Stasimon 4
[Episode 1]
rushing wildly on to the stage. Woe, woe is me! I will tear my hair and scratch cruel furrows in my cheeks.
825
Nurse
My child, what wilt thou do? Wilt thou disfigure thyself?
Begone, thou fine-spun veil! float from my head away!
830
Nurse
Daughter, cover up thy bosom, fasten thy robe.
[Episode 2]
Why should I cover it?
Hermione
My crimes against my lord are manifest and clear, they cannot be hidden.
835
Nurse
Art so grieved at having devised thy rival’s death?
Hermione
Indeed I am; I deeply mourn my fatal deeds of daring; alas! I am now accursed in all men’s eyes!
Nurse
Thy husband will pardon thee this error.
840
[Episode]
Oh! why didst thou hunt me to snatch away my sword? Give, oh! give it back, dear nurse, that I may thrust it through my heart. Why dost thou prevent me hanging myself?
Nurse
What! was I to let thy madness lead thee on to death?
845
Hermione
Ah me, my destiny! Where can I find some friendly fire? To what rocky height can I climb above the sea or ’mid some wooded mountain glen,
there to die and trouble but the dead?
850
Nurse
Why vex thyself thus? on all of us sooner or later heaven’s visitation comes.
Hermione
Thou hast left me, O my father,
left me like a stranded bark, all alone, without an oar. My lord will surely slay me; no home is mine henceforth beneath my husband’s roof. What god is there to whose statue I can as a suppliant haste?
855
or shall I throw myself in slavish wise at slavish knees? Would I could speedReading ἀερθείην with Seidler. away from Phthia’s land on bird’s dark pinion, or like that pine-built ship,Argo, in quest of the Golden Fleece.
860
the first that ever sailed betwixt the rocks Cyanean!
865
Nurse
My child, I can as little praise thy previous sinful excesses, committed against the Trojan captive, as thy present exaggerated terror. Thy husband will never listen to
a barbarian’s weak pleading and reject his marriage with thee for this. For thou wast no captive from Troy whom he wedded, but the daughter of a gallant sire, with a rich dower, from a city too of no mean prosperity. Nor will thy father forsake thee, as thou dreadest,
870
and allow thee to be cast out from this house. Nay, enter now, nor show thyself before the palace, lest the sightNauck regards line 878 as spurious. of thee there bring reproach upon thee, my daughter. Exit Nurse.
875
Chorus
Lo! a stranger of foreign appearance from some other land
comes hurrying towards us.
880
Orestes
Ladies of this foreign land! is this the home, the palace of Achilles’ son?
Chorus
Thou hast it; but who art thou to ask such a question?
Orestes
The son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra,
by name Orestes, on my way to the oracle of Zeus at Dodona. But now that I am come to Phthia, I am resolved to inquire about my kinswoman, Hermione of Sparta; is she alive and well? for though
885
she dwells in a land far from my own, I love her none the less.
890
Hermione
Son of Agamemnon, thy appearing is as a haven from the storm to sailors; by thy knees I pray, have pity on me in my distress, on me of whose fortunes thou art inquiring. About thy knees
