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Have some Euripides! It's time to hang out with Tyndareos, who's kinda an asshole, but also makes some good points about how if you constantly murder people for murdering people eventually you run out of people.
Chorus:
And look, the Spartan Tyndareos struggles this way on aged legs, dressed in black for his girl, hair cut in mourning for his daughter.
Orestes:
I am lost, Menelaus; this here Tyndareos comes towards us, in front of whose eyes I'm most ashamed to go, for the things I've done. For he cherished me when I was small, and filled me up with many affections, carrying around Agamemnon's child in his bent arms, together with Leda, the two of them treating me with no less honor than they did the children of Zeus;* which actions, oh my miserable heart and soul, I did not repay well. What darkness would I pull over my face? What sort of cloud would I set up to escape the gaze of the old man's eyes?
Tyndareos:
Where, where will I see the my daughter's spouse, Menelaus? For while I was pouring libations upon the tomb of Clytemnestra I heard he had come into Nauplia with his wife, safe after so many years. Lead me to him; for I want to greet him kindly, standing by his right hand, seeing a loved one after so long.
Menelaus:
Welcome, old man, whose head shared the same bed as Zeus.
Tyndareos:
Welcome again to you, Menelaus, my son-in-law. Alas! How terrible it is, not knowing what will happen. This here mother-killer in front of the house, a serpent, glitters with diseased flashes of light, my abomination. Menelaus, are you speaking now to an unholy being?
Menelaus:
But what? He's of the line of his father, who's dear to me.
Tyndareos:
Has this one really sprung from that one, having become this sort of creature?
Menelaus:
He has; and if he's unlucky, must be honored.
Tyndareos:
You've become a barbarian, having spent too long among barbarians.
Menelaus:
It's Greek to honor a man of the same family.
Tyndareos:
And to wish to not be above the laws.
Menelaus:
Everything that comes from duress is slavery, according to the wise.
Tyndareos:
So believe that yourself, but I won't.
Menelaus:
Since you've a temper, and old age isn't wisdom.
Tyndareos:
What contest of wisdom has come around in this matter, if what is good and not good are clear to everyone? What man has been more stupid than this one, who didn't consider justice, didn't go to the common law of the Greeks? For after Agamemnon breathed out his life, struck on the head by my daughter--a most shameful deed; I'll never praise it--it was necessary for him to exact the penalty for blood, pursuing what is holy, and to throw his mother out of the house; he would've taken the sensible thing from misfortune, and upheld the law, and been holy. But now he's come into the very luck of his mother. For having legitimately thought this woman to be wicked, he himself became more wicked in killing his mother.
But Menelaus, I will ask you this much: if the woman of his bed should kill this man, and his son kill that mother again, and then that man's son return murder to murder, how far will this go? The ancient fathers set things up properly; they wouldn't allow the sight of him in front of anyone's eyes--whoever had blood on his hands--and cleansed him by banishing, and did not kill him in turn. For one man would always be about to be entangled in murder, carrying the previous impurity on his hands. But I hate unholy women: first my daughter, who killed her husband; and I will never speak praise of Helen, your wife, nor address her; and I do not admire you, invading Troy for the sake of a bad woman. And I will defend the law, to the extent it's in my power, by bringing an end to this savagery and blood-thirstiness, which always destroys both the land and the city.
Then what sort of mind did you have, you wretch, when your mother thrust forward her breast, beseeching you? Although I did not see the evils in that place, I, another wretch, melt out my old eye with tears. At least one thing, then, agrees with my words; you're hated by the gods, and you pay the price for your mother in meandering about from madness to fear. What should I hear from other witnesses, that's present to be seen?
Therefore, know this, Menelaus; don't oppose the gods in wanting to help this man; allow him to be slaughtered with stones by the townsfolk, or don't step upon Spartan land.
My daughter achieved justice in dying; but it was not reasonable for her to die at this man's hands. I have been a blessed man regarding other things, except in daughters; in that, I'm not lucky.
---
* Seeing as Helen was descended from Zeus, and all that. See also Menelaus' greeting below. Presumably commenting on these sorts of things wasn't as tactless if gods were involved?
Chorus:
And look, the Spartan Tyndareos struggles this way on aged legs, dressed in black for his girl, hair cut in mourning for his daughter.
Orestes:
I am lost, Menelaus; this here Tyndareos comes towards us, in front of whose eyes I'm most ashamed to go, for the things I've done. For he cherished me when I was small, and filled me up with many affections, carrying around Agamemnon's child in his bent arms, together with Leda, the two of them treating me with no less honor than they did the children of Zeus;* which actions, oh my miserable heart and soul, I did not repay well. What darkness would I pull over my face? What sort of cloud would I set up to escape the gaze of the old man's eyes?
Tyndareos:
Where, where will I see the my daughter's spouse, Menelaus? For while I was pouring libations upon the tomb of Clytemnestra I heard he had come into Nauplia with his wife, safe after so many years. Lead me to him; for I want to greet him kindly, standing by his right hand, seeing a loved one after so long.
Menelaus:
Welcome, old man, whose head shared the same bed as Zeus.
Tyndareos:
Welcome again to you, Menelaus, my son-in-law. Alas! How terrible it is, not knowing what will happen. This here mother-killer in front of the house, a serpent, glitters with diseased flashes of light, my abomination. Menelaus, are you speaking now to an unholy being?
Menelaus:
But what? He's of the line of his father, who's dear to me.
Tyndareos:
Has this one really sprung from that one, having become this sort of creature?
Menelaus:
He has; and if he's unlucky, must be honored.
Tyndareos:
You've become a barbarian, having spent too long among barbarians.
Menelaus:
It's Greek to honor a man of the same family.
Tyndareos:
And to wish to not be above the laws.
Menelaus:
Everything that comes from duress is slavery, according to the wise.
Tyndareos:
So believe that yourself, but I won't.
Menelaus:
Since you've a temper, and old age isn't wisdom.
Tyndareos:
What contest of wisdom has come around in this matter, if what is good and not good are clear to everyone? What man has been more stupid than this one, who didn't consider justice, didn't go to the common law of the Greeks? For after Agamemnon breathed out his life, struck on the head by my daughter--a most shameful deed; I'll never praise it--it was necessary for him to exact the penalty for blood, pursuing what is holy, and to throw his mother out of the house; he would've taken the sensible thing from misfortune, and upheld the law, and been holy. But now he's come into the very luck of his mother. For having legitimately thought this woman to be wicked, he himself became more wicked in killing his mother.
But Menelaus, I will ask you this much: if the woman of his bed should kill this man, and his son kill that mother again, and then that man's son return murder to murder, how far will this go? The ancient fathers set things up properly; they wouldn't allow the sight of him in front of anyone's eyes--whoever had blood on his hands--and cleansed him by banishing, and did not kill him in turn. For one man would always be about to be entangled in murder, carrying the previous impurity on his hands. But I hate unholy women: first my daughter, who killed her husband; and I will never speak praise of Helen, your wife, nor address her; and I do not admire you, invading Troy for the sake of a bad woman. And I will defend the law, to the extent it's in my power, by bringing an end to this savagery and blood-thirstiness, which always destroys both the land and the city.
Then what sort of mind did you have, you wretch, when your mother thrust forward her breast, beseeching you? Although I did not see the evils in that place, I, another wretch, melt out my old eye with tears. At least one thing, then, agrees with my words; you're hated by the gods, and you pay the price for your mother in meandering about from madness to fear. What should I hear from other witnesses, that's present to be seen?
Therefore, know this, Menelaus; don't oppose the gods in wanting to help this man; allow him to be slaughtered with stones by the townsfolk, or don't step upon Spartan land.
My daughter achieved justice in dying; but it was not reasonable for her to die at this man's hands. I have been a blessed man regarding other things, except in daughters; in that, I'm not lucky.
---
* Seeing as Helen was descended from Zeus, and all that. See also Menelaus' greeting below. Presumably commenting on these sorts of things wasn't as tactless if gods were involved?