Epeisodion 4
Electra
their sad burden from the all-consuming pyre, as was proper. No! At the hands of strangers, poor Orestes, you have been tended, and so have come to us, a small bulk in a small urn.Ah, I grieve at the uselessness of my nursing long ago, the service that I often bestowed
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on you in sweet labor! For you were never your mother’s darling so much as mine, nor was
any in the house your nurse but I, and by you I was ever called sister. But now all this has vanished in a day
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with your death. Like a whirlwind you have swept everything away with you. Our father is gone; I am dead because of you; you yourself are dead and gone; our enemies laugh at us; and our mother, who is no mother, raves with joy. Unknown to her, you often
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sent me messages about her, saying that you yourself would appear for vengeance. But our evil fortune, yours and mine, has torn all that away, and has sent you back to me in this state, ash and a useless shade in place of your beloved form.
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ah, me, ah, me! O pitiable body! Alas, dear one sent on a most dire journey, how you have destroyed me, destroyed me indeed, my brother!
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Therefore accept me into this abode of yours—me, a nothing, into your nothingness,—so that I may dwell with you hereafter below. For when you were on earth, we shared equally, and now I wish to die and not to be left out of your grave,
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since I see that the dead are relieved of pain.
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Chorus
Remember, Electra, you are the child of a mortal father, and Orestes was mortal. Therefore do not grieve too much. Death is a debt which all of us must pay.
Orestes
Ah, what shall I say? I am at a loss. To what words
can I turn? I no longer have the strength to master my tongue!
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Electra
What has troubled you? Why did you say that?
Orestes
Is this the illustrious form of Electra?
Electra
It is, though in a very wretched state.
Orestes
What pity, then, for this miserable fortune!
Electra
Surely, stranger, you are not saddened like this on my account?
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Orestes
O frame dishonorably, godlessly wasted!
Electra
Those ills of which you speak, stranger, are none other’s than mine.
Orestes
Ah, pity for your unwed, ill-fated life!
Electra
Why, stranger, do you stare and grieve in this way?
Orestes
How I knew nothing, it seems, of my own sorrows!
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