ORESTES:
Sir, I am afraid to answer you
in a situation that guarantees offense.
If your great age were not before me,
I might not choke back my words. As it is,
your gray hair makes me tremble.
As I see it, the law brands me an outcast
for killing my mother, but also embraces me
with another designation: my father’s avenger.
What was I to do? Let’s weigh
the factors involved, two sets of them.
Father sired me, while your daughter bore me;
his was the seed and hers the empty field.
In coming to his defense, then, I decided
to give priority not to the one who simply
nurtured me, but rather the one who gave me life.
And now the second point: your daughter—
shame prevents me from calling her “mother”—
took herself a man. It was a private wedding,
but not a decent one.
In saying this about her
I blacken my own name, but say it I will.
Aigisthos was her closet husband. I killed him
and added my mother’s death to crown that sacrifice,
bringing pollution and treatment as an outcast
upon myself, but avenging my father.
As for the grounds on which you and others
threaten me with stoning, listen to this:
they make me Greece’s benefactor.
If women can muster the audacity
to kill their own lords, fleeing
to their children, baring their breasts
to excite “pity,” as you call it,
then husband murder will count
for nothing, they’ll resort to it
on the slightest pretext.
By my “dreadful crimes,” as you loudly proclaim them,
I’ve put a stop to that sort of precedent.
In hating my mother, and killing her, I did justice.
She betrayed her husband while he was away from home
leading the combined Greek armies as commander-in-chief—
betrayed him, defiled their bed! And then, seeing
where all this was leading her,
she didn’t punish herself; instead,
to avoid paying for her crimes,
she punished him, she killed my father!
It was you, Sir, who destroyed me—yes, you,
by fathering that evil daughter. Only because of her
outrageousness did I lose my own father and become
what I am: a matricide.
You see? Telemachos hasn’t killed his mother, but then
neither has Penelope run around adding
husband to husband. Odysseus’ wife
behaves. Her marriage bed stays undefiled.
By the gods!—or maybe I shouldn’t mention gods:
it’s they who execute blood justice.
But if I had condoned my mother’s actions
by holding my tongue, what would my father’s ghost
have done to me? Hated and driven me mad
with his own Furies, no?
Or do you suppose that my mother
has gods of her own when he, wronged far more, has none?
And what of Apollo, isn’t he there,
enthroned at Delphi, center of the world, giving
sure oracles to us all? When I killed
my mother, I was obeying him .
Treat him as an outcast, all of you, kill him!

I’m not at fault, he is. What was I to do?
Will the god not stand by his word
and cleanse me of pollution? How on earth
could anyone escape if the same god
who commanded me to kill won’t save me from being killed?
Don’t say, then, that what I did was terrible,
but that for me it has turned out terribly unlucky.

CHORUS LEADER:
Women are always getting themselves involved
in the lives of men, and seldom for the better.

TYNDAREOS:
Outrageous, are you? -Refuse to curb your tongue,
do you? Answer in just the way
to gall me, will you? Well, then: you’ll fire me
all the more to bring about your death!
I’ll consider it an extra piety, a nice
companion to the act of homage
at my daughter’s grave for which I came here.
The Argives are meeting in emergency session.
I’ll go before them —they’re eager enough —
and sic them on you, the whole city,
till I hear you both condemned to death
by stoning—you, and your sister.
Yes, her, too! If anything, she deserves it more.
It was she who unleashed you against your mother,
baited you with tales to swell your hatred,
harping on the scandal of Agamemnon ’s death
and that affair with Aigisthos—I hope
it reeks in Hades, it was a stench in our faces here—
all fuel to the fire she kindled, your sister,
until the whole house went up in flames.
As for you, Menelaos,
I have this to say, and I mean it:
if you care at all about being in my good graces,
don’t go against the gods for the likes of him .
Let the people stone him to death! Try to prevent it
and you will never set foot in Sparta again.
Mark my words, and don’t embrace
a blasphemer, or you’ll put a lot of distance
between yourself and your more decent friends.
Men , lead me away from here.

(Exit Tyndareos.)

ORESTES:
Yes, go! What I have to say to Menelaos
I can say as I please, with your old age out of the way.

(He turns to Menelaos, who is
now walking back and forth.)

Menelaos, why are you pacing up and down,
lost in thought? Is something troubling you?

MENELAOS:
Quiet. Something is on my mind. I don’t know
which way to turn in this situation.

ORESTES:
Don’t decide too hastily. Hear me out
first, and then make up your mind.

MENELAOS:
All right, go ahead. Sometimes it’s better
to listen, at other times to talk.

ORESTES:
With your permission, then , I’ll speak at length:
a longer speech makes for greater clarity.
Menelaos, I’m not asking you
for anything of yours. Return, instead,
the favor you owe my father. Save
what I value most, of all that’s mine: my life.
I have transgressed.
What my guilt requires is a corresponding
transgression from you.
When my father Agamemnon assembled the invasion fleet
and went to Troy, he, too, was in the wrong
but not on his own account.
It was the sin of Helen , your wife’s crime,
that he was mending. Like the true brother he was,
Agamemnon stood by your side, shield to shield,
and fought to retrieve your wife. Pay back to me, then,
what you got there: stand and fight, our savior
not for ten long years but one short day!
As for what Aulis took, also through my father—
the sacrifice of my sister—I ask no return for that, you
need not lift a hand, yourself, against Hermione.
My situation being what it is,
the advantage must remain yours
and I must make allowance.
Offer, instead, my life to my poor father.
Do it to repay him, for if I die
his house, the house of Agamemnon, will be orphaned.
Hopeless, you may say.
Exactly. But it’s during crises
that we help each other, not in good times.
Who needs family when the gods make things smooth?
When those powers prove willing, it is enough.
Everyone knows you love your wife.
I don’t mean to disarm you
with flattery, Menelaos,
by begging you in her name.
Yes, beg: it has come to that.
What choice have I left?
I’m pleading for the house itself, root and branch.

(Orestes adopts a suppliant’s posture.)

Oh you who have my father’s blood in your veins,
Uncle, imagine that in the dead underearth
Agamemnon hears this now, a ghost
fluttering over you, and that he finds
his voice in mine!

(rising to his feet again)

These are my claims. You’ve heard my case.
I’m pleading for my life, as any man would.

CHORUS LEADER:
I, too, though I am only a woman, beg you
to help them in their need, for you have the power.

MENELAOS:
Orestes, I, as you know, hold you
in high regard and I very much want
to share in your ordeals. Honor requires one
to take up a kinsman’s troubles and carry them
to the end, if the gods grant the power, and even
to die, provided one’s enemies die also.
But I’d have to get that power from the gods,
for I’ve come with barely a few fighting men,
worn out, myself, by the endless stress of wandering
and not able to count on the friends I left behind.
Force of arms, then, is not the way to win
ancient Argos. But if we try, by means
of gentle persuasion—there
we have a fighting chance.
How can one hope to attain mighty ends
with meager resources?
Even wanting to do so is silly.
When anger sweeps the people and is still
rising in them, resistance
is like fighting a raging fire.
Yet if, biding his time, a man will calmly
ride out their fury, watching for the right moment,
the tantrum may blow over; and then you can easily
get what you want from them, as much as you want.
There is pity in the people, and powerful emotion -
picked prizes for the man with a sense of timing.
That being the case, I’ll go and try to persuade
Tyndareos and the assembly not to carry things
too far. It’s the same way with a ship:
when you rein her in, straining the ropes,
she heels over; let go, and she lifts again.
The gods hate overdoing it, so do the people.
I must save you, not by
resisting those who are stronger, but by being
clever. Using force, as you would perhaps
have me do, isn’t the way—my spear alone
won’t put your troubles to flight.
Nor would I ever choose the delicate approach
without good reason. As things are, if we’re sensible,
we'll admit that we’re the slaves of chance.
.
(Exit Menelaos)

ORESTES:
O mighty campaigner, when the cause is a woman,
but useless when it’s your own kin, there you go
turning and running—can’t wait to be off? And do
Agamemnon’s claims count for nothing?
You lost your friends, Father, when you lost your luck!
I am betrayed, I have no hope
of finding safety from death in Argos:
that uncle there was my last refuge.

[The assembly then sentences Orestes and Electra to death. But when Orestes hears the news, his companion, Pylades, appears, and the three (Electra, Orestes and Pylades) decide to take revenge before dying together. They plot to kill Helen and kidnap Hermione. Apollo intervenes. First he rescues Helen and then he commands Orestes to marry Hermione. The tragedy ends rather happily with a reconciliation scene between Orestes and Menelaos and a promised wedding.]