The Greek Plays

by The Greek Plays- Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles

  ORESTES: You sat at home: don’t blame him in his hardships!

  920

  CLYTEMNESTRA: A wife kept from her husband grieves, my child.

  ORESTES: A husband’s hard work feeds the sheltered women.

  CLYTEMNESTRA: My son, I think you’re going to kill your mother.

  ORESTES: No, your own hand will cut you down, not mine.

  CLYTEMNESTRA: Watch out! A mother’s raging demon-hounds*34—

  ORESTES: And my father’s, if I leave this thing undone?

  CLYTEMNESTRA: You’re like a grave that cannot hear my wailing.

  ORESTES: My father’s fate now gusts you to your ending.

  CLYTEMNESTRA: My grief! I gave this viper birth and food.

  My nightmare really was a prophecy.

  930

  ORESTES: (forcing her indoors) Suffer in turn the wrong you did in killing.

  CHORUS: Even for these two, I make my lament—

  but seeing poor Orestes reach the summit

  of murders, I would rather have it this way

  than for the house, its eyes put out, to fall.

  strophe 1

  In time, Justice arrived for the sons of Priam,*35

  with a heavy sentence.

  Into the house of Agamemnon came someone

  who was a lion twice over, a war god twice over.

  The exile, sent by the oracle at Pytho,

  940

  raced to the finish line

  with the god’s warnings to goad him.

  mesode 1

  Shriek for the victory, for the escape

  of our masters’ house from poverty and ruin

  under two criminal infections—

  a dirge of a destiny.

  antistrophe 1

  Now an expert in the sneak attack has come,

  insidious Vengeance.

  And the true daughter of Zeus was there, guiding

  his hand in the fight. We mortals

  call on her by the name

  950

  of Justice—

  and our arrow hits the mark.

  She breathes the rage of death on the enemy lines.

  strophe 2

  Apollo, living in Parnassus,*36 in the hollow of the land

  proclaimed no riddle when he called

  Justice baffled and outraged.

  Late, late is her onslaught—

  but may sanctity prevail, and release me

  from serving the wrongdoers.

  960

  Awe for those who rule heaven is our duty.

  mesode 2

  The light is here, you can see it. In the household

  the spiked bit leaves our mouths.

  Stand now, poor house. Long, too long

  you lay groveling on the earth.

  antistrophe 2

  Soon now, Time, who finishes everything,

  will leave by the courtyard gate,

  once the rites for washing ruin away drive out

  from the hearth whatever is defiled.

  Luck will turn back to our gaze a lovely face,

  970

  a face altogether gentle

  toward the sojourners in the house.*37

  (Enter Orestes; the corpses are brought out and displayed, and a robe stained with old, discolored blood is set next to them.)

  ORESTES: (to the Chorus) You see this country’s double share of tyrants,

  my father’s killers, sackers of the house.

  Haughtily, once, they sat here on their thrones.

  They love each other even now: you see it

  in what they suffered for their covenant,

  bound by their oaths to murder my poor father

  and die together: and the oaths have held.

  980

  (indicating the robe) Hearing this wretched story, you can also

  see this device, which chained my helpless father,

  like manacles, like shackles for his feet.

  Spread it out, stand around it, show my father

  what she put on her spouse. No, not my father,

  but the Sun, who watches this whole world, should see

  the shameless, godless workings of my mother

  and be my witness, if I’m ever tried,

  that it was right to seek the penalty

  of death for her. (Aegisthus’ death is simply

  990

  the law, since he debauched somebody’s wife.)

  She plotted hatefully against her husband,

  whose children grew beneath her belt—a dear weight

  briefly, but one she came to loathe, that’s clear.

  What your view? Born a monster in the sea,

  wouldn’t she—lawless, reckless, insolent—

  putrify victims with the slightest touch?

  (indicates robe) And this—is there a decent term to give it?

  A hunter’s snare? A bathrobe tripping him

  and turned into a shroud? No, wait, a net

  1000

  for fish, for birds—a hobbling robe of state.

  This thing is the equipment of a bandit,

  who lies in wait for travelers, whose living

  is rifling money. With this crafty tool,

  he’d murder on and on delightedly.

  Before I have a housemate like this woman,

  the gods can send me childless to my death.

  CHORUS: (keening) The anguish of these doings!

  With a hateful death, you come to the end.

  But he is left, for pain in its full flower.

  1010

  ORESTES: Was it her act or not? I call as witness

  this cloak, dyed scarlet by Aegisthus’ sword.

  The blood sprayed here has worked with time to ruin

  the many dyes in the embroidery.

  I’m here at last to eulogize and mourn

  with words aimed at the cloth that killed my father.

  All that’s been done and suffered, all my bloodline

  grieves me, in my defiled, unenvied victory.

  CHORUS: No one of humankind can spend

  his life unharmed, and in perfect honor.

  1020

  (keening) One trouble’s here, another’s coming.

  ORESTES: You need to know—since I can’t see the ending—

  I’m like a charioteer who’s left the track

  far to the side. My mind runs wild and drags me—

  I’ve lost the fight. The terror in my heart

  is poised to sing and dance to fury’s music.

  While I’m still sane, though, I affirm to friends

  in public that I justly killed my mother—

  filth the gods hate, assassin of my father.

  The chief authority who braced and nerved me

  1030

  is Pytho’s prophet Loxias,*38 who declared

  that I could do this blamelessly, but if

  I shirked—it’s not a punishment to speak of:

  arrows of words can’t reach the agony.

  But witness now the bough and wreath that arm me

  to be a suppliant at Loxias’ shrine,*39

  at the world’s midpoint, where the flame they call

  undying lights his sacred ground. I’m exiled

  for shedding blood I share and can’t take refuge

  at any hearth but his—so he commands.

  1040

  I charge the Argives all to vouch for me,

  from now on, in accounting for these troubles.*40

  CHORUS: No, you did right. Don’t let such noxious words

  escape your mouth; don’t take yourself to task.

  You gave the Argives back their city’s freedom

  by deftly cutting off two serpents’ heads.

  ORESTES: (shrieks) Here they are! Hideous women!*41 They’re like Gorgons,

  black-robed, with teeming, twining snakes instead

  1050

  of hair—no, I can’t stay here any longer.

  CHORU
S: What’s in your mind—so loyal to your father—

  to trouble you? Be brave, stand fast, great victor!

  ORESTES: This torment is no vision. Hunting dogs—

  roused by my mother’s rage—I can’t mistake them!

  CHORUS: You think so, with the fresh blood on your hands;

  no wonder that this fit attacks your senses.

  ORESTES: Look, there are even more now, Lord Apollo!

  The blood of hatred oozes from their eyes.

  CHORUS: A single thing can cleanse you: Loxias’*42 hand

  1060

  laid on to liberate you from this torture.

  ORESTES: You tell me you can’t see them—I can see!

  They drive me like a horse, and I can’t stay.

  (Rushes off.)

  CHORUS: Then take our blessing. May the god, in kindness,

  watch over you and protect you, come what may.

  Now the clan’s third storm has breathed

  its blasts on the royal halls,

  now it has ended.

  First was the food—the children—

  a pitiful affliction;

  1070

  second, the violence against the king, the husband,

  in the bath the rending, the death of the Achaeans’

  strong leader in war;

  third now, a rescuer—or should I speak of a fatality?—

  has come—from somewhere.

  Where at last will this fierce havoc find something

  to lull it to sleep, to end it?

  * * *

  *1 Hermes, the divine messenger and guide, here addressed in his capacity as the intermediary between the living and the dead.

  *2 The text of the prologue is uncertain, because the single extant manuscript through which the play comes to us from antiquity is missing these opening lines, and their reconstruction through citations in ancient authors remains incomplete. The bracketed periods indicate a lacuna, or gap in the known text, that cannot be filled in by a satisfactory editorial conjecture.

  *3 The major river of a territory was traditionally personified as a god and offered a lock of hair by each young man as thanks for “nurturing” him. Inachus was the principal river of Argos.

  *4 I concur only in part with Garvie’s reconstruction and interpretation of the stanza up to here.

  *5 A lacuna; see note to line 5.

  *6 I was so dissatisfied with any editorial or interpretive ingenuity displayed over these lines that I supplied my own version, based on two simple ideas: the slaves weep because it is the only offering they have left now; and whereas loyal people (the word kednos is rare except for persons and their personal attributes) weep, the guilty must regard weeping for the victim with disgust and fear. This seems especially fitting because agos is the pollution of guilt.

  *7 The Chorus think that he sent the lock from permanent exile, or that he is dead and this is his memorial (Garvie).

  *8 The line is difficult to understand in the context and may be an interpolation, or addition to the text, by someone other than the author. But a lacuna (see note to line 5) or other textual corruption may simply mean that the line is out of place.

  *9 There is serious corruption here. I translate somewhat along the lines of Garvie’s proposed emendation, which he expands in English as “I have called him a woman; whether or not I am right in doing so he will soon find out.”

  *10 West retains a word that means “on the bent elbows” or “from above,” which does not make sense to me, so I have accepted the alternate manuscript reading.

  *11 Cremation.

  *12 These two lines are corrupt and the possibilities for emending them uncertain. I translate with some of the ambiguity or irony I see traces of.

  *13 A lacuna (see note to line 5) not persuasively filled in by any of several conjectures.

  *14 These are a very corrupt couple of lines, and my translation is only one rough consensus about them.

  *15 The Furies, or Erinyes, are female goddesses of the Underworld who avenge the murder of blood relatives. The killing of Clytemnestra will turn their attention to Orestes at the end of this play and in the next, the Eumenides (Kindly Goddesses), which takes its title from another name by which the Furies were known in the Greek world.

  *16 Three seriously corrupt lines, not only left incomplete by the editor but containing two phrases marked with the symbol for “hopeless.”

  *17 Cf. the Kissian women’s intense lamentation in Persians 121–22. The musical reference is uncertain in meaning.

  *18 A special form of mutilation called maschalismos, evidently designed to prevent the spirit of the dead person from taking vengeance.

  *19 The meter makes clear that there is a word missing, but it is impossible to be sure how to fill it in.

  *20 This is just one possible way to deal with this apparently mutilated line.

  *21 Queen of the Underworld and consort of Hades.

  *22 My attempt to deal with a highly problematic pair of lines with a clear lacuna (see note to line 5).

  *23 Althaea, the mother of the hero Meleager, murdered him, in her rage during a feud, by burning a magic log that controlled his life span.

  *24 Scylla took a necklace as a bribe from King Minos of Crete to cut off her father’s, Nisus’, purple lock of hair, which gave him immortality. His kingdom of Megara was defeated and he was killed, and Scylla was turned into a sea monster as a punishment.

  *25 Having murdered their husbands, who had been consorting with female captives, the women of Lemnos were afflicted with a disgusting smell.

  *26 A lacuna of at least one line; see note to line 5.

  *27 Ibid.

  *28 I’ve adopted Thomson’s conjecture trophou phreni (“by the mind of the nurse”), commended by Garvie.

  *29 The text is thought to be badly damaged. I credit Garvie for help in translation.

  *30 A lacuna; see note to line 5.

  *31 Apollo in his cave at Delphi.

  *32 Hermes.

  *33 A lacuna; see note to line 5.

  *34 The reference is to the Furies, often imagined as monstrous dogs.

  *35 The royal family of Troy.

  *36 Parnassus is a mountain near Delphi.

  *37 An approximate translation of some corrupted lines.

  *38 Apollo at Delphi.

  *39 Orestes carries the ritual bough and wreath used when supplicating a god.

  *40 The line transmitted as 1041, which mentions Menelaus, seems hopelessly corrupt, and I opt for Blomfield’s simplified emendation.

  *41 I reluctantly accept Lobel’s conjecture for a word meaning “hideous,” though the actual word is not attested. The beings appearing to Orestes are the Furies, or Erinyes.

  *42 Apollo at Delphi.

  INTRODUCTION TO AESCHYLUS’ EUMENIDES

  The title of the third play in the Oresteia trilogy, Eumenides, means Kindly Ones and refers to the Chorus of ancient female deities that dominate the drama. These goddesses, however, are not called Eumenides anywhere in the play, and for most of its length they are anything but kindly. Their more familiar Greek name is Erinyes, sometimes translated (via Latin) to Furies, and their costumes, in Aeschylus’ original production, attested to their power to harm: hair in the form of snakes, funereal black robes, and ugly, angry masks. Among the audience that beheld them that day, according to one ancient source, men fainted and women miscarried (though it’s unclear whether in fact women attended the Athenian tragic festival). The title Eumenides—not one that Aeschylus himself gave the play, but something imposed on it later—anticipates the transformation these hags will undergo before the play’s end.

  The Erinyes were given different origins in different mythic accounts, but they were always considered primeval beings, linked to the earth—the place where the dead are buried, but also the source of growth and fertility—and the Underworld. They oversaw obligations of various kinds, oaths in particular, and had the power to torment those who broke them. Any mortal
who had incurred blood-guilt by killing a family member—thus shattering the most essential social obligation—became their prey. Thus in the Libation Bearers, the play that precedes this one, Orestes, having just emerged from the palace where he slew his mother, Clytemnestra, thinks he sees the Erinyes pursuing him and runs in terror off the stage. That flight began an arduous exile, perhaps months long by the time the Eumenides begins, during which Orestes, always pursued by the Erinyes, sought purification—the ritual cleansing of his blood-guilt—at shrines throughout Greece, and finally at the most sacred shrine of all, the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

  Delphi has a complicated history, as the priestess of Apollo, the Pythia, describes in her opening speech. The goddess Earth once used it as her prophetic seat, and after Earth, her daughter Themis; then her sister Phoebe took over the shrine and gave it to Apollo as a birthday present. The happy tale of peaceful transfer contrasts markedly with a myth found elsewhere in which Apollo seized the site by force, using his bow and arrows to kill a dragon who dwelled there. Both versions construct Delphi as a token of cosmic rule, passing from Earth and her offspring to the Olympians, who stand for enlightened governance and lawful power. But by putting a new, harmonious spin on the story, Aeschylus prefigures the surprising twists of his tragedy, by which he will arrive at an ending that, tonally, is anything but “tragic” in modern terms.

  The opening scene at Delphi takes us into a drama dominated by gods and primal forces. Thus far in the Oresteia, the will of the gods has been the subject of confused debate, or has been relayed by intermediaries; Pylades, for instance, reminds Orestes, at the critical moment in the Libation Bearers when he shrinks from killing his mother, that Apollo’s oracles have commanded him to do so. Now Apollo appears in person to uphold that command and stand by Orestes’ side; ranged against him are the Erinyes, visible to all, and the ghost of Clytemnestra, practically an Erinys herself in her demand for blood vengeance. Soon Athena, too, will take her place onstage, as the scene shifts, after line 234, to the city of Athens (a unique break, among surviving plays, in unity of time and place). Orestes’ personal crisis has become a battleground on which immense supernatural forces are ranged.

  The killing of Clytemnestra has brought two generations of gods into a direct clash. Apollo claims to represent the will of Zeus, his father, who decreed that Clytemnestra should die as the just penalty for her murder of Agamemnon. The Erinyes align themselves with an older order—Earth and the primal forces linked to her—that pays no heed to such abstractions as divine justice. They refer contemptuously to the Olympians as “younger gods” and invoke the ancient principle that “blood will have blood”—the slaying of kin must be punished by death. Theirs is a clan-based view of the world, in which crimes against homaimous, those who share your bloodlines, must be deterred by the severest punishment or chaos will ensue. Apollo will try to counter them by claiming, as we shall see in a moment, that Orestes and Clytemnestra were not homaimoi, so the rule does not apply.