Orestes (350-405)

O my home, some joy I feel to see you again on my return from Troy, but I also grieve at the sight; for never have I seen another house more closely encircled by dire affliction.

For I learned Agamemnon’s fate and the death he died at his wife’s hands, as I was trying to put in at Malea; when the sailors’ prophet, the truthful god Glaucus, Nereus’ seer, brought the news to me from the waves;

he stationed himself in full view and told me this: Menelaus, your brother lies dead, plunged in a fatal bath, the last his wife will ever give him. My sailors and I wept greatly at his words. When I arrived at Nauplia,

my wife already on the point of starting here, I was expecting to give a fond embrace to Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, and his mother, thinking that they were doing well, when I heard from a sailor the unholy murder of Tyndareus’ child.

And now tell me, young ladies, where to find the son of Agamemnon, who dared such evil. For he was a baby in Clytemnestra’s arms when I left my home to go to Troy, so that I would not recognize him if I saw him.

Menelaus, I am Orestes, whom you are asking about. I will of my own accord inform you of my sufferings. But as my first portion, I clasp your knees as a suppliant, giving you prayers from the mouth of one without the suppliant’s bough; save me, for you have come at the crisis of my troubles.

O gods, what do I see? What living corpse greets my sight?

You are right; I am dead through misery, though I still gaze upon the light.

How savage the look your unkempt hair gives you, poor wretch!

It is not my looks, but my deeds that torture me.

Your tearless eyes glare dreadfully!

My body is gone, though my name has not deserted me.

Unsightly apparition, so different from what I expected!

Here I am, the murderer of my wretched mother.

I have heard, spare your words; evils should be seldom spoken.

I will be sparing; but the deity is lavish of woe in my case.

What ails you? what is your deadly sickness?

My conscience; I know that I am guilty of a dreadful crime.

What do you mean? Wisdom is shown in clarity, not in obscurity.

Grief especially has ruined me—

Yes, she is a dreadful goddess, yet are there cures for her.

And fits of madness, the vengeance of a mother’s blood.

When did your madness begin? Which day was it?

On the day I was heaping the mound over my poor mother’s grave.

When you were in the house, or watching by the pyre?

As I was waiting by night to gather up her bones.

Was any one else there, to help you rise?