Electra
My father has by now received the libations, which the earth has drunk.
[165]
But take your share of this startling news.
Chorus
Speak—but my heart is dancing with fear.
Electra
I see here a lock cut as an offering for the tomb.
Chorus
A man's, or a deep-girt maid's?
Electra
That is open to conjecture—anyone may guess.
[170]
Chorus
How then? Let my age be taught by your youth.
Electra
There is no one who could have cut it but myself.
Chorus
Yes, for those who ought to have mourned with a lock of hair are enemies.
Electra
And further, in appearance it is very much like—
Chorus
Whose lock? This is what I would like to know.
[175]
Electra
It is very much like my own in appearance.
Chorus
Then can this be a secret offering from Orestes?
Electra
It is his curling locks that it most resembles.
Chorus
But how did he dare to come here?
Electra
He has merely sent this cut lock to honor his father.
[180]
Chorus
What you say is no less a cause of tears for me, if he will never again set foot on this land.
Electra
Electra
Over my heart, too, there sweeps a surge of bitterness, and I am struck as if a sword had run me through. From my eyes thirsty drops of a stormy flood fall unchecked at the sight of this tress.
[185]
For how can I expect to find that someone else, some townsman, owns this lock? Nor yet in truth did she clip it from her head, the murderess, my own mother,
[190]
who has assumed a godless spirit regarding her children that ill accords with the name of mother. But as for me, how am I to assent to this outright, that it adorned the head of Orestes, the dearest to me of all mortals? No, hope is merely flattering me.
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Table of Contents:
Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. 2. Libation Bearers. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926.
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