Agamemnon (1520-1550)

wrought by a weapon of double edge wielded by your own wife’s hand!

Neither do I think he met an ignoble death. And did he not himself by treachery bring ruin on his house?

Yet, as he has suffered—worthy prize of worthy deed—for what he did to my sweet flower, shoot sprung from him, the sore-wept Iphigenia, let him make no great boasts in the halls of Hades, since with death dealt him by the sword he has paid for what he first began.

Bereft of any ready expedient of thought, I am bewildered where to turn now that the house is tottering. I fear the beating storm of bloody rain that shakes the house; no longer does it descend in drops.

Yet on other whetstones Destiny is sharpening justice for another evil deed.

O Earth, Earth, if only you had taken me to yourself before ever I had lived to see my lord

occupying a lowly bed of a silver-sided bath! Who shall bury him? Who shall lament him? Will you harden your heart to do this—you who have slain your own husband—to lament for him

and crown your unholy work with an uncharitable gift to his spirit, atoning for your monstrous deeds? And who, as with tears he utters praise over the hero’s grave,

shall sorrow in sincerity of heart?