Electra And I tell you therefore that Aegisthus is to die; if you fall dead in the struggle, I am also dead, do not count me as alive; for I will strike my heart with a two-edged sword. I will go indoors and make things ready there. So that if a good report comes from you, the whole house will cry aloud in triumph; but, if you die, it will be the opposite of that. These are my words to you.
Orestes I know it all.
Electra Therefore you must be a man. And you, women, please take care to give a shout in signal of this contest. I will keep a sword ready, holding it in my hand, for I will not ever, if defeated, submit to my enemies the right to insult my body.
Chorus
The story remains in old legends that Pan, the keeper of wild beasts, breathing sweet-voiced music on his well-joined pipes, once brought from its tender mother on Argive hills a lamb with beautiful golden fleece. A herald stood on the stone platform and cried aloud, To assembly, Mycenaeans, go to assembly to see the omens given to our blessed rulers. . . . and they honored the house of Atreus.
Chorus
The altars of beaten gold were set out; and through the town the altar fires of the Argives blazed; the flute, handmaid of the Muse’s song, sounded its note sweetly, and lovely songs of the golden lamb swelled forth, saying that Thyestes had the luck; for he persuaded Atreus’ own wife to secret love, and carried off to his house the portent; coming before the assembly he declared that he had in his house the horned sheep with fleece of gold.
Chorus
Then, it was then that Zeus changed the radiant paths of the stars, and the light of the sun, and the bright face of dawn; and the sun drove across the western back of the sky with hot flame from heaven’s fires, while the rain-clouds went northward and Ammon’s lands grew parched and faint, not knowing moisture, robbed of heaven’s fairest showers of rain.
Chorus
It is said, but I have small belief in it, that the sun turned round his glowing throne of gold, changing it to the misfortune of mankind, for the punishment of mortals. But tales that frighten men are profitable for service to the gods; of whom you had no thought, when you killed your husband, you who are the relative of famous brothers.
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