Through Hades’ gloomy gates; ere those be done,
The spirits and spectres of departed men
Drive me far from them, nor allow to cross
Th’ abhorred river; but forlorn and sad
I wander through the wide-spread realms of night,
And give now thy hand, whereupon to weep;
For never more, when laid upon the pyre,
Shall I return from Hades; never more,
Apart from all our comrades, shall we two,
As friends, sweet counsel take; for me, stern Death,
The common lot of man, has op’d his mouth;
Thou too, Achilles, rival of the Gods,
Art destin’d here beneath the walls of Troy
To meet thy doom; yet one thing must I add,
And make, if thou wilt grant it, one request.
Let not my bones be laid apart from thine,
Achilles, but together, as our youth
Was spent together in thy father’s house.
Since first my Sire Menœtius me a boy
From Opus brought, a luckless homicide,
Who of Amphidamas, by evil chance,
Had slain the son, disputing o’er the dice;
Me noble Peleus in his house receiv’d,
And kindly nurs’d, and thine attendant nam’d;
So in one urn be now our bones enclos’d,
The golden vase, thy Goddess-mother’s gift.”
Whom answer’d thus Achilles, swift to foot:
“Why art thou here lov’d being? why on me
These several charges lay? whate’er thou bidd’st
Will I perform, and all in one short embrace,
Let us, while yet we may, our grief indulge.”
Thus as he spoke, he spread his longing arms.
But nought he clasp’d; and with a wailing cry,
Vanish’d, like smoke, the spirit beneath the earth.[6]
Having slain her husband the atrocious Clytemnestra heaps sin upon sin and outrages not merely all decent feeling and human respect, but in some mysterious way insults the majesty of heaven itself in that, a supreme act of wanton insolence, she “dared to lay her husband in the tomb without mourning and without lamentation or dirge,” for an adequate show of outward grief was considered an essential and religious part of any Greek funeral. In bitter accents Electra cries:[7]
ἰὼ δαΐα
πάντολμε μᾶτερ, δαΐαις ἐν ἐκφοραῖς
ἄνευ πολιτᾶν ἅνακτ᾿,
ἄνευ δὲ πενθημἄτων
ἔτλας ἀνοίμωκτον ἄνδρα θάψαι.
