Iphigenia
Oh! My servants, how I am involved in mournful dirges,
in laments unfit for the lyre, of a song that is not melodious, alas! alas! wailing for my family. Ruin has come to me; I am lamenting the life of my brother,
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such a vision I saw in my dreams, in the night whose darkness is now over.
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I am lost, lost! My father’s house is no more; alas for my vanished family,
alas for the sufferings of
Argos
! O fate, I had one brother only and you carry him off and send him to Hades. For him,
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I am about to pour over the back of the earth these libations and the bowl of the dead: streams of milk from mountain cows, and offerings of wine from Bacchus,
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and the labor of the tawny bees; these sacrifices are soothing to the dead.
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(To a servant) Give me the golden vessel and the libation of Hades.
O child of Agamemnon beneath the earth, I send these to you as one dead. Accept them; for I will not bring to your tomb my yellow hair or my tears.
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I live far indeed from your country and mine, where I am thought to lie, unhappily slaughtered.
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Iphigenia in Tauris. Euripides. Edward P. Coleridge (Translator). London. 1891.
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