Sophocles Electra 18

Thomas Francklin (Translator)

Table of Contents

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

View: By Card
← Previous Next →
Electra
I am myself to blame, and blush to think
How much unfit I seem to liear the weight
Imposed upon me ; but indeed 'tis great.
Forgive me, friends, a woman born as I am,
Must she not grieve to see each added minute
Fraught with new mis'ries? Thus to be a slave
E'en in my father's house, and from those hands
Which shed his blood to ask the means of life !
Think what my soul must sufter to behold
The cursed Aigisthus seated on the throne
Of Agamemnon, in the very robes
Which once were his — to see the tyrant pour
Libations forth e'en on the fat;d spot
Where the sad deed was done. But, worst of all.
To see the murderer usurp his bed.
Embrace my mother (by that honoured name
If I may call a guilty wretch like her).
Who, pleased, returns his love, and, of her crimes i
I Unconscious, smiles, nor fears th' avenging Furies U
I But ever as the bloody day returns ' 1
Which gave the royal victim to her wiles, j ^
Annual the dance and choral song proclaim
A solemn feast, nor impious sacrifice
Forgets she then to her protecting gods.
Shocked at the cruel banquet I letire,
And in some corner hide my griefs, denied
E'en the sad comfort to indulge my sorrows,
For Clytemnestra in opprobrious terms
lleviles me oft ; *' To thee alone," she cries,
" Is Agamemnon lost, detested maid !
Perdition on thee ! May th' infernal gods
J^efuse thee succour, and protract thy pains ! "
Thus rails she bitter, and if chance she hear
Orestes is approaching, stung with rage
Wild she exclaims, " Thou art th' accursed cause ;
This is thy deed, who stole Orestes from mo.
And hid him from my rage ; but be assured
Ere long my vengeance shall o'ertake thee for it
These threats her noble lord still urges on —
That vile adulterei", that abandoned coward,
Whose fearful soul called in a woman's aid
To execute his bloody purposes.
Her wished avenger ; his unkind delay
Destroys my hopes. Alas ! my gentle friends,
Who can bear this, and keep an equal mind?
To suffer ills like mine, and not to err
From wild distraction, would be strange indeed.
Or may we speak our thoughts unblamed ?

Electra. Sophocles. Thomas Francklin (Translator). London. 1758–1759.

Current edition Experimental

English (Thomas Francklin, 1758–1759) (OCR draft) (English) (English (Thomas Francklin, 1758–1759))

Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.

Editions (2)
Greek (Lewis Campbell, 1879) (OCR draft) Experimental (Greek (Lewis Campbell, 1879)) — 18 focus
ἑῷα κινεῖ φθέγματ᾽ ὀρνίθων σαφῆ,
Greek (F. Storr, 1912) (OCR draft) Experimental (Greek (F. Storr, 1912)) — 1-120 focus
Translations (4)
English (Lewis Campbell, 1906) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Lewis Campbell, 1906)) — 18 focus
CH
Take thought to keep thy crying within bound.
Doth not thy sense enlighten thee to see
How recklessly
Even now thou winnest undeservèd woe?
Still art thou found
90
To make thy misery overflow
90
Through self-bred gloomy strife. But not for long
Shall one alone prevail who strives against the strong.
German (J. J. C. Donner, 1875; OCR review) (OCR draft) Experimental (German (J. J. C. Donner, 1875; OCR review)) — 23 focus
bester Diener, liebster Mann, wie legst du mir
Der Treue Zeichen gegen uns so deutlich dar!
Denn wie das Noß aus edler Art, obschon betagt,
25
In keiner Schreckniß und Gefahr den Muth verliert,
Nein, stolz das Ohr aufrichtet: also du, der uns
Zum Kampfe treibt und selbst der Ersten Einer folgt.
Drum will ich offenbaren, was ich ausgedacht;
Doch du vergönne meinem Wort ein scharfes Ohr,
30
Und traf ich nicht das Rechte, gib mir andern Rath.
Nachdem ich angekommen war bei'm pythischen
Orakel, dort zu fragen, wie des Vaters Tod
Ich rächen mög' an jenen, die ihn mordeten,
Gebot mir Phöbos also, wie du gleich vernimmst:
35
Den Streich gerechter Rache mit geheimer List
Allein zu führen, nicht bewehrt mit Schild und Heer.
Nun, da mir solcher Gottesspruch verkündet ward,
Tritt du, sobald die Stunde dich gelegen führt,
Zu diesem Haus ein, auszuspäh'n, was hier geschieht,
40
Auf daß du klar uns meldest, was du wohl erforscht.
Unkenntlich schuf dich Alter und die lange Zeit,
Und vor Verdacht bewahrt dich dieser Blumenschmuck. 1
Doch also sprich zu jenen, daß ein Fremdling du,
Ein Phoker seiest, abgesandt von Phanoteus; 2
45
Denn dieser Mann ist ihres Hauses bester Freund.
Mit Eid betheuernd, melde dann, Orestes sei
Dahingeschieden durch ein unerbittlich Loos,
Bei Kämpfen Pytho's aus dem raschhinrollenden 3
Rennwagen stürzend. Also sei der Rede Sinn.
50
English (Robert Potter, 1788) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Robert Potter, 1788)) — 18 focus
Chorus
193
Mournful at his return the voice of woe,
Through all the chambers of thy father's house
Mournful the voice, when the relentless axe
In tempest fell. Fraud first devised, Lust struck
The murderous blow, with horrid thought of old
Forming the horrid image, were these deeds
Or by some god, or daring mortals, wrought.
English (Sir Richard Jebb, 1904) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Sir Richard Jebb, 1904)) — 1-120 focus

Commentary

Commentary (R. C. Jebb) (OCR draft) (Commentary (R. C. Jebb))

mvp-comment-114-1 Hitherto the Chorus have offered consolation or counsel. At v. 213 they return to that strain. But here, moved by Electra's misery, they join with her in bewailing its cause.

mvp-comment-114-2 οἰκτρὰ μὲν … πλαγά 1 κοίταις 2 οἰκτρὰ … αὐδὰ 3

mvp-comment-114-3 Sophocles, who follows the Homeric story as to the banquet, could not but remember the

οἰκτροτάτην ὄπα
of the dying Cassandra. And this might naturally suggest to him that other
οἰκτρὰ αὐδή
which she had uttered at an earlier moment, immediately after Agamemnon's return,—her presage of his fate, and her own: Aesch. Ag. 1072 —1314.

mvp-comment-114-4 The sense then is:—‘There was a voice of lamentation at the return from Troy’; alluding especially to Cassandra's laments, but also, perhaps, to forebodings in the mouth of the people at Mycenae. ‘And there was a voice of lamentation

ἐν κοίταις πατρῴαις
, when thy father lay on the couch at the fatal banquet.’ The ‘voice’ at the banquet is, first, that of the dying Agamemnon; but Sophocles may have thought also of Cassandra's death-cry, which was sounding in the king's ears as he fell.—For other interpretations, see Appendix.

mvp-comment-114-5 νόστοις 4 ἐν 5

mvp-comment-114-6 κοίταις 6

mvp-comment-114-7 ὅτε οἱ 7 σοι 8 ἀνταία 9

mvp-comment-114-8 γενύων 10

Commentary (Lewis Campbell, 1879) (OCR draft) (Commentary (Lewis Campbell, 1879)) focus

86-250. mvp-comment-59-1 In this long lament there are two principal movements, each of which admits of subdivision. First, the monody of Electra, consisting of two anapaestic systems, of which one (ll. 86-102) is retrospective, and the other (ll. 103-120) is prospective. Secondly, there is the commatic parodos :-the chorus on their entrance address Electra with lyric strains, to which she responds also in lyric measures. This movement consists of three strophes and antistrophes. In στρ. and ἀντ. α' (ll. 121-152), the chorus gently, but gloomily, expostulate with Electra, who is inconsolable. In στρ. and ἀντ. β΄ (ll. 153-192), they vainly try to cheer her. In στρ. and ἀντ. γ΄ (ll. 193- 232), they remind her of her past and present troubles, and exhort her not to add to them. All this is followed by a ῥῆσις of Electra (ll. 254-309) in reply to the coryphaeus, who, at l. 324, again speaks to call attention to Chrysothemis' approach.

86-250. mvp-comment-59-2 Metres. The anapaests in 86-120, although for the most part regular are in so far of the freer kind which belong to laments as to admit the spondaic paroemiacs near the commencement of each system in ll. 88, 9, 105, 6, which, with the opening half line, have a strange effect of heaviness and of struggle and pain. The two systems so nearly correspond, both in this respect and in the number of the lines, that one is tempted to believe that the half line that would complete the antistrophic effect has been lost somewhere between 113 and 117. But anapaestic systems are seldom exactly antistrophic, and the pause after the (dactylic) invocation in l. 115 may be intentional.

194. mvp-comment-116-1 οἰκτρὰ μὲν νόστοις αὐδά] 'Piteous were thy tones at the time of thy father's return.' In the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, the Watchman and the Chorus, i. e. the household and the people, express a vague misgiving, which is not sufficiently definite to enable them to warn Agamemnon. Sophocles here, as elsewhere, concentrates in an individual what in Aeschylus was general. It is quite consistent with his conception of the character of Electra, that, young as she then was, and totally unable, both from her inexperience ( infr. 1024) and her dependent position, of averting the harm which she may have vaguely foreseen, she had a sufficiently clear perception of the situation to be sad instead of joyful on the occasion of her father's coming home, and her sadness would be aggravated by her helplessness :-ἐπεὶ ἐχθίστη ὀδύνη πολλὰ φρονέοντα μηδενὸς κρατέειν. Her friends, of the same age with her, observed this, and in recollecting it, now understand the cause. ooi is easily supplied, both because the whole of Electra's last speech refers to herself, and because σοί occurs immediately afterwards as an ethical' dative. πατρός is no less easily supplied with νόστοις for a similar reason, both because the word occurs three lines above, and because it is implied in πατρώαις in the following line. νόστοις is dative of the occasion, E. on L. § 11. p. 18. For the sense, cp. Aesch. Pers. 935, 6, πρόσφθογγόν σοι νόστου τὰν | κακοφάτιδα βοάν, κακομέλετον ἰὰν | Μαριανδυνοῦ θρηνητῆρος | πέμψω πολύδακρυν ἰακχάν.