Electra (1218-1298)

Divine forms are seen above the house. But see the ones who are appearing over the top of the house—spirits or gods from heaven?

For this path does not belong to men. Why ever do they come into the clear sight of mortals?

Son of Agamemnon, listen; the twin sons of Zeus, your mother’s brothers,

Castor and his brother Polydeuces, are calling you. Having just now calmed the swell of the sea, terrible for ships, we have come to Argos when we saw the slaying of our sister, your mother. Now she has her just reward, but you have not acted justly,

and Phoebus, Phoebus—but I am silent, for he is my lord; although he is wise, he gave you oracles that were not. But it is necessary to accept these things. As to what remains, you must do what Fate and Zeus have accomplished for you. Give Electra to Pylades as his wife to take to his home;

but you leave Argos; for it is not for you, who killed your mother, to set foot in this city. And the dread goddesses of death, the one who glare like hounds, will drive you up and down, a maddened wanderer. Go to Athens and embrace the holy image of Pallas;

for she will prevent them, flickering with dreadful serpents, from touching you, as she stretches over your head her Gorgon-faced shield. There is a hill of Ares, where the gods first sat over their votes to decide on bloodshed,

when savage Ares killed Halirrothius, son of the ocean’s ruler, in anger for the unholy violation of his daughter, so that the tribunal is most sacred and secure in the eyes of the gods.

You also must run your risk here, for murder.

An equal number of votes cast will save you from dying by the verdict; for Loxias will take the blame upon himself, since it was his oracle that advised your mother’s murder. And this law will be set for posterity, that the accused will always win his case if he has equal votes.

Then the dread goddesses, stricken with grief at this, will sink into a cleft of the earth beside this hill, a holy, revered prophetic shrine for mortals. You must found an Arcadian city beside the streams of Alpheus near the sacred enclosure to Lycaean Apollo;

and the city will be called after your name. I say this to you. As for this corpse of Aegisthus, the citizens of Argos will cover it in the earth in burial. But as for your mother, Menelaus, who has arrived at Nauplia only now after capturing Troy,

will bury her, with Helen helping him; for she has come from Proteus’ house, leaving Egypt, and she never went to Troy; Zeus, to stir up strife and bloodshed among mortals, sent a phantom of Helen to Ilium. Now let Pylades, having one who is both a virgin and a married woman,

go home from the Achaean land, and let him conduct the one called your brother-in-law to the land of Phocis, and give him a weight of riches. But you set out along the narrow Isthmus, and go to Cecropia’s blessed hill.

For once you have completed your appointed lot of murder, you will be happy, freed from these troubles.

Sons of Zeus, is it right for us to draw near to speak with you?

It is right, for those not polluted by this murder.

May I too share your conversation, sons of Tyndareus?

You too; to Phoebus I will attribute this bloody deed.

How was it that you, being gods and the brothers of this murdered woman,