Parodos
[Choral]
Alas for the house of the Atreidae; the light of their scepter, alas, of the ancestral house, is lost. Once they ruled
Chorus
as prosperous kings in Argos, but troubles dart out from troubles: Pelops, on his horses swiftly whirling, made his cast; the sun changed from its seat the holy beam of its rays.
190
One pain comes after another, to the house of the golden lamb. . . . from that earlier time when the Tantalids were killed,
195
punishment came to the house, and fate presses what you do not want upon you.
200
Iphigenia
From the beginning my fate was unhappy, from that first night of my mather’s marriage;
from the beginning the Fates attendant on my birth directed a hard upbringing for me, wooed by Hellenes, the first-born child in the home,
205
whom the unhappy daughter of Leda, by my father’s fault, bore as a victim and a sacrifice not joyful, she brought me up as an offering. In the horse-drawn chariot,
210
they set me as a bride on the sands of Aulis, oh woe, a wretched bride for the son of the Nereid, alas! But now, as a stranger I live in an unfertile home on this sea that is hostile to strangers,
215
without marriage, or children, or city, or friends, not raising hymns to Hera at Argos, nor embroidering with my shuttle, in the singing loom, the likeness of Athenian Pallas and the Titans; but
220
. . . a bloody fate, not to be hymned by the lyre, of strangers who wail a piteous cry and weep piteous tears. And now I must forget these things,
225
and lament my brother, killed in Argos, whom I left at the breast, still a baby, still an infant, still a young child in his mother’s arms and at her breast,
230
the holder of the scepter in Argos, Orestes.
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