to find a healer for ill fortune, such as I have in you. And so, even though unbidden, I ought to share your labors, relieving you of work as far as I have strength, so that you may bear it more easily. You have enough to do outside; I must keep the housein order. It is pleasant for the worker coming in from outside to find things within right.PeasantGo, then, if you wish; and in fact the springs are not far from my house. When it is day, I will drive the oxen to my lands and sow the fields.For no idler, though he has the gods’ names always on his lips, can gather a livelihood without hard work. Exeunt Peasant and Electra. Enter Orestes and Pylades. OrestesPylades, I hold you first among men as a kind and trusted friend to me. You alone of my friends have honored me, Orestes,being as I am in dreadful suffering from Aegisthus, who killed my father, he and my most deadly mother. I have come from the mystic shrine of the god to Argive land, and no one knows it, to repay my father’s murderers with murder.During this past night, going to my father’s tomb, I wept and cut off a lock of my hair as an offering and sacrificed over the altar the blood of a slaughtered sheep, unnoticed by the tyrants who rule this land. And now I do not set foot within the walls,but I have come to the borders of this land combining two desires: I may escape to another country if anyone on the watch should recognize me; and, looking for my sister (for they say that she lives here, joined in marriage, and is no longer a virgin),I may meet with her and, having her as an accomplice for murder, I may learn clearly what is happening within the walls. And now, since dawn is lifting up her bright eye, let us step aside from this path. For either some plowman or serving maidwill come in our sight, from whom we may ask if my sister lives in this place. But now that I see this maidservant, bearing a weight of water on her shorn head, let us sit down, and inquireof this slave girl, if we may receive some word about the matter, Pylades, for which we have come to this land. They retire a little.

ElectraHasten your step, it is time; go onward, onward, weeping! Ah me!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,