The Greek Plays
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sing hymns of reverence, call forth the god*55
Darius, while I send these earth-drunk honors
as offerings to please the gods below.
CHORUS: Royal wife whom the Persians honor,
pour your offerings down to the halls of the earth;
while we, with our songs, shall request
those who escort the dead
to be gracious under the ground.
You, sacred divinities of the world below,
Earth and Hermes, and you, lord of the Underworld,
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send up a spirit into the daylight;
for if he knows any cure for our troubles,
he alone among mortals could tell us their end.
(As Atossa takes the vials and pours their contents onto the ground, the Chorus address themselves to the tomb of Darius.)
strophe
Does he hear? Our blessed king, now like a god;
does he hear me sending forth
my many doleful, sad cries, in their clear Asian tones?
I shall cry out aloud
our all-wretched woes;
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does he hear me, from under the ground?
antistrophe
You, holy Earth, and other lords of the buried,
allow him out of your dwelling,
that high-boasting spirit, the Susa-born god of the Persians;
send him up from below,
a man such as never
Persian soil ever covered.
strophe
Beloved is the man, belovèd his tomb;
for the heart that it hides is beloved.
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Lord Hades, I beg, send him up and release him,
our king, the godlike Darius—
ēe.
Never did he incur losses of men
with war-ravaged follies.
Godlike in counsel the Persians called him, for godlike
he was, a sure hand at the helm of the army.
ēe.
Great shah,*56 shah who once was, come forth;
arise, from the peak of your funeral mound;
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step forward on saffron-slippered foot,
revealing the peak of your royal tiara.
Blameless father, Darius, come; oi.
antistrophe
Master of masters, appear,
that you may hear of new woes, shared by all;
for a gloom from the Styx has descended.
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Our young men are destroyed, a whole generation.
Blameless father, Darius, come; oi.
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aiai aiai
You whose death brought grief to your friends,
[…*57
…
…] the ships with their triple oar-banks
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are destroyed; ships no longer, no longer.
(The ghost of Darius appears, rising up from the burial mound.)
GHOST OF DARIUS: Companions of my youth, most trusted counselors,
you aged Persians: What does my city suffer?
It groans and beats its breast; its soil is trampled.
Seeing my wife draw near my tomb, I’m frightened.
Yet graciously I take her offerings.
And you who stand beside my tomb, you chant
your spirit-drawing spells, in high, clear voices,
wretchedly summoning me. But my arrival
has not been easy; the gods below the earth
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are better at seizing than at letting go.
Yet I, a king among them, have prevailed.
Be quick, lest I be blamed for tardiness.
What new and weighty evil ails the Persians?
CHORUS: I dread to look on you.
I dread to speak face to face,
stirred by my old fear of you.
DARIUS:*58 I’ve come from down below, obedient to your chants.
Don’t drag things out at length, but keep to the essentials
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and tell me everything. Forget your dread of me.
CHORUS: I fear to indulge what you ask.
I fear to speak to your face
words hard for a friend to pronounce.
DARIUS: I see that ancient fear has blocked your wits; and so,
(to Atossa) my noble wife, the aged sharer of my bedroom,
leave off your wails and groans, say clearly what has happened.
It’s clear that ills are mankind’s lot; they fall upon us all.
Some come from the sea to trouble us, while others
arrive by land, if life goes on and waxes long.
ATOSSA: Most fortunate of mortals! With your lucky destiny,
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You were much envied while you lived and saw the sun’s light,
bringing a happy lifetime for the Persians, as a god does.
I envy you also now—dead, before this abyss of evils.
I’ll tell you the whole story in a brief space of time:
Persian might has been annihilated, or nearly so.
DARIUS: But how? Some blast of plague attacked the city, or civil war?
ATOSSA: Neither. But near Athens our entire army perished.
DARIUS: Which one of my children*59 led an expedition there?
ATOSSA: Impetuous Xerxes. He emptied out the continent to do it.
DARIUS: Was it by land or sea he undertook this reckless folly?
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ATOSSA: By both. He used two forces, making a double assault.
DARIUS: But how did so great an army cross the straits on foot?
ATOSSA: He used contrivances to bridge the Hellespont.
DARIUS: And with that effort he sealed off great Bosporus?*60
ATOSSA: Just so. Surely some god had got hold of his wits.
DARIUS: A mighty god indeed—to judge by the delusion.
ATOSSA: True. We can see at last the evil he’s accomplished.
DARIUS: What fate was theirs—those for whom you’re groaning so?
ATOSSA: The navy came to grief, and that destroyed the army.
DARIUS: And so the entire host has been laid low by enemy spears?
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ATOSSA: Indeed. The Sousans’ city now bewails its lack of men…
DARIUS: (in shock and sorrow) O popoi! Not the army—our steadfast aid, our succor!
ATOSSA: …and all the Bactrians, too, are gone. […]*61
DARIUS: Oh, wretched son! The host of allied youth he has destroyed!
ATOSSA: They say that he alone, Xerxes, and only a few others—
DARIUS: How, and where, did he end up? Did he find safety somewhere?
ATOSSA: —arrived in joy at the bridge, the one yoke of the two lands.
DARIUS: So he’s come safely back to Asian land—is that so?
ATOSSA: Yes. This is the story that prevails, no conflict.
DARIUS: Cry woe! The oracles came swiftly to completion.
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Zeus hurled their grim fulfillment on my son. I must have thought
the gods would bring them to pass a long, long time from now.
But a man who strives in haste has the god, too, hastening him on.
A font of evils, it seems, has been unveiled for our allies.
My son, in ignorance, with youthful zeal, has done this.
He hoped to hold the holy Hellespont in fetters
as though enslaving it—Bosporus, stream of the god—
and tried to rearrange the straits. With chains that hammers forged
he compassed it and made a great path for a great host,*62
wrongly believing, though mortal, he could control the gods,
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even Poseidon. What else but a disease of mind was this
that took hold of my son? And now, I fear, the wealth
I labored for will only be the first invader’s spoils.
ATOSSA: Reckless Xerxes—but his b
ad companions taught him this.
They kept on telling him that you attained great riches
at spearpoint, for your children, while he’s been playing the coward,
campaigning close to home, not adding to his father’s wealth.
Again and again he heard such taunts from evil counselors.
And so he planned this journey and this great attack on Greece.
DARIUS:*63 That’s why this deed of his is catastrophic,
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always to be remembered. Never has such a deed
emptied this city, Susa, of its manpower,
not since the time King Zeus established this:
one man should rule all Asia, rich in flocks,
and wield the scepter that brings order to it.
Medus was the first leader of our host,*64
and then another, his son, took up the task.
Third of this line was Cyrus,*65 a lucky man,
who came to power and brought our allies peace,
for wisdom was the steersman of his passions.
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He conquered the Lydians and the Phrygians,
and harried all Ionia with his power;
he felt no hate from god, for he had sense.
The son of Cyrus was our host’s fourth leader;
Next Mardus, fifth in line, who brought great shame
to country and to throne; Artaphrenes
conspired to kill this man, along with friends,*66
the men who knew their duty, and I among them.
Then I received by lot the rule I wanted.
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I campaigned many times with many soldiers,
yet never brought such woe upon my country.
Xerxes, my son, is young; his thoughts are young.
He does not keep in mind what I enjoined.
I here proclaim to you, aged companions,
that all of us who held this rule before him
have not, together, caused his sum of sorrows.
CHORUS: Then what comes next, my king? Or toward what end
do you conduct this speech? How, from here on,
shall we, the Persian people, do what’s best?
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DARIUS: Don’t make campaigns against the home of Greeks,
not even with a greater Persian host.
Their very land’s their ally and defender.
CHORUS: What do you mean? How does their land defend them?
DARIUS: It kills with hunger those who are too many.
CHORUS: But we’ll equip a fleet with much provision.
DARIUS: But even the force that tarries now in Hellas
will never find the safety of homecoming.
CHORUS: What’s this you say? The entire Persian army
will not recross the straits, depart from Europe?
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DARIUS: Few will cross of many, if one trusts
the oracles of the gods, and judges how
some have come true already; the rest must follow.
If it be so, then he believes false hopes
and leaves behind a corps of chosen soldiers.
They camp beside the plain Asopus waters,
the river that gives sweet drink to the Boeotians.
The pitch of suffering awaits them there,
a scourge to punish their ungodly thinking.
For those who went to Greece were not ashamed
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to rob the shrines of gods and burn their temples.
Altars have been destroyed, and sacred buildings
have been wrenched up and toppled from their bases.
And so the doers of wrong shall suffer wrongs
no less than they inflict. More are to come.
The bricks that build our doom are still being laid.
Plataea’s land will see a blood-soaked slush
of clotted gore, caused by a Dorian spear;*67
the heaps of corpses there will wordless show
to eyes of men, for two more generations,
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that mortals must not cast their thoughts too high.
For pride will flower and bear the fruit of folly,
from which one reaps a much-bemoanèd harvest.
Look on the punishments you see before you;
remember Athens, remember Greece. Let no one
allow his thoughts to pass his present fortune,
or, lusting for others’ wealth, let slip his own.
For Zeus, the grim chastiser, will be at hand,
with recompense for over-boastful minds.
Tell him all this. […]*68
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With soothing words, upbraid him; make him stop
offending god with his too-boastful daring.
(to Atossa) And as for you, dear, agèd mother of Xerxes,
go fetch from home the trappings fit for kingship
and bring them to your son. For rags surround him—
the tattered remnants of his splendid robes,
all torn to shreds in grief at his misfortunes.
Give comfort to him with your gentle words;
yours is the only voice that can uplift him.
I go now, down below the gloomy darkness.
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(to Chorus) Farewell, you elders. Even amid your woes
your spirits must take delight in daily joys.
For wealth is useless, down among the dead.
(He sinks below the earth.)
CHORUS: I grieve to hear the Persians’ many woes,
those happening now, and those that are still coming.
ATOSSA: Oh, spirit! So many painful woes beset me.
But most of all, it’s this mischance that stings:
your tale of the disgrace to my son’s clothing,
disgrace that he’s now wrapped in. I am going.
I’ll fetch fine raiment from the palace halls
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and try to meet my son as he comes homeward.
Amid these woes, I won’t desert what’s dearest.
(Atossa exits.)
strophe
CHORUS: O popoi. Great and good was the life we had,
a life under rules of the city, back when the agèd,
blameless, all-providing, unconquerable king,
Darius, the equal of god, ruled the land.
antistrophe
First we can cite the glorious deeds of our army,
860
[…]*69
Homeward journeys from war, unwearied, unhurt,
brought men back to prosperous houses.
strophe
How many the cities he captured, without crossing the river Halys,
nor leaving behind his own hearth;*70
among them the cities of Achelous, by the marsh of the Strymon,*71
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the country houses of the Thracians,
antistrophe
and the cities with towering walls, on the mainland, outside the lake,*72
obeyed this great king,
those scattered*73 around the broad ford of Helle, the embayed Propontis,
and the mouth of the Pontus.*74
strophe
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Then the islands beside the sea’s headland,*75 girt round by the waves,
neighbors to our continent,
like Lesbos, Samos with its olive groves, and Chios, and Paros,
Naxos, Myconos, and Andros, which borders closely on Tenos.
antistrophe
And he ruled the islands between the two shores,
Lemnos, and the place where Icarus dwelt,*76
and Rhodes, and Cnidos, and the Cyprian cities of Paphos and Soli,
and Salamis,*77 whose mother city gave cause for all of our groanings.
epode
And the flourishing, populous cities in lands the Ionians got,*78
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the cities of Greeks, he controlled by the strength of his mind;
at
his beck he had tireless strength of his warrior corps
and of all-varied allies.
But now—without doubt, we have had all this turned upside down by the god.
We are greatly brought low, by the blows that came from the sea.
(Xerxes enters, dressed in rags, his mother having failed to intercept him and bring him his new robe. In the long exchange that follows, he trades laments with the Chorus, both chanting in anapestic meter.)
XERXES: iō.
Wretched me! Hateful fate,
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impossible to foretell. How cruelly
the god set his foot on the Persian race!
What now lies ahead, what must I suffer?
My knees give way as I behold
this crowd of elder citizens.
Zeus! If only the fate of death
had hidden me beneath the earth,
along with those that are gone.
CHORUS: Ototoi! Oh, king! Our noble army,
the honor of our Persian rule,
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the men in their glory
whom the god has cut down!
The land itself laments the dead,
its native youth, whom Xerxes killed—
and thus stuffed Hades with corpses. […]*79
Many are the men who have died,
a numberless multitude,
the flower of youth, the wielders of bows.
Aiai aiai! Our sure defense!
All Asia, O king who rules this land,
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has gone down hard upon its knees.
strophe
XERXES: Oioi! I am here, fit for weeping;
A woe and bane, that’s what I am,
to family and to fatherland.
CHORUS: I’ll send, I’ll send a tearful cry
to salute your return home,
an ill-omened wail that tends to woes,
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like that of Mariandyan mourners.*80
antistrophe
XERXES: Send out your all-lamenting voice,
long-lingering, harsh; for the god, in turn,
has reversed course against me.
CHORUS: I shall. […*81
…
…] of the city’s mourner.
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I’ll sound again my tearful keen.
strophe
XERXES: An Ionian has robbed us—
Ionian Ares, ship-girt, battle-turning,