IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS
In Attica.
Help me to do this thing
And to fulfil His mission. Help me, sister!
Once I have carried home in these two hands 980
The image of the Goddess, I am rid
Of madness! And I urge you with a gift
Of rugged rowers rowing you home to Argos!
0 my own sister, for our family's sake,
Help me to save that family and ourselves!
Unless you help me take the image back, 985
This very day our family's name shall die.
The Fourth Maiden
Some God is visiting ancestral sin
On the house of Tantalus.
Iphigenia
How I had dreamed, long, long before your coming,
Of you and of my country! How my prayer 990
Joins yours for the renewal of our breed—
Even of his whose hand reached for my blood!
Now that no blood of yours stains my own hand,
1 have no anger left, but only hope
That in your life the family name shall live. 995
But if you leave me, taking Artemis,
When the king sees the empty pedestal,
What can I say? How can my life be saved
Unless, with one quick stroke seizing the image,
We flee together to your leaping deck? 1000
If we succeed, what happiness for me!
But even if I fail, you need not fail.
My life is little. I would gladly die
To earn your safety and your reaching home.
If a man die, a house, a name, is lost. 1005
But if a woman die, what does it matter?
Orestes
It mattered when my mother died! If now
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