land of Inachus, avenging you no less than my father, I slew my mother, for
if the murder of men shall become licensed to women, ye no longer can
escape dying, or ye must be slaves to your wives. But ye do the contrary to
what ye ought to do. For now she that was false to the bed of my father is
dead; but if ye do indeed slay me, the law has lost its force, and no man
can escape dying, forasmuch as there will be no lack of this audacity."

But he persuaded not the people, though appearing to speak well. But that
villain, who spoke among the multitude, overcomes him, he that harangued
for the killing of thy brother and thee. But scarcely did the wretched
Orestes persuade them that he might not die by stoning; but he promised
that this day he would quit his life by self-slaughter together with
thee:--but Pylades is conducting him from the council, weeping: but his
friends accompany him bewailing him, pitying him; but he is coming a sad
spectacle to thee, and a wretched sight. But prepare the sword, or the
noose for thy neck, for thou must die, but thy nobleness of birth hath
profited thee nothing, nor the Pythian Phoebus who sits on the tripod, but
hath destroyed thee.

CHOR. O unhappy virgin! how art thou dumb, casting thy muffled countenance
toward the ground, as though about to run into a strain of groans and
lamentations!

ELEC. I begin the lament, O land of Greece, digging my white nail into my
cheek, sad bleeding woe, and dashing my head, which[26] the lovely[27]
goddess of the manes beneath the earth has to her share. And let the
Cyclopian land[28] howl, applying the steel to their head cropped of hair
over the calamity of our house. This pity, this pity, proceeds for those
who are about to die, who once were the princes of Greece. For it is gone,
it is gone, the entire race of the children of Pelops has perished, and the
happiness which once resided in these blest abodes. Envy from heaven has
now seized it, and the harsh decree of blood in the state. Alas! alas! O
race of mortals that endure for a day, full of tears, full of troubles,
behold how contrary to expectation fate comes. But in the long lapse of
time each different man receives by turns his different sufferings.[29] But
the whole race of mortals is unstable and uncertain.

Oh! could I go to that rock stretched from Olympus in its loftiness midst
heaven and earth by golden chains, that mass of clay borne round with rapid
revolutions, that in my plaints