98
THE LIBATION-BEARERS.
In the under-world again
Where are throned the kings of hell,
Full of sway, adorable
Thou hadst stood at their right hand—
Thou that wert, in mortal land,
By Fate's ordinance and law,
King of kings who bear the crown
And the staff, to which in awe
Mortal men bow down.
Electra.
Nay O father, I were fain
Other fate had fallen on thee.
Ill it were if thou hadst lain
One among the common slain,
Fallen by Scamander's side—
Those who slew thee there should be![1]
Then, untouched by slavery,
We had heard as from afar
Deaths of those who should have died
'Mid the chance of war.
Chorus.
O child, forbear! things all too high thou sayest.
- ↑ Electra's aspiration, vaguely expressed in the original, is made more indefinite still by a gap in the text. She seems to wish passionately that the facts had been exactly reversed; that, instead of Agamemnon being slain close to his home and to her, his enemies, i.e., Ægisthus and Clytemnestra, had been slain in a far-off land. The idealism, so to speak, of her wish, is immediately reproved by the Chorus. With all deference to Paley's view, however, I doubt if Electra's feeling is one of horror at being compelled to witness the coming deaths of Ægisthus and Clytemnestra. This shrinking is not in her character; her wish here is only a passion of feminine sorrow—a cry like that of Daphnis: πάντα δ᾽ ἔναλλα γένοιτο.—Theoc., Id., i, 133.
