Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Orestes
    Orestes
    Orestes
    Ebook65 pages58 minutes

    Orestes

    By Euripides

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Euripides was one of the greatest Greek tragedians and is considered one of the most important figures in ancient literature.  Euripides is thought to have written close to 100 plays and almost 20 of them have survived.  This edition of Orestes includes a table of contents.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles River Editors
    Release dateMar 22, 2018
    ISBN9781531283711
    Author

    Euripides

    Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. He was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC to his mother, Cleito, and father, Mnesarchus, a retailer who lived in a village near Athens. He had two disastrous marriages, and both his wives—Melite and Choerine (the latter bearing him three sons)—were unfaithful. He became a recluse, making a home for himself in a cave on Salamis. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. He became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education. The details of his death are uncertain.

    Read more from Euripides

    Related to Orestes

    Related ebooks

    Ancient History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Orpheus and Eurydice

      Dec 25, 2023

      Orpheus and Eurydice
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Wisdom of Women Shines in Najla Jraissaty Khoury’s ‘Pearls on a Branch: Oral Tales’

      Oct 22, 2018

      Long, long ago These things happened or maybe no. Let’s start with the image on the cover. Three women sit in a courtyard. One holds a long-handled pan over a coal brazier; the other two, one of whom has her back to us, hold small cups. They wear ide

      7 min read

    • Article

      There’s No Place Like Home

      Aug 17, 2022

      NÍL aon tinteán mar do thinteán fhéin,’ Rose says (it means: ‘There is no fireplace like your own’) every time we turn in through our gates and catch a glimpse of the house at the end of the drive. We have been leading such a peripatetic existence of

      2 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Jun 16, 2021

      Great Read
      4 min read

    • Article

      In The Spotlight: Your Writing Genre - Busting

      Apr 4, 2024

      What an inventive lot the WM writers proved themselves to be with the ‘Genre-busting' submission call! The response was terrific, with a postbag full of playful, off-the wall writing that read as if its creators had a gonzo riot mashing up elements f

      5 min read

    • Article

      Ten Essential Books Inspired by Greek Mythology

      May 13, 2021

      I think this is why there is so much enthusiasm for mythological retellings: they let us escape to another world, but they ask questions that still matter to us today. The post Ten Essential Books Inspired by Greek Mythology appeared first on The Mil

      4 min read

    • Article

      THE BLACK SPIDER Part Two

      Oct 30, 2019

      THE BLACK SPIDER Part Two
      25 min read

    • Article

      Meet Your New Favorite Poet

      Feb 20, 2019

      Meet Your New Favorite Poet
      6 min read

    • Article

      Cul-de-Sac

      Dec 1, 2021

      That old rage for order: how my father drove a square mouthed mower over-and-back, over-and-back, each row of neatly trimmed grass cut just like he told his barber: boy’s short, regular. O pioneer, taming this joke bit of prairie, no bindweed or dog

      5 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      I’m looking at a photograph of a bearded Romaine Tenney on his hay mowerhitched to draft horses in a half-cut field. Tenney, whose Vermont farm was slatedto be swallowed by Interstate 91, immolated himself, rather than be forciblymoved. My son says,

      3 min read

    • Article

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work

      Dec 15, 2018

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Orestes

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Orestes - Euripides

      ORESTES

      ..................

      Euripides

      KYPROS PRESS

      Thank you for reading. If you enjoy this book, please leave a review or connect with the author.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2016 by Euripides

      Interior design by Pronoun

      Distribution by Pronoun

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Orestes

      Characters in the Play

      Scene: Before the royal palace at Argos.

      ORESTES

      ..................

      Translated by Edward P. Coleridge

      CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY

      Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

      Helen, wife of Menelaus

      Chorus of Argive Maidens

      Orestes, brother of Electra

      Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon; King of Argos

      Pylades, friend Of Orestes

      Messenger, formerly servant of Agamemnon

      Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen

      A Phrygian Eunuch, in Helen’s retinue

      Apollo

      Tyndareus, father of Clytemnestra

      Attendants

      SCENE: BEFORE THE ROYAL PALACE AT ARGOS.

      (It is the sixth day after the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Electra is discovered alone. Orestes lies sleeping on a couch in the background.)

      ElectraThere is naught so terrible to describe, be it physical pain or heaven-sent affliction, that man’s nature may not have to bear the burden of it. Tantalus, they say, once so prosperous,-and I am not now taunting him with his misfortunes,-Tantalus, the reputed son of Zeus, hangs suspended in mid air, quailing at the crag which looms above his head; paying this penalty, they say, for the shameful weakness he displayed in failing to keep a bridle on his lips, when admitted by gods, though he was but mortal, to share the honours of their feasts like one of them.

      He it was that begat Pelops, the father of Atreus, for whom the goddess, when she had carded her wool, spun a web of strife, even to the making of war with his own brother Thyestes. But why need I repeat that hideous tale?

      Well, Atreus slew Thyestes’ children and feasted him on them; but,-passing over intermediate events-from Atreus and Aerope of Crete sprang Agamemnon, that famous chief,-if his was really fame,-and Menelaus. Now it was this Menelaus who married Helen, Heaven’s abhorrence; while his brother, King Agamemnon, took Clytemnestra to wife, name of note in Hellas, and we three daughters were his issue, Chrysothemis, Iphigenia, and myself Electra; also a son Orestes; all of that one accursed mother, who slew her lord, after snaring him in a robe that had no outlet. Her reason a maiden’s lips may not declare, and so leave that unexplained for the world to guess at. What need for me to charge Phoebus with wrong-doing, though he instigated Orestes to slay his own mother, a deed that few approved; still it was his obedience to the god that made him slay her; I, too, feebly as a woman would, shared in the deed of blood, as did Pylades who helped us to bring it about.

      After this my poor Orestes fell sick of a cruel wasting disease; upon his couch he lies prostrated, and it is his mother’s blood that goads him into frenzied fits; this I say, from dread of naming those goddesses, whose terrors are chasing him before them,-even the Eumenides. ‘Tis now the sixth day since the body of his murdered mother was committed to the cleansing fire; since then no food has passed his lips, nor hath he washed his skin; but wrapped in his cloak he weeps in his lucid moments, whenever the fever leaves him; other whiles he bounds headlong from his couch, as colt when it is loosed from the yoke. Moreover, this city of Argos has decreed that no man give us shelter at his fireside or speak to matricides like us; yea, and this is the fateful day on which Argos will decide our sentence, whether we are both to die by stoning, or to whet the steel and plunge it in our necks. There is, ‘tis true, one hope of escape still left us; Menelaus has landed from Troy; his fleet now crowds the haven of Nauplia where he is come to anchor, returned at last from Troy after ceaseless wanderings; but Helen, that lady of sorrows, as she styles herself, hath he sent on to our palace, carefully waiting for the night, lest any of those parents whose sons were slain beneath the walls of Troy, might see her if she went by day, and set to stoning her. Within she sits, weeping for her sister and the calamities of her family, and yet she hath still some solace in her woe; for Hermione, the child she left at home in the hour she sailed for

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1