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Messenger: He stood quite unconcerned, nor strove to plead, 720
Knowing such prayer were vain. But in his neck
That savage butcher plunged his gleaming sword
Clear to the hilt and drew it forth again.
Still stood the corpse upright, and, wavering long,
As 'twere in doubt or here or there to fall, 725
At last prone on the uncle hurled itself.
Then he, his rancor unabated still,
Dragged youthful Plisthenes before the shrine,
And quickly meted him his brother's fate.
With one keen blow he smote him on the neck,
Whereat his bleeding body fell to earth;
While with a murmur inarticulate,
His head with look complaining rolled away.
Chorus: ⁠What did he then, this twofold murder done? 730
The last one spare, or heap up crime on crime?
Messenger: As when some maned lion in the woods
Victorious attacks the Armenian herds—
(His jaws are smeared with blood, his hunger gone;
And yet he does not lay aside his wrath; 735
Now here, now there he charges on the bulls,
And now the calves he worries, though his teeth
Are weary with their work)—so Atreus raves;
He swells with wrath; and, grasping in his hand
The sword with double slaughter dripping yet,
By fury blinded but with deadly stroke,
He drives clean through the body of the boy. 740
And so, from breast to back transfixed, he falls
By double wound, and with his streaming blood
Extinguishes the baleful altar fires.
Chorus: ⁠Oh, horrid deed!
Messenger: ⁠What! horrid call ye that?
If only there the course of crime had stopped,
'Twould pious seem. 745
Chorus: ⁠What more atrocious crime,
What greater sin could human heart conceive?
Messenger: And do ye think his crime was ended here?
'Twas just begun.
Chorus: ⁠What further could there be?