ORESTES:

In reverence to thy age I dread to speak

What I well know must pierce thy heart with grief.
I am unholy in my mother's death,
But holy, as my father I avenged.
The veneration due to those grey hairs
Strikes me with awe: else I could urge my plea
Freely and boldly; but thy years dismay me.
What could I do? Let fact be weighed with fact.
My father was the author of my being;
Thy daughter brought me forth: he gave me life,
Which she but fostered: to the higher cause
A higher reverence then I deemed was due.
Thy daughter, for I dare not call her mother,
Forsook her royal bed for a rank sty
Of secret and adulterous lust: on me
The word reflects disgrace, yet I must speak it.
gisthus was this private paramour:
Him first I slew, then sacrificed my mother:
An impious deed; but I avenged my father.
Thou threatenst the just vengeance of the state:
Hear me: deserve I not the thanks of Greece?
Should wives with ruffian boldness kill their husbands,
Then fly for refuge to their sons, and think,
Baring their breast, to captivate their pity,
These deeds would pass for nothing, as the mood,
For something or for nothing, shall incline them.
This complot have I broke, by doing what
Thy pompous language styles atrocious deeds.
My soul abhorred my mother, and I slew her,
Who, when her lord was absent, and in arms
To glorious conquest led the sons of Greece,
Betrayed him, with pollution stained his bed;
And, conscious of her guilt, sought not t' atone it,
But, to escape his righteous vengeance.

PROMETHEUS:

O divine air Breezes on swift bird-wings,

Ye river fountains, and of ocean-waves
The multitudinous laughter Mother Earth!
And thou all-seeing circle of the sun,
Behold what I, a God, from Gods endure!
Look down upon my shame,
The cruel wrong that racks my frame,
The grinding anguish that shall waste my strength,
Till time's ten thousand years have measured out their length!
He hath devised these chains,
The new throned potentate who reigns,
Chief of the chieftains of the Blest. Ah me!
The woe which is and that which yet shall be
I wail; and question make of these wide skies
When shall the star of my deliverance rise.
And yet-and yet-exactly I foresee
All that shall come to pass; no sharp surprise
Of pain shall overtake me; what's determined
Bear, as I can, I must, knowing the might
Of strong Necessity is unconquerable.
But touching my fate silence and speech alike
Are unsupportable. For boons bestowed
On mortal men I am straitened in these bonds.
I sought the fount of fire in hollow reed
Hid privily, a measureless resource
For man, and mighty teacher of all arts.
This is the crime that I must expiate
Hung here in chains, nailed 'neath the open sky. Ha! Ha!
What echo, what odour floats by with no sound?
God-wafted or mortal or mingled its strain?
Comes there one to this world's end, this mountain-girt ground,
To have sight of my torment? Or of what is he fain?
A God ye behold in bondage and pain,
The foe of Zeus and one at feud with all
The deities that find submissive entry to the tyrant's hall;
His fault, too great a love of humankind.

TECMESSA:
O my lord Ajax, in the ills of men
There is none sorer than Necessity.
I was the offspring of a sire free-born,
Strong in his wealth, no Phrygian more than he;
And now, I am a slave. So the Gods willed it,
And thy right hand determined. Coming thus
Unto thy bed, I am on thy side, now.
And I beseech thee by our household Jove,
And by thy couch, which thou didst share with me,
Leave me not open to contemptuous talk
From thy foes' tongues, bequeathing me to be
Handmaid to some one! For the very day
Thou diest, and dying puttest me away,
Think how the Argives will lay violent hands
On me who, with thy son, must thenceforth eat
The bread of bondage! And some master then,
In bitter language aiming taunts at me,
Will word me--"Look at Ajax' concubine!
His, who was once the mightiest of the host;
What servitude, after such envied state,
Is come on her!" Such things will some one say,
And I shall be the sport of destiny,
But thee and thine these sayings will bring to shame.
O tremble, ere in sorrowful old age
Thou leav'st thy father--leav'st thy mother, too,
Who has seen so many years, and oft to Heaven
Is praying for thy return in safety home!
And pity, O king, thy son--if he, bereft
Of childish nurture, must survive alone,
Under unfriendly guardians--what sore trouble
Is this which, by the death, thou wilt impart
To him and me? For I no longer know
To whom to look, save thee; my native land
Thy spear destroyed; and yet another stroke
Brought low my mother and my sire, to be
Inhabitants of Hades with the dead.
What home, then, could supply thy place to me?
What wealth? All my existence is in thee.
Have thou some care for me. Some mindfulness
A man should surely keep, of any thing
That pleased him once.

ELECTRA:
Holy Light, with Earth, and Sky,
Whom thou fillest equally,
An how many a note of woe,
Many a self-inflicted blow
On my scarred breast might'st thou mark,
Ever as recedes the dark;
Known, too, all my nightlong cheer
To bitter bed and chamber drear,
How I mourn my father lost,
Whom on no barbarian coast
Did red Ares greet amain,
But as woodmen cleave an oak
My mother's axe dealt murderous stroke,
Backed by the partner of her bed,
Fell gisthus, on his head;
Whence no pity, save from me,
O my father, flows for thee,
So falsely, foully slain.
Yet I will not cease from sighing,
Cease to pour my bitter crying,
While I see this light of day,
Or the stars' resplendent play,
Uttering forth a sound of wail,
Like the child-slayer, the nightingale,
Here before my father's door
Crying to all men evermore.
O Furies dark, of birth divine!
O Hades wide, and Proserpine!
Thou nether Hermes! Ara great!
Ye who regard the untimely dead,
The dupes of an adulterous bed,
Come ye, help me, and require
The foul murder of our sire;
And send my brother back again;
Else I may no more sustain
Grief's overmastering weight.

CLYTEMNESTRA:
Though much to suit the times before was said,
It shames me not the opposite to speak:
For, plotting against foes,--our seeming friends,-How else contrive with Ruin's wily snare,
Too high to overleap, to fence them round?
To me, not mindless of an ancient feud,
Hath come at last this contest;--late indeed.
The deed achieved, here stand I, where I slew.
So was it wrought (and this I'll not deny),
That he could neither 'scape, nor ward his doom;
Around him, like a fish-encircling net,
This garment's deadly splendour did I cast;-Him twice I smote, and he, with twofold groan,
His limbs relaxed;--then, prostrate where he lay,
Him with third blow I dowered, votive gift
To nether Hades, saviour of the dead.
Thus as he fell he chafed his soul away;
And gurgling forth the swift death-tide of blood,
He smites me with black drops of gory dew,
Not less exultant than, with heaven-sent joy
The corn-sown land, in birth-hour of the ear.
For this great issue, Argive Senators,
Joy ye, if joy ye can, but I exult.
Nay, o'er the slain were off'rings meet,--with right
Here were they poured,--with emphasis of right.
Such goblets having filled with cursed ills
At home,--himself on his return drains off.
Me thou dost doom to exile,--to endure
The people's hate, their curse deep-muttered,--thou,
Who 'gainst this man of yore hadst naught to urge.
He, all unmoved, as though brute life he quenched,
The while his fleecy pastures teem'd with flocks,
His own child slaughtered,--of my travail throes
To me the dearest,--charm for Thracian blasts.
Him shouldst thou not have chased from land and home
Just guerdon for foul deed? Stern judge thou art
When me thou dost arraign;--but, mark my words,
(Nerved as I am to threat on equal terms,)
If with strong hand ye conquer me, then rule;-But should the god decree the opposite,
Though late, to sober sense shalt thou be schooled.

ATHENA:
Not slighted are ye, powers august! through rage
Curse not with hopeless blight the abode of man.
I too on Zeus rely; why speak of that?
And sole among the gods I know the key
That opes the halls where seald thunder sleeps.
But such we need not. Be appeased by me,
Nor scatter o'er the land, from froward tongue,
The harmful seed that turneth all to bane.
Of bitter rage lull ye the murky wave;
Be venerated here and dwell with me.
Sharing the first fruits of this ample realm,
For children offered, and for nuptial rite,
This word of mine thou wilt for ever praise.
I'll bear thine anger, for mine elder thou,
And wiser art, in that regard, than I.
Yet me, with wisdom, Zeus not meanly dowers.
But if now ye seek some alien soil,
Will of this land enamour'd be; of this
You I forewarn; for onward-flowing time
Shall these my lieges raise to loftier fame;
And thou, in venerable seat enshrined
Hard by Erectheus' temple, shalt receive
Honours from men and trains of women, such
As thou from other mortals ne'er may'st win.
But cast ye not abroad on these my realms,
To waste their building strength, whetstones of blood,
Evoking frantic rage not born of wine;
Nor, as out-plucking hearts of fighting cocks,
Plant ye among my townsmen civil strife,
Reckless of kindred blood; let foreign war
Rage without stint, affording ample scope
For him who burns with glory's mighty rage.
No war of home-bred cocks, I ween, is that!
Such terms I proffer, thine it is to choose;
Blessing and blest, with blessd rites revered,
To share this country dear unto the gods.

DANAOS:
Ye to the Argives should with sacrifice,
As to Olympian gods, libations pour,
My daughters! for deliverers they have proved,
Beyond dispute. 'Gainst those assiduous friends,
Your cousins, all that had been done they heard,
Indignant, and forthwith, this body-guard,
As mark of honour they assigned to me,
Lest too, by secret spear-thrust slain, my death
Should curse undying bring upon the land.
Such favours reaping, justice bids us hold
In higher honour still their kindly grace.
These admonitions too ye shall inscribe
With many prudent maxims of your sire,
That Time this stranger company may test.
Each 'gainst the alien bears an evil tongue,
From which the slanderous word full lightly falls.
But, I exhort you, do me no disgrace,
Crowned as ye are with youth's attractive bloom.
Not easy tender ripeness is to guard;
Wild beasts despoil it,--mortals too no less,
And wingd tribes and treaders on the earth.
Her gushing fruitage Kypris heraldeth,
Nay, the unripe scarce suffers she to stay;
And at the virgin's daintiness of form,
Each passer-by, o'ercome by fond desire,
Sends from his eye a shaft of suasive spell.
Forget we not then wherefore many a toil,
And breadth of sea was furrowed by our keel.-Shame to ourselves, but triumph to our foes,
Let us not work. A two-fold dwelling here,
(One doth Pelasgos give, the city one,)
Awaits us, free of charge;--easy the terms.
This only,--guard the mandates of your sire.
And honour hold in more respect than life.