring in the streets
Confer together and resolve yourselves.
No time for longer pause; now must we act.

Dearest of followers, how well thou show’st
The constant service of thy loyalty!
For as the high-bred steed, though he be old,
Pricks up his ears and champs the bit for joy
When battle rages, even so dost thou
Both urge us on and follow with the first.
Therefore I will unfold our plans, and thou
Note well my words, and if in aught I seem
To miss the mark, admonish and correct.
Know then that when I left thee to consult
The Pythian oracle and learn how best
To execute just vengeance for my sire
On those that slew him, Phoebus answered thus:
Trust not to shields or armed hosts, but steal
The chance thyself the avenging blow to deal.
Since then the Pythian god hath thus advised,
Go thou and watch thine opportunity
To enter in the palace and observe
What happens there and bring us full report.
And fear not to be recognised; long years
And thy white locks, the blossom of old age,
Have changed thee wholly. Forge some specious tale:
Thou art a Phocian stranger hither sent
By Phanoteus their doughtiest ally.
Report, confirming with an oath the tale,
How that Orestes by a fatal chance
Hath perished, from his speeding chariot hurled
(So let thy tale run) at the Pythian games.
And we meanwhile, as the god ordered us,
First having crowned my father’s sepulchre
With pure libations and rich offerings
Of new-shorn tresses, will return anon,
An urn of well-wrought brasswork in our hands,
The same we hid in the brush-wood, as thon know’st.
This will confirm the feignèd tale we bring,
That I am dead and to the pyre consigned,
Naught left of me but ashes and grey dust:
Little reck I by rumour to be dead,
So I live on to win me deathless fame.
The end, methinks, gives any fraud excuse.
Oft have I heard of men, reputed wise,
Who spread the rumour of their death, and so
Returning home a heartier welcome found.
Thus by my bruited death I too aspire
To blaze a sudden meteor on my foes.
But O my country and my country’s gods,
Give me fair welcome, prosper my emprise!
And greet me too, thou palace of my sires;
A heaven-sent purger of thy stain I come.
Send me not forth again to banishment,
But O! restore to me its ancient wealth,
May I refound its old prosperity!
Enough of words; go presently, old friend,
Attend thy business; and we two will go,
And watch the time, for opportunity
Is the best captain of all enterprise.

Within.

Ah me! unhappy me!

Hist! from the doors a voice, my son, methought,
A wailing as of some handmaid within.

Can it be sad Electra! Shall we stay
And overhear her lamentable plaint?

Not so; we first must strive before all else
To do as Loxias bade us and thence take
Our auspices—with lustral waters lave
Thy father’s grave, thus shall we surely win
Vantage at each step, victory in the end. Exeunt. Enter Electra from the palace.

O holy light,
O circumambient air,
What wailings of despair,
What sight
Have ye not witnessed in the first grey morn,
Beatings of breasts and bosoms madly torn!
By night for me is spread
No festal banquet in this haunted hall,
But my lone pallet bed.
All night I muse upon my father dead,
Not in a foreign land at Ares’ call,
But here, at home, by my own mother slain;
Her and Aegisthus, these adulterers twain;
Felled by their axe’s bloody stroke,
E’en as the woodman fells an oak.
And I, O father, I alone of all
Thy house am left forlorn
To make my moan, to mourn
Thy piteous fall.

Yet never, while these eyes
Behold or sun or star-bespangled skies,
Will I restrain my plaint, my bitter cries;
But like some nightingale
My ravished nest bewail,
And through these halls shall sound my groans and sighs.
Halls of Persephonè and Death,
Guide of the shades, O Hermes, and O Wraith,
Ye god-sprung Furies dread
Who watch when blood is shed,
Or stained the marriage bed,
O aid me to avenge my father slain,
O send my brother back again!
Alone, no more I countervail
Grief that o’erloads the scale.

Strophe 1

Child of a mother all unblest,
Electra, how in grief that knows no rest
Thou witherest;
Mourning thy father’s cruel fate,
By her betrayed and slaughtered by her mate.
Black death await
The plotter of that sin,
If prayer so bold may answer win!

Ah, noble friends ye come, I see
To ease my misery;
Your kind intent, O trust me, I perceive.
Yet can I never leave
My task, each day, each hour, anew to shed
Tears o’er my father dead.
O kindly hearts, so ready to repay
All friendship owes,
Leave me, O leave me (this one boon I pray)
To my wild woes.

Antistrophe 1

Yet him, thy sire, from Acheron’s dark shore
By prayers or cries thou never can’st restore,
No, never more;
And by excess of grief thou perishest.
If remedy be none, were it not best
From grief to rest?
O rest thee! why
Thus nurse thy fruitless misery?

That child’s insensate who remembers not
His sire’s sad lot.
O bird of Zeus, to thine I’ll set my note,
Who with full throat
For Itys, Itys griev’st from eve till morn.
Ah! Niobe forlorn,
How blest art thou who tombed in stone dost lie
And weep for aye!

Strophe 2

Not thou alone, hast sorrow; others share
Thy load of care.
Think on thy kinsfolk whom afflictions press
Than thine no less,
Iphianassa and Chrysothemis.
Think of thy brother; sorrow now is his,
An exiled youth, yet shortly shall he come
By heaven’s good guidance home,
And glad Mycenae shall Orestes own
Heir to his father’s throne.

Yea, for him long years I wait,
Unwed, childless, desolate,
Drenched with tears that ever flow
For my barren load of woe;
And the wrongs whereof he wot,
Or hath heard, are all forgot.
All those messages are vain—
How he hopes to come again,
How for home his heart doth yearn!—
Yet he wills not to return.

Antistrophe 2

Take heart, my child, Zeus still in heaven is king,
And orders everything;
To him commit the wrath that gnaws thy breast,
His will is ever best.
Nurse, as is meet, thy vengeance, but abate
Excess of hate,
For Time can heal, a gentle god and mild.
Nor Agamemnon’s child
Who long by Crisa’s pastoral shore remains,
Nor he who reigns
O’er Acheron will nevermore relent.

Nay but for me is spent
The best of life; I languish in despair.
Fordone with care,
Without a parent’s love or husband’s aid,
An orphaned maid.
Here in the chambers of my sire I wait
In low estate,
Or like a stranger who in beggar’s weeds
On fragments feeds.