The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I.. Euripides
He sleeps.
ELEC. Thou sayest well.
CHOR. Venerable, venerable Night, thou that dispensest sleep to languid mortals, come from Erebus; come, come, borne on thy wings to the house of Agamemnon; for by our griefs and by our sufferings we are quite undone, undone.
ELEC. Ye were making a noise.
CHOR. No. (Note35.)
ELEC. Silently, silently repressing the high notes of your voice, apart from his couch, you will enable him to have the tranquil enjoyment of sleep.
CHOR. Tell us; what end to his miseries awaits him?
ELEC. Death, death; what else can? for he has no appetite for food.
CHOR. Death then is manifestly before him.
ELEC. Phœbus offered us as victims, when he commanded36 the dreadful, abhorred murder of our mother, that slew our father.
CHOR. With justice indeed, but not well.
ELEC. Thou hast died, thou hast died, O mother, O thou that didst bring me forth, but hast killed the father, and the children of thy blood. We perish, we perish, even as two corses. For thou art among the dead, and the greatest part of my life is passed in groans, and wailings, and nightly tears; marriageless, childless, behold, how like a miserable wretch do I drag out my existence forever!
CHOR. O virgin Electra, approach near, and look that thy brother has not died unobserved by thee; for by this excessive quiet he doth not please me.
ORESTES, ELECTRA, CHORUS
ORES. O precious balm of sleep, thou that relievest my malady, how pleasant didst thou come to me in the time of need! O divine oblivion of my sufferings, how wise thou art, and the goddess to be supplicated by all in distress! – whence, in heaven's name, came I hither? and how brought? for I remember not things past, bereaved, as I am, of my senses.
ELEC. My dearest brother, how didst thou delight me when thou didst fall asleep! wilt thou I touch thee, and raise thy body up?
ORES. Raise me then, raise me, and wipe the clotted foam from off my wretched mouth, and from my eyes.
ELEC. Behold, the task is sweet, and I refuse not to administer to a brother's limbs with a sister's hand.
ORES. Lay thy side by my side, and remove the squalid hair from my face, for I see but imperfectly with my eyes.
ELEC. O wretched head, sordid with ringlets, how art thou disordered from long want of the bath!
ORES. Lay me on the couch again; when my fit of madness gives me a respite, I am feeble and weak in my limbs.
ELEC. Behold, the couch is pleasant to the sick man, an irksome thing to keep, but still a necessary one.
ORES. Again raise me upright – turn my body.
CHOR. Sick persons are hard to be pleased from their feebleness.
ELEC. Wilt thou set thy feet on the ground, putting forward thy long-discontinued37 step? In all things change is sweet.
ORES. Yes, by all means; for this has a semblance of health, but the semblance is good, though it be distant from the truth.
ELEC. Hear now therefore, O my brother, while yet the Furies suffer thee to have thy right faculties.
ORES. Wilt thou tell any news? and if good indeed, thou art conferring pleasure; but if it pertain at all to mischief – I have enough distress.
ELEC. Menelaus has arrived, the brother of thy father, but his ships are moored in the Nauplian bay.
ORES. How sayest? Is he come, a light in mine and thy sufferings, a man of kindred blood, and that hath received benefits from our father?
ELEC. He is come; take this a sure proof of my words, bringing with him Helen from the walls of Troy.
ORES. Had he been saved alone, he had been more blest. But if he brings his wife, he has arrived with a mighty evil.
ELEC. Tyndarus begat an offspring of daughters, a conspicuous mark for blame, and infamous throughout Greece.
ORES. Do thou then be unlike the bad, for it is in thy power. And not only say, but also hold these sentiments.
ELEC. Alas! my brother, thine eye rolls wildly; quick art thou changed to madness, so late in thy senses.
ORES. O mother, I implore thee, urge not on me those Furies gazing blood, horrid with snakes, for these, these are leaping around me.
ELEC. Remain, O wretched man, calmly on thy couch, for thou seest none of those things, which thou fanciest thou seest plainly.
ORES. O Phœbus, these dire Goddesses in the shape of dogs will kill me, these gorgon-visaged ministers of hell.
ELEC. I will not let thee go, but, putting my arm around thee, will stop thy starting into those unfortunate convulsions.
ORES. Loose me. Thou art one of my Furies, and seizest me by the middle, that thou mayest hurl me into Tartarus.
ELEC. Oh! wretched me! what assistance can I obtain, since we have on us the vengeful wrath of heaven!
ORES. Give me my bow of horn, the gift of Phœbus, with which Apollo said I should repel the Fiends, if they appalled me by their maddened raging.
ELEC. Shall any God be wounded by mortal hand? (Note38.)
ORES. Yes. She shall, if she will not depart from my sight… Hear ye not – see ye not the winged shafts impelled from the distant-wounding bow? Ha! ha! Why tarry ye yet? Skim the high air with your wings, and impeach the oracles of Phœbus. – Ah! why am I thus disquieted, heaving my panting breath from my lungs? Whither, whither have I wandered from my couch? For from the waves again I see a calm. – Sister, why weepest, hiding thine eyes beneath thy vests, I am ashamed to have thee a partner in my sufferings, and to give a virgin trouble through my malady. Pine not away on account of my miseries: for thou indeed didst assent to this, but the shedding of my mother's blood was accomplished by me: but I blame Apollo, who, after having instigated me to a most unholy act, with words indeed consoled me, but not with deeds. But I think that my father, had I, beholding him, asked him if it were right for me to slay my mother, would have put forth many supplications, beseeching me by this beard not to impel my sword to the slaughter of her who bore me, if neither he thereby could be restored to life, and I thus wretched must go through such miseries. And now then unveil thyself, my sister, and cease from tears, even though we be very miserable: but when thou seest me desponding, do thou restrain my distraction, and that which preys upon my mind, and console me; but when thou groanest, it becomes my duty to come to thee, and suggest words of comfort. For these are the good offices friends ought to render each other. But go thou into the house, O unfortunate sister, and, stretched at full length, compose thy sleepless eyelids to sleep, and take refreshment, and pour the bath upon thy fair skin. For if thou forsakest me, or gettest any illness by continually sitting by me, we perish; for thee I have my only succor, by the rest, as thou seest, abandoned.
ELEC. This can not be: with thee will I choose to die, with thee to live; for it is the same: for if then shouldst die, what can I do, a woman? how shall I be preserved, alone and destitute? without a brother, without a father, without a friend: but if it seemeth good to thee, these things it is my duty to do: but recline thy body on the bed, and do not to such a degree conceive to be real whatever frightens and startles thee from the couch, but keep quiet on the bed strewn for thee. For though thou be not ill, but only seem to be ill, still this even is an evil and a distress to mortals. (Note39.)
CHORUS. Alas! alas! O swift-winged, raving40 Goddesses, who keep up the dance, not that of Bacchus, with tears and groans. You, dark Eumenides, you, that fly through the wide extended air, executing vengeance, executing slaughter, you do I supplicate, I supplicate: suffer the offspring of Agamemnon to forget his furious madness; alas! for his sufferings.
But Dindorf reads κτυπου η ηγαγετ'. ουχι; interrogatively, thus: "Ye were making a noise. Will ye not … enable him," etc.?
δους – δυναται δε και αποδους. SCHOL.
Perhaps this interpretation of χρονιον is better than "slow," for the considerate Electra would hardly go to remind her brother of his infirmities.
Dindorf would continue this verse to Orestes.
Dindorf supposes something to be wanting after vs. 314.
Ποτνιαδες. The Furies have this epithet from Potnia, a town in Bœotia, where Glaucus's horses, having eaten of a certain herb and becoming mad, tore their own master in pieces. SCHOL.