Chapter 1

THE

ELECTRA

OF

EURIPIDES

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY

GILBERT MURRAY, LL.D., D.LITT.

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

FORTY-SECOND THOUSAND

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1

_First Edition, November_ 1905 _Reprinted, November_ 1906 " _February_ 1908 " _March_ 1910 " _December_ 1910 " _February_ 1913 " _April_ 1914 " _June_ 1916 " _November_ 1919 " _April_ 1921 " _January_ 1923 " _May_ 1925 " _August_ 1927 " _January_ 1929

_(All rights reserved)_

PERFORMED AT THE COURT THEATRE, LONDON IN 1907

_Printed in Great Britain by Unwin Brothers Ltd., Woking_

Introduction[1]

The _Electra_ of Euripides has the distinction of being, perhaps, the best abused, and, one might add, not the best understood, of ancient tragedies. "A singular monument of poetical, or rather unpoetical perversity;" "the very worst of all his pieces;" are, for instance, the phrases applied to it by Schlegel. Considering that he judged it by the standards of conventional classicism, he could scarcely have arrived at any different conclusion. For it is essentially, and perhaps consciously, a protest against those standards. So, indeed, is the tragedy of _The Trojan Women_; but on very different lines. The _Electra_ has none of the imaginative splendour, the vastness, the intense poetry, of that wonderful work. It is a close-knit, powerful, well-constructed play, as realistic as the tragic conventions will allow, intellectual and rebellious. Its _psychology_ reminds one of Browning, or even of Ibsen.

To a fifth-century Greek all history came in the form of legend; and no less than three extant tragedies, Aeschylus' _Libation-Bearers_ (456 B.C.), Euripides' _Electra_ (413 B.C.), and Sophocles' _Electra_ (date unknown: but perhaps the latest of the three) are based on the particular piece of legend or history now before us. It narrates how the son and daughter of the murdered king, Agamemnon, slew, in due course of revenge, and by Apollo's express command, their guilty mother and her paramour.

Homer had long since told the story, as he tells so many, simply and grandly, without moral questioning and without intensity. The atmosphere is heroic. It is all a blood-feud between chieftains, in which Orestes, after seven years, succeeds in slaying his foe Aegisthus, who had killed his father. He probably killed his mother also; but we are not directly told so. His sister may have helped him, and he may possibly have gone mad afterwards; but these painful issues are kept determinedly in the shade.

Somewhat surprisingly, Sophocles, although by his time Electra and Clytemnestra had become leading figures in the story and the mother-murder its essential climax, preserves a very similar atmosphere. His tragedy is enthusiastically praised by Schlegel for "the celestial purity, the fresh breath of life and youth, that is diffused over so dreadful a subject." "Everything dark and ominous is avoided. Orestes enjoys the fulness of health and strength. He is beset neither with doubts nor stings of conscience." Especially laudable is the "austerity" with which Aegisthus is driven into the house to receive, according to Schlegel, a specially ignominious death!

This combination of matricide and good spirits, however satisfactory to the determined classicist, will probably strike most intelligent readers as a little curious, and even, if one may use the word at all in connection with so powerful a play, undramatic. It becomes intelligible as soon as we observe that Sophocles was deliberately seeking what he regarded as an archaic or "Homeric" style (cf. Jebb, Introd. p. xli.); and this archaism, in its turn, seems to me best explained as a conscious reaction against Euripides' searching and unconventional treatment of the same subject (cf. Wilamowitz in _Hermes_, xviii. pp. 214 ff.). In the result Sophocles is not only more "classical" than Euripides; he is more primitive by far than Aeschylus.

For Aeschylus, though steeped in the glory of the world of legend, would not lightly accept its judgment upon religious and moral questions, and above all would not, in that region, play at make-believe. He would not elude the horror of this story by simply not mentioning it, like Homer, or by pretending that an evil act was a good one, like Sophocles. He faces the horror; realises it; and tries to surmount it on the sweep of a great wave of religious emotion. The mother-murder, even if done by a god's command, is a sin; a sin to be expiated by unfathomable suffering. Yet, since the god cannot have commanded evil, it is a duty also. It is a sin that _must_ be committed.

Euripides, here as often, represents intellectually the thought of Aeschylus carried a step further. He faced the problem just as Aeschylus did, and as Sophocles did not. But the solution offered by Aeschylus did not satisfy him. It cannot, in its actual details, satisfy any one. To him the mother-murder--like most acts of revenge, but more than most--was a sin and a horror. Therefore it should not have been committed; and the god who enjoined it _did_ command evil, as he had done in a hundred other cases! He is no god of light; he is only a demon of old superstition, acting, among other influences, upon a sore-beset man, and driving him towards a miscalled duty, the horror of which, when done, will unseat his reason.

But another problem interests Euripides even more than this. What kind of man was it--above all, what kind of woman can it have been, who would do this deed of mother-murder, not in sudden fury but deliberately, as an act of "justice," after many years? A "sympathetic" hero and heroine are out of the question; and Euripides does not deal in stage villains. He seeks real people. And few attentive readers of this play can doubt that he has found them.

The son is an exile, bred in the desperate hopes and wild schemes of exile; he is a prince without a kingdom, always dreaming of his wrongs and his restoration; and driven by the old savage doctrine, which an oracle has confirmed, of the duty and manliness of revenge. He is, as was shown by his later history, a man subject to overpowering impulses and to fits of will-less brooding. Lastly, he is very young, and is swept away by his sister's intenser nature.

That sister is the central figure of the tragedy. A woman shattered in childhood by the shock of an experience too terrible for a girl to bear; a poisoned and a haunted woman, eating her heart in ceaseless broodings of hate and love, alike unsatisfied--hate against her mother and stepfather, love for her dead father and her brother in exile; a woman who has known luxury and state, and cares much for them; who is intolerant of poverty, and who feels her youth passing away. And meantime there is her name, on which all legend, if I am not mistaken, insists; she is _A-lektra_, "the Unmated."

There is, perhaps, no woman's character in the range of Greek tragedy so profoundly studied. Not Aeschylus' Clytemnestra, not Phaedra nor Medea. One's thoughts can only wander towards two great heroines of "lost" plays, Althaea in the _Meleager_, and Stheneboea in the _Bellerophon_.

G.M.

[Footnote 1: Most of this introduction is reprinted, by the kind permission of the Editors, from an article in the _Independent Review_ vol. i. No. 4.]

ELECTRA

CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY

CLYTEMNESTRA, _Queen of Argos and Mycenae; widow of Agamemnon_.

ELECTRA, _daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra_.

ORESTES, _son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, now in banishment_.

A PEASANT, _husband of Electra_.

AN OLD MAN, _formerly servant to Agamemnon_.

PYLADES, _son of Strophios, King of Phocis; friend to Orestes_.

AEGISTHUS, _usurping King of Argos and Mycenae, now husband of Clytemnestra_.

The Heroes CASTOR and POLYDEUCES.

CHORUS of Argive Women, with their LEADER.

FOLLOWERS of ORESTES; HANDMAIDS of CLYTEMNESTRA.

_The Scene is laid in the mountains of Argos. The play was first produced between the years_ 414 _and_ 412 B.C.

ELECTRA

_The scene represents a hut on a desolate mountain side; the river Inachus is visible in the distance. The time is the dusk of early dawn, before sunrise. The_ PEASANT _is discovered in front of the hut_.

PEASANT.

Old gleam on the face of the world, I give thee hail, River of Argos land, where sail on sail The long ships met, a thousand, near and far, When Agamemnon walked the seas in war; Who smote King Priam in the dust, and burned The storied streets of Ilion, and returned Above all conquerors, heaping tower and fane Of Argos high with spoils of Eastern slain.

So in far lands he prospered; and at home His own wife trapped and slew him. 'Twas the doom Aegisthus wrought, son of his father's foe.

Gone is that King, and the old spear laid low That Tantalus wielded when the world was young. Aegisthus hath his queen, and reigns among His people. And the children here alone, Orestes and Electra, buds unblown Of man and womanhood, when forth to Troy He shook his sail and left them--lo, the boy Orestes, ere Aegisthus' hand could fall, Was stolen from Argos--borne by one old thrall, Who served his father's boyhood, over seas Far off, and laid upon King Strophios' knees In Phocis, for the old king's sake. But here The maid Electra waited, year by year, Alone, till the warm days of womanhood Drew nigh and suitors came of gentle blood In Hellas. Then Aegisthus was in fear Lest she be wed in some great house, and bear A son to avenge her father. Close he wrought Her prison in his house, and gave her not To any wooer. Then, since even this Was full of peril, and the secret kiss Of some bold prince might find her yet, and rend Her prison walls, Aegisthus at the end Would slay her. Then her mother, she so wild Aforetime, pled with him and saved her child. Her heart had still an answer for her lord Murdered, but if the child's blood spoke, what word Could meet the hate thereof? After that day Aegisthus thus decreed: whoso should slay The old king's wandering son, should win rich meed Of gold; and for Electra, she must wed With me, not base of blood--in that I stand True Mycenaean--but in gold and land Most poor, which maketh highest birth as naught. So from a powerless husband shall be wrought A powerless peril. Had some man of might Possessed her, he had called perchance to light Her father's blood, and unknown vengeances Risen on Aegisthus yet. Aye, mine she is: But never yet these arms--the Cyprian knows My truth!--have clasped her body, and she goes A virgin still. Myself would hold it shame To abase this daughter of a royal name. I am too lowly to love violence. Yea, Orestes too doth move me, far away, Mine unknown brother! Will he ever now Come back and see his sister bowed so low?

Doth any deem me fool, to hold a fair Maid in my room and seek no joy, but spare Her maidenhood? If any such there be, Let him but look within. The fool is he In gentle things, weighing the more and less Of love by his own heart's untenderness.

[_As he ceases_ ELECTRA _comes out of the hut. She is in mourning garb, and carries a large pitcher on her head. She speaks without observing the_ PEASANT'S _presence_.

ELECTRA.

Dark shepherdess of many a golden star, Dost see me, Mother Night? And how this jar Hath worn my earth-bowed head, as forth and fro For water to the hillward springs I go? Not for mere stress of need, but purpose set, That never day nor night God may forget Aegisthus' sin: aye, and perchance a cry Cast forth to the waste shining of the sky May find my father's ear.... The woman bred Of Tyndareus, my mother--on her head Be curses!--from my house hath outcast me; She hath borne children to our enemy; She hath made me naught, she hath made Orestes naught....

[_As the bitterness of her tone increases, the_ PEASANT _comes forward._

PEASANT.

What wouldst thou now, my sad one, ever fraught With toil to lighten my toil? And so soft Thy nurture was! Have I not chid thee oft, And thou wilt cease not, serving without end?

ELECTRA (_turning to him with impulsive affection_).

O friend, my friend, as God might be my friend, Thou only hast not trampled on my tears. Life scarce can be so hard, 'mid many fears And many shames, when mortal heart can find Somewhere one healing touch, as my sick mind Finds thee.... And should I wait thy word, to endure A little for thine easing, yea, or pour My strength out in thy toiling fellowship? Thou hast enough with fields and kine to keep; 'Tis mine to make all bright within the door. 'Tis joy to him that toils, when toil is o'er, To find home waiting, full of happy things.

PEASANT.

If so it please thee, go thy way. The springs Are not far off. And I before the morn Must drive my team afield, and sow the corn In the hollows.--Not a thousand prayers can gain A man's bare bread, save an he work amain.

[ELECTRA _and the_ PEASANT _depart on their several ways. After a few moments there enter stealthily two armed men,_ ORESTES _and_ PYLADES.

ORESTES.

Thou art the first that I have known in deed True and my friend, and shelterer of my need. Thou only, Pylades, of all that knew, Hast held Orestes of some worth, all through These years of helplessness, wherein I lie Downtrodden by the murderer--yea, and by The murderess, my mother!... I am come, Fresh from the cleansing of Apollo, home To Argos--and my coming no man yet Knoweth--to pay the bloody twain their debt Of blood. This very night I crept alone To my dead father's grave, and poured thereon My heart's first tears and tresses of my head New-shorn, and o'er the barrow of the dead Slew a black lamb, unknown of them that reign In this unhappy land.... I am not fain To pass the city gates, but hold me here Hard on the borders. So my road is clear To fly if men look close and watch my way; If not, to seek my sister. For men say She dwelleth in these hills, no more a maid But wedded. I must find her house, for aid To guide our work, and learn what hath betid Of late in Argos.--Ha, the radiant lid Of Dawn's eye lifteth! Come, friend; leave we now This trodden path. Some worker of the plough, Or serving damsel at her early task Will presently come by, whom we may ask If here my sister dwells. But soft! Even now I see some bondmaid there, her death-shorn brow Bending beneath its freight of well-water. Lie close until she pass; then question her. A slave might help us well, or speak some sign Of import to this work of mine and thine.

[_The two men retire into ambush._ ELECTRA _enters, returning from the well._

ELECTRA.

Onward, O labouring tread, As on move the years; Onward amid thy tears, O happier dead!

Let me remember. I am she, [_Strophe_ 1. Agamemnon's child, and the mother of me Clytemnestra, the evil Queen, Helen's sister. And folk, I ween, That pass in the streets call yet my name Electra.... God protect my shame! For toil, toil is a weary thing, And life is heavy about my head; And thou far off, O Father and King, In the lost lands of the dead. A bloody twain made these things be; One was thy bitterest enemy, And one the wife that lay by thee.

Brother, brother, on some far shore [_Antistrophe_ 1. Hast thou a city, is there a door That knows thy footfall, Wandering One? Who left me, left me, when all our pain Was bitter about us, a father slain, And a girl that wept in her room alone. Thou couldst break me this bondage sore, Only thou, who art far away, Loose our father, and wake once more.... Zeus, Zeus, dost hear me pray?... The sleeping blood and the shame and the doom! O feet that rest not, over the foam Of distant seas, come home, come home!

What boots this cruse that I carry? [_Strophe_ 2. O, set free my brow! For the gathered tears that tarry Through the day and the dark till now, Now in the dawn are free, Father, and flow beneath The floor of the world, to be As a song in she house of Death: From the rising up of the day They guide my heart alway, The silent tears unshed, And my body mourns for the dead; My cheeks bleed silently, And these bruised temples keep Their pain, remembering thee And thy bloody sleep.

Be rent, O hair of mine head!

As a swan crying alone Where the river windeth cold, For a loved, for a silent one, Whom the toils of the fowler hold, I cry, Father, to thee, O slain in misery!

The water, the wan water, [_Antistrophe_ 2. Lapped him, and his head Drooped in the bed of slaughter Low, as one wearièd; Woe for the edgèd axe, And woe for the heart of hate, Houndlike about thy tracks, O conqueror desolate, From Troy over land and sea, Till a wife stood waiting thee; Not with crowns did she stand, Nor flowers of peace in her hand; With Aegisthus' dagger drawn For her hire she strove, Through shame and through blood alone; And won her a traitor's love.

[_As she ceases there enter from right and left the_ CHORUS, _consisting of women of Argos, young and old, in festal dress_.

CHORUS.

_Some Women._

Child of the mighty dead, [_Strophe_. Electra, lo, my way To thee in the dawn hath sped, And the cot on the mountain grey, For the Watcher hath cried this day: He of the ancient folk, The walker of waste and hill, Who drinketh the milk of the flock; And he told of Hera's will; For the morrow's morrow now They cry her festival, And before her throne shall bow Our damsels all.

ELECTRA.

Not unto joy, nor sweet Music, nor shining of gold, The wings of my spirit beat. Let the brides of Argos hold Their dance in the night, as of old; I lead no dance; I mark No beat as the dancers sway; With tears I dwell in the dark, And my thought is of tears alway, To the going down of the day. Look on my wasted hair And raiment.... This that I bear, Is it meet for the King my sire, And her whom the King begot? For Troy, that was burned with fire And forgetteth not?

CHORUS.

_Other Women._

Hera is great!--Ah, come, [_Antistrophe_. Be kind; and my hand shall bring Fair raiment, work of the loom, And many a golden thing, For joyous robe-wearing. Deemest thou this thy woe Shall rise unto God as prayer, Or bend thine haters low? Doth God for thy pain have care? Not tears for the dead nor sighs, But worship and joy divine Shall win thee peace in thy skies, O daughter mine!

ELECTRA.

No care cometh to God For the voice of the helpless; none For the crying of ancient blood. Alas for him that is gone, And for thee, O wandering one: That now, methinks, in a land Of the stranger must toil for hire, And stand where the poor men stand, A-cold by another's fire, O son of the mighty sire: While I in a beggar's cot On the wrecked hills, changing not, Starve in my soul for food; But our mother lieth wed In another's arms, and blood Is about her bed.

LEADER.

On all of Greece she wrought great jeopardy, Thy mother's sister, Helen,--and on thee.

[ORESTES _and_ PYLADES _move out from their concealment_; ORESTES _comes forward_: PYLADES _beckons to two_ ARMED SERVANTS _and stays with them in the background_.

ELECTRA.

Woe's me! No more of wailing! Women, flee! Strange armèd men beside the dwelling there Lie ambushed! They are rising from their lair. Back by the road, all you. I will essay The house; and may our good feet save us!

ORESTES (_between_ ELECTRA _and the hut_).

Stay, Unhappy woman! Never fear my steel.

ELECTRA (_in utter panic_).

O bright Apollo! Mercy! See, I kneel; Slay me not.

ORESTES.

Others I have yet to slay Less dear than thou.

ELECTRA.

Go from me! Wouldst thou lay Hand on a body that is not for thee?

ORESTES.

None is there I would touch more righteously.

ELECTRA.

Why lurk'st thou by my house? And why a sword?

ORESTES.

Stay. Listen! Thou wilt not gainsay my word.

ELECTRA.

There--I am still. Do what thou wilt with me. Thou art too strong.

ORESTES.

A word I bear to thee... Word of thy brother.

ELECTRA.

Oh, friend! More than friend! Living or dead?

ORESTES.

He lives; so let me send My comfort foremost, ere the rest be heard.

ELECTRA.

God love thee for the sweetness of thy word!

ORESTES.

God love the twain of us, both thee and me.

ELECTRA.

He lives! Poor brother! In what land weareth he His exile?

ORESTES.

Not one region nor one lot His wasted life hath trod.

ELECTRA.

He lacketh not For bread?

ORESTES.

Bread hath he; but a man is weak In exile.

ELECTRA.

What charge laid he on thee? Speak.

ORESTES.

To learn if thou still live, and how the storm, Living, hath struck thee.

ELECTRA.

That thou seest; this form Wasted...

ORESTES.

Yea, riven with the fire of woe. I sigh to look on thee.

ELECTRA.

My face; and, lo, My temples of their ancient glory shorn.

ORESTES.

Methinks thy brother haunts thee, being forlorn; Aye, and perchance thy father, whom they slew...

ELECTRA.

What should be nearer to me than those two?

ORESTES.

And what to him, thy brother, half so dear As thou?

ELECTRA. His is a distant love, not near At need.

ORESTES.

But why this dwelling place, this life Of loneliness?

ELECTRA (_with sudden bitterness_).

Stranger, I am a wife.... O better dead!

ORESTES.

That seals thy brother's doom! What Prince of Argos...?

ELECTRA.

Not the man to whom My father thought to give me.

ORESTES.

Speak; that I May tell thy brother all.

ELECTRA.

'Tis there, hard by, His dwelling, where I live, far from men's eyes.

ORESTES.

Some ditcher's cot, or cowherd's, by its guise!

ELECTRA (_struck with shame for her ingratitude_).

A poor man; but true-hearted, and to me God-fearing.

ORESTES.

How? What fear of God hath he?

ELECTRA.

He hath never held my body to his own.

ORESTES.

Hath he some vow to keep? Or is it done To scorn thee?

ELECTRA.

Nay; he only scorns to sin Against my father's greatness.

ORESTES.

But to win A princess! Doth his heart not leap for pride?

ELECTRA.

He honoureth not the hand that gave the bride.

ORESTES.

I see. He trembles for Orestes' wrath?

ELECTRA.

Aye, that would move him. But beside, he hath A gentle heart.

ORESTES.

Strange! A good man.... I swear He well shall be requited.

ELECTRA.

Whensoe'er Our wanderer comes again!

ORESTES.

Thy mother stays Unmoved 'mid all thy wrong?

ELECTRA.

A lover weighs More than a child in any woman's heart.

ORESTES.

But what end seeks Aegisthus, by such art Of shame?

ELECTRA.

To make mine unborn children low And weak, even as my husband.

ORESTES.

Lest there grow From thee the avenger?

ELECTRA.

Such his purpose is: For which may I requite him!

ORESTES.

And of this Thy virgin life--Aegisthus knows it?

ELECTRA.

Nay, We speak it not. It cometh not his way.

ORESTES.

These women hear us. Are they friends to thee?

ELECTRA.

Aye, friends and true. They will keep faithfully All words of mine and thine.

ORESTES (_trying her_).

Thou art well stayed With friends. And could Orestes give thee aid In aught, if e'er...

ELECTRA.

Shame on thee! Seest thou not? Is it not time?

ORESTES (_catching her excitement_).

How time? And if he sought To slay, how should he come at his desire?

ELECTRA.

By daring, as they dared who slew his sire!

ORESTES.

Wouldst thou dare with him, if he came, thou too, To slay her?

ELECTRA.

Yes; with the same axe that slew My father!

ORESTES.

'Tis thy message? And thy mood Unchanging?

ELECTRA.

Let me shed my mother's blood, And I die happy.

ORESTES.

God!... I would that now Orestes heard thee here.

ELECTRA.

Yet, wottest thou, Though here I saw him, I should know him not.

ORESTES.

Surely. Ye both were children, when they wrought Your parting.

ELECTRA.

One alone in all this land Would know his face.

ORESTES.

The thrall, methinks, whose hand Stole him from death--or so the story ran?

ELECTRA.