Orestes
Old man, I am afraid to speak before you, in a matter where I am sure to grieve you to the heart. I am unholy because I killed my mother, I know it, yet holy on another count, because I avenged my father. Only let your years, which frighten me from speaking, set no barrier in the path of my words, and I will go forward; but now I fear your gray hairs. What ought I to have done? Set one thing against another. My father begot me; your daughter gave me birth, being the field that received the seed from another; for without a father no child would ever be born. So I reasoned that I ought to stand by the author of my being rather than the woman who undertook to rear me. Now your daughter—I am ashamed to call her mother—came to a man’s bed in a private and unchaste wedding; I speak against myself when I speak badly of her, yet I will speak. Aegisthus was her secret husband in the home; I killed him, and I sacrificed my mother, an unholy crime, no doubt, but done to avenge my father. Now, as regards the matters for which I deserve to be stoned as you threatened, hear the service I am conferring on all Hellas. For if women become so bold as to murder their husbands, taking refuge in their children, with the mother’s breast to catch the pity, they would think nothing of destroying their husbands on any charge whatsoever. But I, by a horrible crime, as you boast it to be, have put an end to this custom. I hated my mother and killed her justly. She was false to her husband when he was gone from his home to fight for all Hellas at the head of its armies, and she did not keep his bed undefiled; and when her sin had found her out, she did not impose punishment on herself, but, to avoid paying the penalty to her husband, punished my father by death. By the gods! it is not a good time for me to mention the gods, when defending the charge of murder; but if I consented by my silence to my mother’s conduct, what would the murdered man have done to me? Would he not now in hatred be tormenting me with the Furies? Or does my mother have goddesses as allies, but he does not, in his deeper wrong? You, yes! you, old man, have been my ruin by begetting a wicked daughter; for it was owing to her audacious deed that I lost my father and became my mother’s murderer. You see, Telemachus did not kill the wife of Odysseus, because she did not marry husband upon husband, but the marriage-bed remained untainted in her home.
Orestes And you see Apollo, who makes the navel of the earth his home, dispensing to mortals unerring prophecies, whom we obey in all he says; I killed my mother in obedience to him. Find him guilty of the crime, slay him; his was the sin, not mine. What ought I to have done? or is the god not competent to expiate the pollution when I refer it to him? Where then should anyone flee, if he will not rescue me from death after giving his commands? Do not say that the deed was done badly, but unfortunately for the ones who did it. A blessed life those mortals lead who make wise marriages; but those for whom it does not fall out well are unfortunate in their public and private concerns.
Chorus Leader Women by nature always meddle in the doings of men, with unfortunate results.
Tyndareus Since you are so bold and suppress nothing, but answer me back in such a way as to vex my heart, you will lead me to go to greater lengths in procuring your execution; and I shall regard this as a fine addition to my labors in coming here to adorn my daughter’s grave. Yes, I will go to the chosen band of Argives and set the city, willing or not, on you and your sister, to pay the penalty of stoning. She deserves to die even more than you, for it was she who embittered you against your mother, always carrying tales to your ear to increase your hate the more, announcing dreams from Agamemnon, and Aegisthus’ bed, may the gods in Hades loathe it! for even here on earth it was bitter; till she set the house ablaze with fires never kindled by Hephaestus. Menelaus, I tell you this, and I will do it, too: if you then consider my hatred or our marriage connection of any account, do not ward off this man’s doom in defiance of the gods, but leave him to be stoned to death by the citizens, or do not set foot on Spartan land. Remember you have been told all this, and do not choose the ungodly as friends, pushing aside the more righteous. Servants, lead me from this house.
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