Chorus Leader
Stranger, you are wrongly defiling the attendant of the goddess, by putting your hands on her robe that should not be touched.
Orestes
My own sister, born from my father Agamemnon, do not turn away from me, when you hold your brother and thought you never would!
800
Iphigenia
Orestes
Unhappy girl, your brother is not there.
805
Iphigenia
But did Tyndareus’ daughter, the Spartan, give birth to you?
Orestes
Yes, and my father was Pelops’ grandson.
Iphigenia
What are you saying? Do you have some proof of this for me?
Orestes
I do; ask me something about our father’s home.
Iphigenia
Well, it is for you to speak, for me to learn.
810
Orestes
I will say first what I have heard from Electra. Do you know of the strife that was between Atreus and Thyestes?
Iphigenia
I have heard of it; the quarrel concerned a golden ram.
Orestes
Did you not weave these things in a fine-textured web?
Iphigenia
O dearest, you are bending your course near to my heart!
815
Orestes
And the image of the sun in the middle of the loom?
Iphigenia
I wove that shape also, in fine threads.
Orestes
And you received a ceremonial bath from your mother, for
Aulis
?
Iphigenia
I know; for no happy marriage has taken that memory from me.
Orestes
What about this? You gave locks of your hair to be brought to your mother?
820
Iphigenia
As a memorial, in place of my body, in the tomb.
Orestes
What I myself have seen, I will say for proof: an old spear of Pelops, in my father’s house, which he brandished in his hand when he won Hippodamia,
the maiden of
Pisa
, and killed Oenomaus; it was hung up in your rooms.
825
Iphigenia in Tauris. Euripides. Edward P. Coleridge (Translator). London. 1891.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.