Electra
What do you think? Does it seem to you that she, poor woman, wept and wailed terribly,
[805]
like a grieving, anguished woman, over her son thus destroyed? No, she left us with a laugh! Ah, miserable me! Dearest Orestes, how your death has destroyed me! For your passing has torn from my heart
[810]
the only hopes which still were mine: that you would live to return some day as the avenger of our father, and also of me in my misery. But now, where shall I turn? I am alone, cheated of you, as of my father. Hereafter I must be a slave again
[815]
among those I most hate, my father's murderers. Am I not in a fine way? But at least in the time remaining me I will never enter the house to dwell with them. No, lying down at these gates, without a friend, I shall wither away my days.
[820]
Therefore, if anyone in the house be angry, let him kill me. It is a favor, if I die, but a pain, if I live. I desire life no more.
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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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