Parodos
[Choral 3]
Mournful was the voice heard at his return, and mournful the voice amidst your father’s
reclining banquet
Chorus
when the straight, swift blow of the bronze-jawed axe was sped against him. Deceit was the plotter, Lust the slayer, two dread parents of a dreadful
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phantom, whether it was god or mortal that did this deed.
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Electra
O that hated day, hated beyond all that have come to me; O that night, the terrible grief of that unutterable feast, the shameless death-strokes
my father saw from their twin hands, hands which took my life captive by treachery, which cast me to ruin! May the great god of Olympus
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create for them sufferings in penalty, and may they never have enjoyment of their splendor since they have committed such crimes!
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Chorus
Be advised to say no more; do you not see by what actions
under the present circumstances you plunge so shamefully into self-made miseries? You have far excelled in achieving misfortune, ever breeding wars in your hardhearted soul. But such strife
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should not be pushed into a conflict with the powerful.
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Electra
I have been forced to it, forced by a terrible compulsion. I know my own passion; it does not escape me; but, under such terrible compulsion, I will not restrain these disastrous cries of frenzy,
so long as life is in me. Who indeed, my noble friends, who that keeps what is appropriate in mind, would think any word of comfort right for my ears? Let me be, let me be, my comforters!
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For these ills will be reckoned with those which have no cure; I will never know a respite from my pains, or the sum of this wailing.
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[Choral]
It is nevertheless with goodwill, like a true-hearted mother,
Chorus
that I dissuade you from begetting misery upon miseries.
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Electra
But what limit has nature begot for my affliction? Tell me, how can it be right to
neglect the dead? Has such a seed been sown in any mortal? May I never have
such men’s esteem;
never, when I am close to prosperity, may I dwell in ease, hindering the wings of shrill lamentation so as to deprive my begetter of his honors!For if the dead is to lie a wretch, merely dust and nothingness,
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while his slayers do not pay back to him blood for blood in penalty,
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then shame and reverence will vanish from all humanity.
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