Video Eumendides Lines 587 627 de Aeschylus 2025 Lyrics Lyrics

Aeschylus - Eumendides Lines 587 627 Lyrics

(Athena turns to the furies).
ATHENA:
The trial begins! Yours is the first word -
the prosecution opens. Start to finish,
set the facts before us, make them clear.
Leader: Numerous as we are, we will be brief.
(To Orestes).
Answer count for count, charge for charge. First, tell us, did you kill your mother?

Orestes: I killed her. There's no denying that

LEADER:
Three falls in the match. One is ours already.

Orestes: You exult before your man is on his back.

Leader: But how did you kill her? You must tell us that.

Orestes: I will. I drew my sword - more, I cut her throat.

Leader: And who persuaded you? who led you on?

Orestes: This god and his command.
Indicating Apollo.
He bears me witness.
Leader: The Seer? He drove you on to matricide?

Orestes:
Yes, and to this hour I have no regrets.

Leader:
If the verdict brings you down, you'll change your story quickly.
Orestes: I have my trust; my father will help me from the grave.

Leader: Trust to corpses now! You made your mother one.

ORESTES:
I do. She had two counts against her, deadly crimes.

Leader: How? Explain that to your judges.

Orestes: She killed her husband - killed my father too,

Leader: But murder set her free, and you live on for trial.

Orestes: She lived on. You never drove her into exile - why?

Leader: The blood of the man she killed was not her own.

Orestes: And I? Does mother's blood run in my veins?
Leader: How could she breed you in her body, murderer? Disclaim your mother's blood? She
gave you life.

Orestes:
ORESTES turns to APOLLO.
Bear me witness - show me the way, Apollo!
Did I strike her down with justice?
Strike I did, I don't deny it, no.
But how does our bloody work impress you now? -
Just or not? Decide.
I must make my case to them.
Looking to the judges.

Apollo:
Just,
I say, to you and your high court, Athena. Seer that I am, I never lie. Not once from the
Prophet's thrones have I declared a word that bears on man, woman or city that Zeus did not
command, the Olympian Father.
This is his justice - omnipotent, I warn you. Bend to the will of Zeus. No oath can match the
power of the Father.