IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS
Without whoever is behind them hearing?
If we are caught, it will be certain death, 100
Your death as well as mine. Even this waiting,
Wondering what to do, may cost our lives.
Enough of it! Enough! Back to the ship!
Pylades
What do we know of flight? How should we dare
To take a course of which our hearts know nothing?
Why should we disobey Apollo's order, 105
Do him dishonor? No, we shall find a way.
Come, let us leave the temple, let us look
For a dark cave to hide in. Not the ship!
By now they must have spied the ship from shore.
They'd be ahead of us, catch us and end us. 110
Notice the opening between those beams?
It's wide enough. Under the night's dim eye
We could drop through and hoist a wooden statue.
A coward turns away but a brave man's choice 115
Is danger. And by all the Gods, shall we,
Coming this far, now at the end turn back?
Orestes
I should have been the one to say those words.
Yes, let us go and find a hiding-place,
Keep faith with Phoebus and deserve his help. 120
Have we not youth? Youth, with its fill of strength,
Turning away from any task should be ashamed.
(They leave by the path to the shore. A great bell
rings. From the town side the Temple
Maidens assemble in the courtyard.]
A Maiden
Let those who dwell close to these Clashing Rocks
That guard the Euxine Sea, 125
Keep silence now before Latona's daughter,
Artemis, Goddess of the pointed hills!
377