ELECTRA
O chariot-race of Pelops old,
The source of sorrows manifold,
What endless curse hath fallen on us
Since to his sea-grave Myrtilus[1]
Sank from the golden chariot hurled;
Woe upon woe, of woes a world.
Enter Clytemnestra.
Clytemnestra
So once again I find thee here at large,
For he who kept thee close and so restrained
Thy scandalous tongue, Aegisthus, is away;
Yet thy complaints, repeated many a time
To many, censured my tyrannic rule—
The insults that I heaped on thee and thine.
Was it an insult if I paid in kind
The flouts and taunts wherewith thou girdest at me?
Thy father, the sole pretext of thy grief,
Died by my hand, aye mine, I know it well,
’Tis true beyond denial; yet not I,
Not I alone, but Justice slew him too:
And thou shouldst side with Justice, wert thou wise.
This sire of thine for whom thy tears still flow
- ↑ The charioteer of Oenomaüs. In the race for the hand of Hippodameia, the king’s daughter, he betrayed his master by removing a linch-pin. Pelops won the race, but afterwards for an insult offered to his wife, he hurled into the sea Myrtilus, who invoked a dying curse on the house.
