Epeisodion 2
Orestes
For though a man may pour out all he has in atonement for one deed of blood, it is wasted effort. So the saying goes. If indeed you know, tell me: I wish to learn.
520
Chorus
I know, my child, for I was there. It was because she was shaken by dreams and wandering terrors of the night
that she sent these offerings, godless woman that she is.
525
Orestes
And have you learned the nature of the dream so as to tell it properly?
Chorus
She dreamed she gave birth to a serpent: that is her own account.
Orestes
And where does the tale end, and what is its consummation?
Chorus
She laid it to rest as if it were a child, in swaddling clothes.
Orestes
What food did it crave, the newborn viper?
530
Chorus
In her dream she offered it her own breast.
Orestes
Surely her nipple was not unwounded by the loathsome beast?
Chorus
No: it drew in clotted blood with the milk.
Orestes
Truly it is not without meaning: the vision signifies a man!
Chorus
Then from out of her sleep she raised a shriek and awoke appalled, and many lamps that had been blinded in the darkness flared up in the house to cheer our mistress. Then she sent these libations for the dead in the hope that they might be an effective cure for her distress.
535
Orestes
Well then, I pray to this earth and to my father’s grave that this dream may come to its fulfilment in me. As I understand it, it fits at every point. For if the snake left the same place as I; if it was furnished with my swaddling clothes;
540
if it sought to open its mouth to take the breast that nourished me and mixed the sweet milk with clotted blood while she shrieked for terror at this, then surely, as she has nourished a portentous thing of horror, she must die by violence. For I, turned serpent,
545
am her killer, as this dream declares.
550
Chorus
I choose your reading of this portent. Let it be so. As for the rest, give your friends their parts. Tell some what to do, others what to leave undone.
Orestes
It is a simple story. My sister must go inside, and I charge her to keep concealed this pact with me,
so that as by craft they killed a worthy man, so by craft they may likewise be caught and perish in the very same snare, even as Loxias decreed, lord Apollo, the prophet who has never before been false.
555
In the guise of a stranger, one fully equipped,I will come to the outer gate, and with me Pylades, whom you see here, as a guest and ally of the house. Both of us will speak the speech of Parnassus, imitating the accent of a Phocian tongue. And in case none of the keepers of the door will give us a hearty welcome
560
