Classic Greek Drama_ 10 Plays by Euripides in a Single File [NOOK Book] - Euripides [35]
ELEC. I begin the lament, O land of Greece, digging my white nail into my cheek, sad bleeding woe, and dashing my head, which[26] the lovely[27] goddess of the manes beneath the earth has to her share. And let the Cyclopian land[28] howl, applying the steel to their head cropped of hair over the calamity of our house. This pity, this pity, proceeds for those who are about to die, who once were the princes of Greece. For it is gone, it is gone, the entire race of the children of Pelops has perished, and the happiness which once resided in these blest abodes. Envy from heaven has now seized it, and the harsh decree of blood in the state. Alas! alas! O race of mortals that endure for a day, full of tears, full of troubles, behold how contrary to expectation fate comes. But in the long lapse of time each different man receives by turns his different sufferings.[29] But the whole race of mortals is unstable and uncertain.
Oh! could I go to that rock stretched from Olympus in its loftiness midst heaven and earth by golden chains, that mass of clay borne round with rapid revolutions, that in my plaints I might cry out to my ancient father Tantalus; who begat the progenitors of my family, who saw calamities, what time in the pursuing of steeds, Pelops in his car drawn by four horses perpetrated, as he drove, the murder of Myrtilus, _by casting him_ into the sea, hurling him down to the surge of the ocean, as he guided his car on the shore of the briny sea by Geraestus foaming with its white billows. Whence the baleful curse came on my house since, by the agency of Maia's son,[30] there appeared the pernicious, pernicious prodigy of the golden-fleeced lamb, a birth which took place among the flocks of the warlike Atreus. On which both Discord drove back the winged chariot of the sun, directing it from the path of heaven leading to the west toward Aurora borne on her single horse.[31] And Jupiter drove back the course of the seven moving Pleiads another way: and from that period[32] he sends deaths in succession to deaths, and "the feast of Thyestes," so named from Thyestes. And the bed of the Cretan AErope deceitful in a deceitful marriage has come as a finishing stroke on me and my father, to the miserable destruction of our family.
CHOR. But see, thy brother is advancing, condemned by the vote of death, and Pylades the most faithful of all, a man like a brother, supporting the enfeebled limbs of Orestes, walking by his side[33] with the foot of tender solicitude.
ELECTRA, ORESTES, PYLADES, CHORUS.
ELEC. Alas me! for I bewail thee, my brother, seeing thee before the tomb, and before the pyre of thy departed shade: alas me! again and again, how am I bereft of my senses, seeing with my eyes the very last sight of thee.
ORES. Wilt thou not in silence, ceasing from womanish groans, make up thy mind to what is decreed? These things indeed are lamentable, but yet we must bear our present fate.
ELEC. And how can I be silent? We wretched no longer are permitted to view this light of the God.
ORES. Do not thou kill me; I, the unhappy, have died enough already under the hands of the Argives; but pass over our present ills.
ELEC. O Orestes! oh wretched in thy youth, and thy fate, and thy untimely death, then oughtest thou to live, when thou art no more.
ORES. Do not by the Gods throw cowardice around me, bringing the remembrance of my woes so as to cause tears.
ELEC. We shall die; it is not possible not to groan our misfortunes; for the dear life is a cause of pity to all mortals.
ORES. This is the day appointed for us! but we must either fit the suspended noose, or whet the sword with our hand.
ELEC. Do thou then kill me, my brother; let none of the Argives kill me, putting a contumely on the offspring of Agamemnon.
ORES. I have enough of thy mother's blood, but thee I will not slay; but die by thine own hand in whatever manner thou wilt.
ELEC. These things shall be; I will not be deserted