Orestes Alas, the things you have said! For perception of suffering, even another’s, gnaws at mortals. Speak, so that when I know, I may tell your brother the story, unpleasant, but necessary to hear. Pity is not present at all in clownishness, but in wise men. And indeed it is not without mischief for the wise to have overly profound thoughts.
Chorus Leader And I have the same desire in my heart as this man. Being far from the town, I do not know the city’s scandals, and now I want to learn them.
Electra
I will speak, if I must—and one must speak to a friend—about my own and my father’s heavy misfortunes. Since you are setting the tale in motion, I entreat you, stranger, tell Orestes of our sorrows, mine and his. First of all, in what clothes I live like a beast in a stall, with what filth I am weighted down, under what roof I dwell, having lived in a royal home; I myself working hard on my clothes at the loom, or else I shall go barely clad and do without; always carrying water from the springs myself, with no share in the festival rites, no part in the dance. I turn away from married women, as a virgin; and I turn away from Castor, who sought me in marriage before he joined the gods, for I was his relative. But my mother, in the spoils of Troy, is seated on her throne, and at her chair stand slaves from Asia, my father’s plunder, fastening their Trojan robes with golden brooches. And still my father’s blood has rotted black on the wall, while the one who killed him mounts the same chariot and goes forth; and is proud to hold in his blood-stained hands the scepter with which my father used to command the Hellenes. Agamemnon’s grave, dishonoured, has not yet ever received any libations, or branch of myrtle, but his altar is barren of ornament. That famous one, my mother’s husband, leaps on the grave, they say, when soaked in drink, and pelts my father’s marble monument with stones, and dares to say this to us: Where is your son Orestes? Is he here to defend the tomb for you nobly? Orestes is insulted in this way while absent. But, stranger, I beg you, report these things. There are many calling him to come—I am their interpreter—these hands, this tongue, my broken heart, my shorn head, and his own father. For it is shameful, if his father exterminated the Trojans but Orestes is unable to kill a man, one against one, being young and born from a more noble father.
Cite This Text