You challenge me as a woman without foresight

But I with unflinching heart to you who know

Speak. And you, whether you will praise or blame,

It makes no matter. Here lies Agamemnon,

My husband, dead, the work of this right hand,

An honest workman. There you have the facts.

CHORUS.

Woman, what poisoned

Herb of the earth have you tasted

Or potion of the flowing sea

To undertake this killing and the people’s curses?

You threw down, you cut off—The people will cast you out,

Black abomination to the town.

CLYTEMNESTRA.

Now your verdict—in my case—is exile

And to have the people’s hatred, the public curses,

Though then in no way you opposed this man

Who carelessly, as if it were a head of sheep

Out of the abundance of his fleecy flocks,

Sacrificed his own daughter, to me the dearest

Fruit of travail, charm for the Thracian winds.

He was the one to have banished from this land.

Pay off the pollution. But when you hear what I

Have done, you judge severely. But I warn you—

Threaten me on the understanding that I am ready

For two alternatives—Win by force the right

To rule me, but, if God brings about the contrary,

Late in time you will have to learn self-discipline.

CHORUS.

You are high in the thoughts,

You speak extravagant things,

After the soiling murder your crazy heart

Fancies your forehead with a smear of blood.

Unhonoured, unfriended, you must

Pay for a blow with a blow.

CLYTEMNESTRA.

Listen then to this—the sanction of my oaths:

By the Justice totting up my child’s atonement,

By the Avenging Doom and Fiend to whom I killed this man,

For me hope walks not in the rooms of fear

So long as my fire is lit upon my hearth

By Aegisthus, loyal to me as he was before.

The man who outraged me lies here.

The darling of each courtesan at Troy,

And here with him is the prisoner clairvoyante,

The fortune-teller that he took to bed,

Who shares his bed as once his bench on shipboard,

A loyal mistress. Both have their deserts.

He lies so; and she who like a swan

Sang her last dying lament

Lies his lover, and the sight contributes

An appetiser to my own bed’s pleasure.

CHORUS.

Ah would some quick death come not overpainful,

Not overlong on the sickbed,

Establishing in us the ever-

Lasting unending sleep now that our guardian

Has fallen, the kindest of men,

Who suffering much for a woman

By a woman has lost his life.

O Helen, insane, being one

One to have destroyed so many

And many souls under Troy,

Now is your work complete, blossomed not for oblivion,

Unfading stain of blood. Here now, if in any home

Is Discord, here is a man’s deep-rooted ruin.

CLYTEMNESTRA.

Do not pray for the portion of death

Weighed down by these things, do not turn