No further parley, and prolong discourse.

Once overtaken by calamity,

What profit should a man who is to die

Draw from delay? Nay, kill him on the spot,

And cast him forth, slain, to such buriers

As it is fitting he should meet withal,

Out of our eye-sight! This alone can be

An expiation for my wrongs of old.

ORESTES.

GO thou within, with speed. The contest now

Lies not in words, but for thy life-blood.

ÆGISTHUS.

Nay,

Why do you drag me to the house? What need

Of darkness, if the deed is honourable?

Why are you backward to despatch me here?

ORESTES.

Prescribe not thou! Pass, where thou slew’st my father,

And perish there.

ÆGISTHUS.

IS it fated that this roof

Must witness all the ills of Pelops’ race,

That are, or shall be?

ORESTES.

Thine, at any rate.

I am soothsayer good enough to tell thee that!

ÆGISTHUS.

The craft you boast was not inherited, then!

ORESTES.

Thou praf st, and prat’st; and the way lengthens out;

Move on.

ÆGISTHUS.

Lead forward.

ORESTES.

Thou must foot it first.

ÆGISTHUS.

Lest I escape thee?

ORESTES.

Rather, that thy soul

May not pass easily; this bitterness

I must reserve for thee. And well it were

If this quick justice could be dealt on all —

Whoever will transgress the bounds of right,

To strike him dead.

[Kills ÆGISTHUS.

So should not villainy thrive.

CHORUS

O Atreus’ seed!

How hardly, after many labours past,

Art thou come forth to liberty at last,

Through this new trial perfected indeed!

[Exeunt omnes.

* Io, daughter of the river god Inachus, became attractive to Zeus, thereby incurring the wrath of Hera, who changed her into a cow, and set a stinging insect upon her which drove her out of Argos.

* Epithet of Apollo, meaning either the Ambiguous or the Speaker.

* Philomela, who, with Procne, killed Tereus’ son Itys, cooked him and served him to his father.

† Ara: goddess of destruction and revenge.

* Boastful, blasphemous woman whose fourteen children were wiped out by Apollo and Artemis. She had claimed to he more fertile than their mother Leto. Niobe herself was turned to stone.

* Collective name for the Eumenides, or Furies.

* Another, more famous, goddess of revenge.

* A reluctant participant in the mission of the Seven Against Thebes who was tricked by his wife Eriphyle into joining up. Departing, he put a curse upon her which his own son later fulfilled by killing her.

Medea

EURIPIDES

Characters

MEDEA, princess of Colchis and wife of

JASON, son of AESON, king of Iolcus

Two children of MEDEA and JASON

CREON, king of Corinth

AEGEUS, king of Athens

NURSE to MEDEA

TUTOR to MEDEA’s children

MESSENGER

CHORUS of Corinthian Women

SCENE:

In front of Medea’s house in Corinth. Enter from the house Medea’s nurse.

NURSE

How I wish the Argo* never had reached the land

Of Colchis, skimming through the blue Symplegades,