I am Agamemnon’s child, and Clytemnestra, hated daughter of Tyndareus, bore me; the citizens call me unhappy Electra.Alas for my cruel pain and hateful life! O father, Agamemnon, you lie in Hades, by the butchery of your wife and Aegisthus.

ElectraCome, waken the same lament, take up the enjoyment of long weeping.

ElectraHasten your step, it is time; go onward, onward, weeping. Ah me!In what city and what household do you wander about, my wretched brother, leaving your pitiable sister in our ancestral home, to great pain?Come to me, the unhappy one, as a deliverer from this pain, oh Zeus, Zeus, and as a defender for my father against his most hateful bloodshed; bring the wanderer to shore in Argos.

ElectraTake this pitcher from my head and put it down, so that I may cry aloud the night-time laments for my father. A wail, a song of death, of death, for you, father, under the earth, I speak the lamentsin which I am always engaged, day by day, tearing my skin with my nails, and striking my cropped head with my hand, for your death.

ElectraOh, oh, tear my face; as a clear-sounding swan beside the river’s streams calls to its dearest father, dying in the crafty snares of thenet, so I lament you, my unhappy father,

Electrawashed by the very last bath, in the most piteous bed of death. Oh, me,your bitter cleaving by the axe, father, the bitter plans of the way from Troy! Your wife welcomed you with no victor’s garlands or crowns, but with a two-edged sword,making you the mournful victim of Aigisthus, she got a treacherous bed-fellow.

ChorusO Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, I have come to your rustic courtyard. A milk-drinker from Mycenae has come, he has come,a mountain walker; he reports that the Argives are proclaiming a sacrifice for the third day from now, and that all maidens are to go to Hera’s temple.ElectraMy unhappy heart beats fast, friends, but not at adornment or gold; nor will I set up choruses with the maidens of Argosand beat my foot in the mazes of the dance. By tears I pass the night; tears are my unhappy care day by day. See if my filthy hair,and the rags of my dress, will be fit for a princess, a daughter of Agamemnon, or for Troy, once taken, which remembers my father.

ChorusMighty is the goddess; come then, and borrow from me thick-woven clothes to wear, and gold—as a favor to me—accessories to adornment. Do you think to rule over your enemies by tears, if you do not revere the gods?Honoring the gods not by lamentation but by prayers, you will have good fortune, child.ElectraNo god attends to the voice of the ill-fated one,or to the slaying of my father long ago. Alas for the dead, and for the living vagabond, who dwells in another land somewhere,miserably wandering to a slave’s hearth, yet born of that renowned father. I myself live in a poor man’s house, wasting my life away, an exile from my father’s house,on the mountain crags. But my mother, with a new husband, makes her home in a bed stained by blood.

Chorus LeaderHelen, your mother’s sister, is the cause of many evils to the Hellenes and to your house.ElectraCatching sight of Orestes and PyladesAh! Women, I have broken off my lament; strangers, who had their lair at the altar, are rising from ambush towards the household. Let us escape the villains by flight, you along the path and I to the house.OrestesStay, poor girl; do not fear my hand.ElectraO Phoebus Apollo! I beseech you to spare my life.OrestesMay I kill others more hated than you!ElectraGo away! Do not touch one whom you must not touch.