[Not yet day. The WATCHMAN can be discerned on the roof of the palace.]
I beg you gods: release me from this drudgery,
this year long spent as lookout,
time I’ve crouched through like some watchdog,
bedded up here on the palace roof of Atreus’ sons.
I’ve got to know the gathering of the stars,
distinguishing those sparkling dynasties
which bring the winter and the summer with their rise and fall.
And now I’m watching for a token marked in flame,
the gleam of fire that brings a word from Troy:
10 the message it has fallen.
And in control of this there waits a heart in hope,
a woman’s heart that organizes like a man.
But as I pass the night upon my restless dew-drenched bed—
it is unvisited by dreams, this bed of mine,
because it’s fear, not sleep, that visits me
and stops my eyes from closing fast—
whenever I would like to sing or hum,
dispensing music as a healing antidote,
instead I weep for how this house has met bad times,
not managed for the best as once it was.
20 Now, though, let’s hope there’ll be
a bright release from all this pain:
the flame in darkness that declares good news.
[Silence while he watches . . . he sees the distant beacon.]
The beacon! Welcome!
beaming through this night as bright as day!
There will be carnivals of song and dance
in Argos at this happy turn.
[He cries out in jubilation.]
I’m calling clear to Agamemnon’s wife:
stir out of bed, and quickly as you can
raise through the house a triumph-cry
in celebration of this flame.
The town of Troy is overthrown!
30 the beacon-message tells us clear.
I’m going myself to start a jig of joy
to match my master’s winning throw,
because this beacon-watch has cast a triple six.
At least I hope to greet the ruler of this house
and clasp his much-loved hand in this of mine.
As for the rest, I’m keeping quiet—
a hulking ox is standing on my tongue.
The house itself, if it could find a voice,
would speak out all too clear.
I’m saying this to those who know my drift:
for those who don’t . . . it’s slipped my mind.
[He goes; the CHORUS of elders enters.]
40 Ten long years now since the day that
Menelaus, prosecuting
Priam, strongly honor-bonded
with his brother Agamemnon—
double-rulers, Zeus-descended—
launched their thousand-ship armada
from this country, battle claimants.
“War!” they cry out, “war!” and shrieking
sail like eagles high above their
50 emptied eyrie; range in anguish
for their children; wheel in spirals,
rowing with their feathered oar-strokes,
since they’ve wasted all that labor,
nest-patrolling for their hatchlings.
High above some god does hear them—
Pan or Zeus or lord Apollo—
hears the piercing, keening bird-cry;
sends against the trespassers a
late-avenging Erinys.
In this spirit, Zeus, who guards the
60 rights of host and guest, dispatches
Atreus’ sons against prince Paris;
all about a much-manned woman,
he imposes grueling struggles—
knees in dust and splintered lances—
pressed on both the Greeks and Trojans.
That is where these things are poised now,
heading for the end that’s destined:
70 no amount of sacrificing
can placate relentless anger.
As for us, back then we had no
strength to offer with our wasted
muscles, so we stayed behind here,
propped up on these wooden crutches.
There’s no camp for war within us;
and the very old, with leafage
80 dry, already withered, drift on
triple-footed journeys, shadows,
merely dreams by daylight.
What’s the news, queen Clytemnestra?
what’s the message that has led you
to proclaim these sacrifices?
All the altars flame with offerings
to the gods who help the city—
90 those of sky, earth, meeting-places—
everywhere the flames are leaping,
conjured by the purest resin,
ointments from the royal storehouse.
Tell as much as you are able
and is proper: do your best to
cure this anxious fear that plagues us.
100 Sometimes it recurs malignant,
while, at others, soothing hope comes
from your sacrifices, fending
off the heart-devouring anguish.
Since this god-given gift
has stayed with me strong
through my whole life, the power
of persuasive song,
I can command the art
to evoke in words
the omen that sent off
our departing lords.
So I shall tell of those
birds of prey that faced
the double chiefs of our
110 Greek youth on their quest
to take their vengeful spears
to Troy’s distant shore—
kings of birds to match
our kings of the oar.
One eagle’s tail was black
and the other’s white;
they flew along the camp’s
spear-hand, to the right,
and made their perch where all
could observe them clear:
they tore their talons’ prey,
body of a hare—
a hare whose womb was crammed
with its embryo-young,
stopped short while racing on
120 its life’s final run.
Cry out, cry out with grief, I say;
yet hope what’s best will win the day.
The prophet Calchas saw
those who rent the hare
reflected Atreus’ sons,
the contrasting pair.
He spoke this prophecy:
“Once proper time’s passed by,
this invading force
130 is bound to conquer Troy—
the city sacked, and its
human animals
massacred in flocks
within their own walls.
My only fear’s that some
god will take offense,
and stain the curb of Troy
tarnished in advance.
For Artemis is stirred
by compassion’s pangs;
resents her father’s cruel
terriers with wings,
who sacrifice the hare’s
still-born leverets.
It is this eagles’ feast
Artemis detests.”
Cry out, cry out with grief, I say;
yet hope what’s best will win the day.
140 “Artemis is so gentle,
favoring new-born nurslings,
fond of the suckling kittens
of every ranging creature.
So she demands atonement,
balance for this defilement.
Partly propitious I see,
partly malign, this portent.
I am disturbed in case she
should generate relentless
counterwinds, ship-detaining,
stopping the Greeks from sailing.
150 Don’t, goddess, stir that other
sacrifice with no music,
no celebratory feasting—
that architect, inbred worker
of quarrels, who fears no husband.
For waiting behind is lurking
a frightening, reawakening,
devious house-caretaker,
long-memoried, child-avenging
Fury.” This was what Calchas
prophesied from the bird-signs,
mixed with good for the royal
household as they departed.
Sing this refrain in chorus:
“Cry out, cry out with grief, I say;
yet hope what’s best will win the day.”
160 Zeus—
whoever he may be—but Zeus,
if he’s contented with that name,
remains the title I shall use:
there is no other key or claim,
none to compare, if I should try
to balance all the world by weight,
except for “Zeus”: no, not if I
still hope to cast my mind’s disquiet
(167) away in all reality.
(176) Zeus—
who set us humans on the road
to finding wisdom on our own,
and fixed this precept for our good,
the truth that “learning comes through pain.”
Through hearing its persistent drip,
180 the agony of pain recalled
molds our thoughts in place of sleep;
and brings sound mind, although not willed.
This favor from the gods’ high throne
is kind but forcibly laid down.
So was it for the elder king,
commander of the great Greek fleet,
not blaming seers for anything,
but breathing as the winds inflate,
when all the host was stuck aground,
because the ships could not set sail,
and all the soldiers were worn down,
their stomachs filled with hunger’s pain,
190 pinned where the surging currents roar,
encamped on Aulis’ sandy shore.
The winds unrelenting
from the northeast sent them
idleness and hunger,
insecure at anchor,
constant people-chafing,
rotting ship and cable,
stretching out the days redoubled,
scouring the Greek bloom to stubble.
Then a grimmer course was offered
200 to the leaders by the prophet,
medicine for the bitter tempest.
This solution, naming
Artemis as plaintiff,
made the sons of Atreus
beat earth with their scepters;
and there was no keeping
bitter tears from dropping.
The elder king then poses
his dilemma-choices:
“Heavy chaos waiting
for my not obeying:
heavy, though, the future
chaos if I butcher
my own household’s precious glory,
210 stain my hands with daughter pouring
life-blood on the altar table.
Which of these is free from evil?
How can I desert my navy?
How betray my allies?
For their keen desire cries
for the wind to fade now,
for a virgin’s blood now.
All that’s right forbids this:
may what’s best conclude this.”
Once he had placed his neck beneath the harness
of what had to be,
220 he veered the breathings of his thought to godless,
rank impiety.
From then he turned his mind to foster plans of
sheer audacity—
for clever, scheming madness, trouble-starting,
can make people bold.
And so he steeled his hand to grasp his daughter’s
sacrificial blade;
did all this to support a war of vengeance
for a woman’s bed.
They count as nothing all her “father”-cries, her
pleas, her virgin-years,
230 those battle-loving lords. The father tells his men
to pray and then to raise
her high above the altar like a goat-kid
for the sacrifice;
with all their will to hold her and her trailing
robes in readiness,
neck facing down. They tie a fetter round her
lovely cheeks and face,
a gag to hold her tongue from words to put her
house beneath a curse.
They used the bridle’s brutal force
to muffle up her voice;
and as her saffron-tinted cloth
fell pouring to the earth,
240 she shot each leader standing by
an arrow from her eye,
imploring pity. Beauty standing out
as in a work of art,
she longed to call out all their names,
since there were many times
she’d sung the maiden paean-hymn
within her father’s hall,
to chime with their third good-luck toast,
and grace her father’s feast.
What happened next upon that day
I neither saw nor say.
The things that Calchas’ skill foretold
did not go unfulfilled.
250 The scales of Justice weigh out gain
to those who’ve learned from pain:
but as for what the future bears,
you’ll hear as it occurs.
Let be: it will emerge as bright
as when the dawn brings light.
Let’s hope the rest at any rate
will turn out fortunate,
as we would wish, the old and loyal,
this land’s defensive wall.
[Enter CLYTEMNESTRA from the palace.]
I’m here in homage to your power, queen Clytemnestra,
since it’s right to show respect
toward the consort of a ruler,
260 when the throne’s been emptied of the male.
I would be glad to know from you if you are sacrificing
in the knowledge of some firm good news,
or in the hope of hearing something welcome . . .
but I’ll not object if you stay silent.
May dawn deliver her good news
that’s born from kindly mother night.
Here is intelligence more joyful far than could be hoped for:
yes, the Greeks have taken Priam’s city.
What do you mean? I can’t quite catch your words as real.
Troy’s fallen to the Greeks—do I make that clear?
270 I am so overwhelmed with joy I can’t restrain my tears.
Your eyes profess your loyal thoughts.
But what are you relying on? Have you clear proof?
Of course I have, unless a god has played a trick on me.
Is it the tempting vision of a dream that you put faith in?
I’d not accept the mirage of a drowsing mind.
Then has some fluttering rumor lifted you?
You are insulting my intelligence as though I were some girl.
How long ago, then, was the city taken?
I told you: in the kindly night that gave birth to this day.
280 Tell me, what messenger could travel here so fast?
Hephaestus.
It was he who sent the bright gleam blazing on its way
from Troy’s Mount Ida; and then beacon after beacon
passed along a chain of couriers to here.
The hills of Ida sent it to Hermaeon crag on Lemnos;
from that island, next the towering promontory
of Athos took in hand the mighty torch.
Then, flaring bright to leap across the sea’s rough back,
<the flame-light reached Peparathos,
where piles of resin-pine passed on>
the golden sunlike messenger to make its landfall
on the lookout peak of Macistos.
290 That stage was not delayed by carelessness or sleep,
but flashed the beacon-signal far across the straits of Aulis
to the watchmen on Massapion.
They kept the sequence going strong by lighting heaps
of dried-out brushwood, so the torch undimmed
jumped right across the plain of Asopus
to rouse the next link of the chain high on Cithaeron’s crags.
(300) The watch there kindled even more, and sent the beacon
swooping over Gorgon Lake to Mount Geranion.
The men there waiting, keen to follow, sent the beard of flame
across the headland overlooking the Saronic gulf.
And then it swooped and safe arrived
on Arachnaeon’s height, our neighboring lookout point.
So finally it leapt upon this rooftop
310 of the sons of Atreus—this light,
direct descendant from the fire of Troy.
This is the way I organized my relay race
of beacons, carried to its end
by handing on from one stage to the next.
Such is the quality of proof I tell you of,
transmitted from my man at Troy to me.
I shall pray later to the gods, my lady;
but first in my astonishment I’d dearly like
to hear again these things that you have spoken of.
320 The Greeks are occupying Troy this very day.
And I imagine there’s discordant shouting in the town.
Put oil and vinegar together in a jar,
they stay apart, irreconcilable, you’d say:
just so the sounds you hear from conquerors
and conquered—fates so different.
One side falls down and clutches at the bodies
of dead husbands, brothers, parents’ parents,
as they mourn their dearest dead from throats enslaved.
330 Meanwhile the others, after roaming through the night,
all weary from the battle, turn to feeding,
hungry for whatever they can find—
not orderly but grasping at what chance may grant.
They occupy the captured Trojan dwellings,
and, relieved from camping in the open
with the dew and frost, they sleep like happy men
all through the kindly night, no need of guards.
Provided that they show due reverence to the gods
who hold that conquered land, and to their shrines,
340 the captors should not then become
the captured in their turn.
I fear, though, that the lust to plunder what they should not
may invade the troops as they give in to greed.
Remember they have yet to make their journey
safely back around the homeward section of the course.
But if the army can return
without offense against the gods,
the price paid by the dead might be appeased—
provided no disastrous twist of fate intrudes.
Well, that’s the lesson that you hear from me,
the woman. May what’s best win out,
(350) and in a way that’s clear beyond dispute.
[CLYTEMNESTRA goes back into the palace.]
You’ve spoken, woman,
shrewdly as a man, one of good sense.
And now that I have heard persuasive evidence from you,
I shall prepare to offer to the gods due thanks,
since such high favor has been granted
in return for all our pains.
Mighty Zeus along with star-lit
Night in league, you threw your tightly
clinging meshes over all the
topmost towers of Troy to make it
sure no adults, no young children
360 could escape the vast enslaving
trawl-net, all-entrapping ruin.
And to Zeus the host-protector,
who achieved this, I pay homage.
Long has he been waiting with his
bowstring drawn to shoot at Paris,
aiming so his arrow does not
fall short wasted, nor go flying
off above the constellations.
The hammer-blow of Zeus
you might well call it;
it can be traced to source
if you explore it.
Some people say the gods
370 will take no notice
when mortals trample things
which are so precious
they should not be touched—
but that is impious.
Disaster’s sure for those
with too much daring,
and those whose puffed-up pride
is overbearing,
with houses full of goods
to overflowing.
Enough is good enough
380 for wise discretion:
a man with excess wealth
has no protection—
not once he’s idly kicked
the altar-base
of mighty Justice into
darkest space.
His downfall is enforced
by hard Persuasion;
no remedy can cure
his infestation,
which glows with ghastly light
that can’t be hidden.
390 Like counterfeited bronze,
with scuffs and hitting
he tarnishes to black;
once brought to justice,
indelibly he smears
his city’s fortunes.
None of the gods will hear
his invocations,
as Justice crushes him
for those distortions.
One such corrupting man
was Trojan Paris,
who in the palace of
400 the sons of Atreus
breached hospitality
and decent life
by stealing and corrupting
his host’s wife.
So Helen went, and left behind
military raging,
recruiting of battalions,
troops to man the navy.
She brought to Troy catastrophe
as her marriage dowry;
tripped lightly in there through the gates,
reckless in her daring.
The seer back in the palace sighed,
sensing the disaster:
“Alas the house for what’s to come,
410 alas the house and master,
the empty bed, her trail of lust.
Sitting silent, broken,
he’ll waste with pining, long for her
far across the ocean;
and it will seem the house is ruled
by a fading phantom.
Her husband takes no pleasure in
lovely shapes of statues,
because, without her living eyes,
Aphrodite’s absent.”
The visions that appear in his
420 melancholy dreaming,
though vivid, bring no true relief,
only futile seeming;
for if what seems a rare delight
slips out from embraces,
it never will rejoin the joys
that wingèd sleep releases.
Distress like this pervades the house:
yet the grief spreads wider.
For every man who went from Greece
ready for the fighting,
conspicuous in each one’s house
there’s a woman sighing.
This is a thing that touches all
430 with heart-piercing passion,
since each of those that they sent off
was a living person.
Contrast the shape that comes back home,
entering their houses,
voiceless and cold: a hollow urn
filled with crumbling ashes.
Ares makes exchange for gold,
holding up his weighing-scales
on the bloody battlefield,
trading bodies for his sales.
He refines men through his fires
into gold-dust by the ton
440 sent back home from Trojan pyres,
bringing loved ones heavy pain.
Ares trades men into jars,
ashes for lament and praise:
“He,” they say, “knew battle skill”;
“this one sacrificed his life”;
“bravely in the field he fell”;
“died for . . . someone else’s wife.”
This they growl through gritted teeth;
450 and suppressed resentment burns,
aggravating spread of grief,
finding fault with Atreus’ sons.
Far away from here their men—
bodies that were beautiful—
win a burial in the earth
under hard-won Trojan soil.
With their low, resentful voice
citizens can raise a debt
that in time works as a curse.
There is a fear stays with me yet,
460 something roofed beneath the night:
gods maintain a watchful eye
on those who go beyond what’s right,
and who kill excessively.
And the dark Erinyes
wear away relentlessly
men who have unjust success,
and they punish them below.
Those who preen with too much praise
470 catch the lightning bolt from Zeus.
I would choose an easy life
free from envy’s ranging eye;
I’m not one to relish pain,
or to rage destructively.
May I not lay cities low,
putting people to the sword;
nor ever know captivity
subjected to an alien lord.
Prompted by the beacons, news
spread like wildfire through the city:
yet is it really true—who knows?—
or divine duplicity?
Who’s so childish, wonderstruck,
as to have their heart set blazing
480 by some new fire-message trick,
just as liable to changes?
This kind of guesswork will occur
when control rests with a woman:
she celebrates before it’s clear.
Gullible and rash, that’s women;
their chattering is quick to spread,
but, once flared, is quick to fade.
We soon shall know for sure about the lookout posts
490 and message-chains of flaming beacons:
whether they were true, or whether like some dream
this light of joy has made a fool of us.
I see a herald running from the shore,
an olive garland on his head;
the cloud of flying dust is evidence
this messenger will not be one without a voice
who kindles signal-fires and smoke from mountain timber.
He shall either speak out loud a stronger call
for celebration, or . . . but I recoil
from uttering the opposite of that.
I trust he will establish well
500 what has apparently seemed well.
And if there’s anyone with other wishes for this land,
I hope they reap the harvest of their own misguided thoughts.
[The HERALD has arrived by now.]
O soil of Argos, my ancestral country,
after ten long years I have returned to you this day!
At least I have achieved this,
even though so many of my hopes lay shattered
that I had despaired of ever dying here in Argos,
and of resting in our family tomb.
So greetings, land, and greetings, sun,
and Zeus, our highest guardian—
510 and you, Apollo, now restrain your arrows aimed at us
implacably upon Scamander’s banks,
and now once more be healer and protector.
I greet you, gods of gatherings, and you,
my guardian Hermes, herald-god of heralds;
and these local hero-gods, who sent us off:
I ask you all to welcome heartily
those of our men who have survived the war.
O palace of our rulers,
and you thrones and deities in front,
now, as before, receive our king,
520 so long away, with those bright eyes of yours,
because he brings illumination
through the dark to you and all in common here:
lord Agamemnon.
Welcome him right royally,
the man who has uprooted Troy by hacking
with the blade of justice-wielding Zeus.
Their soil has been completely turned,
the country’s every seed eliminated.
Such is the shackle he’s imposed on Troy,
this man of happy fate, the elder son of Atreus—
530 and he’s coming home.
Of every man alive he is the one most worthy
to be praised, because that Paris can no longer claim
his exploits pay more than his sufferings.
He’s been found guilty of both rape and robbery:
so now he’s lost his takings,
harvesting the total devastation of his dynasty—
the family of Priam has incurred a double punishment.
Herald from the army of the Greeks, I wish you joy!
And joy I have. I would no longer grudge the gods my death.
540 Has longing for your fatherland so worn you down?
So deeply that my eyes flood now with tears of joy.
Stirred up by longing for the ones who needed you.
This country yearned for those who yearned for it, you mean?
So much that I would grieve with gloomy sorrow.
But what provoked this sullen state of mind?
I’ve always said that silence is the antidote to harm.
Some people made you fearful in the rulers’ absence?
550 So much that, as you said, to die would be a blessing.
Well, things have been achieved; and we could say
that some, in this long stretch of years, have turned out well,
while others are more questionable.
But who except the gods can stay entirely free
from pain throughout the whole of time?
I might describe the labors and discomforts
on board ship, the narrow gangways
where we bedded down, the many deprivations
every day provided for complaint!
And then on land conditions were more loathsome still.
We had to camp out near the enemy walls,
where rainstorms pouring down and dampness
560 rising from the ground combined to keep us soaking wet,
so all our clothing was infested by the lice and leeches.
And then the winters, cold enough to kill the birds,
with winds from off the mountain snows.
And next the heat . . . the noondays when the sea
lay fast asleep in waveless torpor.
But why complain of all these things?
The pain is past, well past—so far so for the dead
that they don’t need to think of getting up again.
For us, the ones left living, benefit wins out,
and gains outweigh the losses—
(570) so good riddance to those sufferings!
It’s justified to boast before this sunlight
that the fame of our achievement
shall go flying over sea and land.
And we shall offer dedications that proclaim:
“The expedition of the Greeks defeated Troy,
and fixed these trophies to adorn the walls of shrines
throughout all Greece, a glory gleaming from the past.”
580 And now that you’ve heard this, it’s surely right
you offer praises to the country and its generals.
And thanks to Zeus who brought all this to be.
There, that’s my story for you.
I’m gladly won round by your speech—
capacity to learn stays ever youthful in old men.
But all these things, besides enriching me,
should rightly most concern the house,
and Clytemnestra.
[As the HERALD is about to go in, CLYTEMNESTRA comes out through the door.]
A while ago I raised my joyful triumph-cry,
back when the fiery messenger first came at night
to tell me of the capture and the sack of Troy.
590 And there were some who carped:
“What? Put such confidence in beacon-fires
as to suppose that Troy has now been taken?
Just like a woman to allow her heart
to be so easily elated!”—
they made me sound a lunatic.
All the same I offered sacrifice,
and, following the female custom,
throughout all the city first one woman here,
and then one there struck up the triumph-cry of joy,
and in the temples made the altars smoke with incense.
So now there is no need for you to talk to me
at greater length, when I shall hear
the tale in full told by the king himself.
600 I must make efforts, though, to welcome
my respected spouse as finely as I can when he arrives.
What day is sweeter for a wife than this:
to open wide the gates before her man
when he’s been safely brought home
by the gods from his campaigns?
So give this message to my husband:
to return as quickly as he can, the darling of the city.
And he should find his wife at home, as faithful
as the day he left her, guard dog of the house,
so loyal to him and fierce against his enemies.
In keeping with this task I have not broken
610 any seal or lock in all this stretch of time.
I have no deeper knowledge of enjoyment
or of scandal with another man
than I know how to dip and temper red-hot metal.
So there’s my boast, brim full of truth,
appropriate calling from a noble woman.
[Exit CLYTEMNESTRA back into the palace.]
So that is what she says to you;
and clear enough, if taken with interpretation,
speech that may sound well and good.
But tell me, herald, what of Menelaus?
Is he, the much-loved ruler of this land,
returning safe along with you?
620 There is no way that, if I give a false account,
it would sustain true friends for long.
I wish you could give news that is both good and true:
but if the two are split, there is no way to hide the rift.
He’s disappeared. The truth is that the man himself,
and his ship too, are missing from our fleet.
But did he set sail by himself from Troy?
Or did a tempest tear him from the rest of you?
Like a skillful archer you have hit the mark,
and put a great disaster in few words.
630 And do the other sailors reckon him alive or dead?
There’s none can give a sure report,
except the Sun that nurtures all that grows on earth.
So tell us how this storm that struck the fleet began and ended.
It’s not appropriate to sully a propitious day
with telling of bad news.
Suppose a messenger, his face all sorrow, has to tell a city
of atrocious sufferings for their defeated army,
640 and to bring one common wound for all the people;
it’s then appropriate for one who’s burdened
with a task like that to chant
a paean-hymn for the Erinyes.
But when a messenger comes with good news
about successes to a city that’s rejoicing . . .
how on earth am I to mix up good and bad
with telling of the storm
the gods brought down against the Greeks?
650 Two powers that have been always enemies
conspired together, Fire and Sea,
and sealed their pact by shattering
the wretched navy of the Greeks.
During the night a hell of waves arose:
gales from the north collided ships together,
driven by the lightning-swirls and pelting torrents
into goring one another’s flanks,
until they got all scattered, as though chased
by sheepdogs ordered by a vicious herdsman.
And when the shining sun arose, we saw
the plain of the Aegean waters blossoming
660 with corpses of Greek men and debris of their ships.
But as for us, our ship survived unscathed,
thanks to the stealth or pleading of a god—
it was no human took the helm,
but our preserving fortune must have steered
to rescue us from being swamped
upon the open sea, or driven on the rocks.
Then, once we had avoided watery death,
we turned our minds by light of day toward
670 this new disaster that had smashed our fleet.
And now if any of the others still remain alive,
they must be thinking we are drowned,
just as we think the same’s befallen them.
But may things turn out for the best.
And Menelaus you might think, if anyone,
will get safe back, if light shines somewhere
on him still alive, thanks to the schemes of Zeus,
who does not wish his line to die out yet.
In that case there is still some hope
that he’ll return back home.
680 Now that you’ve heard all this, you’ve heard the truth.
[Exit the HERALD.]
Who could have named her quite so fitly?
—unless it was some unseen deity,
one whose foreknowing tongue dictated
precisely what was to be fated—
matching the war-in-law bride, spelling
her proper name for conflict: Helen,
which predicts hell for ships and sailors,
and hell for soldiers, hell for cities.
690 She sailed from her fine-spun bower,
with zephyrs from the west to blow her,
pursued by many men with sword blades
behind the ripples of her oar blades,
until they reached the leafy babble
of Simois—through blood-stained Trouble.
Wrath brought to Troy a fateful marriage—
700 “marriage” that aptly sounds like “damage.”
This god-sent Wrath drove to the finish
its sentence, after time, to punish
insults against the host-shared table
that Zeus himself protects as central;
to punish the song that rose raucous,
from her new family’s wedding chorus.
710 But Priam’s ancient town is learning
a newer kind of tune, and turning
that song to soulful dirge inside them,
renaming Paris “deadly bridegroom.”
He brought a wave of devastation
that spilled the blood of his whole nation.
Once there was a man
who raised a lion cub
starved of mother’s milk;
hand-fed it like a babe,
raised it in his house.
720 And through its kitten-time
it was a playful pet,
beloved by children, tame,
favorite for the old,
and often cradle-held,
dandled in their arms
like a human child.
It nuzzled fondly,
and with a shining eye
looked up at their hands
to be fed, hungrily.
But, as time went by,
it grew mature and showed
the inherited
true nature of its blood.
As repayment to
its rearers for their help,
it showed gratitude
730 by slaughtering their sheep;
served the household with
an uninvited meal—
many cruelly killed,
and blood splashed round the hall.
The creature that was housed
in its infancy
was god-raised as a priest
of catastrophe.
To Troy’s old citadel there came
in early days, one might well say,
740 a sense of calm tranquility,
a jewel of prosperity;
her glance shot out a gentle dart,
rose of desire to pique the heart.
She brought them, though, a bitter end
by twisting round that marriage-bond.
She was for Priam’s family
a bad inmate, bad company,
dispatched by host-protecting Zeus
to make brides weep, an Erinys.
750 There is an age-old commonplace
that when a man’s wealth multiplies
and crops with gain a thousandfold,
it does not die without a child,
and from a growth so bountiful
bad trouble springs insatiable.
But I for one do not agree:
I say it is the evil deed
that later grows in quantity,
760 and copies through heredity.
The houses that keep justice straight
will breed a line that’s fortunate.
And ancient arrogance
has a way of breeding
new young arrogance
in human evil dealing.
When it comes, the day,
one time or another,
that appointed day
gives birth to fresh anger.
770 Godless insolence,
too intense to master,
makes the house collapse
engulfed in dark disaster.
Justice radiates
in houses smoke has tarnished;
Justice elevates
the man whose life is honest.
Mansions decked in gold,
where grasping hands are dirtied,
she condemns as soiled,
and leaves with eyes averted;
780 wealth-power she disdains
as a mere illusion
falsified by praise.
She guides all to conclusion.
[AGAMEMNON approaches on an open carriage, with attendants; CASSANDRA, who has the robes and regalia of a prophet, sits behind him.]
Welcome, mighty sovereign, sacker
of the Trojans’ city, son of
Atreus. What way should I greet you?
How to pay due homage, yet not
overshoot, nor send my arrow
falling short of proper honor?
There are many who have wrongly
favored seeming over being.
Just as all are prompt to grieve with
790 someone who has suffered, yet no
anguish stabs their deepest feelings:
so too people make out that they
take delight in someone else’s
happy fortune, while they’re forcing
mirthless faces into smiling.
There’s no way, though, that a person’s
look can fool the expert flock-judge,
if they merely seem to greet him
with a friendly fawning manner
which is really thin as water.
Back then at the time you led your
800 army off to fight for Helen—
I’ll not hide it—in my eyes you
did not paint a pleasing picture;
you were steering far from wisdom’s
channel when, in order to retrieve a
wayward woman, you recruited
men to face their deaths. However,
I rejoice now with deep gladness
for these labors well completed.
As time passes you’ll discover
which among the city’s keepers
have been honest, which corrupted.
810 First it is right for me to greet this land of Argos
and its guardian gods; they share with me the credit
for this safe return, and for the justice
that I’ve visited upon the land of Priam.
For the gods decided on the case from listening,
not to speeches: to the death of soldiers.
And unanimously they then cast their votes
into the urn for blood, the blood of Troy and its destruction:
only hope approached the other urn, but left it empty.
And now the conquered city still remains
conspicuous by its plume of smoke;
the winds of ruination blow in lively gusts,
while dying embers spread about
820 a greasy stench of wealth.
For this the gods should be repaid with mindful thanks,
because we have exacted punishment
for a presumptuous act of theft.
And, in a woman’s cause, the beast of Argos,
offspring from the horse’s womb,
has ground the city into fragments—
I mean the armored troop, which launched its leap
at dead of night, a flesh-devouring lion
that jumped the walls and lapped its fill of princely blood.
It’s for the gods that I’ve drawn out this prelude.
[To the CHORUS.]
830 Also, remembering your sentiments,
I quite agree—you have me as corroboration.
For it comes to few by nature to admire a friend
in times of happy fortune with no taint of envy.
I speak from my own knowledge:
for I can read the mirror of true attitudes,
and see that those who seemed so well disposed to me
840 were really shadows, ghosts.
And as for what remains concerning gods and city,
we’ll convene assemblies that are communal,
consulting all the people, so we can consider
how to make quite sure that what works well at present
will remain effective in the longer term.
And if there’s any issue stands in need of remedy,
850 we shall endeavor to avert malignant spread
by the judicial use of surgery—the knife or burning-out.
And now I’m going to go into my palace,
home and hearth, where first I shall do honor to the gods
who sent me out and now have brought me back.
I pray for Victory, as she has followed me,
to stay on steadfast at my side.
[As he is about to descend, CLYTEMNESTRA, with women attendants, comes out of the palace.]
Gentlemen, you elder citizens of Argos,
I am not ashamed to tell you of my husband-loving ways.
It’s from my own direct experience
that I shall speak about the burdens of my life
860 throughout the time this man was kept at Troy.
It is a dreadful anguish for a woman
sitting by herself at home without her male,
forever listening to malicious rumors.
They would arrive, man after man,
announcing news of ever worse catastrophes.
And as for wounds: if this man here had suffered blows
as many times as was reported to this house,
he’d be more perforated than a net!
And if he’d died as often as the stories told,
he’d have to have been triple-
870 bodied, like some second Geryon.
Thanks to grim rumors of this sort,
I’ve had to be unbound by others from the noose
I’d fixed above and round my neck.
[She turns finally to AGAMEMNON.]
And that is why our child, the token of our pledges,
yours and mine, is not here by my side,
as should have been the case: Orestes.
880 Don’t be concerned at this, because a family friend
is looking after him, king Strophius of Phocis.
He wisely warned me of two grave uncertainties:
the danger you were threatened by at Troy;
and then the risk, supposing popular unrest
attempted to contrive a hostile plot . . .
there is a tendency to kick a man who’s down.
So caution of this kind brings no deception with it.
And as for me . . . the wellsprings of my tears
are all dried up, with not a droplet left;
my eyes are bleared from lying late awake
890 and weeping for my beacons standing there inactive.
When I did have dreams, they were so shallow
I’d be woken by the whine of a mosquito in my ear.
And now that I’ve endured all this,
I can, with heart released from grief,
address this man of mine as guard dog of the fold;
the forestay that secures the ship;
the firm-fixed pillar that supports the roof on high;
(900) dry land to storm-tossed sailors who’d lost hope;
a flowing fountain to the thirsting traveler.
I hold him worthy of descriptions such as these. . . .
But let this not attract resentment,
since we’ve borne so many troubles in the past.
And now, my dearest heart, step from this carriage,
but do not, great king, set down upon the soil
this foot which flattened Troy.
[To her servant women, who are waiting ready.]
Come, women, get on with your task of spreading fabrics
all along the pathway he will walk.
910 Yes, let us have a passage strewn with purple,
so that Justice may escort him well
inside a home that lies beyond his hopes.
[The women spread out the purple cloths between the wagon and the door.]
Our close attention, ever wakeful, shall ensure
that all the rest is, with the gods’ help, rightly done.
Offspring of Leda, guardian of my house,
your speech was fitting to my absence—
stretching out at length.
But proper eulogy remains a prize
it’s right for others to award.
So do not pamper me in female fashion,
nor, like some barbarian, bow down to me
920 with gawping salutations.
And stop this spreading of my path with woven stuff
which might attract resentment—
it’s the gods who should be honored in this style.
For mortals to take steps upon such ornaments of beauty
is, in my belief, a thing that’s fraught with fear.
So pay me homage like a man, I say, not like a god.
There is a very different ring between the sound
of foot-mats and of fancy fabrics.
Keeping clear of dangerous thoughts
remains the greatest gift from god.
One should not call a life well blessed
until it has been lived right through in full prosperity.
If I can act entirely in this frame of mind,
930 then I may rest secure.
Well, tell me this in open honesty. . . .
For sure I’ll not betray my honest judgment.
Might some alarming turn have made you vow these to the gods?
If someone with authority had authorized this deed.
And Priam? If he’d had success like yours . . . what do you think?
I’m sure he would have stepped upon the precious cloths.
Then pay no heed to people’s carping talk.
Yet grumbling from the populace can be a powerful force.
The unresented man’s the one with nothing to be envied.
It’s not a woman’s place to show such relish for a fight.
Yet those who reap success may properly concede defeat.
Does victory in this contest mean so much to you?
Agree! You’re still in charge if you give way to me by choice.
All right, if this is what you want:
here, somebody unlace my boots.
[One of CLYTEMNESTRA’s women unlaces and takes off his boots.]
And as I tread upon these fabrics dyed with purple,
may no envious eye light on me from afar.
I have deep qualms about destroying
household properties by crushing underfoot
these precious cloths that must have cost much silver coin.
So much for that.
[Draws attention to CASSANDRA.]
950 And now this stranger: offer her a kindly welcome—
god looks favorably from afar upon the man
who wields his power with gentleness.
No one puts on the yoke of slavery on purpose.
She’s had to come along with me, the army’s gift,
the bloom selected out of many captured spoils.
Well, now I’ve been subjected to your wish like this,
I’ll make my way inside my house
with trampling on purple.
[AGAMEMNON steps onto the cloths and makes his way toward the door.]
The sea there is—and who could drain it dry?
The sea produces many, many dye-shells,
an inexhaustible supply of welling purple,
960 worth much silver, rich for steeping fabrics.
Thank the gods we have a wealth of these, my lord—
this house does not know poverty.
I would have vowed to trample
on innumerable woven cloths,
if that had been prescribed by prophets
to ensure deliverance of this man’s life.
As long as there’s the root, the leafage
can grow back around the house,
and spread its shade against the fierce dog days.
And now that you’ve returned to your domestic hearth,
your coming signals warmth in winter;
970 and in summer, when the grapes are sour,
there then is coolness through the palace,
as the complete master ranges through his home.
[By now AGAMEMNON is going in through the door.]
Zeus, Zeus, god complete,
now see my prayers through to the end;
make sure those things that you ensure
become complete.
[CLYTEMNESTRA and her servants follow him inside.]
Why does this clinging dread
overcast me with foreboding,
fluttering around my heart,
as I try to read the omen?
Why this prophetic chant
with no payment, no commission?
Why can’t my reason spit
980 it out, dreamlike, and dismiss it?
Time has gone aging on
since the sand jumped off the cable
hauled from the ocean bed
when it sailed for Troy, that navy.
They have returned back home,
my own eyes have been the witness,
yet all the same my heart
uninstructed sings within me
990 dirge-notes without the lyre,
dirge an Erinys composes,
dismissive of the strength
that hope offers to oppose it.
My heart is churning, whirled
with the dread of due completion:
I hope my fears prove wrong—
1000 may it never reach completion.
Insatiable desire
can fill a house too full;
corruption lives next door
and leans against the wall.
A life that’s laden rich
will strike on a dark reef,
unless some dread can reach
1010 it first to keep it safe,
by throwing off the side
a share of all those goods.
The house may then survive,
not sunk by its crammed holds.
Once blood has spurted black
1020 and soaked the ground with death,
there’s none can chant it back
to life from the stained earth.
An overriding fate
holds back those who transgress—
a warning that my heart
should make clear with full voice:
1030 it lurks in dark instead,
and murmurs in its pain,
and can’t unwind the thread—
meanwhile, my mind’s aflame.
[CLYTEMNESTRA reenters.]
You! Come along inside as well—
it’s you I mean . . . Cassandra.
Zeus, far from showing anger, has delivered you
where you may share the rituals of the house,
and take your place with all the other slaves
around the altar of our household Zeus.
So step down off this carriage,
1040 and don’t act aloof—they say that even Heracles
was sold to be a slave, and had to feed on barley gruel.
So since compulsion has tipped down
the balance of your fortune, count it as a blessing
you belong to masters with ancestral wealth—
those who unexpectedly strike rich prove cruel owners,
while from us you shall receive what is the proper custom.
[CASSANDRA is unresponsive.]
It’s you she has been speaking to, and speaking clearly.
Now that you’ve been captured in a fatal net,
you should obey . . . if you are going to.
Unless she speaks some unintelligible
1050 foreign tongue and chirrups like a swallow,
I should be reaching through into her understanding.
Go on. She’s telling you what course is best for you.
Obey, and leave your seat here in the wagon.
I don’t have time to waste out here.
The animals are waiting, ready for the sacrifice
before the central altar of the palace.
[To CASSANDRA.]
If you wish to join in this, then don’t delay.
1060 Or if you can make nothing of my words,
then wave your hands instead
with alien gestures to communicate.
It seems the stranger needs a good interpreter;
she is behaving like some new-caught creature.
She’s crazy and delusional.
She has arrived here from a conquered city,
yet she has no notion how to wear the bridle—
not, that is, before she has been broken in,
her mouth blood-flecked with foam.
I’ll not waste further words on her,
just to be disrespected in this way.
[Exit CLYTEMNESTRA back indoors.]
Well, I feel pity for you, so I’ll not be angry.
1070 Come, poor woman, get down from this wagon;
yield before necessity and take on this new yoke.
ototototoi popoi da.
Apollo, Apollo!
Why these strange sounds about Apollo?
He is not the god for someone who laments.
ototototoi popoi da.
Apollo, Apollo!
There she goes again, profanely calling on the god
who’s not appropriate for joining cries of grief.
1080 Apollo, Apollo,
appalling, you destroyed me!
Now for a second time
you easily destroy me.
It seems she is to prophesy her own misfortune—
although a slave, the gift remains strong in her mind.
Apollo, Apollo,
appalling, you destroyed me!
What kind of home is this?
Where’s this that you have drawn me?
This is the palace of the sons of Atreus,
if you did not know—I’m telling you the truth.
1090 No, a house god-hating—
it’s a house that’s freighted
with much inbred bloodshed,
where its own are butchered.
A human abattoir,
a blood-bespattered floor.
The stranger seems keen-scented like a hound;
she’s on the track of murders, that’s for sure.
This is what confirms me,
what I see before me:
these little ones bewailing
their own cruel killing,
and the roasted meat
their father had to eat.
We’ve heard about your reputation as a prophet;
but we do not need your visions.
io, so hard!
1100 What is this, this scheming,
what trauma is this now?
Utter wrong this scheming,
here within this house,
unbearable, incurable—
far off from all defense.
I cannot understand this prophecy.
I recognized that other one—it is well known.
io, so harsh!
So this is what you’re hatching?
The man who shares your bed,
your husband, as you bathe him . . .
how to tell the end?
1110 Immediate, inexorable,
hand reaches over hand.
I still don’t see. I’m at a loss to understand
the prophecies these riddles are obscuring.
e, e, such pain, such pain!
What’s this that comes in sight?
It is some Hades-net;
and she who draws it tight
is she who shares the bed,
who shares the guilt of blood.
So let the gloating crew,
bloodthirsty for this race,
strike up the triumph-cry
to mark this sacrifice.
What sort of Erinys is this you tell to crow
1120 above the house? Your words don’t cheer me, no.
The sallow drops of blood drain out
from my pale cheeks to flood my heart,
just as a wounded man’s life fades
together with his sunset rays.
a, a, it’s plain, it’s plain!
Keep him from the cow,
the bull: she wraps the robes
around him, then see how
she springs the trap and stabs
him with her jet-black horn.
Down in the watery pool
he falls. I tell of death
by tricks enough to fill
a deadly murder-bath.
1130 I am no expert judge of prophecy,
but all these things you say sound bad to me.
No human good that I can tell
has ever come from prophets’ skill.
Their craft and many sayings lean
to fearful things for us to learn.
Oh, oh, so cruel a fate!
I mean my own ordeal;
it’s for my death I cry,
poured in to fill the bowl.
Why have you dragged me here to misery?
For nothing but to share death’s agony.
1140 Mad-minded, god-possessed, frenetic,
to set this music that’s no music
to your own fall.
You’re like the nightingale for pity
with her lament of “Itys, Itys,”
perpetual.
Oh, oh, the nightingale
with her clear-ringing songs,
the gods have fashioned her
with feather-covered wings.
She has a pleasant time, no cause to wail:
for me there waits the edge of sharpened steel.
1150 These sorrows, god-possessed, onrushing,
these elegies you mold with passion,
where are they from?
These darkling, piercing notes of mourning,
waymarks of your prophetic journey,
where are they from?
Oh, oh, the marriage, marriage,
joined with death by Paris!
Oh, oh, Scamander’s waters,
stream of my ancestors!
Back then I grew from girlhood
by your flowing whirl pools:
1160 now, though, it seems that I shall prophesy
upon the banks where Acheron sweeps by.
Why are your words like this?
All too precise—
even a child could hear
and find it clear.
I feel the piercing bite
of your cruel fate;
you shake me to the core
with notes of fear.
Oh, oh, the suffering, suffering
of my city’s crushing!
Oh, oh, the ritual slaughter
offered by my father!
Those sheepflocks from our meadow
1170 proved no cure from death, though,
no way to stop the city falling as it had to.
And I shall spill to earth my hot blood too.
The horrors that you tell
continue still.
Some cruel divinity
drums heavily,
and turns your melody
to threnody.
I cannot understand
how this will end.
No longer shall my prophecies peer out from veils,
all coyly like a bride upon her wedding day;
1180 but, springing freshly like the breezes
from the rising dawn, they’ll stir a swell
that breaks yet greater grief upon the shore.
No longer shall I offer hints from riddling clues.
Bear witness I’m a bloodhound sniffing keenly
on the scent of horrors perpetrated long ago,
because there is a chorus never leaves this house;
it sings in unison but not in harmony—
its theme is not benign. It is a drunken band,
fired up by swigging human blood,
1190 and yet they skulk inside, refusing to be sent away.
What are they?
Family Erinyes.
They occupy the rooms, and chant their anthem
of the primal wrong, denouncing him,
the one who trampled on his brother’s marriage bed.
Well? Does my arrow miss, or does it hit the mark?
Am I a cheating prophet, just a burbling
fortuneteller hawking door to door?
I am amazed at you: although brought up
1200 across the seas, you have the power
to tell what happened in an alien place
as though you had been standing by.
It was Apollo raised me to this role as prophetess.
He was enraptured with desire, you mean, a god?
Before now I was too ashamed to speak of this:
he twined his limbs about mine, breathing sweetness.
And did the two of you join in the act that makes a child?
I promised that I would, but then refused.
Were you imbued already with god-given powers?
1210 I was already prophesying all Troy’s sufferings.
How could Apollo’s anger let you stay unharmed?
Since I offended him, no one believes a word I say.
To us your prophecies appear convincing.
Again the piercing anguish
of foretelling true comes swirling up,
and thrums me with discordant preludes.
Look! See these children, like the forms in dreams,
that sit around the house.
1220 Their hands are full of meat, a home-cooked feast;
it’s their own offal that they’re holding, clear—
such pitiable portions, innards that their father gorged upon.
And in revenge for this, I say that there is one,
the jackal lolling in the lion’s bed, the stay-at-home,
who’s plotting how to catch the master when he comes.
The leader of the fleet and conqueror of Troy
has no idea of how the hateful bitch
can use her tongue, how she can fawn and lick
and brightly dip her ears . . . then bite.
(1230) So daring is the female killer of the male.
What could I call this loathsome creature?
Viper with envenomed fangs at either end?
Or snapping Scylla lurking in the rocks, a threat for sailors?
A hellish mother monster set on war with her own family?
How brazenly she whooped her cry of triumph,
as though it was a battle turning point,
while seeming joyful at his safe return.
It makes no difference if I fail convincing you,
1240 because the future will be coming all the same.
And soon you shall be standing there, and pitying me,
and calling me the one whose prophecies
infallibly turn out too true.
I recognize Thyestes and his feast of children’s meat:
it makes me shudder when I hear it so directly put in words.
But as for all the rest I’ve heard from you,
I’m trying to interpret but I’ve lost the track.
With your own eyes, I say, you shall see Agamemnon dead.
Hush now, poor woman! Do not say such things.
There is no way of curing this prediction.
Not if it is to be, but may it never come about.
1250 You utter prayers: meanwhile, they’re readied for the kill.
Who is the man who’s planning this atrocity?
That shows how far you’ve lost the track of what I’ve prophesied . . .
But I can’t see how he’ll devise a way of doing this.
. . . although my grasp of Greek is good—too good!
The Delphic Oracle is Greek, yet hard to understand.
The fire, how it engulfs me!
Apollo, ai ai me!
This is the lioness that walks upon two feet,
who makes love with the jackal
while the noble lion is well away.
1260 And she is going to kill me.
Like mixing up a potion, she has added
her reward for me stirred in the brew;
and as she whets her sword to kill the man,
she gloats that he will recompense
in blood for bringing me along with him.
What reason have I, then, to keep
this token stuff? A joke against myself,
this staff and ribbons round my neck.
[She throws her prophetic staff, ribbons, and trappings to the ground, and tramples on them.]
To hell with you!
I pay you back like this.
And see, Apollo for himself
1270 strips off this prophet rigmarole.
He does this after gazing at me being ridiculed
in this array by even dear ones turned against me.
I have had to suffer insults,
and be called a starving pauper girl,
as though I were some begging fortuneteller;
and now the prophet-god
has done with me, his prophetess,
and brought me to this kind of deathbound end.
In place of my ancestral altar there awaits
a butcher’s block still warm with blood
from previous slaughter there.
And yet . . . our deaths shall not go disregarded by the gods,
1280 because another one shall come as our avenger,
a mother-killing, father-vindicating child.
A wandering fugitive, excluded from this land,
he shall return and add the topmost row of stones
to cap these kin-catastrophes.
His father stretched out there shall draw him back.
In that case, why lament so piteously?
I have seen Troy first suffering as it did;
and next the conquerors are being dealt
their turn before the judgment of the gods:
I therefore take my place as well.
(1290) I shall be bold to die.
[She turns toward the door to go in.]
This door I greet now as the gate of Hades.
And I pray I shall receive a swift, clean blow,
so that, without convulsion,
with my blood outgushing easily in death,
I close these eyes.
You are a woman deep in misery,
yet also deep in insight.
But if you truly know about your death,
how can you tread so resolutely,
like a god-directed heifer to the altar-stone?
There’s no escaping, strangers, none.
There’s no more time.
1300 But time is precious at the very end.
This is the day, today. To run away would gain me nothing.
Well, your resolve is surely rooted in a heart of courage.
No happy person ever has to hear such words.
It is some blessing, though, to perish gloriously.
O father, how I feel for you and for your noble sons!
[She advances to the door, but recoils.]
What is the matter? Why recoil in fear?
Why retch like that? Is this revulsion in your mind?
The whole house reeks of murder, dripping blood.
1310 No, no! That’s just the smell of ritual sacrifice.
It’s like the fetid stench exuding from a tomb.
It can’t be the exotic incense that you mean!
No longer shall I flutter like a frightened bird:
Now I shall go inside and sing laments
for Agamemnon and myself.
Enough of life.
Strangers, I ask you this: bear witness
after I am dead that I was right,
once that it’s happened: that a woman
has met death to make amends for me, a woman,
and a man has been laid low
to match a badly mated man.
1320 As a stranger on the point of death,
I ask this favor of you.
Poor woman, I feel pity for the fate you have foretold.
I wish to add just one more word—
a swan song for myself.
I call on this, my final shining sun:
make sure my killers pay back dear
with their own blood for me,
the victim slave, the easy catch.
This is the way it is for humans:
if they have good fortune, it is like a shadow;
if they are unfortunate,
it takes a dampened sponge
to wipe the picture clean away.
1330 And I feel far more pity for these things than those.
[Exit CASSANDRA into the palace.]
It is only human nature
never to know satisfaction
with success. And no one tries to
stop it moving into mansions
which set envious fingers pointing;
no one orders “No Admission.”
This is true of this man even,
one the gods have favored with the
prize of taking Priam’s city,
and of coming home in honor.
All the same, if now he has to
pay for murder done by former
generations, and to die for
his own killings; and by dying
1340 bring about yet further killings . . .
if all this, then who could claim that
any human may be born to
happy fortune, safe from troubles?
[A cry of agony is heard from inside.]
Aah! I have been struck . . . deep . . . fatal. . . .
Keep quiet. Who is it shouting about deadly wounds?
Again . . . I’m struck again . . . aah!
It is the king. His cries sound like the deed is done.
We should decide together on the safest course.
I tell you my advice: it is to summon citizens
to come here to the palace bringing help.
1350 I think that we should break inside at once:
investigate it while the sword still drips with blood.
I share in that opinion. My vote’s for action:
this is not the moment for delay.
It’s clear to see: this is the overture
to setting up a new tyrannical regime.
Yes! And we’re wasting time, while they despise
our caution and are pressing on with action.
I’m unsure what response to recommend:
someone who means to act must plan ahead.
1360 I go along with that. It’s not as though we can
stand up the dead again, for all our fighting talk.
So are we going to give in to these violators
of the royal house, just to save our skins?
Intolerable! It’s better to be dead—
less bitter than to live on under tyranny.
So do we speculate the man is murdered
merely on the evidence of hearing shouts?
We ought to be discussing what we know for sure.
Mere guesswork’s not like certain knowledge.
1370 I feel we are agreed: we must
find out for sure how Agamemnon fares.
[The doors open to reveal CLYTEMNESTRA with sword in hand, standing over the bodies of AGAMEMNON and CASSANDRA lying, caught up in a net, in a bathtub.]
I offer no apology for saying things that contradict
what I have said before to suit the moment.
How else, if you are planning harm
against your enemies, who think they’re friends—
how else are you to rig the trap of nets
too high to be escaped by leaping over them?
My mind has long been working out
this final contest in my long-drawn feud—
and now, at last, it has arrived.
1380 I stand here where I struck,
with what I did in front of me.
I managed it—and I am proud of this—
in such a way that he could not
escape his fate, nor fend it off.
I cast around him an impenetrable mesh,
like one for netting fish, a fatal luxury of fabric.
Then I struck him twice,
and with two cries his limbs went limp;
once he was down, I followed with a third,
an offering made in gratitude to Hades,
the saver of the dead below.
And so he gasped his life away,
and spouted out a jet of blood
1390 that showered me with a drizzle of dark dew.
And I was glad, as glad as is the crop of corn
to feel the gleaming moisture, gift of Zeus,
when grain is brought to birth from out the husk.
It is a proper offering to pour
upon this corpse, this blood.
It’s just, and even more than just,
because this man has filled a cup
of such accursèd crimes within this house—
and now he has returned and drained it to the dregs.
(1393) So that is how things are, you Argive elders.
Be glad, if you are gladdened:
as for me, I revel in all this.
I am astounded at your brazen tongue—
1400 your bragging like this over your own husband.
You patronize me like some little woman
with no mind to call her own.
I speak with heart devoid of fear
to those with wit to understand,
and you can praise me or condemn me
as you like, it’s all the same to me.
This man is Agamemnon,
yes, my spouse, and yes, a corpse,
the work of this right hand of mine,
this architect of justice.
And that is that.
Woman, what detested
earth-grown venom have you tasted,
or drunk down what poison
dredged up from the deeps of ocean,
to have done this murder?
With the people’s curses shouted,
1410 you shall be deprived of country,
banished with the city’s hatred.
Today you sentence me to exile from my country,
and to hatred from the people and their curses.
Yet back then you raised no voice against this man,
this man who rated her as nothing,
back on that day he cut his own child’s throat—
as though it were the slaughter of an animal,
one from his many fleecy flocks of sheep—
the treasure of my labor pains,
used as a charm to quell the gusts from Thrace.
So isn’t he the one you should have driven
1420 from this country in atonement for pollution?
Yet when you scrutinize my handiwork,
oh, then you are the righteous judge!
I tell you this in answer to such threats:
I’m ready to submit if I am overcome
in contest hand-to-hand:
but if the god ordains the opposite, then you may learn
in your old age to think more carefully.
You are proud and devious,
and the words you speak ambitious,
just as you are maddened
in your mind, which murder’s reddened.
And the blood-flecks flaring
show up on your eye-whites clearly.
You shall pay dear, friendless,
1430 trading blow for blow relentless.
Hear this, my solemn oath,
by Justice, now completed for my child,
by Curse and Erinys, the powers
I’ve sacrificed this man to satisfy:
no pang of fear stalks through my house,
no, not so long as one maintains
the flame upon my hearth, Aegisthus,
not while he stays loyal to me,
the shield who keeps me confident.
Here this one lies, the violator of this woman here,
the charmer of the golden girls at Troy.
1440 And here she is, the prisoner, the prophetess—
his double-bedmate, fortuneteller,
believable between the sheets—
who used to shuttle back and forth
across the benches on board ship.
And so they both have met their due deserts:
he’s here like this, while she, swanlike,
has sung her final funeral dirge.
And with her lying here on top of him,
she has served up for me an extra sauce
to top my luscious feast.
I wish it would come quick,
not after lying sick,
nor after pain-filled years:
1450 that final fate that draws
the never-ending dark
of sleep that does not wake—
now that our noblest guard
is lying here, struck dead.
He suffered many ways,
all in a woman’s cause;
and through a woman’s deed
his life has been destroyed.
Frenzied Helen, you alone
have destroyed in front of Troy
lives so many, all too many.
Now you’ve bound a final crown,
1460 stained with blood too strong to scour,
you the war-cause in this house.
Don’t allow these things to crush you
so you wish for death to take you.
And don’t turn your anger onto
Helen, calling her the fatal
man-destroyer. It’s not right to
claim that she, one woman, ended
all those lives of Greeks, inflicting
all this pain that stays unhealed.
O Daimon of the house,
you swoop down on this place,
and on the differing pair,
the sons of Atreus here.
1470 And you have lavished power
upon the female pair,
so similar at heart.
It bites me deep, this hurt.
Above the body now,
like some detested crow,
it struts and gloating sings
its tuneless triumph-songs.
Now you’ve hit a truer version
when you name the family Daimon,
fattened for three generations.
That’s what nourishes the lust for
lapping blood-pools; then, before the
ancient trauma can be mended,
1480 yet more suppuration gathers.
Yes, it’s fraught with fury,
that strong Daimon,
never sated fully
with misfortune.
Everything that happens
comes through Zeus all-
causing, all-enacting.
What’s concluded
for us humans without
Zeus behind it?
How am I to weep for you,
1490 O my king, my king?
What heartfelt words of loyal lament
can I turn to song?
You lie where you breathed your last,
in this spider’s web,
prisoner of slavish bonds
on this squalid bed.
Hobbled by this deadly trick,
you met with your end,
chopped down by a two-edged blade
gripped in your wife’s hand.
Are you claiming that this slaughter
is my doing? Stop regarding
me as Agamemnon’s spouse, then:
no, the ancient, acrid Vengeance-
1500 spirit has assumed the shape of
this cadaver’s wife. Aroused by
Atreus, heartless banquet-server,
it has claimed this full-grown victim,
further payment for the children.
To claim that you are guiltless
of this slaughter:
no one could stand as witness
for that falsehood.
How? How? But that some specter
might have paired you,
avenging ghost ancestral,
as a partner . . .
that is possible. And Ares,
gore-stained and dark,
will make more bloodstream channels
1510 come flooding back
to where he can claim justice
for the babies
whose flesh and clotted blood were
served at table.
How am I to weep for you,
O my king, my king?
What heartfelt words of loyal lament
can I turn to song?
You lie where you breathed your last,
in this spider’s web,
prisoner of slavish bonds
on this squalid bed.
Hobbled by this deadly trick,
you met with your end,
chopped down by a two-edged blade
1520 gripped in your wife’s hand.
In my judgment, this man’s death was
no more squalid than was fitting.
It is right that he has perished
through deception, since he ruined
this whole family with deception.
Yes, the darling that I bore him,
dearly-wept Iphigeneia,
he, her father, made his victim.
Now he’s suffered suitably to
match his actions. He will have no
cause to bluster down in Hades,
now he’s paid by fatal sword-stroke.
1530 I remain at a loss,
helpless without resource
which way to turn my mind
before the falling house.
I fear the drumming storm
beating upon the home,
the deluge turned to blood,
a pelting hurricane.
Now fate whets action’s edge
keen on the sharpening-stone,
preparing to ensure
that there’s more justice done.
O earth, O earth, I wish you’d covered me
before I’d set my eyes
1540 on this man brought to such a lowly bed,
this bath with silver sides.
Who comes to bury him, who to lament?
Could you now have the gall,
when you have killed your man, to stand up there
and lead the funeral wail?
to favor his past life disfavoredly
in tribute for his deeds?
Who shall proclaim the graveside eulogy
1550 with heart that truly bleeds?
It is not your proper place to
raise this matter. By my hand he
dropped down, downed in death, and by my
hand he shall be laid down under,
not with mourning from outsiders.
Aptly shall his daughter greet him,
his adored Iphigeneia,
meet her father at the ferry–
landing by the aching river,
and embrace him, planting kisses.
1560 Damnation meets with condemnation back:
to judge is difficult.
The plunderer gets plundered in his turn,
the killer pays for guilt.
Yet this remains as long as Zeus remains
upon his throne secure:
who does the deed must suffer for the deed—
that’s the eternal law.
Who can eliminate the seed, expel
the household curse at last?
This family and dire catastrophe
are glued together fast.
Yes, you’ve hit upon the truth with
that pronouncement. So I’m willing
1570 to agree a solemn promise
with the Daimon of this bloodline:
that if only it will go and
leave this palace, and oppress some
other house with kindred murders,
I shall be content to manage
with a fraction of our riches,
just enough and nothing further.
This I promise, if I can then
purge this household from the madness
of our killing one another.
[AEGISTHUS, accompanied by bodyguards, enters abruptly.]
I greet you, welcome light of day that brings me justice.
I can say at last that gods look down from high
upon the crimes of earth and make sure humans
1580 pay the price, since now I see this man here
lying in the woven cloths of the Erinyes,
and paying for the plot his father perpetrated.
That father, Atreus, was the ruler of this land:
when he was challenged for the kingship
by Thyestes, my own father and his brother,
Atreus drove him out, an exile from his house and land.
Unfortunate Thyestes then returned,
a suppliant at the hearth, which was a way
to save his blood from staining his ancestral soil.
1590 But as an act of hospitality, and with enthusiasm
more than love toward my father, godless Atreus
made out to be arranging a great celebration-feast;
and there he served him up a dish of children-flesh.
He hacked away their heads and hands and feet,
and served Thyestes, as he sat apart,
with portions that could not be recognized.
So in his ignorance he ate—a dish which, as you see,
has proved disastrous for the dynasty.
Then, once he’d realized his monstrous act,
he cried out in revulsion and, recoiling,
(1600) spewed the gobbets out.
He kicked the feasting table over,
and so made it fit the justice of his curse:
“Like this I pray the whole bloodline be overturned.”
In consequence of that you see this man brought low;
and I have pieced this death together with the thread of justice.
For I was the third child, left alive and driven
into exile as a little baby with my wretched father.
Justice has returned me here, now that I am full-grown;
and I have got this man into my grip,
although I was outside the house itself,
by linking the whole scheme behind this deadly plot.
1610 So even death would seem acceptable for me,
now that I’ve seen him tangled
in the cords of Justice.
Aegisthus, I have no respect for one
who acts all high and mighty in bad circumstances.
You claim you meant to kill this man,
and planned this pitiable murder:
well, I proclaim that, once you’re brought to justice,
you shall not escape the people’s
stones and curses flung at you.
You dare to talk like this, although you’re down
upon the lowest rowing-bench,
while those in charge are on the bridge?
1620 You’ll find, when brought to see some sense,
that learning can be tough for people of your age.
Prison and starvation-pangs remain
outstanding teachers, even for the agèd mind.
You have your sight, yet don’t see that?
Don’t kick against the goad,
for fear you get jabbed back.
You stayed at home, effeminate, and schemed
against the soldier fresh back from the field;
and all the while you sullied his own marriage bed,
and planned his death, our general.
You’ll suffer long and hard for saying that.
Your talk sounds just the opposite of Orpheus:
1630 his voice was so delightful he would draw all nature to him,
while you, thanks to your howling foolishness,
will find yourselves dragged off in chains!
Once you’re subdued, you’ll prove a bit more tame.
You think that you’ll be sovereign over Argos?
You, who when you’d planned his killing,
didn’t even dare to strike the blow?
Because the trickery was obviously the woman’s role;
my longtime enmity made me the object of suspicion.
Yet I’ll undertake to rule the people here
by making use of this man’s treasury;
and anyone who’s not obedient
I’ll clamp beneath a heavy yoke.
1640 He’ll prove no frisky grain-fed colt:
starvation rations and a pitch-dark cell
will see him turn more docile.
But why not strike this warrior down yourself,
you coward? Why do it through a woman,
bringing down pollution on the country and its gods?
I only hope Orestes is alive somewhere,
so he may yet return here with good fortune
to become the champion, killer of the pair of you.
Since you’ve decided on this way to act with bluster,
you’ll soon have to learn your lesson.
1650 Come on now, my fellow fighters—close to time for action.
Come on now, my soldiers, hands on sword hilts ready.
[The guards grip their swords, and the CHORUS raise their wooden staves.]
And my hand is ready also; and I’m quite prepared to die here.
Yes, your saying “die” is welcome: we accept that offer!
No, my dearest, let’s not do more damage.
We’ve already reaped enough unhappy harvest;
let’s not have yet further bloodshed.
Go back to your houses, you respected elders,
go before you suffer; yield to how things are determined.
We have done the things we had to.
If this proves the end of troubles, we would welcome that,
1660 since we’ve been lacerated by the Daimon’s talon.
That is my woman’s contribution,
in case anybody thinks it worthy of attention.
But to have these people letting loose their tongues against me,
trying out their luck in hurling their defiance!
Should they be allowed to scorn their ruler without thinking?
Argives could not stoop to bow before a worthless creature.
I shall still be looking out to get my hands on you in future.
Not if some divinity directs Orestes back to Argos.
I am well aware that those in exile feed themselves on hoping.
All right, glut yourself, and mess with justice while you have the chance to.
1670 Trust me, you shall pay back dearly for this mad defiance.
Keep on crowing like a cock parading by his hen-bird.
Take no notice of their futile yapping.
You and I shall take control together,
and set straight the powers of this palace.
[CLYTEMNESTRA ushers AEGISTHUS and his guards into the palace. The old men of the CHORUS disperse in silence.]