Stasimon 1
[Episode]
You mighty Fates, through the power of Zeus grant fulfilment in the way to which Justice now turns. For a word of hate let a word of hate be said,
Chorus
Justice cries out as she exacts the debt, and for a murderous stroke let a murderous stroke be paid. Let it be done to him as he does, says the age-old wisdom.
[Choral 1]
O father, unhappy father, by what word or deed of mine can I succeed in sailing from far away to you, where your resting-place holds you, a light to oppose your darkness?
315
Orestes
Yet a lament in honor of the Atreidae who once possessed our house is none the less a joyous service.
320
[Choral 2]
My child, the fire’s ravening jaw does not overwhelm the wits of the dead man,
Chorus
but afterwards he reveals what stirs him. The murdered man has his dirge; the guilty man is revealed. Justified lament for fathers and for parents,
325
when raised loud and strong, makes its search everywhere.
330
[Choral 1]
Hear then, O father, as in turn we mourn with plentiful tears. Look, your two children mourn you
Electra
in a dirge over your tomb. As suppliants and exiles as well they have sought a haven at your sepulchre. What of these things is good, what free of evil? Is it not hopeless to wrestle against doom?
335
[Choral]
Yet heaven, if it pleases, may still turn our utterance to more joyfully sounding strains. In place of dirges over a tomb, a song of triumph within the royal halls will welcome back a reunited friend.
νεοκρᾶτα, newly-mixed. As friendship, when begun, was pledged by a loving-cup, so Orestes, after his long absence, is to be welcomed as a new friend.
340
[Choral 3]
Ah, my father, if only beneath Ilium’s walls you had been slain, slashed by some Lycian spearman! Then you would have left a good name for your children in their halls,
345
Orestes
and in their maturity you would have made their lives admired by men. And in a land beyond the sea you would have found a tomb heaped high with earth, no heavy burden for your house to bear—
350
[Choral 2]
—Welcomed there below by your comrades
Chorus
who nobly fell, a ruler of august majesty, distinguished even beneath the earth, and minister of the mightiest, the deities who rule in the nether world.Pluto and Proserpine.
355
For in your life you were a king of those who have the power to assign the portion of death,He was a king of those princes who have the right to apportion life or death to their subjects. and who wield the staff all mortals obey.
360
[Choral 3]
No, not even beneath the walls of Troy, father,
Electra
would I wish you to have fallen and to be entombed beside Scamander’s waters among the rest of the host slain by the spear. I wish rather that his murderers had been killed by their own loved ones, just as they killed you,
365
so that someone in a distant land who knew nothing of these present troubles should learn of their fatal doom.
370
[Choral]
In this, my child, your wish is better than gold. It surpasses great good fortune, even that of the supremely blesssed;The Hyperboreans, a fabulous people dwelling beyond the North wind, were imagined to live longer and in greater felicity than other mortals. for it is easy to wish.
Chorus
But now the lash of this double scourgeThe lash of this double scourge refers to the appeal to the dead, lashing him to vengenace, to the beating of the head and breast, and to the stamping open the ground, which, like the invocation of the dead, were intended to arouse the nether powers. The scourge is double (cp.
Agam.647) because the participants in the scene are the two children (l. 334) and the Chorus. comes home: our cause already has its champions beneath the earth, while the hands of our loathsome opponents, though they have the mastery, are unholy. The children have won the day.
375
[Choral 4]
This has pierced the earth and reached your earThe ear of Agamemnon. as if it were an arrow. O Zeus, O Zeus, who send long-deferred retribution up from below onto the reckless and wicked deeds done by the hands of mortals. . . .
380
Orestes
And yet it will be accomplished for our father’s sake.He thus justifies his (unvoiced) prayer, slay my mother
385
[Choral 5]
May it be mine to raise a hearty shout in triumph over the man when he is stabbed and over the woman as she perishes! Why should I try to keep hidden what nevertheless hovers before my soul?
Chorus
Full against the prow of my heart wrath blows sharply in rancorous hate.
390
[Choral 4]
And when will mighty Zeus bring down his hand on them
Electra
and split their heads open? Let it be a pledge to the land! After injustice I demand justice as my right. Hear, O Earth, and you honored powers below!
395
[Choral]
And it is the eternal rule that drops of blood spilled on the ground demand yet more blood. Murder cries out on the Fury, which from those killed before brings one ruin in the wake of another.
400
[Choral 6]
Alas, you sovereign powers of the world below, behold, you potent Curses of the slain, behold the remnants of the line of Atreus in their helpless plight, cast out from house and home in dishonor. Which way can we turn, O Zeus?
405
[Choral 5]
But again my heart throbs as I hear this pitiful lament. At once I am devoid of hope and my viscera are darkened at the words I hear.
410
Chorus
But when hope once again lifts and strengthens me, it puts away my distress and dawns brightly on me.
415
[Choral 6]
To what could we more fittingly appeal than to those very miseries we have endured from the woman herself who bore us?
Electra
She may fawn upon us, but they are past all soothing. For like a fierce-hearted wolf the temper we have acquired from our mother is implacable.
420
[Choral 7]
On my breast I beatAt the time of Agamemnon’s murder, when the women wailed with the extravagance of professional Asiatic mourners. Here they repeat those signs of mourning. an Arian
Aria was a district of Persia. For Eranians (Old-Persian ariya) the Greeks used Ἄριοι; at least Herodotus says this was an ancient name of the Medes. dirge in just the same fashion as a CissianCissia formed part of Susiana. wailing woman.
Chorus
With clenched fists, raining blows thick and fast, my outstretched hands could be seen descending from above, from far above, now on this side, now on that, till my battered and wretched head resounded with the strokes.
425
[Choral 8]
Away with you, cruel
Electra
and utterly brazen mother! You dared to give your husband a most cruel burial: unmourned, without lamentation, a king unattended by his people.
430
[Choral 9]
Ah me, your words spell utter dishonor.
Orestes
Yet with the help of the gods, and with the help of my own hands, will she not atone for the dishonor she did my father? Let me only take her life, then let me die!
435
Chorus
Yes, and I would have you know he was brutally mangled.An allusion to the savage custom by which the extremities of the murdered man were cut off, then hung about his neck and tied together under the arm-pits (μασχάλαι). At least one object of this arm-pitting was to disable the spirit of the dead from taking vengeance on the murderer.
And even as she buried him in this way, she acted with intent to make the manner of his death a burden on your life past all power to bear. You hear the story of the ignominious outrage done to your father.
440
[Choral 7]
My father was murdered just as you say. But all the while I was kept sequestered, despised, accounted a worthless thing. Kennelled in my room as if I were a vicious cur, I gave free vent to my streaming tears, which came more readily than laughter, as in my concealment I poured out my lament in plentiful weeping.
445
Electra
Hear my tale and inscribe it on your heart.
450
[Choral 8]
Yes, let it sink deep into your ears, but keep inside a quiet steadfastness of soul. So far things are so. But you yourself be eager to resolve what is to follow.
Chorus
You must enter the contest with inflexible wrath.
455
[Choral 10]
Father, I call on you; side with your loved ones!
Electra
And I in tears join my voice to his.
Chorus
And let all our company blend our voices to echo the prayer. Hear! Come to the light!
Side with us against the foe!
460
Orestes
Ares will encounter Ares; Right will encounter Right.
Electra
O you gods, judge rightly the plea of right!
Chorus
A shudder steals over me as I hear these prayers. Doom has long been waiting,
but it will come in answer to those who pray.
465
[Choral 11]
Ah, inbred trouble and bloody stroke of ruin striking a discord! Ah, lamentable and grievous sorrows!
Chorus
Ah, the unstaunched pain!
470
Our house has a cure to heal these woes, a cure not from outside, from the hands of others, but from itself, by fierce, bloody strife.
This hymn is for the gods beneath the earth.
475
[Choral]
O you blessed powers below, hear this supplication of ours, and with a favorable will send forth to these children your aid for victory!