Libation Bearers (745-765)

that occurred in this house of Atreus have always made my heart ache within my breast! But never yet have I endured a blow like this. For all the other troubles I bore patiently, but my beloved Orestes, on whom I spent my soul,

whom I took from his mother at birth and nursed, and the many and troublesome tasks, fruitless for all my enduring them, when his loud and urgent cries broke my rest.... For one must nurse the senseless thing like a dumb beast, of course one must, by following its humor.

For while it is still a baby in swaddling clothes, it has no speech at all, whether hunger moves it, or thirst perhaps, or the call of need: children’s young insides work their own relief. I would anticipate these needs. Yet many a time, I think, having to wash the child’s linen because of my own errors,

laundress and nurse had the same function. It was I who, with these two handicrafts, received Orestes for his father. And now, wretch that I am, I hear that he is dead. But I am on my way to fetch the man who wrought destruction on

our house, and he will be glad enough to hear this news.