Epeisodion 1
Chrysothemis
So you will not be persuaded to agree with me?
Electra
No, indeed; may I not yet be so devoid of intelligence.
Chrysothemis
Then I will move on to where I was sent.
Electra
And where is it that you go? For whom do you take these offerings to be burned?
405
Chrysothemis
Mother sends me with funeral libations for our father.
Electra
What are you saying? For her deadliest enemy?
Chrysothemis
Whom she herself killed, no doubt you wanted to say this as well.
Electra
What friend persuaded her? Whose idea was it?
Chrysothemis
The cause, I think, was fear induced by some vision in the night.
410
Electra
My father’s Gods! Stand with me now at last!
Chrysothemis
Do you find something heartening in this terror?
Electra
If you would tell me the vision, then I could answer.
Chrysothemis
I know no more than a small part of the story.
Electra
Tell me that, anyway; a small tale has often before now tripped men up, or set them upright.
415
Chrysothemis
It is said that she saw the father of you and of me restored to the sunlight and to her company once more. Then he took the scepter—
once his own, but now carried by Aegisthus—and planted it at the hearth. From it branched upward a flourishing limb, by which the whole land of the Mycenaeans was overshadowed. Such was the tale that I heard told by one who was present
420
when she revealed her dream to the Sun-god. More than this I do not know, except that she sent me by reason of this fear of hers. Now, I beg you by our ancestral gods, obey me, and do not fall in your senselessness!
425
If you reject me now, it is in misery that you will next seek me out.
430
Electra
Dear sister, let none of these offerings in your hands touch the tomb. For neither divine law nor piety allows you to dedicate funeral gifts or bring libations to our father from his hateful wife.
No! To the winds with them! Or cover them in a deep, dusty hole, where not one of them
will ever come near our father’s resting place. Rather let these treasures be
preserved for her below when she dies. Were she not by nature the most
audacious
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