and there I purified him after bloodshed.

  And I shall speak on his behalf,

  580 since I am answerable for the killing of his mother.

  So begin proceedings, and conduct

  the case as you know best.

  ATHENA

  I do hereby begin proceedings.

  [To the Erinyes.]

  It is for you to make your case,

  since it is proper for the prosecution to be first to speak,

  and to explain the issue from the start.

  CHORUS LEADER

  We may be many, yet we shall each speak incisively.

  [To ORESTES.]

  And you must give your answers point by point.

  So this first: did you kill your mother?

  ORESTES

  I killed her, yes. There is no way I can deny the deed.

  CHORUS MEMBER 1

  Three falls are needed—that’s already one!

  ORESTES

  590 You claim that, but I’m not yet on the floor.

  CHORUS MEMBER 2

  Then next you have to say: how did you murder her?

  ORESTES

  I say I drew my sword and slit her throat.

  CHORUS MEMBER 3

  And who persuaded you? Whose plan was this?

  ORESTES

  The oracle of this god here, as he’s my witness.

  CHORUS MEMBER 4

  The prophet authorized your mother-killing?

  ORESTES

  Yes—and, thus far, I stand by what has happened.

  CHORUS MEMBER 5

  But when the vote entraps you, then you’ll change your tune.

  ORESTES

  I keep on trusting. And my father helps me from the grave.

  CHORUS MEMBER 6

  You kill your mother, and then pin your faith on corpses!

  ORESTES

  600 I do, because she had been doubly stained.

  CHORUS MEMBER 7

  What do you mean? Explain this to the judges.

  ORESTES

  In murdering her husband, she destroyed my father too.

  CHORUS MEMBER 8

  But you are still alive: she’s been absolved through death.

  ORESTES

  So, when she was alive, why did you not chase after her?

  CHORUS MEMBER 9

  She did not share his blood, the man she killed.

  ORESTES

  And do I share my mother’s blood?

  CHORUS LEADER

  Of course you do. She nurtured you within her womb,

  you loathsome murderer. Would you deny

  your mother’s blood, the nearest to your own?

  ORESTES [turning to APOLLO]

  610 Please stand, Apollo, as my witness now:

  explain if I had justice on my side in killing her.

  I can’t deny I did it—that’s a fact—

  but give your judgment if my shedding of this blood

  was justified or not.

  APOLLO

  Then I declare to you, who represent

  this mighty charter set up by Athena:

  it was justified.

  I am a prophet and can never lie:

  from my prophetic throne I’ve never said a thing,

  concerning man or woman or a city,

  not one word which was not authorized

  by great Olympian Zeus.

  I would advise you to appreciate

  just how supreme this justice is,

  620 and act in concert with the father’s will—

  there is no oath that binds more strongly than does Zeus.

  CHORUS LEADER

  So Zeus, by your account, conveyed to you this oracle,

  which told Orestes to take vengeance for his father’s death,

  and to account his mother’s claims as valueless?

  APOLLO

  Just so—because they’re not to be compared.

  This was the killing of a noble man,

  distinguished by the scepter, gift of Zeus;

  and, what is more, it was a woman laid him low—

  yet nothing like the arrow of some warlike Amazon.

  No, listen how it was, Athena,

  630 and you jurors sitting here to give your votes.

  When he had come back from the war,

  where he had managed mostly well,

  she welcomed him with lavish words;

  and then, as he was lying in the bath,

  she tented him inside a robe,

  and, with him fettered in this crafty cloak of cloth,

  she struck.

  This is the sad tale of his death,

  a man revered by all, commander of the fleet.

  I emphasize this so the people gathered

  to decide this case may feel the sting of it.

  CHORUS LEADER

  640 According to your version, then, you claim that Zeus accords

  a father’s death the heavier weight.

  Yet he himself tied up his ancient father, Cronus.

  Is not that a blatant contradiction?

  I call upon you listeners to confirm this point.

  APOLLO

  You loathsome, god-detested monsters!

  Zeus could loose mere chains—there is a mass of ways

  of getting those unlocked, with no harm done—

  but once the soil has gulped the life-blood of a man,

  there is no way to stand him up again.

  My father can reverse all other things

  650 by turning them this way and that, without much effort,

  but for this he has composed no counterspell.

  CHORUS LEADER

  Now think what your defense of this man means.

  He’s spilled his mother’s blood upon the ground,

  his own shared blood: how can he then

  inhabit his ancestral home in Argos?

  How could he stand by altars that are communal?

  What brotherhood could have him at their rites?

  APOLLO

  I shall explain this; and you’ll see that I am right.

  The person who is called the mother

  is no parent of the child, merely the feeder

  of the new-implanted embryo.

  660 The true begetter is the one who thrusts;

  and she is like a stranger acting for a stranger:

  she keeps the seedling safe, provided no god injures it.

  I offer an exhibit that will prove the point

  and show a father can give birth without a mother:

  here stands the daughter of Olympian Zeus as witness.

  She was never cultured in the darkness of a womb.

  And I, Athena, shall so far as I am able

  make your city and its people great.

  I’ve guided this man to your hearth

  670 so that he may stay loyal for all of future time,

  and you may gain him and those after him as allies,

  ever standing firm as pledges for the children of these men.

  ATHENA

  Now I instruct these jurors to apply

  their honest judgment, and to cast their votes.

  Enough has now been argued.

  [The jurors proceed to vote in the course of the following dialogue.]

  CHORUS LEADER

  Well, we have fired off all our arrows,

  So we wait to see what way the issue is decided.

  APOLLO

  You’ve heard what you have heard,

  680 So, strangers, when you vote, revere your oath.

  CHORUS MEMBER 1 [to the jurors]

  (711) I would advise you not to underrate our claims:

  we could become a harmful presence for this land.

  APOLLO

  I tell you to feel fearful of my oracles from Zeus,

  and not to leave them barren.

  CHORUS MEMBER 2 [to APOLLO]

  If you embark on bloodshed—matters not your business,

  the temple of your oracle will not stay pure.

  APOLLO

  Was Zeus then in the wrong when he assessed

  the case of Ixion, the world’s first homicide?

  CHORUS MEMBER 3

  Whatever you may say, if we don’t win this case,

  720 we shall stay on to be a menace for this land.

  APOLLO

  You have no standing with the younger gods,

  nor with the older. I shall win.

  CHORUS MEMBER 4

  You did this kind of thing back when you coaxed

  the Moirai to release Admetus from mortality.

  APOLLO

  Was it not right to do a favor for that virtuous man,

  especially in his hour of need?

  CHORUS MEMBER 5

  You upset age-old functions when you fooled

  those ancient goddesses with wine.

  APOLLO

  Well, soon, when you have lost this case,

  you shall be spewing toxic bile—

  730 although it cannot harm your enemies.

  CHORUS MEMBER 6

  A younger god, you try to trample over me, the old,

  and so I’ll stay to hear the outcome of this trial,

  still undecided whether I should turn my anger on this city.

  [The jurors’ voting is now complete.]

  ATHENA

  It is my place to give my judgment last:

  and I shall cast this vote in favor of Orestes.

  [She puts in her vote.]

  This is because no mother gave me birth,

  and so in every way I’m for the male—

  except for intercourse—with all my heart.

  I’m strongly on the father’s side,

  and shall not grant a wife’s fate precedence—

  740 not one who killed her man, the master of her house.

  It is the rule that, if the votes are equally divided,

  the defendant wins.

  And now, you jurors who’ve been trusted with this task,

  be quick and tip the vote-stones from the urns.

  [The vote-tellers turn out the urns and count.]

  ORESTES

  Phoebus Apollo, which way will this judgment go?

  CHORUS LEADER

  O mother Night, dark mother, do you see?

  ORESTES

  Now it is either hanging or the light of life for me.

  CHORUS LEADER

  For us it’s nothingness or keeping our prerogatives.

  CHORUS LEADER

  Count up the emptied votes correctly, strangers.

  ORESTES

  Give justice your supreme respect as you decide.

  CHORUS LEADER

  750 A lapse of honesty can cause immeasurable harm.

  ORESTES

  A single vote can make or break a house.

  ATHENA [after being informed by the vote-tellers]

  This man has been acquitted of the charge of murder,

  since the tally of the votes is equal for both sides.

  [APOLLO departs.]

  ORESTES

  Athena, you have saved my heritage.

  It’s you who have restored me in my home

  when I was dispossessed of fatherland.

  And Greeks will say:

  “This man is once again a man of Argos,

  rich in his ancestral property.

  He owes this to Athena and Apollo

  and, third, all-achieving Zeus, the guardian.”

  760 Zeus gave my father’s death his full respect,

  and saved me from my mother’s champions.

  And now, as I head home, I swear an oath

  to this whole country and its people,

  good for all of future time:

  no leader of my land shall ever marshal here

  a hostile armored force.

  If any should transgress this oath of mine,

  then I myself, from in my tomb,

  shall set against them fatal obstacles;

  770 and make their march ill-omened and demoralized,

  till they regret the undertaking.

  But so long as they stay firm and true

  toward this city of Athena with alliance in the field,

  then I shall look on them with favor.

  So farewell to you, and to the people

  who maintain your city in their care.

  May you hold fast a grip upon your enemies

  that brings security and victory.

  [Exit ORESTES.]

  Scene 8

  CHORUS

  You younger gods have ridden down

  the ancient laws,

  wrenching them roughly from my hands

  and into yours.

  780 Deprived of rights, and full of rage,

  I’ll blight this earth

  with poison, poison from my heart

  to pay back grief.

  I’ll drip it on the soil to make

  foul cankers sprout,

  mildews that bring to children death

  and foliage blight—

  O Justice!—make plagues sweep the land

  and rot the soil,

  rot human flesh. What can I do?

  I mourn, I howl.

  790 These citizens have made us fools,

  so we, dark Night’s

  dear daughters, are consumed by grief,

  deprived of rights.

  ATHENA

  I must persuade you that you should not take offense

  with such extreme resentment.

  Understand: you were not beaten,

  since the votes came out as truly equal,

  and with no disgrace to you.

  There was, though, clear-cut testament from Zeus,

  delivered by the god who gave the oracle himself,

  which said Orestes should not come to harm

  because of what he’d done.

  So you should not rain down

  800 such deadly rancor on this land.

  Hold back your anger; don’t create a sterile desert

  by exhaling poison droplets,

  acid froth that eats at healthy seed.

  I give my solemn promise: you shall have

  a cavern-dwelling in this land, where you shall take

  your seats on glistening stones beside your altars,

  and receive due worship from these citizens.

  CHORUS

  You younger gods have ridden down

  the ancient laws,

  wrenching them roughly from my hands

  and into yours.

  810 Deprived of rights, and full of rage,

  I’ll blight this earth

  with poison, poison from my heart

  to pay back grief.

  I’ll drip it on the soil to make

  foul cankers sprout,

  mildews that bring to children death

  and foliage blight—

  O Justice!—make plagues scour the land

  and rot the soil,

  rot human flesh. What can I do?

  I mourn, I howl.

  820 These citizens have made us fools,

  so we, dark Night’s

  dear daughters, are consumed by grief,

  deprived of rights.

  ATHENA

  You do still have your rights.

  Do not be so incensed; and don’t, as gods,

  infect the land of humans with foul blight.

  I too have my support—

  I should not need to mention Zeus—

  and I’m the only god who knows about the key

  to where his thunderbolt is locked away.

  But there’s no call for that:

  be open to persuasion by my words.

  830 Don’t hurl about these vitriolic threats

  to poison every fruit that grows.

  Soothe down the seething storm-waves of your rage,

  so you may be most solemnly revered,

  and stay as fellow settlers here.

  When you are given first fruits from this fertile land,

  receiving sacrifices to promote good childbirth

  and good marriage, you shall be

  forever grateful for this pledge of mine.

  CHORUS

  For me to be demeaned,

  despite my age-old mind!

  To stay in this land where

  pollution’s everywhere!

  840 Such force is in my breath,

  its blast is full of wrath.

  Such pain is this that jabs

  me deep beneath my ribs.

  Hear me, my mother Night:

  the gods’ deceitfulness

  has stripped me of old rights,

  and made me nothingness.

  ATHENA

  I shall be patient with your anger,

  seeing you are older and far wiser than I am—