oh, yes, my life is so wondrously fine. Chrysothemis It would be, if only you learned good sense. Electra Do not teach me to betray my friends. Chrysothemis I do not, but to bend before the strong. Electra Keep your flattery to yourself; it is not in my character. Chrysothemis Regardless, it brings no honor to fall through senselessness. Electra I will fall, if need be, while honoring my father. Chrysothemis But our father, I know, pardons me for this. Electra It is for cowards to commend such sentiments. Chrysothemis So you will not be persuaded to agree with me? Electra No, indeed; may I not yet be so devoid of intelligence. Chrysothemis Then I will move on to where I was sent. Electra And where is it that you go? For whom do you take these offerings to be burned? Chrysothemis Mother sends me with funeral libations for our father. Electra What are you saying? For her deadliest enemy? Chrysothemis Whom she herself killed, no doubt you wanted to say this as well. Electra What friend persuaded her? Whose idea was it? Chrysothemis The cause, I think, was fear induced by some vision in the night. Electra My father’s Gods! Stand with me now at last! Chrysothemis Do you find something heartening in this terror? Electra If you would tell me the vision, then I could answer. Chrysothemis I know no more than a small part of the story. Electra Tell me that, anyway; a small tale has often before now tripped men up, or set them upright. Chrysothemis It is said that she saw the father of you and of me restored to the sunlight and to her company once more. Then he took the scepter— once his own, but now carried by Aegisthus—and planted it at the hearth. From it branched upward a flourishing limb, by which the whole land of the Mycenaeans was overshadowed. Such was the tale that I heard told by one who was present when she revealed her dream to the Sun-god. More than this I do not know, except that she sent me by reason of this fear of hers. Now, I beg you by our ancestral gods, obey me, and do not fall in your senselessness! If you reject me now, it is in misery that you will next seek me out. Electra Dear sister, let none of these offerings in your hands touch the tomb. For neither divine law nor piety allows you to dedicate funeral gifts or bring libations to our father from his hateful wife. No! To the winds with them! Or cover them in a deep, dusty hole, where not one of them
 will ever come near our father’s resting place. Rather let these treasures be
 preserved for her below when she dies. Were she not by nature the most
 audacious of all women, she would never at all have tried to pour these ill-willed offerings to the man she killed. Consider whether you believe that the dead in his tomb will welcome this tribute with affection towards her, by whose hand he died dishonored and was mutilated