2 Best Aeschylus Monologues

The Libation Bearers (Electra)

The Libation Bearers (Electra)

Category: Play Role: Electra From: The Libation Bearers

Ye captive women, ye who tend this home,
Since ye are present to escort with me
These lustral rites, your counsel now I crave.
How, while I pour these off’rings on the tomb,
Speak friendly words? and how invoke my Sire?
Shall I declare that from a loving wife
To her dear lord I bear them? from my mother?
My courage fails, now know I what to speak,
Pouring libations on my father’s tomb.
Or shall I pray, as holy wont enjoins,
That to the senders of these chaplets, he
Requital may accord, ay! meed of ill.
Or, with no mark of honour, silently,
For so my father perished, shall I pour
These offerings, potion to be drunk by earth,
Then, tossing o’er my head the lustral urn,
(As one who loathd refuse forth has cast,)
With eyes averted, back retrace my steps?
Be ye partakers in my counsel, friends,
For in this house one common hate we share.
Through fear hide not the feelings of your heart;
For what is destined waits alike the free
And him o’ermastered by another’s hand;-
If ye have aught more wise to urge, say on.

Agamemnon (Cassandra)

Agamemnon (Cassandra)

Category: Play Role: Cassandra From: Agamemnon

Oh, mistery, misery! Again comes on me
The terrible labor of true prophecy, dizzying prelude.
Do you see these who sit before the house,
Children, like the shapes of dreams?
Children who seem to have been killed by their kinsfolk,
Filling their hands with meat, flesh of themselves,
Guts and entrails, handfuls of lament –
Clear what they hold – the same their father tasted.
For this I declare someone is plotting vengeance –
A lion? Lion but coward, that lurks in bed,
Good watchdog truly against the lord’s return-
My lord, for I must bear the yoke of serfdom.
A daring criminal! Female murders male.
It is Agamemnon’s death that you shall witness!
Ah, what a fire it is! It comes upon me.
It is the two-foot lioness who beds
Beside a wolf, the noble lion away,
It is she will kill me! Brewing a poisoned cup
She will mix my punishment while sharpening
The dagger for her husband; to pay back murder
For my being brought here. Destruction!
They call me crazy, like a fortune-teller,
A poor starved beggar-woman – and I bore it!
And now the prophet undoing his prophetess
Has brought me to this final darkness.
Instead of my father’s altar the executioner’s block
Waits me the victim, red with my hot blood.
I will go in and have the courage to die.
Look, these gates are the gates of Death.
I greet them, and pray that I may meet a
Deft and mortal stroke so that I may close my
Eyes as my blood ebbs in an easy death.