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Chorus
[251] I came, my child, mindful of your interests no less than my own. But if what I say is wrong, let your way prevail; for united we will follow you. Electra
Electra
I am ashamed, my friends, if you judge me [255] too intolerant with my many laments; but, since rough compulsion forces me to act this way, forgive me. How indeed could any woman of noble nature not act, when she sees her father's sufferings as I see them day and night continually, [260] and flourishing rather than fading? First, everything to do with the mother who bore me has become most hateful towards me; next, in my own home I live with my father's murderers; they rule over me and from them [265] equally I either have or do without. And then think what manner of days I pass, when I see Aegisthus sitting on my father's throne; when I look on him wearing the very robes which my father wore and [270] pouring libations at the hearth where he killed him; and when I see the chief outrage of them all, the murderer in my father's bed at my wretched mother's side, if I must call her mother, even though she shares her bed with that man. [275] So hardened is she that she joins with this polluter, fearing no Erinys. No, as if laughing at her deeds, having found the day on which in the past she treacherously killed my father, [280] she celebrates it with dance and song, and in monthly rites she sacrifices sheep to the gods who worked her deliverance.
Sophocles. The Electra of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1894.
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