Electra
O joyous day! O sole preserver of Agamemnon's house,
[1355]
how did you come here? Are you indeed the man who saved my brother and myself from many sorrows? O dearest hands, O messenger whose feet were kindly servants! How could you be with me so long and remain unknown, without giving a ray of illumination,
[1360]
but instead afflicting me with stories, while possessed of sweetest reality? Welcome, Father, for it is a father that I seem to behold! Welcome, and know that in one day I have hated you and loved you as no man ever before!
Paedagogus
That is enough, I think. As for the recounting of intervening events,
[1365]
many are the circling nights and an equal number of days which will reveal them to you clearly, Electra.
To Orestes and Pylades.
And this is my advice to you two, since you stand there: now is your opportunity to act, now Clytaemnestra is alone, now no man is inside. But if you pause,
[1370]
consider that you will have to fight both those inside and others mightier and better skilled.
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Sophocles. The Electra of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1894.
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