Orestes
Look out, take care that no one is in the path.
Pylades
I am looking, and turning my eyes everywhere, in examination.
Orestes
Pylades, do you think this is the hall of the goddess,
[70]
for which we set sail from Argos?
Pylades
Yes, Orestes; and you must think so too.
Orestes
And the altar, that drips with the slaughter of Hellenes?
Pylades
Its dedications of hair, at least, are red with blood.
Orestes
Do you see the spoils hanging from the very walls?
Pylades
[75]
Trophies of strangers that have been slain. But I must look all around and keep careful watch.
Orestes
Orestes
O Phoebus, where have you again brought me into the snare, by your oracles, since I avenged my father's blood by the murder of my mother, and was driven by successive Furies,
[80]
a fugitive, away from the land, and completed many winding courses; and coming to you I asked how I might arrive at an end to whirling madness and my labors, which I have carried out, wandering all over Hellas. . . .
[85]
And you told me to go to the boundaries of the Tauric land, where Artemis, your sister, has an altar, and to take the statue of the goddess, which is said here to have fallen to this temple from heaven; and, taking it by craft of some stroke of luck,
[90]
to complete the venture by giving it to the Athenian land—what was to come next was not spoken of—and if I did this, I would have rest from my labors.
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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.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.