Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/179

508–545]

Since, from the golden car

Hurled to the deep afar,

Myrtilus sank and slept,

Cruelly plucked from that fell chariot-floor,

This house unceasingly hath kept

Crime and misfortune mounting evermore.

. Again you are let loose and rare at will.

Ay, for Aegisthus is not here, who barred

Your rashness from defaming your own kin

Beyond the gates. But now he ’s gone from home,

You heed not me: though you have noised abroad

That I am bold in crime, and domineer

Outrageously, oppressing thee and thine.

I am no oppressor, but I speak thee ill,

For thou art ever speaking ill of me—

Still holding forth thy father’s death, that I

Have done it. So I did: I know it well:

That I deny not; for not I alone

But Justice slew him; and if you had sense,

To side with Justice ought to be your part.

For who but he of all the Greeks, your sire,

For whom you whine and cry, who else but he

Took heart to sacrifice unto the Gods

Thy sister?—having less of pain, I trow,

In getting her, than I, that bore her, knew!

Come, let me question thee! On whose behalf

Slew he my child? Was ’t for the Argive host?

What right had they to traffic in my flesh?—

Menelaüs was his brother. Wilt thou say

He slew my daughter for his brother’s sake?

How then should he escape me? Had not he,

Menelaüs, children twain, begotten of her

Whom to reclaim that army sailed to Troy?

Was Death then so enamoured of my seed,

That he must feast thereon and let theirs live?

Or was the God-abandoned father’s heart

Tender toward them and cruel to my child?