For all the evils of the years gone by. _Ores._ [To _Aegisthus_.] Go thou within, and quickly. Now our strife Is not of words, but for thy life itself. _Aegis._ Why dost thou force me in? If this be right, What need of darkness? Why not slay at once? _Ores._ Give thou no orders, but where thou did'st slay My father go, that thou too there may'st die. _Aegis._ Truly the doom is fixed, this house should see The ills that on the house of Pelops fall, Or present, or to come. _Ores._ Yes, those that fall On thee: of these I am a prophet true. _Aegis._ Thou boastest of a skill which he had not-- Thy father. _Ores._ Still thou bandiest many words, And length'nest out the way. Move on. _Aegis._ Lead thou. _Ores._ Not so, thou must go first. _Aegis._ Dost think I'll flee? _Ores._ Thou must not die the death thou would'st desire. I needs must make it utter. Doom like this Should fall on all who dare transgress the laws, The doom of death. Then wickedness no more Would multiply its strength. _Chor._ O seed of Atreus, after many woes, Thou hast come forth, thy freedom hardly won, By this emprise made perfect! [1] The quotations of Sophocles are (mostly) from Plumptre's translation. THE ELECTRA OF EURIPIDES[1] PROLOGUE _The Scene is in front of a Peasant's Cottage: the Centre is the door of the Cottage, the scene on the two sides of it represents the ways to fields and to the river. Time: early Morning, the stars still shining._ _Enter from the Cottage the Peasant on his way to his day's work_. In the form of a Morning Prayer to the stream Inachus, he makes known the situation of affairs, the murder of Agamemnon, etc.--and in particular how Aegisthus, fearing lest some nobleman might marry Electra and be her avenger, had forced her into wedlock with himself, a peasant, honest but in the lowest poverty. But he is too good a friend to his master's house and to the absent Orestes to wrong Electra; he has been a husband only in name, to give her the shelter of his humble roof. _Enter Electra from the Cottage with a watering pot_: not seeing the Peasant she in a similar soliloquy announces that she is on her way to the river to prosecute her unnatural toil.