The murder of Agamemnon

but we were over there, fighting hard [ athlos] at Troy, and Aigisthos who was taking his ease quietly in the heart of Argos, cajoled Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra with incessant flattery.

No matter how far out of the world you live, you will have heard of Agamemnon and the bad end he came to at the hands of Aigisthos - and a fearful reckoning did Aigisthos presently pay.

moreover there was a singer with her, to whom Agamemnon had given strict orders on setting out for Troy, that he was to keep guard over his wife;

And even as she buried him in this way, she acted with intent to make the manner of his death a burden on your life past all power to bear.

The awe of majesty once unconquered, unvanquished, irresistible in war, that penetrated the ears and heart of the people, is now cast off.

Father, remember the bath where you were robbed of life.

but at home he died by the guile of his wife Clytemnestra and the hand of Aegisthus, son of Thyestes.

O Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, I have come to your rustic courtyard.

But, since Agamemnon’s son, both present and not present, for whose sake we have come, is worthy of it, let us accept a lodging in this house.

Zeus, guardian of the dead — the votive favour.

I am struck — a right-aimed stroke within me!

AGAMEMNON.

but my black-hearted mother killed him after she covered him in a crafty snare that still remains to witness his murder in the bath.

then, as he was stepping from the bath, on its very edge, she threw a cloak like a tent over it, fettered her husband in an embroidered robe, and cut him down.

Yes, for he was dreadfully murdered by a woman.

Iphigenia:

Orestes: The wretched man is dead, and in addition he destroyed another.

When I arrived at Nauplia, my wife already on the point of starting here, I was expecting to give a fond embrace to Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, and his mother, thinking that they were doing well, when I heard from a sailor the unholy murder of Tyndareus’ child.

For I learned Agamemnon’s fate and the death he died at his wife’s hands, as I was trying to put in at Malea;

all from that one accursed mother, who slew her husband, after snaring him in an inextricable robe.

My accursed bed in that house of suffering there knows well already how I observe my night-long rites—how often I bewail my miserable father, whom bloody Ares did not welcome with deadly gifts in a foreign land, but my mother and her bedfellow Aegisthus split his head with murderous axe, just as woodmen chop an oak.

O that night, the terrible grief of that unutterable feast, the shameless death-strokes my father saw from their twin hands, hands which took my life captive by treachery, which cast me to ruin!

Long ago from here, away from the murder of your father, I carried you for her whose blood is yours, your sister, and saved you and reared you up to manhood to be the avenger of your murdered father.