472-458 BC 2026
This is an AI modernization of The Seven Tragedies into contemporary English. The original is available from Perseus Digital Library. Also available as an epub.
Aeschylus is the oldest playwright whose work survives. He was born near Athens around 525 BC, fought the Persians at Marathon, and died in Sicily in 456. He is credited with something like eighty plays. Seven came through whole, and they are in this book, complete. Three of them are the Oresteia of 458 BC, the only complete trilogy left from the Greek theatre: a king comes home from Troy and his wife kills him in the bath, their son comes home and kills her, and the goddesses who hunt him for it are argued to a standstill in the first courtroom in literature. Prometheus Bound, the fourth play here, has been doubted since antiquity and may not be his; it is printed with the rest because the manuscripts carry it under his name.
These plays were written for a competition. Once a year, at the festival of Dionysus, three playwrights each put on a day of plays in an open-air theatre below the Acropolis, in front of some thousands of people, and judges awarded a prize. Every part was played by a man in a mask, and there were only two or three speaking actors, so one man took several roles. The rest of the cast was a chorus of twelve or fifteen who sang and danced. Aeschylus is said to have been the one who added the second actor, which means he was working close to the point where the form was still mostly singing, and it shows: more than half of what is here is chorus. The Agamemnon runs two hundred lines of it before anyone speaks.
That difference is on the page. The spoken scenes are set as prose and the sung parts as verse, indented, unrhymed, because in the Greek the metre says which is which and a reader ought to be able to see it. The rhyme that Victorian translators added has gone; none of it was ever there. This is one of three volumes here, with Sophocles and Euripides, and between them they hold every Greek tragedy that survives.
The Persians, from 472 BC, is the only surviving tragedy about a real event. It is about the sea battle at Salamis eight years earlier, which the author had lived through, and it is told entirely from the losing side, in the Persian court, waiting for news. The images are the argument in these plays, and the same English word is used for each of them every time it recurs: the net, the yoke, the lion cub raised in the house, the blood that soaks into the ground and will not come up. Nothing is softened. Iphigenia is gagged so she cannot curse her father. Apollo argues in court that a mother is not a parent, and he wins.
The Persians (472 BC)
Seven Against Thebes (467 BC)
The Suppliants (c. 463 BC)
The Oresteia (458 BC)
Prometheus Bound (date unknown)
(Susa, the Persian capital, before the council house, with the tomb of Darius in view. The Elders of the kingdom come in, old men left in charge while the army is away.)
Chorus. We are the ones they call the Faithful. The Persians have gone to the land of Greece and we were left to keep the seats, the rich seats, the seats heavy with gold. Xerxes the King, Darius's son, chose us himself, for our age and our rank, to watch over the country. But about the King's return, about the army and all its gold, something inside me has started to prophesy disaster. The whole strength of Asia is gone, and every house is muttering the young man's name, and no runner comes, no rider comes, to the city of the Persians. They left the walls of Susa, of Agbatana, the old stronghold of Cissia, and went, some on horses, some in ships, some on foot at the march, a solid mass of war. Men like Amistres and Artaphrenes, Megabates and Astaspes, marshals of Persia, kings themselves, and vassals of the Great King, are hurrying on at the head of that huge army, masters of the bow, masters of the horse, terrible to see and terrible in a fight, with hearts that have decided to endure. Artembares, who fights from the chariot, and Masistres, and Imaeus, the good archer, and Pharandaces, and Sosthanes, who drives the horses. And others the great Nile sent, the river that feeds so many: Susiscanes, Pegastagon, born in Egypt, great Arsames, lord of holy Memphis, Ariomardus, who governs ancient Thebes, and the rowers out of the marshes, frightening men, too many to count.
Chorus. Behind them come the soft-living Lydians in a crowd, and the men who hold down the whole mainland, whom Metrogathes and brave Arcteus, their commanding kings, and Sardis, heavy with gold, sent riding out in chariot after chariot, teams of two poles and of three, a sight to make you afraid to look. And the men who live by holy Tmolus swear they will throw the yoke of slavery over Greece: Mardon and Tharybis, anvils for any spear, and the Mysians, who throw the javelin. And Babylon, heavy with gold, sends a mixed crowd streaming out, men who ride the ships and men who trust in the pull of the bow. And the whole nation that wears the short sword follows out of every part of Asia at the King's terrible summons. That is the flower of the Persian land, the men who are gone, and all Asia, the country that nursed them, groans for them with a longing that burns, and parents and wives count the days and shake, as the time stretches out.
Chorus. The King's army, the sacker of cities, has already crossed to the neighbouring land on the far shore. It went over the strait of Helle, Athamas's daughter, on a raft of boats lashed with flax, a road bolted tight, a yoke thrown over the neck of the sea.
Chorus. The hot-headed ruler of Asia, land of so many men, is driving his marvellous flock, his herd of men, against the whole earth, in two divisions, on land and off the sea, trusting in his hard, rough commanders, he himself, a man like a god, of the race that was born from gold.
Chorus. With the dark blue glare of a deadly snake in his eyes, with his thousands of hands and thousands of sailors, whipping on his Syrian chariot, he brings a War of arrows against men famous for the spear.
Chorus. And no one has yet been found who can stand against that great river of men and hold back with solid walls the unfightable wave of the sea. The Persian army cannot be approached, and its people have brave hearts.
Chorus. For from the gods, long ago, Fate took hold and laid it on the Persians to carry through the wars that break down towers, the confusion of charging horsemen, the uprooting of cities.
Chorus. And they learned to look out on the sea's sacred grove, the broad roads of water whitening under the wild wind, trusting their thin-spun cables and the machines that carry a people across.
Chorus. But the god's trick, the cunning deception, what man alive can escape it? Who is so quick on his feet that he can leap clear of it lightly?
Chorus. For Ruin is friendly at first. She fawns and coaxes a man into her nets, and from there no mortal slips out above the trap and away.
Chorus. This is why my heart is dressed in black and torn with fear. Oh, for the Persian army! I am afraid the city will hear that the great town of Susa has no men left in it,
Chorus. and that the fortress of the Cissians will sing the answer back, Oh, a crowd of women crying that one word out loud, and the tearing will fall on the fine linen dresses.
Chorus. For every man who rides a horse and every man who walks the plain has left, like a swarm out of the hive when the bees go with the leader of the host, and crossed the headland that is yoked to both shores, the sea's own cape, the land that the two continents share.
Chorus. And the beds fill with tears for the men they miss. The women of Persia are soft in their grief. Each one sent off her fierce, spear-carrying husband with love and longing, and is left in a yoke made for two, alone.
Chorus. But come, Persians. Let us sit down here under this ancient roof and think carefully, think deep. The need has come for it. How is Xerxes the King doing, Darius's son, of the race that gave our people their name? Is it the drawn bow that has won, or has the strength of the spear with its iron head prevailed? But look. Here comes a light like the eyes of the gods: the King's mother, my Queen. I fall to the ground before her. And it is right that every one of us speaks to her with words of greeting.
(The Queen comes in on a chariot, richly dressed, with attendants. The old men prostrate themselves and rise again.)
Chorus. Queen, highest of the deep-belted women of Persia, aged mother of Xerxes, wife of Darius, greetings. You were the wife of the Persians' god and you are the mother of a god, unless the old luck of the army has turned its back on it now.
Queen. That is exactly why I have come, out of the palace with its gold hangings, out of the room where Darius and I slept. Worry is clawing at my heart too. I will tell you something, friends, and I am in no way free of fear when I tell it: I am afraid that great wealth may kick up the dust from the ground and trip up, with its own foot, the prosperity that Darius built, and did not build without some god's help. So there is a double anxiety in my mind, and it is hard to put into words. A pile of money with no men to it is nothing to honour. And men with no money never shine with the light their strength deserves. We have wealth enough, and no one could fault it. My fear is for the eye. The eye of a house, I think, is the presence of its master. That is how things stand. So be my advisers in this, Persians, old and faithful men. Every piece of good counsel I have is in you.
Chorus. Be sure of this, Queen of this land: you will never have to ask twice for anything, in word or deed, that it is in our power to guide you to. You are calling on advisers who wish you well.
Queen. Ever since my son fitted out his army and went off meaning to lay waste the land of the Ionians, I have lived with dreams, night after night. But I have never seen one as clear as last night's. I will tell it to you.
Two women in beautiful clothes seemed to come before my eyes. One was dressed in Persian robes, the other in Dorian dress. They were far taller than women are now, flawless in their beauty, and sisters, of one family. For a homeland, one had drawn Greece by lot, the other the land of the barbarians. And the two of them, as I seemed to see it, were starting some quarrel between themselves. My son noticed it, and tried to hold them back and calm them down. He yoked them both under his chariot and put the collar straps on their necks. One of them towered up proud in that harness and kept her mouth obedient to the reins. The other fought. She tore the chariot's tackle apart with her hands, dragged it off with her by force, bit and all, and broke the yoke in the middle. My son fell. And his father Darius stood there beside him, pitying him. And when Xerxes saw him, he tore the clothes off his own body.
That is what I say I saw in the night. When I got up and touched my hands in the clear running water of the spring, I went to the altar with an offering in my hand, meaning to sacrifice a cake to the gods who turn evil away. That is their due. And I saw an eagle running for refuge to the hearth of Apollo, and I stood there without a sound, my friends, in fear. And then I saw a hawk come rushing in on its wings and pluck at the eagle's head with its claws. And the eagle did nothing but crouch down and offer up its body. Those were terrors for me to see, and they are terrors for you to hear. For you know this well: if my son does well, he will be a man everyone marvels at. And if he does badly, he answers to no city. If he comes home safe, he rules this land exactly as before.
Chorus. Mother, we do not want to frighten you too much with what we say, or to reassure you too much either. Go to the gods with your prayers. If what you saw was bad, ask them to turn it aside and finish it off, and to bring the good things to fulfilment for you and your children and the city and everyone you love. Then you must pour offerings to the Earth and the dead. And ask your husband Darius, whom you say you saw in the night, ask him kindly to send good things up out of the earth into the light for you and for your son, and to hold the opposite of them down under the ground, fading in the dark. That is my advice, and I mean it well. My heart is my prophet. Our judgement is that all of this turns out well for you, in every way.
Queen. Well, you have read the dream kindly, at least, as its first interpreter, and with goodwill to my son and my house. May the good things come true. Everything you ask, I will do for the gods and for the dear ones under the earth, as soon as I go back into the house. But there is something I want to find out, my friends. Where in the world do they say Athens is?
Chorus. Far away, towards the west, where our lord the Sun goes down and dies.
Queen. And my son really wanted to hunt down this city?
Chorus. Yes. Because then all Greece would be the King's subject.
Queen. Do they have so many men in their army?
Chorus. Enough of an army to have done the Medes a great deal of harm already.
Queen. And what else do they have? Enough wealth in their houses?
Chorus. They have a spring of silver, a treasure in their soil.
Queen. Is it the arrow and the drawn bow that fits their hands?
Chorus. Not at all. Spears for standing and fighting close, and shields for armour.
Queen. And who is the shepherd over them? Who is master of their army?
Chorus. They are called nobody's slaves, and nobody's subjects.
Queen. Then how can they stand against an invading enemy?
Chorus. Well enough to have destroyed Darius's army, which was large and fine.
Queen. What you say is terrible for the parents of the men who have gone there to think about.
Chorus. But I think you will soon know the whole story, and every word of it true. That is a Persian running, you can tell by the way he moves, and he brings some clear news, good or bad to hear.
Messenger. Cities of all the land of Asia! Land of Persia, great harbour of wealth! At one blow, all that prosperity is destroyed, and the flower of the Persians has fallen and is gone. Oh, it is a bad thing to be the first to bring bad news. But I have to unfold the whole of the suffering, Persians. The whole barbarian army is lost.
Chorus. Pain, pain, strange new pain, and cruel. Aiai, be drenched, Persians, as you hear this grief.
Messenger. Yes, because everything over there is finished. And I, past all hope, am looking at the light of home.
Chorus. Too long. This life has shown itself too long for us, old men, to have to hear this pain we never expected.
Messenger. I was there, Persians. I did not get it from other men's stories. I can tell you what kind of disaster was worked.
Chorus. Otototoi. For nothing, all those weapons, all those mixed peoples, went out from the land of Asia against Greece, the enemy's country.
Messenger. The shores of Salamis and all the coast around are full of the bodies of men who died an ugly death.
Chorus. Otototoi. You are telling me the bodies of the men we love, rolled by the sea, soaked through, dead, are being carried back and forth, tossing in their long cloaks.
Messenger. The bows were no use. The whole army was lost, broken by the ramming of the ships.
Chorus. Raise the cry, the unlucky cry, the cry of misery for the Persians: the enemy has made an end of everything, utterly. Aiai for the army that is destroyed.
Messenger. Salamis. The most hateful name there is to hear. Oh. How I groan when I remember Athens.
Chorus. Hateful Athens, to her enemies. We have cause to remember how many Persian women she has made, for nothing, childless and without a man.
Queen. I have been silent a long while, wretched, struck dumb by the disaster. This calamity is too big to speak of, too big even to ask about. But when the gods send suffering, mortals have to bear it. Compose yourself, and unfold the whole of it, even if you are groaning at our losses as you speak. Who is not dead? Which of the commanders shall we mourn, who held a place of authority and left his post empty of its man by dying?
Messenger. Xerxes himself is alive and sees the light.
Queen. You have spoken a great light for my house, and a white day after a night black as pitch.
Messenger. But Artembares, who commanded ten thousand horse, is being beaten now against the rough shore of Sileniae. And Dadaces, captain of a thousand, took a spear and made a light leap out of his ship. Tenagon, the true-born chief of the Bactrians, is roaming the sea-beaten island of Ajax. Lilaeus, Arsames, and Argestes, a third, were spun round the island where the doves breed and butted the hard ground with their heads. And from the springs of the Egyptian Nile, their neighbour, Arcteus, Adeues, and a third, Pharnuchus of the great shield: these fell out of one ship. Matallus of Chrysa, commander of ten thousand, leader of the Black Horse, thirty thousand strong, died and soaked his thick, bushy, tawny beard, changing its colour with a purple dye. And Arabus the Magian, and Artabes the Bactrian, who has settled now in a hard country, perished there. Amistris, and Amphistreus, who handled a spear that gave a lot of trouble, and good Ariomardus, who has brought grief to Sardis, and Seisames the Mysian, and Tharybis, commander of five times fifty ships, a Lyrnaean by birth, a handsome man, lies dead, poor wretch, not lucky at all. And Syennesis, first of them all for courage, commander of the Cilicians, one man who gave the enemy more trouble than any other, died with glory. Those are the commanders I have called to mind. There were many losses. I am reporting a few.
Queen. Aiai. These are the highest evils I could hear: shame for the Persians, and shrill wailing. But turn back and tell me this. How many Greek ships were there, that they thought themselves fit to join battle with the Persian fleet and ram it?
Messenger. If it had gone by numbers, be sure of this, the barbarians would have won with their ships. The Greeks had ten times thirty ships in all, and a picked squadron of ten besides. Xerxes, and I know this, had a thousand under his command, and the ones that were exceptional for speed were two hundred and seven. That is the count. Do you think we were outnumbered in that fight? No. It was some god that destroyed the army, loading the scales with a luck that was not evenly weighed. The gods keep the goddess Pallas's city safe.
Queen. Then the city of Athens is still unsacked?
Messenger. While she has her men, her wall is secure.
Queen. Tell me how the ships came to engage. Who began the fighting? The Greeks? Or my son, glorying in the number of his ships?
Messenger. What began it all, my lady, was a fiend, or some evil spirit, that appeared from somewhere. A Greek came from the Athenian army to your son Xerxes and told him this: that when the darkness of black night came on, the Greeks would not stay, but would jump to the rowing benches of their ships and save their lives by slipping away, each one where he could. Xerxes heard it, and he did not see the Greek's trick, or the gods' jealousy. He gave every ship's captain this order at once. When the sun stopped burning the earth with its rays and dark took hold of the precinct of the sky, they were to draw up the main body of the fleet in three lines to guard the exits and the sounding channels, and post other ships in a ring around the island of Ajax. And if the Greeks escaped their fate and found some way to slip off with their ships, it was laid down that every captain would lose his head. He said all this with a very confident heart. He did not know what was coming from the gods.
Our men, in good order and with obedient spirits, got their supper ready, and every sailor looped his oar to the thole-pin so it ran well. When the light of the sun had gone and night came on, every master of an oar and every man in charge of arms went aboard. Line called out to line along the long ships, and they sailed each to the station he was given, and all night long the captains kept the whole fleet cruising back and forth across the strait. Night wore on, and the Greek fleet made no attempt anywhere to slip out. But when day with her white horses had spread over all the land, bright to see, the first thing was a noise from the Greeks, a shout like a song of triumph, and at the same instant the echo came back high and clear from the rocks of the island. Terror took hold of all the barbarians. They had been wrong. The Greeks were not singing their solemn hymn for flight. They were going into battle, with brave hearts.
Messenger. Then the trumpet set the whole of their side ablaze. At the word of command they struck the deep brine together, oars roaring, and in a moment all of them were there to be seen. The right wing led off first, well marshalled and in order, and then the whole fleet came on behind, and at the same time we could hear a great shout: "Forward, sons of the Greeks! Free your country! Free your children, your wives, the seats of your fathers' gods and the tombs of your ancestors! Now the fight is for everything!" And from our side a roar of Persian speech went out to meet it, and there was no more time to wait. Ship struck ship, bronze beak on bronze. A Greek ship began the ramming and sheared off the whole stern of a Phoenician, and after that every captain aimed his ship at another. At first the flood of the Persian fleet held its own. But when the mass of the ships was jammed in the narrows, and no one could help anyone, and they were striking each other with their own bronze-mouthed rams and splintering the whole bank of oars, then the Greek ships, who knew exactly what they were doing, hemmed them in and battered them all round. Hulls rolled over. You could no longer see the sea for wrecks and slaughtered men. The beaches and the reefs were full of corpses, and every ship in the barbarian fleet was rowing away in disorder. And the Greeks kept hitting them, hacking at them with broken oars and pieces of wreckage, as if they were tuna or some other haul of fish. Groaning and shrieking together filled the open sea, until the face of black night took it away. As for the full extent of the losses, if I talked in order for ten days I could not get to the end of them for you. But be sure of this: never before did so great a number of men die in a single day.
Queen. Aiai. A great sea of evils has broken over the Persians and the whole barbarian race.
Messenger. And know this: the evil is not yet at the halfway mark. Such a disaster came on them after it as to outweigh all this twice over.
Queen. What worse luck than this could there be? Say what this other blow was, that you say fell on the army and tipped the scale further down into evil.
Messenger. Those Persians who were in the prime of their strength, the bravest in spirit, the best born, and always first in loyalty to the King himself: they are dead, shamefully, by the most inglorious death of all.
Queen. Oh, I am wretched, friends, wretched at this disaster. By what death do you say they died?
Messenger. There is an island in front of Salamis, a small one, a bad anchorage for ships, where Pan, who loves the dance, walks the shore by the sea. Xerxes sent these men there, so that when the enemy were wrecked from their ships and got away to the island, they could kill the Greek force easily and rescue their own men out of the channels of the sea. He read the future badly. For when a god gave the glory of the sea battle to the Greeks, that same day they fenced their bodies in good bronze armour and jumped down from their ships and ringed the whole island, so that our men had no idea where to turn. They were hit again and again with stones thrown by hand, and arrows flying from the bowstring kept falling on them and killing. In the end the Greeks charged with a single roar, and struck, and hacked the poor wretches limb from limb, until they had put out the life of every one. Xerxes cried aloud when he saw the depth of the disaster. He had a seat with a clear view of the whole army, a high hill by the open sea. He tore his robes and shrieked, gave his orders at once to the land army, and let it go in disorderly flight. That is the disaster you have to mourn on top of the first.
Queen. Hateful god. How you have cheated the Persians of their hopes. My son has found a bitter revenge on famous Athens. The barbarians that Marathon destroyed before were not enough. My son thought he would make them pay for those, and he has drawn this whole mass of suffering on himself. But the ships that escaped their fate, tell me: where did you leave them? Can you give a clear account?
Messenger. The captains of the ships that were left put up sail and fled in a rush, in no order, wherever the wind took them. And the rest of the army was dying in the land of the Boeotians, some of them struggling with thirst beside the sparkling springs, and the rest of us, empty and gasping, came through to the country of the Phocians and the land of Doris and the Malian gulf, where the Spercheus waters the plain with its kindly stream. From there the plain of Achaea and the cities of Thessaly took us in, starving. There most of us died, of thirst and hunger, because we had both. We reached the Magnesian country and the land of the Macedonians, the crossing of the Axius, the reedy marsh of Bolbe, Mount Pangaeus, the Edonian land. And that night the god raised winter out of season and froze the whole stream of the holy Strymon from bank to bank. Men who had never thought anything of the gods before prayed then, and bowed to earth and sky. And when the army had finished calling on the gods, it crossed over the frozen ford. Every one of us who set out before the god scattered his rays got across safe. But the sun's bright disc, blazing, heated the middle of the crossing with its flame and cut it through. And they fell in on top of one another, and the lucky man was the one whose breath broke off soonest. The rest, the ones who happened to survive, struggled across Thrace with great hardship and have come home, not many of them, to the land of their hearths. So the city of the Persians may mourn, and long for the dearest youth of the land. That is the truth. And I have left out many of the evils the god hurled down on the Persians.
(The Messenger goes out.)
Chorus. Terrible god, god of hard labours, how heavily you have jumped with both feet on the whole Persian race.
Queen. Oh, I am wretched. The army is destroyed. Vision of my dreams, so plain in the night, how clearly you showed me the evil. And you, you read it far too lightly. Still, since your word has settled it so, first I want to pray to the gods, and then I will come back with gifts for the Earth and the dead, a cake from my own house. I know it is for what is already done. But for whatever is still to come, if there is anything better in it. And you, after what has happened, must bring faithful counsel to faithful men. And my son, if he comes here before I get back: comfort him, and see him into the house, so that he does not add some further evil to the evils we have.
(The Queen goes out.)
Chorus. Zeus, King. Now you have destroyed the army of the Persians, so proud of themselves, so many men, and buried the city of Susa and Agbatana under a black cloud of grief. Women everywhere are tearing at their veils with soft hands, and the tears run down and soak the dresses at their breasts. They share the pain. And the wives of Persia, gentle even in their wailing, who long to see the men they were only just yoked to, have given up the soft sheets of the marriage bed, the pleasure of their pampered youth, and mourn with cries that can never have enough. And I too take up the fate of the men who are gone and raise, as is proper, a song of many sorrows.
Chorus. Now the whole land of Asia groans, emptied of its men. Xerxes led them out, popoi, Xerxes lost them, totoi, Xerxes bungled everything with his ships on the sea. Why was Darius, in his time, so free of harm when he was over us, master of the bow to his people, the leader the men of Susa loved?
Chorus. Soldiers and sailors alike, the ships led them out, the dark-eyed ships with wings of linen, popoi, the ships lost them, totoi, the ships, with the ramming that destroys everything, and the hands of the Ionians. And the King himself, we hear, only just escaped across the flat plains of Thrace and its roads of bitter winter.
Chorus. And the ones who were the first to die, pheu, left behind because they had no choice, Oh, are dragged back and forth along the shore of Cychreia, oa. Groan, and bite your lips, and roar out heavily a grief to reach the sky, oa. Stretch out the miserable voice into a long, wretched howl.
Chorus. Torn by the whirling water, pheu, they are gnawed, Oh, by the voiceless children of the sea that nothing stains, oa. A house robbed of its man mourns him, and parents with no children left, old men wailing over pain the gods sent, oa, are hearing now the whole of it.
Chorus. And the peoples across the land of Asia will not be ruled by Persian law much longer, nor go on paying tribute because a master makes them, nor fall face down on the ground in awe. The King's strength is destroyed.
Chorus. Men's tongues are no longer under guard. The people are let loose to say whatever they like, now that the yoke of power is broken. And the island of Ajax, washed round by the sea, its fields soaked in blood, holds all that was Persia.
(The Queen comes back on foot, without her chariot and her finery, with attendants carrying the offerings.)
Queen. My friends, anyone who has had experience of misfortune knows how it is with people: when a wave of trouble comes over them, they are frightened of everything. But when the god is sending a fair wind, they trust that the same god will blow their luck the same way for ever. For me, now, everything is full of fear. Before my eyes the gods appear, set against me, and in my ears a noise is shouting that has no healing in it. That is how badly this disaster has shaken me and frightened my mind. So I have come back from the house by this road with no chariot and none of my earlier finery, bringing offerings to soften the heart of my son's father, the things that soothe the dead: white milk, good to drink, from an unblemished cow; bright honey, the drop the flower-worker bee distils; running water from a virgin spring; and this, unmixed, the drink from a wild mother, the shining juice of an old vine. And here too is the sweet-smelling fruit of the pale olive, which spends its whole life in leaf; and flowers plaited together, the children of the earth that bears everything. Come, my friends: sing your hymns over these offerings to the dead, and call up the spirit of Darius, while I send these honours down for the earth to drink, for the gods below.
Chorus. Royal lady, whom the Persians honour, you send your offerings down to the chambers under the earth, and we will ask, with hymns, the escorts of the dead to be kind to us down there beneath the ground. Come then, holy gods of the world below, Earth, and Hermes, and you, King of the dead, send his soul up from underneath into the light. For if he knows of any further cure for our troubles, he alone of mortals can tell us where they end.
Chorus. Does he hear me, the blessed one, the King who was a god's equal, as I send up in barbarian speech, confused and thick with grief, these cries of every misery, these harsh, broken sounds? Or must I shout out the whole of my wretched pain? Does he hear me, down there?
Chorus. Earth, and you others, you leaders of the dead below, consent, and let the proud spirit come out of his house, the god of the Persians, born in Susa. Send him up: a man whose like the earth of Persia never covered yet.
Chorus. Yes, the man was loved, and the mound is loved, because what it hides is a heart we loved. Hades, you who send the dead back up, Hades, let him come, our divine lord Darius. Oh.
Chorus. For he never lost his men in wars that ruin and destroy. The Persians called him the counsellor whose counsel came from god, and he was that, because he steered the army well. Oh.
Chorus. Master, old master, come, come here. Come up to the very top of the mound, lifting the saffron-dyed slipper on your foot, showing the crest of the royal tiara. Come, father Darius, who did no harm. Oi.
Chorus. So that you can hear of griefs that are new and will last for ever, master of our master, appear. A fog like the fog of the Styx has settled over us, for the young men of the land are dead now, all of them. Come, father Darius, who did no harm. Oi.
Chorus. Aiai, aiai. You whose death your friends wept for so bitterly, why, master, master, why has this double blunder, wept for on every side, come over your land? Every three-banked ship this country had is gone. Ships that are ships no more, no more.
(The ghost of Darius rises out of the tomb, in his royal robes and tiara.)
Darius. Faithful of the Faithful, men who were young when I was, old men of Persia, what is this trouble the city is in? The ground groans. It is beaten, it is scored with feet. I see my wife beside my tomb and I am afraid, though I received her offerings kindly. And you stand close to the tomb and wail, and with high cries that call up the dead you call me, pitifully. It is not easy to get out. For one reason above all: the gods under the earth are better at taking than at letting go. Still, I have power among them, and I have come. But hurry, so that no one can blame me for the time I take. What is this new, heavy evil on the Persians?
Chorus. I am in awe, and cannot look at you. I am in awe, and cannot speak to your face, from the old dread of you.
Darius. Well, since I came up from below because your wailing persuaded me, do not make a long story of it. Be short. Speak, and go through all of it, and put your awe of me aside.
Chorus. I am afraid to do what you want. I am afraid to speak to your face and say things hard to say to the people I love.
Darius. Well, since the old fear in your minds stands in your way: you, my noble wife, the aged partner of my bed, stop these tears and this wailing and tell me something clear. Human suffering can come to human beings; that is how it is. Many evils come out of the sea and many out of the land for mortals, if their life is stretched out long enough.
Queen. You who outdid every mortal in prosperity, with a fortunate fate: as long as you looked on the rays of the sun, you lived a life the Persians envied, a happy life, like a god. And now I envy you for dying before you saw the depth of our evils. You will hear the whole story in a short time, Darius. The Persian state is sacked and wrecked, in a word.
Darius. How? Did some thunderbolt of plague fall on the city? Or civil war?
Queen. Neither. Near Athens, the whole army has been destroyed.
Darius. Which of my sons led the army there? Tell me.
Queen. Hot-headed Xerxes. He emptied the whole flat continent of its men.
Darius. Was it on foot or by sea that the poor fool made this mad attempt?
Queen. Both. There were two fronts, two armies.
Darius. But how did a land army as large as that get across?
Queen. He yoked the strait of Helle with engines, and made himself a road.
Darius. He did that? He shut the great Bosporus?
Queen. He did. Some god must have had a hand in the plan.
Darius. Pheu. Some great god came on him, so that he could not think straight.
Queen. Yes. You can see how it ended, what an evil he brought about.
Darius. And how did it go for them, that you groan over them like this?
Queen. The fleet was beaten, and its defeat destroyed the land army.
Darius. So the whole people has been wiped out by the spear, utterly?
Queen. So much so that the whole city of Susa groans that it has no men.
Darius. Oh, popoi. That fine defence, that army that stood by us.
Queen. And the people of Bactria are gone, wiped out, not even an old man left.
Darius. Poor wretch. What a youth of allies he has destroyed.
Queen. And Xerxes, alone, deserted, they say, with not many men...
Darius. Ended how, and where? Is there any hope of safety?
Queen. Reached, to his joy, the bridge that yokes the two lands.
Darius. And is safe on this continent? Is that certain?
Queen. Yes. The report is clear and it holds. There is no argument about it.
Darius. Pheu. So the oracles have been carried out quickly, and it is on my son that Zeus has brought down the end of what was foretold. I trusted that the gods would take a long time to bring it about. But when a man is in a hurry himself, the god joins in. Now a spring of evils seems to have been found for everyone I love. And it was my son who did it, not knowing what he did, in the boldness of youth. He hoped to hold the sacred Hellespont with chains, as if it were a slave, the Bosporus, the god's own flowing stream. He changed the shape of the strait, threw hammered shackles around it, and made a great road for a great army. He was a mortal, and he thought he could master all the gods, Poseidon too. That was not good judgement. Was that not a sickness of the mind that had hold of my son? I am afraid that the great wealth I laboured for will be plunder for whoever gets to it first.
Queen. Hot-headed Xerxes learned that lesson by keeping company with bad men. They kept telling him that you won great wealth for your children with your spear, while he, for want of manhood, played the warrior at home and added nothing to his father's fortune. He heard taunts like that many times from bad men, and he planned this road, and this army against Greece.
Darius. And so they have done a deed, the greatest deed, one that will never be forgotten, one that has emptied this city of Susa by its fall as nothing ever did before, since the day Lord Zeus granted this honour: that one man should rule all of Asia, the land that feeds the flocks, with the sceptre of command in his hand. Medus was the first leader of the army. Another, his son, finished his work, because his mind held the tiller of his heart. Third after him came Cyrus, a fortunate man. He ruled and made peace for everyone who was his. He won the people of the Lydians and the Phrygians and drove the whole of Ionia under him by force, and no god hated him for it, because he was born with good sense. Fourth, the son of Cyrus commanded the army. Fifth, Mardus ruled, a disgrace to his country and its ancient throne; brave Artaphrenes killed him by a trick, in the palace, with the men he trusted, whose duty it was. Sixth was Maraphis, and seventh, Artaphrenes. And I drew the lot I wanted, and I marched out many times with a great army. But I never threw an evil this size on the city. Xerxes, my son, is young, and thinks like a young man, and does not remember what I told him. You know this well, men of my own age: all of us who have held this power could not be shown, put together, to have done so much harm.
Chorus. Then what, lord Darius? Where are you steering your words to? After this, how can we, the people of Persia, do best?
Darius. If you do not march against the land of the Greeks, not even if the Median army is larger than theirs. The land itself is their ally.
Chorus. What do you mean? How is it their ally?
Darius. It kills with hunger any army that is far too large.
Chorus. But we will send out a picked force, trim and easy to supply.
Darius. Not even the army that is left in the land of Greece now will win its way safely home.
Chorus. What do you mean? Is the whole barbarian army not crossing the strait of Helle out of Europe?
Darius. Few out of many, if the oracles of the gods are to be trusted at all, looking at what has happened now; for when they come true, it is not some and not others. It is all of them. And if that is so, he is leaving behind a picked mass of his army, persuaded by empty hopes. They are waiting where the Asopus waters the plain with its streams, a welcome fattening for the soil of the Boeotians. There the highest of evils is waiting for them to suffer, the payment for outrage and godless thoughts. They came to the land of Greece and did not scruple to rob the images of the gods and burn their temples. Altars are wiped out, and the seats of the gods have been torn up from their bases, roots and all, and thrown down in a heap. So they did evil, and they are suffering no less, and more is to come; the spring of their evils is not dried up yet, it is still bubbling up. So great will be the clotted mess of slaughtered blood on the ground at Plataea under the Dorian spear that the heaps of the dead will tell the eyes of men, without a word, down to the third generation, that a mortal must not think too high. For outrage comes into flower, and the crop it ripens is Ruin, and from that it reaps a harvest of nothing but tears. Look at these punishments, and remember Athens and Greece, and let no one of you, despising the luck he has and lusting after more, pour away great wealth. Zeus stands over thoughts that boast too much and punishes them; he corrects with a heavy hand. So teach him, with sensible warnings, the man who needs to learn to keep himself in hand, to stop offending the gods with his boasting recklessness. And you, aged mother, whom Xerxes loves, go into the house, take whatever clothing is fit for him, and go to meet your son. For the grief of these evils has ripped his embroidered robes to shreds all about his body. Soothe him gently with words. He will listen to you, I know, and to no one else. I am going down now, into the dark under the earth. And you, Elders, farewell. Even in evil times, give your hearts some pleasure every day, since wealth is no use at all to the dead.
(The ghost of Darius sinks back into the tomb.)
Chorus. It hurts to hear it, so many sufferings for the barbarians, now and still to come.
Queen. God, how many evils and pains come over me. And this misfortune bites the hardest: to hear of the shame my son is wearing on his body, the rags that wrap him. I will go, and take clothing from the house, and try to meet my son. I will not desert the one I love most in his trouble.
(The Queen goes out.)
Chorus. Oh, popoi. What a great and good life we had, a life under good government, when the old King, who provided everything, who did no harm, whom no one could fight, Darius, equal to a god, ruled the land.
Chorus. First, we showed the world armies to be proud of, and laws, strong as towers, kept everything straight, and men came home from war unworn, unhurt, and well, to their own houses.
Chorus. And how many cities he took without crossing the ford of the river Halys, without stirring from his own hearth: the Acheloan cities by the Strymonian sea, that neighbour the Thracian farms,
Chorus. and outside the lake, the cities on the mainland, ringed round with a wall, obeyed him as their King; and the ones that boast of the broad strait of Helle, and the deep-set Propontis, and the mouth of the Pontus;
Chorus. and the islands along the sea's headland, washed round by the water, lying close to this land of ours: Lesbos, and Samos planted with olives, Chios and Paros, Naxos, Myconos, and Andros, that lies next door to Tenos;
Chorus. and he ruled the islands out in the sea, between the two shores, Lemnos, and the seat of Icarus, and Rhodes and Cnidus, and the Cyprian cities, Paphos, and Soli, and Salamis, whose mother city is now the cause of all this groaning.
Chorus. And the rich cities, full of men, of the Greeks in the Ionian allotment, he ruled by his own will, and he had, at his call, the tireless strength of armoured men and allies from every people mixed together. But now, past all argument, we bear the reverse, the gods turned it, beaten down hard in war by blows off the sea.
(Xerxes comes in on foot, with only a few attendants, his robes torn to rags and an empty quiver on his back.)
Xerxes. Io. Wretched man that I am, I have met this hateful fate, that gave no sign at all of its coming. How savagely the god has stamped on the race of the Persians. What is to become of me? The strength has gone out of my legs as I look at these old men of the city. Zeus, I wish that the fate of death had covered me too with the men who are gone.
Chorus. Otototoi, King, for the good army, for the great honour of Persian rule, for the fine order of men that the god has cut down now. The land cries aiai for its own young men, killed by Xerxes, who has crammed Hades full of Persians. Many men have walked down to Hades, the flower of the country, masters of the bow, a thick crowd, ten thousand at a time, and are gone. Aiai, aiai, for the strong men we trusted. And the land of Asia, King of the earth, terribly, terribly, is bent down onto its knee.
Xerxes. Here I am, oioi, a thing to wail over, a wretch. I was born to be an evil to my race and my father's land.
Chorus. To greet you home I will send up a cry of bad omen, an ill-tuned shout, the howl of a Mariandynian mourner, I will send it, send it, a wail of many tears.
Xerxes. Let it go, the harsh voice, full of grief, all lament. The god has turned round against me now.
Chorus. I will let it go, all lament, in honour of your sufferings and the blows the sea dealt, the city's grief for its children. I will scream out, scream out a wail of many tears.
Xerxes. It was the Ionians who took them, the Ionian War, fenced with ships, that gave the strength to the other side and mowed the dark plain of the sea and the shore of ill luck.
Chorus. Oioioi. Cry out, and learn everything. Where is the rest of the crowd of your friends? Where are the men who stood beside you, men like Pharandaces, Susas, Pelagon, and Dotamas, and Agdabatas, Psammis, and Susiscanes, who left Agbatana behind him?
Xerxes. I left them dead, fallen from a Tyrian ship, drifting on the shores of Salamis, knocked against the hard beach.
Chorus. Oioioi. Cry out. Where is your Pharnuchus, and good Ariomardus? Where is Seualces the prince, or Lilaeus of the noble father, Memphis, Tharybis, and Masistras, Artembares and Hystaechmas? This I ask you again.
Xerxes. Io, io, moi, moi. They looked on ancient Athens, the hateful city, and all with one stroke of the oar, eh, eh, the poor wretches lie gasping on the land.
Chorus. And your Eye, the faithful Eye, who counted the Persians for you ten thousand, ten thousand at a time, Alpistus, son of Batanochus, of the line of Sesames, of Megabates, and Parthus, and great Oebares, did you leave them, leave them? Oh, oh, oh, for the wretched men. You are telling the noble Persians of evils beyond evil.
Xerxes. Io, io, yes, you remind me of the longing for my good companions, you stir what cannot be forgotten, hateful, evil beyond evil. The heart inside my body shouts, shouts.
Chorus. And there are others too that we miss: the commander of ten thousand Mardian men, Xanthis, and warlike Anchares, and Diaexis and Arsaces, masters of horse, Cegdadatas and Lythimnas, and Tolmus, who never had enough of the spear. I am amazed, amazed that they are not following behind your wheeled tent.
Xerxes. They are gone, the men who led the army.
Chorus. Gone, oi, and without a name.
Xerxes. Ie, ie. Io, io.
Chorus. Io, io, you gods, you made an evil no one hoped for, plain to see, like the look in Ruin's eyes.
Xerxes. We are struck, what a blow, for all time.
Chorus. We are struck. It is plain enough.
Xerxes. New misery, new misery.
Chorus. We met the Ionian seamen and our luck was bad. The race of the Persians is unlucky in war.
Xerxes. How not? An army so large, and I am struck down, wretched.
Chorus. And what is not? Everything the Persians had is destroyed.
Xerxes. Do you see this, what is left of my robe?
Chorus. I see, I see.
Xerxes. And this, that held the arrows
Chorus. What is this you say was saved?
Xerxes. a treasure-house for shafts?
Chorus. Little enough, out of so much.
Xerxes. We are stripped of defenders.
Chorus. The Ionian people do not run from the spear.
Xerxes. Too brave by far. And I saw a disaster I never expected.
Chorus. You mean the fleet, turned and routed?
Xerxes. I tore my robe when the evil fell.
Chorus. Papai, papai.
Xerxes. And more than papai.
Chorus. Yes, for double and triple
Xerxes. the pain, and the joy for our enemies.
Chorus. And our strength is cut short
Xerxes. I am naked of my escort.
Chorus. by the ruin of your friends at sea.
Xerxes. Wet, wet your grief with tears. And go home.
Chorus. Aiai, aiai. Misery, misery.
Xerxes. Cry now, and answer me.
Chorus. A bad gift, bad on bad, for the wretched.
Xerxes. Howl, and match your song to mine.
Chorus. Otototototoi. This blow is heavy. Oi. I feel this too.
Xerxes. Row with your arms, row, and groan for my sake.
Chorus. I am wet with weeping.
Xerxes. Cry now, and answer me.
Chorus. That is my care, master.
Xerxes. Lift up your voice now in wailing.
Chorus. Otototototoi. And mixed in with it, oi, a black blow, a groaning blow.
Xerxes. Beat your breast too, and cry the Mysian cry.
Chorus. Pain, pain.
Xerxes. And tear out the white hair of your beard for me.
Chorus. With clenched fists, clenched fists, wailing hard.
Xerxes. And shriek.
Chorus. I will do that too.
Xerxes. And rip the robe over your chest with the tips of your fingers.
Chorus. Pain, pain.
Xerxes. And pluck your hair, and pity the army.
Chorus. With clenched fists, clenched fists, wailing hard.
Xerxes. And wet your eyes.
Chorus. I am soaked.
Xerxes. Cry now, and answer me.
Chorus. Oioi, oioi.
Xerxes. Go home wailing.
Chorus. Io, io. Land of Persia, hard to walk on.
Xerxes. Ioa, through the city.
Chorus. Ioa, yes, yes.
Xerxes. Wail, you who step so softly.
Chorus. Io, io. Land of Persia, hard to walk on.
Xerxes. Ie, ie, in the three-banked ships, ie, ie, the men lost in the boats.
Chorus. I will bring you home with harsh cries of grief.
(Xerxes and the Elders go out together toward the palace, wailing as they go.)
(Thebes, on the citadel, before the statues of the city's gods. The city is under siege. Eteocles comes in to a crowd of citizens.)
Eteocles. Citizens of Cadmus's city. The man who guards the ship of state from the stern, with his hand on the tiller and never letting his eyelids close in sleep, has to say what the moment needs. If we come through this well, the credit goes to a god. But if disaster comes, and may it never come, then Eteocles is the one name that will be sung all over the city by every citizen, in a rising roar of blame and the wailing that goes with it. May Zeus the Defender live up to his name and defend the city of the Cadmeans from that.
As for you, all of you: the boy who has not yet reached the peak of his youth, and the man whom time has carried past it but who still keeps a big strong growth of body, and every man in his prime, each as fits him. You must come to the help of the city now, and of the altars of the gods of this land, so that their honours are never wiped out. Help your children, and the Earth, your mother, the nurse who loves you most. When you were small and crawling on her kind ground she took on the whole burden of raising you, and she raised you to be householders who carry a shield, and to be faithful to her in this hour of need.
And up to this day the god's scales have tipped our way. All the time we have been penned in behind our towers, the war has mostly gone well for us, and that is the gods' doing. But now the prophet, the herdsman of birds, who works without the fire of sacrifice, sorting the oracle birds with his ears and his mind by an art that does not lie, this master of prophecy says the greatest Argive assault yet is being debated in the night and planned against the city. So all of you, to the battlements and the gates of the towered walls. Move. Run, in full armour. Man the breastworks, take your stand on the platforms of the towers, hold your posts where the gates open out, and keep your courage up. Do not be too frightened of this mob of foreigners. The god will bring it to a good end. I have sent out scouts myself, men to watch their army, and I trust them not to waste the journey. Once I have heard them, no trick will catch me out.
(The Scout comes in, running.)
Scout. Eteocles, best of the Cadmeans, my lord, I have come back from the army out there with sure news. I saw what they did with my own eyes. Seven men, fierce captains of companies, cut a bull's throat over a black-rimmed shield, dipped their hands in the bull's blood, and swore by Ares, by Enyo, and by Terror who loves blood, that either they would tear this city down to its foundations and gut the town of the Cadmeans by force, or die and knead this earth into mud with their own blood. And they were hanging keepsakes of themselves on Adrastus's chariot, for their parents at home, and crying as they did it. But not one word of pity came out of their mouths. Their iron hearts were blazing with courage and breathing hard, like lions with war in their eyes.
And the news of this has not been slowed by any hesitation of mine. I left them drawing lots, to decide which gate each man would lead his company against, as chance assigned him. So pick the best men in the city and post them at the gate exits, quickly. The Argive army is already close, in full armour, coming on and raising dust, and white foam from the horses' lungs is spattering the plain in drops. You are the good helmsman of this ship. Make the town fast before the squalls of Ares break over it. The wave of their army is roaring in over dry land. Seize the fastest moment there is for this. For the rest, I will keep a faithful daylight watch with my eyes, and with the clear word I bring you will know what is happening outside the gates and come to no harm.
(The Scout goes out.)
Eteocles. Zeus, and Earth, and gods who hold this city, and Curse, the Fury of my father, so strong: do not tear my city up by the roots, do not let it be ripped out and destroyed and taken by the enemy, a city that speaks the language of Greece, with its houses and its hearths. Never let this free land, this city of Cadmus, be held under the yoke of slavery. Be our strength. What I ask is for all of us, I think. A city that does well honours its gods.
(Eteocles goes out with the citizens. The Chorus, the young women of Thebes, come rushing in, in terror.)
Chorus. I cry out in fear, great pains, great cries. The army is loose. It has left its camp, and here it comes, a flood of men, the horsemen out in front. The dust rising into the sky tells me so, a messenger with no voice, but clear, and true. And now the plains of my own country ring under the hooves and push the roar into my ear. It flies, it rumbles, like water no one can fight, crashing down a mountain. Oh, oh, gods and goddesses, the evil is rushing on us, shout it back over the walls. The army of the white shields is on its feet, ready, running at the city at full stretch. Who will save us then? Which of the gods or goddesses will stand by us? Shall I throw myself down before the old statues of my fathers' gods? Oh, blessed ones on your firm seats, now is the time to hold on to your statues. Why do we wait, and groan? Do you hear the shields clash, or don't you? If not now, when shall we hold up robes and garlands and pray? I see the clash. That is not the clatter of one spear. What will you do, Ares, old lord of this land? Will you betray your own? Oh, god of the golden helmet, look, look at the city you once loved so well.
Chorus. Gods who guard the city, all of you, come, over the land. Look at this band of girls on our knees, begging to be spared slavery. A wave of men with plumes slanting on their helmets is boiling round the town, driven by the blasts of Ares. Zeus, father, who brings all things to their end, keep us, whatever it costs, from capture by the enemy. The Argives are circling the fortress of Cadmus. Terror of their weapons of war shakes us, and through the horses' jaws the bridles whine of murder. Seven proud men, the pick of the army, in spear-shaking harness, at the seven gates take their stands, as the lot fell to them.
Chorus. And you, Zeus-born power who loves the fight, be the saviour of the city, Pallas. And you, lord of horses, ruler of the deep, Poseidon, with your weapon that strikes fish, give us release from fear, give us release. And you, Ares, oh, oh, guard the city that carries Cadmus's name; show that you care for it, out in the open. And Aphrodite, first mother of our race, keep this off us. We come from your blood. Crying to you with prayers a god must hear, we come close. And you, Wolf-lord Apollo, be a wolf to the enemy army, and give them groan for groan. And you, girl born of Leto, Artemis, our own, make your bow ready.
Chorus. Ah, ah, ah, ah, I hear the rattle of chariots round the city. Lady Hera! The hubs screamed under the loaded axles. Artemis, our own, ah, ah, ah, ah, the air is going mad with shaken spears. What is happening to our city? What is coming? Where is the god leading us, and to what end?
Chorus. Ah, ah, ah, ah, a hail of stones is coming at the tops of the battlements. Apollo, our own! At the gates the clang of bronze-bound shields. Son of Zeus, from whom comes the holy end of war, the deciding of the battle. And you, blessed queen Onca, before the city, shield your seven-gated home.
Chorus. Oh, gods who can do everything, oh, you gods and goddesses who bring things to their end, guardians of the towers of this land, do not betray a city worn out by the spear to an army that speaks another tongue. Hear us, hear us girls, as is right, our prayers, our hands stretched out.
Chorus. Oh, spirits who love us, stand round the city and set it free, show how you love this town. Think of the people's holy offerings, and as you think of them, help. The city loves its sacrifices and its rites. Remember them for me.
Eteocles. I ask you, you unbearable creatures: is this the best way? Is this how the city gets saved? Is this what gives heart to an army penned in behind its towers, you throwing yourselves down in front of the statues of the gods who hold the city and howling and shrieking, the thing every sane person hates? May I never share a house with the female race, not in bad times and not in the good times we love. When a woman has the upper hand her boldness is more than anyone can live with, and when she is frightened she is a worse evil still, for house and city both. Look at you now. Running this way and that in flight, you have shrieked a spineless cowardice into the citizens. The enemy outside the gates could not ask for better help, and we are being sacked from inside by our own people. That is what you get when you live with women. And if anyone will not listen to my command, man, woman, or whatever is in between, the vote against them is death, and there is no escaping the people's stones. What happens outside is the man's business. No woman is to make decisions about it. Stay inside and do no harm. Did you hear me or not? Or am I talking to the deaf?
Chorus. Dear son of Oedipus, I was afraid when I heard the rattle, the rattle of the crashing chariots, when the axle-boxes screamed as the wheels went round, and the steering gear in the horses' mouths, the fire-forged bits, sang out.
Eteocles. And so? Did a sailor ever find a way to safety by running from the stern to the prow while the ship was labouring in the open sea?
Chorus. No. I ran to the gods, to their ancient statues, trusting the gods, when the deadly blizzard, the snowstorm of stones, roared at the gates. That was when fear lifted me up to pray to the blessed ones to hold their strength over the city.
Eteocles. Pray that the wall keeps out the enemy's spear. That is the gods' business, yes. But they say the gods of a captured city leave it.
Chorus. Never in my lifetime may this gathering of gods leave us. Never let me see this city overrun, and an army setting it alight with the enemy's fire.
Eteocles. Call on the gods, but do not plan badly while you do it. Obedience is the mother of Success, and the wife of Safety. That is the saying.
Chorus. It is. But the strength of a god is higher still, and often, in bad times, it lifts a helpless man up out of hard misery, even with the storm clouds hanging over his eyes.
Eteocles. Slaughtered beasts and offerings to the gods, when we test the enemy: that is men's work. Yours is to keep silent and stay inside the house.
Chorus. It is through the gods that we live in a city no one has conquered, and that the wall holds off the crowd of men who hate us. What is there in that to resent?
Eteocles. I do not grudge you honouring the race of the gods. But so that you do not turn the citizens into cowards, be calm, and stop being so terribly afraid.
Chorus. I heard a strange clashing, all mixed together, and I came, shaking with fear, up to this citadel, our honoured seat of worship.
Eteocles. Then if you hear of men dying or wounded, do not snatch at the news with wailing. That is what Ares feeds on: the blood of men.
Chorus. But I do hear it. Horses, snorting.
Eteocles. Then hear it, but not so loudly.
Chorus. The town is groaning from the ground up, as if they were all round us.
Eteocles. It is enough that I am making the plans for that.
Chorus. I am afraid. The battering at the gates is getting worse.
Eteocles. Will you be quiet, and say none of this in the city?
Chorus. Gods gathered here, do not betray our walls.
Eteocles. Damn you. Will you not bear this in silence?
Chorus. Gods of my city, do not let slavery be my lot.
Eteocles. You are making a slave of me, and of the whole city, yourself.
Chorus. Zeus almighty, turn your bolt on the enemy.
Eteocles. Zeus, what a breed you have given us in women.
Chorus. A wretched one, like men whose city is taken.
Eteocles. Words of bad omen again, with your hands on the statues?
Chorus. I have no courage left, and fear is snatching at my tongue.
Eteocles. If you would only grant me one small thing I ask.
Chorus. Say it, as fast as you can, and I will know as fast.
Eteocles. Be quiet, you poor wretch. Do not frighten your own people.
Chorus. I am quiet. I will suffer what is fated, with the others.
Eteocles. I take those words of yours in place of the ones before. And one thing more: get away from the statues, and make the better prayer, that the gods fight on our side. Listen to my prayers, and then raise the holy cry of triumph, the cry of good omen, the Greek custom of shouting over a sacrifice, which gives courage to our friends and unties their fear of the enemy.
To the gods who hold this country's city, the ones who live in the plain and the ones who watch over the market place, and to the springs of Dirce and the water of Ismenus, I say this: if things go well and the city is saved, we will redden the gods' hearths with the blood of sheep and slaughter bulls for the gods. That is my vow. And I will hang trophies in their holy houses, the enemy's clothing, spoils torn from them by the spear. I will hang them up in front of the temples, the garments of our enemies.
Pray to the gods like that, not with your love of groaning, not with wild, useless panting. You will not escape what is fated one bit the more for it. I am going to post six men, and myself the seventh, to face the enemy in the grand manner at the seven exits in the walls, before fast-running messengers and hurrying words arrive and set us on fire with need.
(Eteocles goes out.)
Chorus. I obey. But fear will not let my heart sleep. Worries, neighbours to my heart, keep fanning the terror of the army all round the walls, the way a dove, trembling all over, fears for the young in her nest because of the snakes, bad bedfellows. Some of them march against the towers with all their people, all their host. What will become of me? Others are hurling jagged stones at the citizens caught on every side. Gods born of Zeus, by every means, save the city and the army born of Cadmus.
Chorus. What ground will you take in exchange for this, what better country, if you hand over to the enemy this deep-soiled land, and the water of Dirce, the most nourishing drink of all the drinks that Poseidon who holds the earth and the children of Tethys pour out? So, gods who hold the city, throw onto the men outside the towers the doom that destroys men, the ruin that makes them drop their weapons, and win glory for these citizens. Be the saviours of the city, stay firm in your seats, for these shrill, wailing prayers.
Chorus. It is pitiful, to throw a city as old as this down to Hades, the spear's prey, a slave, crumbling to dry ash, sacked without honour by an Achaean man because the gods willed it; and the women, taken, led away, ah, ah, young and old alike, dragged by the hair like horses, their clothes torn off round them. The city screams as it empties out, the plunder wailing in every voice as it dies. I shudder at the heavy fate before it comes.
Chorus. And it is a thing to weep for, that girls just ripe should be picked raw, before the wedding rites, and go the hateful road away from home. What? I say the dead man does better than they do. For when a city is beaten down, ah, ah, many and miserable are the things it suffers. Man drags man away, or kills him, or carries fire. The whole town is smeared with smoke. And Ares breathes over it, raging, the breaker of peoples, fouling everything holy.
Chorus. Roaring through the town, and against the town a towered net closing in. Man goes down before man, by the spear. Bloody bleating, the wails of babies fresh from the breast, still at the nipple. And looting, blood-brother to the running to and fro. Loaded man runs into loaded man, empty man calls to empty man, wanting a partner in it, and none of them wants less, none wants an equal share. From this you can guess the rest.
Chorus. Fruit of every kind, fallen to the ground, hurts to find, a bitter sight for the housekeepers' eyes. Heaped, jumbled, the gifts of the earth are swept away on worthless waves. And the young slave women, new to suffering: a wretched bed, a prisoner's bed, a lucky man's, an enemy's, a stronger man's, that is their hope now, the coming of the night's due, a helper to the tears and all the grief.
(The Scout is seen coming from one side, Eteocles from the other, both in a hurry.)
First Half-Chorus. The scout from the army, I think, is bringing us some fresh news, friends. Look how fast his legs are swinging as they carry him on his errand.
Second Half-Chorus. And here is our lord himself, the son of Oedipus, just in time to hear the messenger's report. Haste is spoiling his stride, too.
Scout. I can tell you the enemy's dispositions exactly, and which gate each man drew by lot. Tydeus is already roaring at the Proetid gate. But the prophet will not let him ford the Ismenus. The sacrifices are not coming out well. And Tydeus, raving, greedy for the fight, is bellowing like a snake that hisses at midday, and lashing the wise prophet, the son of Oecles, with the insult that he fawns on death and on battle out of cowardice. Shouting things like that, he shakes the three shadowing plumes, the mane of his helmet, and under his shield bells beaten out of bronze ring out fear. On his shield he has this proud sign: a sky worked in metal, blazing with stars, and bright in the middle of the shield the full moon, eldest of the stars, the eye of night. Raving like that in his boastful armour he roars along the river bank, in love with the fight, like a horse straining at the bit and panting, waiting for the trumpet's call. Who will you set against him? Who can be trusted to stand at the Proetid gate when the bars are drawn?
Eteocles. No man's finery would make me tremble, and signs do not make wounds. Plumes and bells do not bite without a spear. And this night you speak of on his shield, glittering with the stars of heaven: perhaps his folly will turn prophet for someone. If night falls on his eyes as he dies, then for the man who carries it this arrogant sign will be rightly and justly named, and he will have prophesied his own outrage against himself. Against Tydeus I will post the trusty son of Astacus as defender of this gate, a man of very good birth, who honours the throne of Shame and hates arrogant talk. He is slow to do anything disgraceful, and he does not like to be a coward. His root springs from the sown men, the ones Ares spared, and he is very much a man of this soil. His name is Melanippus. Ares will decide the outcome with his dice. But Justice, who shares his blood, is sending him out, and rightly, to keep the enemy spear from the mother who bore him.
Chorus. May the gods give our champion good luck, since he goes up in a just cause to fight for the city. But I tremble to see the bloody deaths of men who die for their own.
Scout. May the gods give him that luck. Capaneus drew the Electran gate, another giant, bigger than the one I told you of, and his boasting is beyond what a man should think. He threatens terrible things against our towers, and may chance not fulfil them. He says he will sack the city whether the god wants it or not, and that not even the Quarrel of Zeus, striking the ground in front of him, would stand in his way. The lightning and the thunderbolts he compares to the heat of noon. For a sign he has a naked man carrying fire, and the torch he holds as his weapon blazes in his hands, and in gold letters he says: I will burn the city. Against a man like that, send someone. Who will stand up to him? Who will wait for that boaster without trembling?
Eteocles. Here too, gain breeds gain. When men think empty thoughts, the tongue turns out to be their true accuser. Capaneus threatens, ready to act, dishonouring the gods, and giving his mouth its exercise in idle joy he sends up to heaven, a mortal man, loud swelling words for Zeus to hear. I trust that the fire-bearing thunderbolt will come to him with justice, and that it will be nothing like the heat of the noonday sun. Against him, big-mouthed as he is, a man of burning spirit is posted: the strength of Polyphontes, a guard you can trust, with the goodwill of Artemis who stands before the gate, and of the other gods. Tell me of another, and the gate he drew.
Chorus. Death to the man who boasts so big against the city. May the thunderbolt's shaft stop him before he bursts into my house and with his arrogant spear drives me out of my girlhood room.
Scout. Now I will tell you of the man who drew the next gate. The third lot leaped out of the upturned bronze helmet for Eteoclus, the third man, to throw his company at the Neistan gate. He is wheeling his mares, snorting in their head-straps, wanting to fall on the gate. Their muzzles whistle in a barbarian way, filled with the breath of their proud nostrils. And his shield is not modestly decorated: an armoured man climbs the rungs of a ladder up an enemy tower, meaning to sack it. And this one too shouts, in the syllables of written letters, that not even Ares could throw him off the wall. Against this man too send someone you can trust to keep the yoke of slavery from this city.
Eteocles. I would send this man now, and with luck, too. In fact he is already sent, his boast in his hands: Megareus, Creon's seed, of the race of the sown men. He will not back away from the gate for fear of the thunder of maddened horses snorting. Either he will die and pay the land in full for his rearing, or he will take two men and the city on the shield, and dress his father's house with the spoils. Boast of another, and do not grudge me the telling.
Chorus. I pray for him to have good luck, oh, champion of my home, and for them, bad luck. As they talk their great talk against the city with a mind gone mad, so may Zeus the Punisher look on them in anger.
Scout. Another, the fourth, has the gate next to Onca Athena, and stands there with a shout: Hippomedon, the shape and huge stamp of him. He spun a great threshing floor, I mean the circle of his shield, and I shuddered. I will not say otherwise. The man who worked the sign on it was no cheap craftsman: it is Typhon, sending out of his fire-breathing mouth black smoke, the flickering sister of fire, and the rim of the hollow-bellied shield is nailed all round with coils of snakes. He himself raised the war cry, and possessed by Ares he raves for the fight like a maenad, with terror in his eyes. Guard well against the attack of a man like that. Terror is already boasting at the gate.
Eteocles. First, Onca Pallas, who lives close to the city, next to the gate, and hates outrage in a man, will keep him off like a cold snake from her nestlings. And Hyperbius, the trusty son of Oenops, is chosen to meet him man to man, willing to find out his fate in the crisis that chance brings, a man with no fault in his body, in his spirit, or in the handling of his arms. Hermes has matched them well. Man will meet man as enemy, and the gods on their shields will clash as enemies too. One has fire-breathing Typhon. On Hyperbius's shield Father Zeus sits upright with a flaming bolt in his hand. And no one has ever yet seen Zeus beaten. That is how the gods' favour lies. We are on the side of the winners, they on the side of the beaten, if Zeus is stronger than Typhon in a fight. It is likely the men will fare as their gods do, and by the reading of the sign Zeus will be Hyperbius's saviour, since Zeus happens to be on his shield.
Chorus. I am sure of it: the man who carries Zeus's enemy on his shield, the unloved body of the earth-born spirit, an image hated by mortals and by the long-lived gods, will fling his head down in the dust before the gate.
Scout. May it be so. Now the fifth. He is posted at the fifth gate, the North Gate, right beside the tomb of Amphion, Zeus's son. He swears by the spear in his hand, which he trusts and honours more than any god and more than his own eyes, that he will sack the city of the Cadmeans in spite of Zeus. That is what he says, this beautiful shoot of a mountain-ranging mother, this man who is half boy still. The down is only now creeping across his cheeks, the first thick hair coming up as his youth comes on. But the spirit he brings up to the gate is savage, nothing like a girl's, for all that his name says girl, and the eye in his head is a Gorgon's. And he does not stand at the gate without a boast of his own. On his shield of beaten bronze, the round wall he holds in front of his body, he was swinging the shame of our city: the Sphinx, the eater of raw flesh, fastened on with bolts, her body bright and hammered up out of the metal, and under her she carries a man, one of the Cadmeans, so that as many missiles as possible will be thrown at that man. He has not come to haggle over the fighting, it seems, or to disgrace the long road he travelled. Parthenopaeus, the Arcadian. Such is the man: a resident foreigner paying Argos back for a fine upbringing, and he threatens these towers with things I pray no god brings about.
Eteocles. If only they got from the gods exactly what they intend, they and those unholy boasts of theirs. Then they would die, all of them, utterly and badly. For this one too, the Arcadian you speak of, there is a man with no boast in him, whose hand sees what has to be done: Actor, brother of the man I named before. He will not let a tongue with no deeds behind it come flooding in through the gate and swell our troubles. He will not let a man in who carries the image of that hateful biting beast on an enemy shield. She will turn on the man who carries her, from the outside in, when she meets the thick hammering of blows under the city wall. If the gods are willing, what I say may turn out true.
Chorus. The words go through my chest. The hair on my head stands up straight as I hear the huge threats of these huge talkers, these unholy men. Oh, let the gods destroy them here, in our land.
Scout. The sixth I would name is the most level-headed man there and the best of them in courage, a seer: mighty Amphiaraus. He is posted at the Homoloid Gate, and he is heaping abuse on mighty Tydeus. Killer of men. Wrecker of the city. Argos's great schoolmaster in evil. The man who calls up the Fury. Slaughter's servant. Adrastus's counsellor in all this wickedness. And then he turned his eyes up to heaven and spoke to your own brother, mighty Polyneices, your mother's son, and twice, at the end, he broke the name in two and called him by it, Poly-neices, Much-Strife. This is what he said, word for word:
"Is this really a deed the gods love? Is it a fine thing to hear about, a fine thing to tell the men who come after us, that you sacked the city of your fathers and the gods of your own blood, and threw a foreign army at them? What justice is there in drying up the spring that is your mother? Your fatherland, taken by the spear because you were in a hurry: how is it ever going to be your ally? As for me, I will fatten this soil, a seer buried under enemy ground. Let us fight. I do not expect a shameful death."
That is what the seer said, calmly, holding his shield of solid bronze, and there was no device on its circle at all. He does not want to seem the best. He wants to be it, and he reaps the deep furrow that runs through his mind, where the good plans grow. Send wise and brave men to row against that one, that is my advice. A man who reveres the gods is a man to be afraid of.
Eteocles. Oh, the bad luck of it, the omen that yokes a just man to the most godless of men. In every business there is nothing worse than bad company. Its crop is not worth carrying home: the field of ruin grows death for its harvest. A god-fearing man boards a ship with a crew of hotheads bent on some crime, and he goes down with that race of men the gods spit on. Or he is a just man among fellow citizens who hate strangers and have forgotten the gods, and he is caught in the same net as them, though he does not deserve it, and struck down by the god's whip that falls on everyone alike. So it is with the seer, the son of Oecles: a level-headed, just, good, god-fearing man, a great prophet, mixed in with godless, loud-mouthed men against his own judgement, men marching out in a long procession that is a long way back. If Zeus is willing, he will be dragged down with them. My own guess is that he will not even attack the gate. Not because he has no heart or a weak will, but because he knows he has to die in this battle, if the oracles of Apollo Loxias are to bear fruit. And that god likes either to say nothing or to say the thing that counts. Even so, I will post a man against him: mighty Lasthenes, a gatekeeper who hates strangers. He has an old man's mind in a body in its prime, a quick-footed eye, and a hand that is not slow to drive its spear into whatever shows past the edge of a shield. But it is the gift of a god when mortals succeed.
Chorus. Hear our just prayers, gods, and bring them to pass. Let the city come through this safe. Turn the hard work of the spear back on the men who have invaded our land. Let Zeus strike them outside the walls with his thunderbolt and kill them.
Scout. Now the seventh, at the seventh gate: your own brother, and the fate he prays for and calls down on this city. He prays that he will climb our towers and be proclaimed king over the land, shout the war-cry of victory over a captured city, and then meet you hand to hand. And having killed you, he prays to die beside you. Or, if you live, to pay you back for dishonouring him, for driving him out, with the same coin: exile. That is what mighty Polyneices is shouting, and he calls on the gods of his birth, the gods of his fathers' land, to look down on his prayers and see every one of them granted. He carries a newly made shield, a perfect circle, with a double device cleverly fastened on it. A man in armour, worked in beaten gold, is led along by a woman walking ahead of him with modest steps. She says she is Justice, and the letters on the shield say it too: "I will bring this man home, and he will have his city and the run of his father's house again." Those are the inventions on their shields. Now decide for yourself, quickly, whom you think to send. You will never be able to fault this man for what he reported. What you must decide for yourself is how to steer the city.
(The Scout goes out.)
Eteocles. Oh, my family, driven mad by the gods and hated by them, house of Oedipus, all tears. Oh no. Now my father's curses come true. But it is not right for me to weep or to wail, in case an even harder grief is born out of this one. As for the man whose name fits him so well, Polyneices, I mean, we will soon know where that device on his shield ends up, whether golden letters babbling on a shield, with a wandering mind behind them, are going to bring him home. If Justice, Zeus's unmarried daughter, had been with him in what he did and what he thought, that might have happened. But not when he came out of the darkness of his mother's womb, not while he was nursed, not when he was a boy growing up, not when the beard first gathered on his chin, not once did Justice look at him and judge him worth her while. And I do not think she is standing beside him now, while he does his own fatherland this violence. She would be false to her own name, and justly so, if she kept company with a man who would dare anything. Trusting in that, I will go and stand against him. I myself. Who has a better right? Commander against commander, brother against brother, enemy against enemy, I will take my stand. Quick, bring my greaves, my armour against spear and stone.
Chorus. No, son of Oedipus, dearest of men, do not become the twin in temper of the man with the worst of names. It is enough that Cadmeans come to grips with Argives. That blood can be washed clean. But two brothers of one blood killing each other: that is a pollution that never grows old.
Eteocles. If a man has to suffer something bad, let it at least be without shame. That is the only profit there is among the dead. But when a thing is bad and shameful together, you will find no glory in it to speak of.
Chorus. What are you so hungry for, child? Do not let the spear-mad ruin that fills the heart carry you away. Throw out this evil desire while it is still a beginning.
Eteocles. Since the god is driving the business so hard, let the whole race of Laius, which Phoebus hates, go down the wind, its lot the wave of Cocytus.
Chorus. A raw-biting desire is goading you too far, to bring off a killing of men whose fruit is bitter: blood the gods forbid.
Eteocles. Yes, my own dear father's curse, hateful, wretched, sits on my dry, unweeping eyes and says: the gain comes first, and then the death.
Chorus. But do not let it drive you. No one will call you a coward for coming out of this with your life and your honour. Will the Fury in her black goat-skin not leave the house when the gods take a sacrifice from your hands?
Eteocles. The gods have already stopped caring about us, somehow. The only gift of ours they admire is our destruction. So why should I go on fawning on a deadly fate?
Chorus. Now, while it stands right beside you. Because the spirit may turn, in time, with a change of heart, and come on a gentler wind. Right now it is still boiling.
Eteocles. Yes, it boiled over: the curses of Oedipus. And the visions that came to me in my sleep were too true, dividing up my father's property.
Chorus. Listen to women, even though you do not like to.
Eteocles. Say something that can be done. And do not make it long.
Chorus. Do not go yourself, not on that road to the seventh gate.
Eteocles. I am whetted sharp. You will not blunt me with words.
Chorus. And yet a victory, even a cowardly one, is honoured by god.
Eteocles. A man in armour has no business hugging that saying to himself.
Chorus. But do you want to reap your own brother's blood?
Eteocles. When the gods give evils, you cannot run away from them.
(Eteocles goes out to the seventh gate.)
Chorus. I shudder at the goddess who wrecks a house, the goddess who is not like other gods, the prophet of evil who is never wrong, the Fury a father prayed for: that she will carry out the raging curses of Oedipus, whose mind was hurt. This strife that kills his sons is driving her on.
Chorus. A stranger is dealing out their inheritance, a Chalybian settler out of Scythia, a bitter divider of goods, savage-hearted iron. He has shaken the lots for the land they will live in, as much as the dead can hold, and no share in the wide plains.
Chorus. And when they have died, each by the other's hand, each cutting the other down, and the dust of the earth has drunk their black clotted blood, who could find a cleansing for them? Who could wash them? Oh, new troubles of this house mixed in with the old evils.
Chorus. I am speaking of the old crime, the crime whose punishment came fast and has stayed on into the third generation: when Laius, against Apollo, who told him three times at his Pythian oracle at the navel of the earth that he could save the city if he died without children,
Chorus. was overpowered by his own foolish longing and fathered his own death, Oedipus, who killed his father, who sowed his mother's holy field, the field where he himself was grown, and endured a root of blood. Madness brought that pair together, a bride and groom out of their minds.
Chorus. It is like a sea of evils driving its wave on. One wave falls, and the sea lifts another, three-crested, and it crashes and boils around the stern of the city. In between, the defence stretches thin, no wider than a wall. I am afraid the city will go down along with its kings.
Chorus. Because when a curse spoken long ago comes true, the settling of accounts is heavy, and once the deadly thing exists, it does not pass by. When the wealth of men who live by their gain grows too fat, it has to go overboard, from the stern.
Chorus. What man did the gods ever admire so much, the gods, and the people who share the city's hearth, and the crowded gathering of mortals, as they honoured Oedipus then, when he took out of our land the plague that snatched men away?
Chorus. But when he came to himself and understood, poor wretch, his terrible marriage, he could not bear the pain. With a maddened heart he did two evil things at once. With the hand that killed his father he struck out his own eyes, which he loved more than his children.
Chorus. And on his sons he loosed savage words, angry at the way they kept him, aiai, curses from a bitter tongue: that one day they would divide his goods with iron in their hands. And now I tremble that the Fury, on her quick feet, is bringing it about.
(The Scout comes back from the walls.)
Scout. Take heart, you daughters your mothers raised. This city has escaped the yoke of slavery. The boasts of those mighty men have fallen to the ground. The city is in fair weather. Under all the blows of the waves she has not taken on a drop of water. The wall holds, and we barred the gates with champions we could trust, one man against one man. At six of the gates all is well. But the seventh: the holy lord Apollo, the leader of sevens, took the seventh gate for himself, and on the children of Oedipus he finished the old folly of Laius.
Chorus. What new thing has happened to the city, on top of all the rest?
Scout. The city is saved. But the kings, born of the same seed—
Chorus. Who? What are you saying? Fear of your news is driving me out of my mind.
Scout. Be sensible now, and listen. The sons of Oedipus—
Chorus. Oh, I am wretched. I am a prophet of these evils.
Scout. Beyond any argument, beaten down into the dust—
Chorus. They are lying out there? It is heavy. But tell it anyway.
Scout. The men are dead, by their own hands, each killing the other.
Chorus. So with brothers' hands they slaughtered each other, both at once?
Scout. Yes, so alike was the fate that took them both, too much alike. It is that fate, all by itself, that is using up this ill-starred family. There is cause here for joy and for tears. Joy, because the city is doing well. Tears, because its two masters, the two generals, have divided up the whole of their inheritance with hammered Scythian iron. They will own exactly as much land as they take when they are buried, swept away in misery, just as their father's curses said. The city is saved. But the earth has drunk the blood of the two kings born of the same seed, each murdered by the other.
(The Scout goes out.)
Chorus. Great Zeus, and you gods who hold the city, you who truly guard these towers of Cadmus, which do I do? Shout for joy and raise the women's cry because the city is safe and unharmed, or weep for the war-lords, miserable, ill-starred, and childless, who lived up to their names, men of much strife, and died of their godless intent?
Chorus. Black curse on the race of Oedipus, curse that has come to its end, a cold evil is falling round my heart. I have made a song for the tomb, like a wild woman of Dionysus, hearing of corpses dripping blood, dead by a miserable fate. It is a bird of bad omen, this music played to the spear.
Chorus. It has done its work, it did not fall short, the prayer a father spoke. The plans of Laius, made in disbelief, held their force. And I am anxious for the city: what the gods have said does not go blunt. Oh, men of many groans, you have done a thing past belief. Sorrows to scream at have come, and not in words.
(The bodies of the two brothers are carried in.)
Chorus. It is plain to see. The Scout's report is here in front of us. Double troubles, twin men killed by each other, a double share of suffering, complete. What can I say? What else but this: pain on pain sits at this house's hearth. Come, friends, on the wind of grief, row with your hands about your heads, the stroke that sends the dead on their way, the stroke that always carries across Acheron the black-sailed ship of pilgrims with no sail spread, to the shore where Apollo never walks, the sunless shore that takes in everyone, the land no one can see. But here they come to their bitter task, Antigone and Ismene, to keen for their two brothers. There is no doubt in my mind that from their lovely, deep-folded breasts they will send up a grief worthy of the dead. But it is right that we, before their voices, shriek out the ugly hymn of the Fury and then sing the victory-song that Hades loves and we hate. Oh, unluckiest in your brothers of all women who fasten a belt about their dress, I cry, I groan, and there is no pretence in it: this shrill lament comes straight from my heart.
Chorus. Oh. Oh. Men of wrong minds, whom your own people could not persuade and no evil could wear down, you captured your father's house with the spear, in your misery. Misery, yes. They found miserable deaths, and outraged their house to find them.
Chorus. Oh. Oh. You who were set to knock down the walls of your own home, who had eyes for one bitter thing, sole rule, you are reconciled now, with iron. And all too truly the queenly Fury of your father Oedipus has brought it to pass.
Chorus. Struck through the left side, struck, yes, through the flanks that grew in one womb. Aiai, the god in it. Aiai, the curses, death answering death. Struck clean through, you say, in their bodies and in their house, by a rage that has no voice, by the doom their father's curse called down, a doom that did not divide them.
Chorus. And the groaning runs right through the city. The towers groan. The ground that loved these men groans. But the property stays, for the ones who come after, the property through which these ill-fated men, through which the quarrel came, and death, the end of it. Quick-tempered, they shared out the goods so that each got an equal share. The one who reconciled them is not blameless to those who loved them, and there is no grace in Ares.
Chorus. Struck down by iron, this is how they are, and struck down by iron, what waits for them? Someone might ask that. What waits for them is their share of their father's tomb. Our loud, shrieking, tearing grief sends them on their way from this house, a groan for our own selves, a pain of our own, sick at heart, with no joy in it, weeping real tears from the heart, the heart that wastes away as I weep for these two lords.
Chorus. And it can be said over these wretched men that they did much to the citizens, and much to the ranks of all the foreigners who died by the crowd in the fighting. Ill-starred, beyond every woman who is called a mother, is the woman who bore them. She took her own child for her husband and bore these two, and this is how they ended, killing each other with hands born of the same seed.
Chorus. Of the same seed, yes, and both destroyed, in a parting with no love in it, in strife gone mad, at the end of their quarrel. Their hatred has stopped. Their lives are mixed together in the earth that runs with their blood. Now they truly are of one blood. Bitter, the settler of their quarrels, the stranger from across the sea, the iron whetted sharp and rushed out of the fire. Bitter too was Ares, the wicked divider of goods, who made their father's curse come true.
Chorus. They have their share, poor wretches, their allotment of the griefs the gods gave. Under their bodies the wealth of earth will have no bottom. Oh, you have crowned your family with troubles, like a garland. At the last the Curses have raised their war-cry, the shrill tune, over a family routed and put to flight on every side. A trophy to Ruin stands at the gate where they struck each other down, and the god, having mastered them both, stopped there.
(Antigone stands by the body of Polyneices, Ismene by the body of Eteocles. The two sisters sing in answer to each other.)
Antigone. You struck, and were struck.
Ismene. You killed, and died.
Antigone. With the spear you killed—
Ismene. With the spear you died—
Antigone. Misery in the doing.
Ismene. Misery in the suffering.
Antigone. Let the wailing come.
Ismene. Let the tears come.
Antigone. You lie there dead—
Ismene. Who did the killing.
Antigone. Ah.
Ismene. Ah.
Antigone. My mind is mad with grief.
Ismene. The heart groans inside me.
Antigone. Oh. Oh. You, whom I mourn for everything.
Ismene. And you, wretched in everything.
Antigone. By one of your own you were destroyed.
Ismene. And one of your own you killed.
Antigone. Double to tell—
Ismene. Double to see—
Antigone. these griefs, brother beside brother.
Ismene. Brothers' sorrows beside brothers'.
Chorus. Oh, Fate, hard giver of hard gifts, and you, great shadow of Oedipus, black Fury, how strong you are.
Antigone. Ah.
Ismene. Ah.
Antigone. Sorrows hard to look at—
Ismene. he showed me, coming home from exile.
Antigone. And he never got home, once he had killed.
Ismene. He was saved, and lost his breath.
Antigone. He lost it, yes, and more.
Ismene. And robbed this one of his.
Antigone. Wretched family.
Ismene. Wretched suffering.
Antigone. Griefs of one blood, full of groans.
Ismene. Drenched with sorrows three times over.
Chorus. Oh, Fate, hard giver of hard gifts, and you, great shadow of Oedipus, black Fury, how strong you are.
Antigone. You know her now. You crossed through her—
Ismene. And you learned no later than he—
Antigone. when you came back to the city,
Ismene. yes, to row against this one with your spear.
Antigone. Deadly to tell.
Ismene. Deadly to see.
Antigone. Oh, the pain—
Ismene. Oh, the evils—
Antigone. for house and land.
Ismene. And above all for me.
Antigone. And further still, for me.
Ismene. Oh. Oh. The groaning evils, my king.
Antigone. Oh, most mourned of all men.
Ismene. Oh. Oh. Possessed by Ruin.
Antigone. Oh. Oh. Where in the earth shall we lay them?
Ismene. Oh. Where the honour is greatest.
Antigone. Oh. Oh. A grief to lie beside their father.
(A Herald comes from the city.)
Herald. I am to announce what the people's councillors of this city of Cadmus have resolved and decreed. Eteocles here, for his loyalty to this land, is to be buried in a kindly grave dug in its soil. He hated the enemy and chose to die in the city. He kept faith with the shrines of his fathers, and he died without a stain on him, in the place where it is a fine thing for the young to die. That is what I was ordered to say about him. But his brother, this corpse of Polyneices, is to be thrown outside the city unburied, for the dogs to tear. He would have been the destroyer of the Cadmeans' land, if one of the gods had not stood in the way of him with his brother's spear. Even dead, he will carry the guilt of the gods of his fathers, whom he dishonoured when he threw a foreign army at this city to take it. So this is his reward, so the council rules: to be buried without honour, under the birds of the air. No hands are to heap a mound over him, no one is to pay him the respect of shrill wailing, and he is to be denied the honour of being carried to the grave by the people who loved him. That is what the Cadmeans' council has decreed.
Antigone. And I have something to say to the rulers of the Cadmeans. If no one else is willing to help me bury this man, I will bury him myself, and take the risk of burying my own brother, and I am not ashamed of this defiance, this refusal to obey the city. There is something to be feared in the womb we shared, born as we were from a wretched mother and an unlucky father. So, my soul, share his evils willingly, though he had no will in it. Be alive with the dead, one heart with my brother. No hollow-bellied wolf is going to tear the flesh off this man. Let no one imagine it. I will find him a grave and a burial, even though I am a woman, carrying the earth in the fold of my linen dress, and I will cover him with my own hands. Let no one decree otherwise. Take heart. I will find a way to get it done.
Herald. I order you not to force the city's hand like this.
Antigone. I order you not to waste your proclamations on me.
Herald. A people that has just escaped disaster can be harsh.
Antigone. Be harsh, then. This man will not go unburied.
Herald. What? A man the city hates, and you will honour him with a grave?
Antigone. The gods finished settling their account with him long ago.
Herald. No. Not until he put this land in danger.
Antigone. He was treated badly, and he gave back bad for bad.
Herald. But he did it to all of us, not to one man.
Antigone. Strife is the last of the gods to end an argument. I am going to bury him. Stop making speeches.
Herald. Follow your own counsel, then. But I forbid it.
(The Herald goes out.)
Chorus. Oh. Oh. Great boasters, wreckers of families, you Fates, you Furies, who have destroyed the race of Oedipus like this, from the root, what is to become of me? What do I do? What plan do I make? How can I bring myself neither to weep for you nor to walk beside you to your tomb? But I am afraid. I turn away in terror of the citizens. You, at least, will have many mourners. But he, poor wretch, goes off unwept, with one sister's song for his whole dirge. Who could go along with that?
First Half-Chorus. Let the city do what it likes, or not, to those who weep for Polyneices. We will go and bury him with her, we will walk beside his body. This grief belongs to the whole race, and what the city praises as just is one thing one day and another the next.
Second Half-Chorus. And we will go with this one, as the city and justice together approve. Because after the blessed gods and the strength of Zeus, it was this man, more than any other, who kept the city of the Cadmeans from capsizing, from going under in a wave of foreign men.
(All go out, the two processions taking the two bodies in opposite directions.)
(The shore of Argos, near a mound where the images of the city's gods stand together. Fifty young women come in from the sea, dark-skinned and dressed in Egyptian linen, each carrying a branch wound with white wool. Their father Danaus is with them.)
Chorus. Zeus, god of the suppliant, look kindly on our company, that put to sea from the fine-sanded mouths of the Nile. We have left the land of Zeus, whose pastures run up against Syria, and we are fugitives, not because any city voted to banish us for blood on our hands, but by our own choice. We are running from men. We hate the marriage the sons of Aegyptus want, and we call it what it is: impious. Danaus, our father, head of our councils, head of our revolt, moved the pieces on the board and picked, out of all the griefs on offer, the one with most honour in it: to run, headlong, over the salt waves, and put in at the land of Argos. For that is where our race began, and we are proud of it: from the heifer the gadfly tormented, from the touch and the breath of Zeus. What country could we come to kinder than this one, with these in our hands, the suppliant's only weapons, branches wreathed in wool? City, land, clear water, gods on high, and you gods below, heavy in your punishments, who keep the graves, and Zeus the Saviour, called on third, who guards the houses of righteous men: receive this company of women as your suppliants, and let the land breathe respect on us. But that swarm of men, that crowd of outrage born of Aegyptus, before they set one foot on this marshy shore, drive them out to sea, them and their fast-oared ship, and there let them meet the whirlwind, the storm that beats down, the thunder and lightning, the rain-heavy winds on a wild sea. Let them die out there, before they ever climb into beds that Right forbids them, before they take their uncle's daughters, us, against our will, and call us theirs.
Chorus. Now I call on the calf of Zeus, our champion from across the sea, the son of the cow our ancestress, the cow who grazed among the flowers, the child of the breath of Zeus. Zeus touched her. Her time came to term and gave the child his name, and the name was right: she bore Epaphus, the Touched One.
Chorus. I call on him. And now, here in the grassy places where our ancient mother pastured, I will remember what she suffered long ago, and I will show the people of this land sure proofs of it. Some of it they will not expect, but it will be seen to be true. Anyone who hears the whole story through will know it for the truth.
Chorus. And if there is someone near, a native of this place, who reads the cries of birds, when he hears our pitiful lament he will think he is hearing the voice of Metis, Tereus' wife, the pitiable one, the nightingale the hawk drives before it,
Chorus. who, shut out from her green leaves, grieves and cries for the haunts she loved, and puts together the song of her child's death: how he died by her own hand, killed by his own mother, when he met her unnatural rage.
Chorus. So I too, who love to lament, in the Ionian way, tear at my soft cheek that the Nile's sun has ripened, and at a heart that has never learned to weep. I gather the flowers of grief, afraid, wondering whether we have friends here at all, whether there is one person who will take up the cause of this flight of ours from the land of mists.
Chorus. But gods of our race, hear us. Look well at what is just. Do not let the young have all they want against what is due. Hate outrage, be quick to hate it, and you will be just toward marriage. Even for men beaten in war and running from it there is an altar, a defence against harm, the awe that the gods command.
Chorus. May Zeus make it come out well, truly well. The desire of Zeus is not easy to hunt down. It blazes everywhere, even in the dark, with black fortune, for the peoples of the earth.
Chorus. It lands safe, and not on its back, whatever thing the head of Zeus has nodded into being. The paths of his mind run thick and shadowed, and no eye can follow them.
Chorus. He hurls men down from the high towers of their hopes into utter destruction. He arms no violence against them. Everything the gods do is done without effort. Seated, he thinks his thought, and from where he sits, somehow, it is done, all of it, there on his holy throne.
Chorus. So let him look at human outrage and see how it grows young again, an old stock sprouting new shoots because of this marriage they want with us, with minds that no advice can turn, a mad purpose for its goad that nothing can escape, and ruin waiting, which it will know too late, when it is deceived.
Chorus. Such sufferings I cry out in my grief, shrill and deep, and the tears fall with them, ieh, ieh, the wailing that belongs at funerals. Alive, I sing my own dirge.
Chorus. I call on the hill country of Apia to be kind to me. Land, you understand my foreign speech well enough. Again and again I fall on my Sidonian veil and tear it, and the linen rips to rags.
Chorus. When things go well, and death keeps its distance, the gods get their sacrifices, freely and in full. Oh, oh, oh, troubles too tangled to read. Where will this wave carry me?
Chorus. I call on the hill country of Apia to be kind to me. Land, you understand my foreign speech well enough. Again and again I fall on my Sidonian veil and tear it, and the linen rips to rags.
Chorus. The oar and the house of timber stitched with linen rope, that kept the sea out, carried me here on the winds and no storm touched me. I have no complaint. But in time to come let the Father who sees everything make the ending kind:
Chorus. that the great seed of our honoured mother escape the beds of men, ah, ah, unmarried, untamed.
Chorus. And let the pure daughter of Zeus, who keeps her holy face steady and safe, look on me, willing, as I am willing. Angry at this hunt, with all her strength, a virgin, let her come to a virgin's rescue, and set me free:
Chorus. that the great seed of our honoured mother escape the beds of men, ah, ah, unmarried, untamed.
Chorus. And if she will not, then we, a race burned black by the sun, will go with our branches to the Zeus of the earth below, the Zeus who hosts more guests than any, the Zeus of the dead, and we will get there by the noose, if the gods of Olympus will not hear us.
Chorus. Ah, Zeus. It is Io's poison, a wrath from the gods that hunts us down. I know your wife's spite. It conquered heaven. After a harsh wind comes the storm.
Chorus. And then will Zeus not be caught by charges he cannot answer, for dishonouring the child of the cow, the child he made himself, long ago, and turning his face away from our prayers now? Let him hear, from high up, when we call him.
Chorus. Ah, Zeus. It is Io's poison, a wrath from the gods that hunts us down. I know your wife's spite. It conquered heaven. After a harsh wind comes the storm.
Danaus. Children, you have to keep your heads. You came here with a father who keeps his: an old man you can trust, and the captain of your ship. Now that we are on land I have thought ahead, and I want you to write what I say on the tablets of your minds and keep it there.
I see dust, an army's messenger that makes no sound. The axles are turning in their sockets, and they are not quiet. I can make out a crowd of men with shields and spears, and horses, and curved chariots. Most likely the rulers of this land have heard from their scouts and are coming to look at us. Whether the man who set this expedition moving means no harm, or has been sharpened to a cruel rage, it is better in every way, girls, to sit down at this mound, where the gods of the land stand gathered together. An altar is stronger than a fortress wall. It is a shield that cannot be broken.
So go, as fast as you can. Hold your branches wreathed in white wool, the emblems of Zeus who respects the suppliant, solemnly, in your left hands. Answer the strangers in the language of respect, of grief, of sheer need, as newcomers should, and tell them plainly that this flight of yours has no blood on it. Above all, let there be nothing bold in your voices. Let nothing shameless come from your faces: modest brows, quiet eyes. Do not run ahead of them in talk and do not drag behind. The people here are very easily offended. And remember to give way. You are a stranger in need, a fugitive. Bold tongues do not suit the weak.
Chorus. Father, you speak good sense, and you are speaking to daughters who have some. I will take care to remember these wise orders of yours. And may Zeus, the father of our race, look on us.
Danaus. May he look, indeed, and with a kind eye.
Chorus. I would like to be sitting close beside you now.
Danaus. Then do not waste time. Let the plan become action.
Chorus. Zeus, pity our labours. Do not let us be destroyed.
Danaus. If he wills it, all this will end well.
Danaus. And now call on this bird of Zeus here too.
Chorus. We call on the saving rays of the sun.
Danaus. And on pure Apollo, a god who was once himself an exile from heaven.
Chorus. He knows what that fate is. He may feel for mortals.
Danaus. May he feel for us indeed, and stand beside us, ready to help.
Chorus. Which of these gods should I call on next?
Danaus. I see a trident here, the sign of its god.
Chorus. He sent us here safely. Let him receive us safely on his land.
Danaus. And here is Hermes, another god, as the Greeks set him up.
Chorus. Then let him bring good news to free women.
Danaus. Honour the altar that all these lords share. Sit down on holy ground like a flock of doves in terror of hawks, birds of the same feather, kin and enemies at once, who would defile their own blood. If a bird eats a bird, how can it be pure? And if a man marries a woman who does not want him, taking her from a father who does not want to give her, how can he be pure? Not even in Hades, when he is dead, will a man who has done that escape the charge of outrage. There too, so people say, another Zeus sits in judgement on wrongdoing among the dead, and passes the last sentence. Watch carefully, and answer in the way I told you, so that this business comes out a victory for you.
(The King of Argos comes in with armed men.)
King. Where has this crowd come from, that we are speaking to? There is nothing Greek in the way you dress: you lounge in barbarian robes and thick, close-woven headbands. This is not the clothing of the women of Argos, or of anywhere in Greece. And how you dared to come to this country without fear, with no heralds to announce you, no one here to sponsor you, and no guides, that is a wonder to me. And yet I see branches laid beside you in front of the gathered gods, the kind that suppliants carry by custom. On that one point alone Greece can make a confident guess. About everything else it would be fair to go on guessing, if there were not a voice here present to tell me.
Chorus. About our clothes you have spoken nothing but the truth. But I, how am I to address you? As a private citizen, as a spokesman carrying the sacred staff, or as the ruler of the city?
King. On that point, answer me and speak without fear. I am Pelasgus, son of Palaechthon, whom the earth itself brought forth, and I rule this land. The race of the Pelasgians, who farm this ground, takes its name from me, its king, as is right. All the country that the pure Strymon runs through, on the side towards the setting sun, is mine. I set my borders at the land of the Perrhaebians, at the parts beyond Pindus near the Paeonians, and at the mountains of Dodona. The edge of the wet sea cuts my land short. Everything on this side of those lines, I rule.
And the ground itself, this plain of Apia, has carried that name from long ago in honour of a healer. Apis, healer and prophet, son of Apollo, came from Naupactus on the far shore and cleaned this land of monsters that were killing men, creatures that the earth itself, stained with the pollution of old bloodshed, had sent up in her anger: a colony of swarming snakes, a hateful thing to live beside. Apis cut those plagues out and set us free of them, and did it without a fault, and the land of Argos paid him back by remembering him in its prayers.
Now you have my account of myself. Declare your own ancestry and go on from there. But our city does not care for long speeches.
Chorus. Our story is short and clear. We claim to be Argives by birth, the seed of a cow blessed in her child. And every word of it is true. I will fix it to the story, point by point.
King. Strangers, what you are telling me is past believing: that your race is from Argos. You look far more like the women of Libya, and nothing at all like the women born here. The Nile might raise a plant like you. And there is the Cyprian stamp, struck on the female form by male craftsmen, and it looks like yours. I hear too that there are nomad women who ride camels as if they were horses, on padded saddles, in a country next door to the Ethiopians. And if you were armed with bows I would certainly have taken you for Amazons, the women who live without men and eat raw meat. But teach me, and I will understand better how your birth and your seed come from Argos.
Chorus. Is there a story that once, here in the land of Argos, Io kept the keys of Hera's house?
King. There certainly is. The tradition is very strong.
Chorus. And is there some story too that Zeus lay with a mortal woman?
King. There is. And that embrace was no secret from Hera.
Chorus. How did this quarrel between the royal pair end?
King. The goddess of Argos turned the woman into a cow.
Chorus. And while she was a cow with horns, did Zeus not come near her?
King. So they say, in the shape of a bull that mounts cows.
Chorus. And what did the strong wife of Zeus do about that?
King. She set the all-seeing one to watch the cow.
Chorus. What all-seeing herdsman with a single cow do you mean?
King. Argus, the son of Earth. Hermes killed him.
Chorus. What else did she devise against the unlucky cow?
King. A sting that drives cattle and keeps them moving.
Chorus. The people by the Nile call it the gadfly.
King. So it drove her out of the land on a long, long run.
Chorus. Everything you have said fits my story exactly.
King. And so she came to Canobus, and to Memphis.
Chorus. And Zeus laid his hand on her, and fathered a son by the touch.
King. Then who claims to be the calf of Zeus, born of the cow?
Chorus. Epaphus, and the name is true: he is called after the touch that set her free.
Chorus. Libya, who reaps the largest portion of the earth.
King. And what other offspring of hers can you name?
Chorus. Belus, who had two sons and was the father of my father here.
King. Now tell me this very wise name of his.
Chorus. Danaus. And he has a brother with fifty sons.
King. Open up his name too. Do not hold it back.
Chorus. Aegyptus. Now you know our ancient line. Act on it, and raise up this company, which is Argive.
King. I think you do have a share in this land from long ago. But how did you bring yourselves to leave your father's house? What stroke of fortune came down on you?
Chorus. Lord of the Pelasgians, the troubles of human beings come in many colours. You will not find two feathers of pain the same. Who would have guessed that a family related to you from old times would run here, on a flight no one expected, and put in at Argos in terror, because it loathed a marriage bed?
King. Why do you say you have come as suppliants to these gods gathered here, with those fresh-cut branches wreathed in white?
Chorus. So that I do not become a slave to the sons of Aegyptus.
King. Because you hate them? Or are you saying it would be against the law?
Chorus. Who would buy their masters from among their own kin?
King. That is how families grow their power.
Chorus. Yes, and when things go badly it is easy to get rid of a wife.
King. Then how am I to do my duty by the gods where you are concerned?
Chorus. By not handing us back to the sons of Aegyptus when they ask for us.
King. That is a heavy thing you ask: to take on a new war.
Chorus. But Justice stands over the men who fight beside her.
King. Yes, if she had a share in the business from the beginning.
Chorus. Then respect the city's stern, the altar, wreathed as you see it with our branches.
King. I shudder, looking at these seats in the shadow of the branches.
Chorus. But the anger of Zeus, god of suppliants, is heavy.
Chorus. Son of Palaechthon, lord of the Pelasgians, hear me with a kind heart. Look at me, your suppliant, a fugitive, running in circles, like a heifer that wolves are chasing over sheer rocks, where she trusts the herdsman's strength and lows to tell him her trouble.
King. I see this company of the gathered gods nodding in the shade of fresh-cut branches. Let this business of our city's guests bring no harm. Let no quarrel come on the city out of nowhere, unforeseen and unprepared for. The city has no need of that.
Chorus. Let Right, the suppliant's goddess, daughter of Zeus who portions out, look on this flight and see that it brings no harm. And you, old in wisdom, learn from someone younger: if you respect the one who turns to you for help, you will not go short. The gods accept offerings from a man who is pure.
King. It is not at the hearth of my own house that you sit. If the city is polluted as a whole, let the people as a whole work out the cure. I will make no promise before I have shared all this with every citizen.
Chorus. You are the city. You are the people. You are a ruler no one judges. You rule the altar, the hearth of the land, with the single vote of your nod. On a throne with a single sceptre you decide every matter. Guard against pollution.
King. Pollution on my enemies. But I cannot help you without harm. And it is not wise, either, to dishonour these prayers. I have no way out. Fear holds my mind: to act, or not to act, and take what fortune gives.
Chorus. Look up at the one who watches from above, the guardian of mortals worn out with trouble, who sit at their neighbours' doors and do not get the justice the law owes them. The anger of Zeus, god of suppliants, stays, and the sufferer's cries will not soften it.
King. If the sons of Aegyptus have power over you by the law of your own city, claiming to be your nearest kin, who would want to stand against them? You must plead by the laws of the home you fled that they have no authority over you at all.
Chorus. Never, never let me fall into the hands of men and their power. I steer by the stars and I mark out my escape from a marriage that sickens my heart: flight. Take Justice for your ally and give the judgement that reveres the gods.
King. The judgement is not easy. Do not make me the judge. I have said it already: even though I rule, I will not do this without the people, or one day, if something goes wrong, they will say, "You honoured foreigners, and you destroyed your city."
Chorus. Zeus, kin to both sides, looks down on this, tipping his scale to one side or the other, giving, as is right, wrong to the wicked and holy things to those who keep the law. When the weights are balanced so evenly, why are you sorry to do what is just?
King. We need deep thought here, thought that saves, an eye that sees clearly and is not too drunk with wine, to go down like a diver into the depths, so that this comes out without harm, first for the city and then for ourselves, and ends well; so that no fight over hostages fastens on us, and so that we do not hand you over, settled as you are in the seats of the gods, and bring in to live with us the god who destroys everything, the heavy avenger, who does not set a man free even in Hades, even dead. Do you really think there is no need of thought that saves?
Chorus. Think, and be, with all justice, our reverent protector. Do not betray the fugitive, driven from far away by a godless expulsion.
Chorus. Do not see me dragged from these seats of many gods as a prize, you who hold all the power in the land. Recognise the outrage of these men and guard against the anger.
Chorus. Do not bring yourself to see your suppliant hauled from the images of the gods by force, against justice, like a horse by the headband, with hands seizing my robes of many-coloured weave.
Chorus. Know this: whichever way you settle it, your children and your house are left to pay the debt in full, measure for measure. Think about this. The power of Zeus is just.
King. I have thought about it. And this is where I run aground. Against one side or the other I am forced to take up a great war. There is no way round it. The hull is bolted tight, as if the shipwrights' windlasses had drawn it in. There is no ending anywhere without pain.
When property is plundered from a house, more can come, by the grace of Zeus who guards a man's goods, a fresh cargo bigger than the loss. And when a tongue has shot its arrows wide of the mark, one speech can heal the wound another made, a soothing word for the bitter pain that stirs the heart. But to keep kindred blood from being shed, there must be sacrifice, and many victims must fall to many gods, to heal the harm before it comes. Truly, I have come deep into this quarrel, and I am the loser by it. I would rather be ignorant of trouble than an expert in it. But let it go well, against my expectation.
Chorus. Hear now the last of my many respectful words.
King. I hear you. Speak. It will not escape me.
Chorus. I have breast-bands and belts to gather up my robes.
King. Such things go well with women, no doubt.
Chorus. Out of these, then, understand me, there is a fine device.
King. Tell me what words you are about to utter.
Chorus. If you will not give this company some pledge it can trust—
King. What does your device of belts accomplish for you?
Chorus. To decorate these images with new tablets.
King. That is a riddle. Say it plainly.
Chorus. To hang ourselves from these gods, as fast as we can.
King. I have heard a word that is a whip across my heart.
Chorus. You understand. I have given you eyes to see it clearly.
King. Yes, and on every side there are things hard to wrestle down. A mass of troubles is coming at me like a river. I have put out onto a bottomless sea of ruin with no easy crossing, and there is no harbour from trouble anywhere. If I do not pay you this debt, the pollution you speak of is beyond any arrow's range. And if I stand in front of my walls against your own blood, the sons of Aegyptus, and fight it out to the end, how is that not a bitter price to pay: men's blood staining the ground for the sake of women? And yet I have to respect the anger of Zeus who guards the suppliant. Among mortals there is no fear higher than that.
You, old father of these girls, take these branches in your arms at once and lay them on the other altars of our country's gods, so that every citizen sees the sign that you have come as suppliants, and no word of blame is thrown at me. The people love to find fault with those in charge. And it may be that someone, seeing this and pitying it, will hate the outrage of that male expedition, and the people will be better disposed to you. Everyone feels goodwill towards the weaker side.
Danaus. This is worth a great deal to us: to have found a protector who respects us. But send escorts and guides with me, natives of the country, so that we can find the altars in front of the temples of the gods who keep your city, and their seats, and go through the town in safety. Our shape is not like yours. The Nile does not raise the same stock as the Inachus. Take care that boldness does not give birth to fear. Men have killed a friend before now, not knowing him.
King. Go with him, men. The stranger speaks well. Lead him to the city's altars, the seats of the gods. And do not talk at length with anyone you meet on the way, while you are bringing this seafarer to sit at the hearths of the gods.
(Danaus goes out with the King's men.)
Chorus. You have told him what to do, and let him go with his orders. But what about me? What am I to do? Where do you set my safety?
King. Leave your branches here, the sign of your trouble.
Chorus. There. I leave them, at your word and at your hand's signal.
King. Now move down into this open grove around the sanctuary.
Chorus. But how can a grove that is not holy ground protect me?
King. We will not hand you over to be snatched away by birds of prey.
Chorus. But what if it is to men more hateful than cruel snakes?
King. Speak well of what may come, when you are spoken to so well.
Chorus. It is no wonder if fear in the mind makes me hard to bear with.
King. Fear that goes too far is always beyond control.
Chorus. Then cheer my heart, with deeds as well as words.
King. Your father will not leave you alone for long. I am going now to call together the people of this land and make the community friendly to you, and I will teach your father what he ought to say. So stay here, and pray to the gods of this country for what your heart longs for, while I go to arrange it. May persuasion go with me, and the luck that gets things done.
(The King goes out with his attendants.)
Chorus. Lord of lords, most blessed of the blessed, power most perfect of all perfect powers, Zeus, the fortunate one: hear us. Keep the outrage of these men away from your own blood. Hate it well, and keep it far off. Throw their ruin, their black-benched ships, into the purple sea.
Chorus. Look at the women's side of this. Look at our race, old in the story, and at the woman you loved, our ancestor, and renew the kind old tale. Remember it all, you who laid your hand on Io. We say we are the children of Zeus, settlers who went out from this land.
Chorus. I have come back to the old tracks, to the meadow where my mother was watched as she grazed among the flowers, the pasture rich for cattle, where Io, stung to madness by the gadfly, ran with her wits gone, passing through tribe after tribe of men, and, as fate had cut it, split the surging strait in two and marked out the land on the other shore.
Chorus. She races on through the land of Asia, straight through Phrygia, where the sheep graze, past the Mysian city of Teuthras, through the hollows of Lydia, over the mountains of the Cilicians and the tribes of the Pamphylians, over rivers that never run dry, over deep, rich earth, and the land of Aphrodite, heavy with wheat.
Chorus. Driven on by the sting of the winged herdsman, she comes at last to the holy grove of Zeus that feeds every living thing, to the meadow fed by snow that Typhon's fury attacks, to the water of the Nile that no sickness can touch, maddened by torments no one should have to suffer and by the pain of the goad that pierced her, Hera's frenzied dancer.
Chorus. And the mortals who lived in that land then shook with green fear in their hearts at a sight they had never seen, a creature hard to look at, half beast and half human, one part cow and one part woman. They stared at the monster. And then, who was it who soothed her, the far wanderer, the wretched one, Io, driven by the gadfly?
Chorus. Zeus, who rules through endless time. Zeus. By the strength of his hand, which does no harm, and by his divine breath, she was stilled, and she wept out the grief and the shame in tears. She took Zeus into herself, and the story is true: she bore a child without a fault,
Chorus. blessed through the long ages. And so the whole earth shouts, This truly is the child of Zeus, who gives life to everything. For who else could have stopped the sickness Hera plotted against her? Say it was the work of Zeus, say this race comes from Epaphus, and you have the truth.
Chorus. Which of the gods has done deeds that give me a better right to call on him? The father himself, the planter, who made us with his own hand, the lord, the great, old-minded builder of our race, who devises everything, Zeus, the fair wind behind us.
Chorus. He does not sit under anyone's command, a lesser power ruling at a greater one's pleasure. No one is enthroned above him whose strength he bows to. His deed is as quick as his word. Whatever his counselling mind carries, he hurries to do it.
(Danaus comes back from the city.)
Danaus. Take heart, children. All is well with the people of this land. The people have voted, and the decrees they passed carry full authority.
Chorus. Welcome, old man, welcome, dearest of all messengers to me. Tell us how it was settled, how the people's ruling hand fell, which way the weight of the vote came down.
Danaus. The Argives decided, and not by a split vote. They decided in a way that made my old heart young again. The air bristled with right hands, the whole people at once, as they ratified this proposal into law: that we are to live in this land as settlers, free, not to be seized, and safe from any man's violence; that nobody, native or foreigner, may carry us off; and that if anyone uses force, any landholder who fails to come to our help loses his rights and is driven out of the country by the people.
That is the speech the King of the Pelasgians made on our behalf, and it persuaded them. He warned them of the great anger of Zeus, the protector of suppliants, and said the city must never, in time to come, fatten that anger. He told them that a double pollution, from strangers and from citizens both at once, appearing before the city, would be a feeding-ground for grief past all cure. When the Argive people heard that, they decided by a show of hands, without waiting for the crier's call, that so it should be. The Pelasgian people listened to the windings of his speech and were easily persuaded. But it was Zeus who brought it to its end.
Chorus. Come now, let us speak good prayers over the Argives, good returned for good. And may Zeus, god of strangers, look on this thanks from a stranger's mouth and see it true, and see it reach its goal with nothing lacking.
Chorus. Now, gods born of Zeus, hear me as I pour out prayers for our kin. Never may the Pelasgian land, this city, be gutted by fire at the hands of Ares, who never has enough of the war-cry, the lecher of battle, who reaps his harvest of men in fields other men have ploughed. Because they pitied us and cast a kind vote, and respect the suppliants of Zeus, this poor flock of ours.
Chorus. They did not cast their votes with the males and trample down the women's quarrel. They looked to Zeus, the avenger, the watcher no one can fight, whom no house would want to have settling on its roof and fouling it. He sits heavy. They honour their own blood, suppliants of holy Zeus. And so, with clean altars, they will please the gods.
Chorus. So let a prayer fly up, eager to honour them, out of mouths in the shadow of these branches. Never may plague empty this city of its men. Never may civil strife bloody the ground of the land with the bodies of its own people. Let the flower of its youth stand unplucked. Let Ares, who shares Aphrodite's bed and kills men, never cut off its bloom.
Chorus. And let the altars where the old men gather be crowded with old men and blaze with their offerings. So may the city be well governed, its people honouring great Zeus, and above all Zeus, god of strangers, who by his grey old law sets destiny straight. We pray that guardians of the land will always be born to take the others' place, and that Artemis, who is Hecate too, will watch over the women when they give birth.
Chorus. Let no man-killing slaughter come on this city to tear it apart, arming Ares, who has no dance and no lyre and is the father of tears, and arming the shout of civil war. Let the joyless swarm of diseases settle far from the heads of its people. And may Apollo the Wolf God be kind to all the young.
Chorus. May Zeus bring the earth to its full fruit, with the produce of every season. May the grazing herds in the fields breed and multiply. May they have everything from the gods. At the altars, let singers set a music of good omen, and out of clean mouths let the song that loves the lyre go up.
Chorus. May the people, who hold the city's power, guard its rights without fear, a government that thinks ahead and counsels for the common good. And to strangers, before they arm Ares, may they give fair terms of settlement, justice without grief.
Chorus. And the gods who hold this land forever, may they always honour them, in the way of their fathers, with the laurel branch carried high and the ox slaughtered. For respect for parents stands written third among the laws of Justice, who is honoured above all.
Danaus. I approve these prayers, dear children; they are sensible. But do not be frightened when you hear from your father news you did not expect, and news that is new. From this look-out, here on the shrine that shelters suppliants, I can see the ship. It is well marked, and there is no mistaking it: the trimming of the sail, the leather screens along the sides, the prow whose painted eyes look out on the road ahead, obeying the steering-oar at the stern all too well, for those who are not its friends. The men on board are plain to see, their black limbs against their white linen clothes. And the other ships, and the whole supporting fleet, are in clear view. The lead ship herself has furled her sail close under the land and is rowing in with every oar beating.
But you must look at this calmly and with your wits about you, and not forget these gods. I will go, and come back with helpers and advocates for our case. Perhaps some herald or embassy will come, wanting to take you away, to lay hands on you as if you were their property. None of that will happen. Do not be afraid of them. Still, in case we are slow to answer your cry, it is better never for a moment to forget the help you have right here. Take courage. In time, on the appointed day, the man who dishonours the gods pays the penalty.
Chorus. Father, I am afraid. The ships come on such quick wings. There is no time left in between.
Chorus. Fear has me all round. Terror. So it is true. Was all my long running any use to me at all? Father, I am dying of fright.
Danaus. The Argives' vote is final, children. Take heart. They will fight for you. I know it for certain.
Chorus. The lustful sons of Aegyptus are a race that should be wiped out, and they never have enough of a fight. I am telling a man who knows.
Chorus. In ships bolted tight with timber, dark-eyed at the prow, they have sailed here, and their anger has found its mark, with a great dark army at their backs.
Danaus. And they will find plenty of men here whose arms are filed hard by the noon heat.
Chorus. Do not leave me alone. I beg you, father. A woman alone is nothing, and there is no Ares in her.
Chorus. They are murderous-minded and full of tricks, unclean in their hearts, like ravens, caring nothing for altars.
Danaus. That would work out well for us, children, if the gods hated them as much as you do.
Chorus. No, father. No fear of these tridents or the holy things of the gods will ever keep their hands off us.
Chorus. They are too proud, mad with an unholy rage, shameless as dogs, and they hear nothing the gods say.
Danaus. But there is a saying that wolves are stronger than dogs. And the fruit of the papyrus does not beat the ear of wheat.
Chorus. They have the tempers of lewd and godless beasts. We must guard against them, and fast.
Danaus. A fleet is not quick to get itself ashore, nor quick to moor, when the cables that keep it safe have to be carried up onto the land. Even at anchor, the shepherds of ships do not feel safe straight away, especially when they have come to a coast with no harbour and the sun is going down into night. Night tends to breed worry in a careful pilot. And an army cannot be landed properly before the ship trusts her mooring. You keep your mind on this: for all your fear, do not neglect the gods. I will get help and come back. The city will not fault its messenger for being old, when his mind and his tongue are young.
(Danaus goes out toward the city.)
Chorus. Oh, land of hills, land we rightly worship, what will become of us? Where in this land of Apis can we run, if there is any dark hiding-hole anywhere? Let me turn into black smoke and neighbour the clouds of Zeus. Let me lift, without wings, and vanish altogether, unseen, like dust, and be gone.
Chorus. There is no escaping the evil now. My heart is black and it shudders. My father's look-out has caught me. I am going out of my mind with fear. I would rather find my death in a noose, in the knotted rope, before a man I loathe comes near this skin of mine. Let Hades be my master. I will die first.
Chorus. Where could I find a seat high in the air, where the wet clouds turn into snow, or some smooth cliff no goat can climb, out of everyone's sight, brooding alone, overhanging, a haunt of vultures, to witness my long fall, before a marriage that would tear my heart is forced on me?
Chorus. After that, I would not refuse to be carrion for dogs and a feast for the birds of this country. Death sets you free from evils that love a wail. Let it come, let death come and find me before the marriage bed. What other road of escape can I cut, one that frees me from marriage?
Chorus. Shriek it to the sky, songs, sad songs of prayer to the gods. Father, see that somehow they reach their end and set me free, and set me at peace. Look on this violence with no kindness in your eyes, your just eyes. Respect your suppliants, Zeus, who holds the earth and has all the power.
Chorus. For the race of Aegyptus, the male race, unbearable in their outrage, are running me down, a fugitive, with their loud, shouting lust, and they want to take me by force. But yours, and only yours, is the beam of the balance. Without you, what is ever brought to its end for mortals?
(An Egyptian ship has landed. The Herald of the sons of Aegyptus comes up from the shore with armed men behind him.)
Chorus. Oh, oh, oh. Ah, ah, ah. Here he is, the snatcher, off the ship and onto the land. Before that, snatcher, may you drop dead. I cry out, I cry out the pain. I see the start of it, the violence I am going to suffer. Eh, eh. Run for shelter, run. He is savage in his heart and he swaggers, unbearable on ship and on land. Lord of the land, stand in front of us.
Herald. Move, move, to the boat, as fast as your feet can carry you. Or else, or else, hair torn out, hair torn out, and the goad, and bloody, a bloody cutting off of heads. Move, move, damn you, damn you, to the boat.
Chorus. I wish you had drowned on the wide salt road with all your masters' outrage and your ship bolted with nails. You men of blood, with your boat, your boat.
Herald. I order you to stop your shrieking. Give up the madness in your heart. Iou, iou. Leave your seats. Go to the ship. You have no honour and no city, and I do not respect you.
Chorus. Never again let me see the water that fattens the cattle, where the blood that gives life to men grows and thrives. I belong to this land, I am of old, deep stock here, old man, of the deep-rooted stock.
Herald. You will go on board, on board, fast, whether you want to or not, by force, by force, and plenty of it. Go, before you suffer the worst of it and die under our hands.
Chorus. Aiai, aiai. May you die past all help, driven off course across the sea's salt grove, along the sandy mound of Sarpedon's tomb, wandering under the east winds.
Herald. Shriek and scream and call on the gods. You will not jump clear of the Egyptian boat. Shriek and shout. Pour out a song more bitter than grief.
Chorus. Oioi, oioi, the outrage. You bark ahead of the land and swagger over the sea, you crocodile. May the great Nile, who watches you, turn you back from your outrage, you and your unseen violence, and blot you out.
Herald. I order you to the boat that turns both ways. As fast as you can. Let no one hang back. Dragging has no respect for a head of hair.
Chorus. Oioi, father. The help of the holy image is ruining me. He is dragging me to the sea, step by step, like a spider. A dream, a black dream. Otototoi. Mother Earth, Mother Earth, turn away his terrible cry. Oh father, son of Earth, Zeus.
Herald. I am not afraid of the gods of this place. They did not rear me. They never fed me into old age.
Chorus. He is close, he is raging, the two-footed snake. Like a viper he has me, he has bitten my foot and holds on. Otototoi. Mother Earth, Mother Earth, turn away his terrible cry. Oh father, son of Earth, Zeus.
Herald. If none of you agrees to this and goes to the ship, the tearing will have no pity on the cloth of your dresses.
Chorus. We are lost. King, we are suffering things no god allows...
Herald. Kings? You will soon see plenty of kings, the sons of Aegyptus. Take heart. You will not be able to complain that no one is in charge.
Chorus. Io, leaders of the city, chiefs, I am being overpowered!
Herald. It looks as if I will have to grab you by the hair and drag you, since you do not listen sharply to what I say.
(The King comes in with armed men.)
King. You there. What do you think you are doing? What kind of arrogance made you dishonour this land of Pelasgian men? Do you think you have come to a city of women? For a barbarian dealing with Greeks you take far too many liberties. You have got a great deal wrong and nothing right.
Herald. And what have I done wrong here, that goes against my rights?
King. First of all, you do not know how to be a stranger.
Herald. How do I not? I found what I had lost and I am taking it.
King. Which of our citizens did you tell, whose duty it is to look after strangers?
Herald. Hermes the Searcher, greatest of all who look after strangers.
King. You name the gods and you show them no respect.
Herald. The gods I respect are the gods by the Nile.
King. And ours are nothing, from what I hear you say?
Herald. I will take these women, unless someone tears them out of my hands.
King. You will be sorry if you touch them, and not in the long run either.
Herald. I hear you. And what you say is no way to treat a guest.
King. No. I do not host men who rob the gods.
Herald. I will go and tell this to the sons of Aegyptus.
King. That is a thought my pride will not graze on.
Herald. But so that I can know it and report it more clearly, since it is a herald's duty to report every detail exactly, what am I to say? Who am I to say took this band of women, their own cousins, away from me, when I come back? Ares does not judge a case like this by calling witnesses. He does not settle the quarrel by taking silver. Before it is over, many men fall and kick their lives away.
King. Why should I tell you my name? You will learn it in time, you and your shipmates. As for these women: if they are willing, if their hearts are in it, you may take them, if a god-fearing argument persuades them. But the people of this city have passed a single decree, all of one mind, never to give up this company of women to force. The bolt is driven clean through it, to hold and stay fixed. This is not written on tablets or sealed up in the folds of a book. You hear it plainly from a tongue that speaks free. Now get out of my sight, and fast.
Herald. It seems we are about to start a new war. May victory and power go to the males.
King. Males? You will find that the men who live in this land are males too, and they do not drink beer brewed from barley.
(The Herald goes back down to the ships.)
But you, all of you, with your dear serving women, take heart and go into our well-walled city, closed in by a deep engineering of towers. There are plenty of public houses, and I am not housed with a small hand myself. There you can live in well-prepared rooms with many others, or, if it pleases you more, you may live in houses of your own. Choose the best of these, whatever pleases your hearts most. I am your protector, I and all the citizens, whose vote this is that is now taking effect. Why wait for anyone with more authority than that?
Chorus. Good things for good things. May you overflow with them, godlike son of the Pelasgians. And be kind, and send our father here, brave Danaus, who thinks ahead and leads our counsels. It is for him first to plan where we should live and what quarter is friendly. Everyone is quick to find fault with people who speak a foreign tongue. May the best come of it. With a good name, and with no angry word from the people of this land, take your places, dear slaves, just as Danaus allotted to each of you her share of service, as her dowry.
(The King goes out toward the city. Danaus comes back with a bodyguard of Argive spearmen.)
Danaus. Children, we should pray to the Argives, and sacrifice to them, and pour libations to them as if to Olympian gods, because they are our saviours, and not by a split vote. They heard from me what happened, what your cousins did to their own kin, and it made them bitter against them. And they assigned me these spearmen as an escort, so that I should have rank and honour, and should not be killed unawares by a spear from an ambush and become a burden on the land that never dies. When people receive favours like these, gratitude has to be honoured all the more, from the bottom of the heart.
And write this too, beside the many other wise rules of your father already written in your minds: an unknown company is tested by time. Everyone has an evil tongue ready for an immigrant, and it is easy to say something filthy about him. So I urge you: do not shame me, now that you have in you the ripeness that turns men's heads. Tender summer fruit is never easy to guard. Beasts spoil it, and men, why not, and creatures that fly and creatures that walk the earth. Aphrodite cries out the news of fruit that drips with ripeness, and every man who passes by, overcome by desire, shoots the eye's bewitching arrow at the soft beauty of virgins. So let us not suffer the very thing we took so much trouble to avoid, ploughing so much sea with our ship, and let us not bring shame on ourselves and pleasure to my enemies. We have two kinds of housing offered, one from Pelasgus and one from the city, to live in and pay nothing. These terms are easy. Only keep your father's instructions, and value your chastity above your life.
Chorus. For all the rest, may the Olympian gods give us good luck. As for the ripeness of my body, father, be easy. Unless the gods have planned something new, I will not turn my mind off the track it has followed.
Danaids. Come now, go on, and glorify the blessed gods who rule the city and keep it, and those who live around the ancient stream of Erasinus. And you, our attendants, take up the song. Let our praise be for this city of the Pelasgians, and let us no longer honour with our hymns the mouths of the Nile,
Danaids. but the rivers that pour their gentle drink through this land and give it many children, soothing its soil with their fat streams. May pure Artemis look on this company with pity, and may marriage never come by Aphrodite's compulsion. Let that prize go to the people I hate.
Serving Women. But this kindly song of ours does not neglect Aphrodite, for with Hera she has the power nearest to Zeus, and the goddess of many wiles is honoured for her solemn work. At their dear mother's side stand her partners, Desire, and the one who is refused nothing, Persuasion, who enchants. And Harmony has her share of Aphrodite, and so do the whispering paths of the Loves.
Serving Women. But for the fugitives I am afraid of what is blowing in: bitter pain and bloody wars. Why did they have such fair sailing, with the pursuit so quick behind them? What is fated will happen. The great mind of Zeus cannot be stepped over. It has no bounds. Many women before you have ended in marriage. May it be so for you.
A Danaid. May great Zeus keep marriage with the sons of Aegyptus away from me.
A Serving Woman. That would be best.
A Danaid. You would charm what cannot be charmed.
A Serving Woman. And you do not know what is to come.
A Danaid. How could I look into the mind of Zeus, a sight with no bottom to it?
A Serving Woman. Then pray in measured words.
A Danaid. What is this measure you are teaching me?
A Serving Woman. Not to ask too much of the gods.
Chorus. May Zeus the lord keep from me a marriage to a man I hate, a deadly marriage: Zeus, who set Io free from her pain, holding her still with his healing hand, making his force a kindness.
Chorus. And may he give the victory to the women. I praise what is better than evil, two parts good to one part bad, and I praise this: that by my prayers, justice should follow justice, by the means of release that come from a god.
(They all go out together toward the city.)
(Argos, at night, before the palace of the sons of Atreus. A Watchman lies on the flat roof, looking out towards the hills.)
Watchman. I ask the gods for release from this work, this watch that has run a whole year. All that time I have lain up here on the roof of the sons of Atreus, propped on my elbow like a dog, and I have come to know the whole gathering of the night stars, and the bright lords that bring winter and summer to men, the stars that stand out in the sky, when they set and when they rise. And now I am watching for the signal of the torch, the gleam of fire that will carry word from Troy, the news that the city has fallen. That is the order of a woman whose heart hopes like a man's and plans like a man's.
So I keep this bed of mine, a bed that wanders through the night, wet with dew, a bed no dreams come to, because fear stands beside it instead of sleep, and I cannot shut my eyes properly and sleep. And whenever I think I will sing, or hum a tune, cutting myself a dose of song as a cure for sleep, then I weep instead, groaning for the luck of this house, which is not run as well as it used to be. But tonight, let there be a lucky release from these labours. Let the fire of good news show out of the dark.
(A fire flares up on the far hills.)
Oh, welcome, lamp of the night, showing a light like day, and the setting up of many dances in Argos to give thanks for this stroke of luck. Iou, iou! I give the sign, loud and clear, to Agamemnon's wife: up from her bed, and as fast as she can, raise the cry of joy through the house to welcome this torch, if the city of Ilium is truly taken, as that beacon blazing there announces. And I will dance the opening steps myself. My masters' dice have fallen well, and I am counting it as my own throw: this beacon-watch has thrown me three sixes.
Well, may it happen that the master of the house comes home, and that I hold his dear hand in this hand of mine. The rest I keep quiet about. A great ox has stepped on my tongue. The house itself, if it could find a voice, would tell the story plainest. As for me, I choose to speak to those who know. For those who do not know, I have forgotten.
(The Watchman goes down into the house. The old men of Argos, the Chorus, come in below.)
Chorus. This is the tenth year since Priam's great opponent at law, King Menelaus, and Agamemnon with him, the strong yoked pair of Atreus' sons, honoured by Zeus with two thrones and two sceptres, put out from this land with a thousand ships full of Argives, an army to back their claim, screaming a great war-cry out of their hearts the way vultures do when, in wild grief for their young, they wheel high above the nest, rowing with the oars of their wings, the long labour of guarding the chicks lost, all of it. And someone on high, Apollo, or Pan, or Zeus, hears the shrill, sharp bird-cry of these lodgers in his sky and sends a Fury on the ones who broke the law, late, but she comes. Just so the stronger one, Zeus, god of guest and host, sends the sons of Atreus against Paris, all for a woman with many husbands, and he will lay many wrestling-bouts, limb-heavy, the knee driven into the dust, the spear-shaft snapped in the first rites, on Danaans and Trojans alike. It is where it is now. It is being brought to its appointed end. Not by burning under, not by pouring under, not by tears will a man charm away the stiff anger of sacrifices that will not take fire. But we, who cannot pay our way with old flesh, left behind when that army went to help, stay here, steering a strength like a child's on our walking sticks. For the young marrow, king inside the breast, is like an old man's: Ares is not in his place. And great old age, its leaves already drying, walks its three-footed roads, no stronger than a child, a dream that wanders about in daylight. But you, Tyndareus' daughter, Queen Clytemnestra, what is it? What is new? What have you heard, what message has persuaded you to send round the order for sacrifice? All the gods that hold the city, the high gods, the gods under the earth, the gods of the sky and the gods of the marketplace, their altars are blazing with gifts, and here and there and everywhere a flame rises high as the sky, drugged with the soft, honest coaxing of holy oil, the royal offering brought up from the palace's inner store. Tell us what you can of this, and what is lawful to tell, and be the healer of this worry, which now turns to dark thoughts, and now the hope that shines gentle from the sacrifices pushes back the care that never gets its fill, the grief that eats the heart.
Chorus. I have the right to sing of the sign that met the men on the road, the lucky sign of power, of grown men in their strength, for still the gods breathe into me persuasion, the strength of song, the age that grew up with me: how the twin-throned power of the Achaeans, the two commanders of one mind over the young men of Greece, was sent with spear and avenging hand against the Trojan land by the rushing bird, the king of birds to the kings of the ships, one black, one white behind, appearing near the palace on the spear-hand side, perched where everyone could see them, feeding on a hare, heavy with the young inside her, caught in her last run. Sing sorrow, sing sorrow, but let the good win out.
Chorus. And the army's trusted prophet, seeing the two sons of Atreus, two in temper as well, knew the eaters of the hare for the leaders who sent the army out, and read it like this: "In time this march takes Priam's city, and all the herds the people own before its towers Fate will plunder by force. Only let no jealousy from the gods darken the great bit forged for the mouth of Troy, the army, and strike it down before its time. For holy Artemis pities, and hates the winged hounds of her father that sacrificed the poor cowering thing with her young, before the birth. She loathes the eagles' feast." Sing sorrow, sing sorrow, but let the good win out.
Chorus. "Lovely goddess, so kind to the dewy cubs of savage lions, so delighted in the suckling young of every beast that roams the fields, grant that what these signs mean comes true, the omen of the birds, lucky on the right hand, but with a fault in it. And I call on Apollo the Healer: let her not raise against the Danaans long winds that hold the ships and will not let them sail, pressing for another sacrifice, one with no law, one no one may eat, a builder of quarrels born into the family, a thing that fears no husband. For there waits at home, terrible, rising up again, a keeper of the house full of tricks, a Wrath that remembers, that avenges a child." Such were the fates Calchas screamed out, along with great good, from the birds on the road, for the royal house. And in tune with it, Sing sorrow, sing sorrow, but let the good win out.
Chorus. Zeus, whoever he is, if that is the name he likes to be called, that is what I call him. I have weighed everything and I have nothing to set beside him, nothing but Zeus, if I am truly to throw this useless weight off my mind.
Chorus. Not the one who was great before, swollen with a daring that would fight anyone: he will not even be spoken of. He was, and is gone. And the one who came after him met his thrower, three falls, and is gone. But whoever gladly shouts the victory song for Zeus will hit the mark of understanding, all of it.
Chorus. Zeus, who set mortals on the road to thinking, who made it the law that stands: learning through suffering. In sleep, in front of the heart, the pain that remembers drips, and against their will men come to their senses. It is a violent kindness, somehow, from the gods who sit at the helm on their solemn bench.
Chorus. And so, at that time, the older leader of the Achaean ships, blaming no prophet, bending with the winds of luck that beat on him, when the Achaean people were weighed down by no sailing and empty bellies, holding the shore across from Chalcis at Aulis, where the tide roars back and forth,
Chorus. the winds came down from the Strymon, winds of bad idleness, of hunger, of bad anchorage, that set men wandering, that spared neither ships nor cables, and doubled the length of the waiting and wore the flower of the Argives down by rubbing. And when the prophet screamed out to the chiefs a cure for the bitter storm heavier still than the storm, and named Artemis as its cause, so that the sons of Atreus struck the ground with their sticks and could not hold back their tears,
Chorus. then the older king spoke and said: "It is a heavy fate not to obey, and heavy if I cut down my child, the glory of my house, staining a father's hands at the altar with streams of a slaughtered girl's blood. Which of these is without evil? How can I desert the fleet and fail my allies? For them to want, with passion beyond passion, a sacrifice to stop the winds, a virgin's blood, is their right. May it turn out well."
Chorus. When he had put on the yoke-strap of Necessity, a wind shifting in his mind, impious, unclean, unholy, from that moment he changed, and would think anything, dare anything. For men are made bold by the wretched madness that plans shame and is the first cause of pain. He steeled himself, then, to be the sacrificer of his daughter, to help a war fought to avenge a woman, a first rite for the ships.
Chorus. Her prayers, her cries of "Father," her girl's life: the judges who loved war counted them as nothing. Her father said a prayer and told the servants to lift her over the altar like a goat, as she fell forward with all her heart into her robes, to lift her up bodily, and to hold her lovely mouth with a guard against any word that might curse the house,
Chorus. by force, by the bit, by a strength that gave her no voice. Her saffron dress poured onto the ground, and she struck each of the men who were sacrificing her with a shot from her eyes that begged for pity, standing out like a figure in a painting, wanting to speak, because many times, in her father's hall at the good tables, she had sung, and with a pure voice, untouched by any man, lovingly she had honoured her dear father's hymn at the third libation, the prayer for good luck,
Chorus. What came after that I did not see, and I do not tell. The arts of Calchas do not go unfulfilled. Justice tips her scales so that those who suffer learn. The future you will hear when it happens. Until then, let it go. It comes to the same as grieving ahead of time. It will come clear with the light of dawn. And for what follows, may the outcome be good, as she wishes it, the one who stands nearest to our lord, the single guard and wall of this Apian land.
(Clytemnestra comes out of the palace.)
Chorus. I have come, Clytemnestra, out of respect for your power. It is right to honour the wife of the ruling man when the man's throne stands empty. Whether you have heard something good, or heard nothing and are sacrificing on hopes of good news, I would gladly hear it. And if you keep silent, no one will blame you.
Clytemnestra. Good news, as the proverb has it: may Dawn be born from her mother Night. You will hear of a joy greater than any you hoped to hear. The Argives have taken Priam's city.
Chorus. What did you say? The word ran past me. I could not believe it.
Clytemnestra. Troy belongs to the Achaeans. Am I speaking clearly?
Chorus. Joy is creeping over me, and it is calling out my tears.
Clytemnestra. Yes. Your eye gives you away. You mean well by us.
Chorus. But what is the proof? Do you have evidence of this?
Clytemnestra. I do. Why would I not? Unless a god has cheated me.
Chorus. Is it the persuasive visions of dreams you are honouring?
Clytemnestra. I would not take the fancies of a dozing mind for fact.
Chorus. Then has some rumour without wings fattened your hopes?
Clytemnestra. You are finding fault with my wits as if I were a little girl.
Chorus. And how long ago was the city sacked?
Clytemnestra. In the night, I tell you, that has just now given birth to this light.
Chorus. And what messenger could get here so fast?
Clytemnestra. Hephaestus, sending out a bright blaze from Ida. Beacon sent beacon here, fire relayed by courier fire. Ida to the Hermes crag on Lemnos. Third from the island, the great torch was taken up by the peak of Athos, the mountain of Zeus; and rising high, high enough to ride on the back of the sea, the strength of the travelling beacon went on joyfully, the pine-wood shining gold like a sun, and passed the blaze on to the lookouts of Macistus. And the man there did not delay, was not beaten stupidly by sleep, and did not neglect his share of the message: far off, the beacon's light came to the streams of Euripus and signalled to the watchmen on Messapion. They answered with a blaze and passed it on, setting fire to a heap of old heather. The lamp, strong, not dimmed yet, leaped the plain of Asopus like a bright moon to the crag of Cithaeron and woke another relay of the courier fire. The watch there did not refuse the far-sent light but burned more than they were told; the light shot across the Gorgon-eyed lake, and reaching Mount Aegiplanctus it urged on the ordinance of fire: no delay. They light it with unstinting force and send up a great beard of flame, so that it crossed, blazing, even the headland that looks down on the Saronic strait. Then it swooped, and came to the peak of Arachnaeus, the lookout next door to our city. And then it lands on this roof of the sons of Atreus, this light, whose grandfather is the fire on Ida.
Those were my rules for the beacon-runners, one runner taking the light from the next, like a torch-race, and the winner is the one who ran first and last. That is the proof and the sign I give you: my husband sent me word from Troy.
Chorus. Lady, I will pray to the gods again in a moment. But I would like to hear this story straight through from beginning to end and marvel at it, so tell it once more.
Clytemnestra. The Achaeans hold Troy today. I think a cry that will not mix is rising in the city. Pour vinegar and oil into the same jar and you would say they stand apart, no friends. So you can hear the voices of the taken and the takers, two separate fortunes. Some are thrown over the bodies of husbands and brothers, children over the old fathers who gave them life, and they wail for the death of their dearest from a throat that is no longer free. And the others: the night's wandering labour after battle sets them down hungry at whatever breakfast the city has, with no order of rank about who goes where, but as each man drew his lot from luck. They are already living in the captured houses of Troy, out of the frosts and dews of the open sky, and like happy men they will sleep the whole night through with no guard.
If they honour properly the gods who hold the city, the gods of the conquered land, and the seats of the gods, then the takers will not be taken in their turn. But let no lust fall on the army first, to plunder what they must not, beaten by greed. They still have to make the turn for home, run the second leg of the double course, and get safely back. And if the army comes home without any offence to the gods, the pain of the dead might still wake up, if no sudden evil strikes first. That is what you hear from me, a woman. But may the good win out, with no one in two minds about seeing it. Of many blessings, I have chosen to enjoy this one.
Chorus. Lady, you speak with good sense, like a sensible man. Now that I have heard your trustworthy proofs I am getting ready to address the gods properly. The labour has earned a thanks worth the giving.
Chorus. Zeus the king, and friendly Night, who won us great glory, you who threw over the towers of Troy a net with no gaps in it, so that no one, grown man or child, could leap over the great dragnet of slavery, the ruin that catches everything. Great Zeus, god of guest and host, I stand in awe of him, who did this, who kept his bow aimed at Paris so long, so that the arrow should not fall short nor fly past the stars for nothing.
Chorus. "The stroke of Zeus": they can say it. This much you can track down: he did as he decided. Someone said the gods do not bother to care about men who trample the grace of untouchable things. That man was impious. It is shown now, what comes of daring what must not be dared, when men breathe bigger than is just, and their houses swell past all reason, past the best measure. Let there be enough, and no harm in it, so that a man with good sense can be satisfied. For there is no wall in wealth to protect a man who, glutted, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight.
Chorus. Wretched Persuasion forces him on, the unbearable child of Ruin, who plans ahead. Every remedy is useless. It is not hidden; the damage shows, a light with a terrible shine. Like bad bronze rubbed and knocked, he shows black when he is put to the test, since he is a child chasing a bird on the wing, and he has put a stain on his city no one can bear. No god hears his prayers, and the man who keeps company with these things, the unjust man, they pull down. Such was Paris, who came to the house of the sons of Atreus and shamed the table where he was a guest by stealing a wife.
Chorus. She left to her own people the clash of shields, the churning of spears, the arming of ships, and carrying to Ilium destruction for a dowry, she went lightly through the gates, daring what should not be dared. And the prophets of the house groaned loud and said: "Oh, oh, the house, the house and its princes! Oh, the bed and the tracks where she lay and loved her husband!" You can see him: silent, dishonoured, not reproaching, sitting apart in bitter grief. In his longing for the woman over the sea a ghost will seem to rule the house. The grace of beautiful statues is hateful to the husband; in the emptiness of their eyes all Aphrodite is gone.
Chorus. Grieving shapes come in dreams and bring a joy that is useless, useless, for when a man thinks he sees good things, the vision slips through his hands and is gone, never to come back, on wings, down the paths of sleep. These are the griefs at home, at the hearth, and there are griefs that go far beyond them: in every house of all who set out together from the land of Greece a grief no heart can stand shows plain. Many things touch the liver. A man knows whom he sent away; but instead of men, urns and ashes come home to each man's house.
Chorus. Ares, who trades bodies for gold and holds the scales in the battle of spears, sends back from Ilium to the families a heavy dust out of the fire, wept over with hard tears, filling the neat urns with ashes in exchange for men. They groan and praise him: this one, how well he knew battle; that one, fell well in the killing, for another man's wife. Somebody snarls that under his breath, and grief with resentment in it creeps against the sons of Atreus, who brought the case. And others, there, around the wall, fine-looking men, hold graves in the earth of Ilium; the enemy's soil has covered the men who took it.
Chorus. Heavy is the talk of citizens with anger in it. It pays the debt of a curse the people have voted. My worry waits to hear something hidden under the night. The gods are not blind to men who kill many. The black Furies, in time, take the man who is lucky without justice and wear him down, turn his luck, and dim him, and once he is among the unseen there is no help. To be praised beyond measure is heavy; the thunderbolt is thrown from the eyes of Zeus. I choose a prosperity nobody envies. Let me not be a sacker of cities, nor let me be taken myself and see my life in another man's hands.
Chorus. From the beacon of good news the quick report runs through the city. But is it true? Who knows? Or is it some lie from a god? Who is so childish, so struck out of his wits, that he lets his heart catch fire at fresh news from a flame, and then, when the story changes, breaks down? It fits a woman's command to give thanks for a thing before it appears. Too ready to believe, a woman's word spreads fast over its borders; but it dies fast too, the glory a woman proclaims.
Chorus. We will soon know about these light-bringing torches and beacon watches and fires relayed one to the next, whether they are true, or whether this pleasant light came like a dream and tricked our minds. I see a herald coming up from the shore, shaded with olive branches. And the dust, mud's thirsty sister, right beside him, tells me this: he will not be dumb, and he will not signal to you by lighting a fire of mountain wood and sending up smoke. He will either come out and say "rejoice," and more than the beacon said, or the opposite of that, and I refuse to say it. Let good be added to the good that has already shown itself. Whoever prays otherwise for this city, let him reap the harvest of his own mind's mistake himself.
(The Herald comes in from the shore, with olive branches in his hair.)
Herald. Oh, soil of my fathers, land of Argos! In the light of the tenth year I have come back to you. Many hopes broke; I have caught hold of one. I never expected to die here in the land of Argos and have my share of the grave I love best. Now greetings, land, and greetings, light of the sun, and Zeus, highest lord of the country, and the Pythian lord, no longer shooting his arrows at us. You were hostile enough to us beside the Scamander. Now be our saviour again, and our healer, lord Apollo. All the gods of the gathering-place, I address them, and my own patron, Hermes, dear herald, whom heralds revere; and the heroes who sent us out: take back kindly what the spear has left of the army.
Oh, halls of kings, dear roofs, solemn seats, and you gods who face the sun: if ever before, then now, after so long, receive the king with honour, with shining eyes. For he has come bringing light in the darkness to you and to all these people here, King Agamemnon. Give him a good welcome; it is right, for he has dug Troy up with the mattock of Zeus who brings justice, and the ground has been worked over with it. The altars are gone and the seats of the gods, and the seed of the whole land is dying out. Such a yoke he threw round the neck of Troy, the king, the elder son of Atreus, a man the gods have blessed, and he has come home, the most worthy of honour of all men living. For Paris and the city that paid with him cannot boast that what they did was greater than what they suffered. Convicted of rape and of theft, he lost his plunder and mowed his father's house down to the ground, land and all, in total destruction. The sons of Priam have paid double for their crimes.
Chorus. Herald of the Achaeans, from the army, greetings and joy.
Herald. Joy, yes. I will no longer argue with the gods if they want me dead.
Chorus. Was it longing for this land of your fathers that wore you down?
Herald. So much that my eyes are filling with tears of joy.
Chorus. Then it was a sweet sickness you caught.
Herald. How so? Teach me, and I will master what you mean.
Chorus. You were struck with longing for people who longed for you back.
Herald. You mean this land missed the army that missed it?
Chorus. So much that I often groaned from a darkened heart.
Herald. Where did this gloom come from, this hatred weighing on your spirit?
Chorus. For a long time now I have kept silence as my medicine against harm.
Herald. How? With the princes away, were there people you feared?
Chorus. So much that now, in your own words, even death would be a great kindness.
Herald. Yes, because it has ended well. Over such a long time, some of it you could say went smoothly, and some of it was open to blame. Who but the gods goes without pain the whole length of a lifetime? If I told you the hardships, the bad quarters, the narrow gangways, the wretched bedding, what did we not groan over? What did we not get as our share of the day? And then on land there was worse still to hate. Our beds were under the enemy's walls, and out of the sky and up from the meadows the dews drizzled down on us, a steady ruin to our clothes, making our hair a nest for lice. And if someone told of the winter that killed the birds, the unbearable snow Ida sent down, or the heat, when the sea at noon fell asleep on a bed with no wave and no wind, why grieve over that? The trouble is past. It is past, and for the dead so past that they will never care even to get up again.
Why count the spent men on the tally? Why should the living feel pain at bad luck long gone? I say a long goodbye to our misfortunes. For us, what is left of the Argive army, the gain wins, and the loss does not tip the scale against it. So it is right that we boast to this light of the sun, as we fly over sea and land: "The Argive expedition took Troy at last and nailed up these spoils on the houses of the gods throughout Greece, a glory for all time." When men hear such things they must praise the city and its generals; and the grace of Zeus that brought this about will get its honour. You have the whole story.
Chorus. Your words have won and I do not deny it. The old are always young enough to learn properly. But this news most properly concerns the house and Clytemnestra, and it makes me rich along with them.
(Clytemnestra comes out of the palace again.)
Clytemnestra. I raised my cry of joy long ago, when the first night messenger of fire came, telling of the capture and the overthrow of Ilium. And somebody sneered at me and said: "On the strength of beacons you believe Troy is sacked now? How like a woman, to let her heart lift." Talk like that made me look as if I had lost my way. Still, I went on sacrificing, and in the woman's way, here and there all over the city, they raised the cry of joy in the seats of the gods, lulling the sweet-smelling flame that eats the offerings.
And now, why do you need to tell me more? I shall hear the whole story from the king himself. And I should hurry to receive my honoured husband as well as I can when he comes home. For what light is sweeter for a woman to see than this: to open the gates for her husband when the god has brought him safe home from the war? Take this message to my husband: come as fast as he can, the darling of the city; and when he comes, may he find in his house a wife as faithful as the one he left, a watchdog of the house, good to him, an enemy to those who wish him ill, and the same in everything else, having broken no seal in all this length of time. Of pleasure from another man, or of any talk of scandal, I know no more than I know the dipping of bronze.
(Clytemnestra goes back into the palace.)
Herald. A boast like that, when it is loaded with truth, is no shame for a noble woman to shout out.
Chorus. That is how she spoke to you, and you have taken it in: a fine speech, for those who read it clearly. But tell me, herald. I am asking about Menelaus. Has he come back safe with you, the beloved power of this land?
Herald. There is no way I could tell a lie so beautiful that the people I love would enjoy it for long.
Chorus. Then how could you manage to say something both good and true? When those two split apart, it is hard to hide.
Herald. The man has vanished from the Achaean fleet, himself and his ship. I am not lying.
Chorus. Did he put out from Ilium in plain sight, or did a storm, a burden shared by all, snatch him away from the fleet?
Herald. You have hit the mark like a champion archer. A long pain, and you have said it in a word.
Chorus. Alive or dead? What did the other sailors say about him?
Herald. Nobody knows enough to report it clearly, except the Sun, who feeds everything that grows on the earth.
Chorus. Then how do you say the storm came on the fleet, by the anger of the gods, and how did it end?
Herald. It is not right to stain a day of good words with a tongue that brings bad news. The honour of the gods is a separate thing. When a messenger with a grim face brings a city the disasters it prayed against, the army fallen, one wound for the whole city, the public wound, and many men cursed out of many houses by the double whip that Ares loves, a ruin with two spears, a bloody pair in one harness: when he is loaded with that kind of suffering, that is the time to sing this hymn of the Furies. But when he comes as the bearer of good news, of things saved, to a city rejoicing in its good fortune, how am I to mix the good with the bad, telling of a storm that fell on the Achaeans, and not without the gods' anger?
For fire and sea, the bitterest of enemies before, swore an oath together and showed their good faith by destroying the wretched Argive army. In the night the evil rose, and the waves ran badly. The Thracian winds smashed the ships against each other; rammed by force, horn against horn, in the hurricane and the driving rain, they went off and vanished, spun round by an evil shepherd. When the bright light of the sun came up, we saw the Aegean sea blooming with the corpses of Achaean men and the wreckage of ships. As for us and our ship, its hull unharmed, somebody stole us out of it, or begged us off, some god, not a man, with his hand on the tiller. Luck the saviour sat on our ship and was willing, so that we neither took the surge of the waves at anchor nor ran aground on rocky land. Then, having escaped a Hades of the sea, in the white daylight, not trusting our luck, we grazed our thoughts on the new suffering: the army worn out and badly battered.
And now, if any of them is still breathing, they speak of us as lost, and why would they not? We think the same of them. May it turn out for the best. As for Menelaus, first and most of all, expect him to come. If some ray of the sun finds him alive and seeing, by the devices of Zeus, who does not yet want to wipe out the family, there is some hope he will come home again. So much you have heard; and know that what you have heard is the truth.
Chorus. Who was it that gave her that name, a name so completely, so exactly true? Was it someone we cannot see, who knows ahead of time what is fated, and steered a tongue to hit the mark by luck? Helen. The bride the spear fought for, the woman two armies quarrelled over. And the name fits her. She was hell to ships, hell to men, hell to the city. Out from behind her delicate, costly curtains she sailed on the breath of a giant west wind, and after her came the hunters, a great crowd of men carrying shields, following the vanished track of her oars to the place where she had run her boat ashore on the leafy banks of the Simois, to a quarrel that would end in blood.
Chorus. And to Troy that marriage brought a mourning that deserved its name, driven home by Wrath, who finishes what she starts. In later time she collected the debt for the dishonoured table, for Zeus who shares the hearth, from the men who raised their voices loud in honour of the bride, the wedding song it fell to the bridegroom's kin to sing that day. Priam's old city has learned a new song since. Now, I think, she groans out loud, a long lament, and calls Paris the man whose marriage was a curse. She has borne a life of total ruin, a life of lament, for the pitiful blood of her people.
Chorus. So a man once raised a lion cub in his house, taken from the milk it wanted, still hungry for the breast. In the first days of its life it was gentle, loving with the children, a delight to the old. It was held in their arms, often, like a newborn baby, bright-eyed, turning to the hand that fed it, fawning, because its belly made it fawn.
Chorus. But time went on, and it showed the nature it had from its parents. It paid back the ones who raised it: unasked, it made itself a feast, a ruin of slaughtered sheep, and the house was fouled with blood, a grief the household could not fight, a great slaughter, many killed. A priest of Ruin, sent by a god, and the house itself had raised it.
Chorus. And so, I would say, there came to the city of Troy what looked like a spirit of windless calm, a soft ornament of wealth, a gentle arrow from the eyes, the flower of love that bites the heart. Then she swerved aside and brought the marriage to a bitter end, a bad neighbour, bad company, rushing in on the sons of Priam with Zeus, god of guest and host, as her escort: a Fury who made the brides weep.
Chorus. There is an old saying among men, spoken long ago and handed down: that a man's good fortune, once it is full grown, has children and does not die childless, and that out of good luck a family sprouts a misery that is never satisfied. But I stand apart from the others. I think alone. It is the godless deed that breeds more after it, and the children look like their parents. A house that keeps to straight justice has fine children always. That is its fate.
Chorus. Old Outrage loves to breed a young Outrage in bad men, sooner or later, when the appointed day of birth comes, and with it a spirit no one can fight or make war on, unholy Recklessness, and black Ruins for the house, the image of their parents.
Chorus. But Justice shines in smoky houses, and honours the life that keeps to the line. The gold-plated halls where hands are dirty she leaves, with her eyes turned away, and goes to what is clean. She does not worship the power of wealth stamped with a false mark by men's praise, and she steers everything to its end.
(Agamemnon comes in on a chariot, with a large escort of soldiers. Cassandra rides in the chariot behind him, silent.)
Chorus. Come then, my King, sacker of Troy, son of Atreus, how am I to greet you? How am I to honour you without overshooting, without falling short of the right measure of thanks? Many men put the look of a thing before the truth and step over the line of justice. Everyone is ready to groan beside the man who is down, but no bite of grief ever reaches his liver. And they force their unsmiling faces into smiles and pretend to share in other people's joy. But a good shepherd knows his flock, and a man's eyes cannot fool him when they fawn on him with watery friendship and pretend it comes from a loyal mind. I will not hide it from you: back then, when you sent the army out for Helen's sake, you were painted in my eyes in very ugly colours, a man not steering the helm of his mind well, buying courage for dying men with sacrifices. But now, not from the surface of my heart, and not without love, I say it: the work was worth it to the men who finished it well. And in time, by asking, you will learn which of your citizens kept the city justly while you were gone, and which did not.
Agamemnon. Argos first, and the gods of this land. It is right that I greet them first. They helped me home, and they helped me take the justice I took from Priam's city. For the gods did not listen to pleas from anyone's tongue. They cast their votes, with no divided opinion, into the urn of blood: death for the men of Troy, and destruction for the city. To the other urn Hope came near, but no hand filled it. The city is taken, and even now you can tell it by the smoke. The storms of Ruin are still alive there. The ash is dying with the city, and as it dies it breathes out rich fumes of wealth.
For this we owe the gods a gratitude that never forgets, since we threw the net of our anger around the city, and for the sake of one woman the Argive beast ground the city into dust: the horse's brood, the people carrying shields, that made its leap as the Pleiades were setting. It vaulted the tower, a lion that eats raw meat, and lapped its fill of royal blood.
That is my opening, to the gods, and I have drawn it out at length. As for what you feel, I heard it, and I remember it. I say the same, and you have an advocate in me. Few men are born with this: to honour a friend's good fortune without envy. The poison of ill will sits on the heart and doubles the load of the man who has caught the disease. He is weighed down by his own troubles, and he groans to see happiness next door. I can speak from knowledge, for I know the mirror of companionship well: the men who seemed so very devoted to me were the ghost of a shadow. Only Odysseus, the very man who did not want to sail, once he was yoked, pulled beside me willingly in harness. I say this of him whether he is dead or alive.
For the rest, matters of the city and the gods: we will call a full assembly, put them to open debate, and take counsel. Where things are going well, we must see how they may stay well for a long time. And where some healing drug is needed, we will burn or cut, with kind intentions, and try to turn away the harm of the disease.
Now I will go into my halls, to my house and its hearth, and first I will give the gods my right hand in greeting. They sent me out and they have brought me back. And since Victory has followed me, may she stay with me, and hold firm.
(Clytemnestra comes out of the palace. Behind her are slave women carrying purple cloths.)
Clytemnestra. Men of the city, elders of Argos here before me, I will not be ashamed to tell you how I love my husband. In time, shyness dies away in people. I have not learned this from others: I will tell you my own hard life, all the years this man was under the walls of Troy.
First, for a woman to sit at home alone, apart from her man, is a monstrous evil. She hears rumour after spiteful rumour. One messenger comes, and then another brings a worse blow than the last, shouting it to the house. If this man had taken as many wounds as the reports that ran home like water through a channel, he would have more holes in him than a net. If he had died as often as the stories said, he would be a second Geryon, with three bodies, and could boast of taking on a triple cloak of earth, a great deal of it above him, for of the earth below him I say nothing, dying once for each of his shapes. Because of spiteful rumours like these, other people had to loosen from my neck, more than once, the noose I had hung from above and was caught in, by force.
That is why our boy is not standing here beside me as he should, Orestes, who holds the pledges of my faith and yours. Do not be surprised at it. He is being raised by a good ally, our friend by the spear, Strophius of Phocis, who warned me of trouble from two sides: your danger under Troy, and the chance that the people, in a roar of lawlessness, might throw down the council, since it is in men's nature to kick a man harder once he is down. An excuse like that carries no trickery.
Clytemnestra. As for me, the rushing springs of my tears have run dry. There is not a drop left. My eyes are sore from late nights, weeping over the beacon-lights set for you that were never attended to. In my dreams I would be woken by the thin whine of a gnat, and I had seen more suffering happen to you than the time I slept could hold.
Now I have borne all that, and with a heart free of grief I can call this man the watchdog of the fold, the forestay that saves the ship, the pillar footed firm under a high roof, a father's only son, land appearing to sailors past all hope, the loveliest daybreak after a storm, a spring of running water to a thirsty traveller. It is sweet to escape every kind of necessity. Those are the greetings I think he deserves. And let envy stay far away. We have put up with many evils before now.
And now, my dear one, step down from this chariot. But do not set your foot on the bare ground, my lord, the foot that trampled Troy. Women, what are you waiting for? You were given the task of spreading cloth over the ground where he walks. Let his path be purple at once, so that Justice may lead him into a home he never hoped to see. The rest, a mind that sleep does not overcome will set in order justly, with the gods' help, as it is destined.
Agamemnon. Daughter of Leda, guardian of my house, your speech matched my absence: you drew it out at length. But fitting praise is a prize that should come from other people. And do not pamper me like a woman, and do not gape at me with grovelling shouts from the ground as if I were some barbarian, and do not make my path a thing for envy by spreading cloth on it. That is how we honour the gods. For a mortal to walk on embroidered beauty is never, to my mind, a thing without fear. I tell you to honour me as a man, not a god. Footcloths and embroideries: Rumour shouts the difference between them. Not to think badly is the gods' greatest gift. Call a man blessed only when he has ended his life in the prosperity he loves. If I can act like this in everything, I have good confidence.
Clytemnestra. Come now, tell me this, and do not go against what you really think.
Agamemnon. What I think, be sure of it, I will not corrupt.
Clytemnestra. If you had been afraid, would you have vowed to the gods to do this?
Agamemnon. Yes, if any man ever would. I would have declared it as my vow, knowing well what I said.
Clytemnestra. And what do you think Priam would have done, if he had won what you have won?
Agamemnon. He would have walked on the embroidered cloth. I am quite sure of it.
Clytemnestra. Then do not be ashamed of what people will say.
Agamemnon. And yet the voice of the people has great power.
Clytemnestra. Yes, but the man nobody envies is a man nobody admires.
Agamemnon. It is not a woman's part to be hungry for a fight.
Clytemnestra. But for the fortunate, it is fitting even to be beaten.
Agamemnon. And you, do you value winning this quarrel so much?
Clytemnestra. Give in. Yield the victory to me, but of your own free will.
Agamemnon. Well, if that is what you want, let someone quickly unlace my boots, the slaves that serve my feet as I walk. And as I walk on these purple cloths of the gods, may no envious eye strike me from far off. I feel a great shame at ruining the house with my feet, spoiling wealth, spoiling weaving bought with silver. So much for that. This foreign girl, take her into the house kindly. God looks with favour from far away on a master who is gentle in his power. Nobody puts on the yoke of slavery by choice. She is the pick of the flower of many treasures, the army's gift to me, and she came with me. Now, since I have been brought round to obey you in this, I will go into the halls of my house, walking on purple.
Clytemnestra. There is the sea, and who will drain it dry? It breeds an ever-fresh ooze of purple, worth its weight in silver, to dye our clothes. And the house has enough of this, my lord, thanks to the gods. This house does not know how to be poor. I would have vowed the trampling of many cloths, if the oracle had ordered it for this house, when I was working out a ransom for this life. While the root lives, the leaves come back to the house and spread their shade against the dog star. So now that you have come to the hearth of your home, you are a sign that warmth has come in winter. And when Zeus makes wine from the bitter unripe grape, then already there is coolness in the house, when the master, the perfect man, walks his own halls again.
(Agamemnon walks over the purple cloth into the house.)
Zeus, Zeus who brings things to their end, bring my prayers to their end. And take care of what you mean to bring to an end.
(She goes into the house after him.)
Chorus. Why does this terror keep hovering, standing guard before my heart, my heart that reads the signs? Why does my song play the prophet, unasked, unpaid? Why can I not spit it out like a dream too hard to read, and let a confidence I can trust sit on the throne of my mind? Time has heaped the sand of the beach over the stern-cables thrown ashore when the army took ship and set out for Troy.
Chorus. I have seen their homecoming with my own eyes. I am my own witness. But still my heart, self-taught, inside me, sings the dirge of the Fury, with no lyre, and cannot hold the whole of hope's welcome courage. My insides are not talking nonsense. My heart is spinning in whirlpools that come to their end, against a mind that has good reason to fear. I pray that what I expect falls out a lie and never comes to its end.
Chorus. Truly, great health does not know when to stop. Disease is its neighbour, leaning on the shared wall. And a man's fortune, sailing straight, strikes on a hidden reef. But if fear throws overboard a part of the cargo, the goods he owns, with a well-measured swing of the sling, the whole house does not go down, overloaded with grief, and the hull is not swamped. And truly Zeus gives with both hands, and the yearly furrows kill the disease of hunger.
Chorus. But a man's black blood, once it has fallen to the ground in front of him, and he is dead, who can sing it back by any charm? The one man who knew the right way to bring back the dead: did Zeus not stop him, as a warning? If one fate set by the gods did not hold back another fate from getting more than its share, my heart would have run ahead of my tongue and poured all this out. As it is, it mutters in the dark, sore, and with no hope of ever unwinding anything in time, while my mind is on fire.
(Clytemnestra comes out of the palace again.)
Clytemnestra. Go inside, you too. I mean you, Cassandra. Zeus, without anger, has made you a sharer in the holy water of this house, standing with many other slaves beside the altar of the god who guards its wealth. Get down from this chariot, and do not be too proud. Even Alcmene's son, they say, was once sold, and put up with eating the bread of a slave. And if necessity tips the scale this way, there is much to be thankful for in masters whose wealth is old. Those who reap a rich harvest they never hoped for are cruel to their slaves in everything, and beyond the measure. From us you get what custom allows.
Chorus. She has finished speaking to you, and plainly. You are caught inside the nets of fate. Perhaps you will obey, if you are going to obey. Perhaps you will not.
Clytemnestra. Well, unless she twitters in some unknown barbarian tongue, like a swallow, my words are reaching inside her mind, and I am winning her round.
Chorus. Go with her. What she says is the best of what is left to you. Do as she says. Leave your seat in the chariot.
Clytemnestra. I have no time to waste out here at the door with this woman. The sheep are already standing at the central hearth for the slaughter, for a joy we never hoped we would have. As for you, if you are going to do any of this, do not waste time. But if you do not understand and are not taking in what I say, then instead of your voice, make a sign with your barbarian hand.
Chorus. The stranger seems to need an interpreter, a clear one. She is like a wild animal, just caught.
Clytemnestra. She is mad. She listens to her own sick mind. She has come here leaving a city just taken, and she does not know how to carry the bit until she has foamed her rage away in blood. I will not throw more words at her and be insulted.
(Clytemnestra goes back into the house.)
Chorus. I will not be angry with her. I pity her. Come, poor woman, leave the chariot empty. Give in to this necessity, and put on the new yoke.
Cassandra. Otototoi, popoi, da! Apollo! Apollo!
Chorus. Why are you crying otototoi over Apollo? He is not the kind of god who has anything to do with mourning.
Cassandra. Otototoi, popoi, da! Apollo! Apollo!
Chorus. Again she calls on the god with ill-omened cries, a god who has no business standing by at a lament.
Cassandra. Apollo, Apollo, god of the roads, my destroyer. Your name says it. You have destroyed me, and it cost you nothing, this second time.
Chorus. She is going to prophesy, it seems, about her own troubles. The god's gift stays in her mind, slave though she is.
Cassandra. Apollo, Apollo, god of the roads, my destroyer. Ah, where have you brought me? To what kind of house?
Chorus. To the house of the sons of Atreus. If you do not understand that, I am telling you. And you will not say it is a lie.
Cassandra. No. To a house that hates the gods, a house that has seen too much: kin killing kin, heads cut off, a slaughterhouse for men, a floor spattered with blood.
Chorus. The stranger seems to have a nose like a hound's. She is on the scent, and she will find the blood.
Cassandra. Here is the evidence I trust: those babies, crying over their own slaughter, their roasted flesh eaten by their father.
Chorus. We had heard of your fame as a prophet. But we are not looking for any prophets here.
Cassandra. Oh, popoi, what is she plotting? What is this new grief? Great, great is the evil she is plotting in this house, unbearable to the people who are its own, past any cure. And help stands far away.
Chorus. These prophecies I know nothing about. But those others I understood. The whole city is shouting them.
Cassandra. Oh, wretched woman, you will do it, then? The husband who shares your bed: you wash him bright in the bath, and then, how do I say the end? It will be soon. Hand after hand she stretches out, reaching.
Chorus. I still do not follow. Now, after riddles, I am helpless before oracles with a film over their eyes.
Cassandra. E, e! Papai, papai! What is this that shows itself? Is it some net of Hades? No. The net is the woman who shares his bed, who shares the guilt of murder. Let the pack that never has enough of this family scream in triumph over a sacrifice that should be answered with stoning.
Chorus. What Fury is this you are calling to raise its cry over this house? Your words do not brighten me. The blood runs back to my heart, yellow as saffron, the way it does for a man struck down, when it ends together with the last rays of his life. And Ruin comes fast.
Cassandra. Ah, ah, look, look! Keep the bull away from the cow! She has caught him in the robe, her trick with the black horn, and she strikes. He falls in the vessel full of water. It is a cauldron of treacherous murder I am telling you of.
Chorus. I would not boast that I am a fine judge of oracles, but I make this out to be some evil. From oracles what good word ever comes to men? Through evil, the wordy arts of prophets bring men to learn fear.
Cassandra. Oh, oh, the bad luck of my wretched fate! It is my own suffering I cry out now, poured on top of the rest. Why have you brought me here, poor thing that I am? For nothing, except to die with him. What else?
Chorus. Your mind is out of itself, some god is carrying you, and you cry over yourself a song that is no song, like that brown bird who never has enough of crying, ah, in her wretched heart, moaning Itys, Itys, a life that flowers on both sides with grief, the nightingale.
Cassandra. Oh, oh, the fate of the clear-voiced nightingale! The gods wrapped her in a feathered body and gave her a sweet life, without tears. What waits for me is the split of a two-edged blade.
Chorus. Where do they come from, these rushing, god-driven pains that mean nothing? Why do you beat out the terrible things in a song of ugly screams and high straining notes? Where did you learn the landmarks on this road of prophecy, a road of evil words?
Cassandra. Oh, the marriage, the marriage of Paris, death to the ones he loved. Oh, Scamander, the river my fathers drank from. Once, poor wretch, I was raised beside your banks, and grew up there. Now beside Cocytus and the banks of Acheron I think I will soon be singing my prophecies.
Chorus. What is this word you have said, far too clear? A newborn child could hear it and understand. I am struck through, as by a bloody fang, by your bitter fate, as you cry your small sad cries, things that break me to hear.
Cassandra. Oh, the pains, the pains of my city, destroyed to the last. Oh, my father's sacrifices before the walls, the herds killed, the cattle from the pasture, and they were no cure at all, they could not stop the city suffering what it has. And I, my mind on fire, will soon be thrown to the ground.
Chorus. These words follow the ones before. Some god who means you harm falls on you with all his weight and makes you sing of sufferings, groaning, full of death. And the end of it I cannot find.
Cassandra. Now my prophecy will no longer look out at you from behind a veil, like a bride on her wedding morning. It is going to come clear and rushing, like a wind that blows into the sunrise, so that a grief far bigger than mine breaks like a wave against the light. I will not teach you in riddles any more. And be my witnesses. Run beside me while I follow the scent of crimes done long ago. There is a choir that never leaves this roof. It sings in unison, and the sound is ugly, because what it sings is not good. And it has been drinking, this gang of revellers that stays in the house and cannot be got out of the door: it has drunk human blood to make itself bolder, this troop of Furies born with the family. They sit in the house and sing their song, the song of the first ruin that began it all, and each in turn they spit in disgust at a brother's bed and hate the man who trampled it. Did I miss? Or did I hit something, like an archer? Or am I a lying prophet, a babbler who knocks on doors? Swear it first, and then be my witness: I know the story of this house's old sins.
Chorus. And how could an oath, however honestly the pledge was made, cure anything? But I am amazed at you. You were raised across the sea, and you speak of a city that talks another language as if you had been standing right there.
Cassandra. The prophet Apollo set me to this work.
Chorus. Surely not a god, struck with desire?
Cassandra. Before now I was ashamed to talk about this.
Chorus. Yes. Everyone is more delicate when things are going well.
Cassandra. But he was a wrestler, and he breathed his favour on me hard.
Chorus. And did the two of you come to the making of children, in the usual way?
Cassandra. I gave Apollo my consent, and then I cheated him.
Chorus. Were you already taken by the god's art by then?
Cassandra. Already I was prophesying to my people every suffering that was coming.
Chorus. Then how did Apollo's anger leave you unharmed?
Cassandra. After that fault I could persuade no one of anything.
Chorus. To us, at least, what you prophesy seems worth believing.
Cassandra. Iou, iou! Oh, oh, the pain! Again the terrible labour of true prophecy spins me and shakes me with its opening notes, and the opening is dreadful. Do you see them, these children sitting by the house, young, like the shapes in dreams? Children killed, it seems, by the people who should have loved them, their hands full of meat, their own flesh for food, holding up their guts and innards, a load that would make you weep, plain to see. And their father tasted them. For that, I tell you, someone is planning to make them pay: a lion with no courage, rolling in the bed, keeping the house, oh, against my master when he comes home. My master, yes. I have to wear the yoke of slavery now. And the commander of the ships, the man who turned Troy upside down, does not know what that hateful bitch's tongue is going to bring him, by an evil stroke of luck. She licked his hand. She talked, and stretched her ears out in gladness, like a Ruin that works in secret. That is her daring: the female is the killer of the male. What hateful monster can I call her and hit the mark? A two-headed snake? Some Scylla living in the rocks, the wreck of sailors? A raging mother out of Hades, breathing a war without truce against her own family? And how she shouted for joy, that woman who dares anything, as if the battle had turned, while she pretended to be glad he had come home safe. Whether I convince you of any of this or not makes no difference. Why should it? What is coming will come. And soon you will stand here and see it, and pity me, and say I was a prophet who told too much truth.
Chorus. Thyestes' feast on his children's flesh: that I understood, and I shudder, and fear has hold of me, hearing it told true, with nothing made up to look like truth. But the rest of it I heard and fell off the track, and now I am running blind.
Cassandra. I say you will see Agamemnon dead.
Chorus. Poor girl, put your mouth to sleep. Say something lucky.
Cassandra. There is no healing god standing over these words.
Chorus. No, not if it is really going to happen. But let it not, somehow.
Cassandra. You pray. Their business is killing.
Chorus. What man is getting this pollution ready?
Cassandra. Then you have wandered a very long way off the track of my prophecies.
Chorus. I do not understand how the one who does it will do it.
Cassandra. And yet I know Greek. I know it far too well.
Chorus. So do the oracles from Delphi, and they are still hard to understand.
Cassandra. Papai! What fire! It is coming over me. Otototoi! Apollo, Wolf-god, oh, me, me! This two-footed lioness, who sleeps with a wolf while the noble lion is away, is going to kill me, poor wretch that I am. She is brewing a drug, and she swears she will mix my wages into her anger too. She is sharpening the sword for the man, to pay back murder for bringing me here. So why do I still wear these things that make a joke of me, the staff and the prophet's wreaths around my neck? You, at least, I will destroy before my own hour comes.
(She breaks the staff and throws it down with the wreaths and the rest of her prophet's dress, and tramples them.)
Go to ruin! There. You are on the ground, and that is how I pay you back. Make some other woman rich in ruin instead of me. Look, Apollo himself is stripping me of the prophet's dress. He watched me in this finery being laughed at, laughed at hard, by friends who were enemies, all of them of one mind, and all for nothing. They called me a wandering beggar-woman, a fortune-teller at the door, a starving wretch, and I bore it. And now the prophet has finished with his prophetess and led me away to this, to a death like this. Instead of my father's altar a butcher's block is waiting for me, hot with the red blood of the victim cut down before the sacrifice, and the victim is me. But we will not die unhonoured by the gods. Someone else will come, another avenger for us, a child who kills his mother, a son who makes men pay for his father. An exile, a wanderer, a stranger to this land, he will come back and set the coping-stone on these ruins for his family. For the gods have sworn a great oath: the body of his father, lying on its back, will bring him home. Why do I stand here wailing and pitying myself? I saw the city of Troy fare as it fared, and the men who took the city are ending like this, by the gods' judgement. I will go and do it. I will bear dying. I greet these doors as the gates of Hades. And I pray for a clean stroke, so that I close these eyes without a struggle, with the blood running out and death coming easy.
Chorus. Woman, you have suffered so much and you know so much, and you have gone on a long time. But if you really know your own death, how can you walk to the altar so bravely, like a cow the god drives?
Cassandra. There is no escape, friends. No. Not with any more time.
Chorus. But the last of the time is worth the most.
Cassandra. The day is here. I would gain very little by running.
Chorus. Then know this: you are bearing it with a brave heart.
Cassandra. Nobody says that to the happy ones.
Chorus. But to die with honour is a grace for a mortal.
Cassandra. Oh, father. Oh, for you and your noble children.
(She stops at the door and turns back.)
Chorus. What is it? What fear is turning you back?
Cassandra. Oh. Oh.
Chorus. Why that cry? Unless it is some horror in your mind.
Cassandra. The house breathes murder. It drips blood.
Chorus. And what of it? That is the smell of the sacrifices at the hearth.
Cassandra. It is the same kind of breath that comes off a grave.
Chorus. That is not Syrian incense you are describing, to make the house splendid.
Cassandra. Well, I will go in, and wail inside the house too, for my own fate and Agamemnon's. Enough of life. Oh, friends. I am not shrinking in fear like a bird at a bush for no reason. When I am dead, be my witnesses to this: when a woman dies for me, a woman, and a man falls for the man who married badly. I ask this of you as a guest's gift, now that I am going to die.
Chorus. Poor woman, I pity you for the death you have foretold.
Cassandra. Once more I want to speak, one speech, not a dirge, my own, for myself. I pray to the sun, in the last of his light I will see, that my enemies, my murderers, pay my avengers in the same coin for a slave killed, an easy thing to overpower. Oh, the affairs of men. When they go well, a shadow can turn them over. When they go badly, a wet sponge, a few strokes, and the picture is gone. And of the two, it is the second I pity far more.
(She goes into the house.)
Chorus. Doing well is a thing no mortal ever gets enough of. Nobody points at a great house and turns it away from the door with the words, Come in no more. And to this man the blessed gods gave Priam's city to take, and he comes home honoured by heaven. But now, if he must pay for the blood of those before him, and by dying for the dead bring other deaths to pass in payment, what mortal, hearing this, could boast he was born to a fate that does him no harm?
(A cry comes from inside the house.)
Agamemnon. Oh! I am hit. A deep blow, a deadly one, in here.
Chorus. Quiet. Who is that crying out, hit with a deadly blow?
Agamemnon. Oh! Again. I am hit a second time.
Chorus. The deed is done, I think, by the king's groaning. But let us put our heads together, in case there is some safe plan.
(The old men speak one after another, each giving his own view.)
Chorus. I tell you my opinion: shout for the townspeople, call them here to the house.
I say we break in as fast as we can and prove the deed while the sword is still dripping.
I share that opinion, and I vote we do something. This is no time to hang back.
It is plain to see. Their first move announces what they mean for the city: a tyranny.
Yes, because we are wasting time. And they are trampling the fine name of Delay into the dirt, and their hands are not asleep.
I do not know what plan I could hit on to propose. The man who acts should be the man who plans it too.
I am the same. I cannot find a way to raise a dead man again with words.
What, are we to drag our lives out like this and bow to these men who defile the house, and let them lead us?
No. It cannot be borne. Better to die. Death is a gentler fate than tyranny.
Are we really going to take groans as evidence and prophesy that the man is dead?
We should know for certain before we get angry about it. Guessing is one thing and knowing is another.
That is the view I find myself pushed into from every side: to find out clearly how it stands with the son of Atreus.
(The doors of the house open. Agamemnon lies dead in a silver bath, tangled in the robe, and Cassandra's body lies beside his. Clytemnestra stands over them with the sword in her hand.)
Clytemnestra. I said a great deal before to suit the moment, and I will not be ashamed to say the opposite now. How else could a woman, working out hatred against people she hated, people who pretended to be her friends, fence in the nets of ruin too high to jump out of? This contest is an old one, from an old quarrel. I have been thinking about it for a long time, and it has come at last, late as it is. I stand where I struck, over the work as I finished it. And I did it like this, and I will not deny it: so that he could neither run from his death nor fight it off, I threw a net around him with no way out, the kind you throw for fish, a robe, a rich and deadly robe. I struck him twice, and with two groans his legs went from under him. And when he was down I gave him a third blow, a thank-offering to the Zeus under the earth who keeps the dead safe, a prayer fulfilled. So he lay there and coughed his life out, and as he blew out the sharp spurt of his blood he hit me with a dark spray of bloody dew. And I was glad of it. It fell on me like rain from heaven on the sprouting corn, and I was as glad as the corn is, when the buds are being born. Since that is how things are, old men of Argos, be glad of it, if you can be glad. I exult in it. And if it were the right thing to pour a libation over a dead body, over this one it would be just. It would be more than just. He filled a great bowl in this house with so many cursed evils, and now he has come home and drunk it down himself.
Chorus. We are amazed at your tongue, how bold it is in your mouth, to boast a speech like that over your husband.
Clytemnestra. You are testing me as if I were a woman with no sense. My heart does not tremble, and I say this to people who know it already. Praise me or blame me, it is all the same. This is Agamemnon, my husband, and a corpse, the work of this right hand, a craftsman who did justice. That is how things stand.
Chorus. Woman, what evil thing did you eat that grew out of the earth, what did you drink that welled up from the running sea, that you took this sacrifice on yourself, and the curses the people roar? You threw him off. You cut him off. And you will be cut off from the city, a huge hatred to its people.
Clytemnestra. Now you sentence me to exile from the city, to the hatred of the townspeople and the curses the people roar. But then you brought nothing against this man. He thought no more of it than the death of a sheep, when his flocks were thick with fleece: he sacrificed his own child, the child I bore, my dearest labour, to charm the winds of Thrace. Was it not him you should have driven out of this land, to pay for the filth he brought on it? But when you hear what I have done, you are a hard judge. Well, I tell you this. Threaten me like that, and understand that I am ready: if you beat me by force, on equal terms, you rule me. But if the god decides otherwise, you will learn, late as the lesson comes, to keep yourselves in hand.
Chorus. Your plans are big and your talk is arrogant. Just as your mind is mad with the luck that drips with slaughter, so the smear of blood on your eyes shows plain. Unhonoured yet, stripped of your friends, you will pay blow for blow.
Clytemnestra. Then hear this too, the right I swear by: by Justice, who brought my child's case to its end, by Ruin, and by the Fury, to whom I cut this man's throat, hope does not walk the halls of fear for me, so long as Aegisthus lights the fire on my hearth and keeps faith with me as he has before. He is no small shield for my confidence. Here lies the man who wronged his wife, the pet of every Chryseis under the walls of Troy. And here she lies, his prisoner, his seer, his bedfellow, his faithful whore who talked oracles and knew the sailors' benches as well as he did. The two have got what they deserved. He, like that. She, like a swan, sang her last dying lament and lies here, his lover. And to me she has brought a side dish for my bed, an extra to my pleasure.
Chorus. Oh, if only some fate would come, quickly, without too much pain, without long lying in bed, and bring us the sleep that never ends, that lasts for ever, now that our kindest guardian is brought down, who suffered so much for a woman's sake and has lost his life at a woman's hand.
Chorus. Oh, oh, Helen, out of your mind, one woman who destroyed so many, so very many lives under Troy. Now you have put on your last crown, the one they will remember, for blood that cannot be washed out. Truly there was a spirit of strife in this house then, strong-built, and a man's misery.
Clytemnestra. Do not pray for a share of death because these things weigh on you, and do not turn your anger on Helen as a killer of men, as if she alone destroyed the lives of so many Greeks and worked a pain that nothing can heal.
Chorus. Spirit that falls on this house and on the two grandsons of Tantalus, you rule through women with a strength that matches theirs, and it bites at my heart. She stands over the body like a hateful crow, against all law, and glories in the song she sings.
Clytemnestra. Now you have set your mouth's judgement straight, calling on the spirit of this family, the one fattened three times over. He is the one who feeds the lust for lapping blood in the belly of this house: before the old wound stops hurting, there is new blood.
Chorus. Yes, a great spirit you speak of, a heavy anger that keeps this house. Oh, oh, an evil tale to tell, of a ruinous fate that is never full. Ie, ie, through Zeus, the cause of all, the worker of all. For what is brought to pass for mortals without Zeus? Which of these things is not the gods' doing?
Chorus. Oh, oh, my King, my King, how shall I weep for you? What can I say, out of a heart that loved you? You lie in this spider's web, breathing your life out in a godless death. Oh, oh, this bed no free man should lie on, brought down by a treacherous death from your wife's hand, with a two-edged weapon.
Clytemnestra. You claim this deed is mine? Do not even count me as Agamemnon's wife. It was the old, bitter avenger of Atreus, that cruel host at the feast, who took the shape of this dead man's wife and paid him back with this, a grown man sacrificed on top of the children.
Chorus. That you are guiltless of this murder, who will witness that? How? How? And yet the avenger from his father's side could have been your helper. Ares, the black god of war, forces his way on through streams of kindred blood, and wherever he goes forward he will grant justice for the clotted gore of children eaten.
Chorus. Oh, oh, my King, my King, how shall I weep for you? What can I say, out of a heart that loved you? You lie in this spider's web, breathing your life out in a godless death. Oh, oh, this bed no free man should lie on, brought down by a treacherous death from your wife's hand, with a two-edged weapon.
Clytemnestra. I do not think his death was one no free man should die. Did he not bring a treacherous ruin on this house himself? He did to the child I grew from him, Iphigenia, so much wept for, what he deserved to suffer for. Let him not boast in Hades: killed by the sword, he has paid with death for what he began.
Chorus. I have no plan. I am stripped of the ready thought that could tell me where to turn, and the house is falling. I am afraid of the beat of the rain of blood that shakes the house: it is not drops any more. And Fate is sharpening justice for another deed of harm on other whetstones.
Chorus. Oh, earth, earth, if only you had taken me before I saw this man lying low in the silver-sided bath. Who will bury him? Who will sing his dirge? Will you dare do it, you who killed your own husband, to wail over him and pay his soul a graceless grace for great things done, and wrong him again? Who will speak the praise over the godlike man's tomb, with tears falling, and labour at it with truth in his heart?
Clytemnestra. That care is not yours to trouble about. By our hands he fell, he died, and we will bury him, and not with weeping from the house. No: Iphigenia, his daughter, as she should, will meet her father gladly at the fast-running ferry of sorrows, and throw her arms around him, and kiss him.
Chorus. Here comes reproach to answer reproach. It is hard to judge. The robber is robbed. The killer pays. And it stays, while Zeus stays on his throne: the doer must suffer. That is the law. Who could throw the seed of the curse out of the house? The family is glued to ruin.
Clytemnestra. You have walked into that prophecy with the truth on your side. And I, for my part, am willing to swear an oath to the spirit of the house of Pleisthenes: I will be content with this, hard as it is to bear, and for the rest, let him go out of this house and wear down some other family with deaths inside itself. A small share of the goods is enough for me, all I want, if I can take the madness of kin killing kin out of these halls.
(Aegisthus comes in with armed men behind him.)
Aegisthus. Kind light of the day that brings justice! Now at last I can say that the gods who avenge men look down from above on the sufferings of the earth, now that I see this man lying here, to my delight, in the woven robe the Furies made, paying in full for the schemes of his father's hand. For Atreus, who ruled this land, this man's father, when his right to rule was challenged, drove my father Thyestes, to say it plainly, his own brother, out of the city and out of his home. And when the wretched Thyestes came back as a suppliant to the hearth, he found a fate safe enough for himself: he did not die and stain his native ground with his own blood. But as his guest-gift, this man's godless father Atreus, more eager than friendly, pretending to keep a feast-day cheerfully with a meal of meat, served my father a dinner of his own children's flesh. The feet, and the fingers spread out to their tips, he broke off and hid underneath, and the men sat each at his own table. My father took the unrecognisable pieces at once, not knowing, and ate a meal that has been, as you see, the ruin of the family. Then he realised the unholy thing that had been done and screamed, and fell back vomiting the butchered flesh, and called down a fate too heavy to bear on the house of Pelops, kicking the table over to go with his curse: so perish the whole race of Pleisthenes. That is why you see this man fallen here. And I am the one who stitched this murder together, and justly. He drove me out too, with my miserable father, the third child, a baby still in swaddling clothes. But I grew up, and Justice brought me home again. I laid hands on this man from outside the house, and I put together every piece of the plan that undid him. So now even death would be a fine thing for me, having seen him in the net of Justice.
Chorus. Aegisthus, I have no respect for outrage in the middle of misery. You say you killed this man on purpose, and that you alone planned this pitiful murder. Then I say your head will not escape, in a court of justice, the curses the people throw, and the stones. Be sure of it.
Aegisthus. You talk like that, you, sitting at the lower oar, when the men on the upper bench hold the ship? Old as you are, you will learn how heavy a lesson is for a man your age, when the lesson set is to keep yourself in hand. Chains and the pangs of hunger, even in old age, are the very best prophet-doctors for teaching the mind. You have eyes. Do you not see this? Do not kick against the goad. You will hit it and hurt yourself.
Chorus. Woman. You stayed at home and waited for the men to come back from the fighting, disgracing a man's bed all the while, and you plotted this death for the general of the army?
Aegisthus. Those words too will be the start of your tears. You have a tongue that is the opposite of Orpheus's. He led everything after him with joy at his voice. You have stirred us up with your childish yelping, and you will be led away. When you are mastered you will look tamer.
Chorus. So you are going to be tyrant over the men of Argos, you, who planned this man's death and then did not have the courage to do the deed with your own hand?
Aegisthus. Because the trapping was clearly the woman's job. I was an old enemy, and suspected. But now I will try to rule the citizens with this man's money. And the one who does not obey, I will yoke him under a heavy yoke, and he will be no well-fed trace-horse on barley for me. No. Hunger, that hateful lodger who lives with darkness, will see him gentle.
Chorus. Then why, out of the cowardice of your soul, did you not kill the man yourself? Why did a woman kill him, a pollution on the land and on the gods of the land? Does Orestes still see the light somewhere, so that he can come home with luck on his side and kill this pair, and win outright?
Aegisthus. Since you mean to act and talk like this, you will learn soon. Come on, my men, my guard: your work is not far off.
Chorus. Come on, then. Every man get his sword ready, hand on the hilt.
Aegisthus. I have my hand on my hilt too, and I do not refuse to die.
Chorus. Die, you say. We take the omen. We choose that luck.
Clytemnestra. No, dearest of men. Let us not do any more harm. Even this is a great deal to reap, a wretched harvest. There is enough suffering already. Let us not have more blood. Go home, honoured old men, and give way to what is fated before you get hurt. What we did had to be done. And if this trouble turns out to be enough, we will accept it, struck hard as we have been by the heavy claw of the spirit. That is a woman's counsel, if anyone thinks it worth learning.
Aegisthus. But that these men should pick the flowers of empty talk and throw them at me, and fling out words like that, and put their luck to the test, and miss the sensible line, and insult the man in power!
Chorus. It would not be like men of Argos to fawn on a coward.
Aegisthus. I will come after you yet, in the days to come.
Chorus. Not if the god steers Orestes home.
Aegisthus. I know how exiles feed on hope.
Chorus. Go on. Get fat, and dirty justice, while you can.
Aegisthus. Know that you will pay me for this stupidity.
Chorus. Crow away, brave, like a cock beside his hen.
Clytemnestra. Pay no attention to their empty yelping. You and I are masters of this house, and you and I will set this house in order.
(Argos, years after the murder of Agamemnon. His tomb stands in the open ground before the palace. Orestes comes in with his friend Pylades and lays a lock of his hair on the grave.)
Orestes. Hermes of the underworld, you who watch over the powers your father handed down to you: be my saviour, fight at my side, I am asking you. I have come back to this land. I have come home from exile. Here on the mound of this tomb I call to my father to hear me, to listen. Here is a lock of hair for Inachus, the river of my home, in thanks for the years it raised me, and here is a second one, for grief. Because I was not here to cry over your death, father, and I never stretched out my hand when they carried your body to the grave.
What is this I am looking at? What is this crowd of women coming this way, so plain to see in their black cloaks? What kind of trouble should I read into it? Has some new blow fallen on the house? Or would I be right to guess that they are carrying offerings to my father, drink poured out to soothe the dead below? It can be nothing else. Yes, that is Electra, I think, my own sister, walking with them, and her bitter grief marks her out. Zeus, let me pay back my father's death, and be my willing ally.
Pylades, let us stand out of the way, so I can find out for certain what these women have come here to pray for.
(Orestes and Pylades step back out of sight. Electra comes in with the women of the house, slaves, who carry the offerings for the grave.)
Chorus. Sent out from the house, I have come to carry the offerings, and my hands beat the time, sharp blow on blow. My cheek shows it, torn red, where the nail has cut fresh furrows, and all my life long my heart feeds on crying. Grief has ripped the linen to rags, the weaving of my dress is torn across the breast, the cloth struck down by blows of fortune that no one laughs at.
Chorus. For Terror, with his hair standing on end, the dream-prophet of this house, breathing anger out of sleep, screamed in the dead of night from the innermost rooms, a cry of fear that fell heavy on the women's quarters. And the readers of dreams, speaking for the god, under oath, cried out that the dead under the earth are furious, that they blame, that they rage at the ones who killed them.
Chorus. With that kind of thanks, a thankless thanks, to turn the evil away, Oh, Earth, my mother, the godless woman sends me here. I am afraid to let the words out of my mouth. What ransom is there for blood once it has fallen on the ground? Oh, hearth of pure misery, Oh, house dug up to its foundations! Sunless, hated by men, the dark covers this house since its master was killed.
Chorus. The awe of majesty that nothing could fight, nothing could tame, nothing could break in war, that went in through the ears and the hearts of the people, stands aside now. And people are afraid. Success: that, among men, is a god, and more than a god. But the scales of Justice keep watch. For some the blow comes fast, in daylight; for some, pain waits and ripens in the twilight between; and some an empty night holds fast.
Chorus. Because of blood drunk down by the earth that nursed us, the murder that wants payment has set hard and will not drain away. Ruin, an agony, splits the guilty man till he swells with a sickness that fills him whole.
Chorus. For the man who touches a bride's bed that is not his there is no cure. All the rivers, flowing in one course to wash the blood from the polluted hand, run for nothing.
Chorus. And I, since the gods threw a necessity around my city and led me out of my father's house into a slave's lot, I must approve what my masters do, just and unjust, forcing my heart down, and master my bitter hatred. But under my veil I weep for the senseless fate of my lord, frozen through with hidden grief.
Electra. You slave women who keep this house in order: since you are here beside me, walking with me in this procession of prayer, advise me about this. What should I say as I pour these offerings of mourning? How do I find kind words? How do I pray to my father? Do I say I bring them from a loving wife to a loved husband, from my mother? I have not got the nerve for that, and I do not know what I should say as I pour this offering onto my father's tomb. Or do I say the words people usually say, "Repay with good the ones who send these honours," a gift, that is, to match their crimes? Or do I pour them out in silence and dishonour, the way my father died, for the earth to drink, and then walk back the way I came, like someone throwing out the rubbish after a purification, tossing the bowl away without turning my eyes? Share this decision with me, friends. We share a hatred in this house. Do not hide your thoughts in your heart out of fear of anyone. What is fated waits for the free man and for the one whom another's hand rules over. If you have something better to say than this, say it.
Chorus. I honour your father's tomb as if it were an altar, and since you tell me to, I will say what my heart says.
Electra. Say it, as you honour my father's grave.
Chorus. Pour, and speak good words for the people who mean us well.
Electra. And which of the people I love do I call by that name?
Chorus. Yourself first, and then anyone who hates Aegisthus.
Electra. Then I am to make this prayer for myself and for you?
Chorus. You see it now. Work the rest out yourself.
Electra. Then who else do I add to our side?
Chorus. Remember Orestes, even though he is far from home.
Electra. Good. That is the best reminder you could have given me.
Chorus. Now, for the guilty ones who did the killing, remember —
Electra. What do I say? Teach me, I have never done this. Show me the form.
Chorus. That someone come for them, a god or a man —
Electra. A judge, do you mean, or an avenger?
Chorus. Say it plainly: someone who will kill them in return.
Electra. And is it right for me to ask the gods for that?
Chorus. How could it not be right, to pay back an enemy with harm?
Electra. Greatest of heralds, of the world above and the world below, Hermes of the underworld, help me. Carry my call to the spirits under the earth, the ones who keep watch over my father's house, and tell them to hear my prayers. And call Earth herself, who gives birth to everything, and rears it, and takes its swelling harvest back again. And I, as I pour this water to the dead, call on my father and say: pity me, and pity Orestes, whom I love. How are we to be masters in our own house again? Because as things stand we have been sold, we are drifting, thanks to the woman who bore us, and she has taken another man in exchange for you: Aegisthus, who shared in your murder. I am no better than a slave. Orestes is driven out of his inheritance, and the two of them are wallowing in the winnings of your work, and the arrogance of it is enormous. That Orestes may come home, with some luck on his side, I pray to you, father. Hear me. And for myself, grant that I turn out far more decent than my mother, and my hand far cleaner.
Those are the prayers for us. For our enemies I say this: father, let your avenger appear, and let the killers be killed in their turn, as Justice demands. I set that in the middle of my prayer for good, speaking this curse against them. But to us, send up good things from below, with the help of the gods and Earth and Justice who brings victory.
(Electra pours the offerings out over her father's grave.)
Those are my prayers, and over them I pour these offerings. It is your part, by custom, to crown them with your cries, and raise the song for the dead.
Chorus. Let the tear fall, splashing as it drops, for our lord who has fallen, onto this rampart against evil, this ward against the pollution the good turn from and pray away, now the offerings are poured. Hear me, hear me, my honoured lord, out of the dark where your mind lies. Otototototoi. Let some man come, strong with the spear, to set the house free, an Ares, with the Scythian bow bending back in his hands, shaking its arrows in the fight, swinging a sword hilt-to-hand at close quarters.
Electra. My father has his offerings now, the earth has drunk them. But here is something new. Share it with me.
Chorus. Say it. My heart is dancing with fear.
Electra. I see a lock of hair here, cut off and left on the tomb.
Chorus. A man's? Or some girl's, with the deep belt at her waist?
Electra. That is easy for anyone to guess.
Chorus. How so? Let the old learn from the young.
Electra. There is no one who could have cut it but me.
Chorus. True. The ones who should have mourned him with their hair are his enemies.
Electra. And look, to my eye it is very like, the same feather as —
Chorus. Like whose hair? That is what I want to know.
Electra. Very like our own, to look at.
Chorus. Then can it be a secret gift from Orestes?
Electra. It is his curls it looks like most.
Chorus. And how did he dare to come here?
Electra. He sent it. He cut his hair and sent it, to honour his father.
Chorus. What you say gives me no less to cry over, if he is never going to set foot on this land again.
Electra. Over my heart too a wave of bitterness has broken, and I am struck as if a spear had gone right through me. Out of my eyes fall thirsty drops, nothing holds them back, a winter flood, as I look at this lock of hair. How can I expect that any other person in this town owns it? And she certainly did not cut it, the murderess, my mother, whose feeling for her children is godless and does not deserve the name of mother. But as for me, how can I say outright that this is a gift to me from Orestes, the dearest man alive? Hope is fawning on me.
Electra. Oh. If only it had a voice, and could speak kindly, like a messenger, so that I would not be torn two ways and shaken, but it would tell me plainly to spit this lock out, if it was cut from a head I hate, or, if it came from my own blood, it could grieve with me, an ornament on this tomb, an honour to my father. But we call on the gods, who know what storms are spinning us round, like sailors. And if we are meant to reach safety, from a small seed a great trunk can grow. And look, footprints, a second piece of proof, the same shape as mine, matching my own feet. Yes, here are the outlines of two pairs of feet, his own, and some companion who travelled with him. The heels, the lines of the tendons, measured out, come to exactly the same as my own tracks. I am in labour with this. It is destroying my mind.
(Orestes comes out from where he was hidden and stands in front of her.)
Orestes. Pray for the rest as well. Tell the gods your prayers have been answered, and ask that what comes next goes well.
Electra. Why? What have I got now, by the will of the gods?
Orestes. You have come face to face with what you prayed for so long.
Electra. And what person do you know that I was calling on?
Orestes. I know you were crying out for Orestes, again and again.
Electra. Then how has my prayer been answered?
Orestes. Here I am. Do not look for anyone closer to you than me.
Electra. Is this some trick you are weaving around me, stranger?
Orestes. Then I am spinning plots against myself.
Electra. No. You want to laugh at my misery.
Orestes. Then at my own too, if I laugh at yours.
Electra. Am I to call you Orestes, then? Is it really you?
Orestes. You are looking at the man himself, and you are slow to know me. Yet when you saw this lock of mourning hair, and when you were tracking my footprints, your heart took wing and you were sure you saw me. Look. Put the hair back where it was cut from, your own brother's hair, and see how it matches my head. And look at this weaving, the work of your own hands, the strokes of the batten, and the hunting scene in the design. Hold yourself together. Do not let joy knock your mind loose. I know that the people closest to us are bitter enemies to us both.
Electra. Oh, dearest of all to your father's house, the hope we wept for, the seed that saves the line, trust your own strength and you will win your father's house back. Oh, face I love, that has four shares of love in it for me. I have to call you father; and the love I owe a mother falls to you, because her I hate, with every right; and the love for my sister, slaughtered without pity; and you were my faithful brother, the one person who honoured me. May Power and Justice, and Zeus with them, the third, greatest of all, stand at your side.
Orestes. Zeus, Zeus, look down on what is happening here. See the brood of an eagle whose father is dead, dead in the coils, in the twisting knots of a terrible snake. The orphans are pinched with starving hunger, because they are not grown enough to bring their father's kill back to the nest. That is what you see when you look at me, and at her, at Electra, children robbed of their father, both of us driven out of the same house. If you destroy the nestlings of a father who sacrificed to you and honoured you so highly, where will you find another hand like his to give you the rich feast? Destroy the eagle's brood, and you will never again send signs that men can believe; and if this royal trunk is left to wither, it will not serve your altars on the days when oxen are slaughtered. Look after it. From something small you could raise this house to greatness again, though it looks now as if it has fallen flat.
Chorus. Children, saviours of your father's hearth, quiet, so that no one hears you, children, and carries all this to the ones in power for the pleasure of talking. May I see them dead one day, in the pitch, in the ooze of the flame.
Orestes. Apollo's oracle will not betray me, it is too strong. It ordered me to run this risk to the end, and cried out to me at the top of its voice, naming ruin after ruin, storms of it, to chill the warm blood under my liver, if I do not go after the men who killed my father, and kill them the same way they killed him, made wild as a bull by a penalty no money can pay. He said that I myself would pay for it with my own dear life, and suffer a great deal first, and none of it pleasant. Because he showed men what the anger of the dead under the earth does to the living, and he named the plagues: sores that climb onto the flesh with savage jaws and eat away what a man was born with, and white hair sprouting on the diseased place. And he spoke of other attacks the Furies make, set in motion by a father's blood: the dark arrow of the powers below, loosed when kin who fell cry out for vengeance, and madness, and empty terrors in the night, that harass a man and drive him, a man who sees clearly and yet has to feel his way in the dark, and hound him out of his city, his body flayed by a scourge of beaten bronze. And for such a man, the god said, there is no share in the wine-bowl, no drop of the friendly offering; his father's anger, unseen, bars him from the altar; no one takes him in, no one shelters him; and in the end, dishonoured by everyone, without a friend, he dies, badly, wasted to a husk by a death that spoils him whole. Oracles like that: must I not trust them? And even if I do not trust them, the thing has to be done. Many wishes come together into one: the god's commands, and my great grief for my father, and the pinch of having nothing, which presses too, and this: that my fellow citizens, the most famous men alive, who uprooted Troy with glory in their hearts, should not be the subjects of two women. Because his heart is a woman's. If not, he will soon find out.
Chorus. You great Fates, by the power of Zeus, let this end the way Justice is now turning. For a word of hatred let a word of hatred be paid. That is the debt collected, and Justice shouts it as she collects. For a murderous blow let a murderous blow be paid. The doer must suffer. That is the saying, three generations old.
Orestes. Father, unhappy father, what can I say, what can I do, to reach you on a fair wind from far away, there where your bed holds you, a light to set against your dark? And yet a song of grief that honours the sons of Atreus, the old masters of this house, is called a kindness, all the same.
Chorus. Child, the hungry jaw of the fire does not tame the mind of the dead man. Afterwards he shows his anger. The dying man is wailed over, and the man who harmed him is shown up. A just cry of grief for fathers, for parents, once it is raised full and wide, goes searching everywhere.
Electra. Hear us then, father, in turn, our grief and all our tears. Two children, over your tomb, sing you the dirge. Your grave has taken them in as suppliants and exiles alike. What of this is good? What is free of evil? Is ruin not past wrestling?
Chorus. And yet, out of all this, a god who wished it could still set a song with a brighter sound. Instead of the dirge at the graveside, a hymn of victory in the king's own halls could bring home the friend, a new wine, freshly mixed.
Orestes. If only under the walls of Troy, father, some Lycian's spear had cut you down and killed you! You would have left a good name in your house, and for your children, in the street, a life people turned to look at, and had a tomb heaped high in a land across the sea, a weight your house could bear.
Chorus. Loved there below by the men you loved, the ones who died well, standing out under the earth, a lord held in awe, right hand to the greatest kings down there, the kings of the dead. Because you were a king, while you lived, one of the men who fill the lot of death with their hands, and hold the staff men obey.
Electra. No, not under the walls of Troy, father, not killed there and buried by the crossing of Scamander with the rest of the army the spear cut down. Sooner let the ones who killed him be brought down the same way, by their own people, so that someone far off, who knows nothing of the trouble we have here, hears the news of their deadly end.
Chorus. What you say, child, is better than gold, greater than any great luck, greater than the Hyperboreans'. You can wish it, and it costs nothing. But the double lash is coming down now, I can hear it strike: the ones who help us are already under the earth, and the hands of the ones in power, hateful men, are unholy. It has gone the children's way.
Orestes. That went through my ear straight as an arrow. Zeus, Zeus, who send up from below the ruin that punishes late, on the hard, reckless hand of men — and yet it is a parent it will be paid to.
Chorus. Let it be mine to raise the shout, the shrill cry of triumph over the man as he is struck, over the woman as she dies. Why hide what hovers over my heart all the same? Before the prow of my heart a sharp wind blows, anger, rancorous hate.
Electra. And when will Zeus, strong with both hands, bring his fist down, oh, oh, and split their heads? Let the land have its pledge. After injustice I demand justice. Hear me, Earth, and you honoured powers below.
Chorus. It is the law: drops of murdered blood spilled on the ground demand more blood. Slaughter shouts for the Fury, who comes from those killed before bringing ruin on top of ruin.
Orestes. Popoi, you royal powers below, look, you Curses of the dead, strong Curses, look at what is left of the sons of Atreus, helpless, thrown out of their house, dishonoured. Which way can we turn, Zeus?
Chorus. And again my heart shakes as I hear this pitiful cry. One moment I have no hope, and my insides go black at the words I hear. Then hope lifts me again to strength, pushes the pain away and shows me a fair face.
Electra. What could we say that would hit the mark better than the pain we have suffered from the woman who bore us? Let her fawn. It will not be soothed. Like a wolf's, raw-hearted, the temper we got from our mother will not be coaxed.
Chorus. I beat my breast to a Persian dirge, the way a wailing woman from Cissia does it, and you could see the hands reaching out and raining down blows, thick and fast, from above, from high above, one side then the other, till the strokes rang on my battered, miserable head.
Electra. Oh, oh, cruel, mother who would dare anything, at that cruel funeral you dared to bury a king without his people, a husband without mourning, and no one wept.
Orestes. Nothing but dishonour, all of it. Oh. And will she not pay for dishonouring my father, with the help of the gods, with the help of my own hands? Let me only take her life, and then let me die.
Chorus. And he was mutilated, you should know this. The woman who buried him like that did it on purpose, to make his death a weight your life could not bear. Now you have heard your father's shame, his suffering.
Electra. You tell how my father died. And I was kept out of the way, dishonoured, counted as nothing. Shut up in a back room like a vicious dog, I let the tears run, which came more easily than laughter, and poured out my grief where no one could see. Hear that, and write it on your heart.
Chorus. Yes, let it bore through your ears to a mind that stands quiet and firm. That is how things are. What comes next, you must be eager to learn yourself. You must go into the fight with a will that does not bend.
Orestes. I am speaking to you, father. Stand with the people who are yours.
Electra. And I add my voice to his, in tears.
Chorus. And all of us together take up the cry. Hear us. Come up into the light. Stand with us against our enemies.
Orestes. Ares will meet Ares, Justice will meet Justice.
Electra. Oh gods, judge our plea justly, as justice asks.
Chorus. A shiver creeps over me as I hear these prayers. What is fated has been waiting a long time, but it can come to people who pray.
Chorus. Oh, the trouble bred in the blood, and the bloody stroke of Ruin that jars against the music. Oh, the griefs, unbearable, past all groaning. Oh, the pain that will not be stopped.
Chorus. The house has a cure to dress these wounds, not from others, not from outside, but from itself, from its own people, through raw, bloody strife. This is the hymn to the gods under the earth.
Chorus. Hear it, then, blessed powers below, hear this prayer, and gladly send your help to the children, for victory.
Orestes. Father, you died a death no king should die. I ask you: give me the mastery of your house.
Electra. And I ask you for this, father: let me escape, once I have brought great destruction down on Aegisthus.
Orestes. Do that, and men will set the feasts for you that custom owes the dead. If not, you will sit without honour while the others are fed on the rich, savoury smoke of the burnt offerings the earth receives.
Electra. And I, when I marry, will pour offerings to you out of my whole inheritance from my father's house, and before anything else I will give this tomb of yours the place of honour.
Orestes. Earth, send up my father to watch me fight.
Electra. Persephone, grant us victory, and make it beautiful.
Orestes. Remember the bath, father, where they robbed you of your life.
Electra. And remember how they thought up a new kind of net for you.
Orestes. You were caught, father, in fetters that no smith forged.
Electra. And shamefully, in a robe they had plotted over.
Orestes. Do taunts like these wake you, father?
Electra. Are you lifting that head we love, and holding it upright?
Orestes. Either send Justice to fight beside the people who are yours, or let us get the same grip on them that they got on you, if you want to win in your turn after losing.
Electra. And hear this last cry of mine, father, as you look at these nestlings crouched on your tomb. Pity your children, the female and the male together, and do not let this seed of the house of Pelops be wiped out. Because that way you are not dead, even though you died. Children keep a man's name alive after death, like the corks that carry a net and hold the flax cord up out of the deep. Hear us. It is for you that we are grieving like this. Honour what we say and you save yourself.
Chorus. There is nothing to fault in that. You have drawn the plea out long enough to pay this tomb the honour it never had, when no one mourned it. For the rest, since your mind is set straight on the deed, act now, and put your luck to the test.
Orestes. It will be done. But it is not off the track to ask how she came to send these offerings, and what she was thinking of, honouring too late a wound that nothing can heal. A miserable kindness to send to a dead man who cannot feel it. I cannot make it out. The gifts are smaller than the crime. Pour out everything you own to pay for one man's blood and the effort is wasted. That is how the saying goes. If you know, tell me. I want to hear it.
Chorus. I know, child. I was there. It was dreams, and terrors that walk at night, that shook her, and made her send these offerings, godless woman that she is.
Orestes. And did you find out what the dream was, so that you can tell it properly?
Chorus. She dreamed she gave birth to a snake. That is her own account.
Orestes. And where does the story end? What is the point of it?
Chorus. She laid it down in swaddling clothes, as if it were a child.
Orestes. What food did it want, the newborn thing with the fangs?
Chorus. In the dream she offered it her own breast.
Orestes. And her nipple was surely not left unwounded by that loathsome thing?
Chorus. No. It sucked out a clot of blood along with the milk.
Orestes. This is not empty. This dream means a man.
Chorus. Then she screamed in her sleep and woke in terror, and all through the house lamps that had been blinded by the dark flared up to comfort our mistress. And after that she sent these offerings of mourning, hoping they would be a cure cut clean through her troubles.
Orestes. Then I pray to this earth and to my father's grave that this dream comes true in me. I read it, and it fits at every joint. If the snake came out of the same place I came from, and was wrapped in my swaddling clothes, and opened its mouth around the breast that fed me, and mixed a clot of blood into the sweet milk, and she screamed with fear at the pain of it, then she must die by violence, because she has nursed a monster, a thing of horror. I am the snake. I turn snake, and I kill her, just as this dream says.
Chorus. I take you as my reader of this omen. Let it be so. For the rest, tell your friends their parts. Tell some what to do and others what to leave alone.
Orestes. The story is simple. My sister goes inside, and I tell her to keep this agreement of ours hidden, so that the people who killed an honoured man by a trick will be caught by a trick in their turn, and die in the same net. That is what Apollo, lord Apollo, decreed, the prophet who has never yet told a lie.
I will come to the outer gate looking like a stranger, with all the gear of a traveller, and Pylades here comes with me, a guest and friend of the house, sworn to it by the spear. We will both put on the speech of Parnassus, copying the accent of the Phocian tongue. And suppose none of the doorkeepers gives us a cheerful welcome, because the house is in the grip of an evil god: then we will wait there, so that anyone walking past the house will think it over and say, "Why is Aegisthus shutting his door on a man who asks for shelter, if he is at home and knows about it?"
But if I do get across the threshold of the outer gate, and find that man sitting on my father's throne, or if he comes to meet me face to face and lifts his eyes and drops them again, then be sure of this: before he can say, "Where is the stranger from?", I will have him dead, with my quick bronze through him. And the Fury of murder, who has never gone short of slaughter, will drink her third drink, blood unmixed with water.
Now you, Electra, keep careful watch on everything inside the house, so that all this fits together tight. And you women, I advise you to carry a tongue that says only what is right: silence where silence is needed, and the words the moment calls for. As for the rest, I call on the god who spoke to me to turn his eyes this way and set the sword-fight straight for me.
(Orestes, Pylades and Electra go out.)
Chorus. The earth breeds many things that are terrible, griefs that bring terror, and the arms of the sea are crowded with monsters that hate us. Between the sky and the ground lights hang high in the air and come flashing down, and every creature with wings, everything that walks, could tell you about the anger of the whirlwind, the storm that comes roaring.
Chorus. But the reckless pride of a man, who could put words to that? Or to the loves that stop at nothing in the hard hearts of women, loves that live side by side with the ruin of mortals? A loveless love, the kind that masters the female, wins its twisted victory over the yoked pairs who share one bed, beasts and human beings alike.
Chorus. Let anyone whose mind is not all feathers know this, and learn from it: the plan that Althaea lit with fire, Thestius's wretched daughter, the killer of her own child. She burned the red log, the one that was the same age as her son, that had shared his life from the day he came out of his mother crying, and would have measured him out, step for step, to the day the Fates had fixed.
Chorus. And there is another to hate in the old stories, a girl with blood on her hands, Scylla, who destroyed the man she should have loved because his enemies asked it, won over by the gift of Minos, a Cretan necklace worked in gold. While Nisus, her father, breathed in his sleep suspecting nothing, she cut away the one hair that kept him from dying, the bitch-hearted girl. And Hermes, who leads the dead, came for him.
Chorus. And since I have called to mind pains that nothing could soften, this is the moment for a marriage no one could love, a thing this house prays to be rid of, and the schemes a woman's mind laid against her husband in his armour, a husband even his enemies had reason to honour. I honour the hearth that no fire of passion heats, and in a woman a spear-point that dares nothing.
Chorus. Of all crimes the one from Lemnos comes first in the telling, the women who killed every man on the island. People still groan over it as a thing to spit at, and whenever a new horror comes they measure it against Lemnos. Because of a deed the gods loathed a whole race was dishonoured and is gone. No one respects what the gods hate. Which of these stories have I gathered without good reason?
Chorus. The sword is near the lungs. Sharp, bitter, it drives clean through, because Justice sends it. For what is not right is lying on the ground, kicked and trampled, when a man has stepped over the whole majesty of Zeus against everything that is lawful.
Chorus. The anvil of Justice is planted firm. Fate, who forges swords, is hammering the bronze ahead of time, and the Fury, famous in story, brooding in the deep, is bringing a child into the house to pay off, at last, the filth of old blood.
(Orestes and Pylades come to the palace door, dressed as travellers. Orestes knocks.)
Orestes. Boy! Boy! Do you hear me knocking at the courtyard door? Who is inside? Boy! Boy, I say it again, is anyone at home? This is the third time I have called for someone to come out of the house, if Aegisthus keeps a house that welcomes strangers.
Servant. All right, all right, I hear you. Where is the stranger from? What country?
Orestes. Announce me to the masters of the house. It is to them I have come, and I bring news. And hurry, because the dark chariot of night is coming on fast, and it is time for travellers to drop anchor in a house that takes in guests. Let someone with authority come out, the woman in charge of the place, though a man would be more fitting. Between men there is no embarrassment to blur the words. A man speaks to a man with confidence and shows plainly what he means.
(The Servant goes in. Clytemnestra comes to the door with a slave woman behind her.)
Clytemnestra. Strangers, tell me what you need. We have here everything a house like this should have: hot baths, beds to charm away the tiredness of the road, and the presence of honest faces. But if there is some other business that needs more careful counsel, that is men's work, and we will share it with them.
Orestes. I am a stranger, a man of Daulis in Phocis. I was on the road to Argos, carrying my own pack on my own back, and just as I unyoked my feet and stopped here, a man fell in with me, a stranger to me as I was to him. He asked where I was going and told me his own road. He was Strophius the Phocian, I learned his name as we talked, and he said to me: "Stranger, since you are going to Argos anyway, remember this carefully and tell his parents that Orestes is dead. Do not, whatever happens, let it slip your mind. And whether his people decide to bring him home or to bury him where he died, a foreigner, a guest for ever, carry their instructions back to me." For now the sides of a bronze urn hold the ashes of a man who has been well mourned. That is what I heard, and that is what I have told you. Whether I happen to be speaking to the people whose business this is, his own family, I do not know. But his parent ought to know the truth.
Clytemnestra. Oh, no. Your words say we are sacked to the top of the walls. Curse on this house, so hard to wrestle down, how far you see! Even what was laid well out of your reach you bring down with a well-aimed arrow from a long way off, and you strip me bare of the people I love, wretched woman that I am. And now Orestes. He was being sensible, keeping his foot out of the deadly mud. And now the one hope of a cure for this house, for its fine wild revelling, write him down as a deserter.
Orestes. For my part, with hosts as fortunate as you, I would have liked to make myself known and be welcomed on account of good news. Where is there more goodwill than between guest and host? But to my mind it would have been an offence against the gods not to carry out a charge like this for people I was bound to, when I had given my word and been taken in as a guest.
Clytemnestra. You will get nothing less than you deserve, and be no less a friend to this house for it. Someone else would have come and brought this news just the same. But it is the hour when strangers who have been on the road all day on a long journey should get what is proper.
(She turns to the slave woman.)
Take him to the men's guest rooms, him and these attendants of his and his fellow traveller, and let them be looked after there as this house does things. I order you to see to it, and you will answer for it. Meanwhile we will share this with the master of the house, and, since we are not short of friends, we will take counsel together about what has happened.
(All go into the house. The Chorus is left alone.)
Chorus. Well then, women of the house, slaves and friends, when will we show the strength that is in our mouths, for Orestes? Sacred earth, and sacred lip of the mound that lies now on the body of the king, the commander of the fleet, hear us now, help us now. Now is the moment for Persuasion, the cunning one, to go down into the fight beside him, and for Hermes of the underworld, Hermes of the night, to stand over this contest of the killing sword.
(The Nurse comes out of the house, crying.)
Chorus. It looks as if the stranger is working some harm. There is Orestes' nurse coming out in tears. Cilissa, where are you going, out through the palace gates? And grief walking with you, a companion nobody hired?
Nurse. The mistress orders me to call Aegisthus for the strangers, as fast as I can, so that he can come and hear this fresh news more clearly, man from man. In front of the servants she put on a gloomy face, but behind her eyes she was hiding her laughter at how well things have turned out for her. For this house it is disaster from top to bottom, and the strangers told it plainly. And he, when he hears the story, he will be glad in his heart all right. Oh, I am wretched. The old griefs, all mixed together, the ones so hard to bear that happened in this house of Atreus, they hurt my heart inside my chest badly enough. But I never had to hold up under a blow like this. The other troubles I bailed out patiently, like water from a boat. But my Orestes, my darling, the thing I wore my soul out on, the one I took from his mother's arms and brought up. And the shrill orders that had me walking the floor all night, all the drudgery that got me nothing, and I put up with it. A thing with no sense in it you have to feed like an animal, how else? By guessing what it wants. A baby still in its nappies cannot tell you anything, whether it is hungry, or thirsty, or needs to pee. A baby's little belly answers to nobody. I had to be a prophet for all that, and many a time, I think, I got it wrong, and then I was the one washing the baby's linen. Laundress and nurse, it was the same job. I did both those trades with my two hands, and that is how I took Orestes from his father to raise him. And now, wretched woman, they tell me he is dead. And I am on my way to the man who has done this house so much harm, and he will be glad enough to hear it.
Chorus. Then how did she tell him to come? With what, in what company?
Nurse. How do you mean, how? Say it again so I understand you better.
Chorus. With his bodyguard, or by himself?
Nurse. She says to bring his spearmen with him.
Chorus. Then don't give that message to the master we all loathe. Tell him to come by himself, so he can hear it without being afraid, and tell him as fast as you can, with a glad heart. In a messenger's mouth a crooked message gets straightened out.
Nurse. What? Are you pleased about the news that has just come?
Chorus. Why not, if Zeus is ever going to turn the wind of our troubles?
Nurse. And how? Orestes, the hope of the house, is gone.
Chorus. Not yet. It would be a bad prophet who read it that way.
Nurse. What are you saying? Do you know something beyond what has been told?
Chorus. Go and give the message. Do what you were sent to do. The gods take care of what the gods care about.
Nurse. Well, I will go, and do as you say. And may it all turn out for the best, with the gods' help.
(The Nurse goes out.)
Chorus. Now, Zeus, father of the Olympian gods, at my asking grant that the fortunes of this house be settled, rightly, for those who long to see good order. Every word I have cried out is for justice. Zeus, may you keep it safe.
Chorus. Ah, ah. Set the man inside the house in front of his enemies, Zeus, because if you raise him up high he will gladly pay you back twice over, and three times.
Chorus. Know that the orphaned colt of a man you loved is yoked to a chariot of troubles. Set a measure to his running, so that we can see him keep his stride safe over the ground, reaching, at full gallop, to the finish.
Chorus. And you gods inside the house, who keep the inner room that is glad with its wealth, hear us, you who feel with us. Come, wash out the blood of what was done long ago with fresh justice. Let old Murder breed no more children in this house.
Chorus. And you who live in the great cavern, the one so finely built, Apollo, grant that this man's house lifts up its eyes again, and looks with loving eyes on the bright light of freedom out from under its dark veil.
Chorus. And may Maia's son, Hermes, take a hand in it, rightly, since no one carries an action on a fairer wind when he wants to. Many hidden things he brings to light at need, and with a word no eye can follow he brings night and darkness over people's eyes, and by day he is no easier to see.
Chorus. And then at last, for the house set free, we will sing the famous song, the song women sing when the wind sits fair, not the shrill, high song of mourning: the ship sails well. This is my gain, mine, and it grows, and ruin stands far off from the people I love.
Chorus. And you, take heart when the moment for action comes. When she cries out to you "Son," shout back "Father," and carry through the ruin that no one can blame.
Chorus. Hold up the heart of Perseus in your chest, and for the ones you love under the earth and the ones above it, do this favour to their bitter anger: set bloody ruin inside the house, and wipe out the man who is guilty of the murder.
(Aegisthus comes in, alone.)
Aegisthus. I have come, not uninvited but sent for. I hear there is fresh news, that some strangers have arrived and are telling a story that is anything but welcome: Orestes is dead. To take this on top of everything else would be a load dripping with terror for a house that is still raw and bleeding from the murder before it. How am I to judge whether this is true, alive and real, or just women's talk, frightened out of them, that jumps up into the air and dies for nothing? What can you tell me about it that would make it plain to my mind?
Chorus. We heard it, yes. But go in and ask the strangers yourself. There is no strength in messengers compared with a man questioning the man himself.
Aegisthus. I want to see this messenger and test him again, whether he was there himself, close by, when the man died, or whether he is only repeating a dim rumour he picked up. He will not steal past a mind with its eyes open.
(Aegisthus goes into the house.)
Chorus. Zeus, Zeus, what am I to say? Where do I begin this prayer, this calling on the gods? How can I find words to match my goodwill and finish what I am saying? Now the blood-stained edges of the blades that cut men down are about to do one of two things: destroy the house of Agamemnon altogether, for good, or light fire and light for freedom, and win him the rule of the city and the great wealth of his fathers. That is the wrestling match godlike Orestes is about to join, one against two, the fresh man waiting at the edge of the ring. Let it be for victory.
(A cry comes from inside the house.)
Aegisthus. Ah! Ah! Otototoi!
Chorus. Listen. Listen, again. How is it? How has it been decided for the house? Let us stand back while the thing is being finished, so that we seem to have no part in these evils. The fight has been settled now, one way or the other.
(The Chorus draws aside. A Servant of Aegisthus runs out of the house.)
Servant. Oh, oh, oh, the master is struck down! Oh, again, a third time I cry it: Aegisthus is no more. Open up, as fast as you can, and unbar the women's doors. It will take a young man's strength, and not to help him, he is finished. What use would that be? Help! Help! Am I shouting to the deaf, wasting my voice for nothing on people who are asleep? Where is Clytemnestra? What is she doing? Her own neck is on the razor's edge now, I think, ready to fall, struck down by justice.
(Clytemnestra comes in, alone.)
Clytemnestra. What is this? What is this shouting you are raising in the house?
Servant. The dead are killing the living, I tell you.
Clytemnestra. Oh. I understand the riddle. We are to die by treachery, exactly as we killed. Someone give me an axe, a man-killing axe, quickly! Let us find out whether we win or lose. That is where I have come to, in this whole evil business.
(The Servant goes. The door opens. Aegisthus lies dead. Orestes stands over him with a sword, Pylades behind him.)
Orestes. You are the one I am looking for. He has had enough.
Clytemnestra. Oh. You are dead, Aegisthus, my love, my strength.
Orestes. You love the man? Then you will lie in the same grave with him, and never desert him now that he is dead.
Clytemnestra. Stop, my son. Have some respect, child, for this breast. Here is where you dozed off so many times, sucking with your soft gums the milk that made you grow.
Orestes. Pylades, what do I do? Shall I be ashamed to kill my mother, and spare her?
Pylades. Then what becomes of the rest of Apollo's oracles, the ones given at Delphi? What becomes of the oaths you swore? Count every man your enemy sooner than the gods.
Orestes. I judge you the winner. You advise me well.
(He turns to Clytemnestra.)
Come with me. I mean to cut your throat right next to him. While he was alive you thought him a better man than my father. Sleep with him in death, since you love this man and hate the one you should have loved.
Clytemnestra. I brought you up. I want to grow old with you.
Orestes. Kill my father and then live in the same house as me?
Clytemnestra. Fate had a share in that, my child.
Orestes. Then Fate has arranged this death too.
Clytemnestra. Have you no fear of a parent's curse, child?
Orestes. You gave birth to me and threw me out into misery.
Clytemnestra. I did not throw you out. I sent you to the house of an ally.
Orestes. I was sold, shamefully, and I was a free man's son.
Clytemnestra. Then where is the price I got for you?
Orestes. I am ashamed to throw that in your face outright.
Clytemnestra. No, go on. And name your father's follies in the same breath.
Orestes. Do not put the man who was out there suffering on trial, you who sat at home.
Clytemnestra. It is hard on a woman, child, to be kept from her husband.
Orestes. Yes, but it is the husband's hard work that feeds the women sitting at home.
Clytemnestra. You seem determined, child, to kill your mother.
Orestes. You are killing yourself. Not I.
Clytemnestra. Look out. Beware the hounds of a mother's anger.
Orestes. And my father's hounds, how do I escape them, if I leave this undone?
Clytemnestra. I see it. I am alive, and wailing at a tomb, for nothing.
Orestes. Yes. My father's fate marks out this death for you.
Clytemnestra. Oh, no. This is the snake I gave birth to and fed.
Orestes. The fear in your dream was a true prophet. You killed the man you should not have; now suffer what you should not.
(He drives her into the house. Pylades follows.)
Chorus. I grieve, even for these two, and the double blow that has fallen on them. But since Orestes, who has suffered so much, has reached the crest of all this blood, we choose this anyway: that the eye of the house should not fall and be lost altogether.
Chorus. Justice came to the sons of Priam in time, a heavy punishment, and just. And to the house of Agamemnon came a double lion, a double War. The exile the oracle at Delphi sent has driven it through to the end, sped on his way by good counsel from the gods.
Chorus. Cry out, cry out for joy, for the house of our masters, its escape from evil, from the wasting of its wealth under two who fouled it, from a fortune that had lost its road.
Chorus. And he has come, the one whose business is the secret fight, the punishment that plots, and in the fight the true daughter of Zeus touched his hand. Justice, we mortals call her, and we hit the right name. She breathes deadly anger on her enemies.
Chorus. Cry out, cry out for joy, for the house of our masters, its escape from evil, from the wasting of its wealth under two who fouled it, from a fortune that had lost its road.
Chorus. What Apollo of Parnassus cried out, Apollo who holds the great hollow in the earth, comes now against the harm that had settled in so long, with a cunning that is no cunning. The god's word wins, somehow, so that I need not serve the wicked. The power that holds the sky deserves our worship.
Chorus. Look, the light is here. The great curb is off the mouth of the house. Rise up, house. Too long, far too long, you have lain flat on the ground.
Chorus. Soon time, that finishes everything, will cross the threshold of the house, when every stain is driven from the hearth by the cleansing rites that drive out ruin. And the dice of fortune will fall again and lie with their fair faces up, kind to see, kind to hear, for the people who live in this house.
Chorus. Look, the light is here. The great curb is off the mouth of the house. Rise up, house. Too long, far too long, you have lain flat on the ground.
(Orestes stands over the two bodies. Attendants spread out the robe in which Agamemnon was killed.)
Orestes. Look at them, the two tyrants of this land, who murdered my father and sacked my house. They were majestic once, sitting on their thrones, and they are lovers still, if you judge by what has happened to them, and their oath holds good to its pledges. Together they swore death to my poor father, and swore to die together, and they have kept their word well. And look again, you who are hearing this tale of evils, at the device, the thing that bound my poor father, the shackles for his hands, the fetters for his feet, the pair of them. Spread it out. Stand round it in a circle and show it, this thing that covered a man, so that the Father can see it, not mine, but the one who watches over everything here, the Sun, so that he can see my mother's unholy work and stand as my witness one day in court that I hunted down this death, my mother's death, justly. Aegisthus's death I do not even count. He has paid the penalty for a seducer, as the law says. But she, who plotted this hateful thing against her husband, the man whose children she carried as a weight under her belt, a weight she loved once, and now, as it turns out, a hateful evil, what do you think of her? If she had been born a moray eel or a viper, she would have rotted anyone she touched without even biting, by sheer daring, by the crookedness of her mind. And this thing, what do I call it, however careful I am with my words? A trap for a wild animal? A shroud for a corpse, wrapped round its feet in the bath? No. A net. Call it a hunting net, or a robe to tangle a man's feet. This is what a highway robber would own, a man who cheats strangers and makes his living by stealing silver, and with this snare he could kill men by the dozen and warm his heart at it. May I never have a woman like that living in my house. Sooner let the gods kill me childless.
Chorus. Aiai, aiai, for the miserable work. You were finished off by a hateful death. Ah, ah. And for the one who is left, suffering is coming into flower.
Orestes. Did she do it, or did she not? This robe is my witness, dyed where Aegisthus's sword went in. The ooze of blood has worked with time to spoil the many dyes of the embroidery. Now I praise him. Now I am here to mourn him, speaking to this woven thing that killed my father. I grieve for the deed and the suffering and my whole family. The stain of this victory is nothing anyone would envy.
Chorus. No one alive gets through a whole life unhurt, unharmed to the end. Ah, ah. One trouble is here now, and another is on its way.
Orestes. But so that you know, for I do not know how this ends: I am like a charioteer driving his horses wide of the course. My mind is hard to rein in and it is carrying me off, beaten, and at my heart fear is ready to sing and dance to the tune of anger. While I still have my wits, I proclaim to the people I love, and I say it: I killed my mother, and not without justice, the unclean murderer of my father, a thing the gods hated. And as for what drugged me with courage for this deed, I name above all Apollo, the prophet of Delphi, who told me that if I did this I would be clear of all blame, and if I let it go, I will not say the penalty. No bowshot could reach that height of pain. And now look at me, how I go, with this branch and this wreath, a suppliant, to the seat at the centre of the earth, Apollo's ground, and the fire they call undying, in flight from this blood, my own family's blood. Apollo told me to turn to no other hearth. And I charge all the people of Argos to bear witness for me, in time to come, to how these evils were brought about. I go out a wanderer, a stranger to this land, and living or dead I leave this name behind me.
Chorus. But you have done well. So do not yoke your mouth to an ill-omened speech, or put evil on your tongue. You have set the whole city of Argos free, and cut off the heads of two snakes with one lucky stroke.
Orestes. Ah, ah! Women, slaves of this house, look at them, there, like Gorgons, dressed in grey, wound about with thick, swarming snakes. I cannot stay here any longer.
Chorus. What are these visions that whirl you round, of all men the one your father loved best? Hold on. Do not let fear beat you altogether.
Orestes. These are no visions to me. These are real. They are the hounds of my mother's anger.
Chorus. It is the blood, still fresh on your hands. That is what is throwing your mind into confusion.
Orestes. Lord Apollo, look, there are more and more of them, and from their eyes they are dripping blood, foul blood.
Chorus. There is one cleansing for you. Apollo's touch will set you free from these torments.
Orestes. You do not see them. I see them. I am being driven. I cannot stay here any longer.
(Orestes runs out.)
Chorus. Then good luck go with you, and may the god look on you kindly, and guard you, and bring you good fortune when you need it.
Chorus. Here, on the house of the kings, a third storm has blown itself out, a storm out of the family's blood. First came the eating of children, the wretched sufferings of Thyestes. Second, the suffering of a man, a king: the war leader of the Achaeans died, cut down in his bath. And now a third has come from somewhere, a saviour, or shall I say a death? Where will it end? Where will it come to rest, the fury of ruin, lulled to sleep at last?
(Delphi, before the temple of Apollo. The Priestess comes out to open the day's prophecy.)
Priestess. First of all the gods, in this prayer, I give the place of honour to Earth, the first prophet. After her, Themis, who was the second to sit on this seat of prophecy, her mother's seat, so the story goes. Third, by allotment, with Themis willing and no one forcing her, another Titan sat here, a child of Earth, Phoebe. And she gave it as a birthday gift to Phoebus, Apollo, who carries her name as his own. He left the lake and the ridge of Delos, put in at the shores of Athena where the ships come and go, and came to this land and to his seat on Parnassus. The sons of Hephaestus, the men of Athens, built him a road and escorted him with great reverence, taming a land that had been wild. And when he arrived, the people paid him high honour, and so did Delphus, the lord who steers this country. Zeus filled his mind with the inspired skill and set him on this throne, the fourth prophet. And Apollo speaks for Zeus his father.
These are the gods I put first in my prayers. And Athena of the Forecourt, who stands before the temple, has the place of honour in my words. I worship the Nymphs, where the Corycian rock is hollow, loved by the birds, where the spirits come and go. Dionysus holds that ground, and I do not forget him, not since the day the god led his Bacchants to war and stitched up a death for Pentheus like a hunted hare. I call on the springs of the Pleistus, on the power of Poseidon, and on Zeus the highest, who brings all things to their end. And then I take my seat on the throne as prophet. May they grant me now an entrance far better than any before. And if any Greeks are here, let them come in by lot, in their turn, as the custom is. I prophesy as the god leads me.
(She goes into the temple. A moment later she comes back out on her hands and knees.)
Priestess. Horrible to tell, horrible to see with my own eyes. What is inside has sent me back out of the house of Apollo so weak that I cannot stand, cannot walk upright. I am running on my hands, not on my legs. A frightened old woman is nothing. She is a child again.
I was going in to the inner shrine, all hung with wreaths, and I saw a man on the navel stone, a man the gods must loathe, sitting in the seat of a suppliant, his hands dripping blood, holding a sword just drawn and an olive branch cut from the top of the tree, wreathed properly with a great tuft of wool, white fleece. That much I can tell you clearly. And in front of this man an astonishing company of women was asleep, sitting on the thrones. Not women. Gorgons, I would say. No, not even Gorgons: I cannot compare them to any picture of Gorgons. I saw a painting once of the creatures carrying off the feast of Phineus. These have no wings, that I could see. They are black, and altogether disgusting. They snore, and the breath that comes out of them is not to be gone near. Out of their eyes drips a foul liquid. And their dress is not fit to bring before the statues of the gods or into the houses of men. I have never seen the tribe this company comes from, nor the land that can boast it reared this brood without paying for it, and did not weep for the labour afterwards.
What happens from here is the business of the master of this house, mighty Apollo himself. He is a healer and a prophet, a reader of signs, and for other men he cleans the pollution out of their houses.
(She goes. The inside of the temple is seen. Orestes sits at the navel stone with the Furies asleep on the seats around him, and Hermes stands behind. Apollo comes out from the inner shrine and stands beside Orestes.)
Apollo. No, I will not betray you. I am your guardian to the end, standing close beside you or far off, and I will not go soft on your enemies. Look at them now, these mad women, caught. They have dropped asleep, these loathsome girls, these ancient old-woman children, whom no god, no man, no beast ever goes near. They were born for evil and nothing else, because evil darkness is what they live in, and Tartarus under the earth, hated by men and by the gods of Olympus. All the same: run, and do not go soft. They will drive you the length of the mainland and over all the ground a wanderer treads, over the sea and through the island cities. Do not tire too soon, brooding over this labour like a herdsman over his cattle. Come to the city of Athena, sit down there, and take her ancient image in your arms. There we will have judges of your case, and words that charm, and we will find a way to release you from these troubles for good. For it was I who persuaded you to take your mother's life.
Orestes. Lord Apollo, you know how not to do wrong. And since you know that, learn not to neglect me either. Your strength to do good is a guarantee.
Apollo. Remember: do not let fear beat your mind. And you, Hermes, my own blood, my father's son, watch over him. Be true to your name and be his guide. Shepherd this suppliant of mine, for Zeus honours this right of the outcast, and send him out among men with the good luck of a good escort.
(Apollo goes back in. Orestes leaves, with Hermes guiding him. The Ghost of Clytemnestra rises among the sleepers.)
Ghost of Clytemnestra. Sleep, would you? Hey! What use are sleepers to me? It is your doing that I am dishonoured like this among the other dead. Because of the ones I killed, the reproach never lets up among the dead, and I wander in disgrace. I tell you, I carry the heaviest blame down there because of them. And after suffering so terribly at the hands of my nearest and dearest, not one of the powers is angry for my sake, though I was butchered by a son's hands, a mother-killer's hands. Look at these gashes in my heart. Look where they came from. The mind asleep has bright eyes; in the daytime the fate of mortals cannot be seen ahead. You have lapped up plenty of mine, I tell you: wineless libations, sober offerings to soothe you, and the solemn feasts of the night that I used to burn on the hearth of fire, at an hour no other god shares. And I see all of it trampled underfoot. He has slipped away and gone, like a fawn, and lightly too. Out of the middle of your nets he sprang, and he made a great mocking face at you as he went. Hear me. It is my life I am pleading for. Wake up and think, goddesses under the earth. It is a dream that calls you now, and the dream is Clytemnestra, and I am she.
Chorus. (The sleeping women whine, the way a dog whines in its sleep.) Mmm. Mmm.
Ghost of Clytemnestra. Whine away. But the man is gone, far away in flight. He has friends, and they are not like mine.
Chorus. (The whining goes on.) Mmm. Mmm.
Ghost of Clytemnestra. You sleep too deep. You have no pity for my suffering. Orestes, who murdered me, his mother, has got away.
Chorus. (The whine turns into a moan.) Ohh. Ohh.
Ghost of Clytemnestra. You moan, you doze. Will you not get up? Now! What work were you ever made for except doing harm?
Chorus. (The moaning goes on.) Ohh. Ohh.
Ghost of Clytemnestra. Sleep and hard labour, the two true conspirators, have drained the terrible snake of her strength.
Chorus. (Two sharp whines together, and then words, still asleep.) Get him. Get him, get him, get him. Look out.
Ghost of Clytemnestra. You are hunting a beast in a dream, and you yelp like a dog that never lets the work out of its mind. What are you doing? Up! Do not let weariness beat you. Do not let sleep soften you into forgetting my pain. Let my reproaches sting you in the liver. They are just, and to those who keep themselves in hand a just reproach is a goad. Send your bloody breath after him like a wind, dry him up with the heat of it, the fire out of your bellies. After him. Wither him with a second chase.
(The Ghost is gone. The Furies wake, one rousing the next.)
Chorus. Wake up. Wake her, as I am waking you. Still asleep? Up. Kick sleep off you, and let us see if any of this beginning was for nothing.
Chorus. Oh, oh, pupax! We have suffered, friends. I have suffered so much, and all for nothing. We have suffered a pain hard to bear, oh, popoi, an evil past carrying. The beast has slipped out of the nets and gone. Sleep beat me, and I have lost my prey.
Chorus. Oh, son of Zeus, you are a thief. Young, you have ridden down the old powers, honouring your suppliant, a godless man, bitter to the parents that bore him. You stole away a mother-killer, and you a god. Who will say there is any justice in that?
Chorus. The reproach that came to me out of my dreams struck me like a charioteer with the goad gripped in the middle, under the heart, under the liver. I can feel it, the heavy, the crushing cold of the public scourger's cruel whip.
Chorus. This is what they do, the younger gods, ruling past all justice from a throne that drips blood about its foot, about its head. I can see the navel stone of the earth standing thick with a terrible pollution of blood.
Chorus. He is a prophet, and he has fouled his own hearth, stained his inner shrine with pollution, of his own urging, at his own bidding, honouring mortal things against the law of the gods and rotting the allotments that are older than he is.
Chorus. He is a grief to me too, and he will not get that man loose. Even if he runs under the earth, he is never set free. Polluted as he is, he will find another avenger out of his own blood coming down on his head.
(Apollo comes out of the inner shrine, his bow in his hand.)
Apollo. Out! I order you. Out of this house, quickly. Get out of my prophetic shrine, or you will take a winged, glittering snake, shot from a golden bowstring, and bring up black foam in your agony, foam from the men you have fed on, vomiting the clots of blood you sucked out of them. This house is no place for you to come near. Your place is where the sentences are beheading and gouged-out eyes and cut throats, where boys have their manhood ruined by the destruction of the seed, where there is maiming and stoning, and where men fixed on a stake under the spine moan long and pitifully. Do you hear what kind of feast you love, and why the gods spit you out? The whole shape of your bodies tells it. Creatures like you should live in the cave of a lion that drinks blood, not rub your filth off on everyone near you in this place of oracles. Get out, you goats with no herdsman. There is no god who loves a flock like you.
Chorus. Lord Apollo, hear us in our turn. You are not partly to blame for this. You alone did all of it, and the whole blame is yours.
Apollo. How so? Draw your speech out that far.
Chorus. Your oracle told the stranger to kill his mother.
Apollo. My oracle told him to take payment for his father. What of it?
Chorus. And then you undertook to receive the fresh blood.
Apollo. Yes, and I told him to turn to this house for cleansing.
Chorus. And then you abuse us, the escort that brought him here?
Apollo. Because it is not fitting for you to come into this house.
Chorus. But this is the duty assigned to us.
Apollo. What duty is that? Go on, boast of your fine privilege.
Chorus. We drive mother-killers out of their homes.
Apollo. And what about a wife who kills her husband?
Chorus. That would not be the murder of her own blood by her own hand.
Apollo. Then you make nothing of the pledges of Hera, who makes a marriage complete, and of Zeus. You count them dishonoured and worthless. And Aphrodite is thrown aside, dishonoured, by that argument of yours, and from her come the dearest things mortals have. The bed a man and a woman are fated to share is greater than an oath, and Justice stands guard over it. If, then, when one of them kills the other, you are so slack that you take no payment and turn no angry eye on them, I say it is unjust of you to hound Orestes out of his home. One case, I see, you take very much to heart; the other, plainly, you handle far more gently. But the goddess Athena will oversee the trial of this.
Chorus. I will never let that man go. Never.
Apollo. Then chase him, and pile up more trouble for yourself.
Chorus. Do not cut my privileges short with your talk.
Apollo. I would not take your privileges if they were offered to me.
Chorus. No, because you are called great in any case, at the throne of Zeus. But I have a mother's blood leading me on. I will hunt that man down for my case, and I am on his trail now.
Apollo. And I will stand by my suppliant and rescue him. A man who turns to a god for cleansing has a terrible anger, among mortals and gods alike, if the god betrays him of his own free will.
(The Furies go out after Orestes. Apollo goes back into his shrine. The scene is now Athens, before the temple of Athena. Orestes comes in and takes hold of the ancient image of the goddess.)
Orestes. Lady Athena, I have come at Apollo's command. Receive kindly a man under a curse. I am not one who still needs cleansing, and my hand is not unclean. The edge is off my guilt already; it has been rubbed away at other houses and on the travelled roads of men. I have crossed land and sea alike, keeping the commands of Apollo's oracle, and now I come to your house and your image, goddess. Here I will keep my place and wait for the end of my trial.
(The Furies come in, scattered, one after another, hunting his trail like hounds.)
Chorus. There. Here is the clear sign of the man. Follow the hints of the informer who has no voice. The way a hound tracks a wounded fawn, we track him by the drops of blood. My lungs are heaving with all this man-killing labour. I have herded every corner of the earth, and over the sea I came flying without wings, chasing him, as fast as any ship. And now he is here somewhere, cowering. The smell of human blood smiles at me.
Chorus. Look. Look again. Look everywhere, so that the mother-killer does not slip away in secret with his debt unpaid. There he is, and he has found protection again: his arms twisted round the image of the immortal goddess, he wants to go to trial for what he owes. But that cannot be. A mother's blood on the ground is hard to gather back. Papai, the wet of it, poured into the earth, is gone. You must pay it back from your living body: let me suck the red pulp out of your limbs. From you I will take my feeding, a drink hard to swallow. I will dry you up alive and drag you down below, so that you pay, agony for agony, for the mother you murdered. And you will see every other mortal who has sinned, against a god or a guest or the parents he owes his love to, getting exactly what his justice deserves. For Hades is a great auditor of mortals under the earth, and he watches everything and writes it on the tablets of his mind.
Orestes. I have been taught by suffering, and I know many rites of cleansing. I know where it is right to speak and where to keep silent, and in this matter a wise teacher ordered me to speak. The blood is going to sleep and fading from my hand. The pollution of a mother's murder has been washed out; while it was still fresh it was driven off at the hearth of the god Apollo by the cleansing sacrifice of pigs. It would be a long story from the beginning, how many people I have visited without any harm coming to them from my company. Time cleans everything as it grows old along with it. So now, with a clean mouth, I call in all reverence on Athena, the lady of this land, to come and help me. Without a spear she will win me, and my land, and the people of Argos, as a faithful and true ally for all time. Wherever she is, in some part of the Libyan country, by the waters of Triton, the stream where she was born, standing at her ease or striding into action to help the people she loves, or surveying the plain of Phlegra like a bold commander, let her come, for a god hears even from far away, and set me free from this.
Chorus. No. Not Apollo, not the strength of Athena can save you. You will go to ruin, neglected, never learning where in your heart joy lives, a bloodless thing for the powers below to feed on, a shadow. You do not answer me. You spit my words away, you who were fattened up for me and consecrated to me? Alive you will feed me, and not cut down at any altar. Now you will hear the hymn that binds you.
Chorus. Come, then, let us join hands for the dance, since we have decided to show our hateful music and tell how our company deals out its allotted work among men. We believe we are straight in our justice. The man who holds out clean hands, no anger of ours creeps up on him; he goes through life unharmed. But the man who sins, like this one, and hides his bloody hands, we come against him to the end, true witnesses for the dead, collectors of the blood he owes.
Chorus. Mother who bore me, Mother Night, hear me. You bore me to be payment for the blind and for the seeing. The son of Leto is making me nothing: he is taking this cowering thing away from me, this hare, who is the proper offering to wash out a mother's blood.
Chorus. Over our victim we sing this song: a madness, a wandering of the wits, a wrecking of the mind, the hymn of the Furies, a spell to bind the mind, without the lyre, a withering for mortals.
Chorus. This is the lot that Fate, who pierces straight through, spun for us to hold for good: when mortals bring rash murder down on their own kin, we go with them until they go under the earth, and even dead they are not very free.
Chorus. Over our victim we sing this song: a madness, a wandering of the wits, a wrecking of the mind, the hymn of the Furies, a spell to bind the mind, without the lyre, a withering for mortals.
Chorus. These lots were fixed on us at our birth. The immortals must keep their hands off us, and none of them eats at our table; and I have no share, no portion, in the pure white robes.
Chorus. For I chose the overthrow of houses, whenever War, made tame in the home, kills one of its own. We run down that man, and strong as he is we wear him down to nothing for the fresh blood.
Chorus. We are eager to take these cares off another's hands, to let the gods off the work I do, so that none of it ever comes to a hearing before them; for Zeus has ruled that this tribe, dripping blood and hateful, is beneath his notice and his company.
Chorus. For I chose the overthrow of houses, whenever War, made tame in the home, kills one of its own. We run down that man, and strong as he is we wear him down to nothing for the fresh blood.
Chorus. Men's proud thoughts, so high under the open sky, melt and shrink to nothing under the earth, dishonoured, at our attack in our black robes and the spiteful dancing of our feet.
Chorus. Yes, I leap from high above and bring down the full weight of my foot, heavy in the fall, legs that trip even the fast runner, a ruin no one can bear.
Chorus. And as he falls he does not know it, so witless is the harm; such a darkness of pollution hovers over the man, and a rumour full of groaning tells of a dark mist over his house.
Chorus. Yes, I leap from high above and bring down the full weight of my foot, heavy in the fall, legs that trip even the fast runner, a ruin no one can bear.
Chorus. For it stays. We are good at plotting, and we finish what we start; we remember evil deeds, we are revered, and mortals cannot talk us round. We drive at our allotted work, unhonoured, unrespected, set apart from the gods in a light with no sun in it, a road of rocks for the seeing and the dim-eyed alike.
Chorus. What mortal, then, does not stand in awe and fear of this, when he hears from me the law that Fate decreed and the gods gave in full? My ancient privilege stays with me still. I meet with no dishonour, though my station is under the earth in a darkness the sun never reaches.
(Athena comes in, wearing the aegis.)
Athena. From far away I heard a voice calling me, from the Scamander, where I was taking possession of the land that the captains and chiefs of the Achaeans assigned to me, a great share of the spoils their spears won, root and branch, to be mine for ever, a choice gift to the sons of Theseus. From there I came, driving my tireless feet, no wings, the folds of my aegis whistling in the wind, this chariot yoked to colts in their prime. I see a strange new company in my land, and I am not afraid, but it is a wonder to my eyes. Who in the world are you? I ask you all together: you, the stranger sitting at my image, and you, who are like no race ever sown on this earth, never seen among goddesses by the gods, and not shaped like anything mortal either. But to speak ill of a neighbour who has done no wrong is far from just, and Right stands well away from it.
Chorus. You will hear it all in brief, daughter of Zeus. We are the children of Night, and we last for ever. In our homes under the earth we are called the Curses.
Athena. I know your family now, and the names you go by.
Chorus. And you will soon learn my office.
Athena. I would, if someone told it plainly.
Chorus. We drive murderers out of their homes.
Athena. And where does the killer's flight end?
Chorus. Where joy is nowhere the custom.
Athena. And you are screaming this man on into that kind of flight?
Chorus. Yes. Because he thought it right to be his mother's murderer.
Athena. Was he forced to it by something else, or afraid of someone's anger?
Chorus. Where is there a goad sharp enough to drive a man to kill his mother?
Athena. There are two parties here, and I have heard half the case.
Chorus. But he will not accept an oath, and he will not give one.
Athena. You want to be called just more than you want to act justly.
Chorus. How so? Teach me. You are not poor in cleverness.
Athena. I say that oaths must not let injustice win.
Chorus. Then examine him, and judge a straight judgment.
Athena. So you would turn the decision of the charge over to me?
Chorus. How could we not? We honour you: you are worthy, and you come of worthy parents.
Athena. And what do you want to say to this, stranger, in your turn? First tell me your country, your family and what has happened to you, and then defend yourself against this charge, if it really is trust in the justice of your case that keeps you sitting here holding my image, beside my hearth, a solemn suppliant in the manner of Ixion. Give me an answer I can understand, to all of this.
Orestes. Lady Athena, first I will lift a great worry out of your last words. I am not a suppliant who needs cleansing, and I did not sit down at your image with pollution on my hand. I will give you strong proof of that. The law is that a man stained with murder is barred from speech until a man who can cleanse blood has sprinkled him with the blood of a new-born animal cut in sacrifice. Long ago, at other houses, I was cleansed that way, with animals and with running streams. So I say that worry is out of the way. As for my family, you will soon hear how it stands. I am an Argive, and my father, whom you are right to ask about, was Agamemnon, the marshal of the men who sailed in the ships, the man with whom you made Troy, the city of Ilium, no city at all. He did not die well when he came home. My black-hearted mother killed him, after she had wrapped him in a cunning net, a net that stands witness to this day to the murder in the bath. And I came home, after all the years of exile before it, and I killed the woman who bore me. I will not deny it. It was killing paid for killing, for the father I loved. And Apollo shares the blame for it with me. He warned me of pains that would goad my heart if I did not do this to the ones who were guilty. Whether I acted justly or not, you judge. Whatever comes to me at your hands, I will accept it.
Athena. The matter is too big for any mortal who thinks he can judge it. And it is not right even for me to decide a case of murder with the quick anger of the Furies behind it. Especially since you came to my house a suppliant fully prepared, clean and harmless, and so I respect you, since you bring my city no harm. But these women have an office that is not easily sent away, and if they do not win their case, the venom of their resentment will fall on the ground afterwards, an unbearable, unending sickness in the land. So it stands. Either way, whether I let them stay or drive them out, brings disaster, and I have no way through it. But since this matter has fallen here, on me, I will choose judges of murder, bound by oath, and I will set up this court for all time. You two, call your witnesses and your proofs, sworn evidence to support your case. And I will pick the best of my citizens and come back, so that they can decide this matter truly, after they have sworn an oath to say nothing against justice.
(Athena goes out.)
Chorus. Now the new laws overturn everything, if the case of this mother-killer, his justice and his crime together, wins. From now on this one deed will fit every mortal's hand to recklessness. Many wounds, real wounds, struck by their own children, are waiting for parents in the time to come.
Chorus. No anger of ours, the maenads who watch mortals, will creep up on such deeds any more; I will let loose every kind of death. One man will hear from another, each telling his neighbour's troubles, and ask when the labour will ease or end, and some poor wretch will offer comfort that means nothing, remedies that hold no weight.
Chorus. Let no one struck by disaster call out any more and cry this word: Justice! Thrones of the Furies! Some father, some mother fresh in her grief, may cry those words and weep, now that the house of Justice is falling down.
Chorus. There is a place where fear is good, and it should sit as a watchman over the mind. It pays to learn to keep yourself in hand under the strain. But who, if he raised no fear in his heart at all, city or mortal alike, would still bow to Justice?
Chorus. Praise neither the life with no master nor the life ground down under a master. God gives the power to the middle in everything, and watches over each thing in its own way. I say a word in proportion: Outrage is truly the child of a godless heart; but from health of mind comes the happiness everyone loves and everyone prays for.
Chorus. And this I say to you, for all time: honour the altar of Justice. Do not see profit and kick it over with a godless foot; punishment will follow. The appointed end waits. So let a man put first the reverence he owes his parents, and respect the stranger he welcomes under his roof.
Chorus. The man who is just by his own will, and not by force, will not go without happiness; he will never be wiped out altogether. But the man who dares the other way, I say, who trespasses and hauls a great cargo heaped up without justice, will strike his sail in time, by force, when trouble takes him and the yardarm splinters.
Chorus. He calls out, and nobody hears, in the middle of the whirlpool he cannot fight. The god laughs at the hot-headed man, seeing him, who boasted this would never happen, limp with troubles he cannot help and failing to top the crest of the wave. He has driven the happiness of his whole life onto the reef of Justice, and he dies unwept, unseen.
(Athena comes in with a herald and the judges she has chosen, and a crowd of citizens behind them. The judges take their seats. Orestes stands in the place set aside for the accused, with the Furies facing him.)
Athena. Herald, make the proclamation and hold the crowd back. Let the Etruscan trumpet, the one that pierces the ear, fill with human breath and send its high note out over the people. While this council chamber fills, it is right for everyone to keep silent and to learn my ordinances: the whole city, for all the time that is to come, and these two parties here, so that their case may be judged well.
(Apollo comes in and takes his stand beside Orestes.)
Chorus. Lord Apollo, rule over what is yours. Tell us what share you have in this business.
Apollo. I have come to give evidence, because this man is by law a suppliant of mine and a guest at my hearth, and I am the one who cleansed him of the killing. And I have come to plead his case myself. The responsibility for his mother's death is mine. Athena, bring in the case, and settle it as you know how.
Athena. The word is yours. I open the case. The prosecutor speaks first and tells it from the beginning; that is the right way to teach us what happened.
Chorus. We are many, but we will be brief. Answer word for word, taking your turn. Say first: did you kill your mother?
Orestes. I killed her. There is no denying that.
Chorus. One fall already, of the three that win a wrestling match.
Orestes. You are boasting over a man who is not down yet.
Chorus. Still, you have to tell us how you killed her.
Orestes. I will tell you. With a drawn sword in my hand, I cut her throat.
Chorus. Who persuaded you? On whose advice?
Orestes. The oracles of this god here. He is my witness.
Chorus. The prophet told you to kill your mother?
Orestes. Yes, and to this moment I have no complaint against my luck.
Chorus. If the vote takes hold of you, you will soon be talking differently.
Orestes. I trust him. And my father will send help from his grave.
Chorus. Trust in the dead, then, you who killed your mother.
Orestes. I do. She was tainted twice over. Two pollutions were on her.
Chorus. How? Explain that to the judges.
Orestes. She killed her husband, and in killing him she killed my father.
Chorus. And so you are alive, and she is free of it. Her death has cleared her.
Orestes. Then why did you not hunt her into exile while she was alive?
Chorus. The man she killed was not her blood.
Orestes. And I am my mother's blood?
Chorus. How else did she feed you, murderer, inside her body, under her belt? Do you disown the closest blood there is, your mother's?
Orestes. Now give your evidence, Apollo. Explain for me whether I had justice on my side when I killed her. That I did it, exactly as it was done, I do not deny. But whether this blood was shed justly or not, in your judgment, is for you to decide, so that I can tell the court.
Apollo. I will speak to you, Athena's great court, with justice, and being a prophet I will not lie. Never once, from my seat of prophecy, have I said a thing about a man, a woman or a city that Zeus, the father of the Olympians, did not order me to say. Learn how strong this plea of justice is, and take my advice: follow my father's will. No oath is stronger than Zeus.
Chorus. Zeus, you say, gave you this oracle: to tell Orestes here to avenge his father's murder and to pay no honour at all to his mother?
Apollo. Yes. It is not the same thing at all: a noble man killed, a man honoured with the sceptre that Zeus gives, and killed by a woman. Not with the darting arrows of a bow shot from far off, the way an Amazon kills, but in the way you are about to hear, Pallas, and you men who sit to divide this case with your votes. She welcomed him home from the campaign, where he had done better, for the most part, than anyone had hoped, and she welcomed him with kind words. Then, as he stepped from the bath, at the very edge of it, she flung a robe over him like a tent, fettered her husband in the endless embroidered folds of that robe, and hacked him down. That is the death I set before you: the death of a man honoured by everyone, the commander of the fleet. And I have described the woman as I have so that the people appointed to decide this case may feel the sting of it.
Chorus. Zeus, by your account, gives the higher honour to a father's death. Yet Zeus himself put his old father Cronus in chains. How is that not the opposite of what you say? Judges, I call you to witness that you heard it.
Apollo. You beasts that everyone hates, you things the gods loathe! Chains can be undone. There is a cure for that, and plenty of ways to be set loose. But once the dust has drunk up a man's blood, once he is dead, there is no standing up again. For that my father has made no charms, though he turns everything else upside down and sets it back in place without so much as a hard breath.
Chorus. Then look at what your plea for his acquittal means. He poured his mother's blood, his own blood, out on the ground, and after that he is going to live in his father's house in Argos? What public altars can he use? What clan will let him wash his hands in the water where the brotherhood washes its hands?
Apollo. I will answer this too, and see how right I am. The mother is not the parent of the thing that is called her child. She is only the nurse of the seed that was newly sown in her. The one who mounts her is the parent. She keeps the young shoot safe, a stranger keeping a stranger's property, if no god damages it. And I will show you proof of what I say. There can be a father without a mother. The witness is standing right here: the daughter of Olympian Zeus, who was never nursed in the dark of a womb, and yet a shoot such as no goddess could ever bear. For my part, Pallas, in everything else as I know how, I will make your city and your people great, and I sent this man to your hearth as a suppliant so that he would be faithful to you for all time, so that you would gain him and those who come after him as allies, goddess, and so that it would stand for ever: the descendants of these men keeping faith with the pledges made today.
Athena. Shall I now order these men to cast an honest vote according to their judgment? Has enough been said?
Chorus. Every arrow we have has been shot. I am waiting to hear how the contest is decided.
Athena. Well? And you two, how do I arrange this so that neither of you can blame me?
Apollo. You have heard what you have heard. As you cast your ballots, friends, keep the oath sacred in your hearts.
Athena. Hear my ordinance now, people of Attica, as you judge the first case ever tried for spilled blood. From this day on, and for ever, the people of Aegeus will have this council of judges.
This hill of Ares, where the Amazons pitched their tents and camped when they came with an army out of hatred for Theseus, and built this new high-towered city against his city, tower against tower, and sacrificed to Ares, which is how this rock got its name, the Hill of Ares: on this hill the reverence of the citizens, and fear, which is reverence's kinsman, will hold them back from doing wrong by day and by night alike, as long as the citizens themselves do not pollute the laws with foul streams. Foul clear water with mud and you will never find a drink.
Neither anarchy nor a master: that is what I advise my citizens to keep and to respect, and not to throw fear out of the city altogether. What man who fears nothing does what is right? Stand in awe, and rightly, of a majesty like this, and you will have a wall for your land and a saving power for your city such as no people on earth possesses, not among the Scythians, not in the land of Pelops. I found this council here: untouched by greed, worthy of reverence, quick to anger, a guard for the land that stays awake over the sleeping.
That was my advice to my citizens, stretched out over the future. Now you must rise, take up a ballot, and decide the case, respecting your oath. I have said what I have to say.
(The judges rise and go one by one to the urns while the Furies and Apollo argue.)
Chorus. And I advise you: this company of ours is heavy for a land to bear. Do not dishonour it in any way.
Apollo. And I order you to fear the oracles, mine and Zeus's, and not to make them barren.
Chorus. Blood is not your business, yet you show respect for a bloody deed. From now on the oracles you give will be unclean.
Apollo. Then was my father mistaken in his judgment when Ixion, the first man ever to kill, came to him as a suppliant?
Chorus. Talk on. But if I do not get justice in this case, I will settle on this land again, and I will be heavy on it.
Apollo. You have no honour among the gods, the young or the old. I will win.
Chorus. You did the same sort of thing in the house of Pheres. You persuaded the Fates to make mortals free from death.
Apollo. Is it wrong to do good to a man who worships you, above all when he needs it?
Chorus. You were the one who broke up the ancient allotments. You tricked the old goddesses with wine.
Apollo. And you, when in a moment you have lost this case, will spit your venom, and it will not hurt your enemies at all.
Chorus. Since you, a young god, ride me down, an old woman, I will wait to hear the verdict. I have not decided yet whether to be angry with this city.
Athena. This part is mine: to give the final judgment. And I add this vote to Orestes' side. No mother gave birth to me. In everything, except for marriage, I am for the male, with all my heart, and I am altogether my father's child. So I will not give more weight to the death of a woman who killed her husband, the guardian of the house. Orestes wins, even if the votes come out equal. Turn the ballots out of the urns, as fast as you can, you judges who were given that task.
(The ballots are turned out and counted.)
Orestes. Phoebus Apollo, how will it be decided?
Chorus. Night, black Mother, are you watching this?
Orestes. Now it is the end of a rope for me, or I go on seeing the light.
Chorus. And for us it is ruin, or we keep our honours and go on.
Apollo. Count the ballots exactly as they fall, friends. Be in awe of doing wrong as you divide them. When judgment is missing, great pain follows; and one ballot, cast, has set a house back on its feet.
Athena. This man is acquitted of the charge of blood. The count of the ballots is equal.
(Apollo goes.)
Orestes. Pallas, saviour of my house! I had lost my father's land, and you have given me a home in it again. Now some Greek will say: the man is an Argive again and lives on his father's property, by the grace of Pallas and of Apollo, and of the third, the Saviour who brings everything to its end, who looked with respect on my father's death and saves me, though he sees these advocates of my mother's.
I am going home now, but first I swear an oath to this land and to your people, for the whole of time to come: no captain of my country will ever come here bringing a well-armed spear against them. If any of them break the oath I am swearing now, I myself, in my grave by then, will make it fail. I will make their marches dispirited and their roads full of bad omens, so that they regret the effort. But while they keep to the straight road and honour this city of Pallas for ever with an allied spear, I will be all the kinder to them.
And so goodbye, you and the people who guard your city. May you get a grip on your enemies that they cannot slip, a grip that saves you and brings victory to your spear.
(Orestes goes out. The Furies turn on Athena in fury at the verdict.)
Chorus. Oh, you younger gods, you have ridden down the old laws, you have snatched them out of my hands. And I, dishonoured, wretched, heavy with anger, on this land, ah, I will let venom go, venom for my grief, out of my heart, a drip on the ground that nothing can bear. Out of it a blight with no leaf and no child, oh Justice, will race across the plain and throw its stains on the land to kill men. I groan. What shall I do? The citizens laugh at me. Unbearable, what I have suffered. Oh, great is the grief of the daughters of Night, the unlucky ones, dishonoured and mourning.
Athena. Listen to me: do not take it with heavy groaning. You have not been defeated. The case came out with equal votes, honestly, with no dishonour to you. But clear evidence from Zeus was there, and the one who gave the oracle was himself the one who testified that Orestes should take no harm for doing what he did. So do not be angry. Do not hurl your heavy rage on this land or make it barren, letting loose the drops of your divine spite, savage spearpoints that eat the seed. I promise you, in all justice, that you will have a seat and deep places in this righteous land, sitting on shining thrones beside your hearths, and these citizens will honour you.
Chorus. Oh, you younger gods, you have ridden down the old laws, you have snatched them out of my hands. And I, dishonoured, wretched, heavy with anger, on this land, ah, I will let venom go, venom for my grief, out of my heart, a drip on the ground that nothing can bear. Out of it a blight with no leaf and no child, oh Justice, will race across the plain and throw its stains on the land to kill men. I groan. What shall I do? The citizens laugh at me. Unbearable, what I have suffered. Oh, great is the grief of the daughters of Night, the unlucky ones, dishonoured and mourning.
Athena. You are not dishonoured. So do not, goddesses, in the excess of your anger, make a land of mortals into a place no charm can cure. I too trust in Zeus, and why should I need to say it? I alone of the gods know the keys of the house where his thunderbolt is kept under seal. But there is no need of that. Let me persuade you. Do not fling the words of a reckless tongue at this land, so that everything that bears fruit fails to prosper. Put the black wave's bitter fury to sleep, since you will have your share of honour and a house beside mine. And when you have the first fruits of this wide land for ever, offerings made for the birth of children and for the rite of marriage, you will praise what I said.
Chorus. That I should suffer this, ah, I with my ancient mind, to live under the earth, ah, a thing disowned, a pollution. I breathe fury, I breathe out all my rage. Oh, oh, earth, ah! What is this creeping into me, what pain in my side? Hear my anger, mother Night. The gods have stripped my old honours from me with tricks that cannot be fought, and brought me to nothing.
Athena. I will bear with your anger. You are older, and in that you are far wiser than I am. But Zeus gave me a mind too, and not a bad one. If you go off to some foreign land, you will fall in love with this one. I tell you that now. Time, flowing on, will bring these citizens more and more honour, and you, with your honoured seat by the house of Erechtheus, will get more from the processions of men and women than you could ever win from other mortals anywhere.
So do not throw into my country the whetstones of blood that sharpen the young against each other, damage in the guts, a madness like drunkenness without the wine. Do not tear the heart out of my citizens as if they were fighting cocks and plant war among them, war between kin, bold against each other. Let war be outside the door, and let there be plenty of it, for the man with a terrible love of glory in him. But a fight between birds in one house I will not call a war. This is what you can choose from me: do good, receive good, be honoured well, and have your share in this land the gods love most.
Chorus. That I should suffer this, ah, I with my ancient mind, to live under the earth, ah, a thing disowned, a pollution. I breathe fury, I breathe out all my rage. Oh, oh, earth, ah! What is this creeping into me, what pain in my side? Hear my anger, mother Night. The gods have stripped my old honours from me with tricks that cannot be fought, and brought me to nothing.
Athena. No, I will not grow tired of telling you the good that is on offer, so that you can never say that you, an ancient goddess, were thrown out of this land by me, a younger one, and by the mortal guardians of my city, dishonoured, an exile from this soil. But if you hold Persuasion sacred, the sweetness and the spell of my tongue, then you would stay. And if you will not stay, then it would not be just for you to bring down on this city any wrath, any rage, any harm to its people. It is open to you to hold land here by right, with full honour for all time.
Chorus. Lady Athena, what place do you say I will have?
Athena. One free of every pain and every misery. Accept it.
Chorus. Say I have accepted. What honour waits for me?
Athena. That no house will thrive without you.
Chorus. You will do this? You will make me that strong?
Athena. Yes. We will set the fortunes of those who worship you standing upright.
Chorus. And you will give me a pledge for all time?
Athena. I have no need to say what I will not do.
Chorus. Your spell is working on me, I think. I am letting my anger go.
Athena. Then stay in the land, and you will win friends.
Chorus. What blessings, then, do you tell me to sing over this land?
Athena. Those that look to a victory with nothing evil in it: blessings from the earth, from the waters of the sea, from the sky; that the winds blow on the land in bright sunshine; that the fruit of the earth and the herds flow in abundance for my citizens and never fail with time; and that the seed of men be kept safe. And be more generous to those who honour the gods, because I, like a man who tends his plants, love this race of just men and would keep it free of grief. That is yours to give. For my part, I will not put up with this city going without honour among men, this city that wins in the glorious contests of war, where Ares kills.
Chorus. I will accept a home with Pallas. I will not dishonour a city that Zeus the all-powerful and Ares hold as a fortress of the gods, the jewel that guards the altars of the gods of Greece. For it I pray, prophesying in kindness, that life's good fortune come rushing up out of the earth in plenty under the bright glare of the sun.
Athena. This I do, with a glad heart, for these citizens: I have settled here among them powers that are great and hard to please. Everything that happens to men has fallen to them to manage. The man who has never felt their weight does not know where the blows of life come from. His fathers' sins drag him before them. Destruction says nothing, and however loud he shouts, its hateful anger grinds him to dust.
Chorus. Let no wind blow that damages the trees, I speak my favour now, no scorching heat that blinds the buds and crosses over its own border, no fruitless, creeping, endless plague. Let the earth feed the flocks so they thrive and drop twin lambs at the appointed time, and let the rich yield of the earth pay honour to the lucky gift of the gods.
Athena. Do you hear this, guards of my city, what she is bringing to pass? The Lady Fury has great power with the immortals and the gods under the earth, and among men, openly and to the end, they get their way: for some, songs, for others a life blurred with tears.
Chorus. I forbid the deaths that cut men down before their time. Give lovely girls a life with a husband, you who have the power, you Fates, goddesses, sisters of ours by one mother, powers who deal out what is straight, who have a share in every house, whose weight is felt at every season in your just visitations, most honoured of gods, everywhere.
Athena. That they are bringing this to pass for my land, with good will, makes me glad. And I love the eyes of Persuasion, that she watched over my tongue and my mouth against these women when they refused so savagely. But Zeus of the assembly has won. Our rivalry in doing good is the winner, for all time.
Chorus. Civil strife, never satisfied with evil, I pray that it never roars in this city. Let the dust not drink the black blood of citizens and then, in a rage for revenge, snatch greedily at the city's ruin, killing for killing. Let them give joy for joy with a mind for what they share, and hate with one heart. That is the cure for many things among men.
Athena. See, they are finding their way to the road of kind words. Out of these terrifying faces I see great profit for these citizens. Be kind to the Kindly Ones, always, honour them greatly, and you will be seen by all to keep your land and city on the straight road of justice.
Chorus. Farewell, farewell, in the wealth your fate has given you. Farewell, people of the city, who sit close to Zeus, friends of the virgin he loves, learning good sense at last. Under Pallas's wings you are, and her Father stands in awe of you.
Athena. Farewell to you too. I must go ahead to show you your chambers by the sacred light of these escorts. Go, and with these solemn sacrifices speed down under the earth. Hold back what would ruin the land and send up what profits it, so that the city wins. And you, children of Cranaus who hold this city, lead the way for these new settlers. And may the citizens have a good mind for the good that is done to them.
Chorus. Farewell, farewell, and again I say it, all of you in the city, gods and mortals both, who keep the city of Pallas. Show respect to me in my new home among you, and you will not blame the chances of your lives.
Athena. I approve the words of your prayers, and I will escort you by the light of blazing torches to the places below and under the earth, with the attendants who guard my image, as is their duty. The eye of the whole land of Theseus is coming out: a glorious company of children, of women, and a band of old women. Do them honour in robes dyed crimson, and let the light of the fire go forward, so that this kindly company of guests in our land may show itself, from now on, in the good fortune of good men.
(The procession forms with torches, and the Furies, robed in crimson, are led away towards their new home under the earth. The Escort sings as it goes.)
Escort. Go to your home, great ones, lovers of honour, ancient children of Night, under this kindly escort.
Escort. Keep a holy silence, people of the land. Under the age-old hollows of the earth, with honours and sacrifices, revered on every side, keep a holy silence, all the people.
Escort. Gracious and of one mind with the land, come this way, holy ones, and enjoy the fire-eaten torch along the road. Raise the cry now, over our song.
Escort. Peace for all time, between these new settlers and Pallas's people. Zeus who sees everything and Fate have come down together to seal it. Raise the cry now, over our song.
(A bare mountainside at the edge of the world, in Scythia. Power and Force, the servants of Zeus, drag in Prometheus. Hephaestus follows them with his hammer and his chains.)
Power. We have come to the last ground of the earth, the Scythian road, an empty place where nobody walks. Hephaestus, the orders the Father gave you are your business now: to fasten this criminal to the high cliff rock in chains of adamant that nothing can break. Because it was your flower he stole, the flash of fire that makes every craft possible, and he handed it to mortals. For a crime like that he has to pay the gods what he owes them, so that he learns to love the tyranny of Zeus and gets out of the habit of loving mankind.
Hephaestus. Power, and you, Force: as far as you two are concerned, the command of Zeus is carried out, and nothing stands in your way any longer. But I do not have the stomach to chain a god of my own blood by force to this ravine where the winter storms hit. And yet I have to find the stomach for it, whether I like it or not. It is a heavy thing to brush aside the Father's word.
High-thinking son of Themis, whose counsel runs straight: against your will and against mine I am going to nail you with bronze that no one can undo to this rock where no human ever comes. You will never see a mortal's face here or hear a mortal's voice. The sun's bright flame will roast you and change the flower of your skin. You will be glad when night in her embroidered dress hides the light, and glad again when the sun scatters the morning frost. Always, the weight of whatever pain is on you at the moment will grind you down, because the one who is going to relieve you has not been born yet. That is what you got for your love of mankind. You were a god, and you did not cower at the gods' anger; you gave mortals honours that were more than their due. For that you will stand guard over this joyless rock, upright, sleepless, never bending your knee. You will cry out, many times, groans and laments that do no good, because the mind of Zeus is hard to move. Everyone is harsh whose power is new.
Power. Well? Why are you dawdling and wasting pity? Why don't you hate a god the gods hate most, the one who handed your own privilege over to mortals?
Hephaestus. Kinship is a terrible thing. So is friendship.
Power. Agreed. But disobeying the Father's word, how is that possible? Aren't you more afraid of that?
Hephaestus. You never change. Pitiless, and full of nerve.
Power. Because crying over this one cures nothing. Stop working at what is no use to anyone.
Hephaestus. Oh, my craft. How I hate it.
Power. Why hate it? In plain words, your skill is not to blame for any of the trouble in front of us.
Hephaestus. All the same, I wish it had fallen to someone else.
Power. Every job has its burden, except being king of the gods. Nobody is free except Zeus.
Hephaestus. I know that. This proves it. I have nothing to say back.
Power. Then hurry up and throw the chains round him, before the Father sees you loitering.
Hephaestus. There. The cuffs are ready, you can see them.
Power. Put them round his wrists and hit them with the hammer with all your strength. Nail him to the rock.
Hephaestus. It is getting done, and it is not being done badly.
Power. Hit harder. Squeeze tight. Leave nothing slack. He is frightening at finding a way out where there is no way out.
Hephaestus. This arm is fixed, anyway. He will not get that one loose.
Power. Now pin this one too, and make it safe, so that the clever one learns he is slower than Zeus.
Hephaestus. Nobody but him could fairly find fault with my work.
Power. Now the wedge of adamant, the stubborn tooth of it. Drive it straight through his chest and put your weight behind it.
Hephaestus. Aiai, Prometheus. I groan for your pain.
Power. Hanging back again? Groaning for the enemies of Zeus? Watch out, or one day you will be pitying yourself.
Hephaestus. You are looking at a sight that eyes can hardly bear to look at.
Power. I am looking at a man getting what he deserves. Come on. Throw the straps round his ribs.
Hephaestus. I have to do it. You do not have to keep ordering me.
Power. Oh, I will order you, and I will shout you on as well. Get down there and ring his legs with iron. Use force.
Hephaestus. There. Done, and it was not much work.
Power. Now hammer the fetters right through. Hard. The one who inspects this work is a severe judge.
Hephaestus. Your tongue talks the way your face looks.
Power. You be soft. Just do not lecture me for being stubborn and rough in my temper.
Hephaestus. Let us go. He has the net on his limbs.
(Hephaestus goes down the mountain.)
Power. Now sit there and be outrageous. Rob the gods of their privileges and give them to creatures that live for a day. Can mortals bail you out of any of this pain? The gods call you Prometheus, the Forethinker, and the name is a lie. You are the one who needs some forethought now, to work out how you will wriggle out of this piece of craftsmanship.
(Power and Force go out. Prometheus is alone on the rock.)
Prometheus. Bright sky. Winds with your quick wings. Springs of the rivers, and you, waves of the sea, laughing beyond counting. Earth, mother of everything. And the circle of the sun that sees it all: I call on you. Look at what I, a god, am suffering at the hands of gods. Look at the torments that are tearing me apart, and that I have to wrestle with
Prometheus. for ten thousand years. This is the shameful chain the new commander of the blessed gods has invented for me. Oh, oh. I groan for the pain that is here and the pain that is coming. Where will an end to this labour ever rise?
Prometheus. And yet, what am I saying? I know everything that is coming, exactly, in advance. No pain will reach me that I did not expect. What is allotted has to be carried as lightly as it can be, knowing that the strength of Necessity cannot be fought. But I cannot keep silent about my luck, and I cannot speak of it either. I gave gifts to mortals, and for that I am yoked in these bonds, poor wretch. I hunted down the spring of fire, hid it in a hollow fennel stalk, and stole it, and it has turned out to be mortals' teacher in every craft and their great resource. That is the crime I am paying for, nailed up in chains under the open sky.
Prometheus. Ah. Ah. What is that? What sound, what smell has flown to me, out of nowhere? A god's? A mortal's? Something of both? Has someone come to this rock at the end of the world to watch my pain? Or what does he want? Look at me, a god in chains, a god with no luck, the enemy of Zeus, whom every god
Prometheus. who walks through the court of Zeus has learned to hate, because I loved mortals too much. Oh, oh. What is that again? A whirring, close by, like birds. The air whistles under the light beating of wings. Everything that creeps toward me frightens me.
(The daughters of Oceanus arrive through the air in a winged chariot and hover near the rock.)
Chorus. Do not be afraid. We come as friends, this flight of wings racing each other to your rock. It was hard to talk our father round. The quick winds carried me here. The clang of iron on iron rang down to the bottom of our caves and knocked the shyness out of me, for all my grave looks. I came without my sandals, in a winged car.
Prometheus. Aiai, aiai. Children of Tethys, mother of so many, daughters of the father who circles the whole earth with his stream that never sleeps, Oceanus: look at me, see the chain that pins me to the top of this ravine, the watch I keep that nobody would envy.
Chorus. I see you, Prometheus. A fog of fear, full of tears, came over my eyes when I saw your body drying out on the rock in these insults of adamant. New helmsmen are steering Olympus. Zeus rules by new laws, and there is no law in them. What was huge before, he is wiping out.
Prometheus. If only he had thrown me under the earth, under Hades who takes in the dead, into Tartarus that has no end, and chained me there, savagely, in bonds that cannot be undone, so that no god and nobody else could gloat over this. Instead I hang in the wind, a toy for the air, and my pain is my enemies' pleasure.
Chorus. Which of the gods has a heart hard enough to be pleased by this? Who does not feel your pain with you, except Zeus? He has set his mind and it will not bend. He is angry always, and he is crushing the children of Heaven. He will not stop until his heart is full, or until somebody, by some trick, seizes the power that is so hard to take.
Prometheus. Believe this: the day will come when the lord of the blessed gods will need me, me, tortured in these strong shackles, to show him the new plan that strips him of his sceptre and his honours. He will not charm me with the honeyed spells of persuasion. I will not cower at his hard threats and tell him what I know, not until he loosens these savage chains and agrees to pay for this outrage.
Chorus. You are bold. You give nothing to your bitter suffering, and your mouth is far too free. A piercing fear has stirred up my mind. I am afraid for what happens to you. Where will you ever bring this ship of pain to shore and see its end? The son of Cronus has ways nobody can reach and a heart nobody can talk to.
Prometheus. I know Zeus is harsh and keeps justice in his own hands. All the same, I think one day he will be soft-minded, when he is broken in the way I know. He will flatten that iron rage of his and come hurrying to me, to be friends and allies, and I will be hurrying to meet him.
Chorus. Uncover the whole of it and tell us the story. What was the charge Zeus caught you on, that he tortures you so cruelly and with such dishonour? Teach us, unless the telling does you some harm.
Prometheus. It hurts me to tell this, and it hurts to keep quiet. Either way it is bad luck. As soon as the gods began to quarrel and faction broke out among them, one side wanting to throw Cronus off his seat so that Zeus, if you please, could be king, the other pushing the opposite way, so that Zeus would never rule the gods, that was when I gave the best advice there was and tried to persuade the Titans, the children of Heaven and Earth, and could not. They despised clever schemes. In the pride of their strength they thought they would be masters without effort, by force. But my mother Themis, who is also Earth, one shape with many names, had told me more than once how the future was fated to fall out: that it was not by strength, not by main force, but by cunning that the winners would win. I laid all this out for them in words, and they did not think it worth a glance. So the best thing open to me at the time, it seemed, was to take my mother with me and stand beside Zeus, a willing helper of a willing god. And it is by my plans that the black pit of Tartarus now covers old Cronus and his allies with him. That is the help the tyrant of the gods had from me, and this is how he paid me back, with these foul punishments. It is a sickness that comes with tyranny somehow: it cannot trust the people who are its own.
But you asked what he tortures me for, the charge against me, and I will make that clear. The moment he sat down on his father's throne he began handing out privileges to the gods, this to one and that to another, and dividing up his kingdom. But of wretched mortals he took no account at all. He wanted to wipe out the whole race and plant a new one. Nobody stood against that except me. I dared to. I saved mortals from being smashed to pieces and going down to Hades. That is why I am bent under these agonies, painful to suffer and pitiful to look at. I put mortals first in my pity, and I was not judged worthy of any pity myself. Instead I have been disciplined like this, without mercy, into a sight that shames the glory of Zeus.
Chorus. Anyone who does not ache with you at your torments, Prometheus, has a mind of iron and was carved out of rock. I would never have wanted to see this, and now that I have seen it my heart hurts.
Prometheus. Yes. To the people who are my own I am a pitiful thing to look at.
Chorus. You did not go any further than this, did you?
Prometheus. I did. I stopped mortals from seeing their own death coming.
Chorus. What cure did you find for that sickness?
Prometheus. I planted blind hopes inside them.
Chorus. That was a great gift to give mortals.
Prometheus. And on top of that, I gave them fire.
Chorus. What? Creatures of a day have fire now, with its bright eye?
Prometheus. Yes. And from it they will learn many crafts.
Chorus. So these are the charges Zeus has against you, and he...
Prometheus. And he tortures me and never once lets up.
Chorus. And there is no end set to your ordeal?
Prometheus. None. Only when he decides.
Chorus. And how will he ever decide? What hope is there? Don't you see that you did wrong? How you did wrong is not a pleasant thing for me to say, and it is pain for you to hear, so let us leave it. Look for some way out of this ordeal.
Prometheus. It is easy, when your own foot is clear of trouble, to advise and lecture someone who is in it. I knew all of this. I chose it, I chose it, I did wrong, I will not deny it. I helped mortals and found pain for myself. But I never thought the punishment would be like this: withering on a cliff in mid-air, with this empty rock for my share and no neighbour. Now stop crying over the pain in front of you. Come down to the ground and hear what is creeping toward me, so that you learn all of it to the end. Do it for me. Please. Share the burden with someone who is labouring under it now. Pain wanders. It settles on one of us today and on another tomorrow.
Chorus. You did not shout that to ears that were unwilling, Prometheus. Now, on a light foot, I will leave my racing seat and the clean air, the road of the birds, and come down to this jagged ground. I want to hear your troubles from beginning to end.
(The daughters of Oceanus come down from the chariot. Oceanus arrives through the air, riding a winged four-legged creature.)
Oceanus. I have come to the end of a long road, Prometheus, to you, steering this fast-winged bird with my mind, and no bit in its mouth. Know this: what has happened to you hurts me. Kinship makes me feel it, I think, and blood aside, there is no one I would give a bigger share of my respect to than you. You will find that this is true. I do not have it in me to talk sweetly for nothing. Come, show me what I can do to help you. You will never say you had a firmer friend than Oceanus.
Prometheus. What? What am I looking at? You have come too, to watch my pain? How did you find the nerve to leave the stream that carries your name and your caves, roofed with rock, that you hollowed out yourself, and come to this country, the mother of iron? Did you come to look at what has happened to me and to share my grief? Then look. Here is the sight: the friend of Zeus, the one who helped him set up his tyranny, and see what agonies he has bent me under.
Oceanus. I see, Prometheus, and I want to give you the best advice there is, clever as you are. Know yourself. Fit your ways to the new times. There is a new tyrant among the gods too. If you keep throwing out words as harsh and sharpened as these, Zeus may hear you, even sitting far above you, and then the mass of trouble you have now will look like a game. You poor wretch, let go of the anger you are holding and look for a way out of this suffering. Maybe what I am saying sounds old-fashioned to you. But this, Prometheus, is what a tongue that talks too big earns. You are still not humble. You still do not give way to trouble. You want to add fresh trouble to what you have. Take me as your teacher and you will stop kicking against the spurs. You can see that a harsh king rules, and he answers to nobody. Now I am going to go and try, if I can, to get you released from this pain. You keep quiet. Do not let your mouth run away with you. You are very wise; surely you know exactly what an idle tongue gets for its trouble?
Prometheus. I envy you. You shared in all of this, you dared as much as I did, and you are standing there with no blame on you. Now leave it alone. Do not concern yourself. You will not persuade him, whatever you do. He is not easy to persuade. And watch yourself, or the journey will do you harm.
Oceanus. You are far better at teaching your neighbours sense than yourself. I judge by what I see done, not by talk. I am set on going; do not pull me back. I am sure, I am sure, that Zeus will give me this gift, and release you from this pain.
Prometheus. For that, I thank you, and I will never stop thanking you. There is nothing lacking in your goodwill. But do not trouble yourself. You will trouble yourself for nothing and do me no good, if you really do want to take the trouble. Keep quiet and keep yourself out of the way. Because I am in trouble, that is no reason for me to want as many others in it as possible. No. My brother Atlas's fate is grinding at me enough already. He stands in the west, holding up the pillar of sky and earth on his shoulders, a load no arms can hold comfortably. And I pitied the one who lived in the Cilician caves, born of the earth, when I saw him: the murderous monster with a hundred heads, Typhon the furious, broken by force. He stood up against all the gods. Terror hissed out of his hideous jaws, and from his eyes a glare like the Gorgon's flashed, as if he would tear the tyranny of Zeus down by force. But the sleepless missile of Zeus came for him, the thunderbolt that comes down breathing flame, and it knocked him clean out of his big talk. He was hit in the very seat of his mind, and burned to a cinder, and the thunder blasted the strength out of him. And now he lies there, a useless body, a sprawl, near the narrow strait of the sea, pressed flat under the roots of Etna. Hephaestus sits on the topmost peaks and hammers his hot iron. And out of there, one day, rivers of fire will burst and eat the smooth fields of Sicily with savage jaws, Sicily with her lovely crops: that is the rage Typhon will boil up, in hot missiles of a fire-breathing storm nobody can come near, even though the thunderbolt of Zeus burned him to charcoal.
You are not inexperienced. You do not need me to teach you. Save yourself, the way you know how. I will drain the cup of what I have until the mind of Zeus lets go of its anger.
Oceanus. Then do you not know this, Prometheus, that words are the doctors for a sick temper?
Prometheus. If you soften the heart at the right moment, and do not use force to shrink a rage while it is still swelling.
Oceanus. And when a man is eager and takes a risk, what harm do you see in that? Teach me.
Prometheus. Wasted effort and light-headed foolishness.
Oceanus. Let me be sick with that sickness. When you are really wise, it pays best to seem a fool.
Prometheus. That fault will look like mine.
Oceanus. Plainly your words are sending me back home.
Prometheus. Yes. So that grieving for me does not get you hated.
Oceanus. By the one who has just sat down on the throne that rules everything?
Prometheus. Watch him. Do not ever let that heart of his get angry with you.
Oceanus. What has happened to you, Prometheus, is my teacher.
Prometheus. Go. Get moving. Keep the mind you have right now.
Oceanus. You shouted that at me as I was already starting. My four-footed bird is brushing the smooth road of the air with his wings. He will be glad to bend his knees in his own stall at home.
(Oceanus flies off.)
Chorus. I groan for your ruined luck, Prometheus. Tears drip from my eyes and run down my soft cheek and soak it in their wet stream. Zeus is ruling by laws of his own, and what he is doing is past envy; he shows the gods who came before him the spear-point of his pride.
Chorus. The whole country is crying out in grief already. They mourn the great, the ancient dignity that was yours and your brothers', all of them who live in the settled land of holy Asia: mortals who suffer along with you in your loud-groaning pain.
Chorus. And the girls who live in the land of Colchis, who do not flinch from a fight, and the crowd of Scythians who hold the last place on earth, round the marsh of Maeotis,
Chorus. and the warrior flower of Arabia, who hold the high cliff fortress near the Caucasus, a hostile army roaring behind sharp-pointed spears.
Chorus. One other Titan, a god, one only, have I seen before this broken in torment, in insults of adamant: Atlas, whose strength stood out above every other, who groans under the pole of the sky as he props it on his back.
Chorus. The sea's surf roars as it breaks. The deep groans. The black hollow of Hades rumbles under the earth, and the springs of the holy-flowing rivers groan for your pitiful pain.
Prometheus. Do not think it is pride that keeps me silent, or stubbornness. Thought is eating my heart, seeing myself abused like this. And yet, who else but I marked out the privileges of these new gods, every one of them, from start to finish? But I say nothing about that. I would be telling you what you already know. Listen instead to the troubles of mortals, and how I took them, who were children before, and gave them minds and put them in possession of their wits. I say this with no complaint against men. I am only explaining the goodwill behind what I gave.
At first they had eyes and saw nothing; they had ears and did not hear. Like the shapes in dreams they muddled through the length of their lives, all of it at random. They did not know houses of brick that face the sun. They did not know how to work wood. They lived underground like restless ants, in the sunless corners of caves. They had no reliable sign of winter, or of flowering spring, or of summer with its harvest. They did everything without understanding, until I showed them the risings of the stars and their settings, which are hard to tell apart. And number, the cleverest of inventions, I found for them, and the putting together of letters, which is the memory of everything and the working mother of the Muses. I was the first to yoke wild animals and make them slaves to the collar and the pack-saddle, so that they could take over the heaviest labour from mortal bodies, and I brought horses under the chariot and made them love the rein, the pride and ornament of rich men's luxury. And nobody but me invented the sailors' sea-roaming carriages with their wings of linen. Those are the devices I found for mortals, poor wretch, and I have no device of my own to get me out of the pain I am in now.
Chorus. You have suffered a shameful thing. You have lost your wits and gone astray. Like a bad doctor who has fallen ill himself, you are losing heart, and you cannot find the drugs that would cure you.
Prometheus. Hear the rest and you will marvel more, at the crafts and the resources I worked out. The biggest of them first. If anyone fell sick there was no defence at all, nothing to eat, nothing to rub on, nothing to drink. For want of drugs they shrivelled away, until I showed them how to mix gentle remedies, with which they now fight off every disease. I laid out the many roads of prophecy. I was the first to sort out which dreams are going to come true in waking life. I taught them to read chance words, hard to interpret, and the omens met on the road. The flight of birds with crooked talons I marked out exactly: which are lucky by nature and which are on the wrong side, what way of life each kind has, what feuds they have with each other and what loves, and where they gather. The smoothness of the inner organs, and what colour the gall must be to please the gods, and the mottled beauty of the liver's lobe. The thigh-bones wrapped in fat, and the long backbone, I burned, and set mortals on the road into an art that is hard to read. And I opened their eyes to the signs in the flame, which had a film over them before. So much for that. And the things hidden under the earth to help mankind, bronze, iron, silver, and gold: who could claim to have found them before I did? No one, I know it for certain, unless he wants to babble for nothing. Take the whole of it in one short word: every craft mortals have comes from Prometheus, and from no one else.
Chorus. Then do not go on helping mortals past all reason and neglect yourself in your trouble. I have good hope that you will still be set free from these chains and be no weaker than Zeus.
Prometheus. That is not how Fate, who brings everything to its end, has decreed this will finish. Only when I have been bent by ten thousand pains and torments do I escape these chains. Craft is far weaker than Necessity.
Chorus. Then who holds the tiller of Necessity?
Prometheus. The three Fates, and the Furies, who forget nothing.
Chorus. So Zeus is weaker than they are?
Prometheus. He cannot escape what is fated, at any rate.
Chorus. And what is fated for Zeus, except to rule for ever?
Prometheus. That you will not learn yet. Do not press me.
Chorus. It is something solemn, surely, that you are wrapping up.
Prometheus. Think about something else. This is no time to speak of that. It has to be kept covered, as far as it possibly can be. By keeping it safe I escape these shameful chains and these torments.
Chorus. May Zeus, who allots everything, never set his power against my mind. May I never be slow to come to the gods with holy feasts of slaughtered oxen beside the stream of Oceanus, my father, that never fails. May I never sin in what I say. Let this stay fixed in me and never melt away.
Chorus. It is sweet to stretch out a long life on hopes that have courage in them, feeding the heart on bright good cheer. But I shudder when I look at you, torn by ten thousand torments. You do not tremble at Zeus. You go your own way, Prometheus, and you honour mortals too much.
Chorus. Come, my friend, what a thankless thanks it was. Tell me, where is the strength in it? What help can creatures of a day give you? Did you not see how feeble they are, how weak, no more than a dream, the blind race of men with their feet in fetters? Never will the plans of mortals step outside the order Zeus has made.
Chorus. I learned this from looking at what has destroyed you, Prometheus. And a very different song has flown to me now from the one I sang then, around your bath and your bed, the wedding song, when you won my sister Hesione with your gifts and led her home to share your bed as your wife.
(Io runs in. She has the horns of a cow on her head, and she is being driven by something no one else can see.)
Io. What land is this? What people? Who is this I see, storm-beaten in a bridle of rock? What was your crime, that you are dying for it like this? Tell me where on earth my wretched wandering has brought me.
Io. Ah, ah. Eh, eh. It is stinging me again, the gadfly, poor wretch that I am, the ghost of Argus, the earth-born. Keep it off. Earth! I am afraid when I see him, the herdsman with ten thousand eyes. He comes on with his crafty eye, and even dead the earth will not hide him. He crosses over from the dead and hunts me, poor wretch, and drives me, starving, along the sand by the sea.
Io. And under it the reed pipe, stuck together with wax, drones its shrill tune that brings sleep. Oh, oh, popoi. Where are they taking me, these wanderings that carry me so far? What did I do, son of Cronus, what did you find me guilty of, that you yoked me in pain like this? Eh, eh. Why wear me down with a terror that drives me, a gadfly's terror, wretched and out of my mind? Burn me with fire, or hide me in the earth, or throw me to the beasts of the sea to eat, only do not begrudge me what I pray for, lord. These wanderings, all this wandering, have worked me hard enough. I cannot learn how to escape the pain. Do you hear the voice of the girl with the horns of a cow?
Prometheus. How could I not hear the girl the gadfly spins round, Inachus's daughter, who warms the heart of Zeus with love, and now, hated by Hera, is forced to run these endless courses?
Io. How do you know my father's name to speak it? Tell me, wretched as I am, who are you, that you call out to a wretched girl, poor sufferer, and get it right? You have named the sickness the god sent me, that wastes me and stings me with goads that drive me on. Eh, eh. I came here leaping, starving, tormented, rushing, beaten down by the angry schemes of Hera. Who among the unlucky, eh, eh, suffers what I suffer? Show me plainly what is waiting for me to suffer. What remedy is there, what cure for the sickness? Tell me, if you know. Speak. Explain it to a girl who has wandered so badly.
Prometheus. I will tell you plainly everything you want to know, no riddles woven into it, in simple words, the way it is right to open your mouth to friends. You are looking at Prometheus, who gave fire to mortals.
Io. You, who showed yourself the common benefactor of the human race, poor suffering Prometheus, what is this the punishment for?
Prometheus. I have only just stopped weeping over my own troubles.
Io. Then will you not do this one favour for me?
Prometheus. Say what it is you are asking. You can learn anything from me.
Io. Tell me who clamped you into this ravine.
Prometheus. The plan was Zeus's. The hand was Hephaestus's.
Io. And what crimes are you paying for?
Prometheus. I have made enough clear to you already. That is all.
Io. Then tell me this instead: where does my wandering end? How long does a wretched girl like me have to go on?
Prometheus. For you, not knowing is better than knowing.
Io. Do not hide from me what I am going to suffer.
Prometheus. It is not that I begrudge you the gift.
Io. Then why do you hold back from telling me everything?
Prometheus. There is no grudge in it. I am afraid of shattering your mind.
Io. Do not take more care of me than I want taken.
Prometheus. Since you insist, I have to speak. Listen, then.
Chorus. Not yet. Give me my share of the pleasure too. Let us hear about her sickness first, and let her tell us herself the disasters that have ruined her life. Then she can learn from you what struggles are still to come.
Prometheus. Io, it is your job to do them this kindness, all the more since they are your father's sisters. And weeping and wailing over your bad luck is time well spent when the people listening are going to give you a tear for it.
Io. I do not see how I can refuse you. You will hear everything you want to hear, in plain words. And yet even telling it shames me: the storm the gods sent, the ruin of my body, and where it came from, swooping down on me, poor wretch.
Night after night, visions came into my room, into a girl's room, and coaxed me with smooth words. "Lucky, lucky girl, why stay a virgin so long, when the greatest marriage of all is yours for the taking? Zeus has been warmed by the arrow of desire for you, and wants to take love's pleasure with you. Child, do not kick away the bed of Zeus. Go out to Lerna, to the deep meadow, to your father's sheep and cattle pens, so that the eye of Zeus can get some relief from its longing."
Dreams like that held me every night, and I was miserable, until at last I dared to tell my father about the dreams that came walking in the dark. He sent messenger after messenger to Pytho and to Dodona, to find out what he had to do or say to please the gods. They came back reporting oracles with shifting mouths, oracles that meant nothing, worded so that no one could make them out. Then at last a clear message came to Inachus, plainly charging him, plainly telling him, to push me out of his house and out of my country, to roam loose to the farthest edges of the earth. And if he would not, a fiery thunderbolt would come from Zeus and wipe out his whole family.
He believed those oracles of Apollo. He drove me out and barred his doors against me, against his will and against mine. But the bridle of Zeus was on him, and it forced him to do it. At once my body and my mind were twisted out of shape, and I grew horns, as you see, and a gadfly with a sharp mouth stung me, and I went leaping, mad, to the sweet stream of Cerchnea and the spring of Lerna. And a herdsman born from the earth, Argus, hot-tempered and never cooling, came after me, watching every step I took with his crowd of eyes. A sudden death that no one expected took his life from him. But I, stung by the fly, lashed by the gods' whip, am driven from land to land.
You have heard what happened. If you can say what struggles are still left, tell me. And do not pity me and warm me with lies. I say that made-up words are the most shameful sickness there is.
Chorus. Ah, ah. Keep it away. Oh. Never, never did I think words so strange would come to my ears, or that sufferings so hard to look at, so hard to bear, pain and filth and terror, would strike my soul with a two-pointed goad. Oh, oh, Fate, Fate, I shudder to see what has been done to Io.
Prometheus. You are groaning too soon. You are full of fear. Wait until you have learned the rest as well.
Chorus. Speak. Teach us. When someone is sick, it is sweet to know clearly beforehand what pain is still coming.
Prometheus. You got your first request out of me easily enough. You wanted to hear her tell the story of her own struggle first. Now hear the rest, the sufferings this young woman still has to endure at Hera's hands. And you, seed of Inachus, throw my words into your heart, so that you learn where your road ends.
First, from here, turn yourself towards the rising sun and walk across plains that have never seen a plough. You will come to the Scythian nomads, who live in woven houses raised high off the ground on wagons with good round wheels, and carry bows that shoot a long way. Do not go near them. Keep your feet close to the shore, where the sea groans on the rocks, and pass on out of their country. On your left hand live the Chalybes, who work iron. You must watch out for them. They are savages, and strangers cannot approach them. Then you will reach the river Hybristes, the Violent, and it does not lie about its name. Do not cross it. It is not an easy river to cross. Go on until you come to Caucasus itself, the highest of all mountains, where the river blows its strength out of the very brows of the peak. You must climb over those summits, which are neighbours of the stars, and take the road south. There you will come to the army of the Amazons, who hate men. One day they will settle Themiscyra on the river Thermodon, where the rough jaw of Salmydessus opens on the sea, a hateful host to sailors, a stepmother to ships. The Amazons will guide you on your way, and gladly. Then, right at the narrow gates of the lake, you will come to the Cimmerian isthmus. Leave it behind you with a bold heart, and cross the channel of Maeotis. And for all time mortals will tell the great story of your crossing, and it will be named after you: the Bosporus, the Cow's Ford. Then you will leave the soil of Europe and come to the continent of Asia.
Well? Does it not seem to you that the tyrant of the gods is violent in everything alike? He is a god, he wanted to sleep with a mortal girl, and he threw these wanderings on her. Girl, you have found a bitter suitor for your hand. And the words you have just heard, you must understand, are not even the introduction.
Io. Oh, oh, oh. Ee, ee.
Prometheus. Crying out again? Groaning again? What will you do when you learn the evils that are still to come?
Chorus. You mean there are more sufferings still to tell her?
Prometheus. A whole stormy sea of them, a sea of ruinous misery.
Io. Then what do I gain by living? Why did I not throw myself off this rough rock at once, dash myself on the ground and be free of all my troubles? Better to die once than to suffer badly every day of my life.
Prometheus. Then you would find my struggles hard to bear. It is not fated for me to die. Death would have been a release from my sufferings. As it is, there is no end set to my troubles until Zeus falls from his tyranny.
Io. What? Is Zeus really going to fall from power one day?
Prometheus. You would be glad, I think, to see that happen.
Io. How could I not be, when it is Zeus who makes me suffer?
Prometheus. Then you may know it for a fact: it will.
Io. Who will strip him of the tyrant's sceptre?
Prometheus. He will. Himself, and his own empty-headed plans.
Io. How? Tell me, if there is no harm in telling.
Prometheus. He will make a marriage that one day he will be sorry for.
Io. To a goddess, or a mortal? If it can be said, say it.
Prometheus. Why ask to whom? That cannot be spoken aloud.
Io. Is it his wife who will throw him off his throne?
Prometheus. She will bear a son who is stronger than his father.
Io. And is there no way for him to turn this fate aside?
Prometheus. None. Unless I were set free from these chains.
Io. Then who is going to free you, against the will of Zeus?
Prometheus. It has to be one of your own descendants.
Io. What did you say? A child of mine will free you from your suffering?
Prometheus. The third generation after ten more.
Io. Now your prophecy is getting too hard to read.
Prometheus. Then do not try to learn the whole of your own suffering either.
Io. Do not hold out a gift to me and then snatch it back.
Prometheus. I will make you a present of one of two stories.
Io. Which two? Show me them, and let me choose.
Prometheus. I am giving you the choice. Either I tell you clearly the rest of your sufferings, or I tell you who will set me free.
Chorus. Do her the one favour and me the other. Do not refuse my request. Tell her the rest of her wandering. Tell me who will set you free. That is what I long to hear.
Prometheus. Since you are set on it, I will not refuse to declare everything you want to know. To you first, Io, I will describe your wandering, all the tossing about that is still to come. Engrave it on the tablets of your mind, where memory keeps its records.
When you have crossed the stream that divides the two continents, turn towards the flaming east, where the sun walks. You will cross the roaring sea until you reach the Gorgon plains of Cisthene, where the daughters of Phorcys live, three ancient girls shaped like swans, who share one eye between them and have one tooth. The sun never looks down on them with his rays, and the moon never sees them by night. Near them live their three winged sisters, the Gorgons, with snakes for hair, whom the human race hates, and no mortal who has looked at them has drawn another breath. That is one guard-post I am warning you about.
Now hear about another sight, an ugly one. Watch out for the hounds of Zeus that never bark, the griffins with their sharp beaks, and for the one-eyed army of the Arimaspians, who ride on horses and live around the stream of Pluto's river, whose waters run with gold. Do not go near them. Then you will come to a far country, a dark-skinned people who live beside the springs of the sun, where the river Aethiops runs. Go along its banks until you reach the great drop, where the Nile sends down his holy, sweet stream from the Bybline mountains. He will lead you on to the three-cornered land of the Nile, the land Nile makes, where at last, Io, it is fated that you and your children will found your far-off colony.
If any of this is stammered and hard for you to make out, go back over it and learn it clearly. I have more spare time than I want.
Chorus. If there is anything left, or anything you passed over, that you can tell her about her wandering and its ruin, say it. But if you have told everything, then do us the favour we asked in our turn. You remember it, I think.
Prometheus. She has heard her whole journey to its end. But so that she knows she has not been listening to me for nothing, I will tell her what she went through before she came here, and give her that as proof that my words are true. I will leave out the great crowd of details and go straight to the last stretch of your wandering.
When you reached the Molossian plains and the high ridge that stands round Dodona, where the oracle and the seat of Thesprotian Zeus are, and that wonder no one believes in, the talking oaks, you were hailed by them, brightly and with no riddle in it at all, as the one who was going to be the famous wife of Zeus. Does any of that flatter you? From there the gadfly stung you, and you rushed along the coast road to the great gulf of Rhea, and from there you are tossed back the way you came, wandering in reverse. And for all time to come, know this for certain, that inlet of the sea will be called the Ionian Sea, a memorial of your journey to the whole human race.
Those are the signs I give you that my mind sees further than what has been shown. The rest I will tell to you and to her together, coming back onto the track of my earlier story.
Prometheus. There is a city called Canobus at the very edge of the land, right at the mouth of the Nile, on the silt it lays down. There Zeus will give you back your senses, stroking you with a hand that means no harm, and only touching you. And from that touch of Zeus you will bear a child and name him for it: dark Epaphus, the Touched One, who will harvest all the land the broad-flowing Nile waters.
Five generations after him, a family of fifty daughters will come back to Argos, and not by their own choice: they will be running from marriage to their cousins, their own blood. And the cousins, their hearts fluttering, like hawks left not far behind the doves, will come hunting a marriage that should not be hunted. But the god will begrudge them the women's bodies. Pelasgian soil will take them in, after a War made for killing men is fought by women, and the men are beaten by a daring that keeps watch by night. For each wife will rob her husband of his life, dipping a two-edged sword in his throat. May love come to my enemies like that.
But one of the daughters will be charmed by desire, and will not kill the man who shares her bed. The edge will go off her resolve. Of two names she will choose to be called the weaker one: coward rather than murderess. And she will give birth in Argos to a line of kings.
It would take a long speech to go through all this clearly. But from that seed there will be born a bold man, famous with the bow, who will set me free from these sufferings. That is the prophecy my mother told me, Themis, the Titan born long ago. How, and by what means, would take a long story to tell, and you would gain nothing by learning it.
Io. Eleleu, eleleu. Again the spasm, again the madness that hammers the brain, it heats me, the gadfly's barb, forged in no fire, stings me, and my heart kicks at my ribs in terror. My eyes roll and spin, I am carried out of my course by the raging blast of frenzy, I have lost the mastery of my tongue, and muddy words beat wildly against the waves of hateful ruin.
(Io runs off, driven by the gadfly, and does not come back.)
Chorus. Wise, he was wise, the man who first weighed this in his mind and put it into words with his tongue, that to marry in your own rank is far the best, and that a man who works with his hands should not set his heart on marrying among people gone soft with money or people swollen with their great birth.
Chorus. Never, never, you Fates, you powerful ones, may you see me made a partner of the bed of Zeus, never may I come near a bridegroom from the sky. For I shudder when I look at Io, a virgin no man loved, worn down like this by Hera's cruel wandering, by pain.
Chorus. For me, when a marriage is level, there is no fear in it. I am not afraid. But never let the love of the greater gods fix me with the eye no one escapes. That is a war that cannot be fought, a road with no way out and no way through, and I do not know what would become of me. For I cannot see how I could escape the mind of Zeus.
Prometheus. And yet Zeus, stubborn as his heart is, will be humbled. The marriage he is getting ready to make will throw him out of his tyranny and off his throne into nothing. And then the curse his father Cronus laid on him, the curse he spoke as he fell from his ancient throne, will be fulfilled to the last word. No god can show him the way out of those troubles except me. I know what is coming and I know how.
So let him sit there, confident, trusting in the crashes he makes up in the air, shaking his fire-breathing bolt in his hands. None of it will keep him from falling, dishonoured, a fall past bearing. Such is the wrestler he is getting ready now against himself, a wonder that cannot be fought, who will find a flame stronger than the lightning and a mighty crash that outroars the thunder, and will shatter the trident, Poseidon's spear, that plague of the sea that shakes the earth. And when he has tripped over that evil, he will learn how far apart it is to be a ruler and to be a slave.
Chorus. It is only what you wish for that your tongue is putting on Zeus.
Prometheus. I say what will come to pass, and what I want as well.
Chorus. Are we really to expect that someone will be master over Zeus?
Prometheus. Yes. And he will have a neck-load of pains harder to carry than these of mine.
Chorus. How are you not afraid, flinging out words like that?
Prometheus. What should I fear, when I am not fated to die?
Chorus. But he could give you a struggle even more painful than this one.
Prometheus. Let him do it. I expect everything.
Chorus. The wise are the ones who bow down to Necessity, the goddess no one escapes.
Prometheus. Worship, pray, fawn on whoever holds the power at the time. I care less than nothing for Zeus. Let him act, let him hold power for this short time of his, however he likes. He will not rule the gods for long. But look. Here I see the runner of Zeus, the errand boy of the new tyrant. He has come to announce something new, no doubt.
(Hermes comes in, the messenger of Zeus, with the wand and the winged sandals of his office.)
Hermes. You. The clever one. Bitter beyond all bitterness. The one who sinned against the gods by handing out their honours to creatures that live for a day. The thief of fire. I am talking to you. The Father orders you to say what marriage this is you keep boasting about, the one that is going to throw him out of power. And none of it in riddles: set out every single point as it stands. And do not make me come twice, Prometheus. You can see that Zeus is not softened by tricks like yours.
Prometheus. That is a pompous speech, and full of self-importance, as you would expect from a servant of the gods. You are new, and you hold new power, and you really think you live in a stronghold that grief can never reach. Have I not seen two tyrants thrown out of it already? And I will see the third, the one who is lord now, thrown out too, most shamefully and most quickly. Do you think I tremble in front of these new gods and cower down? I am a long way from that. All the way from it. Now hurry back along the road you came by. You will learn nothing you are asking me about.
Hermes. It was wilfulness exactly like this that ran you into this harbour of misery before.
Prometheus. I would not trade my bad luck for your slavery. Be clear about that.
Hermes. Better, I suppose, to be a slave to this rock than to be born the trusted messenger of Father Zeus.
Prometheus. That is how outrage should be answered: with outrage.
Hermes. You seem to be enjoying your present situation.
Prometheus. Enjoying it? I hope I see my enemies enjoying themselves like this. And I count you among them.
Hermes. What? You blame me too, somehow, for your disasters?
Prometheus. In one word: I hate every god that I did good to and that repays me with evil, against all justice.
Hermes. I hear you. You are sick with no small madness.
Prometheus. Sick I may be, if it is a sickness to hate your enemies.
Hermes. You would be unbearable if things were going well for you.
Prometheus. Oh.
Hermes. Oh? That is a word Zeus does not know.
Prometheus. But Time, as he grows old, teaches everything.
Hermes. And yet you, at least, have not learned yet to keep yourself in hand.
Prometheus. No. Or I would not be talking to you, an underling.
Hermes. It seems you will say nothing of what the Father wants.
Prometheus. Of course. I owe him so much. I ought to pay him back the favour.
Hermes. You mock me as if I were a child.
Prometheus. And are you not a child, and stupider than a child, if you expect to learn anything from me? There is no torture and no trick by which Zeus will make me speak this, until these chains that shame me are loosened. So let him throw his blazing flame. Let him stir up everything and shake it with white-winged snow and thunder under the earth. None of it will bend me into saying by whose hand he is fated to fall from his tyranny.
Hermes. Look, now, and see if this course seems likely to help you.
Prometheus. It was looked at long ago, and decided.
Hermes. Bring yourself, you fool, bring yourself at last to think straight about the sufferings you are in.
Prometheus. You are wasting your breath on me, as if you were talking a wave round. Never let it enter your head that I will turn woman-hearted out of fear of what Zeus intends, and beg the one I hate most, with my hands turned up like a woman's, to free me from these chains. I am the whole width of the world from that.
Hermes. I think I am going to say a lot and say it for nothing. Nothing I ask softens you. Nothing wears you down. Like a colt fresh under the yoke you bite the bit and fight against the reins. But the cleverness you are so violent about is a feeble thing. Wilfulness, on its own, in a man who does not think straight, has less strength than nothing at all.
Think, if you will not be persuaded by my words, what a storm, what a triple wave of evils is going to break on you, with no escape. First the Father will tear this jagged ravine apart with thunder and the flame of lightning, and hide your body, and the rock will hold you in its stony arms. And when you have finished a long stretch of time, you will come back up into the light. And then the winged hound of Zeus, the blood-red eagle, will tear your body greedily into great rags, a guest who comes to dinner uninvited and stays the whole day, and will feast on your liver until it is black with his gnawing. Do not expect any end to that agony until some god appears to take over your sufferings, and is willing to go down into Hades, where there is no light, and into the black depths of Tartarus.
Think about it, then. This is no invented boast. It is said all too truly. The mouth of Zeus does not know how to lie: he brings every word to pass. So look around you, and think, and never believe that wilfulness is better than good counsel.
Chorus. To us, at least, what Hermes says does not seem out of place. He is telling you to let go of your wilfulness and go looking for the good counsel that is wisdom. Do as he says. It is shameful for a wise man to go on being wrong.
Prometheus. I knew all that before he came bawling his message at me. And for an enemy to suffer at the hands of enemies is no disgrace. So let it come. Let the two-edged curl of fire be thrown at me, let the air be torn with thunder and the spasm of wild winds, let the blast shake the earth from its foundations, roots and all, let the waves of the sea in their rough surge pile up over the paths of the stars in heaven, and let him lift my body and hurl it down to black Tartarus in the hard whirlpools of Necessity. Whatever he does, he cannot kill me.
Hermes. These are the plans and these are the words you hear from men whose minds are struck. What is missing, what does his prayer lack, to make it raving? Where does his madness slacken? But you, at least, you who share the labour of his sufferings, get away from this place, somewhere, quickly, before the bellow of the thunder that nothing softens stuns your minds.
Chorus. Say something else. Give me advice I could actually take. That word you swept past me just now is not a thing I can stand. How can you order me to practise cowardice? Whatever he has to suffer, I want to suffer with him. I have learned to hate traitors, and there is no sickness I spit out more than that one.
Hermes. Then remember what I am telling you now, and when you are caught in the hunt of ruin do not blame your luck, and never say that Zeus threw you into a suffering you could not foresee. No. You did it to yourselves. You knew. It was not sudden, it was not secret. Your own stupidity will tangle you in the net of ruin, the net with no way out.
(Hermes goes out. The storm begins.)
Prometheus. Now it is deed and no longer word. The earth is rocking. The thunder's echo bellows up from the deep, the curls of lightning flash out, all fire, whirlwinds spin the dust, the blasts of all the winds leap at each other and show their fight, breath against breath, and the sky is churned into the sea. This is the blow that Zeus sends against me, openly, to make me afraid. O holiness of my mother, O sky, wheeling the light that everyone shares, you see me. You see what injustice I suffer.
(Thunder and lightning. The rock splits and Prometheus goes down into the earth, and the daughters of Oceanus go down with him.)