Stasimon 2
[Choral 1]
Where are the thunderbolts of Zeus, or where the
Chorus
shining Sun, if they look upon these things and quietly cover them over?
825
Chorus
My child, why do you weep?
Chorus
Give no cry of bad omen!
830
Electra
You will break my heart!
830
Electra
If you suggest that I keep hope for those who have surely passed to Hades,
you will trample even harder upon me as I waste away.
835
Chorus
No, for I know that the prince Amphiaraus was ensnared by a woman’s chain of gold and
swallowed up. And now beneath the earth—
Electra
ah, me, ah, me!
840
Chorus
—He reigns supreme with the wits of the living.
Chorus
ah, me, indeed! For the murderess—
Electra
I know it; I know it. For a champion arose to avenge the grieving dead. But for me no champion remains: he who yet remained has been snatched clean away.
[Choral 2]
Unhappy are you, unhappy your destiny!
Electra
How well I know that, all too well, with my life swept through all the months by abundant terrors and horrors!
850
Chorus
We have witnessed the events for which you mourn.
Electra
Cease, then, to divert me from it, since no longer—
855
Electra
—Since I no longer have hope in my brother, the seed of our shared noble line, to aid me.
Chorus
Nature ordains death as the destiny of all mortals.
860
Electra
What, a death like the one which that ill-fated one died beneath a race of swift hooves, entangled in the cutting, dragging reins?
Chorus
The mutilation is beyond thought!
Electra
Yes, so it is, when in foreign soil, without being tended by my hands—
865
Electra
—he has been buried not receiving from me either burial