**Chorus**: Though we be many, brief sha...

Chorus: Though we be many, brief shall be our tale. (To Orestes) Answer thou, setting word to match with word; And first avow--hast thou thy mother slain?

Orestes: I slew her. I deny no word hereof.

Chorus: Three falls decide the wrestle--this is one.

Orestes: Thou vauntest thee--but o'er no final fall.

Chorus: Yet must thou tell the manner of thy deed.

Orestes: Drawn sword in hand, I gashed her neck. Tis told.

Chorus: But by whose word, whose craft, wert thou impelled?

Orestes: By oracles of him who here attests me.

Chorus: The prophet-god bade thee thy mother slay?

Orestes: Yea, and thro' him less ill I fared, till now.

Chorus: If the vote grip thee, thou shalt change that word.

Orestes: Strong is my hope; my buried sire shall aid.

Chorus: Go to now, trust the dead, a matricide!

Orestes: Yea, for in her combined two stains of sin.

Chorus: How? speak this clearly to the judges' mind.

Orestes: Slaying her husband, she did slay my sire.

Chorus: Therefore thou livest; death assoils her deed.

Orestes: Then while she lived why didst thou hunt her not?

Chorus: She was not kin by blood to him she slew.

Orestes: And I, am I by blood my mother's kin?

Chorus: O cursed with murder's guilt, how else wert thou The burden of her womb? Dost thou forswear Thy mother's kinship, closest bond of love?

Orestes: It is thine hour, Apollo--speak the law, Averring if this deed were justly done; For done it is, and clear and undenied. But if to thee this murder's cause seem right Or wrongful, speak--that I to these may tell.

Aeschylus, The Eumenides, trans. E.D.A. Morshead, 1881.