View:
By Card
Chorus
Ah! ah! you goddesses swiftly careering on your wings, whose lot it is to hold a revel, not with Bacchic rites,
in tears and groans; you black-skinned avenging spirits, that dart along the spacious air, exacting a penalty for blood, a penalty for murder, I beg you, I beg you!
320
Allow the son of Agamemnon to forget his wild whirling frenzy.
325
Alas for the toils which you, poor wretch, strove after to your ruin, when you heard the voice from the tripod, proclaimed by Phoebus,
at his sanctuary, where the hollows are called the navel of the earth.
330
Ah! ah! you goddesses swiftly careering on your wings, whose lot it is to hold a revel, not with Bacchic rites,
in tears and groans; you black-skinned avenging spirits, that dart along the spacious air, exacting a penalty for blood, a penalty for murder, I beg you, I beg you!
320
Allow the son of Agamemnon to forget his wild whirling frenzy.
325
Alas for the toils which you, poor wretch, strove after to your ruin, when you heard the voice from the tripod, proclaimed by Phoebus,
at his sanctuary, where the hollows are called the navel of the earth.
330
Chorus
O Zeus! What pity, what deadly struggle is here,
hurrying you on, the wretch on whom some avenging fiend is heaping tears upon tears, bringing to the house your mother’s blood, which drives you raving mad?
335
Great prosperity is not secure among mortals. I lament, I lament! But some divine power, shaking it to and fro like the sail of a swift ship, plunges it deep in the waves of grievous affliction, violent and deadly as the waves of the sea.
340
For what other family must I still revere, rather than the one from a divine marriage, from Tantalus.
345
O Zeus! What pity, what deadly struggle is here,
hurrying you on, the wretch on whom some avenging fiend is heaping tears upon tears, bringing to the house your mother’s blood, which drives you raving mad?
335
Great prosperity is not secure among mortals. I lament, I lament! But some divine power, shaking it to and fro like the sail of a swift ship, plunges it deep in the waves of grievous affliction, violent and deadly as the waves of the sea.
340
For what other family must I still revere, rather than the one from a divine marriage, from Tantalus.
345
Orestes. Euripides. Edward P. Coleridge (Translator). London. 1891.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.