Agamemnon

THE GHOST OF THYESTES Leaving the dark places of infernal Dis, I am here, sent forth from the deep cavern of Tartarus, uncertain which abode I hate the more: I, Thyestes, flee the underworld; I put the upper world to flight. Lo, my soul shudders and fear shakes my limbs: I see my father's, nay rather my brother's house; this is the ancient threshold of the Pelopian home; here it is the Pelasgian custom to take the first auspices of the royal crown for the head; here on a lofty couch they sit who bear the proud sceptre in their hand; here is the place for holding council—here the place for feasts. I would gladly turn back. Were it not better even to dwell by the gloomy pools? Were it not better to be the guardian of the Styx, tossing his three-fold neck with its black manes? Where that man, his body bound to the swift wheel, is borne back upon himself; where, against the slope, in vain, the labour is mocked, the stone returning so many times; where the greedy bird crops the ever-renewed liver; and where one, burned with parching thirst amid the waves, reaches with deceived mouth for the fleeing waters, about to pay heavy penalties for the banquet of the gods— but how small a part of our guilt is that old man? Let us reckon all whom, for their unspeakable hands, the Cnossian inquisitor shakes in his urn as the accused: I, Thyestes, will outdo them all with my crimes. Shall I be outdone by my brother? Filled with three children, buried in me? I have devoured my own entrails. And Fortune has not stained the father so far only, but, daring a greater crime than the one committed, bids me seek the unspeakable embrace of my daughter. I did not, trembling, drink in the words, but seized the crime. Therefore, that I might go as parent through all my children, my daughter, forced by the fates, bears a heavy womb, a child worthy of me. Nature is turned backward: I have mingled the father with the grandfather—O the horror!— the husband with the father, the grandsons with the sons—the day with night. But at last, late, after my death, the assurance of uncertain fortune looks back on those wearied by ills: that king of kings, Agamemnon, leader of leaders, whose standard a thousand ships followed, covering the Trojan seas with their sails, after the tenth circuit of Phoebus, Ilium conquered, is here—to offer his throat to his own wife. Now, now the house shall swim with mutual blood: swords, axes, weapons; the royal head split by the heavy stroke of the double axe I see; now crimes are near, now guile, slaughter, gore— the banquet is being prepared. The cause of your birth, Aegisthus, has come. Why does shame weigh down your face? Why does your right hand falter, trembling with doubtful purpose? Why do you take counsel of yourself, torment and question yourself whether this becomes you? Look to your mother: it becomes you. But why do the seasons of the summer night suddenly draw out the long spaces of winter with their delay, or what holds the falling stars in the pole? Do we delay Phoebus? Give the day back now to the world.

CHORUS O Fortune, deceitful to the great goods of kingdoms, you place the too-exalted on a steep and doubtful height; never have sceptres held peaceful rest or a day sure of itself; one care after another wearies them and a new storm troubles their minds. Not so does the sea on the Libyan Syrtes rage to roll its waves in turn, not so does the wave of the Black Sea swell, stirred from its lowest depths, near the snowy pole, where Bootes, free from the dark-blue waters, turns his shining wains, as Fortune whirls the headlong falls of kings. They long to be feared and fear to be feared; no kindly night offers them safe retreat, no sleep, tamer of cares, loosens their breasts. What citadels has not crime in turn cast headlong? What citadels do impious arms not weary? Law and shame and the sacred faith of marriage flee the courts; grim Bellona follows with bloody hand, and the Erinys who burns the proud, ever companion of the over-great houses, which any hour has brought low from on high. Though arms be idle and tricks cease, the great sink by their own weight, and Fortune gives way under her own burden. Sails swollen by favourable winds have feared their own winds too much; the tower, its top set among the very clouds, is beaten by the rainy south wind, and the grove, scattering thick shadows, sees its aged oaks broken; thunderbolts strike the lofty hills, the larger bodies lie open to diseases, and while the common herds run to their wandering pastures, the largest neck is marked for the wound. Whatever Fortune has raised on high, she lifts to dash it down. To modest things belongs a longer age: happy is whoever, content with the lot of the middle throng, the breeze brushes his safe shores, and, fearing to trust his boat to the sea, skirts the lands with a nearer oar.

CLYTEMNESTRA, NURSE CLYTEMNESTRA Why, sluggish soul, do you seek safe counsels? Why do you waver? The better way is now closed: once you might have guarded your husband's chaste bed and the sceptre with the chaste faith of a widow— but they have perished: morals, right, honour, piety, faith, and shame, which, once gone, knows not how to return. Give the reins, and headlong urge on all wickedness: through crimes the safe road is always by crimes. Now turn over within yourself a woman's wiles, what any treacherous wife, beside herself with blind love, what any stepmother's hands have dared, what the maiden, burning with the impious torch, fleeing the Phasian realm in the Thessalian ship: the sword, poisons; or flee the Mycenaean halls, joined to your accomplice, by stealth in a ship— why do you, timid, speak of stealth and exile and flights? Your sister did that; a greater crime becomes you.

NURSE Queen of the Danaans and famous offspring of Leda, what do you silently turn over, and what, beside yourself, do you bear in your swollen mind, fierce impulses? Though you yourself be silent, all your grief is in your face. So, whatever it is, give yourself time and space: what reason cannot, delay has often healed.

CLYTEMNESTRA Greater things torment me than that I could endure delays; flames burn my marrow and my heart, and fear, mingled with grief, has applied its goads, jealousy beats upon my breast; on this side base desire presses my spirit beneath the yoke and forbids me to be conquered; and amid these torches of my besieged mind, weary indeed and bound and brought low, shame rebels. I am driven by changing tides, as when on this side the wind, on that the current snatches the deep, and the uncertain wave hesitates to which evil it should yield. So I have let the rudder slip from my hands: wherever wrath, where grief, where hope shall bear me, there I will go on; we have given our ship to the waves: when the mind wanders, it is best to follow chance.

NURSE Blind is the rashness that seeks chance as its guide.

CLYTEMNESTRA For one whose fortune is at its last, why fear a doubtful one?

NURSE Your fault is safe and hidden, if you suffer it to be.

CLYTEMNESTRA Every vice of a royal house shines through.

NURSE Do you repent the former crime and yet plot a new one?

CLYTEMNESTRA Surely a measure to wickedness is a foolish thing.

NURSE He who buries crime with crime augments what he fears.

CLYTEMNESTRA Both steel and fire are often used in place of medicine.

NURSE No one tries extreme remedies in the first place.

CLYTEMNESTRA In evil affairs one must seize the headlong way.

NURSE But let the sacred name of husband turn you back.

CLYTEMNESTRA Through ten years a widow, shall I regard a husband?

NURSE You should remember the offspring you had by him.

CLYTEMNESTRA Indeed I remember my daughter's wedding-torches and Achilles for son-in-law: he kept faith with her mother.

NURSE She redeemed the delays of the motionless fleet and drove on the seas fixed in sluggish languor.

CLYTEMNESTRA I am ashamed and I grieve—I, daughter of Tyndareus, child of heaven, bore the head of a lustral offering for the Dorian fleet! My mind turns over the marriage of my maiden, which he made worthy of the Pelopian house, when the father stood at the altars with sacrificing face. How nuptial it was! Calchas shuddered at the answers of his own voice and at the retreating hearths. O house, ever surpassing crimes with crimes, with blood we bought the winds, war with slaughter! But did a thousand ships set sail together? The fleet was not loosed by a propitious god: Aulis cast forth the impious ships from its harbour. So one who began with such auspices wages the war no better. Captive to love for a captive, unmoved by prayer, he kept the Sminthean spoils of the priest of Phoebus, even then raging with passion for the sacred maiden. Achilles, untamed, did not bend him with threats, nor he who alone sees the fates of the world, an augur faithful to us, slight toward captives, nor the sick people and the gleaming pyres: amid the final slaughter of falling Greece, conquered without an enemy, he wastes away and has leisure for Venus and renews his loves; and lest his bed should ever be deserted, the unwed bachelor, by some barbarian mistress, he loves the Lyrnessian woman taken from Achilles, nor was he ashamed to snatch her, torn from a husband's bosom— behold the foe of Paris! Now, bearing a new wound, he rages, inflamed with love for the Phrygian prophetess, and after the Trojan trophies and Ilium overthrown, he returns the husband of a captive and son-in-law of Priam. Gird yourself, my soul: you prepare no light wars. The crime must be seized first. Sluggish one, what day do you wait for? That the Phrygian daughters-in-law hold the Pelopian sceptres? Or do the maiden daughters at home keep you back, widowed, and Orestes, like his father? Let the coming evils of these move you, the whirlwind of affairs that threatens: why, wretched one, do you delay? Lo, a raging stepmother is at hand for your children; through your own side, if it cannot be otherwise, let the sword be driven, and slay two. Mingle your blood with theirs, destroy your husband by your own perishing: death is no misery when you die with one you wish.

NURSE Queen, rein yourself in and stay your impulses and consider how great a thing you attempt: he comes a victor over fierce Asia, the avenger of Europe; he drags captive Pergamum and the long-conquered Phrygians; do you now try to attack by fraud and stealth the man whom Achilles did not wound with his fierce sword, though, grim, he had armed his insolent hand, nor better Ajax, raving with death resolved, nor Hector alone, the delay of the war for the Danaans, nor the sure weapons of Paris, nor black Memnon, nor Xanthus, heaping up the bodies mingled with arms, and Simois driving its waves purple with slaughter, nor the snow-white son Cycnus, of the sea-god, nor the Thracian phalanx with warlike Rhesus, nor the Amazon, painted, with quiver and axe-bearing hand and crescent-shield? Him, brought home, do you prepare to slay and to stain the altars with impious slaughter? Will victorious Greece let this deed go unavenged? Set before yourself horses and arms, and the strait bristling with fleets, and the ground overflowing with deep blood, and all the fate of the captured Dardanian house hurled back upon the Danaans; restrain your savage passions and yourself pacify your own mind.

AEGISTHUS, CLYTEMNESTRA, NURSE AEGISTHUS The time which in soul and mind I have ever dreaded is surely here, the last for my affairs. Why do you turn your back, my soul? Why at the first onset do you lay down your arms? Believe that ruin and dread fates the savage gods devise for you: I oppose my worthless head to all torments, and take steel and fire upon a fronting breast, Aegisthus: it is no punishment thus to die for one born as I. You, partner of my peril, you, daughter of Leda, only accompany me: that cowardly leader and brave father shall give you back your blood. But why does pallor circle your trembling cheeks and your gaze lie dull with languid face?

CLYTEMNESTRA Wedded love conquers and bends me back: let me be carried thither, whence I ought not before to have departed; but now let chaste faith be sought again, for it is never too late to find the way to good morals: whoever repents of sinning is almost innocent.

AEGISTHUS Whither are you swept, mad woman? Do you believe or hope that Agamemnon's marriage is faithful to you? Even if nothing lay beneath in your mind to make you greatly fear: yet Fortune, proud and ungovernable, swelling too much in her great inflation, would give swollen spirits. He was heavy to his allies while Troy still stood: what do you think Troy has added to a mind savage by its own nature? He was king of Mycenae, he will come a tyrant: prosperity lifts up the spirit. With how great display the throng of mistresses came pouring about him! But one alone stands out from the throng and holds the king, the handmaid of the truth-telling god: will you, conquered, bear a partner of your marriage-bed? But she will not wish it: the worst evil for a wife is a mistress openly possessing her husband's house. Neither thrones nor marriage-beds know how to bear a partner.

CLYTEMNESTRA Aegisthus, why do you drive me again to the brink and stir up wrath, now subsiding from its flames? A victor allowed himself some liberty with a captive: neither a wife nor a mistress should regard this. One law is for the throne, another for the private bed. And what of this, that my soul, mindful of my own shameful deed, does not suffer me to bear stern laws against my husband? He readily gives pardon who himself has need of pardon.

AEGISTHUS Is it so? Can you bargain for mutual pardon? Are the laws of kingdoms unknown to you, or new? To us they are grudging judges, fair to themselves; they think this the greatest pledge of kingship, if whatever is not allowed to others is allowed to them alone.

CLYTEMNESTRA He pardoned Helen: joined to Menelaus she returns, who afflicted Europe and Asia with equal ills.

AEGISTHUS But no stolen love took from Atrides his wife, nor captured a heart bound to his own spouse. Already he seeks a charge and prepares his pretexts. Believe that you have committed nothing base: what good is an honourable life, free from disgrace? When the lord hates, one is made guilty, not examined. Will you seek Sparta again, scorned, and your Eurotas and your native seat, a fugitive? No outlet do the repudiations of kings give; you ease your fears with false hope.

CLYTEMNESTRA No one knows my faults but the faithful.

AEGISTHUS Faith never enters a royal threshold.

CLYTEMNESTRA I will earn it with wealth, to bind faith by a price.

AEGISTHUS Faith bought with a price is conquered by a price.

CLYTEMNESTRA The remaining shame of my former mind rises up— why do you protest? Why with flattering voice do you dictate evil counsels? Shall I, no doubt, wed you, a king of kings forsaken, I, nobly born, an exile?

AEGISTHUS And why do I seem inferior to you than Atrides, I, the son of Thyestes?

CLYTEMNESTRA If that is too little, add: grandson too.

AEGISTHUS By Phoebus as author I am begotten: I am not ashamed of my race.

CLYTEMNESTRA Do you call Phoebus the author of an unspeakable stock, whom, recalling his reins in sudden night, you drove from heaven? Why do we add gods to our reproach? You, taught to steal away the marriage-bed by fraud, whom we know to be a man only in forbidden love, get hence at once, and the disgrace of our house carry away from my eyes: this house is open for a king and a husband.

AEGISTHUS Exiles are not new to me; I am used to ills. If you command, queen, I depart not only from the house or from Argos: I delay not, at your bidding, to open with steel my breast, heavy with sorrows.

CLYTEMNESTRA If indeed I, bloody daughter of Tyndareus, should suffer this to be done. She who, joined, sins, owes faith even to her fault. Withdraw rather with me, that our joined counsels may unfold the doubtful and threatening state of affairs.

CHORUS Sing, O famous youth, sing Phoebus! For you the festal throng crowns its head, for you the Inachian race, unwedded, shaking the laurel, has loosed in custom its maiden hair; you too, guest from Thespiae, accompany our choirs, and you who drink the cold springs of Erasinus, and you the Eurotas, and you who drink the silent Ismenus on its green bank: whom Manto, foreknowing of the fates, daughter of Tiresias, warned to honour with rites the gods born of Latona. Your bow, victor, peace restored, Phoebus, relax, and from your shoulder lay aside the heavy quivers with their light arrows, and let the tuneful lyre, struck quickly by your hand, resound: I would have it sound nothing keen or great in lofty measures, but such a song as you are wont to bend with the lighter lyre, simple, when the learned Muse reviews your sports; or you may sound on a graver string, such as you sang when the gods saw the Titans conquered by the thunderbolt, or when mountains piled on high upon mountains built steps for the savage monsters, when Pelion stood set upon Ossa, and pine-bearing Olympus pressed them both. Be present, O great one, sister and wife, partner of the sceptre, royal Juno: your own throng, Mycenae, we worship you, you alone protect anxious Argos, a suppliant of your divinity; you rule wars and peace with your hand; you now, victorious, receive the laurels of Agamemnon, for you the many-holed boxwood pipe sounds its solemn strain, for you the learned girls move the strings with soft song, for you the Greek matrons hurl the votive torch: at your bright shrine a white heifer of the bull shall fall, unknowing of the plough, her neck marked by no yoke. And you, O daughter of the great Thunderer, famous Pallas, who often sought the Dardanian towers with your spear, the lesser and the greater matron, in a mingled choir, honour you, and the priestess unbars the temples at the goddess's coming: to you the throng comes, garlanded with woven crowns, to you the aged and weary old men, their prayer fulfilled, give thanks and pour wine with trembling hand. And you, Trivia, we, remembering, pray with the wonted voice: you, Lucina, bid your mother's Delos stand still, which before wandered hither and thither, a Cyclad driven by the winds; now, stable, fixed by its root, it holds the lands fast, spurns the breezes and ties down the ships it was wont to follow. You, victorious, number the deaths of the mother, the daughter of Tantalus: now on the highest peak of Sipylus stands a weeping stone, and still the ancient marble pours forth fresh tears. Greatly do woman and man honour the twin divinity. And you above all, father and ruler, mighty with the thunderbolt, at whose nod the furthest poles have trembled together, Jupiter, author of our race, take our gifts gladly, and as our forefather, look upon your not-degenerate offspring. But lo, a soldier roused, with vast stride, hastens, bearing the clear signs of joy (for his spear bears a laurel on its topmost point), and Eurybates, ever faithful to the king, is at hand.

EURYBATES, CLYTEMNESTRA, CHORUS EURYBATES The shrines and altars of the gods and my fathers' hearths, weary after long spaces, scarce believing myself, a suppliant I adore. Pay your vows to the gods above: the lofty glory of the Argolic land returns, the victor Agamemnon, at last to his own household.

CLYTEMNESTRA A happy message comes to my ears. Where, then, does the husband sought by me through ten years delay? Does he press the sea or the land?

EURYBATES Unharmed, increased in glory, famous in praise, he has set his returning foot on the longed-for shore.

CLYTEMNESTRA With sacred rites let us at last honour the prosperous day and the gods, propitious though slow. Do you tell whether my husband's brother lives, and tell what seats my sister holds.

EURYBATES I ask better things in my prayers and call the gods to witness: for the lot of the doubtful sea forbids me to speak surely. When the scattered fleet met the swollen sea, ship could not see its companion ship. Nay, Atrides himself, wandering on the boundless deep, bore heavier losses from the sea than from the war, and returns like one conquered, dragging a few and shattered ships, a victor, from so great a fleet.

CLYTEMNESTRA Tell what mischance swallowed up my ships, or what fortune of the sea scattered the leaders.

EURYBATES You ask bitter things to tell; you bid me mingle an ill-omened message with a glad one. My sick mind recoils from speaking and shudders at such great evils.

CLYTEMNESTRA Bring it forth: he who recoils from knowing his own disasters makes his fear heavier; doubtful ills torment more.

EURYBATES When all Pergamum fell by the Dorian torch, the spoil was divided, they seek the seas in haste. And now the soldier relieves his weary side of the sword, the neglected shields lie about on the high sterns; the oar is fitted to the soldiers' hands and every delay is too long for the eager. When the signal of return flashed from the royal ship and the clear trumpet warned the glad rowers, the gilded prow marks out the first paths and opens the courses for the thousand ships to cleave. Hence a gentle breeze first drives the ships, gliding to the sails; the wave, scarcely stirred by light motion, trembles, calm, at the soft breath of Zephyr. The sea gleams with the fleet and at once is hidden. It delights to see the bare shores of Troy, it delights to see the lonely places of Sigeum, left behind. All the youth hastens at once to bend the drawn-back oars, helps the winds with their hands, and moves their strong arms with alternate effort. The furrowed waters quiver and the sides resound and the white foam divides the dark-blue sea. When a stronger breeze fills the swelling sails, they laid by the oars; the ship is trusted to the wind, and the soldier, sitting on the thwarts, marks either the lands far off, as much as the sails recede, fleeing, or tells of the war: brave Hector's threats and his chariot, and the body given back for a purchased pyre, and Hercean Jove sprinkled with blood at the altars. Then the Tyrrhenian fish, which plays back and forth in the lying calm and leaps over the swollen sea with curved back, exults in all the strait and drives its circles and swims, a companion, by the side, glad to go before the ships and again to follow; now the troop, touching the first prows, frolics, now circles and ranges round the thousandth ship. Now all the shore is covered and the plains lie hidden and the doubtful ridges of Mount Ida appear; and now—what alone the persistent eye can see— the Trojan smoke appears, a black mark. Now Titan was relieving his weary neck of the yoke, now the light was sinking to the stars, now the day headlong. A small cloud, growing into a dingy ball, stains the bright radiance of falling Phoebus; the suspect sunset made the strait more uncertain. The first night had sprinkled the sky with stars; the sails lie deserted by the wind. Then a grave murmur, threatening greater things, falls from the highest hills, and in a long stretch the shore and the rocks groan: the wave, stirred by the coming winds, swells: when suddenly the moon is hidden, the stars vanish, the sea is lifted to the stars, the sky perishes, nor is the night one: a dense gloom buries the darkness, and, all light withdrawn, it mingles the strait and the sky; on every side at once they bear down and snatch the sea, overturned from its lowest depths— against Eurus, Zephyrus, and Notus against Boreas: each sends his own weapons and, hostile, work up the strait; the whirlwind rolls the sea together: the Strymonian Aquilo whirls the deep snows and the Libyan Auster drives the sands and the Syrtes; nor with rain alone is the sea increased: Eurus stirs the east, shaking the Nabataean realms and the Eastern bays. What of raging Corus, thrusting his face out of the ocean? You would believe that the whole world was torn from its seat and the very gods, the sky burst open, falling down, and black chaos brought upon the world. The current resists the wind, and the wind rolls the current back again; the sea does not contain itself, and rain and waves mingle their own waters. Nor even is this solace given to their sorrows, at least to see and know by what evil they perish: the darkness presses on their eyes and there is the infernal night of the dread Styx. Yet fires break out, and from the riven cloud the dread lightning flashes, and to the wretched so great is the sweetness of the evil light: they long for this light. The fleet itself crushes itself, and prow harms prow and side harms side, that ship the gaping sea snatches headlong and swallows and vomits up again, given back to the deep; this one sinks under its load, that one bows its riven side to the waves, the tenth wave covers this; this one, mangled and stripped of all its grace, light, floats; neither sails nor oars remain to it, nor an upright mast bearing the lofty yards, but the maimed stern swims on all the Icarian sea. Reason and experience dare nothing: art has yielded to the evils; horror holds their limbs, every sailor stands amazed, his duty abandoned, the oar escapes their hands, the final fear forces the wretched to prayers, and Trojans and Danaans alike beg the gods above. What can the fates do! Pyrrhus envies his father, Ulysses Ajax, the lesser Atrides Hector, Agamemnon Priam; whoever lies at Troy is called happy, who deserved to fall on his post, whom fame preserves, whom the conquered land covers. "Do the sea and the waves bear us, who dared nothing noble? Will cowardly fates consume brave men? Must death be wasted? Whoever you are among the gods, not yet sated with such great evils, at last make your power serene: even Troy would give tears for our disasters, if your hatred endures and it pleases you that the Dorian race be sent to destruction. Why does it please you that these perish along with us, by whom you destroy us? Still the hostile sea: this fleet carries Danaans, and Trojans come in it." And they can say no more: the sea seizes their voice. Lo, another disaster: Pallas, armed with the thunderbolt of angry Jove, whatever she can—not with threatening spear, not with the aegis, not with the Gorgon's fury, but with her father's fire she attempts, and from heaven new storms breathe; alone, unconquered by the evils, Ajax struggles. As he gathers his own sails, the falling flame singed him on the tight rope. Another thunderbolt is poised: this with full force, sure, with drawn-back hand Pallas hurled, imitating her father; it passes through Ajax and the ship, and bore away with it part of the ship and Ajax. Nothing moved, like a steep crag, scorched by the brine, he stands out, divides the mad sea and breaks the waves with his breast, and clasping the ship with his hand, drew on the fire, and on the blind sea Ajax gleams, all the strait shines back, at last, a rock seized, he thunders in his frenzy: "It is sweet to have surpassed all things, the sea and the fires, to have conquered the sky, Pallas, the thunderbolt, the sea. The terror of the god of war did not put me to flight, nor did Phoebus' weapons drive me from my post: with the Phrygians I conquered those—shall I dread you? You hurl another's weapons with a feeble hand; what if he himself should hurl them?" As he dared more in his fury, father Neptune, thrusting his head from the lowest waves, undermined the rock with his trident, struck and loosed the mountain; falling, it bore him with it, and, conquered by land and fire and sea, he lies. Another, greater plague calls us, the shipwrecked. There is a shoal, low, deceptive with its jagged shallows, where treacherous Caphereus hides his rocks, shut in by rushing whirlpools; the strait boils about the crags and the wave seethes ever in alternate turn. A steep citadel overhangs, which looks on the sea, the twin sea on either side: hence the shores of your Pelops and the Isthmus, which, curved back on a narrow strip of land, forbids the Ionian to be joined to the Phrixean seas; hence Lemnos, famous for crime, and Calchedon and Aulis, slow for ships: this citadel seizes that father of Palamedes, and raising a bright light from the highest summit with unspeakable hand, he leads the fleet onto the rocks with his treacherous torch. The ships cling, fixed on the sharp crags; the brief shallows of the meagre wave shatter some, part of this one is carried, part sits on a rock; another, retracing its course, this one strikes and, broken, breaks it. Now the ships fear the land and prefer the seas. The frenzy fell with the dawn: after the sacrifice to Ilium was made, Phoebus returns and the grim day shows the losses of the night.

CLYTEMNESTRA Shall I grieve, or rejoice that my husband has returned? I rejoice that he has come back, but I am forced to mourn the heavy wound of the kingdom. Give back now to the Greeks, father, shaking the high-sounding realms, the appeased gods. Now let every head be veiled with glad foliage, let the sacrificing pipe pour forth sweet measures and let a snow-white victim fall before the great altars. But lo, a sad throng with uncombed hair, the Trojan women are here, above whom, with lofty step, the unbridled prophetess of Phoebus shakes the inspired laurels.

CHORUS OF TROJAN WOMEN, CASSANDRA CHORUS Alas, how sweet an evil given to mortals is the dread love of life, when there lies open to the wretched an escape from ills, and free death calls them, a peaceful harbour with eternal rest, which no terror, no ungovernable storm of Fortune moves, nor the flame of the unjust Thunderer. He will burst through all slavery, the despiser of the fickle gods, who looks on the face of black Acheron, who looks unsaddened on the grim Styx and dares to set an end to life. Deep peace . . . fears no gatherings of citizens, nor the threatening wrath of a victor, no seas mad with harsh winds, no fierce battle-lines nor dusty cloud stirred by barbarian troops of horsemen; no peoples falling with the whole city, no hostile flame ravaging your walls, nor untamed war: that man shall be equal to a king, equal to the gods. O how wretched it is not to know how to die! We saw our country falling on the fatal night, when the Dorian fires ravaged the Dardanian roofs, not conquered by war, not by arms, as once it fell by the Herculean quiver. She whom the son of Peleus and Thetis did not conquer, and the dear comrades of the too-fierce son of Peleus, when, with the borrowed arms received, he shone and routed the Trojans, a false Achilles, or when the son of Peleus himself raised his fierce spirits in grief, and the Trojan women feared him, swift in his leap, from the highest walls— she lost, amid her ills, the last glory, to be bravely conquered: she stood firm twice five years, to perish by the stealth of one night. We saw the feigned gifts of the immense mass, and we drew the fatal offering of the Danaans with our own credulous hand; and often the horse trembled on the first threshold, bearing in its caverns hidden kings and war; and we might have turned the trick, that the Pelasgians should fall by their own fraud. Often the shaken shields rang and a silent murmur struck our ears, when Pyrrhus, ill obeying the crafty Ulysses, growled. The Trojan youth, free of fear, rejoices to touch the sacred ropes, on this side Astyanax of the band of his own age, on that the bride betrothed to the Haemonian pyre, lead the troops, she the women's, he the men's. The festal matrons bear votive gifts to the gods; the festal fathers approach the altars; one expression is over all the city, and—what we never saw after Hector's funeral fires—Hecuba is glad. What now first, unhappy grief, or what last, do you prepare to weep? The walls, built by the gods' hand, overthrown by us? Or the temples burned over their own gods? There is no leisure to weep for those ills: you, great father, the Trojan women weep. I saw, I saw the weapon of Pyrrhus in the old man's throat scarcely tinged with his scanty blood.

CASSANDRA Restrain the tears that every time will demand, Trojan women, and mourn yourselves your own dead with your lamentable groan: my sorrows refuse a partner; remove your laments from my disasters; for my own ills I myself will suffice.

CHORUS It is sweet to mingle tears with tears: those whom secret cares lacerate burn the more; it is sweet to weep one's own openly. Nor will you, however a hard heroine and patient of evil, be able to weep such great ruins, not the bird that sings its shifting song on the spring bough, the sad nightingale, tuning Itys into varied notes, not the Bistonian bird, sitting on the high roofs, that chatters of the impious thefts of her dread husband, will be able worthily to mourn your house, though the very swan, bright among the snow-white birds, dwelling by the Hister and the Tanais, should wish to speak its last words; though the halcyons should sound for their Ceyx, the wave lightly beating in lament, when, ill trusting the calm, they boldly trust the sea again and, fearful, cherish their brood in the wavering nest; not though, accompanying the soft men, the throng that beats its sad arms with yours for the turreted mother, stirred by the hoarse boxwood pipe, strikes its breast to mourn Phrygian Attis— there is no measure to tears, Cassandra, because what we suffer has overcome all measure. But why do you tear the sacred fillets from your head? I should think the gods above must be honoured most by the wretched.

CASSANDRA Now all fear is conquered by our ills. Indeed I appease no gods with any prayer, nor, if they should wish to rage, have they wherewith to harm. Fortune herself has spent her own strength. What country remains, what father, what sister now? The tombs and altars have drunk my blood. What of that happy throng of my brother-band? Drained, surely: the wretched old folk, the palace empty, are left abandoned, and through so many chambers they see, except the Spartan, all the brides widowed. That mother of so many kings and ruler of the Phrygians, Hecuba, fruitful for the fires, having proven the new laws of fate, took on a savage shape: about her own ruins she barked, rabid, the survivor of Troy, of Hector, of Priam, of herself.

CHORUS Suddenly the prophetess is silent, and pallor seizes her cheeks, and a frequent trembling possesses her whole body; her fillets stood up, her soft hair bristles, her panting heart roars with a murmur shut within, her uncertain eyes waver, and turned backward her eyeballs are twisted; again, motionless, they grow rigid. Now she lifts her head into the air, higher than is her wont, and walks aloft; now she prepares to unbar her resisting throat; now her words, ill kept within her closed mouth, the maenad keeps back, impatient of the god.

CASSANDRA Why do you snatch me, stirred by the goads of new madness, why me, bereft of mind, sacred ridges of Parnassus? Withdraw, Phoebus; I am no longer yours, quench the flames fixed in my breast. For whom now do I wander, frenzied? For whom rave in fury? Now Troy has fallen—why do I, a false prophetess, act? Where am I? The kindly light flees, and night, deep, darkens my cheeks, and the hidden sky lies in shadows. But lo, the day shines forth with a double sun and a twofold Argos lifts its double houses. I see the Idaean groves: the fatal shepherd sits as arbiter among the powerful goddesses. Fear, kings, I warn you, the stolen offspring: . . . that rustic fosterling will overthrow the house. Why does that frenzied woman bear weapons drawn by a woman's hand? What man does her right hand seek, in Spartan dress, bearing an Amazonian sword? What other face now turns my eyes? The conqueror of beasts lies, his neck on high, the Marmaric lion, beneath an ignoble tooth, having suffered the bloody bites of a bold lioness. Why do you call me, the only survivor of my own, shades of my kin? You I follow, father, witness of buried Troy; brother, the help of the Phrygians and terror of the Danaans, I see not your ancient glory nor your hands warm from the burned ships, but mangled limbs and, wounded by the heavy chain, those arms; you I follow, too quickly met with Achilles, Troilus; you bear an uncertain face, Deiphobus, the gift of a new wife. It is sweet to walk through the very Stygian pools, it is sweet to see the savage dog of Tartarus and the realms of greedy Dis! This day the ship of black Phlegethon shall carry royal souls, the conquered and the conqueror. You, shades, I pray, and you, wave sworn by the gods above, I pray alike: unbar a little the back of the blackening pole, that the light throng of Phrygians may look out on Mycenae. Behold, wretched ones: the fates turn backward. The squalid sisters press on, they brandish their bloody scourges. The left hand bears half-burned torches and the pale cheeks swell and the garb of black mourning girds their wasted flanks, and the terrors of the night clamour, and the bones of a vast body, corrupted by long decay, lie in the muddy marsh. And lo, the weary old man, at the waters playing about his lips, does not snatch at them, forgetting his thirst, mournful at the funeral to come: he exults and sets his steps, the comely father Dardanus.

CHORUS Now the frenzy, having ranged itself out, has broken, and she falls, as before the altars, with bended knee, the bull bearing an uncertain wound on its neck. Let us raise her limbs. Lo, at last to his own gods, girt with victorious laurel, Agamemnon comes, and his festal wife went to meet him with her steps and returns, joined to him in concordant pace.

AGAMEMNON, CASSANDRA AGAMEMNON At last I return safe to my fathers' hearths; O dear land, hail. To you so many barbarian nations gave their spoils; to you long-fortunate Troy, of powerful Asia, submitted its hands. Why does that prophetess, her body sprawled out and trembling, totter with doubtful neck? Servants, lift her, revive her with cold water. Now she recovers the light with fading sight. Rouse your senses: that longed-for harbour for sorrows is at hand; it is a festal day.

CASSANDRA A festal day for Troy too it was.

AGAMEMNON Let us venerate the altars.

CASSANDRA My father fell before the altars.

AGAMEMNON Let us pray to Jove together.

CASSANDRA Hercean Jove?

AGAMEMNON Do you believe you see Ilium?

CASSANDRA And Priam together.

AGAMEMNON Here is not Troy.

CASSANDRA Where Helen is, I count it Troy.

AGAMEMNON Do not fear a mistress, you, a handmaid.

CASSANDRA Freedom is at hand.

AGAMEMNON Live untroubled.

CASSANDRA For me, to die is my security.

AGAMEMNON There is no peril for you.

CASSANDRA But great for you.

AGAMEMNON What can a victor fear?

CASSANDRA What he does not fear.

AGAMEMNON Faithful throng of servants, hold her, until she shakes off the god, lest her ungovernable frenzy do some harm. But you, father, who hurl the savage thunderbolts and drive off the clouds, who rule stars and lands, to whom the victors bring the spoils of triumph, and you, sister of the all-powerful man, with Argolic offerings, with votive cattle, gladly and with gifts of the Arabs and the suppliant entrail, I will worship.

CHORUS, CASSANDRA CHORUS Argos, noble for its noble citizens, Argos, dear to the angry stepmother, ever you rear up mighty fosterlings, and have made the uneven number of the gods even: that great Alcides of yours earned, by his twice-six labour, to be enrolled in heaven, for whom, the law of the world broken, Jupiter doubled the hours of the dewy night, and bade Phoebus drive his swift cars more slowly and your team return slowly, pale Phoebe; the star which by turns changes its name drew back its foot and wondered to be called Hesperus; Aurora moved her head to her wonted changes and, sliding back, laid her neck on her old husband. The rising felt, the setting felt Hercules being born: that violent one could not be created in one night. For you the hurrying world stood still, O boy destined to enter heaven. You the Nemean lion felt, fiery, pressed in your narrow arm, and the Parrhasian hind; the ravager of the Arcadian field felt you, and the bull groaned, leaving the bristling Dictaean fields. By death you tamed the fruitful dragon and forbade it to be born again from its perishing neck, and the twin brothers, three monsters born from one breast, you broke, exulting, with your shaken club, and led to the rising the Hesperian herd, the spoil of three-formed Geryon. You drove the Thracian herd, which no tyrant fed on the grass of the Strymonian river or the banks of the Hebrus: dread, he gave his guests' blood to the savage stalls, and the last blood of the charioteer stained the raw jaws. He saw the spoil snatched from the fierce breast of Hippolyte, and the Stymphalian bird, struck from the cloud by arrows, fell from the high sky; and the tree fertile with golden fruit dreaded the hands unwonted to be plucked, and fled into the air with its lightened bough. The cold guardian, unknowing of sleep, heard the sound from the crackling metal, when Alcides, full of the tawny ore, was now leaving all the grove empty. Dragged to the sky, the dog of the underworld, with its triple chain, was silent, and barked with no mouth, fearing the colour of the unknown light. With you as leader fell the lying house of the Dardanian and felt the bow to be feared again; with you as leader Troy fell in as many days as years.

CASSANDRA A great deed is being done within, equal to the ten years. Alas, what is this? My soul, rise up and take the reward of your frenzy: we conquered Phrygians have conquered. It is well, Troy rises again; lying low, father, you have dragged Mycenae down, your victor turns his back! Never so clearly has the frenzy of my prophetic mind shown things to my eyes: I see and am present and take joy: the doubtful image does not deceive my sight: let us watch. The feast, set out in the royal house, such as was the last banquet of the Phrygians, is celebrated: the couch gleams with Trojan purple and they draw unmixed wine in the gold of old Assaracus. Lo, he himself, in painted robe, reclines aloft, bearing on his body the proud spoils of Priam. His wife bids him strip off the hostile garb, and put on rather the cloak woven by his faithful wife's hand—I shudder and tremble in my soul: shall an exile and adulterer slay the king, the wife the husband? The fates have come. The blood of the lord shall the last banquet see, and the gore shall fall into the wine. The deadly garment, put on, treacherously gives him, bound, to death: it denies an outlet to his hands, and the loose and pathless folds enclose his head. The half-man drains his side with trembling right hand, nor has he driven it home: in the midst of the wound he stands amazed. But the king, like a bristly boar in the deep woods when, bound in the net, he still tries to get out and tightens the bonds by his struggle and rages in vain, longs to scatter the flowing, blind folds on every side, and, entangled, seeks his enemy. The frenzied daughter of Tyndareus arms her right hand with the double axe, and as the priest, before the altars, marks with his eyes the necks of the bulls before he seeks them with the steel, so this way and that she poises her impious hand. She has him, it is done. The head, ill-severed, hangs by a small part, and here from the trunk the gore overflows, there the face lies with a groaning. Not yet do they cease: he attacks the already lifeless one and mangles the body, she helps the one who stabs. Each answers to their own kin in so great a crime: this is the son of Thyestes, this the sister of Helen. Lo, Titan stands doubtful, the day discharged, whether to run his own way or the Thyestean.

ELECTRA Flee, O only help of your father's death, flee and shun the wicked hands of the foe. The house is overthrown from the foundation, the kingdom falls. Who is this stranger who drives the speeding chariot? Brother, I will steal your face with this garment. Why, mad soul, do you shrink back? Do you fear strangers? The house is to be feared. Lay aside now your trembling fears, Orestes: I behold the faithful defence of a friend.

STROPHIUS, ELECTRA STROPHIUS Phocis left behind, I, Strophius, famous for the Elean palm, return. The cause of my coming was to congratulate my friend, by whose hand's onset Ilium fell, shaken, in the ten-year war. Who is this who wets her mournful face with tears and, sad, is afraid? I recognize the royal race. Electra, what cause for weeping is there in a glad house?

ELECTRA My father lies slain by my mother's crime, his son is sought as a companion to his father's death, Aegisthus holds the citadel won by love.

STROPHIUS O happiness of no long time!

ELECTRA By the memory of my parent, I beseech you, by the sceptre known to the lands, by the doubtful gods: take this Orestes and conceal the pious theft.

STROPHIUS Though Agamemnon slain teaches me to fear, I will undertake it, and gladly steal you, Orestes. Take this adornment of the festal contest, the badge of the brow; and holding in the left hand the victorious frond, let it protect the head with its green bough, and let this gift, the palm of Pisan Jove, be at once a covering and an omen for you. And you, comrade, sitting beside the reins of his father, learn well, Pylades, faith by your father's example. You, swift horses, with Greece now as witness, flee in headlong course the treacherous places.

ELECTRA He has gone forth, departed, the chariot with unbridled onset has escaped the eye. Now, safe, I will await my enemies and of my own accord oppose my head to the wound. The bloody victress over her own husband is at hand and bears the signs of slaughter on her stained garment. Her hands are still wet with fresh blood and her savage face bears the crimes before it. I will withdraw to the altars. Suffer me to be joined to your fillets, Cassandra, who fear the like with you.

CLYTEMNESTRA, ELECTRA, AEGISTHUS, CASSANDRA CLYTEMNESTRA Foe of your parent, impious and bold creature, by what custom, a maiden, do you seek public gatherings?

ELECTRA A maiden, I have left the house of adulterers.

CLYTEMNESTRA Who would believe you a maiden?

ELECTRA Your own daughter?

CLYTEMNESTRA With your mother be more modest.

ELECTRA Do you teach piety?

CLYTEMNESTRA You bear a man's spirit in your swollen heart; but, tamed by suffering, you will learn to play the woman.

ELECTRA Unless perchance I am wrong, the sword becomes women.

CLYTEMNESTRA And, mad, do you think yourself equal to us?

ELECTRA To us? Who is this other Agamemnon of yours? Speak as a widow: your husband lacks his life.

CLYTEMNESTRA Hereafter I, the queen, will break the untamed words of the impious maiden; but meanwhile tell me quickly where your son is, where your brother.

ELECTRA Outside Mycenae.

CLYTEMNESTRA Now give me back my son.

ELECTRA And do you give back my father.

CLYTEMNESTRA In what place does he lurk?

ELECTRA Safe, at peace, fearing no new realms: to a just parent that is enough.

CLYTEMNESTRA But to an angry one, too little. You shall die today.

ELECTRA Provided I die by this hand. I withdraw from the altars. Whether it please you to plunge the steel in my throat, I offer you my throat; or if you please to cut my neck in the manner of cattle, my stretched neck awaits your wound. The crime is ready: wash your right hand, sprinkled with your husband's slaughter and defiled with this blood.

CLYTEMNESTRA Partner of my peril alike and of my kingdom, Aegisthus, come. The daughter impiously provokes her mother with reproaches, and hides her brother away.

AEGISTHUS Frenzied maiden, suppress the sound of your unspeakable voice and the words unworthy of a mother's ear.

ELECTRA Will even the contriver of unspeakable crime warn me, a son through crimes, a name doubtful to his own, at once the son of a sister and the grandson of a father?

CLYTEMNESTRA Aegisthus, do you delay to lop off with the sword the impious head? Let her give back her brother or her life at once.

AEGISTHUS Hidden in a blind prison and rock, let her spend her life, and, racked through every manner of punishment, perhaps she will wish to give back the one she now conceals, helpless, needy, shut in, buried in squalor, widowed before marriage, an exile, hated by all, denied the sky, late she will succumb to her ills.

ELECTRA Grant me death.

AEGISTHUS Were you to refuse it, I would give it. He is an unskilled tyrant who exacts punishment by death.

ELECTRA Is there anything beyond death?

AEGISTHUS Life, if you wish to die. Snatch away the monster, servants, and, carried far off beyond Mycenae, in the last corner of the kingdom, bind her, hedged in by the night of a dark cavern, that the prison may tame the restless maiden.

CLYTEMNESTRA But this captive wife shall pay her penalty with her head, the mistress of the royal bed. Drag her, that she may follow the husband torn from me.

CASSANDRA Do not drag me. I myself will go before your steps. I hasten to bear the message first to my Phrygians: that the sea is filled with overturned ships, that Mycenae is captured, that the leader of a thousand leaders, to pay equal fates for the Trojan ills, has perished by the gift of a woman: by adultery, by guile. I delay not, snatch me; nay, I give thanks. Now, now it is sweet to have lived after Troy, it is sweet.

CLYTEMNESTRA Frenzied one, die.

CASSANDRA Frenzy will come to you too.