O then I flinch not, though my doom be death,
So I save thee! A man that from a house 1005
Dies, leaves a void: a woman matters not.
Orestes.
My mother's slayer and thine I will not be!
Suffice her blood. With heart at one with thine
Fain would I live, and dying share thy death.
Thee will I lead, except I perish here, 1010
Homeward, or dying here abide with thee.
Hear mine opinion—if this thing displease
Artemis, how had Loxias bidden me
To bear her statue unto Pallas' burg,[1]
And see thy face? So, setting side by side 1015
All these, I hope to win safe home-return.
Iphigeneia.
How may we both escape death, and withal
Bear off that prize? Imperilled most herein
Our home-return is:—this must we debate.[2]
Orestes.
Haply might we prevail to slay the king? 1020
Iphigeneia.
Foul deed were this, that strangers slay their host.[3]
- ↑ There is probably a gap between this line and the next, the sense of which has been conjecturally supplied thus:—
"And is not this an earnest that the Gods
Are with us, that to this land I have won." - ↑ Reading βούλευσις for MS. βούλησις, "our will lacketh not."
- ↑ Thoas was Iphigeneia's host: she means that she would be an accomplice in his murder.
