relentlessly in the future.
antistrophe 1
Not even from us, the raving
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sentinels over humankind, will anger
find its way to felons like this man:
I will let every species of death off its leash. *50
People will turn to each other, telling
of their neighbors’ disaster and asking how
their troubles could find some ending, some remission.
And some poor fool will mouth
useless, flimsy prescriptions.
strophe 2
No use then, for anyone
battered by calamity
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to shout an appeal
of “Justice!
You Furies on your thrones!”
But with these words, maybe, some father or
some birthgiver with a fresh wound
will lament the fate of lamenting
when the house of Justice falls.
antistrophe 2
There is a fitting place for terror:
the overseer of the mind
must sit there constantly.
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It is good to gain
discretion from distress.
What man, what city
on earth, without fear
to train the heart,*51 would honor
Justice as in the past?
strophe 3
Neither a lawless life
nor an oppressed one merits
your praise.*52 Everything in the midway prevails, as god grants—
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but he sends one life here, one there, under his watch
to fasten onto this saying, I shape another:
outrage is blasphemy’s child, in a true bloodline.
But with a wholesome
mind you prosper in that dear way
all mankind prays for.
antistrophe 3
In everything, I tell you,
revere the altar of Justice.
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Don’t give it a godless kick
into the dust, at a glimpse of profit,
as a penalty must follow.
The ending waits that is ordained.
Let a man mind this, above all honoring his parents, as is right,
and welcoming strangers
to the freehold of his hospitality
with constant reverence.
strophe 4
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This conduct, unaided by force, will keep him just,
and prospering in good measure.
The utmost ruin will never take him.
I say the arrogant, mutinous criminal—
with his freight, the cluttered plunder
he got by violence—will lower his sail
in time, trouble will seize him
beneath his shattered yardarm.
antistrophe 4
He calls, but no one hears a sound. Caught in the center
of a whirlpool, he cannot wrestle free.
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The god laughs at hotheadedness, seeing the man—
who bragged it was impossible—helpless in these straits,
exhausted as he fights, as he fails to reach the wave’s crest.
He has wrecked prosperity, lifelong until this moment,
on the submerged rock, which belongs to Justice,
and is destroyed, yes, every trace of him—and no one weeps.
(While Apollo, Orestes, and the Chorus remain onstage, the scene shifts slightly; we are still in Athens, but now on the Areopagus or “Hill of Ares.” A bench is now onstage and a table with two urns upon it, to be used for casting ballots. Athena enters accompanied by eleven jurymen, who take their seats upon the bench.)
ATHENA: (to a herald) Make your announcement, call this group to order,
let the Tyrrhenian trumpet stab the heavens,
once human breath has filled it, and display
its voice at full pitch for this body coming
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to crowd the courtroom and deliberate.
To learn my laws in silence is a fitting
observance for all time, for the whole city
and these men: that is how just judgment happens.
Now, lord Apollo, take in hand what’s yours.
What is your interest in this matter? Tell us!
APOLLO: I am a witness; it was I who cleansed
this man of blood-pollution when he sat,
a lawful suppliant, beside my hearth.
And I’m his advocate: the matricide
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is my responsibility. (to Athena) Present
the case, and be a skillful arbitrator.
ATHENA: (to Apollo) Yes, I’ll present the case, (to Chorus) but you must speak
first, as the prosecution, and set out
accurately what happened, from the start.
CHORUS: We’re no small group, but we can be succinct.
(to Orestes) Counter our words by answering in turn.
First, tell us, did you strike your mother down?
ORESTES: I killed her. There’s no way I could deny it.
CHORUS: I’ve pinned you once—twice more, and I’m the winner.*53
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ORESTES: You’re bragging, but I’m not yet on the ground.
CHORUS: We’ll see. (indicates jury) You need to tell them how you killed her.
ORESTES: I will. I drew my sword and cut her throat.
CHORUS: But who persuaded you? Who planned the crime?
ORESTES: (indicating Apollo) His holy words did that—and he’s my witness.
CHORUS: The prophet guided you to matricide?
ORESTES: Yes, and I never faulted what occurred.
CHORUS: Once in the verdict’s grip, you won’t say that.
ORESTES: I trust him—and the help the grave will send me.
CHORUS: Yes, trust a corpse, good—though you killed your mother.
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ORESTES: I did, because her hands were soiled twice over.
CHORUS: What do you mean? Explain it to the judges!
ORESTES: She butchered both her husband and my father.
CHORUS: So? You’re alive, she’s murdered—that absolves her.
ORESTES: Why didn’t you hound her, while she was living?
CHORUS: Because she didn’t kill a blood-relation!
ORESTES: But do I share my mother’s blood myself?
CHORUS: How else could you have grown beneath her belt,
you monster? You disown your mother’s own blood?
ORESTES: Now you, Apollo, testify and tell me
610
what the law dictates: Was I right to kill her?
Those are the facts—I don’t deny I did it.
But give your reasoned judgment of this bloodshed
as just or not, and I’ll inform the men here.
APOLLO: (to jurymen) To you, Athena’s lofty institution,
I pronounce this act just. I am a prophet
of truth, who never from my seer’s throne
spoke of a man, a woman, or a city
except as Zeus, the Olympians’ father, ordered.
I ask you all to understand this plea’s force,
620
and fall in with my father’s plan, since over
the will of Zeus your oath cannot prevail.
CHORUS: You say Zeus sent this oracle, which told
Orestes to avenge his father’s murder
with no regard whatever for his mother?
APOLLO: Yes—it is different when a nobleman,
who’s honored with the scepter Zeus bestows,
dies, and a woman kills him—not the rushing
arrows a far-off Amazon might launch,
but an event you, Pallas, and those sitting
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with you will hear about and vote to judge.
Back from his expedition (for the most part
a profitable venture), sweet
ly welcomed
[…]*54
He underwent a bath, but at the end
she wrapped her husband in a cloak, a tent,
a shroud, an endless hobbling maze, and struck him.
This sets the man’s death out for you. The marshal
of the ships was a sublime, majestic man.
[…]*55
I end a speech that’s meant to sting the people,
stationed here to decide the case, to rage.
640
CHORUS: Zeus privileges a father’s fate, you tell us.
But Zeus chained up his own old father, Cronus.*56
What can this do but fight with what you say?
(to the jurymen) I call on you to hear this evidence.
APOLLO: Monsters! Loathed by the world, despised by gods!
Zeus could take off those chains, since there are cures
for bonds, expedients of every kind.
But once a man is dead, and dust has guzzled
his blood, he’s never going to rise again.
For this, there are no healing spells my father
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devised; other conditions he can turn
back and forth effortlessly, at his will.
CHORUS: Look how you plead for him to be acquitted!
He soaked the ground with blood he shared, and now
he’ll live in Argos, in his father’s house?
Which of the public altars can he stand at?
What phratry will admit him to its rites?*57
APOLLO: I’ll say still more—you’ll see how sensibly.
The person called the mother’s not the parent.
She only nourishes the embryo
660
planted by mounting her, and for a stranger
she keeps the shoot alive—if no god blights it.*58
And I can prove my claim: without a mother
there can be fatherhood. For this we have
proof here (points to Athena), the offspring of Olympian Zeus,
not nurtured in the darkness of the womb.*59
No goddess could give birth to such a child.
Athena, I will use all my skill to make
your city and its people great. This man
is part of that; I sent him to your hearth,
670
which will ensure eternal faithfulness,
securing both himself and his descendants
to fight beside you, goddess, for all time.*60
These judges’ sons will not regret the pact.
ATHENA: Shall I now order them to cast their votes
as they think right? Is what they’ve heard enough?
APOLLO: Yes, we’ve shot every arrow in the quiver.
I’ll wait to hear their judgment of the case.
ATHENA: (to the Chorus) How to proceed, then—blamelessly, in your eyes?
CHORUS: What we have heard, we’ve heard, so cast your ballots,
680
strangers—but keep your sacred oaths in mind!
ATHENA: People of Athens, hear what I decree
as you decide in this first trial for bloodshed.
Into the future, too, Aegeus’ cohort*61
will never lack this council and tribunal
at Ares’ Crag,*62 the Amazons’ encampment
when they had marched here on campaign, in rancor
at Theseus.*63 They built a stronghold facing
our own:*64 the two high towers went head to head.
They sacrificed to Ares—hence the name
690
the rocky hill is known by. Reverent fear,
inborn in people of the town, will keep them
from all wrongdoing here, in light or darkness—
if citizens themselves don’t change the laws.
Once you’ve run noxious mire into the spring,
then what you find to drink will never glitter.
I urge this polity: esteem and guard
what’s neither lawlessness nor tyranny.
And leave some fear: don’t banish all of it.
What man on earth can be both just and fearless?
700
So if the thought of justice terrifies you,
you’ll have salvation for your land and city.
There’s no such fortress elsewhere for mankind—
no, not in Scythia or Pelops’ country.*65
Greed won’t lay dirty fingers on this council
that I ordain: it’s upright, quick to anger,
a wakeful sentry in a sleeping country.
I’ve taken time admonishing the people
of my town about the future. You must rise now
and cast your ballots to decide the case,
710
keeping your oaths. My speech is at an end.
(During the next exchanges, jurors come forward one by one and place their ballots in one of the two urns at center stage, one a receptacle for votes to convict, the other for those to acquit.)
CHORUS: I urge you to give visitors like us—
a hazard to your land—no kind of slight.
APOLLO: I tell you, hold my oracles—and Zeus’—
in proper awe, and let them bear their fruit.
CHORUS: You have no right to be concerned with bloodshed.
The shrine you live and speak in will be sullied.
APOLLO: That means my father erred when he approved
Ixion’s plea and cleansed mankind’s first murder.*66
CHORUS: You say so! If the verdict disappoints me,
720
from now on I’ll deal harshly with this land.
APOLLO: All the same, both the young and older gods
have no regard for you, and I will win.
CHORUS: You overstepped in Pheres’ house, persuading
the Fates to stop the wilt of mortal lives.*67
APOLLO: Is kindness not a just return for reverence
always, but most of all when it’s most needed?
CHORUS: You did away with primal dispensations,
gulling the ancient goddesses with wine.
APOLLO: Soon, when the verdict fails you, you’ll spew venom
730
that gives your enemies no pain at all.
CHORUS: A high young horse, to ride your elders down with!
Waiting to hear the verdict, I suspend
the anger I might level at the city.
(The last juror has cast his ballot, and Athena now comes forward to do so.)
ATHENA: The final judgment lies in my hands now:
I mean to give it in Orestes’ favor.
There is no mother who gave birth to me.
With all my heart, I hold with what is male—
except through marriage. I am all my father’s,
no partisan of any woman killed
740
for murdering her husband, her home’s watchman.
Even with equal votes, Orestes wins.
Whichever judges were assigned this task,
empty the urns as quickly as you can.
(Two jurymen come forward and move toward the urns. During the next eight lines, they empty the contents of the urns onto the table in two rows, so that their numbers are visible to those onstage.)
ORESTES: Phoebus Apollo, what will be the verdict?
CHORUS: Black mother, Night, do you look on, this moment?
ORESTES: I’ll die now by the noose, or live in daylight.
CHORUS: We’ll go to ruin, or go on in honor.
APOLLO: The votes are poured out. Strangers, count them right,
in awe of justice as you do the sorting.
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Without good sense, great damage can be done;
a whole house can stand upright on one pebble!*68
ATHENA: This man’s acquitted from the charge of bloodshed.
The ballots have been reckoned up as equal.*69
ORESTES: You, Pallas, are the savior of my house,
settling me in the fatherland they stole.
The Greeks will say, “This man’s once more an Argive
and living on his father’s property,
and this he owes to Pallas, Loxias,
and the all-fulfilling Savior we invoke
760
with the third cup.”*70 He faced my mother’s patrons,
taking my father’s death to heart, and saved me.
And now as I depart for home, I swear
to this country and the people living in it:
for all of time, into an endless future,
no chieftain from my land will ever bring
an army, with its deadly gear, against you;*71
when I am in my grave, I will make certain
that anyone who violates my oath
will find frustration in that enterprise.
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I’ll place him on dispiriting roads, ill-omened
passages, so that he regrets his trouble.
But if what’s right prevails and Pallas’ city
always finds honor in the allied spear,
I’ll look more kindly on my citizens.*72
(to Athena) Farewell to you, then, and the city’s people!
May your opponents feel the iron headlock
that brings you victory in war and saves you.
(He exits. The Furies, who have been silent since the counting of the votes, begin to chant in angry rhythms that recall their first song. Athena, more restrained, responds to them in iambic trimeters.)
strophe 1
CHORUS: Younger gods, tearing ancient laws
from my hands, riding them down and trampling them!
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I am miserable, so miserable in this land’s contempt
and my deep rage.
Poison, the poison of revenge for grief,
I will let loose from my heart,
I will drip the excruciating
liquid on this land.
No leaf, no child will survive my blight—oh, Justice, Justice,
skim over the ground,
hurl your miasmas, your massacres through the country.
What can I do but groan?
They laugh at me. The town’s tribunal
790
wounded me unendurably.
Pity us, Night’s stricken daughters,
stripped of our honor.
ATHENA: Don’t groan so heavily—let me persuade you.
You’re not defeated, since the verdict was
truly divided, which is no disgrace.
The evidence of Zeus was merely plain;
the oracle’s own source has testified
about the act: Orestes is absolved.
The Greek Plays Page 21