OR. [Say this.] May we for the future be happy with each other!
IPH. I have experienced an unaccountable delight, dear companions, but I fear lest it flit[[114]] from my hands, and escape toward the sky. O ye Cyclopean hearths, O Mycenæ, dear country mine. I am grateful to thee for my life, and grateful for my nurture, in that thou hast trained for me this brother light in my home.
OR. In our race we are fortunate, but as to calamities, O sister, our life is by nature unhappy.
IPH. But I wretched remember when my father with foolish spirit laid the sword upon my neck.
OR. Ah me! For I seem, not being present, to behold you there.[[115]]
IPH. Without Hymen, O my brother, when I was being led to the fictitious nuptial bed of Achilles. But near the altar were tears and lamentations. Alas! alas, for the lustral waters there!
OR. I mourn aloud for the deed my father dared.
IPH. I obtained a fatherless, a fatherless lot. But one calamity follows upon another.[[116]]
OR. [Ay,] if thou hadst lost thy brother, O hapless one, by the intervention of some demon.
IPH. O miserable for my dreadful daring! I have dared horrid, I have dared horrid things. Alas! my brother. But by a little hast thou escaped an unholy destruction, stricken by my hands. But what will be the end after this? What fortune will befall me? What retreat can I find for thee away from this city? can I send you out of the reach of slaughter to your country Argos, before that my sword enter on the contest concerning thy blood?[[117]] This is thy business, O hapless soul, to discover, whether over the land, not in a ship, but by the gust[[118]] of your feet thou wilt approach death, passing through[[119]] barbarian hordes, and through ways not to be traversed? Or[[120]] [wilt thou pass] through the Cyanean creek, a long journey in the flight of ships. Wretched, wretched one! Who then or God, or mortal, or [unexpected event,[[121]]] having accomplished a way out of inextricable difficulties, will show forth to the sole twain Atrides a release from ills?