Six Tragedies
Page 30
What is trembling? I feel a restless weight:
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my belly moans with someone else’s moan.
Come here, children! Your poor father wants you.
Come here! When I see you, I will be fine.
Where are their voices coming from?
atreus
Get ready to hug your
children.
They are here already. Do you not recognize them?*
thyestes I recognize my brother. Earth, can you allow
such an atrocity? Will you not break and sink
into the Styx and shadows of Hell, rip open and tear away
the kingdom and the king down into empty chaos?
Will you not uproot this Mycenean palace
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* * *
thyestes
209
from its foundations? We should both already
have been with Tantalus. If anything lies lower
than Tartarus — and our grandfather — then, Earth,
break your bonds,
create a massive chasm, cast us down there,
bury us and cover us both up
with all of Hell. May the souls of the damned
wander above our heads, and the river of fire,
Phlegethon, burning, burning, roasting its toasted sands,
surge roughly over my place of exile.
Earth, why do you lie there, still, a useless lump?
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The gods have gone away.
atreus
Now be happy! You missed
your children; here they are! Brother, no need to wait.
Enjoy them, kiss them, multiply your hugs by three.
thyestes Is this trust? Is this friendship? Is this a brother’s word?
Is this how you end your hatred? I do not even ask
to get my children safely back. I only want
something which cannot hurt your hatred or your crime.
I ask you as a brother: let me bury them.
Let them be cremated, right away. Give me my children,
not to keep, but lose.
atreus
You have all that remains
1030
of your children — and even what does not.
thyestes Are their bodies food for birds of prey?
Are wild beasts ripping them apart and eating them?
atreus You are the one who feasted on your sons.
thyestes This is what made the gods ashamed, this drove
the day back to the east. Ah, what can I say,
how can I even mourn? What words could fit?
I see their heads cut off, their hands dismembered,
their feet torn from their broken bodies.
These are the parts that even their greedy father
1040
did not have room for. Inside my belly they heave,
the horror struggles to escape; there is no exit.
Brother give me your sword — it has already
gorged on my blood. That way, I can journey to my children.—
But the sword refuses. I will beat my chest,
batter my body with grief — but now stop, poor hands:
* * *
210
thyestes
be gentle to the dead. Who has seen such horror?
What pirate in the rocky, barren land
of Caucasus? What menacing highwayman
in Attica? Look, my children and I
1050
weigh down one another. The crime at least is balanced.
atreus Balance the books of crime when you commit it,
not when you pay it back. Even this is too little for me.
I should have poured hot blood into your mouth
direct from their wounds, to make you drink them alive.
My impatience cheated my rage. I used my sword
to stab them. I rushed at the altars. I satisfied
the holy fires with slaughter. Chopping up
their lifeless bodies, I pared their limbs
to little scraps, which I plunged in the boiling pots,
1060
and had them simmered on a gentle heat.
I cut the arms and legs and muscles off
while they were still alive, and skewered them
on nice slim spits. I saw them groan, and brought
fresh fires with my own hands. — But all of this
could have been better done by their own father.
My vengeance is a failure. The wicked father
munched up his sons, but did not know it; nor did they.
thyestes Listen to this sin, seas shut in your winding shores,
and you, gods, listen too — wherever you have hidden.
1070
Listen, Lower World, and listen, Earth; and Night,
heavy with darkness: pay attention to my words.
Only you, Night, are left to comfort me;
you too have been abandoned by the stars.
My prayers will be good and unselfish — in fact now
what could I ask for myself ? I pray only for you.
Great King of the Sky,* Lord of the Hall
of Heaven, wrap the universe in clouds,
make all the winds wage war, and bellow thunder
from every part of earth; and do not use
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the gentle hand with which you touch the homes
of innocent men. Strike as you did when the mass
of the triple mountain fell, along with the Giants*
who stood as high as mountains. So prepare
to fight and hurl your fires; avenge this ruined day,
* * *
thyestes
211
shoot flames; make up the light robbed from the sky
with lightning. Do not pause to judge the case:
we both deserve damnation. — Or do it for my sins:
come find me, let your trident pierce
my heart with fire. My last hope for my sons
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is that I may cremate them with due rites.
Then I myself must burn. — If nothing moves the gods,
if there are no powers above to hunt for sinners,
let night remain eternal, covering up
my giant sins with growing darkness. Sun,
if you stay back I have no more complaints.
atreus Hurrah for me! Now I have my real prize.
Without this pain, my crime would have been wasted.
Now I believe I have my sons, I have my marriage back.*
thyestes What had my sons done to deserve this?
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atreus
They were yours.
thyestes But giving children, to a father…
atreus
Yes! And best of all,
legitimate sons.
thyestes
I call the gods, the guardians of the good!
atreus And the gods of marriage?
thyestes
Who pays back crime with crime?
atreus I know your complaint: you mind me doing it first!
You are not hurt because you gulped that ghastly meal,
but because you did not serve it. You had the plan
to lay out the same menu for your credulous brother,
to make their mother help attack the children
and kill them the same way. Only this stopped you:
you thought they were yours.
thyestes
The gods will take revenge;
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I give you to their care for punishment.
atreus And for your punishment, I give you to your children.
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EXPLANATORY NOTES
The references are to the line numbers in the translation.
PHAEDRA
5 Cecrops . . . Parnethus . . . Thriasian dales: all s
ites in Attica, the south-east
promontory of central Greece, whose chief city was Athens.
8 Riphaeus: series of mountain ridges in Scythia, now identified with the
Urals.
11 Zephyr: the west wind.
35 Molossians . . . Cretans . . . Spartan dogs: the Molossians, who lived in the
mountains of NW Greece, had dogs known for their aggression. Cretan
hounds are a famous type of hunting-dog. Spartan dogs were well known
for their quickness and keen scent.
55 masculine goddess: Diana (Artemis), virgin goddess of the hunt.
92 his usual faithfulness: Theseus had already abandoned his former lover,
Ariadne (see note to l. 760).
103 loom of Pallas: Pallas Athena was the inventor of weaving and the loom.
104 the wool slips down . . . hands: reminiscent of Sappho, fragment 102 — an
account of a woman distracted by love from her work: ‘Mother,
I cannot tend my loom.’
107 witnessing the silent rites: refers to the Elysinian Mysteries, a secret reli-
gious ritual.
109 the goddess: Athena.
113 the fateful trouble of my poor mother: Phaedra’s mother, Pasiphaë, fell in
love with a white bull and gave birth to the half-man, half-bull
Minotaur.
120 What Daedalus . . . love: Daedalus constructed a fake cow so that Pasiphaë
could conceal herself inside it and mate with the bull.
122 the terrible monster: the Minotaur, shut up in the labyrinth created by
Daedalus.
125 the Sun, whom she detests: Pasiphaë was the daughter of the Sun, who told
Vulcan (Hephaestus) about Venus’ adulterous affair with Mars.
149 your father: Minos.
154 your grandfather: the Sun.
157 the father of the gods: Jupiter.
174 your brother’s: the Minotaur, killed by Theseus.
185 one tyrant god: Cupid, god of love.
* * *
214
notes to phaedra, pages 8–14
192 The sturdy Warmonger . . . the Blacksmith god . . . even Phoebus himself:
Phaedra lists in turn three gods mastered by Cupid: Mars, Vulcan, and
Phoebus Apollo.
222 Dis: another name for Hades, king of the Underworld.
223 Stygian: ‘hellish’ (from the Styx, one of the rivers of the underworld).
The dog is Cerberus, guard-dog of the underworld.
226 former wife: Theseus killed Hippolytus’ Amazon mother, Antiope.
240 love has conquered even wild beasts: Phaedra alludes to the bull,
conquered by love for her mother Pasiphaë.
244 Pirithous’ companion?: suggests that Theseus, who has gone to the under-
world to help his friend Pirithous steal someone else’s wife (Persephone,
wife of Hades), would be a hypocrite to condemn Phaedra’s feelings.
245 he indulged Ariadne: Minos did nothing about Theseus’ abduction of
Ariadne, and therefore can be assumed to be tolerant towards his daugh-
ters’ extramarital affairs.
247 the breasts which were dear to you: the Nurse was once Phaedra’s
wet-nurse.
275 twice born: there are two mythical accounts of Cupid’s paternity: he may
be the son of Venus by Mars, or, according to a less common tradition,
Mercury.
286 Hesperides: a legendary garden tended by nymphs at the western end of
the world.
298 he called the cattle home: Phoebus Apollo transformed himself into a
human serf to work for Admetus; in earlier traditions, the labour is a
punishment for Apollo’s killing the Cyclopes, but in Hellenistic poetry it
becomes service for love.
300 great ruler . . . inferior beings: Jupiter, who disguised himself many times
in order to have love affairs with human women.
301 he is a bird: Jupiter changed himself to a swan to have sex with Leda.
303 a young bull: Jupiter changed into a bull to abduct Europa.
309 the shining goddess: the moon-goddess Diana, who fell in love with
Endymion; the Chorus imagines that Diana must have had her heavier
brother, Apollo (l. 316), take over her chariot while she spent time with
her lover.
317 set aside his quiver: Hercules subjected himself to Queen Omphale, dress-
ing as a woman and spinning wool.
389. Tyrian dye . . . silk: Phoenician (Tyrian) dye was used for splendid
clothes; silk was wrongly believed to grow from trees.
401 a woman from Tanais or Maotia: Phaedra wants to model herself on the
Amazons.
404 [chorus]: some editors attribute lines 404 and 405 to the Nurse.
405 the Virgin: Diana.
* * *
notes to phaedra, pages 14–17
215
406 [nurse]: some editors attribute this speech to Phaedra.
412 Hecate: a moon-goddess, often represented as ‘triple’: she presides over
three realms (earth, sky, and underworld), and has three incarnations:
Diana, Moon, and Hecate the witch.
421 charms of Thessaly . . . sky: Thessalian witches were said to use magic to
try to draw the moon down from the sky.
422 no shepherd: the moon (Diana) fell in love with a shepherd, Endymion.
445 Bacchus: Roman god of wine (equivalent to the Greek Dionysus); here
used as metonymy for alcohol.
447 Venus: Roman goddess of sex (equivalent to the Greek Aphrodite).
452 God’s rules: ‘God’ is used in the singular, for some unspecified deity. This
does not necessarily suggest monotheism. But Seneca, or the Nurse,
could be drawing on Stoic belief in a universe permeated by a single
divine spirit (see Introduction).
456 rejoicing: the Latin word laetus means both ‘happy’ and ‘fertile’. The
Nurse plays on the double meaning, suggesting that happiness and sex
might be the same thing.
465 Mars: Roman god of war (equivalent of the Greek Ares).
475 seize: the verb used, carpere, is the same used in Horace’s famous dictum,
carpe diem, ‘Seize the day’ (Odes, 1. 11). The word cleverly reinforces the
Nurse’s carpe diem message: Hippolytus must seize his youth, before
death seizes him.
478. Styx: the River of Pain, one of the four rivers of the underworld. It is here
used to stand in for the whole underworld.
481 follow nature: alludes to the central Stoic precept that one should live a
‘life following nature’. The Nurse perverts Stoic language: she means
something very different by ‘following nature’ from the Stoic wise-man’s
life of restraint and emotional moderation (see Introduction).
504 Ilissus: a river in Attica, near Athens. The conversation in Plato’s Phaedrus
takes place by the Ilissus, represented as an idyllic spot.
505 Alpheus: a river that flows through Arcadia — a real place in central
Greece, but also, in literature after Virgil’s Eclogues, the location of a
fictionalized pastoral world.
507 Lerna: the river by which Hercules killed the Hydra, in the Greek city of
Argos.
527 the first great age of man: Hippolytus draws in this passage on the famous
myth of the Golden Age, our earliest source for which is the archaic
Greek poet Hesiod. The story that humanity has gone through a series of
separate races, each more degenerate than the last. Modernity is always
the worst age, the Age of Iron; before that
, there were (in some versions)
the Heroic Age, the Silver Age, and, earliest and best, the Golden Age.
528 no blind desire for gold: it is a conventional paradox that the Golden Age
was characterized by people’s lack of interest in literal gold.
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216
notes to phaedra, pages 17–22
530 no trusting ships . . . deep: the invention of seafaring is often said to mark
the end of the Golden Age: it is the beginning of human domination of
nature by technology, the end of natural symbiosis. Jason was supposedly
the first to build a ship, for the voyage of the Argonauts.
560 lays siege: military language is applied to the world of erotic seduction.
564 Medea: after killing her children by Jason the Argonaut in revenge for his
infidelity, Medea escaped to Athens. Aegeus, king of Athens, protected
and married her. They had a child, Medus, and when Theseus, son and
heir of Aegeus by an earlier union with another woman (Aethra), returned
to Athens, Medea plotted to kill him. The allusion to Aegeus and Medea
is a reminder that a stepmother has threatened a stepson in the previous
generation; now history repeats itself, with a new, erotic twist.
567 reason, nature, or passion: Hippolytus makes a contrast between three
concepts central to Stoic thought: ratio (‘reason’, ‘rational good sense’),
natura (‘nature’), and furor (‘violent passion’).
571 Hesperian Tethys: the sea-goddess Tethys was the wife of Oceanus, god of
the sea, and they lived in the farthest west (the land of Hesperus, hence
Hesperian). Here normal events are reversed, so that the sea raises the sun
from the west, rather than the sun sinking into the western ocean.
576 Amazons: a race of women who excluded men from their society and who
fought battles like men. Their name may be from the Greek amazos,
‘breastless’, from their supposed practice of cutting off their right breast
in order to throw javelins or shoot arrows better.
they submitted to the yoke of Venus: they were willing to have sex.
577 you are the proof of that: according to legend, Amazons killed their sons;
theirs was an all-female community. Hippolytus was brought up by his
father, Theseus.
605 what I desire: an incomplete line in the original.
627 stole his wife: Theseus helped his friend Peirithous steal Hades’ wife