The Complete Aeschylus, Volume I: The Oresteia
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by any god, and a man who deals
with him the gods will destroy as well.
Such was Paris who
at the house of the Atreidae
dishonored his host’s table
by robbing his host’s bed.
And she now, leaving in her wake
Strophe 2
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among her people the clatter of shield
and spear, the mustering of troops,
the rigging of ships, and bringing, too,
to Troy a dowry of destruction,
daring a deed undarable,
blithely stepped through the gates. And all
the prophets of the royal house
wailed as they watched her, saying: “Alas,
alas for the great house, for the house
and for the princes! Alas for the lawful
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love-bed she once slipped eagerly into.
See how he sits alone in such
dishonored silence that he neither
implores nor curses; and how, as he longs
for her so far beyond the sea,
a ghost is mistress of his house.
The chiselled flow of all
her flowing forms torments him;
against the void her eyes
leave, love is powerless.
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The pleasure brought by dream, because
Antistrophe 2
persuasive, only deepens pain.
For when the beloved whom he thinks
is there before him slips through his arms,
the vision vanishes, it wings
its way unfollowably down
the disappearing paths of sleep.”
These are the sorrows in the house,
the sorrows at the hearth, yes, these
and worse than these; and everywhere,
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in every house, for every man
who went out from the land of Hellas,
there is a woman mourning, one
whose grief is too great to be told.
Grief upon grief, it cuts the heart.
The men they sent away
they know, but what returns
into the houses now
are only urns and ashes.
The war god, broker of bodies, he
Strophe 3
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who loads the scales in the spear clash,
sends in return for loved ones only
a heavy dust from the fires of Troy,
dust bitterly wept for, urns packed tight
with ashes that had once been men.
And they keen over them, praising
this one’s skill in battle, that
one’s glorious death among the slaughter.
“All this,” some mutter to themselves,
“all this for someone else’s wife.”
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All through their grief resentment smolders
against the champions of justice,
the sons of Atreus. But they
in all their beauty fell
by the walls of Troy, and so
the victors now lie hidden
under the ground they conquered.
The citizens are talking and
Antistrophe 3
the talk is dangerous, enraged,
resentful, every hurled out curse
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demands full payment for the loss.
Fearful, I wait to hear what now
goes cloaked in secrecy. For the gods
in their own time see to the ones
who kill so many, and the black
Erinyes deliver, piecemeal,
down into darkness one who thrives
unjustly, grinding his life away
until his luck is turned around,
and he, a shade among the swarming
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shades that close in all around him,
has no strength left to fight them off.
The price of excessive glory is
excessive peril. The thunderbolt
strikes truly from the eyes of Zeus.
May I provoke no envy:
be neither conqueror,
nor eat my life away
as captive to another.
Fueled by the running beacon, rumor
Epode
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swiftly spreads throughout the city,
and who can say if it is true
or only some godsent deception?
Who is so green or gullible,
so bereft of sense, to let his heart flare
with each bright message, only to feel
new sorrow when the message changes?
So like a woman’s sharp spirit to take
what’s hoped for as a proven fact.
The rumor she believes, which spreads
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like brushfire far and fast, will just
as quickly die away to nothing.
CHORUS LEADER Soon we shall learn about these watched for signals,
the beacon exchange of fire for fire, if they
do tell the truth, or if, the way that dreams do,
this joy-delivering light only deceived us.
HERALD enters from the left.
I see a herald coming from the shore,
olive twigs shading his forehead, and the dust
upon him, thirsty brother of the mud,
convinces me that what he has to say
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will not be said by kindling mountain brushwood
up into smoky signals, but by words
we either will rejoice to hear, or else—
but I refuse to think of any “else.”
May there be good beyond what just seems good.
And may anyone praying a different prayer for our city
reap in himself the spoils of his own intent.
HERALD Hail, earth of Argos, land of beloved fathers!
In the sunlight of this tenth year I’ve come home;
so many hopes have foundered, but not this one.
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This one came through. Not once in all those years
did I imagine I should die at home
in Argos, and be buried here at last,
here in this longed for soil. Hail to my country,
hail to this sun’s light, and to you, high
lord of the land, Zeus, and to you, bright king
of Pytho, your shafts no longer raining down
upon us—wasn’t it enough, the hatred
you brought against us by Scamander’s banks?
Be once again our healer and protector,
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our lord Apollo! I greet all the gods
together, and my patron god, Hermes,
beloved herald, whom all heralds honor,
and all the heroes who escorted us,
may they embrace with all due kindness
the army that the spear has missed. And hail,
too, palace of our kings, this cherished house,
these sacred benches, and deities that greet the sun!
If you have ever welcomed him before,
receive him now, your glad eyes brightening,
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give him a fitting welcome, for now, at last,
after so many years, he has come home,
Lord Agamemnon, lighting up the darkness
for you and for all who gather here together.
Come give him now the greeting he is owed,
for he has harrowed Troy, broken her soil
up with the just spade of avenging Zeus.
The altars, too, and all the holy shrines
are leveled, and the seed is dying out
from all that land. That’s just how heavy the yoke is
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that he fastened to Troy’s neck, the oldest son
of Atreus, our king who now has come,
a man the gods hold dear, a man worthy
of honor far beyond all living men,
for neither Paris nor his city boasts
the crime was greater than the punishment.
Convicted of rape and theft, relinquishing
what he had taken, he brought to total ruin
his father’s house, and all his father’s land.
Double was the reparation that
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the sons of Priam paid for one son’s deed.
CHORUS LEADER Herald of the Achaean host, all joy to you!
HERALD If the gods wished me to die now, I’d die rejoicing.
CHORUS LEADER Did longing for your homeland so oppress you?
HERALD So much so that my eyes well up with joy.
CHORUS LEADER This ailment then must have been pleasing to you.
HERALD Sorry? I don’t quite follow what you’re saying.
CHORUS LEADER Because you pined for those who pined for you.
HERALD Do you mean the people longed for the longing army?
CHORUS LEADER So much that my dark spirit often sighed.
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HERALD What was it set your heart to this black brooding?
CHORUS LEADER Silence has long since been my only safety.
HERALD But why? When the kings left were there some you feared?
CHORUS LEADER So much, to quote you, that even death was welcome.
HERALD Yes, well, we won out at last. Of all
that happened in that long stretch of time, one part
now, you could say, has turned out well for us,
another, no; but who beside the gods
can live his whole life free of any pain?
For if I were to tell you of the labor
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and the hard encampments, the tight quarters cramped
with lousy bedding, what groans we didn’t groan
when even our meager rations weren’t doled out;
and worse things, too, on land, more awful, for
our beds, if you could call them beds, lay up
against the ramparts of our enemy,
and thick mist drizzling from the sky, and dew
from the meadows seeped over us, into and through
our fraying clothes, our hair aswarm with vermin;
And if I were to tell you of the winter,
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when the birds died in the snow squalls Ida
kept swirling down against us day after day;
or of the summer heat when the sea at noon
lay windless, waveless, in a flattened sleep …
Why chew this over now? All that for us
is past, and past too for the ones who died,
who now will never care to rise again.
Why must I tell the tale of all the lost,
and why should the living live it through again
in stories, groaning over old misfortune?
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In my view it is right to say a long
goodbye to the disasters that befell us.
For those of us left from the Argive army,
the gain today weighs heavier on the scale
than all the losses: so as our fame flies
over the sea and land, it’s right to boast
in this sun’s light: “The Argive host, once Troy
was taken, hung up these spoils to the gods
of Greece, past glories for their shrines.”
Whoever hears such words will praise the city
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and the army’s leaders; and the grace of Zeus
that brought these deeds to pass shall be exalted.
My story now is told. And you have heard it.
CHORUS LEADER Yours words have overcome my disbelief,
and I believe them, for a willingness
to learn returns youth wisely to the old.
It’s right, though, that Clytemnestra and her house
hear the news first, that I share the wealth with them.
CLYTEMNESTRA enters from the palace.
CLYTEMNESTRA I cried in triumph a long time ago,
when the first message of the fire came,
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telling of Ilium’s capture and destruction.
Some, scoffing at me, said, “Just on the strength
of beacons do you think that Troy’s been sacked?
So like a woman—to be swept away by feeling.”
So I was made to look just like a fool,
as if my mind were cracked. Still, I sacrificed,
and here and there throughout the city, women,
as women do, cried out in jubilation,
and in all the houses of the gods,
lulled softly to rest the sweet flame fed on spice.
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Why do you need to tell me the full story?
Soon I will hear it from the king himself.
But so I’m ready in every way to greet
my honored husband at last on his return—
for what day can dawn sweeter for a woman
than this one when a god has brought her man
home safe from war, and she unlocks the door—
take to my lord this message: may he come
as quickly as he can, the city’s favorite,
and may he find his wife now just as faithful
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as on the day he left, the watchdog of his house,
loyal to him, and him alone, hateful
to all his enemies, in all things steadfast,
having never once in all these years
destroyed the marriage seal he set upon her.
I know no pleasure from another man,
or scandal-mongering gossip, any more
than I know how to dye bronze. Be assured
that what I’ve said is overflowing with
the truth, with what a good wife ought to say.
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CLYTEMNESTRA exits into the palace.
CHORUS LEADER She’s made a seemly speech indeed for those
who know how to interpret what she says.
But Herald tell me now of Menelaus,
a power much loved in this land: what do you know
of him? Did he, like you, return home safely?
HERALD If I give you a false report, though fair,
the joy you harvest will not last, my friends.
CHORUS LEADER If only truth and good news were the same!
It’s hard to hide it when the two are split.
HERALD He vanished utterly from the Achaean host,
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he and his ships alike. This is the truth.
CHORUS LEADER Did he leave Troy before you? Or did a storm,
battering you all, sweep him away?
HERALD You’ve hit the target like a expert marksman
and briefly spoken sorrows too long to tell.
CHORUS LEADER And in the rumors other voyagers
passed on to you, was he alive or dead?
HERALD No one could say for sure, except the sun
that fosters all life everywhere on earth.
CHORUS LEADER And the storm the gods in anger aimed at the ships,
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how did it come upon them, how did it end?
HERALD It is not right to defile a day’s joy
with a grim tongue that spews bad news. Honor
due to the gods must be kept separate.
And when a grim-faced messenger brings bad
news to the city that the city prayed
never to hear, news of the army’s rout,
news telling how a single wound tortures
all of the people in the city, how
the double-pointed scourge that Ares loves,
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destruction’s two-tipped goad, the blood-drenched twins,
has harried many men from many homes—
yes, when a messenger is weighed down with
a cargo of woes like these, then it is right
to sing in tribute to the Eryinyes.
But when with news, at last, of its salvation
he comes to a city ready to rejoice—
how can I muddy good with bad, how tell
about the storm sent down to the Achaeans,
breaking against them hard with the wrath of heaven?
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For fire and sea, the bitterest enemies,
only for this campaign, declared a truce,
and gave sure proof of friendship by destroying
thoroughly the hapless Argive armanent.
Evil rose up at night from the rising waves.
The Thracian winds rammed ship into ship, and they,
tearing each other open, whirled away
in the whirlwind, in the slant rain, vanishing
like sheep sent scattering by an evil shepherd.
And when the sun rose brightly, we could see
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how the Aegean bloomed with Achaean corpses,
and everywhere the wreckage of their ships.
But as for us and our ship, some god’s hand
had to have held the tiller, and by stealth,
or sweet talk, brought the hull through, unscathed.
And luck, our savior, was our helmsman then,
and sailed us on, so that we neither had
to stay at anchor, pummeled by heaving waves,
nor run aground against some rock-strewn shore.
And having then escaped a floating grave,
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in the bright daylight, dazed by our own good luck,
we brooded over what we just got through,
the suffering of the fleet, the brutal beating.
And now, if any of them still live, they speak
of us as dead, of course, as we do them.
But may all in the end be well for them!
And as for Menelaus, first and above
all look for his return. If some ray of sun
still shines upon him, alive and flourishing,
by the will of Zeus who has not yet determined