The Greek Plays
Page 13
AGAMEMNON: No! Stop! Again—a second blow has landed…
AN INDIVIDUAL IN THE CHORUS: I think it’s done—that’s why the king is wailing.
We must discuss what measures might be safe.
ANOTHER: Listen to me—here’s what I recommend:
call out a rescue force of citizens.
1350
ANOTHER: We ought to break in right away—that’s my view—
and seize the proof, the sword that drips fresh blood.
ANOTHER: I’m for a policy along those lines:
I vote for action. Now’s no time for dawdling.
ANOTHER: The truth is here to see: this is the prelude
that signals despotism for the city.
ANOTHER: They’re wide awake, they strike while we waste time.
They’re trampling the regard we had for waiting.
ANOTHER: I’m lost: I can’t arrive at a suggestion.
The one who does a thing should also plan it.
1360
ANOTHER: I’m just as lost as you. There is no way
to make a speech that resurrects the dead.
ANOTHER: How could we even stand to live, condoning
leadership that defiles the royal house?
ANOTHER: No, it’s unbearable, and death is better,
a gentler destiny than tyranny.
ANOTHER: In point of fact, taking those groans as proof,
can we divine the gentleman is dead?
ANOTHER: Clear knowledge must precede deliberation,
since guessing is a thing distinct from knowing.
1370
ANOTHER: Here I have broad majority support:
we should make sure how Atreus’ son is doing.
(The palace doors open and Clytemnestra is revealed, standing over two bloody corpses.)
CLYTEMNESTRA: Though all I said before was right for then,
I’m not ashamed to state the opposite.
How else would someone, paying evil back
to those disguised as friends, raise suffering’s net
around them to a height they can’t leap over?
I gave my full attention to this struggle
from far back. Victory came, though that took time.
Right where I struck, I stand, on my achievement.
1380
I acted—I’m not going to deny it—
to trap him so he couldn’t fight off death.
As if he were a school of fish, I cast
a rich robe in inextricable circles.*48
Twice I strike, and a double groan announces
his legs’ collapse. He’s fallen, but I add
a third, an extra blow, thank-offering
to Zeus below ground, savior of cadavers.*49
He falls, convulsively gasps out his soul,
and spouts a headlong slaughter-gush of blood,
1390
striking me with dark-scarlet showers of dew,
and I rejoice, as in wet, quickened sowings
of Zeus’s grace, when buds emerge from labor.
If a libation for a corpse is proper
and right—and more than right—then this is it.
He filled this cup of curses for the house,
and drank it up himself when he returned.
So there you have it, honored Argive elders.
Be glad, or don’t—but triumph fills my heart.
CHORUS: We’re stunned at this defiance in your mouth,
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this bragging speech above your husband’s body.
CLYTEMNESTRA: You think you’re prodding at a female moron,
but I don’t shake inside, addressing those
who understand. And you can praise or blame me—
it doesn’t matter. This is Agamemnon,
my husband. He’s a corpse now. My right hand,
an honest builder, made this. Here we are.
strophe 1
CHORUS: Woman, what evil thing—
eatable, drinkable—that the ground or the flowing
sea nourishes—passed through your lips?
You’ve burned this sacrifice, earned the town’s clamorous curses;
1410
you have cast us off, you have cut us off, you are exiled from the city;
to the citizens, you are abomination.
CLYTEMNESTRA: So now you sentence me to banishment,
allot me hatred, rumbling civic curses.
Back then you offered him no opposition
when he, as casual as at one death
among the crowding and luxuriant flocks,
sacrificed his own child, my dearest birth-pangs,
to conjure up some blasts of air from Thrace.
Wasn’t it that polluted criminal
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you should have driven out? You hear what I’ve done,
and you’re a savage judge. But pay attention:
threaten away, and know that I’m prepared
to let the winner of a fair fight rule
over me. But if god wills otherwise,
you’ll learn restraint, and well, however late.
antistrophe 1
CHORUS: Monstrous your enterprise,
haughty the words you spoke—and your mind, along with them,
reels in the passion of your bloody triumph;
and the smear of blood in your eye is unmistakable.
All those you love must be taken in revenge
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and a wound pay back each wound that you have given.
CLYTEMNESTRA: There’s more to hear, an oath that’s sanctified
by Justice—realized for my child—and Ruin,*50
And the Fury, since I slaughtered him for these:
from now on, hope won’t pace the house of fear,
as long as there’s a flame lit on my hearth
by Aegisthus, who has been my champion
this whole time, and the shield that gives me courage.
(Indicating the two corpses at her feet)
He lies here, after wronging me, his wife,
and soothing every Chryseis at Troy;*51
1440
and here’s the seer of the signs, his captive,
who shared his bed; rely on her for saying
sooth—and for other services: the whore
among the sailors’ benches. Rightly honored,
the two of them: him, as I stated; her
like a swan, whose song and dance were rites of death—
his lover lying next to him. He brought
this side-dish in—but it was for my pleasure.
strophe 2
CHORUS: Only, if only quickly, with no great torture,
with no long nursing vigil,
1450
the end would come for us, bringing
sleep without end, for all time—now that the man who guarded us
close to his heart is brought down.
He endured so much for a woman;
now a woman has obliterated him.
ephymnium 1
You were out of your mind, Helen, Helen,
annihilating great numbers, terrible numbers
of lives beneath Troy’s walls.
Now you’ve won the consummate, the immortal prize:
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the blood that will not wash away. It was some spirit
of unassailable discord in the house, a husband’s anguish.
CLYTEMNESTRA: No, don’t pray—in your distress—for your share of death.
And do not turn your rage away toward Helen,
calling her the one murderer of many,
destroyer of the Danäan men’s lives,
creator of a sorrow never to be made good.
antistrophe 2
CHORUS: Spirit who falls on the house, on the brace
1470
of Tantalus’ sons;*52 Power that grows out of women. It is a match for my life,
overpowers me, gnaws on my hea
rt.
Over his body she stands
like an evil crow, singing a holy
song off-key, and gloating.
CLYTEMNESTRA: So now you’ve set your thoughts on the matter straight:
you call on the spirit, gorged again and again, of this clan;
the blood-licking lust is from him, he feeds it in the belly.
1480
Before the old agony stops, a new sore runs.
strophe 3
CHORUS: Powerful, full of hard rage
is the spirit in your story toward this house—
terrible, terrible fable, glutted with blighting misfortune.
The hand of Zeus, the fearful hand
that causes, that does everything, lies on it.
What happens without Zeus in mortal lives?
In all this, what did heaven not accomplish?
ephymnium 2
1490
My king! Tell me, how will I weep for you, my king?
Is there anything that my loving heart can say
as you lie in the web this spider wove,
panting your life out in an ungodly death?
I grieve for your resting place—fit for no free man—
and the death by trickery that brought you down,
the stroke from the two-edged weapon in her hand.
CLYTEMNESTRA: You contend that this act is mine.
But don’t count me, then, as Agamemnon’s consort.
1500
This corpse’s wife is only the form you see—
an ancient, pitiless avenger has paid this man
for Atreus and his brutal banquet.*53
He killed this man (indicates Agamemnon), a full-grown sacrifice to follow the young ones.
antistrophe 3
CHORUS: Guiltless you call yourself, in this
murder—but who would be your witness?
How could you do it, how? But maybe your accomplice in vengeance
came from the father. Through channels of brothers’ blood,
1510
the black War-God advances,
in his hands the judgment for the gore
of little children, clotting as it was swallowed.
ephymnium 2
CHORUS: My king! Tell me, how will I weep for you, my king?
Is there anything that my loving heart can say
as you lie in the web this spider wove,
panting your life out in an ungodly death?
I grieve for your resting place—fit for no free man—
and the death by trickery that brought you down,
1520
the stroke from the two-edged weapon in her hand.
CLYTEMNESTRA: No, I don’t think that his death was slavish, that
[…]
Didn’t he scheme catastrophe for his house?
My little one whom he fathered, who was raised here,
Iphigenia, bitterly mourned
[…]*54
What was due he rendered—and he suffered it also.
He has got nothing to bluster about in Hades
but his death on a sword—the price of his own doings.
strophe 4
1530
CHORUS: Now lost, I stand outside of deft
and careful thinking.
Where shall I turn, while the house falls?
I am afraid of the rain that pounds, that shakes the home,
a bloody rain. But now it drizzles away.
Justice moves on, and Fate is whetting her knife
on another stone, for another job of havoc.
ephymnium 3
Earth, earth, I wish you’d taken me to yourself
before I saw this man sprawled over
1540
his bath with its silver sides—pathetic bed.
Who will bury him? Who will mourn for him?
You—would you dare? You have killed your own
husband. Will you mourn him loudly? Will you
perform for his ghost this favor that’s no favor,
in return for all he’s done? Will you wrong him this way?
Who will send out praise, with tears, at the grave for the man
who was like a god? Who will do this work
with the truth in his heart?
1550
CLYTEMNESTRA: That’s no concern of yours, nothing you need to do. By our hands.
he fell and he died; we will bury him also—
and not to the sound of wailing from those in the house.
But Iphigenia will be delighted;
his daughter will do what’s right and meet her father
face to face at the fast-skimming ferry of wailing,
throwing her hands around his neck to kiss him.
antistrophe 4
1560
CHORUS: One insult meets another now—
who could decide?—it’s a deadlock:
the plunderer plundered, the killer paying in full.
Still, while Zeus lasts on his throne, the law will last
that what a man does, he will endure. This is laid down.
Tell me, who’ll drive this fertile curse from the house?
Disaster and this race are mortared together.
CLYTEMNESTRA: It’s a truth, it’s an oracle you’ve stumbled on.
1570
But I’d make a pact with the Pleisthenids’*55 guardian spirit
to be content with this—though it’s unbearable—
granted he goes from this house and grinds another family
to dust with these deaths—no better than suicides.
Wholly enough for me, a tiny share of these possessions,
if I do away with the frenzy of killing back and forth in this palace.
(Enter Aegisthus, from the palace, surrounded by guards.)
AEGISTHUS: O genial sun that lights the day of justice!
At last I think the gods above look down
on the earth’s pain and vindicate us mortals,
1580
now that I see the man who lies here wearing
the robe the Furies wove—heartwarming sight!—
and paying for the trap set by his father
who reigned here, Atreus. That man, in plain terms,
banished Thyestes—my own father—though
he was his brother, from his home and city,
when the right to rule this country was disputed.
On his return to Atreus’ hearth for mercy,
wretched Thyestes’ life remained secure—
which means he didn’t bloody native ground
1590
with his own death. But this man’s godless father
gave keen but unkind hospitality
to mine. He made a show of sacrifice
on the special day, but served up children’s flesh—
the digits of the feet, the serried fingers
minced in a covered dish—and sat apart.
His unsuspecting guest reached out at once*56
and ate, to this clan’s ruin, as you see.
Then, when he sensed the monstrous thing he’d done,
he fell back, howling, retching out the slaughter,
1600
and called down harrowing doom on Pelops’ sons.
The table he kicked over sealed the curse:
annihilation for the race of Pleisthenes;
so on these grounds, he’s there to look at, fallen,
and I’m the one who—justly—stitched this murder.
Atreus drove out my poor father and me—
the thirteenth born,*57 still in my baby clothes,
and Justice brought me back when I was grown.
I fastened this whole grim device together
and caught him in my hand before I came here.
1610
Death itself would be sweet for me, since now
he lies before me in the net of Justice.
CHORUS: Aegisthus, I don’t honor gloating gall—
>
you, though, now say you killed this man on purpose?
You schemed his pitiful murder on your own?
Be sure of what I say: when Justice comes,
your life won’t dodge the people’s stones and curses.
AEGISTHUS: So that’s your tone, down on the rowing bench?*58
Those with the power are sitting at the rudder.
You’re not too old to learn how hard a lesson
1620
prudent obedience can be—at your age.
Chains and starvation are preeminent
physicians for the mind; they even school
elders. Why can’t you see this? You’re not blind.
Kick back when goaded? You’ll grow sore from beatings.
CHORUS: Woman, house-watcher, when they came from war,
you joined your marriage bed’s defiler, plotting
this death for the commander of the army?
AEGISTHUS: These words will father pain to make you sob.
You don’t have Orpheus’ eloquence*59—far from it.
1630
All living creatures trailed him in their joy;
with idiotic yips you’re rousing me
to haul you off. Soon you’ll be tamed by force.
CHORUS: So you’re the Argives’ tyrant, who consulted
in this man’s death, but didn’t have the courage
to stretch your own hand out and do the killing.
AEGISTHUS: Plainly, it was a woman’s job to trick him,
while I, the clan’s old enemy, was suspect.
Now I’ll deploy his property to rule
the citizens, and set a heavy yoke
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on those who won’t obey. No barley-fattened
show-horses here! No, hateful hunger, rooming
with darkness, will be jailers of their weakness.
CHORUS: Your heart was quaking—or why didn’t you
face the man down? A woman did it for you!
That filthy outrage to our land and gods
killed him. But is Orestes living somewhere?
Fortune might favor him and bring him home
to be the champion killer of this pair.
AEGISTHUS: You choose to say and do this—soon you’ll learn.
CHORUS: (refusing to back down)
1650
Come on, then, fellow soldiers, here’s our duty!
AEGISTHUS: (to his own bodyguard)
You all, come on, get ready. Draw your swords.