The Complete Aeschylus - Volume I: The Oresteia

by Aeschylus

  a Scylla coiled in the rocks, the sailors’ scourge,

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  implacable raging hell-hag breathing war

  against her own! And how she trumpeted

  her triumph, she who stops at nothing, as if

  she herself turned the tide of battle, even while

  she seemed to revel in his safe return.

  And whether you believe all this or not,

  it doesn’t matter. What is coming, comes.

  And soon you will yourself stand here and say,

  in pity, that my words were all too true.

  CHORUS LEADER Thyestes feeding on his children’s flesh

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  I understand, and tremble at, and am seized

  by terror as I hear it told in truth,

  not in deceiving images. But when

  I hear the rest I lose the path and stray.

  CASSANDRA I say you’ll look on Agamemnon butchered.

  CHORUS LEADER Hush these bad omens, lull your mouth to sleep.

  CASSANDRA And yet there is no healing for these words.

  CHORUS LEADER No, if it’s meant to be—but may it not.

  CASSANDRA And while you pray, they’re busy with the killing.

  CHORUS LEADER Who is the man who crafts this hateful crime?

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  CASSANDRA How it eludes you, the track of my prophecies.

  CHORUS LEADER I don’t see the device of the designer.

  CASSANDRA Yet I am all too fluent in the Greek tongue.

  CHORUS LEADER So are the Pythian oracles, but hard to follow.

  CASSANDRA POPOI! It’s like fire, and it burns down over me!

  Wolf-god Apollo, ah, OTOTOTOI POPOI!

  This lioness on two feet, she who beds

  down with the wolf when the noble lion’s gone,

  will tear me open, wretched as I am;

  and as if brewing a black enchantment, she

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  will mix my quittance in the cup as well,

  and as she sharpens the blade edge for the man,

  brag that he will pay for bringing me here.

  So why do I go on mocking myself, keeping

  this staff, these fillets at my neck, these trappings

  of prophecy?

  (breaking her ceremonial staff)

  At least I can destroy you

  before my own destruction!

  (throwing down her garlands)

  Off now, go,

  fall to your utter ruin! And as you fall

  feel how I pay you back! Make someone else,

  other than me, more richly destitute!

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  (tearing off her priestly robe)

  But see, Apollo, yes, his very self,

  is stripping me of my prophetic garb,

  he who looked on while I was jeered at,

  despite my vestments, ridiculed by friends

  turned enemies, mocked surely, though in vain,

  but like some homeless drifter people taunt

  with “beggar,” “vagrant,” “starveling,” I bore it all.

  And the prophet has destroyed his prophetess,

  escorting me off to meet my fate right here,

  right now. No, not my father’s altar now

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  awaits me, but a chopping block my blood

  will redden soon, a steaming libation for the dead.

  Yet my death, too, will not go unavenged

  by heaven, for there will come, in turn, another

  to avenge us, a son who will slay his mother, requite

  his father; an exile and a wanderer, hounded

  far from this land, he will return to put

  the capstone on this killing of his kin.

  For the gods have sworn a great oath that the stroke

  that brings his father down will bring him home.

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  Why am I keening so, since I have seen

  Ilium’s city go the way it has gone,

  and seen, too, those that made the city suffer

  suffer in turn such judgment from the gods.

  My turn to die now—I will dare to go.

  I call this door I’ll enter, the door of Hades.

  I pray the readied stroke is swift, and that,

  without a struggle as my blood spurts forth

  in easy death, I simply close my eyes.

  CHORUS LEADER O woman, greatly pitied and greatly wise,

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  you have spoken much. But if you truly know

  your fate, how can you go up to the altar

  more calmly than a cow the god escorts.

  CASSANDRA Friends, there’s no escaping what’s here already.

  CHORUS LEADER The less time one has, the more one clings to it.

  CASSANDRA The day is here; what use is there in fleeing?

  CHORUS LEADER Know yours is a brave heart, to endure like this.

  CASSANDRA No happy person’s ever praised this way.

  CHORUS LEADER But a death that brings glory is a blessing.

  CASSANDRA Alas for you, father, and for your high-born children!

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  CASSANDRA steps toward the palace,

  then starts back in horror.

  CHORUS LEADER What is it? What fear stops you, pulls you back?

  CASSANDRA PHEU! PHEU!

  CHORUS LEADER Why this cry? Some terror in your mind?

  CASSANDRA The stench of slaughter. The whole house reeks of blood.

  CHORUS LEADER How so? That’s just the smell of sacrifice at the hearth.

  CASSANDRA It’s like the exhalation from a tomb.

  CHORUS LEADER You smell no Syrian incense in this house.

  CASSANDRA And yet I go into the house to mourn

  my fate and Agamemnon’s. Enough for living!

  (Again she turns suddenly from the

  doors of the palace.)

  Ah, my friends, I won’t cry any cry

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  of terror like a panicky small bird

  caught in a bush. But after I am dead,

  you be my witnesses when a woman is killed

  for me, a woman, and a man dies,

  in turn, for a man unlucky in his wife.

  I ask this as your guest bound now for death.

  CHORUS LEADER Poor girl, I pity you for this end you see.

  CASSANDRA I want to say one more thing, and not just sing

  my own lament: I pray to the sun’s last shining

  that my avengers will exact a bloody

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  payment from my foes, for my murder too,

  for murdering a slave, a harmless prey.

  Alas for men and their vicissitudes!

  In good times one may say they’re like a shadow;

  in bad times like a picture that a wet sponge

  brushing against it lightly wipes away.

  And these I pity so much more than those.

  CASSANDRA exits resolutely through the palace door.

  CHORUS Whoever says, that is enough

  good fortune? No one

  would ever bar it from the high

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  halls, leaning hard against the door

  and saying, “Never come here again.”

  So to this man the blessed ones

  allowed that he

  should capture Priam’s city and

  come home weighed down with honor

  from all the gods.

  But if he must atone for blood

  his forebears shed and by dying for

  the dead ordain that others die,

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  in turn, for him, who, among mortals,

  can boast of being

  born to a fate immune from harm?

  Cries are heard from within the palace.

  AGAMEMNON Oh! I’ve been struck, and the stroke is deep and deadly!

  CHORUS LEADER Shh! Who cries he’s been stabbed and gravely wounded?

  AGAMEMNON Oh! yet ag
ain I’m dealt a second blow!

  CHORUS LEADER Hear how the king cries. I think the deed’s been done.

  Let’s ask ourselves what we can safely do.

  CHORUS MEMBER 1 Here’s my idea—we summon everyone

  throughout the city, and we storm the palace.

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  CHORUS MEMBER 2 I say we break in now, at once, and seize them

  with the blood still dripping from their swords.

  CHORUS MEMBER 3 Yes, I agree with that, and vote for acting

  right away, this is no time for dithering.

  CHORUS MEMBER 4 It’s all too clear from what they’ve done already

  they’re planning to be tyrants of the city.

  CHORUS MEMBER 5 Yes, while we waste time, they’re alert and busy,

  trampling down the fair name of delay.

  CHORUS MEMBER 6 I can’t tell which plan would be best. Someone

  readier to act could think this through more clearly.

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  CHORUS MEMBER 7 I feel the same way, for I don’t see how

  by mere words we can raise the dead again.

  CHORUS MEMBER 8 Yet just to save our skins shall we bow down

  and kneel to those who have defiled the house?

  CHORUS MEMBER 9 No, anything but that; better to die,

  for death’s an easier fate than tyranny.

  CHORUS MEMBER 10 Yet can we say for sure, just on the strength

  of hearing the king cry out, that he’s been killed?

  CHORUS MEMBER 11 We need to know the facts before deciding

  what we should do; guessing isn’t knowing.

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  CHORUS LEADER All my votes go for this course: that we learn

  for certain how it is with Atreus’ son.

  The palace doors open, and CLYTEMNESTRA

  is seen standing over the dead bodies of AGAMEMNON,

  wrapped in a crimson-colored robe, and of

  CASSANDRA at his side.

  CLYTEMNESTRA I tailored much of what I said before

  to suit the time. But now I feel no shame

  to say I lied. For how else could I give

  my enemies (even when they’re disguised

  as friends) what they deserve, how else set up

  the nets of harm so high no one can over-

  leap them? I have been brooding for a long time

  over this strife bred from an ancient feud,

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  and now at long last it’s come; and here I stand,

  here where I cut him down, my aim achieved.

  My aim was so exact—I won’t deny it—

  that he could not outrun death, or fend it off

  once I ensnared him in a deadly wealth

  of robes, escapeless as a fishing net;

  I struck him twice, and while he cried two cries,

  his legs gave way. Then soon as he was down,

  I struck him yet again, and the third stroke fell

  as a votive offering for the Zeus

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  below the ground, the savior of the dead.

  And so he fell, and panted his life away,

  and breathing out a last sharp gale of blood

  he drenched me in the dark red showering gore,

  and I rejoiced in it, rejoiced no less

  than all the plants rejoice in Zeus-given

  rainfalls at the birthtime of the buds.

  Now things stand where they stand, my honored lords

  of Argos; if you will rejoice, rejoice;

  but know I revel in it. If it were ever

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  right to pour libations joyfully

  over a corpse, it would be more than just

  to pour them over him! Such is the curse-

  brimmed mixing bowl he filled up in the house

  and, now he’s home, has swilled down to the dregs.

  CHORUS LEADER Your tongue astounds us, how you can swagger so

  over the butchered body of your husband.

  CLYTEMNESTRA You test me as if I were a witless woman;

  but I speak with undaunted heart to you

  who know, and it’s all one, whether you praise

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  or blame me. This is Agamemnon, my husband,

  now a corpse, the work of this right hand,

  a righteous workman. There’s nothing more to say.

  CHORUS Woman, what foul food nursed

  deep in the earth, or what drink drawn

  from the flowing sea could you have tasted

  to take on yourself so horrible

  a sacrifice and the people’s curse?

  You have cast away, you have cut away,

  and away will you go from the city, under

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  the full weight of the city’s hate.

  CLYTEMNESTRA Now I’m the one you would condemn, would cast

  out from the city, with the people’s hate

  and loud curses all about me, though before,

  back then, not one of you said anything

  against this man, when easily, with no compunction,

  as if it were a beast he slaughtered,

  plucked from a wide field swarming with fattened sheep,

  he slit his own child’s throat—the child I carried,

  in pain bore, loved—and all for what, to charm

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  the winds of Thrace? Why wasn’t he the one

  you banished from the land in punishment

  for that foul act? Yet now you hear my case

  and all at once you are a ruthless judge.

  Well, I warn you: threaten me all you want,

  and know that if you bring me down in a

  fair fight I am prepared to let you rule;

  But if by god’s will it goes otherwise,

  you’ll learn discretion, though you learn it late.

  CHORUS Your daring’s outrageous, your words

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  too cocksure; your mind is maddened

  by your blood-dripping deed; your eyes

  shine, speckled with blood. Your honor gone,

  deserted by your friends, you’ll pay

  at last for this, pay stroke for stroke.

  CLYTEMNESTRA Listen: there’s more—hear my solemn oath!

  I swear by Justice, completed for my child,

  by Ruin, by the blood-crazed Erinys,

  to whom I sacrificed this man that my hopes

  will never pace the corridors of fear

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  so long as the fire on my hearth is kindled

  and kept bright by Aegisthus, just as loyal

  to me as ever; for in him I have

  a shield of trust nothing can ever shatter.

  So here he lies, the one who wronged me, playboy

  of each Chryseis beneath the walls of Troy!

  And here beside him is his spear bride

  and fortune-teller, the trusty sibyl of his bed,

  whore of the sailors’ benches! Now they receive

  the honor they deserve. For here he lies,

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  and here, too, after singing her last lament

  like a swan, she lies beside him as his lover.

  For me, she only brought an added relish,

  a saucy garnish to my bed’s delight.

  CHORUS Ah! If only quickly,

  Kommos / Strophe 1

  painlessly, free of the drawn

  out vigil of the sickbed,

  some fate would bring to us now

  the sleep no one will wake from

  ever, now that he is slain,

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  the best of guardians

  who in a woman’s name

  suffered so much, and by

  a woman’s hand is dead.

  Ah, ah, crazed Helen—

  Mesode 1

  you who alone brought down

  so many, those numberless many

  lives beneath Troy—now you’ve crowne
d yourself

  with this last, this perfect garland through the

  willing of the blood not washed away.

  1670

  So it was true, all along

  unshakable strife dwelled in the house,

  a husband’s misery.

  CLYTEMNESTRA Don’t pray for death because of this!

  Don’t train your wrath

  on Helen, making her alone

  the man-destroyer, the one who turned

  so many Danaan lives to wreckage,

  and made a grief no one can master.

  CHORUS Furious Spirit, you swoop

  Antistrophe 1

  1680

  down on the house, on the two

  heirs of Tantalus, and

  hold sway through women

  of like mind, and through them

  press such crushing

  weight against my heart!

  You stand over the body

  like a famished crow

  and caw in brash abandon

  your harsh discordant cry.

  1690

  CLYTEMNESTRA You talk sense now by calling on

  the triple-glutted

  Spirit of this race! He feeds the lust

  for blood deep in the belly, the thirst

  to lap it up, and before the old

  wound heals, the fresh pus swells and oozes.

  CHORUS The Spirit whose praises you sing

  Strophe 2

  has the house gripped tight;

  truly his wrath is heavy.

  Ah, you praise sheer evil

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  that fills its maw with misfortune,