Have on my mother's part, yes, hers who bore me,
Found deadliest hate; and then, in this my house,
Companion with my father's murderers,
I bow to them, and at their hands receive,
Or suffer want. And next, I pray thee, think
What kind of days I pass, beholding him,
Ægisthos, sitting on my father's throne,
And seeing him wear all his kingly robes,
And pouring forth libations on the hearth270
Where his hands slew him; last, and worst of all,
I see that murderer in my father's couch,
With her, my wretched mother, if that name
Of mother I may give to one who sleeps
With such an one as he; and she is bold,
And lives with that adulterer, fearing not
The presence of Erinnyes, but, as one
Who laughs in what she does, she notes the day
In which she slew my father in her guile,
And on it forms her choral band, and slays
Her sheep each month, as victims to the Gods280
That give deliverance;[1] I, poor hapless one,
Beholding it, (ah misery!) within
Bewail, and pine, and mourn the fatal feast,[2]
Full of all woe, that takes my father's name,—
I by myself alone. I dare not weep,
Not even weep, as fain my heart would wish;
For she, that woman, noble but in words,
Heaps on my head reproaches such as these:
"Ο impious, hateful mood! Has death deprived
- ↑ The monthly festival which Clytemnestra kept was after the pattern of new-moon feasts or others regulated by them.
- ↑ The "feast of Agamemnon" had become proverbial as the type of treacherous hospitality, and it seems probable that the poet so framed Electra's words as to call up that association in the minds of his hearers.
