CHOR.  What sayest thou?  Oh, the unhappy man!

ELEC.  You will kill him if you move his eyelids, now that he is taking the sweetest enjoyment of sleep.

CHOR.  Unfortunate on account of these most angry deeds from heaven! oh! wretched on account of thy sufferings!

ELEC.  Alas! alas!  Apollo himself unjust, then spoke unjust things, when at the tripod of Themis he commanded the unhallowed, inauspicious murder of my mother.

CHOR.  Dost thou see? he moves his body in the robes that cover him.

ELEC.  You by your cries, O wretch, have disturbed him from his sleep.

CHOR.  I indeed think he is sleeping yet.

ELEC.  Will you not depart from us? will you not bend your footsteps back from the house, ceasing this noise?

CHOR.  He sleeps.

ELEC.  Thou sayest well.

CHOR.  Venerable, venerable Night, thou that dispensest sleep to languid mortals, come from Erebus; come, come, borne on thy wings to the house of Agamemnon; for by our griefs and by our sufferings we are quite undone, undone.

ELEC.  Ye were making a noise.

CHOR.  No. (Note [A].)

ELEC.  Silently, silently repressing the high notes of your voice, apart from his couch, you will enable him to have the tranquil enjoyment of sleep.

CHOR.  Tell us; what end to his miseries awaits him?

ELEC.  Death, death; what else can? for he has no appetite for food.

CHOR.  Death then is manifestly before him.

ELEC.  Phoebus offered us as victims, when he commanded[4] the dreadful, abhorred murder of our mother, that slew our father.

CHOR.  With justice indeed, but not well.

ELEC.  Thou hast died, thou hast died, O mother, O thou that didst bring me forth, but hast killed the father, and the children of thy blood.  We perish, we perish, even as two corses.  For thou art among the dead, and the greatest part of my life is passed in groans, and wailings, and nightly tears; marriageless, childless, behold, how like a miserable wretch do I drag out my existence forever!

CHOR.  O virgin Electra, approach near, and look that thy brother has not died unobserved by thee; for by this excessive quiet he doth not please me.

ORESTES, ELECTRA, CHORUS.

ORES.  O precious balm of sleep, thou that relievest my malady, how pleasant didst thou come to me in the time of need!  O divine oblivion of my sufferings, how wise thou art, and the goddess to be supplicated by all in distress!—­whence, in heaven’s name, came I hither? and how brought? for I remember not things past, bereaved, as I am, of my senses.

ELEC.  My dearest brother, how didst thou delight me when thou didst fall asleep! wilt thou I touch thee, and raise thy body up?

ORES.  Raise me then, raise me, and wipe the clotted foam from off my wretched mouth, and from my eyes.

ELEC.  Behold, the task is sweet, and I refuse not to administer to a brother’s limbs with a sister’s hand.