, be removed out of the way
of my words, and I will go on in a direct path; but now do I fear thy gray
hairs. What could I do? for oppose the facts, two against two. My father
indeed begat me, but thy daughter brought me forth, a field receiving the
seed from another; but without a father there never could be a child. I
reasoned therefore with myself, that I should assist the prime author of my
birth rather than the aliment which under him produced me. But thy daughter
(I am ashamed to call her mother), in secret and unchaste nuptials, had
approached the bed of another man; of myself, if I speak ill of her, shall
I be speaking, but yet will I tell it. AEgisthus was her secret husband in
her palace. Him I slew, and after him I sacrificed my mother, doing indeed
unholy things, but avenging my father. But as touching those things for
which thou threatenest that I must be stoned, hear, how I shall assist all
Greece. For if the women shall arrive at such a pitch of boldness as to
murder the men, making good their escape with regard to their children,
seeking to captivate their pity by their breasts, it would be as nothing
with them to slay their husbands, having any pretext that might chance; but
I having done dreadful things (as thou sayest), have put a stop to this
law, but hating my mother deservedly I slew her, who betrayed her husband
absent from home in arms, the generalissimo of the whole land of Greece,
and kept not her bed undefiled. But when she perceived that she had done
amiss, she inflicted not vengeance on herself, but, that she might not
suffer vengeance from her husband, punished and slew my father. By the
Gods, (in no good cause have I named the Gods, pleading against a charge of
murder,) had I by my silence praised my mother's actions, what then would
the deceased have done to me? To my mother indeed the Furies are present as
allies, but would they not be present to him, who has received the greater
injury? Would he not, detesting me, have haunted me with the Furies? Thou
then, O old man, by begetting a bad daughter, hast destroyed me; for
through her boldness deprived of my father, I became a matricide. Dost see?
Telemachus slew not the wife of Ulysses, for she married not a husband on a
husband, but her marriage-bed remains unpolluted in the palace. Dost see?
Apollo, who, dwelling in his habitation in the midst of the earth, gives
the most clear oracles to mortals, by whom we are entirely guided, whatever
he