eparted, and streams from the mountain heifer, and the wine draughts of
Bacchus, and the work of the swarthy bees,[29] which are the wonted
peace-offerings to the departed. O germ of Agamemnon beneath the earth, to
thee as dead do I send these offerings. And do thou receive them, for not
before [thine own] tomb do I offer my auburn locks,[30] my tears. For far
away am I journeyed from thy country and mine, where, as opinion goes, I
wretched lie slaughtered.

CHOR. A respondent strain and an Asiatic hymn of barbarian wailing will I
peal forth to thee, my mistress, the song of mourning which, delighting the
dead, Hades hymns in measure apart from Paeans.[31] Alas! the light of the
sceptre in the Atrides' house is faded away. Alas! alas for my ancestral
home! And what government of prosperous kings will there be in Argos?[32]
* * * * And labor upon labor comes on * * * * [33] with his winged mares
driven around. But the sun, changing from its proper place, [laid aside]
its eye of light.[34] And upon other houses woe has come, because of the
golden lamb, murder upon murder, and pang upon pang, whence the avenging
Fury[35] of those sons slain of old comes upon the houses of the sons of
Tantalus, and some deity hastens unkindly things against thee.

IPH. From the beginning the demon of my mother's zone[36] was hostile to
me, and from that night in which the Fates hastened the pangs of
childbirth[37] * * * * whom, the first-born germ the wretched daughter of
Leda, (Clytaemnestra,) wooed from among the Greeks brought forth, and
trained up as a victim to a father's sin, a joyless sacrifice, a votive
offering. But in a horse-chariot they brought[38] me to the sands of Aulis,
a bride, alas! unhappy bride to the son of Nereus' daughter, alas! And now
a stranger I dwell in an unpleasant home on the inhospitable sea, unwedded,
childless, without city, without a friend, not chanting Juno in Argos, nor
in the sweetly humming loom adorning with the shuttle the image of Athenian
Pallas[39] and of the Titans, but imbruing altars with the shed blood of
strangers, a pest unsuited to the harp, [of strangers] sighing forth[40] a
piteous cry, and shedding a piteous tear. And now indeed forgetfulness of
these matters [comes upon] me, but now I mourn my brother dead in Argos,
whom I left yet an infant at the breast, yet young, yet a germ in his
mother's arms and on her bosom, Orestes [the future] holder of the sceptre
in Argos.

CHOR. But hithe