Chorus
Then arrayed how does she tell him to come?
Nurse
Arrayed how? Say it again so that I may catch your meaning better.
Chorus
With his guards or perhaps unattended?
Nurse
She tells him to come with his retinue of spearmen.
Chorus
Well, do not give this message to our loathed master,
[770]
but with all haste and with a cheerful heart tell him to come himself, alone, so that he may be told without alarm. For in the mouth of a messenger a crooked message is made straight.1
Nurse
What! Are you gladdened at heart by the present news?
Chorus
Why not, if Zeus at last may cause our ill wind to change?
[775]
Nurse
But how can that be? Orestes, the hope of our house, is gone.
Chorus
Not yet; he would be a poor prophet who would so interpret.
Nurse
What are you saying? Do you know something beyond what has been told?
Chorus
Go, deliver your message! Do what you are asked to do! The gods take care of what they take care of.
[780]
Nurse
Well, I will go and do your bidding. With the gods' blessing may everything turn out for the best!Exit
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
1 A proverbial saying, meant for the Nurse, and not for Aegisthus: “In passing through the mouth of its bearer a message may be changed as he pleases.”
Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. 2. Libation Bearers. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.