Parodos
[Choral 1]
Oh, oh! Alas! We have suffered, friends.
Indeed I have suffered much and all in vain.
Chorus
We have suffered very painfully, oh! an unbearable evil. The beast has escaped from our nets and is gone. Overcome by sleep, I have lost my prey.
145
Oh! Child of Zeus, you have become a thief—
you, a youth, have ridden down old divinities—by showing respect to your suppliant, a godless man and cruel to a parent; although you are a god, you have stolen away a man that killed his mother. What is there here that anyone shall call just?
150
[Choral 2]
Reproach, coming to me in a dream, struck me like a charioteer with goad held tight, under my heart, under my vitals.
155
Chorus
I can feel the cruel, the very cruel chill of the executioner’s destroying scourge.
160
They do such things, the younger gods, who rule, wholly beyond justice, a throne dripping blood,
about its foot, about its head. I can see the center-stone of the earth defiled with a terrible pollution of blood.
165
[Choral 3]
Although he is a prophet, he has stained his sanctuary
Chorus
with pollution at its hearth, at his own urging, at his own bidding; against the law of the gods, he has honored mortal things and caused the ancient allotments to decay.
170
And he brings distress to me too, but he shall not win his release;
even if he escapes beneath the earth, he is never set free. A suppliant, he will acquire another avenger from his family.As Agamemnon was slain by Clytaemestra and Clytaemestra by Orestes, so Orestes shall be slain by one of his own race. μιάστωρis properly polluter.
175