Orestes: Aye; and I never yet my destiny regretted. Eumenides: When judgment will be given thou wilt not speak thus. Orestes: Perhaps. But from his grave my father will send aid. Eumenides: What hopest from the dead thou, who hast killed thy _mother_? Orestes: She had been guilty of a double, bloody crime. Eumenides: How so? Explain unto the judges what you mean. Orestes: She killed her husband and she thereby killed my father. Eumenides: Her crime she expiated now, but you still live. Orestes: Why did you fail to prosecute her while she lived? Eumenides: _She was no blood relation to the man she killed._ Orestes: But I, so you assert, am of my mother’s blood. Eumenides: Did she, thou bloody one, not bear thee ’neath her heart? Wouldst thou thy mother’s sacred blood deny? The Eumenides accordingly do not recognize the right of the father and husband. They proclaim maternal law. That Klytaemnestra caused the murder of her husband seems unimportant to them, for he was a stranger to her. But they demand punishment of the matricide, for by killing his mother, Orestes committed the most unpardonable crime that could be committed under the dominance of the gentile organization. Apollo, on the other hand, holds the opposite point of view. Upon a command from Zeus he has induced Orestes to murder his own mother to avenge the patricide, and before the judges he thus defends the deed: Then say I, listen ye unto my word of justice: The mother is not procreatrix to her child; She only the awakened life doth keep and bear. The father is the procreator; she but keeps The forfeit for her friend, unless a god destroy it I will submit a proof that cannot be denied. For one can have a father, yet no mother have. Minerva, daughter of the great Olympian Zeus, Within the darkness of a mother’s womb ne’er rested, And yet no goddess e’er gave birth to fairer offspring. According to Apollo, then, procreation gives the father a superior right, while the view that had prevailed until then proclaimed the mother, who gives life to the child by her own blood, the child’s sole possessor, and deemed the child’s father a mere stranger to her. Therefore, the Eumenides reply to the views of Apollo: Thou overthrowest forces of remotest days.... Thou, the young god, wouldst us, the ancient ones, dethrone. The judges prepare to pronounce their verdict; half of them favor the old law and the other half favor the new, giving an equal number of votes to both sides. There Minerva seizes a ballot from the altar and casting it into the urn she exclaims: