_Peas._ Why will thou thus, unhappy lady, toil For my sake bearing labours, nor desist At my desire? Not thus hast thou been train'd. _Elec._ Thee equal to the gods I deem my friend, For in my ills thou hast not treated me With insult. In misfortunes thus to find What I have found in thee, a gentle pow'r, Lenient of grief, must be a mighty source Of consolations. It behoves me then, Far as my pow'r avails, to ease thy toils, That lighter thou may'st feel them, and to share Thy labour, though unbidden; in the fields Thou hast enough of work; be it my task Within to order well. The lab'rer tired Abroad, with pleasure to his house returns. Accustom'd all things grateful there to find. _Peas._ Go then, since such thy will; nor distant far The fountain from the house. At the first dawn My bullocks yoked I to the field will drive, And sow my furrows; for no idle wretch With the gods always in the mouth can gain Without due labour the support of life. {95} _Stage vacant a moment. Then enter by Distance-door Orestes and Pylades._ _Orestes_ in conversation with his friend makes known he is come by divine command to avenge his father's death: he has fulfilled the god's first charge to present offerings on his father's tomb; the second is that he must not enter the walls of the city; thus he wishes to find his sister--now, as he hears, wedded to a peasant!--and consult--they step aside as they see one whom 'female slave her tresses show' approaching. {127} _Re-enter Electra with her water-pot filled_: and in a _Monody_ (_strophe, antistrophe and epode_) laments her situation: laments for her lost father, her brother afar off, in servitude it may be: and adjures her father's spirit to send vengeance. {187} PARODE JOINING ON TO EPISODE I _Enter the Orchestra Chorus of Maidens of Mycenae, and in dialogue_ (_two Strophes and Antistrophes_) beg Electra to join them in an approaching festival, as she had been wont in happier days.--Electra declares she is fit for tears and rags, not for festivities.--As for rags they will find her the festal robes; and vows, instead of tears may gain the goddess's help.--No god, says Electra, has an ear for the wretched, and in wretched toil and obscure retreat her life is wasting away.--_A sob from the concealed Orestes startles them, and they are about to flee, when Orestes and Pylades discover themselves and reassure them_. With difficulty he restrains his emotions throughout a long conversation, personating a messenger from himself to Electra.