Thyestes

THE GHOST OF TANTALUS, A FURY

GHOST OF TANTALUS Who drags me out from the accursed seat of the dead, as I snatch with greedy mouth at the food that flees my reach? What god, to my hurt, shows Tantalus the halls of the gods once seen again? Has worse been found than the parching thirst amid the waves, worse than the hunger that gapes forever? Must Sisyphus' slippery stone be carried on my shoulders now? Or the wheel that tears the limbs apart in its swift career? Or the punishment of Tityos, who, spread open in his vast cave, feeds the black birds upon his torn-out entrails, and by night repairing whatever he lost by day lies, a full feast made fresh again for the monster? To what evil am I transferred? O whoever you are, harsh arbiter of shades, who deal out new torments to the dead, if anything can be added to my pains that the very keeper of the grim prison would dread, that mournful Acheron would fear, at the terror of which even we should tremble—seek it out: now from my stock rises a throng that shall outdo its kind, that shall make me innocent and dare deeds undared. Whatever space lies idle in the impious region I shall fill—never, while the house of Pelops stands, shall Minos rest.

FURY Go on, detestable shade, and drive the impious household to madness. Let them strive in every crime, and in turn let the sword be drawn; let there be no measure to their wrath, no shame; let blind frenzy goad their minds, let the parents' rage endure, and let the long sin pass down to the grandchildren; let none have leisure to hate the old crime: ever let a new one rise, and not one in one man, but while one crime is punished let it grow. Let kingdoms fall from the proud brothers and call the exiles back; let the uncertain fortune of the violent house waver between unstable kings: let the powerful become wretched, the wretched powerful, and let chance bear the kingdom on its restless tide. Driven out for their crimes, when a god gives back their country let them return to crime, and be as hateful to all men as to themselves; let wrath think nothing forbidden: let brother fear brother and father his son, and son his father; let children perish foully, yet be born more foully still; let a hostile wife threaten her husband; let them carry wars across the sea; let blood, poured out, drench every land, and over the great captains of the nations let conquering Lust exult; in this impious house let adultery be the lightest sin; let right and faith and all law perish; let heaven itself not be exempt from your evils—why do the stars gleam in the pole, why do their fires keep the world its due splendour? Let another night come, let day fall from the sky. Confound the household; summon hatreds, slaughters, deaths, and fill the whole house with Tantalus. Let the high pillar be adorned, let the doors grow green and joyful with laurel; let a fire worthy of your coming blaze—let the Thracian crime be done on a greater scale. Why is the uncle's right hand idle? Not yet does Thyestes weep for his sons— and when will he raise them up? Already the fires are lit; let the cauldrons foam; let the limbs go piece by piece, torn apart; let the blood pollute the ancestral hearths; let the banquet be prepared—as guest to no new crime you shall come; we have granted you a free day and loosed your hunger to those feasts: glut your fasting; let blood mixed in wine be drunk while you look on; I have found dishes that you yourself would flee—stop! where do you rush headlong?

TANTALUS To the pools, the streams, the receding waters, and the fleeing branches of the laden tree from my very lips. Let me go back to the black bed of my prison, let me, if I seem too little wretched, exchange my banks: in the midst of your channel, Phlegethon, let me be left, ringed round by your fiery flood. Whoever you are who are bidden to suffer the pains appointed by the law of fate, whoever lie trembling beneath the gnawed-out cave and dread the coming ruin of the mountain, whoever, entangled, shudder at the savage gaping jaws of greedy lions and the dread ranks of the Furies, whoever, half-burned, beat back the hurled torches—hear the voice of Tantalus who hastens to you: believe one who has known it, love your pains—when shall it fall to me to flee the world above?

FURY First throw the household into confusion, and bring with you battles and the cursed love of the sword for kings; shake their savage breasts with mad tumult.

TANTALUS It is fitting that I suffer punishment, not that I be a punishment. I am sent like a baleful vapour through the broken earth, or like a plague scattered to bring grievous pestilence on the peoples—shall I, the grandfather, lead my grandsons into horrible crime? Great father of the gods and ours—though it shame you—though my chattering tongue be racked with mighty punishment for its words, yet this I will not keep silent: I warn you, do not defile your sacred hands with slaughter, nor sprinkle the altars with the madness of the Furies. I will stand and bar the crime— why do you thrash my face with the lash, and fiercely threaten me with your twisted serpents? Why do you stir the hunger fixed deep in my marrow? My heart is on fire, kindled with thirst, and the flame flickers in my scorched entrails— I follow.

FURY This, this frenzy spread through the whole house! So, so let them be carried on, and thirst, in mutual hatred, each for the other's blood. The house feels your entry and shudders, all of it, at your unspeakable touch. Enough has been done; go to the infernal caverns and the well-known stream; already the mournful earth is weighed down by your tread: do you see how the spring's water, driven inward, deserts its bed, how the banks lie empty, and the fiery wind drives the scattered clouds? Every tree grows pale, and the bared branch thirsts, its fruit gone fleeing; and the Isthmus, which on this side roars with the near waves, and on that— the neighbouring sea, divided by a narrow strip of land— now hears those sounds far off, in safety. Now Lerna has shrunk back, the streams of Phoroneus have hidden themselves; the holy Alpheus brings forth its waves no more; the ridges of Cithaeron stand nowhere white with their fallen snow, and noble Argos dreads its old thirst. See, Titan himself hesitates whether to bid the day go on and force, with the reins, the day that is doomed to die.

CHORUS If any of the gods loves Achaean Argos and the Pisan halls famed for their chariots; if any loves the realms of Corinth on the Isthmus, the twin harbours and the parting sea; if any loves the conspicuous snows of Taygetus, which, when the Sarmatian North Wind in the cold season has piled them on the highest ridges, summer dissolves with the sail-bearing Etesian winds; whom the bright Alpheus touches with its cold stream, famed for the Olympic course— let him turn his peaceful favour here, and forbid that the alternating turns of crime return, that no grandson succeed worse than his grandsire, and that the lesser take no pleasure in greater guilt. At last let the impious progeny of Tantalus, weary, lay aside its savage impulses. Enough has been sinned; right availed nothing, nor common crime: betrayed, Myrtilus fell, the betrayer of his lord; carried by that faith he had kept, he gave to the sea, with its name changed, a name renowned: no tale is better known to the Ionian ships. The little son, received upon the impious sword as he ran to his father's kiss, fell an untimely victim at the hearth and was carved up by your right hand, Tantalus, that you might set out feasts for the guest-gods. Eternal hunger pursues this food, eternal thirst; nor for the savage banquet could a fitter penalty be decreed. Weary Tantalus stands, his throat empty: above his guilty head there hangs much spoil, more fleeting than the birds of Phineus; on this side and on that, with laden branches the tree leans over him, and bowed with its own fruit and trembling, it mocks his gaping mouth. Though he is greedy and impatient of delay, so often deceived, he neglects to touch it, turns away his eyes, presses his lips together, and binds his hunger fast with closed teeth. But then the whole grove lets down its riches nearer, and the ripe apples from above make mockery among the drooping leaves and kindle his hunger, which bids him stretch his hands in vain—but when he has put them out and it has pleased the fruit to cheat him, all the autumn is snatched up on high, and the shifting woodland. Then thirst presses, no lighter than the hunger; when his blood has grown hot with it and burned with fiery brands, the wretch stands reaching with his mouth for the waters that come to meet him, which the fleeing stream turns away, failing in its barren channel, and deserts him as he tries to follow; here he drinks deep of the dust from the rushing whirlpool.

CHORUS

ATREUS, AN ATTENDANT

ATREUS Spiritless, sluggish, nerveless, and—what I count the greatest reproach to a tyrant in supreme affairs— unavenged: after so many crimes, after your brother's tricks and all right torn away, you spend yourself, Atreus, in idle complaints, though angry? By now the whole world ought to be roaring with your arms, and a double sea to be driving your fleets on either side; by now it were fitting that the fields blazed with fire and the cities, and the drawn sword flashed everywhere; let the whole Argive land resound beneath our horsemen; let no woods shelter the enemy, nor citadels built on the high mountain ridges; let the whole people leave Mycenae and sound the war-trumpet; whoever hides and protects that hateful head, let him fall in deadly ruin. Let this very mighty house of glorious Pelops crash down even upon me, so it crash upon my brother. Come, my soul, do what no posterity may approve, but none keep silent: some crime must be dared, atrocious, bloody, such as my brother would rather have for his own—crimes are not avenged except by surpassing them; and what can be so cruel as to outdo that man? Does he lie cast down? Does he keep, in prosperity, any measure, or rest when weary? I know the man's temper, untameable: it cannot be bent—but it can be broken. Therefore, before he steadies himself or gathers strength, let him be attacked first, lest he attack me while I rest. He will either destroy or perish: between us the crime lies ready for whoever seizes it first.

ATTENDANT Does the unfavourable repute of the people not frighten you at all?

ATREUS This is the greatest good of kingship, that the people are forced to bear the deeds of their lord as much as to praise them.

ATTENDANT Those whom fear compels to praise, the same fear makes into enemies; but he who seeks the glory of true favour will wish to be praised by the heart rather than the voice.

ATREUS True praise often falls even to a humble man; false praise to none but the powerful—what they would not, let them wish.

ATTENDANT Let the king will honourable things: everyone will will the same.

ATREUS Wherever only honourable things are allowed to the ruler, he reigns on sufferance.

ATTENDANT Where there is no shame, no care for right, no holiness, piety, or faith, the kingdom is unstable.

ATREUS Holiness, piety, faith are the goods of private men: let kings go where it pleases them.

ATTENDANT Count it a crime to harm even a wicked brother.

ATREUS Whatever is a crime against a brother is right against him. For what has he left untouched by crime, or where has he spared from wickedness? He stole my wife by adultery, my kingdom by theft; the ancient token of empire he gained by fraud, by fraud he troubled my house. There is in the high stalls of Pelops a noble beast, a secret ram, the leader of a wealthy flock, all through whose body a fleece of poured-out gold hangs down, from whose back the new kings of Tantalus bear their gilded sceptres; its owner reigns, the fortune of so great a house follows him, in safety. Set apart, the sacred beast crops the meadows, which a wall of stone encloses, guarding the fated pasture in its rocky bound. This—daring a monstrous deed—my faithless brother carried off, having taken the partner of my bed into the crime. From this flowed all the evil of our mutual ruin: through my own realms I wandered, a trembling exile; no part of my line is safe and free from snares, my wife corrupted, the faith of empire shaken, my house sick, my blood in doubt—nothing certain but that my brother is my enemy. Why do you stand amazed? At last begin and take heart: look on Tantalus and Pelops; their example summons my hands to such deeds. Tell me, by what means may I slaughter that dread head.

ATTENDANT Let him, struck down by the sword, breathe out his hostile life.

ATREUS You speak of the end of his punishment; I want the punishment. Let a gentle tyrant slay: in my kingdom death is begged for as a favour.

ATTENDANT Does no piety move you?

ATREUS Depart, Piety, if ever you were in our house at all; let the dread band of Furies come, and discordant Erinys, and Megaera brandishing her twin torches: my breast does not yet burn with great enough frenzy; it pleases me to be filled with a greater monstrousness.

ATTENDANT What new thing do you raving devise?

ATREUS Nothing that the measure of accustomed grief could hold; I will leave no crime undone, and none is enough.

ATTENDANT The sword?

ATREUS Too little.

ATTENDANT What of fire?

ATREUS Even that is too little still.

ATTENDANT With what weapon, then, will so great a grief make use?

ATREUS With Thyestes himself.

ATTENDANT This is an evil greater than wrath.

ATREUS I confess it; an astounding tumult shakes my breast and stirs it to the depths; I am swept along, and whither I know not, but I am swept. The ground bellows from its lowest depths, the clear day thunders, and the house, as if its roofs were shattered, crashes, and the household gods, set moving, turn away their faces: be it so, let this crime be done which you gods would fear.

ATTENDANT What at last do you prepare to do?

ATREUS Some greater thing, beyond what I am wont, swells in my soul, larger than usual, and beyond the bounds of human custom, and urges on my sluggish hands—what it may be I do not know, but it is something great. So be it. Seize on this, my soul. It is a deed worthy of Thyestes, and worthy of Atreus: let each do it. The Odrysian house once saw such unspeakable feasts—I confess, it is a monstrous crime, but it has been done before: let my grief find some greater thing. Inspire my soul, mother and sister of Itys; my cause is like yours: stand by me and drive my hand on. Let the eager father in his joy rend his children and devour his own limbs. It is well, it is more than enough. This manner of punishment pleases me—for a while. But where is he now? Why so long does Atreus walk innocent? Already before my eyes the whole image of the slaughter moves; the loss of his children heaped up into the father's face—my soul, why again do you fear, and sink back before the deed? It must be dared, come: that which is the chief horror in this crime, that he himself shall do.

ATTENDANT But by what guile, lured into our snares, will he set his foot? He thinks all things hostile to him.

ATREUS He could not be caught, unless he wished to catch. He hopes now for my kingdom: in this hope he would meet Jove threatening with his thunderbolt, in this hope he would face the menaces of the swollen flood and enter the doubtful straits of the Libyan Syrtis, in this hope—what he reckons the greatest evil— he will see his brother.

ATTENDANT Who will give him assurance of peace? To whom will he trust so great a thing?

ATREUS Wicked hope is credulous. Yet I will give my sons commands to bear to their uncle: that, leaving his wandering exile's lodgings, he exchange his misery for a kingdom and rule over Argos as lord in part; if Thyestes, too hard, scorns the prayers, his children, untried and worn out by heavy ills and easy to be caught, will be moved by the plea: here the old madness for the kingdom, there grim want and harsh toil, will subdue the man, however stiff with so many woes.

ATTENDANT Now time has made his hardships light to him.

ATREUS You are wrong: the sense of evils grows with the day. It is light to bear miseries; to bear them through is heavy.

ATTENDANT Choose other agents for your grim design.

ATREUS The young hear the worse precepts readily.

ATTENDANT They will do to their father what you teach them against their uncle: crimes have often returned upon their teacher.

ATREUS Though no one teach them the ways of fraud and crime, kingship will teach them. Do you fear they will turn out wicked? They are born so. That which you call savage and harsh, and believe is done too cruelly and too impiously, is perhaps being done over there as well.

ATTENDANT Will the sons know that this deceit is being prepared?

ATREUS Silent faith is not in years so untried; they would perhaps disclose the tricks: to keep silent is learned through many ills of life.

ATTENDANT And will you deceive the very ones through whom you plan to deceive another?

ATREUS That they themselves may be free of crime and guilt. For what need is there to mix my children into the crime? Through us let our hatreds work themselves out.—You do ill, you draw back, my soul: if you spare your own, you will spare his as well. Let Agamemnon become the knowing minister of my design, and Menelaus knowingly aid his brother. From this crime let the truth of their doubtful birth be sought: if they refuse the wars and will not wage the hatreds, if they call him uncle— he is their father. Let them go.—But the troubled face often betrays much; great designs, even of one unwilling, give themselves away: let them not know how great a thing they minister to. And you—hide what I have begun.

ATTENDANT I need no warning: that secret shall lie within my breast through faith and through fear—but faith shall keep it more.

CHORUS

What madness drives you on, to give blood in alternation and to seize the sceptre by crime? You do not know, you who covet citadels, in what place a kingdom lies. Riches do not make a king, nor the colour of Tyrian raiment, nor the mark of a royal brow, nor beams gleaming with gold: a king is he who has laid aside his fears and the evils of a cruel heart, whom unbridled ambition and the never-stable favour of the headlong crowd do not move, nor whatever the West digs up or the golden Tagus brings down in its bright channel, nor whatever the threshing-floor grinds, hot with Libyan harvests; whom the falling course of the slanting thunderbolt will not shake, nor the East Wind that sweeps the sea, nor, raging in the savage strait, the swell of the windy Adriatic; whom no soldier's lance, no naked steel has tamed, who, set in a safe place, sees all things below himself and gladly goes to meet his fate, and does not complain to die. Though kings should gather who harry the scattered Dahae, who hold the shoals of the Red Sea's shore and the sea, bright with shining gems, broad and crimson; or those who unlock the Caspian heights to the brave Sarmatians; let him who dares to walk on foot across the ford of the Danube contend; and (wherever they lie) the Seres, famed for their fleece— there is no need of any horses, no need of arms and of the idle weapons that the Parthian hurls from afar when he feigns flight; no need to bring up engines to lay cities low, hurling rocks from a distance. A good mind possesses the kingdom. This kingdom each man gives himself. Let whoever wishes stand powerful on the slippery summit of the court: let sweet quiet sate me; set in an obscure place, let me enjoy soft leisure, known to none of the citizens, let my life flow on in silence. So, when my days have passed with no uproar, let me die an old plebeian. Death lies heavy upon the man who, too well known to all, dies unknown to himself.

THYESTES, with TANTALUS, PLISTHENES, and a third son (silent)

THYESTES The longed-for roofs of my country and the wealth of Argos, and—the highest good to the wretched and above all to exiles— the soil of my birthland and my native gods (if there are gods, after all) I behold; the sacred towers of the Cyclopes, a glory greater than human toil, the stadia thronged in my youth, through which, renowned, I bore the palm more than once in my father's chariot. Argos will come to meet me, the people will come in throngs— but, no doubt, Atreus too. Seek again the woodland flights and the dense thickets, rather, and a life mingled with the beasts and like to theirs; this bright splendour of royalty is not such that it should rob the eyes with false glitter: when you look on what is given, look also on the giver. Lately, amid those things which all men think harsh, I was brave and glad; now, on the contrary, into fears I am rolled back: my soul stands still and longs to bear my body backward; I move my unwilling step.

TANTALUS With sluggish pace (what is this?) my father stands amazed and turns his face about and holds himself in doubt.

THYESTES Why, my soul, do you waver, why so long do you torment a choice so easy? Most uncertain things— a brother and a kingdom—do you trust, and fear evils already conquered, already grown tame, and flee hardships well placed? It pleases you now to be wretched. Turn back your step, while you may, and snatch yourself away.

TANTALUS What cause compels you, father, to turn your step from your country once you have seen it? Why from such great goods do you draw back your lap? Your brother returns, his anger cast aside, and gives back your share of the kingdom, and to the torn house fits the limbs again, and restores you to yourself.

THYESTES You ask the cause of a fear that I myself do not know. I see nothing to be feared, yet I fear nonetheless. I wish to go, yet my limbs falter on sluggish knees, and I am borne, drawn aside, otherwise than where I strive. So a ship, driven on by oar and sail, the tide, resisting oar and sail, carries back.

TANTALUS Overcome whatever stands in the way and hinders your mind, and see what great rewards await you, returned. Father, you can reign.

THYESTES Yes—since I can die.

TANTALUS Power is the highest thing—

THYESTES It is nothing, if you crave nothing.

TANTALUS You will leave it to your sons.

THYESTES A kingdom holds not two.

TANTALUS Does he choose to be wretched, who can be happy?

THYESTES Believe me, great things please by false names, and hard things are feared in vain. While I stood exalted, I never ceased to be afraid, and to fear the very sword at my own side. O what a good it is to stand in no man's way, to take untroubled feasts lying on the ground! Crimes do not enter cottages, and all one's food is taken at a narrow table; poison is drunk from gold—I speak from experience: one may prefer bad fortune to good. No lowly city trembles at a house set on the high mountain-top and towering up, nor does bright ivory gleam in lofty ceilings, nor does a watchman guard my sleep; we do not fish with fleets, nor put the sea to flight with a hurled mole, nor do we feed our shameless belly with the tribute of nations; no field is measured out for me beyond the Getae and the Parthians; we are not worshipped with incense, nor, with Jove shut out, are my altars adorned; no woodland sways, set on my rooftops, nor do pools smoke, kindled by many a hand, nor is the day to be joined to sleep and the night, sleepless, to Bacchus; but we are not feared: the house is safe without a weapon, and great quiet is granted to small possessions— it is a vast kingdom to be able to do without a kingdom.

TANTALUS One must not refuse it, if a god gives the rule, nor seek it: your brother asks you to reign.

THYESTES Asks? Then it is to be feared. Here some trick goes astray.

TANTALUS Piety is wont to return whence it was banished, and true love repairs the strength it lost.

THYESTES Does my brother love Thyestes? Sooner shall the sea flood the ethereal Bears, and the rapacious tide of the Sicilian wave grow still, and on the Ionian sea a ripe harvest rise, and black night give light to the lands—sooner shall water join faith and treaty with flame, life with death, the wind with the sea—

TANTALUS Yet what fraud do you fear?

THYESTES Every fraud: what measure shall I set to my own fear? He can do as much as he hates.

TANTALUS Against you, what can he do?

THYESTES For myself I fear nothing now: it is you who make Atreus to be feared by me.

TANTALUS Do you fear, wary, to be deceived?

THYESTES It is too late a time for caution in the midst of evils: let us go on. Yet this one thing, my sons, I bear witness to: I follow you, I do not lead.

TANTALUS A god will look with favour on what is well-purposed; go on with no doubtful step.

ATREUS, THYESTES, TANTALUS, PLISTHENES, and the silent sons

ATREUS The wild beast is held, shut in the snares set round it: both himself and, joined to the parent, the brood of the hated race I behold; now in a safe place my hatreds turn. At last into my hands has come Thyestes—he has come, and the whole of him indeed. Scarcely do I rein in my soul, scarcely does my grief take the curb. So, when the keen Umbrian hound tracks the game and is held on a long leash, and with nose pressed down scours the trails, while still far off he scents the boar by its faint odour, he obeys, and with silent muzzle ranges over the ground; but when the prey is nearer, he fights with all his neck and calls with a whine the lingering master, and tears himself from the one who holds him: when wrath hopes for blood, it cannot be hid; yet let it be hid. See how, heavy with much squalor, his hair buries his sad face, how foully his beard lies. Let faith be shown.— It is good to see my brother; give me back the embraces I have longed for. Whatever wrath there was, let it have passed away; from this day let blood and love be cherished, let the hatreds, condemned, fall from our souls.

THYESTES I could have washed all this away, were you not such a one. But I confess, Atreus, I confess, I committed all that you believed; my cause this day your love has made most wretched: he is wholly guilty who has seemed guilty to so good a brother. The matter must be done with tears: you are the first to see me a suppliant; these hands, untouched by any feet, beg you: let all wrath be laid aside, and the swelling, erased from my soul, depart. Take these innocent ones as pledges of my faith, my brother.

ATREUS Take your hand from my knees, and seek rather my embrace. You too, defences of the old, so many young men, hang upon my neck. Put off your squalid garment, and spare our eyes, and take adornments equal to mine. And gladly take your share of your brother's rule. This is my greater glory, to give back to my brother his ancestral honour, unharmed: to hold a kingdom is chance; to give one is virtue.

THYESTES May the gods, my brother, repay you equal rewards for such great deserts. My squalor refuses the royal mark upon my head, and my ill-omened hand shrinks from the sceptre. Let me be allowed to hide amid the crowd.

ATREUS This kingdom welcomes two.

THYESTES I count whatever is yours, my brother, to be mine.

ATREUS Who refuses the gifts of inflowing fortune?

THYESTES Whoever has known how easily they flow away.

ATREUS Do you forbid your brother to gain great glory?

THYESTES Your glory is now achieved; mine remains: my fixed resolve is to refuse the kingdom.

ATREUS I will leave my own share, unless you take yours.

THYESTES I accept: I will bear the name of rule laid upon me, but the laws and arms shall serve me along with you.

ATREUS Wear the bands set upon your venerable head; I will give the appointed victims to the gods above.

CHORUS Could anyone believe this? That fierce, that keen, that ungovernable, savage Atreus stood stupefied at the sight of his brother and held still: no force is greater than true love. Quarrels with strangers endure as hatreds, but those whom true love has held, love will hold. When wrath, stirred by great causes, broke their goodwill and called up war, when the light squadrons clattered on their bits, and the sword, brandished here and there, flashed— the sword which raging Mars, craving fresh blood, drives on with blow upon blow— Love seizes the steel and, with joined hands, leads to peace those who refuse. What god has made this sudden calm out of so great a tumult? Lately through Mycenae the arms of civil war clattered: pale mothers held their sons fast; the wife feared for her armed husband, when the sword, against his will, followed his hand, foul with the rust of peaceful quiet; one strove to restore the crumbling walls, another to make firm the towers shaken with decay, to bar the gates with iron bolts, and the trembling sentinel, awake on the battlements of the anxious night, kept watch: the very fear of war is worse than war. Now the threats of the savage sword have fallen, now the grave murmur of the trumpets is silent, now the shrill clamour of the war-horn is stilled: deep peace is recalled to the joyful city. So, when from the deep the waves have swollen, the West Wind striking the Bruttian sea, Scylla resounds from her battered caverns, and the sailors in the harbour have feared the sea— the sea that rapacious Charybdis swallows and spews up again— and the fierce Cyclops, sitting on the rock of seething Aetna, has feared his father, lest the violator, with the overflowing waves, quench the fire that resounds in his eternal furnaces, and poor Laertes thinks his realms can be sunk while Ithaca trembles: if the winds' own force has fallen, the sea sinks more gently than a still pool; the deep, which the ship feared to cleave, spread out here and there with billowing sails, made fair, lies open to the sporting skiff, and there is leisure to count the fish below, here where but now, beneath a mighty storm, the Cyclades feared the sea, set in motion. No lot is lasting: grief and pleasure give way in turn; pleasure is the briefer. The light hour exchanges lowest things for highest: he who sets the diadem on his brow, before whom the nations trembled on bended knee, at whose nod the Mede laid down his wars, and the Indian nearer the rising sun, and the Dahae who threatened the Parthians with their horse, holds his sceptre in anxiety, and divines that all things shift, and fears the changeful chances of affairs and the doubtful hour. You to whom the ruler of sea and land has given the great right of death and of life, lay aside your puffed-up, swollen looks: whatever a lesser man dreads from you, a greater lord threatens against you; every kingdom is under a heavier kingdom. Whom the rising day has seen proud, the setting day has seen laid low. Let no one trust too much in prosperity, let no one despair of better things when weary: Clotho mingles these with those, and forbids Fortune to stand still, and turns every fate. No one has had the gods so favouring that he could promise himself a tomorrow: god whirls our affairs, hurried on, in a swift eddy.

MESSENGER What whirlwind will carry me headlong through the air and wrap me in a black cloud, to snatch so great a horror from my eyes? O house shameful even to Pelops and to Tantalus!

CHORUS What do you bring of news?

MESSENGER What land is this? Argos and Sparta, that drew by lot holy brothers, and Corinth pressing the jaws of the twin sea? Or the Hister, granting flight to the fierce Alani? Or, beneath eternal snow, the Hyrcanian land? Or the Scythians wandering everywhere? What place is this, the witness of an unspeakable monstrous deed?

CHORUS Speak out and disclose that evil, whatever it is.

MESSENGER If my mind stand firm, if my body, stiff with fear, release my limbs—the image of the grim deed clings in my face. Carry me far off, you mad storms, carry me there where the day is borne, snatched from this place.

CHORUS You hold our uncertain spirits the more in suspense. Tell what it is you shudder at, and point out the author: I ask not who he is, but which of them. Speak quickly.

MESSENGER On the highest citadel of the house of Pelops there is a part turned toward the south, whose furthest flank rises as high as a mountain and presses on the city, and holds beneath its stroke the people stubborn against their kings; here gleams a hall, vast, able to hold a multitude—whose gilded beams the noble columns bear, spotted with various marks; beyond these, well known to the people, where the throngs resort, the rich house parts into many spaces; a secret region lies in the deepest recess, restraining in a deep valley an ancient grove, the inmost sanctuary of the realm, where no tree is wont to offer joyful branches or be tended with the knife, but yew and cypress and the dark woodland sway with black ilex, dim, above which, towering high, an oak looks down from on high and overtops the grove. From here the sons of Tantalus are wont to take auspices for the realm, from here to seek aid in weary and doubtful affairs. Offerings hang fastened there: sounding trumpets and chariots conquered, their axles fallen, and broken cars, spoils of the Myrtoan sea, and every crime of the race; here, in this place, is fixed the Phrygian tiara of Pelops, here the spoil of enemies and the cloak painted from a barbarian triumph. A spring stands grim beneath the shade and lingers slow in a black marsh: such is the misshapen wave of the dread Styx, by which the gods swear faith to heaven. From here, in the blind night, the gods of death are said to groan; the grove rings with rattled chains, and the shades howl; whatever it is fearful to hear seems to be seen there: an ancient throng, loosed from the old tombs, wanders, and there leap up monsters greater than the known; nay, the woodland is wont to flicker with flame, and the lofty beams burn without fire. Often the grove resounds with a threefold barking, often the house is struck with mighty phantoms; nor does day allay the fear: the grove has its own night, and the dread of the dead reigns in the middle of the light. From here, to those who ask, sure answers are given, when, with a mighty sound, the fates are loosed from the shrine and the cavern bellows as the god looses the voice. Into this place, raging, Atreus came, dragging his brother's children; the altars are adorned—who could worthily tell it? Behind their backs he binds the noble youths' hands, and binds their heads with the mournful purple fillet; no incense is lacking, nor the sacred liquor of Bacchus, nor the knife touching the victim with the salted meal. Every rite is kept, lest so great a crime be done not duly.

CHORUS Who lays his hand to the steel?

MESSENGER He himself is the priest, he himself with deadly prayer chants the death-song with violent mouth; he himself stands at the altars, he himself the doomed to death handles and sets in place and brings to the steel; he himself attends: no part of the sacred rite is lost. The grove trembles; the whole hall, with the ground shaken, nodded, doubtful where it should give its weight, and like a thing tossing on the waves; from the left sky a star ran, drawing a black furrow. The wines, poured to the fires, flow changed, bloody, the Bacchus altered; the royal crown fell from his head twice and thrice; the ivory wept in the temples. The portents moved all men, but Atreus alone, unmoved, stands firm to himself, and even terrifies the threatening gods. Now, all delay dismissed, he stands at the altars, looking grim and askance. As, fasting, a tigress in the Ganges' woods wanders between two bullocks, greedy for either prey, uncertain to which she should first carry her bite (she turns her jaws this way, turns them back that, and holds her hunger in doubt), so dread Atreus eyes the doomed heads of his impious wrath: whom he should first slaughter for himself he hesitates, then with which second slaughter he should offer next. It makes no difference, but he hesitates, and it pleases him to set his savage crime in order.

CHORUS Whom, then, does he take first with the steel?

MESSENGER The first place (lest you think there was no piety) is given to the grandsire: Tantalus is the first victim.

CHORUS With what spirit, with what face did the youth bear his death?

MESSENGER He stood untroubled for himself, and did not suffer his prayers to be lost in vain; but the savage one hid the sword in his wound and, pressing deep, joined his hand to the throat: the corpse, the steel drawn out, stood, and when it had wavered long whether to fall this way or that, it fell upon the uncle. Then the savage one drags Plisthenes to the altars and adds him to his brother; he severs the struck neck; the trunk, the neck cut, falls forward, and the head ran off, murmuring with uncertain plaint.

CHORUS What does he do next, the double slaughter accomplished? Does he spare the boy, or heap crime on crime?

MESSENGER As a maned lion in the Armenian woods, victor in much slaughter, lies upon the herd (his jaws wet with gore, and, his hunger driven off, he does not lay aside his rage: pressing the bulls this way and that he threatens the calves, sluggish now with weary tooth), just so Atreus rages and swells with wrath, and holding the steel drenched with the double slaughter, forgetting against whom he raged, with hostile hand he drove it on through the body—so that at once the sword, taken in the boy's breast, came out at his back; he falls, and quenching the altars with his own blood, dies through both wounds.

CHORUS O savage crime!

MESSENGER Do you shudder? If the wickedness stop here, he is pious.

CHORUS Does nature admit anything greater or more atrocious beyond this?

MESSENGER Do you think this the end of the crime? It is a step.

CHORUS What could he do beyond it? Did he cast the bodies, perhaps, to the beasts to be torn, and keep them from the fire?

MESSENGER Would that he had kept them from it! That the earth might not cover the dead, nor the fire dissolve them! Let him drag them, a grim food, to be banqueted upon by the birds and the savage beasts— the prayer here is for what is wont to be a punishment: that the father look upon them unburied! O crime credible in no age, which posterity will deny— the entrails, torn from the living breasts, quiver, and the veins breathe, and the still-fearful heart leaps; but he handles the lobes and inspects the fates and marks the still-warm veins of the inner parts. After the victims pleased him, free of care he has leisure now for his brother's banquet: he himself cuts the body, divided into limbs, lops off at the trunk the spreading shoulders and the hindrances of the arms, bares the joints, harsh, and cuts off the bones; only the faces he keeps, and the hands given in faith. These entrails cling on the spits and, set to the slow embers, drip; those the boiling water tosses in the complaining cauldron; the fire leapt over the dishes set upon it, and into the trembling hearths, thrust back twice and thrice and bidden to endure delay, it burns unwilling; the liver hisses on the spits; nor could I easily say whether the bodies or the flames groaned the more. The fire passes into pitch-black smoke; and the smoke itself, grim and a heavy fog, goes not straight up, nor lifts itself on high: it besets the very household gods with its hideous cloud. O patient Phoebus, though you have fled backward and plunged the broken day in the middle of the sky, you set too late. The father mangles his sons and chews his own limbs with his deadly mouth; he gleams, his hair wet with flowing unguent, and heavy with wine; often his closed throat held back the food—in your evils this one good remains, Thyestes, that you do not know your own evils. But even this will perish, though Titan turn his car backward, leading his path to meet itself, and night, sent from the east at an alien hour, heavy, overwhelm the foul deed with new darkness, yet it must be seen. All the evils will be laid bare.

CHORUS Whither, ruler of lands and gods, do you flee, at whose rising all the glory of dark night takes flight? Whither do you turn your course and lose the day in mid-Olympus? Why, Phoebus, do you snatch away your face? Not yet does Vesper, the herald of the late hour, summon the nocturnal lights; not yet does the turning of the Hesperian wheel bid loose the chariots that have earned their rest; not yet, as day inclines to night, has the third trumpet given the signal: the ploughman, his oxen not yet weary, stands amazed at the time of a sudden supper. What has driven you from your ethereal course? What cause has thrown your horses from their certain path? Are the conquered Giants, the prison of Dis thrown open, attempting wars anew? Does wounded Tityos, with weary breast, renew his ancient wrath? Has Typhoeus, the mountain cast aside, freed his flank? Is a high road being built through the Phlegraean foes, and is Thessalian Pelion pressed by Thracian Ossa? Have the wonted changes of the world perished? Will there be no setting, no rising? The dewy mother of the first light, wont to hand the reins to the god of dawn, stands amazed at the overturned thresholds of her realm; she knows not how to bathe his weary chariot, nor to plunge in the sea his manes smoking with sweat. The Sun himself, new to the strange lodging, setting, sees the Dawn, and bids the shadows rise though the night is not yet ready: no stars come on, nor does the pole gleam with any fire, no heavy Moon disperses the shadows. But whatever it is, would that it were night! They tremble, they tremble, our hearts, struck with great fear: lest all things, shattered, fall in fatal ruin, and again deformed chaos press down the gods and men, and again Nature cover the lands and the sea that girds them and the wandering stars of the painted world. No more shall the leader of the stars, guiding the ages by the rising of his eternal torch, give the marks of summer and of winter; no more shall the Moon, meeting Phoebus' flames, take their fears from the night and outrun her brother's reins, running a shorter course in her path; the crowded throng of gods will go heaped into one bay; he who, a path among the sacred stars, cuts the zones by his slanting track, the Zodiac-bearer guiding the long years, will see the constellations fall, as he himself falls; he who, the kindly spring not yet come, gives not back the sails to the warm Zephyr, the Ram, will go headlong into the waves through which he had carried trembling Helle; he who, the Bull, with shining horn leads on the Hyades, will drag with him the Twins and the arms of the curving Crab; the Lion, blazing with fiery heats, will fall again from the sky, the Lion of Hercules; the Virgin will fall to the lands she forsook, and the just weights of the Scales will fall and drag with them the keen Scorpion; and the old Chiron, who holds on his Haemonian string the feathered arrows, will lose his arrows, his string snapped; the cold Goat-horn, bringing back sluggish winter, will fall and break your urn, whoever you are; with you will depart the Fishes, the last stars of heaven, and the Wain, never washed by the sea, the gulf, hiding all things, will sink; and the slippery Serpent, that divides the two Bears, like a river, and the Lesser, joined to the great Dragon, cold Cynosura with its hard frost, and the slow guardian of his own wain, the Bear-keeper, now no longer steady, will fall. Have we, of so great a people, been seen worthy to be crushed, the hinge of the world overturned? Has the last age come upon us? O we, created under a hard lot, whether we have wretchedly lost the sun, or driven it away! Away with complaints, depart, fear: he is too greedy of life who is unwilling to die with the world perishing along with him.

ATREUS Equal to the stars I stride, and above all men, touching the high pole with my proud head. Now I hold the glories of the realm, now my father's throne; I dismiss the gods: I have reached the summit of my prayers. It is well, it is more than enough. Now it is even enough for me. But why should it be enough? I will go on, and, the father glutted with the death of his own, lest any shame should stand in the way, the day has departed: go on while the sky is free. Would, indeed, that I could hold the fleeing gods and drag them all together, that all might see my avenging banquet—but it is enough that the father see it. Even with the day unwilling I will scatter for you the darkness, beneath which your miseries lie hid. Too long you lie at the feast, a guest untroubled and of cheerful face; now enough has been given to the tables and enough to Bacchus: for such great evils there is need of a sober Thyestes. Servants of the household, loose the doors of the temple, let the festal house be thrown open. It pleases me to see, gazing on the sons' faces, what colours he shows, what words his first grief pours out, or how, stunned, his breath driven out, his body grows stiff. This is the fruit of my work. I do not wish to see him wretched, but while he is becoming wretched. The opened halls gleam with many a torch. He himself reclines, leaning back on purple and on gold, propping with his left hand his head, heavy with wine. He belches. O me, the highest of the heavenly ones, and king of kings! I have surpassed my prayers. He is full, he draws the unmixed wine in the capacious silver— do not spare the drink: there still remains the blood of so many victims; the colour of the old Bacchus will hide it—with this, with this cup let the table be closed. Let the father drink the mingled blood of his own: he would have drunk mine. Lo, now he stirs up song and festal voices, nor governs his mind enough.

THYESTES My heart, blunted by long ills, lay aside now your anxious cares. Let grief flee, let dread flee, let the companion of trembling exile flee, grim want, and shame, heavy in afflicted things: it matters more whence you fall than whither. It is a great thing, fallen from a high summit, to set a steady step upon the level ground; a great thing, pressed by a mighty heap of ills, to bear the weight of a broken kingdom with neck unbowed, and, not degenerate or conquered by ills, upright, to bear the ruins laid upon one. But now drive off the clouds of savage fate and put away all the marks of the wretched time; let the looks of good fortune return to joy, send the old Thyestes from your mind. This vice ever follows the wretched: never to trust in joyful things; though happy fortune return, yet the afflicted are loath to rejoice. Why do you call me back, and forbid me to keep the festal day? Why bid me weep, grief rising from no cause? Why do you forbid me to bind my hair with seemly flowers? It forbids, it forbids! The spring roses, fallen from my head, my hair, dripping with rich balsam, stood up amid sudden shudders, a rain falls from my unwilling face, a groan comes in the midst of my words, grief loves the accustomed tears, the wretched have a dread desire to weep. It pleases me to send forth ill-omened laments, it pleases me to rend my robes, soaked with Tyrian purple; it pleases me to wail. My mind sends signs of future grief, foreboding its own evil before it comes: a fierce storm threatens the sailors, when the calm swells without wind. What griefs, what tumults do you imagine for yourself, madman? Show a trusting heart to your brother: now, whatever it is, either without cause or too late you fear. I do not wish it, unhappy man, but a wandering terror roams within; my eyes pour out sudden tears, and no cause lies beneath. Is it grief or fear? Or has great joy its tears?

ATREUS Let us celebrate the festal day, my brother, in equal accord: this is the day to make my sceptre firm and bind the solid pledge of sure peace.

THYESTES Surfeit of feasting holds me, and no less of Bacchus. This addition can increase my pleasure, if it be granted me to rejoice with my own amid this happiness.

ATREUS Believe that your sons are here in their father's embrace; here they are and shall be; no part of your offspring shall be taken from you. The faces you long for I will give, and fill the whole father with his own throng; you shall be sated, fear not. Now, mingled with mine, they keep the pleasant rites of the youthful table; but they shall be summoned. Take the cup of your kindred, poured full with Bacchus.

THYESTES I take the gift of my brother's feast; let wine be poured to our ancestral gods, then let it be drunk. But what is this? My hands will not obey; the weight grows and burdens my right hand; the wine, brought to my very lips, flees, and flows round my mouth with deceived lips, and the table itself leaped up from the trembling floor. Scarcely does the fire gleam; nay, the very heavy air, between day and night, stands deserted and amazed. What is this? More and more the vaults of heaven, shaken, totter; a thicker darkness gathers with dense shadows, and night has hidden itself in night; every star has fled. Whatever it is, I pray it spare my brother and my sons; let all the storm fall upon this worthless head. Now give me back my sons!

ATREUS I will give them back, and no day shall ever snatch them from you.

THYESTES What tumult is this that stirs my entrails? What trembled within? I feel an impatient burden, and my breast groans with a groan not mine. Come, my sons, your unhappy father calls; come. At the sight of you this grief will flee— whence do they answer back?

ATREUS Make ready your embraces, father: they have come. Do you at all recognize your sons?

THYESTES I recognize my brother. Do you endure to bear so great a crime, O Earth? Do you not, broken, plunge yourself into the infernal Styx and the shadows, and by a vast road snatch the realm with its king to the empty chaos? Do you not, tearing up the whole house from its lowest ground, overturn Mycenae? Both of us ought by now to stand about Tantalus: here, with the joints torn apart on this side and on that, if anything lies below Tartarus and below our forefathers, into your monstrous bosom let down this valley, and bury us, sunk deep, beneath all Acheron. Above our head let the guilty souls wander, and let the fiery Phlegethon, driving all its sands with its burning flood, flow violent above our exile— Unmoved earth, do you lie, a sluggish weight? The gods have fled.

ATREUS Now rather receive these gladly, long longed-for—there is no delay through your brother: enjoy them, kiss them, share embraces among the three.

THYESTES Is this your compact? This your favour, this a brother's faith? Do you so lay aside your hatreds? I do not ask to have my sons, a father unharmed; what could be given with crime and hatred safe, a brother of his brother I ask: let me be allowed to bury them; give back what you may see burned at once; I ask of you nothing that a father shall keep, but shall destroy.

ATREUS Whatever remains of your sons, you have; whatever does not remain, you have.

THYESTES Do they lie as food for the savage birds? Or are they kept for the beasts? Or do they feed the wild creatures?

ATREUS You yourself have banqueted on your sons in an impious feast.

THYESTES This is what shamed the gods, this drove the day turned back to its rising. What words shall I, wretched, utter, what laments? What words will suffice me? I behold the severed heads and the torn-off hands and the footsteps broken with the shattered legs— this is what the greedy father could not take in. The entrails turn within, and the shut-in crime, having no way out, struggles and seeks escape. Give me, brother, your sword (it has much of my blood): let a way be given to my children by the steel. Is the sword refused? Let my breast resound, bruised, struck by the blow—stay, unhappy man, your hand; let us spare the shades. Who has seen such a crime? What Heniochus, dwelling on the rough rock of inhospitable Caucasus, or what Procrustes, terror to the Cecropian lands? Behold, a father, I press my sons, and am pressed by my sons—is there any measure to crime?

ATREUS A measure is owed to crime when you do the crime, not when you repay it. Even this is too little for me. From the very wound I ought to have poured the warm blood into your mouth, that you might drink the gore of the living—my wrath was cheated of its words while I hurried; I dealt the wounds with the pressed-in steel, I felled them at the altars, I appeased the hearths with the votive slaughter, and the limbs, cutting the lifeless bodies into small pieces, I plunged some in the boiling cauldrons, others I bade drip on slow fires; I cut off the limbs and sinews while they yet lived, and saw the entrails, pierced on the slender spit, bellow, and heaped on the flames with my own hand— all this the father could have done better; my grief has fallen out in vain: he rent his sons with impious mouth, but unknowing, but they unknowing.

THYESTES Hear, you seas enclosed by wandering shores; hear, you too, this crime, wherever, gods, you have fled; hear, you of the underworld; hear, you lands, and Night, heavy with Tartarean and black cloud, give heed to our voices (to you I am left, you alone behold the wretch, you too without your stars)—I will make no wicked prayers, for myself I will beg nothing—and what now can be for me? My prayers shall look to your good. You, supreme ruler of heaven, lord of the ethereal hall, wrap the whole world in dreadful clouds, join battles of the winds on every side, and from every quarter thunder violently, and with the hand—not that with which you seek the roofs and undeserving homes with the lesser bolt, but that with which the threefold mass of mountains fell, and the Giants who stood matched with the mountains— ready those arms and hurl your fires, avenge the lost day, hurl your flames, fill with thunderbolts the light snatched from the pole. The cause—lest you doubt long—let it be the guilt of us both; or if not, let mine be guilty: seek me, send through this breast the flaming brand on your three-forked weapon—if I, a father, wish to bury my sons and give them to the final fire, it is I who must be burned. If nothing moves the gods above, and no divine power seeks the impious with its bolts, let eternal night remain and cover with darkness crimes vast and long; I make no complaint, Titan, if you persevere.

ATREUS Now I praise my hands, now the true palm is won. I would have lost my crime, had you not grieved so. Now I believe my children are born to me; now I believe faith is restored to a chaste marriage-bed.

THYESTES What did my children deserve?

ATREUS That they were yours.

THYESTES Sons to a father—

ATREUS I confess it, and—what delights me— sure ones.

THYESTES I call to witness the gods, guardians of the pious.

ATREUS Why not the gods of marriage?

THYESTES Who pays back crime with crime?

ATREUS I know what you complain of: you grieve that the crime was snatched from you, nor does it torment you that you drank the unspeakable feast— but that you did not prepare it! This was your intent: to set out a like banquet for your unwitting brother, and, with the mother helping, to attack my children and lay them low by a like death—this one thing stood in the way: you thought them yours.

THYESTES The avenging gods will be present; to them my prayers deliver you to be punished.

ATREUS To be punished I deliver you to your sons.