< Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu
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244

EURIPIDES.

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]

  1. ↑ 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."
  2. ↑ Reading βούλευσις for MS. βούλησις, "our will lacketh not."
  3. ↑ Thoas was Iphigeneia's host: she means that she would be an accomplice in his murder.
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