Iphigenia at Aulis (510-575)

a relationship of this kind which is bitterness to both.[*] But it is useless, for circumstances compel me to carry out the murderous sacrifice of my daughter.

How so? who will compel you to slay your own?

The whole Achaean army here assembled.

Not if you send her back to Argos.

I might do that unnoticed, but there will be another thing I cannot.

What is that? You must not fear the mob too much.

Calchas will tell the Argive army his oracles.

Not if he should die before that—an easy matter.

The whole tribe of seers is a curse with its ambition.

Yes, and good for nothing and useless, when among us.

Has the thought, which is rising in my mind, no terrors for you?

How can I understand your meaning, unless you declare it?

The son of Sisyphus knows all.

Odysseus cannot possibly hurt us.

He was ever shifty by nature, siding with the mob.

True, he is enslaved by the love of popularity, a fearful evil.

Don’t you think, then, he will arise among the Argives and tell them the oracles that Calchas delivered,

saying of me that I undertook to offer Artemis a victim, and after all am proving false? Then, when he has carried the army away with him, he will bid the Argives slay us and sacrifice the girl; and if I escape to Argos, they will come and destroy the place,

razing it to the ground, Cyclopean walls and all. That is my trouble. Woe is me! to what perplexities the gods have brought me at this pass! Take one precaution for me, Menelaus, as you go through the army, that Clytemnestra does not learn this,

till I have taken my child and devoted her to death, that my affliction may be attended with the fewest tears. Turning to the Chorus. And you, foreign women, keep silence. Exit Menelaus.