Medea

MEDEA You gods of marriage, and you, Lucina, guardian of the bridal bed, and you who taught Tiphys to rein his new ship that would tame the seas, and you, fierce ruler of the deep sea, and Titan, dividing the bright day to the world, and you, three-formed Hecate, who lend your gleam as witness to the silent rites; and you gods by whom Jason swore to me, and those whom it is more right for Medea to invoke: the chaos of eternal night, the realms turned away from the gods above, the impious shades, the lord of the gloomy kingdom, and its lady, snatched away by a faith more loyal—with no auspicious voice I pray. Now, now be present, you goddesses who avenge crime, your hair foul with loosened serpents, grasping the black torch with your bloody hands, be present, dreadful, such as once you stood beside my marriage-bed: deal death to the new bride, death to her father and to the royal stock, deal something worse, some greater ill to ask for the bridegroom: let him live; let him wander needy through unknown cities, an exile, trembling, hated, with no certain home; let him, now a notorious guest, seek another's threshold; let him long for me as wife, and—than which I can pray no worse—for children like their father and like their mother. Already, already my vengeance is brought to birth: I have given birth. Why do I weave complaints and words in vain? Shall I not go against my foes? I will strike the torches from their hands and the light from the sky. Does the Sun, the sower of our race, look on this, and is he looked upon, and seated in his car runs down the wonted spaces of the clear pole? Does he not return to his rising and remeasure the day? Grant, grant me to be carried through the air in my father's car, hand me the reins, my forefather, and let me guide the fire-bearing team with the flaming reins: let Corinth, setting on its twin shores a barrier of delay, burned by the flames, join the two seas in one. This one thing remains, that I myself bear the pine-torch as bride-attendant to the marriage, and after the sacrificial prayers slay the victims on the dedicated altars. Through the very entrails seek a path for vengeance, if you live, my soul, if anything of your old vigour remains; drive off these womanish fears and clothe your mind in the inhospitable Caucasus. Whatever crime the Pontus or the Phasis has seen, the Isthmus shall see. Things savage, unknown, horrible, evils to be dreaded by heaven alike and earth, my mind stirs within: wounds and slaughter and a death roaming through the limbs—these I have named too lightly: these I did as a maiden; let a heavier grief arise: greater crimes now become me, now that I am a mother. Gird yourself with wrath and prepare for destruction with all your fury. Let the tale of your divorce be told as equal to your marriage: by what means will you leave your husband? By the means you followed him. Break off your sluggish delays: the house that was won by crime, by crime must be abandoned.

CHORUS To the marriage of kings, with favourable will, let the gods who rule heaven and who rule the sea be present with the people duly favouring. First, to the sceptre-bearing Thunderers let a bull, with lofty white back, offer his neck; to Lucina a heifer of snow-white body, untried by the yoke, is fitting; and to her who restrains the bloody hands of harsh Mars, who gives treaties to warring nations and holds plenty in her rich horn, let a gentler victim be given, a tender one. And you who attend the lawful torches, scattering the night with auspicious right hand, come hither with drunken, languid step, binding your temples with a rosy chain. And you, star that goes before the twin seasons, slow Evening-star, ever late returning for lovers: you the matrons, you eagerly the young brides desire to scatter your bright rays as soon as may be. The maiden's beauty far surpasses the Athenian brides, and those whom on Taygetus' ridges a city without walls trains in the manner of its young men, and those whom the Aonian stream and sacred Alpheus bathe. If he should wish his form to be looked upon, the leader, the son of Aeson, will outshine the offspring of the wicked thunderbolt, who fits the yoke to tigers; and he too who moves the tripods, the brother of the harsh maiden, will yield, with his own Castor, Pollux, more skilled with the boxing-glove. So, so, you dwellers in heaven, I pray, let the woman surpass all wives, let the man far surpass all men. When she has stood in the chorus of women, the face of one outshines them all. So with the sun the starry beauty fades, and the thick flocks of the Pleiades hide, when Phoebe binds her full orb with light not her own and with encircled horns. So a snow-white colour, steeped in scarlet purple, blushes red; so the shepherd, dewy at dawn, gazes on the gleaming radiance of new light. Snatched from the marriage-bed of the dread Phasis, wont to clasp the unwilling breast of your unbridled wife with trembling hand, happy man, seize the Aeolian maiden, now first, bridegroom, with her father's consent. Make sport, young men, with sanctioned banter; this way and that, young men, send your songs: rarely is there just licence against our masters. Noble, bright offspring of thyrsus-bearing Lyaeus, now was it time to kindle the cloven pine: strike out the festal fire with your languid fingers. Let the saucy Fescennine pour out festal jests. Let the crowd loose its jokes—let her go in silent darkness, whoever, a fugitive, weds a foreign husband.

MEDEA, NURSE MEDEA I am undone; the wedding-hymn has struck my ears. Scarcely can I myself, scarcely believe so great an evil. Could Jason do this, my father snatched away, my country and my kingdom, to desert me, hard man, alone in a foreign land? Did he scorn my deserts, who had seen flames and the sea conquered by my craft? Does he so believe all wickedness is spent? Uncertain, mad in mind, frenzied, I am driven in all directions; whence may I avenge myself? Would that he had a brother! He has a wife: into her let the steel be driven. Is this enough for my woes? If any crime the Pelasgian cities, if any the barbarian cities know, that your hands do not know, now it must be prepared. Let your own crimes urge you on, and let all return: the famous glory of the kingdom snatched away, and the little comrade of the wicked maiden, divided by the sword, the death heaped on the father, the body scattered on the sea, and the limbs of old Pelias boiled in the cauldron: how often, impiously, have I shed deadly blood—and no crime did I do in anger: unhappy love persuaded me. Yet what could Jason do, become subject to another's judgment and law? He ought to have offered his breast to the steel—better, ah, better, raging grief, speak: if he can, let my Jason live, as he was; but if not, let him live nonetheless and, mindful of my gift, spare me. The whole fault is Creon's, who, unbridled in his sceptre, dissolves marriages, and drags the mother from her sons, and breaks a faith bound by the close pledge: let him alone be sought, let him pay the penalties he owes; I will heap his house with deep ashes; Malea, bending the long delays for ships, shall see the black summit driven by the flames.

NURSE Be silent, I beg you, and entrust your complaints, hidden in secret, to your grief. Whoever has borne heavy wounds in silence with patient and even mind has been able to repay them: wrath that is hidden harms; hatreds professed lose their chance of vengeance.

MEDEA Light is the grief that can take counsel and conceal itself: great ills do not lie hid. I wish to go against him.

NURSE Check your frenzied onset, my child: scarcely does silent quiet protect you.

MEDEA Fortune fears the brave, crushes the cowardly.

NURSE Courage is to be approved, if it has its place.

MEDEA There can never be a time when courage has no place.

NURSE No hope shows a way to your afflicted affairs.

MEDEA He who can hope for nothing, let him despair of nothing.

NURSE The Colchians are gone, your husband's faith is nothing, and of all your great resources nothing remains to you.

MEDEA Medea remains. Here you see sea and lands and steel and fire and gods and thunderbolts.

NURSE The king is to be feared.

MEDEA My father was a king.

NURSE Do you not fear his arms?

MEDEA Though they were born from the earth.

NURSE You will die.

MEDEA I desire it.

NURSE Flee.

MEDEA I have repented of flight.

NURSE Medea—

MEDEA I shall become her.

NURSE You are a mother.

MEDEA You see by whom.

NURSE Do you hesitate to flee?

MEDEA I will flee, but first to take vengeance.

NURSE An avenger will follow.

MEDEA Perhaps I shall find delays.

NURSE Restrain your words, spare your threats now, madwoman, and lessen your spirit: it is fitting to suit oneself to the time.

MEDEA Fortune can take away wealth, but not the spirit. But whose stroke makes the royal hinge creak? It is Creon himself, swollen with Pelasgian empire.

CREON, MEDEA CREON Medea, the harmful offspring of Colchian Aeetes, has she not yet carried her foot out of my realms? She is contriving something: known is her fraud, known her hand. Whom will she spare, whom leave untroubled? Indeed, I was preparing to destroy this most evil plague quickly with the sword: my son-in-law prevailed by prayers; her life is granted; let her free our borders from fear and depart in safety. She comes toward me, fierce and threatening, and seeks a nearer speech with us. Keep her off, servants, far from touch and approach, bid her be silent. Let her learn at last to bear the royal command. Go in swift flight, and bear away at once the savage, horrible monster.

MEDEA What crime or what fault is punished by exile?

CREON What cause drives her out—the innocent woman asks.

MEDEA If you are a judge, examine; if you reign, command.

CREON You must bear the king's command, just or unjust.

MEDEA Unjust kingdoms never endure forever.

CREON Go, make your complaint to the Colchians.

MEDEA I would go back: let him bear me who brought me.

CREON Your voice comes too late: the decree is fixed.

MEDEA He who determines anything with the other side unheard, though he determine what is just, has not been just.

CREON Was Pelias heard by you before he bore his punishment? But speak: let a place be given to so excellent a cause.

MEDEA How hard it is to turn from wrath a mind already stirred, and how royal he thinks it, whoever has laid his proud hands to the sceptre, to go on by the way he has begun—I have learned in my own kingdom. For though I am overwhelmed by pitiable disaster, driven out, a suppliant, alone, deserted, on every side afflicted, once, by a noble father, and by my grandfather the Sun, I drew my illustrious line. Whatever the Phasis waters with its gentle windings, and whatever the Scythian Pontus sees behind it, where the seas grow sweet with marshy waters, whatever the troop, armed with crescent-shields, terrifies, the widowed band enclosed by the banks of the Thermodon— all this my father rules with his empire. Nobly born, fortunate, powerful in royal beauty, I shone: then suitors sought my marriage, who now are sought. Fortune, swift and fickle and headlong, snatched me from my kingdom, gave me to exile. Trust in kingdoms, when fickle chance bears great wealth hither and thither—this is what kings have, magnificent and vast, which no day snatches away: to help the wretched, to protect suppliants with a faithful house; this alone I brought from the Colchian kingdom: that great glory of Greece and its famous flower, the defence of the Achaean race and the offspring of gods, I myself saved. Orpheus is my gift, who soothes rocks with his song and draws the woods; and twin divinity, Castor and Pollux, is mine, and the sons of Boreas, and he who beyond the Pontus too sees far-off things, Lynceus, with his sight cast forth, and all the Minyae: for I keep silent of the leader of leaders, for whom nothing is owed: him I charge to no one; for you I brought back the others, one for myself. Press me now, and heap on me all my disgraces. I will confess: this one crime can be objected, that the Argo returned. Let the maiden choose modesty, and choose her father: then would all the Pelasgian land have fallen with its leaders; then this your son-in-law first would have fallen in the flaming mouth of the fierce bull. Let Fortune press my cause as she will, I do not repent of having saved the glory of so many kings. Whatever reward I bore from all my guilt, it is in your hands. If you please, condemn the accused; but give me back my crime. I am guilty, I confess, Creon: such you knew me to be, when I touched your knees and sought, a suppliant, the faith of your protecting right hand; in this land I beg some corner and seat for my miseries and a worthless hiding-place: if it pleases you to drive me from the city, let some remote place in your realms be given.

CREON That I am not one who wields his sceptre with violence, nor one who tramples on the wretched with proud foot, I have surely testified clearly enough by choosing for son-in-law an exile, afflicted and trembling with grievous terror—for he is sought by Acastus, who holds the Thessalian realms, for punishment and death. He complains that his father, trembling with feeble age and heavy with years, was slain, and the limbs of the slaughtered old man torn apart, when, caught by your guile, the pious sisters dared the impious crime. Jason can defend his own cause, if you remove yours: no blood has stained him, innocent; his hand was absent from the steel, and he stood pure, far from your company. You, you contriver of wicked deeds, who have a woman's wickedness for daring all things and a man's strength, and no regard for fame, go forth, purge my realms; carry away with you at once your deadly herbs; free the citizens from fear; seated in another land, importune the gods.

MEDEA You compel me to flee? Give back to the fugitive her ship, or give back her comrade—why bid me flee alone? I did not come alone. If you fear to endure wars, drive both from your realm; why distinguish two guilty ones? For him, not for me, lies Pelias. Add flight, plunder, the deserted father, the mangled brother— whatever, even now, the husband teaches his new wives, that is not mine: so often I have been made guilty, but never for myself.

CREON You ought to have gone already. Why do you weave delays with talk?

MEDEA A suppliant, departing, this last thing I pray: let not the mother's fault drag her guiltless sons along.

CREON Go: as a father I will take them to a father's bosom.

MEDEA By the auspicious bed of the royal marriage, by future hopes, and by the state of kingdoms, which varying Fortune drives with doubtful change, I pray, grant a short delay to the fugitive, while I, a mother, fix the last kisses on my sons, perhaps as I die.

CREON You seek time for treachery.

MEDEA What treachery can be feared in so brief a time?

CREON No time is too narrow for the wicked to do harm.

MEDEA Do you deny a wretched woman a little time for tears?

CREON Though deep-fixed fear fights against your prayers, one day shall be given you for preparing your exile.

MEDEA It is too much; you may cut something from that: I myself make haste.

CREON You shall pay the penalty with your head, before bright Phoebus raises the day, unless you depart the Isthmus. The marriage-rites call me, the festal day calls me to pray to Hymenaeus.

CHORUS Too bold was he who first broke the treacherous straits with so frail a craft, and, seeing his own lands behind him, trusted his life to the light breezes, and, cleaving the waters on a doubtful course, could trust to thin wood, between the ways of life and death a too-slender line drawn out. Our fathers saw bright ages, fraud removed far off. Each, sluggish, touching his own shores, and growing old in his father's field, rich on little, knew no wealth but what his native soil had borne. Not yet did anyone know the stars, and of the stars with which the sky is painted there was no use. Not yet could the ship avoid the rainy Hyades, nor the lights of the Olenian goat, nor those which the slow Attic old man, Bootes, follows and turns, his wains; not yet did Boreas, not yet did Zephyrus, have a name. Tiphys dared to spread his sails upon the vast sea, and to write new laws for the winds: now to stretch the sheets with full bosom, now, the foot drawn forward, to catch the cross winds, now to set the yards safe in the middle of the mast, now to bind them at the top, when the sailor, too greedy now, longs for all the gusts, and on the high sea the ruddy topsails tremble in the spread of canvas. The well-divided treaties of the world the Thessalian pine drew into one, and bade the sea endure the lashes, and bade the set-apart sea become a part of our fear. That wicked ship paid heavy penalties, led through such long terrors, when the two mountains, the bars of the deep, on this side and on that, with sudden impact, groaned as if with ethereal thunder, and the caught sea sprinkled the very clouds with its spray under the south winds. Bold Tiphys grew pale, and let all the reins fall from his slackening hand, Orpheus was silent, his lyre numb, and the Argo herself lost her voice. What, when the maiden of Sicilian Pelorus, girt about the womb with rabid dogs, opened all her gaping mouths together? Who did not shudder in every limb, so often with one barking monster? What, when the dread plagues soothed the Ausonian sea with tuneful voice, when, resounding on the Pierian lyre, Thracian Orpheus almost forced the Siren, wont to hold ships by her song, to follow? What was the reward of this voyage? The golden fleece, and Medea, an evil greater than the sea, fit cargo for the first keel. Now at last the sea has yielded and suffers all laws: no Argo, fitted by Pallas' hand, bearing the famous oars of kings, is sought—any little boat wanders the deep; every boundary has been moved, and cities have set their walls on new land, the passable world has left nothing in the place where it had been: the Indian drinks the cold Araxes, the Persians drink the Elbe and the Rhine. Ages will come in later years, when Ocean shall loose the bonds of things and a vast land lie open, and Tethys shall disclose new worlds, and Thule shall not be the last of lands.

NURSE, MEDEA NURSE My child, whither do you snatch your swift foot from the house? Stop, and restrain your wrath and hold back your onset. As a maenad bears her uncertain steps, inspired, when, the god received, she rages in frenzy on the snowy peak of Pindus or the ridges of Nysa, so she runs back here and there with wild movement, bearing the signs of raving madness in her face; her flaming face draws its breath from deep within, she cries out, drenches her eyes with abundant weeping, she beams: she takes the appearance of every passion. Where the weight of her mind inclines, where she sets her threats, she hangs in doubt: she threatens, seethes, complains, groans. Where will this wave break itself? Her fury overflows. She does not turn within herself a slight or middling crime; she will surpass herself: I know the marks of her old wrath. Something great is at hand, savage, monstrous, impious: I see the face of madness. May the gods deceive my fear!

MEDEA If you seek, wretched one, what measure to set to your hatred, imitate your love. Shall I unavenged endure the royal torches? Shall this day go idle, sought with so great striving, given with so great striving? While the earth bears the balanced heaven in its midst, and the bright world rolls out its certain changes, and the sands lack number, and the day follows the sun, the stars the night, while the pole turns the dry Bears, and rivers fall into the sea, never shall my fury cease from vengeance and shall always grow. What savagery of beasts, what Scylla, what Charybdis, sucking up the Ausonian and Sicilian sea, or what Aetna, pressing the panting Titan, shall seethe with such great threats? No rushing river, no stormy sea nor Pontus savage with the northwest wind, nor the force of fires helped by the blast could check my onset and my wrath: I will lay low and overturn all things. Did he fear Creon and the wars of the Thessalian chief? True love can fear no one. But suppose he yielded, forced, and gave his hands: he could at least have come and addressed his wife with one last word—even this the fierce man feared; he could at least have relaxed the time of the harsh flight, since he is the son-in-law—one day was given for two children. I do not complain that the time is short: it will stretch far. This day will do, this day will do what no day shall ever keep silent—I will assail the gods and shake all things.

NURSE Recover, mistress, your breast disturbed by ills; soften your spirit.

MEDEA There is one peace alone: if I see all things overwhelmed in ruin with me: let all things depart with me. When you perish, it is sweet to drag others down.

NURSE See how many things are to be feared, if you persist: no one can attack the powerful in safety.

JASON, MEDEA JASON O fates ever harsh, and lot ever bitter, evil alike when it rages and when it spares! How often does the god find for us remedies worse than the perils! If I wished to keep faith with my wife's deserts, I had to offer my head to death; if I were unwilling to die, I had to lack faith, wretched man. Not fear conquered faith, but trembling love: for the offspring would follow the death of the parents. Holy Justice, if you dwell in heaven, I invoke your power and call you to witness: the sons overcame the father. Nay, even she herself, though fierce in heart and impatient of the yoke, I think prefers to take thought for her sons than for her marriage. My mind is resolved to approach the angry woman with prayers. And lo, at the sight of me she has leapt up, she raves, she bears her hatreds before her: all her grief is in her face.

MEDEA We flee, Jason; we flee—this is nothing new, to change our dwelling; the cause of flight is new: for you I used to flee. I depart, I go forth, whom you compel to flee from your own home: but to whom do you send me? Shall I seek the Phasis and the Colchians and my father's kingdom and the fields that my brother's blood drenched? What lands do you bid me seek? What seas do you point to? The jaws of the Pontic strait through which I brought back the noble band of kings, following the adulterer through the Symplegades? Shall I seek little Iolcos, or Thessalian Tempe? Whatever ways I opened to you, I closed to myself— whither do you send me back? You order exile for an exile, and do not give it. Let me go. The royal son-in-law has commanded: I refuse nothing; heap on me dread punishments: I have deserved them. Let the royal wrath crush the rival with bloody penalties, load my hands with chains, and bury me, shut in rock, in eternal night: I shall suffer less than my deserts—ungrateful man, let your mind recall the fiery breath of the bull, and the weapons of the sudden enemy, when at my command the earth-born soldier fell in mutual slaughter; add the sought-for spoils of the Phrixean ram, and the sleepless monster bidden to give its eyes to unwonted sleep, my brother handed over to death, and crime done not once in one crime, and the daughters whom I dared, deceived by my fraud, to cut the limbs of an old man who would not live again: by the hopes of your children and your settled home, by the conquered monsters, by these hands, which for you I never spared, and by the past terrors, by heaven and the waves, witnesses of my marriage, have pity; repay the suppliant, in your happiness, in turn. Seeking foreign kingdoms, I deserted my own: of those riches which the Scythians drive, snatched far off from the scorched peoples of India, which, because the house was crammed, scarce holds the treasure, we adorn the groves with gold—as an exile I brought nothing but my brother's limbs: these too I spent for you; for you my country yielded, for you my father, brother, modesty— with this dowry I wedded. Give back to the fugitive what is hers.

JASON When hostile Creon wished to destroy you, overcome by my tears he gave you exile.

MEDEA I thought it a punishment: I see that flight is a gift.

JASON While you may depart, flee and snatch yourself from here: the wrath of kings is always heavy.

MEDEA This you urge upon me, but you do it for Creusa's sake: you remove a hated rival.

JASON Does Medea object to love?

MEDEA Both slaughter and tricks.

JASON What crime can you at last object to me?

MEDEA Whatever I have done.

JASON This one thing remains besides, that I be made guilty by your crimes too.

MEDEA Yours, yours are those crimes: whoever profits by a crime has done it. Let all proclaim your wife infamous, do you alone defend her, you alone call her innocent: let her be guiltless to you, who for you is guilty.

JASON Life is unwelcome when one is ashamed to have accepted it.

MEDEA Life is not to be kept when one is ashamed to have accepted it.

JASON Why not rather tame your heart, stirred by wrath, and grow gentle for your sons' sake?

MEDEA I renounce them, I forswear, I refuse— shall Creusa bear brothers to my children?

JASON A queen for the sons of exiles, the powerful one for the afflicted.

MEDEA May there never come so evil a day for the wretched, that should mingle noble offspring with foul.

JASON Why, wretched one, do you drag both me and yourself to ruin? Withdraw, I beg.

MEDEA Creon heard a suppliant.

JASON What can I do? Speak.

MEDEA For me? Even a crime.

JASON On this side a king, on that—

MEDEA There is (and here is the greater fear) Medea. Let us clash; let us contend; let Jason be the prize.

JASON I yield, worn out by ills. And do you yourself fear chances often already proven.

MEDEA Fortune has always stood beneath me, all of it.

JASON Acastus presses on.

MEDEA Creon is the nearer enemy: flee from both. Medea does not compel you to arm your hands against your father-in-law, nor to stain yourself with kindred slaughter: flee with me, innocent.

JASON And who will resist, if a double war assail, if Creon and Acastus join their arms?

MEDEA Add to these the Colchians, add Aeetes their leader, join the Scythians to the Pelasgians: I will give them all to drowning.

JASON I greatly dread the lofty sceptres.

MEDEA See that you do not covet them.

JASON Lest they be suspected, cut short our long talk.

MEDEA Now, highest Jupiter, thunder through all heaven, stretch out your right hand, prepare your avenging flames, and shake the whole world with the clouds burst open. Nor let the bolts be balanced by a choosing hand against me or against him: whoever of us falls will perish guilty; your thunderbolt cannot go astray against us.

JASON Begin to think sane thoughts and speak calmly; if any solace from my father-in-law's house can lighten your flight, seek it.

MEDEA My mind can despise royal wealth, as you know, and is wont to; let it only be permitted to have my children as companions of my flight, in whose bosom I may pour out my tears. New sons await you.

JASON I confess I long to obey your prayers; piety forbids: for that I should endure that, neither king nor father-in-law could himself compel me. This is the cause of my life, this the relief of my burnt heart amid its cares. Sooner could I lack my breath, my limbs, the light.

MEDEA Does he so love his sons? It is well, he is caught; a place lies open for the wound.— Let me at least be allowed to speak my last commands as I depart, let me give a final embrace: even that is welcome. With my last voice now I beg, that, if any doubtful grief poured out from me any words, they remain not in your mind: let the memory of a better me sit in your heart; let these things, given to wrath, be blotted out.

JASON I have driven all from my mind, and I myself beg that you rule your fervid spirit and bear it calmly: quiet softens miseries.

MEDEA He has departed. Is it so? You go, forgetful of me and of all my crimes? Have we fallen from your memory? We shall never fall from it. To this, then; summon all your powers and arts. The fruit of your crimes is this: to think no crime a crime. There is scarce room for fraud: we are feared. Attack on that side where no one can fear anything; go on, now dare, begin whatever Medea can, whatever she cannot. You, faithful nurse, partner of my grief and of my varying fortune, help my wretched plans. I have a robe, a gift of heaven, the glory and ornament of the kingdom, a pledge given to Aeetes by the Sun, the author of our race, and a necklace gleaming with woven gold, and gold that the sheen of gems distinguishes, with which the hair is wont to be bound. Let my sons bear these as gifts to the new bride, but first smeared and steeped with dread arts. Let Hecate be called; prepare the death-bringing rites: let the altars be set up, let the flame now sound in the house.

CHORUS No force of flame or swollen wind is so great, nor so to be feared as that of a hurled weapon, as when a wife, robbed of the wedding-torch, burns and hates; not when cloudy Auster has brought the winter rains and the torrent Hister hastens and forbids the bridges to be joined and roams astray; not when the Rhone drives the deep, or when, into streams, the snows melted, the sun now strong and the spring at its height, Haemus has dissolved. Blind is the fire goaded by wrath, nor does it care to be ruled, nor suffer the reins, nor fear death: it longs to go to meet the very swords. Spare, O gods, we pray for pardon, that he may live safe who subdued the sea; but the lord of the deep rages that his second realms are conquered. The youth who dared to drive the eternal car, forgetful of his father's goal, the fires which he madly scattered through the pole he himself received. The known way has stood ill for no one greatly: go by the way safe for an earlier people, break not, while the sacred witness looks on, the holy treaties of the world. Whoever touched the noble oars of the bold keel, and despoiled Pelion of the thick shade of its sacred grove, whoever entered the wandering rocks, and, having measured out so many labours of the sea, bound his cable to a barbarian shore, a robber of foreign gold, meaning to return, atoned with a dread end for the violated laws of the sea. The challenged sea exacts its penalties: Tiphys first, the tamer of the deep, left the helm to an unskilled master; on a foreign shore, far from his father's kingdom, dying, and covered by a worthless tomb, he lies among the unknown shades. Aulis thence, mindful of the lost king, holds the keels fast in its sluggish harbours, complaining as they stand. He, the son of the tuneful Muse, at whose strings, his plectrum playing, the torrent stood still, the winds were silent, the bird, leaving its own song, came near to his music, and the whole woodland followed, lay scattered through the Thracian fields, but his head floated down the mournful Hebrus: he reached the known Styx and Tartarus, not to return. Alcides laid low the sons of the North Wind, he slew the one born of father Neptune, wont to take on countless shapes: he himself, after the peace of land and sea, after the realms of fierce Dis were opened, living, reclining on burning Oeta, gave his limbs to the savage flames, consumed by the corruption of the double blood, the gift of his bride. The violent boar laid low Ancaeus with his stroke; you, Meleager, impious, slay your mother's brother, and die by the hand of your angry mother. All deserved the death—what crime did the tender boy expiate, the boy never found for great Hercules, snatched, alas, amid the safe waves? Go now, brave men, plough the sea with its fountain to be feared. Idmon, though he knew the fates well, the serpent buried in the Libyan sands; true to all, false to himself alone, Mopsus fell and lacked Thebes. If he sang the future truly, the husband of Thetis shall wander an exile, Oileus, dying by thunderbolt and sea, . . . shall pay the penalty for his father's crime: Nauplius, meaning to harm the Argives by deceitful fire, shall fall headlong into the deep, and, redeeming the fate of her Pheraean husband, the wife shall spend her life for her spouse, he himself who bade the prey and the golden spoil be brought back by the first keel, Pelias, burned in the kindled cauldron. Now you have avenged the sea enough, gods: spare him who only obeyed.

NURSE My mind is afraid, shudders; a great ruin is at hand. How monstrously her grief swells and kindles itself of itself and renews its former force. Often have I seen her raging and assailing the gods, dragging down the sky: a greater, a greater monstrous deed Medea prepares. For when, with frenzied step, she went out and reached her deadly inner shrine, she pours out all her resources, and whatever she herself long feared she brings forth, and unfolds all the throng of evils, things hidden, secret, concealed, and, gathering the grim sacrifice with her left hand, she calls all the plagues that the burning sand of Libya creates, and those that the Taurus, stiff with northern cold, restrains in perpetual snow, and every monster; drawn by her magic chants, the scaly throng comes from its deserted lairs. Here a savage serpent drags its huge body and darts its three-forked tongue and seeks for whom it may come as bringer of death: hearing the song, it stands amazed and folds its body, swollen with heaped-up coils, and forces it into rings. "Small are these ills," she says, "and worthless is the weapon that the lowest earth creates: from heaven I will seek my poisons. Now, now is the time to set in motion something deeper than common fraud. Hither let that serpent descend, lying like a vast torrent, whose immense coils the two beasts, the greater and the lesser, feel (the greater fit for the Pelasgians, the lesser for the Sidonians), and let Ophiuchus at last loose his pressed hands and pour out the venom; let him come to my songs, the Python who dared to provoke the twin deities. And let the Hydra and every serpent cut down by Hercules' hand return, restoring itself by its own slaughter. You too, sleepless one, leaving the Colchians, be present, O serpent, first lulled to sleep by my songs." After she had called forth every kind of serpent, she heaps in one the evils of ill-omened plants: whatever the pathless Eryx breeds among its rocks, whatever the Caucasus bears on its ridges, covered with perpetual winter, sprinkled with the blood of Prometheus, and those with which the rich Arabs smear their arrows, and the warlike quiver of the Medes, or the light Parthians, or those juices which beneath the cold pole the noble Suebi gather in the Hyrcanian groves; whatever the earth creates in the nest-building spring, or when stiff winter has shaken off the glory of the groves and bound all things in snowy frost, whatever herb is green with deadly flower, or whose strong juice in its roots breeds causes of harm, she handles with her hand. Haemonian Athos brought those plagues, these vast Pindus; that one on the ridges of Pangaeus laid down its tender foliage with the bloody sickle; these the Tigris nourished, pressing its deep whirlpool, those the Danube; these, through the parched regions, the gem-bearing Hydaspes, running with its warm waters, and Baetis, which gave its name to its own lands, beating the Hesperian seas with its languid shallows. This one suffered the steel while Phoebus made the day, that one's frond was cut down in the deep of night; but this crop was cut by a nail amid the chant. She plucks the deadly herbs and squeezes out the gore of serpents and mixes them, and the obscene birds, and the heart of the mournful screech-owl, and the entrails of the hoarse owl, cut from it alive: these the artificer of crimes sets apart, kept separate; in some there is the rapacious force of fire, in some the icy frost of sluggish cold. She adds to her poisons words no less to be feared than these. Lo, she has sounded with frenzied step and chants. At her first voices the world trembles.

MEDEA I pray to the throng of the silent and to you, funereal gods, and blind Chaos and the shadowy home of dark Dis, and the caverns of squalid Death bound by Tartarus' banks. Souls of the punished, with your toils relaxed, run to the new marriage: let the wheel that twists the limbs stop, let Ixion touch the ground, let Tantalus, untroubled, drink the Pirenian waters. You too, whom the toil is mocked in vain with pierced urns, Daughters of Danaus, gather: this day requires your hands. Let a heavier punishment sit on one alone, the father-in-law of my spouse: let the slippery stone roll Sisyphus back among the rocks. Now, called by my rites, star of the nights, come, clothed in your worst face, threatening with brow not single. For you, loosing my hair from its native band, I have ranged the secret groves with bare foot, and called forth waters from the dry clouds, and driven the seas to their depths, and Ocean, its tides conquered, gave its heavy waves more inward; and alike the world, the law of the sky confounded, saw both sun and stars, and you, Bears, touched the forbidden sea. I have turned the changes of the seasons: the summer earth flowered at my song, and Ceres, compelled, saw a winter harvest; the violent Phasis turned its waters back to their source, and the Hister, divided into so many mouths, checked its fierce waves, sluggish in all its banks. The waves resounded, the mad sea swelled with the wind silent; the home of the ancient grove sent forth shadows at the command of my voice. Phoebus, the day forsaken, stood still in mid-course, and the Hyades, moved by my songs, totter: it is time, Phoebe, to be present at your rites. For you these garlands are woven by my bloody hand, which nine serpents bind; for you these limbs which discordant Typhoeus had, who shook the realms of Jove; here is the blood of the treacherous carrier, which Nessus dying gave. The Oetaean pyre faded with this ash, which drank the Herculean poison; you see the brand of the pious sister, the impious mother, the avenging Althaea. The Harpy left these feathers in her pathless cave, while she fled from Zetes; add to these the wings of the wounded Stymphalian bird that suffered the Lernaean arrows. You have sounded, altars; I know my tripods moved by the favouring goddess. I see the swift cars of Trivia, not those which, bright with full face, she drives all night, but those which, with sad lurid look, when harassed by Thessalian threats, she traverses the sky with nearer rein. So pour a pale dim light from your torch through the air, terrify the peoples with new horror, and to your aid, Dictynna, let the precious bronzes of Corinth sound. To you on a bloody sod we give the solemn rite; for you a torch, snatched from the midst of a tomb, has raised its nocturnal fires; for you, my head moved, with bent neck, I have given my voices; for you, lying in funereal fashion, a fillet binds my loosened hair; for you is brandished the grim branch from the Stygian wave; for you, a maenad with bared breast, I will strike my arms with the sacred knife. Let my blood drip upon the altars: accustom yourself, my hand, to draw the steel and to bear the shedding of dear blood. Struck, I have given the sacred fluid. But if you complain that you are called too often in my prayers, forgive me, I beg: the cause for calling your bow, daughter of Perses, so often, is one and the same ever—Jason. Now do you steep the robes of Creusa, so that, as soon as she has put them on, a creeping flame may burn her inmost marrow. A fire, hidden in the tawny gold, lies concealed, which he who pays for the theft of heaven with his ever-renewed entrails gave me, Prometheus, and taught me to hide its force by art; and Mulciber gave me fires covered with thin sulphur, and the lightning of living flame I took from my kinsman Phaethon. Lo, I have the gifts of the dread Chimaera, I have flames snatched from the scorched throat of the bull, which, mixed with the gall of Medusa, I bade keep their evil silent. Add goads to my poisons, Hecate, and in my gifts preserve the hidden seeds of flame. Let them deceive the sight and bear the touch, let the heat pass into her breast and her veins, let her limbs drip and her bones smoke, and let the new bride outdo her wedding-torches with her blazing hair. My prayers are granted: thrice has bold Hecate given her barking and put forth the sacred fires with her light-bearing torch. The whole force is accomplished: call my sons hither, through whom I may bear the precious gifts to the bride. Go, go, my sons, offspring of an ill-fated mother, appease for yourselves with a gift and with much prayer your mistress and your stepmother. Go and swiftly bring your steps back home, that I may enjoy a last embrace.

CHORUS Whither is the bloody maenad, headlong with savage love, hurried? What does she prepare the more easily with ungovernable fury? Her face, quickened with wrath, grows rigid, and shaking her head with fierce, proud motion, she of her own accord threatens the king. Who would believe her an exile? Her cheeks burn red. Pallor drives off the redness, she keeps no colour long with her shifting form. She bears her feet hither and thither, as a tigress robbed of her young ranges with frenzied course the Ganges' woodland. Medea knows not how to rein her wrath, nor her loves; now wrath and love have joined their cause: what will follow? When will the unspeakable Colchian carry her step from the Pelasgian fields, and free from fear both the kingdom and the kings? Now, Phoebus, send your car with no rein delaying, let kindly night bury the light, let Hesperus, the leader of night, plunge the day to be feared.

MESSENGER, CHORUS, NURSE, MEDEA, JASON MESSENGER All has perished, the state of the kingdom has fallen, daughter and father lie mingled in one ash.

CHORUS By what fraud were they caught?

MESSENGER By that with which kings are wont to be caught: by gifts.

CHORUS What guile could there be in those?

MESSENGER I myself wonder, and scarce now, the evil done, do I believe that it could have happened.

CHORUS What was the measure of the disaster?

MESSENGER A greedy fire rages through every part of the palace, as if commanded: already the whole house has fallen, the city is feared for.

CHORUS Let water quench the flames.

MESSENGER And this too, in that disaster, happened wondrously: the water feeds the flames, and the more it is hindered, the more the fire burns: it seizes on its very safeguards.

NURSE Carry your hastened step from the seat of Pelops, Medea; headlong, seek whatever lands you will.

MEDEA I withdraw? If I had fled before, I would return for this. I look upon a new marriage. Why, my soul, do you delay? Follow your happy onset. This part of your vengeance, in which you rejoice—how small is it? You still love, madwoman, if it is enough for you that Jason is unwed. Seek a kind of punishment not common, and now thus prepare yourself: let all right yield, let modesty depart, driven out; light is the vengeance that pure hands bring. Lean into your wrath, and rouse yourself, languishing, and from the bottom of your breast draw up violently your old impulses. Whatever has been done so far, let it be called piety. This I will do, and I will make them know how slight and of how common a stamp were the crimes I lent. By those my grief played a prelude: what great thing could untrained hands dare? What could a girl's fury? Now I am Medea; my genius has grown by my ills. It delights, it delights me to have snatched my brother's head; it delights me to have cut his limbs and to have robbed my father of his secret sacred thing; it delights me to have armed the daughters for the old man's destruction. Seek your material, grief: to every crime you will bring no untrained right hand. Whither, then, do you send yourself, my wrath, or what weapons do you aim at the treacherous foe? Some fierce thing my mind has resolved within, and does not yet dare confess to itself. Foolishly I have hurried too much: would that my enemy had some children by his mistress—but whatever is yours by him, Creusa bore. This kind of punishment has pleased me, and rightly pleased: the last crime, I acknowledge, must be prepared in my mind—children once mine, do you pay the penalty for your father's crimes. Horror has struck my heart, my limbs grow numb with cold and my breast trembled. Wrath has left its place and the mother, wholly returned, drives out the wife. Shall I shed the blood of my own children and my offspring? Better, ah, mad fury! Let that unheard-of deed and dread crime be far from me too. What crime shall the wretched ones atone for? It is a crime that Jason is their father, and a greater crime that Medea is their mother— let them die, they are not mine; let them perish, they are mine. They are free of crime and fault, they are innocent: I confess it, and my brother too was so. Why, my soul, do you waver? Why do the tears wet my face, and wrath this way, love that way, draw me in turn? An uncertain tide sweeps me, doubtful. As when the rapid winds wage savage wars, and the discordant waves drive the seas on both sides and the doubtful deep boils, just so my heart wavers. Wrath drives out piety and piety wrath—yield to piety, grief. Hither, dear offspring, the only solace of an afflicted house, hither bear yourselves, and join your limbs, poured upon me. Let your father have you unharmed, while your mother has you too; but exile and flight press hard. Now, now they shall be torn, snatched from my bosom, weeping, groaning. Let them perish to their father by my kisses; they have perished to their mother. Again my grief grows and my hatred boils; the old Erinys seeks again my unwilling hand. Wrath, where you lead, I follow. Would that the throng of the proud daughter of Tantalus had gone forth from my womb, and that I, a parent, had borne twice seven sons! I was barren for vengeance— yet for my brother and my father, what is enough, I bore two. Whither tends that ungovernable throng of Furies? Whom do they seek, or for whom do they prepare their flaming blows, or against whom does the infernal band aim its bloody torches? A huge serpent hisses, twisted with the lash shaken out. Whom does Megaera seek with the hostile beam? Whose shade comes, uncertain, with scattered limbs? It is my brother, he seeks vengeance: we will give it. But—plunge all the torches into my eyes, tear, burn; lo, my breast lies open to the Furies. Bid the avenging goddesses depart from me, brother, and go untroubled to the lowest shades: leave me to myself, and use this hand, brother, which drew the sword—with this victim we appease your shade. What does that sudden sound bring? Arms are made ready and they seek my destruction. I will climb the lofty roof of my house, the slaughter begun. Come you with me, my comrade. Your body too I will myself bear away with me from here. Now to this, my soul: your courage must not be spent in secret; approve your hand to the people.

JASON Whoever, faithful, grieve at the disaster of the kings, run together, that we may seize the very author of the horrid crime. Hither, hither, brave band of armed men, bring your weapons, overthrow the house from its foundation.

MEDEA Now, now I have recovered my sceptre, my brother, my father, and the Colchians hold the spoil of the golden beast; my kingdom has returned, my snatched virginity returns, O gods at last appeased, O festal day, O nuptial day! Go; the crime is finished, the vengeance not yet: finish it while your hands are at work. Why do you now delay, my soul? Why do you hesitate, powerful one? Now my wrath has fallen. I repent of the deed, I am ashamed. What, wretched one, have I done? Wretched? Though I repent, I have done it—a great pleasure steals over me against my will, and lo, it grows. This one thing I lacked, that man as spectator. Nothing yet do I count as done: whatever crime we did without him is lost.

JASON Lo, she herself leans over the steep part of the roof. Let someone snatch fire hither, that she may fall, burned by her own flames.

MEDEA Heap up for your sons, Jason, their last funeral, and build a tomb: your wife and father-in-law have now the rites due to the dead, buried by me; this son has met his fate, this one shall be given to a like destruction with you looking on.

JASON By every divinity, by our common flights and the marriage-bed, which my faith never violated, now spare the boy. If there is any crime, it is mine: I give myself to death; slay my guilty head.

MEDEA Here, where you refuse, where you grieve, I will drive the steel. Go now, proud one, seek the chambers of maidens, abandon mothers.

JASON One is enough for a punishment.

MEDEA If this hand could be sated with one slaughter, it would have sought none. Though I slay two, yet the number is too narrow for my grief.

JASON Now finish the crime begun; I beg no further, and grant at least a delay to the punishment of my own.

MEDEA Enjoy your slow crime, do not hurry, my grief: this is my day; I use the time granted.

JASON Slay me, hostile one.

MEDEA You bid me have pity. It is well, it is accomplished. I had no more, grief, to offer you. Lift your swollen eyes hither, ungrateful Jason: do you recognize your wife? Thus I am wont to flee; a way has opened into heaven: twin serpents offer their scaly necks, bowed beneath the yoke. Now, father, take back your sons; I shall be borne through the air in my winged car.

JASON Go through the high spaces of the lofty air, bear witness that, where you pass, there are no gods.