Iphigenia
Oh! My servants, how I am involved in mournful dirges,
[145]
in laments unfit for the lyre, of a song that is not melodious, alas! alas! wailing for my family. Ruin has come to me; I am lamenting the life of my brother,
[150]
such a vision I saw in my dreams, in the night whose darkness is now over. I am lost, lost! My father's house is no more; alas for my vanished family,
[155]
alas for the sufferings of Argos! O fate, I had one brother only and you carry him off and send him to Hades. For him,
[160]
I am about to pour over the back of the earth these libations and the bowl of the dead: streams of milk from mountain cows, and offerings of wine from Bacchus,
[165]
and the labor of the tawny bees; these sacrifices are soothing to the dead.
Give me the golden vessel and the libation of Hades.
[170]
O child of Agamemnon beneath the earth, I send these to you as one dead. Accept them; for I will not bring to your tomb my yellow hair or my tears.
[175]
I live far indeed from your country and mine, where I am thought to lie, unhappily slaughtered.
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Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 1. Iphigenia in Tauris, translated by Robert Potter. New York. Random House. 1938.
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