View:
By Scene
Electra
Oh! to reach that rock which hangs suspended midway between earth and heaven, that fragment from
Olympus
, which swings on chains of gold, so that I may utter my lament
to Tantalus, my forefather, who begot the ancestors of my house. They saw infatuate ruin, the chase of winged steeds, when Pelops in four-horse chariot
985
drove over the sea, hurling the body of murdered Myrtilus into the ocean swell, after his race near Geraestus’ strand, foam-flecked from the tossing sea.
990
From this came a woeful curse upon my house, brought to birth among the sheep by the son of
Maia
, when there appeared a baleful, baleful portent of a lamb with golden fleece,
995
for Atreus, breeder of horses; from which Strife changed the course of the sun’s winged chariot, fitting the westward path of the sky towards the single horse of Dawn;
1000
and Zeus diverted the career of the seven Pleiads into a new track and exchanged . . . death for death: both the banquet to which Thyestes gave his name, and the treacherous love of Cretan Aerope,
1005
in her treacherous marriage; but the crowning woe has come on me and on my father by the bitter constraints of our house.
1010
Oh! to reach that rock which hangs suspended midway between earth and heaven, that fragment from
Olympus
, which swings on chains of gold, so that I may utter my lament
to Tantalus, my forefather, who begot the ancestors of my house. They saw infatuate ruin, the chase of winged steeds, when Pelops in four-horse chariot
985
drove over the sea, hurling the body of murdered Myrtilus into the ocean swell, after his race near Geraestus’ strand, foam-flecked from the tossing sea.
990
From this came a woeful curse upon my house, brought to birth among the sheep by the son of
Maia
, when there appeared a baleful, baleful portent of a lamb with golden fleece,
995
for Atreus, breeder of horses; from which Strife changed the course of the sun’s winged chariot, fitting the westward path of the sky towards the single horse of Dawn;
1000
and Zeus diverted the career of the seven Pleiads into a new track and exchanged . . . death for death: both the banquet to which Thyestes gave his name, and the treacherous love of Cretan Aerope,
1005
in her treacherous marriage; but the crowning woe has come on me and on my father by the bitter constraints of our house.
1010
Orestes. Euripides. Edward P. Coleridge (Translator). London. 1891.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.