Chorus – Sent forth from the palace I am come to convey libations to the accompaniment of blows dealt swift and sharp by my hands. My cheek is marked with bloody gashes where my nails have cut fresh furrows – and yet throughout all my life my heart is fed with lamentation. To the tune of grievous blows the rendings sounded loud as they made havoc of my vesture of woven linen where my bosom is covered by a robe smitten by reason of fortunes stranger to all mirth.
For with thrilling voice that sets each hair on end, the inspiring power who divines for the house in dreams, with breath of wrath in sleep, at dead of night uttered a cry for terror from the inmost chamber, falling heavily upon the women’s bower. And the readers of dreams like these, interpreting Heaven’s will under pledge, declared that those beneath the earth complain in bitter anger and are wroth against their slayers. (22-41)
Chorus – The while thou pourest, utter words fraught with good to loyal hearts.
Electra – And to whom of those near to me am I to give this name?
Chorus – To thyself first – then to all who hate Aegisthus.
Electra – For myself then and for thee as well shall I make this prayer?
Chorus – It is for thee, using thy judgement, forthwith to consider that thyself.
Electra – Who else then is there that I am to add to our company?
Chorus – Forget not Orestes, though he be still from home.
Electra – Well said! Most excellently hast thou admonished me
Chorus – For the guilty murderers now, with mindful thought –
Electra – What shall I pray? Instruct my inexperience, prescribe the form.
Chorus – That upon them there may come some one or god or mortal –
Electra – As judge or as avenger, meanest thou?
Chorus – Say in plain speech “one who shall take life for life.”
Electra – And is this a righteous thing for me to ask of Heaven?
Chorus – Righteous? How not? To requite an enemy evil for evil! (109-123)
Electra – O best beloved darling of thy father’s house, its hope of saving seed, longed for with tears, trust in thy prowess and thou shalt win again thy father’s house. O thou fond presence that hath for me four parts of love: for father I needs must call thee, and to thee falls the love I should bear my mother – she whom I most rightly hate – and the love I bore my sister, victim of a pitiless sacrifice; and as brother thou hast been my trust, winning reverence even for me, thou only. May Might [Kratos] and Justice, [Dike] with Zeus the third, supreme over all, lend thee their aid! (235-245)
Orestes – Of a surety the mighty oracle of Loxias will not abandon me, charging me to brave this peril to the end, and, with loud utterance, proclaiming afflictions chilling my warm heart’s blood, if I avenge not my father on the guilty; bidding me, infuriated by the loss of my possessions, slay them even as they slew. And with mine own life, he declared, I should else pay the debt myself by many grievous sufferings. For he spake revealing to mankind the wrath of malignant powers from underneath the earth, and telling of plagues: leprous ulcers that mount with fierce fangs on the flesh, eating away its primal nature; and how, upon this disease, a white down should sprout forth. And of other assaults of the Avenging Spirits (Erinys) he spake, destined to be brought to pass from a father’s blood; for the darkling bolt of the infernal powers, who are stirred by slain victims of kindred race calling for vengeance, and both madness and groundless terrors out of the night torment and harass the man, who seeth clearly, though he moveth his eyebrows in the dark; so that, his body marred by the brazen scourge, he be even chased in exile from his country. (269-290)
Orestes – In the guise of an alien, thereto full-equipped, I shall come to the outer gate – and with me Pylades, whom ye see here, as guest and ally of the house. Both of us will speak the speech of Parnassus, imitating the utterance of a Phocian tongue. (560-4)
Chorus – Full many are the horrors, dread and appalling bred of earth, and the arms of the deep teem with hateful monsters. Likewise ’twixt heaven and earth there draw nigh lights hung aloft in the air; and winged things and things that walk the earth can also tell of the stormy wrath of whirlwinds. (585-593)
Orestes – For myself, I am sure, with hosts so prosperous, I had rather been made known and welcomed by reason of good tidings. For where is good-will greater than from guest to host? Yet to my thought it had been a breach of sacred duty not to fulfil for friends a charge like this when I was bound by promise and by hospitality pledged to me. (700-706)
Chorus – May Maia’s son, as rightfully he ought, lend aid, for none can better waft a deed on a favouring course, when so he will; but by his mysterious utterance he bringeth darkness o’er men’s eyes by night, and by day he is no whit clearer. (811-818)
Aegisthus – Orestes is dead. To lay this too upon the house would prove a fearful burthen when it is still festering and galled by the wound inflicted by a former murder. (841-3)
Chorus – We heard the tale, ’tis true – but pass within and make enquiry of the strangers. The sureness of a messenger’s report is naught compared with one’s own enquiry of the man himself. (848-850)
Clytemnestra – Hold, my son! Have pity, child, upon this breast at which full oft, sleeping the while, with toothless gums thou didst suck the milk that nourished thee.
Orestes – Pylades, what shall I do? Shall I for pity spare my mother?
Pylades – What then becomes henceforth of Loxias’ oracles, declared at Pytho, and of our covenant pledged on oath? Count all men thy enemies rather than the gods. (896-902)
Chorus – As unto Priam and his sons justice came at last in crushing retribution, so unto Agamemnon’s house came a twofold lion, twofold slaughter. Unto the uttermost hath the exile, the suppliant of Pytho’s god, fulfilled his course, urged justly on by counsels from above.
…And he hath come whose part is the crafty vengeance of stealthy attack; and in the battle his hand was guided by her who is in very truth daughter of Zeus, breathing wrath to the death upon her foes. Justice we mortals call her name, hitting well the mark.
…The commands loud proclaimed by Loxias, tenant of Parnassus’ mighty cavern shrine, with guileless guile assail the mischief now become inveterate. May the word of God prevail that so I serve not the wicked! It is right to reverence the rule of Heaven.
…But soon shall all-accomplishing Time [Kronos] pass the portals of the house when from the hearth all pollution shall be driven by cleansing rites that drive out calamity. (46-51 & 935-41 & 956-60 & 965-8)
Orestes – But now again behold, ye who hearken to this disastrous cause, the device for binding fast my unhappy father, wherewith his hands were manacled, his feet were fettered. Spread it out! Stand round in a throng, and display it – a covering for a man! – that the Father (not mine, but he that surveyeth all things in this world, the Sun) may behold the impious work of my own mother; and so in the day of judgement may be present as my witness that with just cause I pursued this death, even my mother’s; for of Aegisthus’ death I speak not; for he hath suffered the adulterer’s punishment as the law allows. (980-990)
Orestes – But – since I would have you know – for I know not how ’twill end – methinks I am a charioteer driving my team far outside the course; for my wits, hard to govern, whirl me away o’ermastered, and at my heart fear is fain to sing and dance to a tune of wrath. (1021-5)
Orestes – Ah, ah! Ye handmaidens, see them yonder – like Gorgons, stolen in sable garb, entwined with swarming snakes! . . . For in very truth yonder are the wrathful sleuth-hounds that avenge my mother . . . now they come in troops, and from their eyes they drip loathsome blood! (1047-50, 1054 & 1057-8)
Chorus – First, at the beginning, came the cruel woes of children slain for food; next, the fate of a man, a king, when, murdered in a bath, perished the war-lord of the Achaeans. And now, once again, hath come somewhence, a third, a deliverer – or shall I say a doom? Oh when will it work its accomplishment, when will the fury of calamity, lulled to rest find an end and cease? (1065-1076)
Some Recommended Reading:
Hame, Kerri J. 'All in the Family: Funeral Rites and the Health of the Oikos in Aischylos'Oresteia,' The American Journal of Philology, vol. 125, no. 4 (Winter, 2004), pp. 513-538.
Mace, Sarah. 'Why the Oresteia's Sleeping Dead Won't Lie, Part II: Choephoroi and Eumenides,'The Classical Journal, vol. 100, no. 1 (Oct.-Nov., 2004), pp. 39-60.
Rose, H. J. 'The Part of Pylades in Aeschylus' Choephoroe,' The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 37, (1936/1937), pp. 201-206.
Rose, H. J. ‘Ghost Ritual in Aeschylus,’ The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Oct., 1950), pp. 257-280.
Rose, A.R., ‘The Significance of the Nurse's Speech in Aeschylus’ Choephoroi,’ Classical Bulletin58 (1982) 49-50.
Theatre of Dionysus in Athens
