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Menelaus and his retinue enter.
Menelaus
O my home, some joy I feel to see you again on my return from Troy, but I also grieve at the sight; for never have I seen another house more closely encircled by dire affliction. [360] For I learned Agamemnon's fate and the death he died at his wife's hands, as I was trying to put in at Malea; when the sailors' prophet, the truthful god Glaucus, Nereus' seer, brought the news to me from the waves; [365] he stationed himself in full view and told me this: “Menelaus, your brother lies dead, plunged in a fatal bath, the last his wife will ever give him.” My sailors and I wept greatly at his words. When I arrived at Nauplia, [370] my wife already on the point of starting here, I was expecting to give a fond embrace to Orestes, Agamemnon's son, and his mother, thinking that they were doing well, when I heard from a sailor the unholy murder of Tyndareus' child. [375] And now tell me, young ladies, where to find the son of Agamemnon, who dared such evil. For he was a baby in Clytemnestra's arms when I left my home to go to Troy, so that I would not recognize him if I saw him. Orestes
staggering towards him from the couch.
[380] Menelaus, I am Orestes, whom you are asking about. I will of my own accord inform you of my sufferings. But as my first portion, I clasp your knees as a suppliant, giving you prayers from the mouth of one without the suppliant's bough; save me, for you have come at the crisis of my troubles.
Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 2. Orestes, translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.
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