Chorus O Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, I have come to your rustic courtyard. A milk-drinker from Mycenae has come, he has come, a mountain walker; he reports that the Argives are proclaiming a sacrifice for the third day from now, and that all maidens are to go to Hera’s temple.
Electra My unhappy heart beats fast, friends, but not at adornment or gold; nor will I set up choruses with the maidens of Argos and beat my foot in the mazes of the dance. By tears I pass the night; tears are my unhappy care day by day. See if my filthy hair, and the rags of my dress, will be fit for a princess, a daughter of Agamemnon, or for Troy, once taken, which remembers my father.
Chorus Mighty is the goddess; come then, and borrow from me thick-woven clothes to wear, and gold—as a favor to me—accessories to adornment. Do you think to rule over your enemies by tears, if you do not revere the gods? Honoring the gods not by lamentation but by prayers, you will have good fortune, child.
Electra No god attends to the voice of the ill-fated one, or to the slaying of my father long ago. Alas for the dead, and for the living vagabond, who dwells in another land somewhere, miserably wandering to a slave’s hearth, yet born of that renowned father. I myself live in a poor man’s house, wasting my life away, an exile from my father’s house, on the mountain crags. But my mother, with a new husband, makes her home in a bed stained by blood.
Chorus Leader Helen, your mother’s sister, is the cause of many evils to the Hellenes and to your house.
Electra Ah! Women, I have broken off my lament; strangers, who had their lair at the altar, are rising from ambush towards the household. Let us escape the villains by flight, you along the path and I to the house.
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