ORES.  This it is to have companions, not relationship alone; so that a man who is congenial in manners, though a stranger in blood, is a better friend for a man to have, than ten thousand relatives.

CHORUS.

The great happiness, and the valor high sounding throughout Greece, and by the channels of the Simois, has again withdrawn from the fortune of the Atridae, as of old, from the ancient calamity of the house, when the strife of the golden lamb[20] arose among the descendants of Tantalus; most shocking feasts, and the slaughter of noble children; from whence murder responsive to murder fails not to attend on the two sons of Atreus.  What seems good is not good, to gash the parents’ skin with a fierce hand, and brandish the sword black-stained with blood in the sunbeams.  But, on the other hand, to act wickedly[21] is mad impiety, and the folly of evil-minded men.

But the wretched daughter of Tyndarus in the fear of death shrieked out, “My son, thou darest impious deeds, killing thy mother; do not, attending to the gratification of thy father, kindle an everlasting disgrace.”

What malady, or what tears, or what pity on earth is greater, than to imbrue one’s hand in a mother’s blood?  What a deed, what a deed having performed, does the son of Agamemnon rave with madness, a prey to the Eumenides, marked for death, giddy with his rolling eyes!  O wretched on account of his mother, when though seeing the breast bared from the robe of golden texture, he stabbed the mother in retaliation for the father’s sufferings.

ELECTRA, CHORUS.

ELEC.  Ye virgins, has the wretched Orestes, overcome with heaven-inflicted madness, rushed any where from this house?

CHOR.  By no means; but he is gone to the Argive people, to undergo the trial proposed regarding life, by which you must either live or die.

ELEC.  Alas me! what thing has he done? but who persuaded him?

CHOR.  Pylades.—­But this messenger seems soon about to inform us of what has passed there concerning thy brother.

MESSENGER, ELECTRA, CHORUS.

MESS.  O wretched hapless daughter of the chief Agamemnon, revered Electra, hear the unfortunate words which I am come to bring.

ELEC.  Alas! alas! we are undone; this thou signifiest by thy speech.  For thou comest, as it seems, a messenger of woes.

MESS.  It has been carried by the vote of the Pelasgians, that thy brother and thou must die this day.

ELEC.  Ah me! the expected event has come, which long since fearing, I pined away with lamentations on account of what was in prospect.—­But what was the debate?  What arguments among the Argives condemned us, and confirmed our sentence of death?  Tell me, old man, whether by the hand raised to stone me, or by the sword must I breathe out my soul, having this calamity in common with my brother?