438-405 BC 2026
This is an AI modernization of The Nineteen Plays into contemporary English. The original is available from Perseus Digital Library. Also available as an epub.
Nineteen plays by Euripides survive, more than by Aeschylus and Sophocles together, and this volume has all of them, complete. He was the youngest of the three, born around 480 BC, and he won the prize at the Athenian festival only four times in his life, far less often than either of the others. Aristophanes made a career of mocking him, and put him on stage in a comedy the year after he died, arguing with Aeschylus over which of them was the better poet. He left Athens near the end and died in Macedonia in 406.
The number nineteen is partly an accident. The other two survive in what looks like a set of school selections; Euripides survives in that plus a run of plays from a complete edition, alphabetically consecutive in Greek, which happened to come through. So this book contains the famous ones and also plays nobody chose. Medea kills her children to punish their father and is given the last word. Pentheus is torn apart by his own mother, who walks on stage carrying his head and thinking it is a lion's. Hecuba, an old queen with nothing left, blinds the man who murdered her son. Helen turns out never to have gone to Troy at all. And there is Cyclops, the only complete satyr play left from the Greek theatre, in which Odysseus blinds a giant with the help of a chorus of drunk and cowardly goat-men. Rhesus is here too; its authorship was already disputed in antiquity.
He wrote the plainest Greek of the three, and was mocked for it in his own time as the language of the marketplace. His people talk like people: nurses, farmers, slaves, a terrified Phrygian eunuch, and kings who argue like men in a lawcourt. The formal debate is the engine of nearly every play, and both sides are good, which is the difficulty and the point. He also invented the solo aria, and there are more songs by actors here than by the chorus.
Greek tragedy has two registers, and the metre says which is which. This edition keeps them apart: the spoken scenes are modern prose, the sung parts are set as verse, indented and unrhymed. The rhyme in the old verse translations was the translator's own and has gone. This is one of three volumes here, with Aeschylus and Sophocles, and together they hold every Greek tragedy that survives.
Nothing is softened. The speeches against women stand as their speakers make them, and so do the accusations against the gods that got the author called an atheist. The plays about the fall of Troy are about women being handed out as slaves, and say so.
Alcestis (438 BC)
Medea (431 BC)
The Children of Heracles (c. 430 BC)
Hippolytus (428 BC)
Andromache (c. 425 BC)
Hecuba (c. 424 BC)
The Suppliants (c. 423 BC)
Electra (c. 420 BC)
Heracles (c. 416 BC)
The Trojan Women (415 BC)
Iphigenia Among the Taurians (c. 414 BC)
Ion (c. 413 BC)
Helen (412 BC)
The Phoenician Women (c. 410 BC)
Orestes (408 BC)
The Bacchae (405 BC)
Iphigenia at Aulis (405 BC)
Cyclops (date unknown)
Rhesus (date unknown)
(Pherae, in Thessaly, before the house of Admetus. Apollo comes out of it, carrying his bow.)
Apollo. House of Admetus. I put up with a servant's table here, and I was a god when I did it. Zeus was the cause. He killed my son Asclepius, driving the lightning into his chest, and I lost my temper and killed the Cyclopes, who forge his fire for him, and for that my father made me work for wages in a mortal's house. So I came to this country and kept a stranger's cattle, and I have kept this house safe to this very day. I am a decent god, and I had found a decent man in the son of Pheres, and I saved him from dying. I cheated the Fates. The goddesses agreed with me that Admetus could slip out of the death that was waiting for him, if he gave the powers below another corpse in exchange. He went round everyone he loved and put the question to them, his father, the old mother who bore him, and he found nobody willing to die in his place and stop looking at the light, except his wife. She is in the house now, in his arms, gasping out her life. This is the day she is fated to die and leave the living. And I am leaving too. I love this roof, but I cannot let the pollution touch me inside it. And here is Death himself, already, close by. The priest of the dead. He is on his way to take her down to the house of Hades, and he has timed it exactly. He has been watching for this day, the day she has to die.
(Death comes in.)
Death. Ah. Ah. What are you doing at this house? Why are you hanging about here, Apollo? Cheating again, are you, snatching away the rights of the gods below and stopping them short? Was it not enough for you to block Admetus's death and trip the Fates with a dirty trick? And now here you are again, standing guard over her, with your bow in your hand, over the daughter of Pelias, who promised to die for her husband and set him free.
Apollo. Steady. I have justice on my side, and good arguments.
Death. Then what is the bow for, if you have justice?
Apollo. Habit. I always carry it.
Death. And you always help this house more than is right.
Apollo. I cannot bear it when a friend is in trouble.
Death. So you will rob me of this second body as well?
Apollo. I did not take the first one from you by force.
Death. Then how is he up here on the earth and not under it?
Apollo. He gave you his wife instead. The one you have come for now.
Death. And I will take her down under the ground.
Apollo. Take her, then. I doubt I could talk you out of it.
Death. Out of killing whoever is due? That is my job.
Apollo. No. Your job is to deal death to people who are about to die anyway.
Death. I see your argument. And I see what you want.
Apollo. Is there any way, then, for Alcestis to reach old age?
Death. There is not. I enjoy my rights too, you know.
Apollo. You cannot take more than one life either way.
Death. When the young die, the prize I win is bigger.
Apollo. If she dies old, she will get a rich funeral.
Death. You are writing the law to suit the rich, Apollo.
Apollo. What did you say? Have you been clever all this time, without my noticing?
Death. People with money would buy the right to die old.
Apollo. So you will not do me this one favour.
Death. No. You know my ways.
Apollo. I do. Mortals hate them, and the gods loathe them.
Death. You cannot have everything that is not yours to have.
Apollo. Well, you will be stopped, all the same, savage as you are. There is a man coming to the house of Pheres. Eurystheus has sent him after a team of horses, in the freezing country of Thrace. He will be a guest here, in Admetus's house, and he will take this woman away from you by force. You will get no thanks from me, then, and you will do exactly what I am asking anyway, and I will hate you for it.
Death. Talk all you like, you will get nothing more. This woman is going down to the house of Hades. I am going in for her now, to begin the rite with my sword. Once this blade has cut a lock of hair from a head, that head belongs to the gods below.
(Apollo goes. Death goes into the house. The Chorus, old men of Pherae, come in and gather at the door.)
Chorus. Why is it so quiet in front of the house? Why has the house of Admetus gone silent? And there is not one of the family near, to tell me whether I should be mourning the queen dead already, or whether she still lives and looks at this light, the daughter of Pelias, Alcestis, who to me, and to everyone, seemed the best wife a husband ever had.
Chorus. Does anyone hear a groan, or the sound of hands beating, inside the house, or a wail, as if it were over? No, and there is not a servant either posted at the gate. Oh, Healer, if only you would appear between the waves of this ruin.
Chorus. If she were dead they would not be silent. She is a corpse already. She has not been carried out of the house. How do you know? I am not so sure. What makes you confident? How could Admetus give a wife as good as that a funeral with nobody there?
Chorus. And in front of the gates I see no spring water, as custom has it, standing at the door of the dead. No lock of hair on the doorstep, cut off, the way it falls in mourning. No young women's hands beating out the grief.
Chorus. And yet this is the appointed day. What are you saying? The day she has to go under the earth. You have touched my heart. You have touched my mind. When the good are worn down to nothing, anyone who has ever been counted decent must grieve.
Chorus. There is nowhere on earth you could send a ship, not to Lycia, not to the waterless seat of Ammon in the desert, to save that poor woman's life. Death is coming for her, sheer as a cliff, and I do not know which god's altar I should go to now with a sheep to kill.
Chorus. Only one man, if he were still alive and his eyes saw this light, Apollo's son: then she might have left the dark seats and the gates of Hades and come back. He used to raise the dead, until the lightning Zeus throws struck him, the fire from heaven. But now, what hope of her life is there left for me to hold?
Chorus. The king and queen have done everything already. On the altars of every god the sacrifices stand, full and dripping blood, and there is no cure for the evil. None.
(A Maid comes out of the house, in tears.)
Chorus. But here comes one of the servants out of the house, crying. What am I going to hear? If something has happened to the master and mistress, grief is forgivable. But we would like to know whether the lady is still alive, or whether she is gone.
Maid. You could say she is alive, and you could say she is dead.
Chorus. How can the same woman be dead and still see?
Maid. She is sinking already. Her life is tearing loose.
Chorus. Poor man. To be the man he is, and lose a wife like that.
Maid. The master does not know it yet. He will not until it happens.
Chorus. Is there no hope any more of saving her life?
Maid. None. The appointed day is forcing its way in.
Chorus. Then is everything being done for her that should be?
Maid. The clothes are ready that her husband will bury her in.
Chorus. Then let her know this: she dies with a great name, and she is the best woman under the sun, by a long way.
Maid. Best? Of course she is the best. Who would argue with that? What would a woman have to be, to outdo her? How could anyone show more plainly that she put her husband first than by being willing to die for him? The whole city knows that much. But what she did inside the house, you will be amazed to hear.
When she realised the appointed day had come, she washed her white skin in water from the river, and took clothes and jewels out of the cedar chests and dressed herself beautifully, and stood in front of the hearth and prayed. "Lady, I am going under the earth, and this is the last time I will kneel to you, so I ask you: be a mother to my orphans. Find my boy a loving wife, and my girl a good husband. And do not let my children die before their time, as I their mother am dying, but let them live out a happy life in their father's country, and enjoy it." Then she went to every altar in Admetus's house and put wreaths on them and prayed, breaking the sprigs off the myrtle boughs, without a tear, without a sound, and the evil that was coming did not change the lovely colour of her skin at all.
And then she rushed into the bedroom, to the bed, and there she did cry, and this is what she said. "Bed, where I undid my virgin belt for the man I am dying for, goodbye. I do not hate you. But you have killed me, and only me: it was because I could not bear to betray you, and him, that I am dying. Some other woman will own you. Not a better one. A luckier one, perhaps." And she fell on it and kissed it, and the whole bed was soaked in the flood that ran out of her eyes. When she had had enough of crying, she tore herself off the bed and walked out, head down, and over and over as she was leaving the room she turned round and threw herself back down on the bed again. The children were hanging on their mother's dress, crying. She took them in her arms, first one and then the other, and kissed them, as a woman does who is about to die. And every slave in the house was crying, out of pity for the mistress. And she held out her right hand to each of them, and there was not one so low that she did not speak to him and get his answer back. That is the trouble in Admetus's house. If he had died, he would be gone, and that would be that. He has escaped death, and what he has instead is a pain he will never forget.
Chorus. Admetus must be groaning, surely, at this disaster, if he has to lose a wife as good as that.
Maid. He is crying, holding his dear wife in his arms, begging her not to leave him, asking for the impossible. She is wasting away. The sickness is withering her. She has gone limp, a pitiful weight on his arm. But even so, with what little breath she has left, she wants to look at the rays of the sun. She will never see them again. This is the very last time she will look at the sunlight and its disc. But I will go in and say you are here. Not everyone thinks well enough of their rulers to stand by them kindly when things go wrong. You have been my master's friend a long time.
(The Maid goes in.)
Chorus. Oh, Zeus, what way out of this evil can there be, how, from where? What release from the fate that has come down on the king and queen? Aiai. Is someone coming out? Should I cut my hair now, and put on the black clothes of mourning already? It is plain, friends, plain enough. But all the same let us pray to the gods. The gods' power is the greatest there is. Lord Healer, find Admetus some way out of this evil. Find it, find it. You found one before, for this man. Now be the one who sets her free from death. Stop Hades, the killer.
Chorus. Papai. Son of Pheres, what has been done to you, losing your wife? Aiai. Is this not reason enough to cut your throat, and more than reason enough to hang your neck from a rope in the air? For today you will watch her die, the woman who was not dear to you, but the dearest of all. Look. Look. Here she comes out of the house, and her husband with her. Cry out, groan, land of Pherae, for the best of women, withering away with sickness, going under the earth to Hades below.
(Alcestis is carried out of the house, with Admetus beside her and the two children.)
Chorus. I will never say that marriage brings more joy than grief. I judge by what has happened before, and by what I see now happening to the king, who loses the best of wives, and will live a life that is not a life from now on.
Alcestis. Sun, and light of day, and clouds racing in the whirl of the sky.
Admetus. The sun sees you and me, two people who have done badly, and who did nothing to the gods that you should die for.
Alcestis. Earth, and the roof of the house, and the bed I was married in, in Iolcus, where I was born.
Admetus. Lift yourself up, poor woman, do not leave me. Beg the gods who rule us to have pity.
Alcestis. I see the boat with the two oars. I see it, on the lake. The ferryman of the dead, Charon, with his hand on the pole, is calling me already. "What are you waiting for? Hurry up. You are holding me back." That is how he hurries me, in his impatience.
Admetus. Oh. That is a bitter voyage you are telling me about. Unlucky woman, what is happening to us?
Alcestis. Someone is taking me, taking me, someone is taking me. Can you not see him? To the courtyard of the dead. He is glaring at me from under dark brows, and he has wings. Hades. Let me go. What are you doing? Let go. What a road I am walking down, the most wretched woman alive.
Admetus. A road that is pitiful to everyone who loves you, and most of all to me and the children, who share this grief with me.
Alcestis. Let me go, let me go now. Lay me down, there is no strength in my feet. Hades is close. Dark night is creeping over my eyes. Children, children, there is no mother for you any more, no more. Goodbye, children. Enjoy this light. Look at it.
Admetus. Oh. That is a word of misery to hear, and worse to me than any death. By the gods, do not have the heart to leave me. By the children you will make orphans. Get up. Be brave. If you are dead, I am nothing. Living or not living, we depend on you. It is your love we worship.
Alcestis. Admetus, you can see how it is with me. I want to tell you what I want, before I die. I put you first. I set you up to go on looking at this light at the cost of my own life, and I am dying, when I did not have to die for you. I could have married any man in Thessaly I liked, and lived in a house that was rich with a throne in it. I did not want to live, torn away from you, with orphaned children. And I did not hold back my youth, though I had gifts in it I enjoyed. And yet your father and the mother who bore you betrayed you, when they had come to the time of life where dying is fine, where it would have been fine to save their son and die with honour. You were their only son. There was no hope, if you died, of their having other children. And you and I would have gone on living the rest of our time, and you would not be groaning over a wife you have lost, and bringing up children without a mother. But some god arranged it so that this is how things are.
Well. Now remember what you owe me for it. I am going to ask you for something. Never the equivalent, because nothing is worth more than a life. But something fair, as you will say yourself, because you love these children no less than I do, if you have any sense. Let them be the masters of my house, and do not marry again, and put a stepmother over these children. She would be a worse woman than me, and out of jealousy she would lift her hand against your children and mine. Do not do it. I am begging you. A stepmother who comes in after the first wife hates her children, and a viper is no gentler than she is. A boy has his father, a great tower to him, someone to talk to and to answer him back. But you, my daughter, how will you grow up decently? What kind of wife will you find at your father's side? She could fasten some filthy rumour on you, in the flower of your youth, and wreck your marriage. Your mother will never see you married, never be there at your side to give you courage when you are having your children, my child, when there is nothing kinder than a mother. Because I have to die. And this evil is not coming to me tomorrow, or the day after; in a moment I will be counted among the people who no longer exist. Goodbye. Be happy. And you, husband, can boast that you had the best of wives, and you, children, that you were born from the best of mothers.
Chorus. Do not be afraid. I am not ashamed to answer for him. He will do it, unless he has lost his mind.
Admetus. It will be so, it will be so, do not be afraid. You were the only wife I had while you were alive, and when you are dead you alone will be called my wife. No bride from Thessaly will ever take your place and speak to me as her husband. There is no woman so well born, or so outstandingly beautiful, that she could. And I have children enough. I pray to the gods that I get some good of them, because I have had none of you. I will not mourn you for a year. I will mourn you as long as my life lasts, wife, and I will loathe the woman who bore me and hate my father, because they loved me in words and not in deeds. You gave the dearest thing you had in exchange for my life, and saved it. Do I not have reason to groan, losing a wife like you?
I will put a stop to the drinking parties, and the company of men over the wine, and the garlands, and the music that used to fill my house. I will never touch the lyre again, or lift my heart to sing to the Libyan pipe. You have taken all my pleasure in life away with you. And craftsmen with clever hands will make a likeness of your body, and it will be laid out in my bed, and I will fall on it and wrap my arms round it and call your name, and think I am holding my dear wife in my arms, when I am not. A cold pleasure, I know. But still, I would be draining off some of the weight on my heart. And you might come to me in dreams and make me glad. It is sweet to see the people we love even at night, for as long as they stay.
If I had the tongue of Orpheus, and his music, so that I could charm the daughter of Demeter or her husband with my singing and take you back out of Hades, I would have gone down, and neither Pluto's hound nor Charon at his oar, the ferryman of souls, would have stopped me, until I had set your life back in the light. As it is, wait for me there, when I die, and get a house ready for us to live in together. I will give orders to these children to lay me in the same cedar coffin as you, and stretch my side out next to yours. Not even in death would I be parted from you, the only one who was faithful to me.
Chorus. And I will share this grief with you, friend with friend. It is hard, and she deserves it.
Alcestis. Children, you heard it yourselves. Your father said he will never marry another woman and set her over you, and never dishonour me.
Admetus. I say it again now, and I will keep to it.
Alcestis. On those terms, take the children from my hand.
Admetus. I take them. A dear gift, from a dear hand.
Alcestis. Now you be a mother to these children in my place.
Admetus. I will have to be, now they are robbed of you.
Alcestis. Children, I am going down below, when I ought to be living.
Admetus. Oh, what am I going to do without you?
Alcestis. Time will soften you. The dead are nothing.
Admetus. Take me with you, by the gods. Take me down.
Alcestis. It is enough that I am dying in your place.
Admetus. God, what a wife you are robbing me of.
Alcestis. My eyes are growing dark and heavy.
Admetus. Then I am finished, if you really leave me, wife.
Alcestis. You can speak of me as someone who no longer exists.
Admetus. Lift your face. Do not leave your children.
Alcestis. Not willingly, I promise you. But goodbye, children.
Admetus. Look at them. Look.
Alcestis. I am nothing now.
Admetus. What are you doing? Are you leaving us?
Alcestis. Goodbye.
Admetus. I am lost.
Chorus. She is gone. The wife of Admetus is no more.
Child. Oh, what has happened to me. Mother has gone down below. She is not here any more, father, not under the sun. She has left me behind, poor thing, and made my life an orphan's. Look, look at her eyes, and her hands hanging loose. Listen to me, hear me, mother, I am begging you. It is me, mother, me, your own chick, calling you, pressing my mouth against your lips.
Admetus. She cannot hear you, and she cannot see you. You two and I have been struck a heavy blow.
Child. I am so young, father, to be left alone like this, without my mother, without her love. Oh, it is a terrible thing that has been done to me, and you, my sister, you have gone through it with me. Oh, father, you married for nothing, for nothing. You never reached the end of old age with her. She died first. And with you gone, mother, the house is finished.
Chorus. Admetus, you have to bear this. You are not the first man, and you will not be the last, to lose a good wife. Remember: every one of us owes a death.
Admetus. I know it. This evil did not swoop down on me out of nowhere. I have known it was coming, and it has been wearing me down for a long time. But now I am going to carry this body out for burial, so stay here with me, and while you wait, sing back the hymn to the god below, the god who cannot be bargained with. And to every Thessalian I rule I say this: share the mourning for this woman, with your heads shaved and your clothes black. You who yoke four-horse teams, and you who ride single horses, cut the manes from their necks with iron. Let there be no sound of pipes in the city, and no lyre, until twelve full moons have passed. I will never bury anyone dearer to me than this body, or anyone better to me. She deserves honour from me. She, and nobody else, died in my place.
(Admetus and the children go into the house with the body.)
Chorus. Daughter of Pelias, go with my blessing to live in the house of Hades, the home that has no sun. Let Hades know it, the god with the black hair, and the old man who sits at his oar and his rudder ferrying the dead, that it is by far, by far the best woman he has carried over the lake of Acheron in his boat with the two oars.
Chorus. The servants of the Muses will sing of you many times, to the seven-stringed shell of the mountain tortoise and in hymns with no lyre at all, making you famous, at Sparta, when the circling year brings round the Carnean month, and the moon rides high all night long, and in shining Athens, the rich city. That is the song you left behind when you died, for the makers of songs.
Chorus. If only it were in my power, if only I could send you back to the light out of the halls of Hades and the streams of Cocytus, with an oar on the river of the dead. Because you, and you alone, dearest of women, you had the nerve to buy your husband out of Hades with your own life. May the earth lie light on you, lady. And if your husband ever takes a new bride to his bed, believe me, he will be hated by me, and by your children.
Chorus. His mother was not willing to hide her body in the earth for her son, and nor was his old father. They brought him into the world, and they would not save him, the pair of them, hard-hearted, with their grey hair. But you, in the flower of your youth, died for him, and are gone. May I find a wife like that to share my life and love me. It is a rare thing in this world. She would live beside me all my days and never once give me pain.
(Heracles comes in from the road.)
Heracles. Strangers, you people of this land of Pherae, would I find Admetus at home?
Chorus. The son of Pheres is in the house, Heracles. But tell us, what business sends you to Thessaly, to this town of Pherae?
Heracles. I am doing a job for Eurystheus of Tiryns.
Chorus. And where are you going? What wandering are you yoked to this time?
Heracles. I am after the four-horse chariot team of Diomedes the Thracian.
Chorus. How are you going to manage that? Have you never met the man who will be your host?
Heracles. Never. I have not been to the country of the Bistones yet.
Chorus. You cannot get hold of those horses without a fight.
Heracles. But I cannot refuse the labours, either.
Chorus. Then you will kill him and come back, or die and stay there.
Heracles. It would not be the first race of that kind I have run.
Chorus. And if you beat their master, what do you get out of it?
Heracles. I drive the horses away to the king of Tiryns.
Chorus. It is not easy to put a bit in those jaws.
Heracles. Easy enough, unless they breathe fire out of their nostrils.
Chorus. No, but they tear men to pieces with those quick jaws.
Heracles. That is fodder for mountain beasts you are talking about, not horses.
Chorus. You will see their mangers spattered with blood.
Heracles. And whose son does the man who feeds them boast of being?
Chorus. The son of Ares. He is lord of the golden shield of Thrace.
Heracles. This labour too is just the luck I was born with. It is always hard, and it always goes uphill, if I have to fight the sons Ares fathered, Lycaon first, then Cycnus, and now this third contest, going in against the horses and their master. But there is nobody alive who will ever see the son of Alcmena tremble at an enemy's hand.
Chorus. And here is Admetus himself, the king of this country, coming out of the house.
(Admetus comes out, his hair cut short in mourning.)
Admetus. Welcome, son of Zeus, of the blood of Perseus.
Heracles. And welcome to you, Admetus, king of Thessaly.
Admetus. I wish I could be. But I know you mean it kindly.
Heracles. Why are you showing yourself with your hair cut for mourning?
Admetus. I have to bury someone today.
Heracles. May a god keep harm away from your children.
Admetus. The children I fathered are alive, in the house.
Heracles. Your father, then. Well, he was ripe for it, if he is gone.
Admetus. He is alive, Heracles, and so is my mother.
Heracles. Surely it is not your wife who is dead? Not Alcestis?
Admetus. There are two things I could tell you about her.
Heracles. Do you mean she is dead, or still alive?
Admetus. She is, and she is not. And it hurts me.
Heracles. I am none the wiser. You are talking in riddles.
Admetus. Do you not know the fate she has to meet?
Heracles. I know. She undertook to die in your place.
Admetus. Then how is she still alive, if she agreed to that?
Heracles. Ah. Do not mourn your wife ahead of time. Put it off until then.
Admetus. The one who is about to die is dead. The dead no longer exist.
Heracles. Being and not being are counted as two different things.
Admetus. That is how you judge it, Heracles. I judge it the other way.
Heracles. Then why are you crying? Which of your people has died?
Admetus. A woman. It was a woman we were speaking of just now.
Heracles. An outsider, or someone related to you by blood?
Admetus. An outsider. But she was bound to this house all the same.
Heracles. Then how did she come to lose her life in your house?
Admetus. Her father died, and she lived here as an orphan.
Heracles. Ah. I wish I had found you without grief, Admetus.
Admetus. What are you planning to do, that you stitch a speech like that together?
Heracles. I will go to the hearth of some other host.
Admetus. That cannot happen, my lord. Never let an evil like that come on me.
Heracles. A guest is a nuisance to people in grief, if he turns up.
Admetus. The dead are dead. Come into the house.
Heracles. It is shameful for guests to feast beside people who are weeping.
Admetus. The guest rooms are separate. We will take you there.
Heracles. Let me go, and I will owe you ten thousand thanks.
Admetus. You are not going to another man's hearth. You there, lead the way for him. Open the guest rooms that face away from the house, and tell the stewards to have plenty of food there. And shut the doors to the inner courtyard, and shut them well. Guests at their dinner should not hear groaning, or be made unhappy.
(Heracles goes in, a servant leading the way.)
Chorus. What are you doing? With a disaster like this in front of you, Admetus, you have the heart to take in guests? What is this foolishness?
Admetus. And if I had driven him away from my house and my city, when he came to me as a guest, would you have praised me more? You would not. My disaster would have been no smaller, and I would have been less of a host. And on top of my troubles I would have had another trouble: my house getting the name of a house that hates its guests. And I find the man himself the best of hosts, whenever I go to the thirsty land of Argos.
Chorus. Then why did you hide the misfortune that is on you, if it was a friend who came, as you say yourself?
Admetus. He would never have been willing to come into the house if he had known anything of my troubles. And I suppose there are people who think I am a fool for doing this, and will not praise me for it. But my house does not know how to push a guest away, or treat one without honour.
Chorus. House that has always had room for guests, house of a free man, Pythian Apollo himself, the fine lyre-player, thought you worth living in, and brought himself to be a shepherd under your roof, down the slanting hillsides piping to your flocks the wedding songs of shepherds.
Chorus. And the spotted lynxes grazed alongside them, glad of his music, and the tawny pack of lions came down out of the glen of Othrys, and round your lyre, Apollo, the fawn with the dappled coat danced, stepping out past the tall pines on her light hooves, happy at the cheerful song.
Chorus. And so he lives in a house with more sheep than any other, by the lovely waters of Lake Boebe, and for his ploughed fields and his level plains he sets one border in the west, where the sun stables its horses in the dark sky of the Molossians, and the other at the Aegean, where he rules as far as the harbourless coast under Pelion.
Chorus. And now he has thrown open his house and taken in a guest, with his eyes wet, weeping for the body of his dear wife, dead in the house this very day. Good birth comes out as decency. In good men there is every kind of wisdom. I admire it, and in my heart the confidence sits firm that a man who honours the gods will do well.
Admetus. Men of Pherae, you are kind to be here. My servants are carrying the body out now, dressed with everything it needs, high on their shoulders, to the tomb and the pyre. And you, as custom asks, speak to the dead woman as she goes out on her last road.
(The body is carried out of the house. Pheres comes in, an old man, with servants behind him carrying robes and ornaments.)
Chorus. And I see your father coming, on his old man's feet, and attendants carrying in their hands finery for your wife, offerings for the dead below.
Pheres. I have come to share your pain, my son. You have lost a good wife, and a sensible one; nobody will deny it. But you have to bear these things, hard as they are to bear. Take these robes and ornaments, and let them go under the earth with her. Her body deserves to be honoured. She died for your life, my son, and she did not leave me childless; she did not let me lose you and wither away in a mourning old age. She has made life a more glorious thing for every woman, by daring this noble act. You who saved this man, who raised us up when we were falling, farewell, and may it go well with you even in the house of Hades. Marriages like that are a gain to men, I say. Otherwise marrying is not worth it.
Admetus. You did not come to this burial because I invited you, and I do not count your presence as a friend's. She will never wear that finery of yours. She will be buried needing nothing of yours. You should have shared my pain then, when I was dying. But you stood out of the way, and you let somebody else die, somebody young, when you were old, and now you are going to wail over this body? Then you were never really the father of this body of mine. And the woman who says she bore me, and is called my mother, did not give birth to me. I was born of slave's blood and slipped secretly to your wife's breast. You showed what you are when you were put to the test, and I do not consider myself your son.
You outdo everyone in cowardice. At your age, at the very end of your life, you would not die for your own son, you did not have the nerve to. You left it to this woman, an outsider, and I would be right to count her, and her alone, as my mother and my father both. And yet what a fine contest that would have been for you to enter, dying for your own son, and in any case the time you had left to live was short. And I would have lived, and so would she, for the rest of our time, and I would not be left alone, groaning over my troubles.
And you have had everything a happy man should have. You had your youth as a king. You had a son, me, to inherit this house, so you were not going to die childless and leave an orphaned house for strangers to loot. And you cannot say you gave me up to die because I dishonoured your old age. I was the most respectful son to you that there could be. And in return for that, this is the thanks you and my mother gave me. So you had better get on with fathering more children, and lose no time about it, children who will look after you when you are old, and lay you out when you are dead, and set out your body for burial. Because I am not going to bury you, not with this hand. As far as you are concerned, I am dead. If I found somebody else to save me, and I am looking at the light, then I say I am that person's child, and the loving supporter of that person's old age. It is all lies, then, when old men pray to die, complaining about old age and how long life is. When death comes near, not one of them wants to die, and old age is not a burden to them any more.
Chorus. Stop, both of you. The trouble that is here is enough. My boy, do not goad your father's temper.
Pheres. Boy, who do you think you are abusing? Some Lydian, some Phrygian, that you bought with your silver? Do you not know I am a Thessalian, and my father was a Thessalian, a free man, legitimately born? You are going too far. This is outrage. You fling a young man's words at me, and you are not going to hit me with them and walk off like that. I fathered you to be the master of this house, and I brought you up. I do not owe you my death. That is not a law I inherited from my fathers, that fathers die for their sons, and it is not a Greek one either. You were born for yourself, lucky or unlucky, and what you had a right to get from me, you have. You rule many people, and I will leave you broad acres, because I got them from my father. So how have I wronged you? What am I robbing you of? Do not die for this man here, and I will not die for you.
You love looking at the light. Do you think your father does not? Believe me, I count the time down below as long, and life as short, but sweet all the same. You, at any rate, fought shamelessly not to die, and you are alive, past the death that was appointed for you, because you killed her. And then you talk about my cowardice, you, the worst of men, beaten by a woman, who died for you, her fine young husband? What a clever scheme you have found for never dying at all: talk whatever wife you have at the time into dying for you, every time. And then you insult your own family for not being willing to do it, when you are the coward yourself? Be quiet. And think about this: if you love your own life, everyone loves theirs. And if you go on speaking ill of me, you will hear plenty of evil about yourself, and none of it false.
Chorus. Too much evil has been said, now and before. Stop, old man, abusing your son.
Admetus. Speak. I have had my say. If it hurts you to hear the truth, you should not have wronged me.
Pheres. I would have done you more wrong by dying for you.
Admetus. So it is the same thing for a young man to die and an old one?
Pheres. We owe one life. Not two.
Admetus. Then may you live longer than Zeus.
Pheres. You curse your parents, when they have done you no wrong?
Admetus. I saw you were in love with a long life.
Pheres. And this body you are carrying out, is it not in your place?
Admetus. A sign of your cowardice, you coward.
Pheres. She did not die at my hands. You cannot say that.
Admetus. Oh, may you come to need this man some day.
Pheres. Court plenty of wives, so there will be more of them to die.
Admetus. That is a reproach to you. You were the one who would not die.
Pheres. This light of the god is sweet. It is sweet.
Admetus. That is a mean spirit, and not a man's.
Pheres. You will not be laughing as you carry out an old man's corpse.
Admetus. You will die with a bad name, when you do die.
Pheres. A bad name does not bother me once I am dead.
Admetus. Oh, oh. How shameless old age is.
Pheres. She was not shameless. It was a fool you found in her.
Admetus. Go away, and let me bury this body.
Pheres. I am going. You bury her, you, her murderer. And you will still pay for it to her family. Acastus is no longer a man, if he does not make you answer for his sister's blood.
Admetus. Get out, you and the woman who lives with you. Grow old childless, though your son is alive, the way you deserve. You will never again come under the same roof as this man. If I had to renounce your hearth, my father's hearth, by heralds' proclamation, I would have renounced it.
(Pheres goes.)
And now, because the trouble in front of us has to be borne, let us go and lay the body on the pyre.
Chorus. Oh. Oh. What nerve you had, and what it cost you. Noble woman, best of all by far, goodbye. May Hermes of the world below receive you gladly, and Hades too. And if there, as well, the good have anything more, may you have your share of it and sit beside the bride of Hades.
(The funeral procession goes out. The Servant comes out of the house.)
Servant. I have known many guests already, from every kind of country, come to the house of Admetus, and I have set dinner in front of them. But I have never yet taken in a worse one at this hearth than this one. First of all, he saw the master was in mourning, and he came in anyway, and had the nerve to walk through the gates. Then, he did not take what hospitality we could give him with any decency, knowing our disaster. No. If there was anything we did not bring, he shouted for it. He took the ivy-wood cup in his hands and drank the black grape's dark juice, neat and strong, until the flame of the wine wrapped round him and heated him up, and he put myrtle branches on his head and howled, out of tune. And there were two kinds of music to hear: he was singing, caring nothing for the troubles in Admetus's house, and we slaves were crying for our mistress. But we did not let the guest see our wet eyes, because Admetus had ordered it so. And now here I am in the house, feeding a guest, some crook, a thief and a robber for all I know, while she has gone out of the house, and I did not follow her, or stretch out my hand to her, mourning my mistress, who was a mother to me and to every slave in the house. She saved us from ten thousand troubles, softening her husband's tempers. So am I not right to hate this guest, who came in the middle of our troubles?
(Heracles comes out of the guest rooms, with a wreath on his head and a cup in his hand.)
Heracles. You there. Why the solemn, worried look? A servant should not be sour-faced with the guests. He should welcome them with a friendly mind. You see a friend of your master's standing right in front of you, and you receive him with a sullen face and your brows knitted, because you are so taken up with a grief that belongs to somebody outside the house. Come here, so you can learn a little wisdom. Do you know what mortal life is really like, what its nature is? I do not suppose you do. How could you? Well, listen to me. Every mortal owes a death, and there is not a man alive who knows for certain whether he will be alive tomorrow. Where fortune will go next is hidden. It cannot be taught, and no skill can catch it. So now you have heard it, and learned it from me: cheer yourself up, drink, count the life you have today as yours, and the rest as fortune's. And honour the sweetest of all the gods to mortals, Aphrodite. She is a kind goddess. Let all the rest go, and take my advice, if you think I am talking sense, that is. I think I am. So will you not drop this excessive grief, and drink with us, and put these troubles behind you, with a garland on your head? I know for a fact that the splash of wine falling into the cup will carry you out of this sullen, knotted state of mind and into another harbour. We are mortals, and we should think mortal thoughts. Because for all the solemn ones with their knitted brows, if you take my judgement on it, life is not truly life. It is a disaster.
Servant. We know all that. But what we are going through right now does not call for partying and laughter.
Heracles. The dead woman is an outsider. Do not grieve too much. The masters of this house are alive.
Servant. Alive? Do you not know what has happened in this house?
Heracles. I do, unless your master lied to me about something.
Servant. He is too kind to his guests. Far too kind.
Heracles. Was I supposed to go without my dinner because some outsider died?
Servant. An outsider. Oh yes. She was a complete outsider, she was.
Heracles. Is there some trouble here that he did not tell me about?
Servant. Go and enjoy yourself. Our masters' troubles are our business.
Heracles. That does not sound like the start of a stranger's grief.
Servant. No. If it were, watching you carouse would not have hurt me the way it did.
Heracles. Have my hosts done something terrible to me, then?
Servant. You did not come at the right time for this house to take you in. We are in mourning. You can see the clothes, black, and the shorn hair.
Heracles. Who is it that is dead? One of the children gone? Or his old father?
Servant. It is the wife of Admetus who is dead, stranger.
Heracles. What did you say? And after that you still sat me down to dinner?
Servant. He was ashamed to turn you away from his door.
Heracles. Poor man. What a wife he has lost.
Servant. We are all lost, not just her.
Heracles. But I noticed. I saw it: his eyes streaming, his hair cut short, his face. But he talked me round. He said it was an outsider's funeral he was taking to the grave. So I forced myself through these gates, and I sat drinking in the house of a man who loves his guests, while he was in that state. And then I went on carousing, with garlands piled on my head? But you. To say nothing, with a disaster like this lying on the house. Where is he burying her? Where do I go to find her?
Servant. Straight along the road that leads to Larissa. You will see the tomb of cut stone, just outside the town.
Heracles. Heart of mine, you have put up with so much, and you, my hand: now show what kind of son Alcmene of Tiryns, the daughter of Electryon, bore to Zeus. I have to save this woman who has just died. I have to set Alcestis back in this house and pay Admetus back for what he did for me. I will go and watch for Death, the black-robed lord of the dead, and I think I will find him near the tomb, drinking the blood of the offerings. If I rush him out of hiding and get hold of him and lock my arms round him in a ring, there is nobody who will get him out of it, however his ribs ache, until he lets the woman go to me. And if I miss my quarry, and he does not come to the clotted blood, I will go down to the sunless house of Persephone and her Lord below, and I will ask them for her. I am confident I will bring Alcestis up, and put her into the hands of my host, who took me into his house and did not drive me away, though he had been struck a heavy blow. He hid it, because he is a noble man, out of respect for me. Who in Thessaly loves his guests more than this man does? Who in all Greece? He will never say that he did a good turn to a bad man, noble as he is.
(Heracles goes off toward the tomb, and the Servant goes into the house. Admetus comes back from the burial, with the Chorus.)
Admetus. Io. Hateful, the way in. Hateful, the sight of a house with the wife gone. Io moi moi. Ai ai. Where can I go? Where can I stand? What can I say? What not say? How can I die? The mother who bore me bore me under a heavy fate. I envy the dead. I want to be them. I long to live in those houses of theirs. I take no joy in looking at the light, or in setting my foot on the earth. That was the hostage Death took from me and handed to Hades.
Chorus. Go forward, go on. Go into the shelter of the house.
Admetus. Aiai.
Chorus. You have suffered things worth crying over.
Admetus. E, e.
Chorus. You have walked through pain, I know it well . . .
Admetus. Pheu, pheu.
Chorus. but you do nothing for the woman below.
Admetus. Io moi moi.
Chorus. Never to see your dear wife's face in front of you again. That is hard.
Admetus. You have named the thing that scars my heart. What worse can happen to a man than losing a faithful wife? I wish I had never married, never lived with her in this house. I envy the unmarried and the childless. They have one life. To ache for that is a burden a man can carry. But children falling sick, and marriage beds torn apart by death, no one can bear to watch it, when he could have been childless and unmarried all his life.
Chorus. Fate, fate has come, and there is no wrestling with it.
Admetus. Aiai.
Chorus. But you set no limit to your grief.
Admetus. E, e.
Chorus. Heavy to carry. And yet . . .
Admetus. Pheu, pheu.
Chorus. bear it. You are not the first man to lose . . .
Admetus. Io moi moi.
Chorus. a wife. Disaster shows itself to one mortal after another, and presses down.
Admetus. Long grief, long sorrow for the people we love under the earth. Why did you stop me throwing myself into the open trench of the tomb, to lie there dead with her, the best woman by far? Hades would have had two souls for one, the two most faithful, crossing the lake under the earth together.
Chorus. I had a kinsman whose son died in his house, a boy worth mourning, his only child. And yet he carried the evil, and carried it well enough, childless as he was, his hair already grey, already stooping forward, far along the road of his life.
Admetus. Shape of my house, how can I go in? How can I live here, when my luck has turned over? Oh. The distance is so wide. Then, with pine torches from Pelion and wedding songs, I walked in, holding my dear wife's hand, and a loud crowd of revellers came behind, calling the dead woman and me happy: two people well born, from noble stock on both sides, yoked together. Now, in place of the wedding songs, a wail, and black clothes in place of white, escort me in to an empty bed.
Chorus. On the heels of good fortune this pain came to you, who had never known evil. But you saved your life and your breath. Your wife died. She left her love behind her. What is new in that? Death has already unyoked many men from their wives.
Admetus. Friends, I think my wife's fate is luckier than mine, though it does not look it. No pain will ever touch her again. She has finished with all her troubles, and with glory. But I, who should not be alive, who slipped past my fated hour, I will live out a life of misery. I am only now learning it. How am I going to bear walking in through these doors? Who will I speak to, and who will speak to me, so that I get any pleasure from coming in? Where will I turn? The emptiness inside will drive me out, when I see my wife's bed empty, and the chairs she used to sit in, and the floor unswept under the roof, and the children falling at my knees and crying for their mother, and the slaves groaning for the mistress they have lost from the house.
That is how it will be at home. And outside, the weddings of Thessaly and the gatherings full of women will drive me away, because I will not be able to stand looking at women my wife's age. And whoever happens to be my enemy will say this about me: "Look at him, living in disgrace. He did not have the nerve to die. He gave the woman he married in his place, out of cowardice, and escaped Hades. And he thinks he is a man? He hates his own parents, when he was not willing to die himself." That is the name I will have, on top of my troubles. So what is the profit in living, friends, with a bad name and a bad life?
Chorus. I have gone up through the Muses' country and high into the air, I have taken hold of many arguments, and I have found nothing stronger than Necessity. There is no drug on the Thracian tablets that the voice of Orpheus wrote out, none among all the medicines Apollo gave the sons of Asclepius, cut from the roots to heal the pains of mortal men.
Chorus. She is the only goddess with no altar you can go to, no image, and she does not listen to sacrifice. Lady, do not come to me any harder than you have in my life before. Whatever Zeus nods his head to, he brings to its end with you. Even the iron of the Chalybes you break by force, and there is no mercy in you, no relenting in that sheer will.
Chorus. And you, Admetus: the goddess has caught you in the grip of her hands, and you cannot escape. Bear it. You will never bring the dead up from below by crying. Even the sons of gods fade into the dark of death. She was dear when she was with us, and dead, she will be dear still. The noblest wife of all women was the one you yoked to your bed.
Chorus. Do not let your wife's tomb be counted a mound of the dead, like the other dead. Let it be honoured like the gods, something travellers bow to. Someone stepping off the road onto the side path will say: "This woman died for her husband, once. Now she is a blessed spirit. Hail, Lady. Be good to us." That is how they will speak to her.
(Heracles comes back, leading a woman whose face is veiled.)
Chorus. And here, it seems, is the son of Alcmene, Admetus, on his way to your hearth.
Heracles. Admetus, a man should speak freely to a friend, and not keep his complaints down under his ribs and say nothing. I came to you when you were in trouble, and I thought I had earned the right to stand close and be counted as a friend. But you did not tell me your wife's body was laid out in the house. You gave me a guest's welcome instead, as if you were taken up with some outsider's grief. And I put a garland on my head and poured out wine to the gods, in your house, with that disaster in it. I blame you for that. I do blame you, after what I went through. But I do not want to hurt you when you are down.
What I have come back here for, I will tell you. Take this woman and keep her safe for me until I come back with the horses from Thrace, once I have killed the king of the Bistones. And if something happens to me that I hope does not happen, because I do hope to come home, I give her to you to serve in your house. She came into my hands with a lot of hard work. I found some people setting up a public contest, a real job for athletes, and that is where I got her: I took her as the prize. The men who won the light events led away horses, and the ones who won the bigger events, the boxing and the wrestling, got herds of cattle, and a woman went with the cattle. I happened to be there, and it would have been a disgrace to pass up a prize with glory in it. So, as I said, you must look after the woman. I did not steal her. I won her with hard work, and I have brought her here. And in time, maybe you will thank me for it too.
Admetus. It was not from any disrespect to you, or because I count you among people I am ashamed of, that I hid my wife's miserable fate from you. It would have been pain piled on pain if you had gone off to some other host's house. It was enough for me to cry over my own trouble. But the woman, my lord, if there is any way at all, I beg you, tell some other Thessalian to keep her, someone who has not suffered what I have. You have plenty of friends in Pherae. Do not remind me of my misery. I could not look at her in the house and keep my eyes dry. Do not put a sickness on top of the sickness I have. I am weighed down enough with what has happened to me.
And where in the house would a young woman live? She is young: her dress and her jewellery show it. Is she to live in the men's quarters? And how will she stay untouched, moving about among young men? A young man in his prime, Heracles, is not easy to hold back. I am thinking of your interests. Or do I take her into the dead woman's bedroom and keep her there? And how do I bring her into that woman's bed? I am afraid of blame from two sides. From the townspeople, in case someone accuses me of betraying the woman who saved me and falling into another young woman's bed. And from the dead woman herself. She deserves my respect. I have to be very careful.
And you, woman, whoever you are, know this: you have the same measure of body as Alcestis. You are her shape. Oh. By the gods, take this woman out of my sight. Do not take me when I am already taken. When I look at her I think I am looking at my wife. It churns my heart, and the springs have broken open in my eyes. Oh, I am a wretched man. Only now am I tasting how bitter this grief is.
Chorus. I could not call your luck good. But whoever you are, you have to bear what a god gives.
Heracles. If only I had the power to bring your wife up into the light from the houses below and do you that favour.
Admetus. I know you would want to. But how? The dead do not come back to the light.
Heracles. Then do not go too far. Carry it the way you should.
Admetus. It is easier to give advice than to suffer and hold out.
Heracles. What good will it do you if you want to groan for ever?
Admetus. I know that myself. But some longing drags me on.
Heracles. Yes. Loving the dead brings tears.
Admetus. She has destroyed me, more than I can say.
Heracles. You have lost a good wife. Who will deny it?
Admetus. So that this man takes no more pleasure in life.
Heracles. Time will soften it. The evil is still young.
Admetus. Time. Yes, you can say time, if time means dying.
Heracles. A woman will cure you. The longing for a new marriage.
Admetus. Be quiet. What a thing to say. I would not have believed it of you.
Heracles. What? You will not marry again? You will keep an empty bed?
Admetus. There is no woman who will lie in it.
Heracles. Do you expect that to do the dead woman any good?
Admetus. She has to be honoured, wherever she is.
Heracles. I approve. I do approve. But you are convicting yourself of foolishness.
Admetus. As long as you never call this man a bridegroom.
Heracles. I praised you because you are a faithful friend to your wife.
Admetus. May I die if I ever betray her, even though she is gone.
Heracles. Then take this woman into your noble house.
Admetus. No. I beg you, by Zeus who fathered you.
Heracles. And yet you will be making a mistake if you do not.
Admetus. And if I do, grief will gnaw at my heart.
Heracles. Do it. The favour may turn out to land just where it is needed.
Admetus. Pheu. If only you had never won her in that contest.
Heracles. But when I win, you win with me.
Admetus. Well said. But the woman must go.
Heracles. She will go, if she has to. But first, look at whether she has to.
Admetus. She has to, unless you mean to lose your temper with me.
Heracles. I know something, and that is why I am pressing it.
Admetus. Win, then. But what you are doing gives me no pleasure.
Heracles. There will come a time when you praise me. Just do it.
Admetus. Take her in, servants, if this woman has to be received in the house.
Heracles. I will not hand the woman over to servants.
Admetus. Then take her into the house yourself, if you like.
Heracles. No. I am going to put her into your hands.
Admetus. I will not touch her. She is free to go inside.
Heracles. I trust your right hand, and only yours.
Admetus. My lord, you are forcing me to do this against my will.
Heracles. Have the nerve. Stretch out your hand and touch the stranger.
Admetus. There. I am holding it out, as if I were cutting off the Gorgon's head.
Heracles. Have you got her?
Admetus. Got her? Yes.
Heracles. Then keep her safe. And one day you will say the son of Zeus was a noble guest.
(He lifts the veil from the woman's face.)
Look at her. See if she seems at all like your wife. You are a lucky man now; step out of your grief.
Admetus. Gods, what am I going to say? This is a wonder I never hoped for. Is this really my wife I am looking at? Or is some god mocking me, knocking me out of my senses with joy?
Heracles. No. It is your own wife you are looking at.
Admetus. Make sure it is not some ghost from below.
Heracles. The guest you took in was no conjuror of spirits.
Admetus. But am I looking at my wife, the woman I buried?
Heracles. Be sure of it. I am not surprised you cannot believe your luck.
Admetus. Can I touch her? Can I speak to her as my living wife?
Heracles. Speak to her. You have everything you wanted.
Admetus. Face and body of my dearest wife. I have you, past all hope, when I thought I would never see you again.
Heracles. You have her. Only let no god be jealous of it.
Admetus. Noble son of almighty Zeus, be happy, and may the father who begot you keep you safe. You alone have set my house back on its feet. How did you send her up from below into this light?
Heracles. I fought the god who had her in his power.
Admetus. Where did you fight this fight with Death, you say?
Heracles. Right beside the tomb. I sprang out of hiding and got my hands on him.
Admetus. But why is she standing there without a word?
Heracles. You are not allowed to hear her speak to you yet. Not until she has been purified from her consecration to the gods below, and the third day comes. Take her inside now. And in future, Admetus, be a just man and treat your guests with reverence. Goodbye. I have a job waiting, and I am going to do it for Eurystheus, the king, Sthenelus's son.
Admetus. Stay with us. Share our hearth.
Heracles. Another time. Now I have to hurry.
Admetus. Good luck to you, and may you come home again. And to the citizens, and to all four districts of my Thessaly, I give this order: set up dances for this good fortune, and make the altars smoke with the sacrifice of cattle and with prayers. Because now we have changed our life for a better one than the life before. I am a lucky man, and I will not deny it.
(Heracles goes. Admetus leads Alcestis into the house.)
Chorus. Many are the shapes of what the gods do, and many the things they bring about that no one expected. What we counted on did not happen, and for what no one counted on, a god found a way. That is how this business ended.
(Corinth, in front of the house where Jason and Medea have lived. The Nurse comes out alone.)
Nurse. If only the Argo had never flown through the dark Clashing Rocks to the land of Colchis. If only the pine had never been cut down in the glens of Pelion and fallen, to put oars in the hands of the best men alive, the ones who went to fetch the golden fleece for Pelias. Then my mistress Medea would never have sailed to the towers of Iolcus, her heart knocked flat by love for Jason. She would never have talked the daughters of Pelias into killing their father, and she would not be living here in Corinth with her husband and her children. And she was welcome here. The citizens of the country she came to as an exile liked her, and she herself went along with Jason in everything, which is the surest safety there is: a wife who does not stand apart from her husband. But now it is all hatred, and what was dearest is sick. Jason has betrayed his own children and my mistress, and he sleeps in a royal marriage. He has married the daughter of Creon, who rules this land. And Medea, poor woman, cast off and dishonoured, shouts about the oaths he swore. She calls up the right hand he gave her, the greatest pledge there is, and she calls the gods to witness what kind of return she is getting from Jason.
She lies there without eating, her body given up to pain, melting away the whole of her time in tears, ever since she found out her husband had wronged her. She does not lift her eyes; she does not raise her face off the ground. When her friends try to talk sense into her she listens the way a rock does, or a wave of the sea. Except that now and then she turns that white neck of hers away and cries to herself for her dear father, and her country, and the home she betrayed to come away with a man who has now thrown her aside. Now she knows, poor thing, from what has happened to her, what it is worth never to leave your own country. She hates the children. She takes no pleasure in seeing them. And I am afraid she is planning something new. She has a heavy mind, and she will not put up with being treated badly. I know her. I am frightened she will go quietly into the room where the bed is made and drive a sharpened sword through the liver, or kill the princess and the man who married her too, and then bring some greater disaster down on herself. She is dangerous. Nobody who picks a quarrel with that woman is going to come out of it singing the victory song easily.
But here come the children, finished with their running about. They have no idea of their mother's troubles. A young mind does not like to hurt.
(The Tutor comes in with the two boys.)
Tutor. Old servant of my mistress's house, why are you standing out here at the gate by yourself, groaning your troubles to yourself? How does Medea come to want to be left alone without you?
Nurse. Old man, you who walk behind Jason's children: when a master's affairs go wrong, that is a misfortune for good slaves as well. It takes hold of their hearts. I have come to such a pitch of grief that a longing came over me to come out here and tell the earth and the sky what has happened to my mistress.
Tutor. Has the poor woman not stopped crying yet?
Nurse. I envy you. The trouble is at its beginning. It is nowhere near the middle.
Tutor. The fool. If I may say that about a master. She knows nothing yet about the newer troubles.
Nurse. What is it, old man? Do not begrudge me the telling.
Tutor. Nothing. I take back even what I said already.
Nurse. No. By your beard, do not hide it from a fellow slave. I will keep quiet about it, if I have to.
Tutor. I heard someone talking, and pretended not to listen, as I came up to the draughts players, where the oldest men sit, by the holy water of Pirene. He said that Creon, the ruler of this land, is going to drive these children out of Corinth, and their mother with them. Whether the story is true I do not know. I would like it not to be.
Nurse. And Jason will put up with his sons being treated like that, even if he has quarrelled with their mother?
Tutor. Old ties lose out to new ones. That man is no friend to this house.
Nurse. Then we are finished, if we add a new trouble to the old one before we have bailed out the first.
Tutor. As for you, keep quiet and say nothing about it. This is not the moment for the mistress to know.
Nurse. Children, do you hear what kind of father you have? Curse him. No. He is my master. But he is caught being a bad man to the people he owes.
Tutor. Who is not? Are you only now learning that every man loves himself more than his neighbour, some of them honestly and some for gain, when their father does not love these children, all for the sake of a bed?
Nurse. Go inside the house, children. It will be all right. And you, keep them out of the way as much as you can. Do not bring them near their mother while she is in this black mood. I have already seen her glaring at them like a bull, as if she wanted to do something. She will not stop this rage, I know it, until she strikes somebody down. Let it be enemies she does something to, and not the people she loves.
(Medea's voice comes from inside the house.)
Medea. Oh. Unhappy, miserable, worn down with pain, oh, oh, how can I die?
Nurse. That is it, dear children. Your mother is stirring her heart, stirring her anger. Hurry into the house, quickly, and keep out of range of her eye, do not go near her. Watch out for the wild temper, the hateful nature of that stubborn mind. Go now, get inside as fast as you can. It is plain enough: the cloud of grief that is lifting off the ground will soon catch fire with a greater rage. What will she do, that great-hearted, hard-to-stop soul, bitten by her wrongs?
(The Tutor takes the children into the house.)
Medea. Aiai. I have suffered, suffered things worth loud crying. Accursed children of a hateful mother, die, you and your father, and let the whole house go to ruin.
Nurse. Oh, oh, poor woman. Why should your children share in their father's crime? Why hate them? Oh, children, I am sick with fear that something will happen to you. The tempers of kings are terrible. Somehow, taking few orders and giving many, they find it hard to shift their anger. Being used to living among equals is better. For my part, let me grow old in no great state, but safe. The middle way: first, its very name wins, and to live by it is far the best thing for mortals. Too much does nobody any good in the end, and when a god is angry with a house it pays back greater ruin.
(The Chorus, women of Corinth, come in.)
Chorus. I heard the voice, I heard the cry of the unhappy woman from Colchis. Is she still not calm? Old woman, tell me. At the double doors, from inside the house, I heard a cry, and I take no pleasure, woman, in the pains of this house. It has become dear to me.
Nurse. There is no house. It is gone already. A royal bed has him, and she is in her room wasting her life away, my mistress, and not one friend's word brings any warmth to her heart.
Medea. Aiai. Zeus, and Earth, and Light: let fire from heaven come down through my head. What good is living to me now? Ah, ah. Let me be done with it in death and leave a life I hate.
Chorus. Did you hear, Zeus and earth and light, what a cry that unhappy bride is singing? What is this longing of yours for the bed no one can go near, you fool? Death's ending will hurry on by itself. Do not pray for it. If your husband bows down to a new bed, that is his affair. Do not tear yourself over it. Zeus will plead your case for you. Do not waste yourself away crying over the man who shared your bed.
Medea. Great Themis, and lady Artemis, do you see what I suffer, I who bound that accursed husband with great oaths? One day let me see him and his bride ground to nothing, house and all, for daring to wrong me first. Father. City. I left you in shame, and killed my brother.
Nurse. Do you hear what she says, how she calls on Themis, who hears prayers, and on Zeus, whom men count the keeper of oaths? There is no way my mistress will lay down this anger over anything small.
Chorus. How could she come out where we can see her, and take in the sound of the words we would say? If only she would let go of the heavy anger and the stubbornness of her mind. Let my goodwill, at least, never fail the people I care for. Go and bring her out here, out of the house. Tell her we are her friends too. Hurry, before she does harm to the ones inside. This grief of hers is gathering speed.
Nurse. I will. But I am afraid I will not persuade my mistress. Still, I will give you the favour of the effort. And yet she glares at her slaves like a lioness with cubs, whenever one of us comes near her to say a word. You would not be wrong to call the men of old clumsy, and not clever at all, who invented songs for festivals, for banquets and for dinners, pleasant sounds for life to listen to, but nobody has found how to stop the hateful griefs of mortals with music and many-stringed song, the griefs that bring deaths and terrible turns of fortune down on houses. And yet it would be a gain if people could heal those with singing. Where the dinner is good and the tables full, why raise a useless noise? The full table in front of them has pleasure enough in itself for mortals.
(The Nurse goes into the house.)
Chorus. I heard the wail, heavy with groans, the shrill and bitter cry she raises against the traitor in her bed, the man whose marriage was a crime. Wronged, she calls on the gods, on Themis, who keeps oaths for Zeus, who brought her across to Greece on the far shore, through the salt sea at night, through the narrow lock of the endless deep.
(Medea comes out of the house.)
Medea. Women of Corinth, I have come out of the house so that you will not blame me. I know many people get a name for being haughty, some because they keep out of sight, and some in public; and others, because they go quietly, are called lazy. There is no justice in people's eyes. Before they have really learned what a man is inside, they hate him on sight, though he has done them no wrong. A foreigner especially must fit in with the city. And I have no praise for the citizen who is stubborn, either, and makes himself bitter to his fellow citizens out of ignorance.
But this thing that fell on me out of nowhere has destroyed my soul. I am finished. I have let go of any pleasure in living, and I want to die, my friends. The man who was everything to me, as he knows very well, has turned out to be the worst man alive: my husband.
Of all creatures that live and think, we women are the most wretched. First we have to buy a husband, at an enormous price, and take a master over our bodies, which is a worse evil on top of the first. And that is the greatest contest of all: getting a bad one or a good one. Divorce brings a woman no honour, and she cannot refuse a husband. She comes into new habits and new rules, and she has to be a prophet, since nobody taught her at home, to work out how best to handle the man she sleeps with. And if we work all this out well, and the husband lives with us and does not fight the yoke, our life is one to envy. If not, better to die. A man, when he is sick of the company indoors, goes out and clears his heart of its disgust, turning to some friend or someone his own age. We have to look to one soul alone. And they say we live a life without danger, at home, while they fight with the spear. What fools. I would rather stand behind a shield three times than give birth once.
But the same argument does not fit you and me. You have this city, and your fathers' houses, and the good things of life, and friends to be with. I am alone. I have no city, and my husband treats me with outrage, a woman carried off as loot from a barbarian country, with no mother, no brother, not one relative I can put in to shelter from this storm. So this much, and only this, I want from you. If I can find some way, some device, to pay my husband back for these wrongs, and the man who gave him his daughter, and the woman he married, keep silent. A woman is full of fear about everything else, a coward when it comes to a fight, and she cannot look at steel. But when she is wronged in her bed, there is no mind more murderous.
Chorus. I will. You will be right to make your husband pay, Medea. I do not wonder that you grieve at what has happened to you. But I see Creon, the king of this land, coming this way, with news of some new decision.
(Creon comes in with attendants.)
Creon. You, with the scowl and the fury at your husband. Medea. I order you out of this country, into exile, and take your two children with you. No delay. I am the judge of this sentence, and I am not going back into my house until I have thrown you outside the borders of the land.
Medea. Aiai. I am destroyed, poor woman, root and branch. My enemies are letting out every rope of sail, and there is no easy landing from this ruin. But I will ask, even in this state. Why are you sending me out of the country, Creon?
Creon. I am afraid of you. No need to dress it up in words. I am afraid you will do my daughter some harm that cannot be undone. A great many things add up to that fear. You were born clever, and you know a great deal about doing harm, and you are in pain, cheated of your husband's bed. And I hear you are threatening, so people tell me, to do something to the father who gave the bride, and the bridegroom, and the bride. So I am going to guard against it before it happens. Better for me to have you hate me now, woman, than to go soft and groan about it afterwards.
Medea. Ah, ah. This is not the first time, Creon. My reputation has hurt me many times and done me a great deal of harm. No man with any sense should ever have his children taught to be too clever. Apart from the name for idleness that they get, they earn the spite and ill will of their fellow citizens. If you bring new and clever ideas to fools, you will look useless, and not clever at all; and if the people who think they know something subtle decide you are better than they are, the city will find you painful to have around. I share this luck myself. Because I am clever, some people envy me, some think me withdrawn, some think the opposite, and some find me difficult. And I am not so very clever.
Anyway, you are afraid of me. Afraid I will do you some injury? I am not in a position, so do not tremble at me, Creon, to go committing offences against kings. What have you done to wrong me? You gave your daughter to the man your heart chose. It is my husband I hate. You, I think, acted sensibly. And now I do not begrudge you your good fortune. Make your marriage, and good luck to you all. But let me live in this country. I have been wronged, and I will keep quiet about it. I have been beaten by people stronger than me.
Creon. Soft words to listen to. But inside I am terrified you are planning something bad, and I trust you that much less than before. A quick-tempered woman, and a man too, for that matter, is easier to guard against than a clever one who keeps quiet. So get out, as fast as you can, and no speeches. It is settled, and you have no trick that will keep you here among us when you are my enemy.
Medea. No. By your knees, by your newly married daughter.
Creon. You are wasting words. You will never persuade me.
Medea. You will drive me out, and pay no respect to my prayers?
Creon. I do not love you more than my own house.
Medea. My country. How I think of you now.
Creon. Yes. After my children, it is what I love most, by far.
Medea. Ah, ah. What a great evil love is for mortals.
Creon. That depends, I imagine, on how things fall out.
Medea. Zeus, do not let the man who caused this escape you.
Creon. Go, you fool, and rid me of this trouble.
Medea. The trouble is mine. I have no shortage of it.
Creon. In a moment my servants' hands will push you out by force.
Medea. Not that, not that. I am asking you, Creon...
Creon. You are going to make a scene, it seems, woman.
Medea. I will go into exile. That is not what I begged you for.
Creon. Then why are you forcing me? Why will you not let go of my hand?
Medea. Let me stay this one day, and finish thinking out how we will go into exile, and find some start in life for my children, since their father does not care to arrange anything for his sons. Have pity on them. You are the father of children yourself. It is natural that you should feel kindly. I have no thought for myself, if we are exiled. It is them I weep for, meeting such a disaster.
Creon. There is nothing of the tyrant in my nature, and I have ruined a great deal by feeling sorry for people. And now I can see I am making a mistake, woman, but all the same you will have what you ask. But I warn you: if tomorrow's sun, the god's torch, sees you and your children inside the borders of this land, you die. That word is spoken and it will not lie. So now, if you have to stay, stay for one day. You will not do any of the terrible things I am afraid of in that time.
(Creon goes out with his attendants.)
Chorus. Unhappy woman, ah, ah, miserable in your sorrows. Where will you turn? To what stranger's house? What home, what country will you find to save you from these evils? Into what a hopeless sea of troubles, Medea, a god has carried you.
Medea. It has gone badly in every direction. Who will deny it? But it is not going to end this way. Do not think so yet. There are still trials ahead for the newlyweds, and for the ones who made the match, no small pains. Do you think I would ever have fawned on that man if I were not getting something out of it, or working some scheme? I would not have spoken to him. I would not have touched him with my hands. But he has gone so far into folly that when he could have wrecked my plans by throwing me out of the country, he has let me stay this one day, and in it I will make corpses of three of my enemies: the father, the girl, and my husband.
I have many roads to their deaths, and I do not know which to take first, my friends. Shall I set fire to the bridal house? Or go quietly into the room where the bed is made and drive a sharpened sword through the liver? One thing stands in my way. If I am caught going into the house and working my scheme, I will die, and give my enemies a laugh. Best to take the straight road, where we women are cleverest by nature: take them with poison.
Very well. Say they are dead. What city will take me in? What host will offer me a land of refuge and a house that stands good for me, and save my life? There is none. So I will wait a little while longer, and if some safe tower shows itself to me, I will go after this murder by stealth and in silence. But if hopeless circumstance drives me out, I will take the sword in my own hand, even if I am going to die for it, and kill them, and go the hard way of daring. For by the mistress I honour above all others and have chosen as my partner in the work, Hecate, who lives in the inmost corner of my hearth, not one of them is going to hurt my heart and enjoy it. Bitter and grievous I will make their marriage, bitter their match-making, bitter my exile from the land.
Come on, then. Spare nothing of what you know, Medea, plotting and scheming. Go to the terrible thing. Now is the trial of courage. You see what is being done to you. You are not to be laughed at over Jason's marriage into the house of Sisyphus, you, the daughter of a noble father, born from the Sun. You have the knowledge. And besides, we were born women: helpless when it comes to doing good, but of every kind of evil the cleverest builders.
Chorus. The springs of the holy rivers are running uphill. Justice and everything else are turned round backwards. It is men whose plans are treacherous, men whose oaths by the gods no longer hold. And the talk will turn, and my life will have its good name. Honour is coming to the race of women. No more will ugly rumour have women in its grip.
Chorus. The Muses of the poets of old will stop singing of my faithlessness. Apollo, lord of song, did not put the lyre's inspired music into our minds, or I would have sung a hymn back at the race of men. The long years have much to say about our lot, and about men's too.
Chorus. You sailed from your father's house with a mind gone mad, and passed between the twin rocks of the sea. Now in a strange land you live, the bed you slept in lost, no husband in it, poor woman, and driven out of the country in dishonour, an exile.
Chorus. The grace of oaths is gone. Shame no longer stays in great Greece. It has flown up into the sky. And you have no father's house, poor woman, to shelter in from your troubles, and another queen, stronger than you in your own bed, has taken over the house.
(Jason comes in.)
Jason. This is not the first time I have seen it. I have seen it often: a harsh temper is an evil nothing can be done about. You could have had this country and this house, if you had taken your betters' decisions lightly, and instead, for the sake of foolish talk, you are being thrown out of the country. It makes no difference to me. Never stop calling Jason the worst man alive, if you like. But for what you have said against the royal family, count it clear gain that exile is your only punishment. I kept trying to take the edge off the king's anger, all the time, and I wanted you to stay. But you would not let go of your folly, always speaking badly of the royal family, and so you are being thrown out. Even so, even after all this, I have not given up on the people I owe. I have come here looking after your interests, woman, so that you will not be thrown out with the children penniless, or short of anything. Exile drags a great many evils along with it. And even if you hate me, I could never wish you harm.
Medea. You utter, utter coward. That is the worst thing my tongue can call you: that you are no man. You have come to me? You come here, when you have made yourself the worst enemy of the gods, and of me, and of the whole human race? This is not courage. It is not daring, to wrong the people you owe and then look them in the face. It is the worst of all the sicknesses that live in human beings: shamelessness. But you did well to come. I will lighten my heart by telling you exactly how bad you are, and you will hurt, listening.
I will start at the beginning. I saved your life. Every Greek who boarded the Argo with you knows it. You had been sent to yoke the fire-breathing bulls and to sow the field of death. And the serpent that coiled round the golden fleece and guarded it, sleepless, in its many folds: I killed it, and held up the light that saved you. I betrayed my own father and my own house and came with you to Iolcus under Pelion, more eager than clever. And I killed Pelias, in the most painful way there is to die, at the hands of his own children, and I wiped out his whole house. That is what I did for you, and you, worst of men, betrayed me and took a new bed, when we had children. If you had still been childless, I could have forgiven you for wanting this marriage.
The trust in oaths is gone. I cannot make out whether you think the gods of those days no longer rule, or that new rules have been laid down for human beings now, because you know perfectly well you have not kept your oath to me. Ah, this right hand, which you took hold of so often, and these knees. How uselessly we were touched by a bad man, and how we missed what we hoped for.
Come, then. I will talk to you as if you were a friend, though what good do I expect to get from you? Still, I will do it. The questions will show you up as even more shameful. Where am I to turn now? To my father's house, which I betrayed for you, along with my country, to come here? To the poor daughters of Pelias? They would give me a fine welcome into their house, when I killed their father. That is how it stands. To the ones I loved at home I have become an enemy; and the ones I had no reason to harm, I have made my enemies, to do you a favour. And in return for all that, you have made me so blessed in the eyes of many a Greek woman. What a wonderful husband I have in you, and how faithful, poor me, if I am thrown out of the country and go into exile, without one friend, alone with my children, alone. A fine reproach to the new bridegroom: his children wandering as beggars, and the woman who saved his life. Zeus, why did you give people clear tests for gold, to tell the counterfeit from the true, when there is no mark stamped on a man's body to tell the bad one by?
Chorus. Anger like this is a terrible thing, and hard to heal, when people who were close to each other fall out and fight.
Jason. It seems I had better be a decent speaker after all. I will have to be like a good helmsman, who reefs his sail right down to the edges and runs out from under the storm, to get clear of this gale you keep blowing from your mouth, woman. As for me, since you pile your favour so high, I say it was Aphrodite who saved my voyage, and nobody else, god or mortal. You have a subtle mind, I grant you. But it would be an ungracious story to go through, how Love forced you, with arrows nobody can dodge, to save my skin. Still, I will not weigh it too finely. However you helped me, it was help, and I do not complain of it. But you took more for saving me than you ever gave, as I will now show you.
First, you live in Greece, instead of a barbarian country. You know what justice is, and how to live by law instead of by whoever is strongest. Every Greek has heard how clever you are, and you have a name. If you were still living out at the far edge of the world, nobody would ever have mentioned you. As for me, I would not want gold in the house, or a voice to sing more sweetly than Orpheus, if my luck did not make me famous with it. That is all I have to say about my labours, and I only say it because you were the one who set up this contest of speeches.
Now, the royal marriage you threw in my face. Here I am going to show you, first, that I was clever; second, that I kept myself in hand; and third, that I was a great friend to you and to my children. No, keep quiet. When I moved here from the country of Iolcus, dragging one hopeless disaster after another behind me, what luckier find could I possibly have found than this, an exile marrying a king's daughter? Not, as you keep stinging yourself with thinking, because I hated your bed and had been struck down with desire for a new bride. Not because I was eager to win some contest for having the most children, either. The ones I have are enough, and I have no complaint about them. No. I did it so that, first and most important, we could live well and not go short, because I know that a poor man's friends all get out of his way. So that I could bring the children up in a manner worthy of my house, and father brothers for the children I have by you, and put them all on the same footing, and join the family into one, and we would all be happy. What do you need more children for? For me, it pays to use the children still to come to help the ones I already have. Have I planned badly? You would not say so yourself, if your bed were not stinging you.
But you women have got to the point where, as long as the bed is going right, you think you have everything, and the moment something goes wrong in the bed, you turn on the best and finest things you have as though they were your worst enemies. Men should have found some other way of getting children, and there should have been no such thing as women. Then there would be no trouble in the world for anyone.
Chorus. Jason, you have dressed these words up very well. All the same, even if I am saying something you will not like, I think you have betrayed your wife, and what you are doing is not just.
Medea. I certainly differ from most people about a great many things. To my mind, a man who is in the wrong and is a clever speaker by nature deserves the heaviest penalty of all. He is so sure his tongue can dress up an injustice nicely that he has the nerve to try anything. And he is not so very clever, either. So do not put on your fine manners with me now, and your gift for speaking. One word will lay you flat. If you were not a bad man, you should have talked me round first and then made this marriage, instead of doing it behind the backs of the people who loved you.
Jason. Oh yes, you would have given that proposal a warm welcome, I am sure, if I had told you about the marriage. When even now you cannot bring yourself to let go of the great rage in your heart.
Medea. That is not what held you back. A barbarian wife was starting to look bad for you, as you got on towards old age.
Jason. Get this clear. It was not for the woman's sake that I married into the royal bed I have now. I told you before: I wanted to save you, and to father royal sons to be brothers to my own children, a wall round the house.
Medea. May I never have the kind of prosperity that hurts, or the kind of wealth that stings my heart.
Jason. Do you know how to change that prayer, and look wiser for it? Pray that good things never look painful to you, and that when your luck is in you do not think it is out.
Medea. Go on, add outrage to it. You have somewhere to turn. I am the one who goes into exile from this country alone.
Jason. You chose this yourself. Blame nobody else.
Medea. By doing what? Marrying someone and betraying you?
Jason. By calling down unholy curses on the royal house.
Medea. Yes, and I am a curse on your house too, as it turns out.
Jason. I am not going to argue any more of this with you. But if you want to take some of my money, to help the children or to help you in your exile, say so. I am ready to give with an open hand, and to send tokens to my friends abroad, who will treat you well. If you refuse this, woman, you are a fool. Let go of your anger and you will come out of it better.
Medea. I would not make use of those friends of yours, and I would not accept a thing. Do not offer it to us. A bad man's gifts do nobody any good.
Jason. Well then. I call the gods to witness that I am willing to do everything for you and for the children. But you do not like good things. You are so stubborn you push away the people who care about you, and so you will suffer all the more.
Medea. Go. You are aching for the girl you have just broken in, and you have been away from the house too long. Go and be a bridegroom. Because perhaps, with the god's help I will say it, you are making the kind of marriage you will wish you had never made.
(Jason goes off towards the palace.)
Chorus. Love that comes in too strong brings men no good name and no goodness either. But if Aphrodite comes in just enough, there is no god so gracious. Never, my lady, aim at me from your golden bow the arrow no one escapes, dipped in desire.
Chorus. Let a steady heart love me, the finest gift the gods give. Never let terrible Aphrodite strike my spirit into quarrelling tempers and fights that are never fed full, over some other woman's bed. Let her honour marriages that keep the peace, and judge with a sharp mind who should sleep with whom.
Chorus. My country. My home. Never let me be a woman without a city, dragging out a life of helplessness that there is no crossing, the most pitiful of griefs. Let death, let death bring me down first, when I have finished this day. There is no hardship worse than to lose the land you were born in.
Chorus. I have seen it. I do not need anybody else's story to tell it. No city, not one of your friends pitied you when you suffered the most terrible thing there is to suffer. Let him die unthanked, the man who could honour his friends and will not, will not unlock a clean mind to them. He will never be a friend of mine.
(Aegeus, the king of Athens, comes in, on his way through Corinth.)
Aegeus. Medea, be happy. Nobody knows a better opening than that for greeting a friend.
Medea. And you be happy too, Aegeus, son of clever Pandion. Where have you come from, to be setting foot in this country?
Aegeus. From Apollo's ancient oracle. I have just left it.
Medea. What sent you to the navel of the earth, where the god sings his answers?
Aegeus. I was asking how I might get the seed of children.
Medea. By the gods. Have you been living childless all this while?
Aegeus. We are childless. Some god has arranged it.
Medea. Do you have a wife, or have you never known a woman's bed?
Aegeus. I am not unyoked. I have a marriage bed.
Medea. Then what did Apollo tell you about children?
Aegeus. Words too clever for a man to piece together.
Medea. Am I allowed to know what the god said?
Aegeus. Certainly. It needs a clever mind, if anything does.
Medea. What did he say, then? Tell me, if I am allowed to hear it.
Aegeus. That I must not untie the foot of the wineskin that sticks out.
Medea. Until you have done what? Or reached what country?
Aegeus. Until I come home again to my father's hearth.
Medea. And what do you want here, that you have sailed to this country?
Aegeus. There is a man called Pittheus, the king of the land of Troezen.
Medea. The son of Pelops, they say, and a very godly man.
Aegeus. I want to share the god's answer with him.
Medea. Yes, he is a clever man, and used to handling things like this.
Aegeus. And to me the dearest of all the friends I have fought beside.
Medea. Well, good luck to you, and may you get everything you long for.
Aegeus. But why are your eyes like that? Why is your skin so wasted?
Medea. Aegeus, my husband is the worst man alive, to me.
Aegeus. What do you mean? Tell me plainly why you are so low.
Medea. Jason is wronging me, and I never did a thing to him.
Aegeus. What has he done? Tell me more clearly.
Medea. He has put another woman over us as mistress of the house.
Aegeus. Surely he has not had the nerve to do a thing as shameful as that?
Medea. Be sure of it. We who were dear to him before are nothing now.
Aegeus. Did he fall in love? Or did he come to hate your bed?
Medea. A great love, yes. He was born faithless to the people he owes.
Aegeus. Then let him go, if he is as bad as you say.
Medea. What he fell in love with was marrying into a king's family.
Aegeus. And who is giving him the bride? Finish the story for me.
Medea. Creon, who rules this land of Corinth.
Aegeus. Then you have every excuse for your grief, lady.
Medea. I am finished. And on top of it, I am being driven out of the country.
Aegeus. By whom? That is another new trouble you are telling me about.
Medea. Creon is driving me out of the land of Corinth as an exile.
Aegeus. And Jason allows it? I do not think much of that either.
Medea. Not in so many words. But he is willing to put up with it. Aegeus, I beg you, by this beard of yours, by your knees, I am your suppliant. Pity me. Pity me, the luckless woman. Do not stand and watch me thrown out alone. Take me into your country, into your house, at your hearth. If you do, may the gods bring your longing for children to fruit, and may you die a happy man yourself. You do not know what a find you have found in me. I will put an end to your childlessness. I will make you the father of children. I know the drugs for it.
Aegeus. There are many reasons, lady, why I am eager to do you this favour. First, for the sake of the gods. Second, for the children you promise me, because on that score I am completely at a loss. So this is how it stands with me. If you come to my country, I will try to protect you as your host, which is only just. But I give you this much warning in advance, lady. I will not be willing to take you out of this land myself. If you come to my house on your own, you will stay there safe from harm, and I will never hand you over to anyone. But it is your own feet that must carry you out of this country. I want to be blameless in the eyes of my hosts here as well.
Medea. So be it. But if I could have a pledge from you on this, I would have everything I want from you.
Aegeus. Do you not trust me? What is the difficulty?
Medea. I trust you. But the house of Pelias is my enemy, and so is Creon. If you were bound to me by oaths, you would not let them take me out of your country. If you had only made an agreement in words, and were not sworn before the gods, you might become their friend, and you might give in when their heralds came asking. No, you would not hold out. My side is weak, and they have wealth and a royal house.
Aegeus. There is a great deal of foresight in what you say. Well, if that is what you want, I do not refuse to do it. It is the safest thing for me too, to have some excuse I can show your enemies, and it puts your own position on firmer ground. Name the gods.
Medea. Swear by the floor of the Earth, and by the Sun, who was the father of my father, and by the whole race of the gods, all together in one oath.
Aegeus. To do what, or not to do what? Say it.
Medea. That you will never throw me out of your country yourself, and that if any enemy of mine wants to take me, you will never willingly let me go, as long as you live.
Aegeus. I swear by Earth, and by the holy light of the Sun, and by all the gods, that I will stand by what I hear from you.
Medea. That is enough. And if you do not stand by this oath, what should happen to you?
Aegeus. Whatever happens to men who do not keep faith with the gods.
Medea. Go, and be happy. Everything is well. I will come to your city as fast as I can, once I have done what I mean to do, and got what I want.
(Aegeus goes on his way.)
Chorus. May Hermes, the son of Maia, the lord who guides travellers, bring you safe to your house, and may you get the thing you are set on and hurrying after, Aegeus, because you have shown yourself a good man in my eyes.
Medea. Zeus. Justice, daughter of Zeus. Light of the Sun. Now, my friends, we are going to win a glorious victory over my enemies. We have set foot on the road. Now there is hope that the people I hate will pay what they owe. Because this man has appeared, right where I was struggling hardest, as a harbour for my plans. I will tie my stern cable to him, when I reach the town and the citadel of Pallas Athena.
Now I will tell you all my plans. Do not expect to enjoy them. I will send one of my slaves to Jason and ask him to come and see me. When he comes, I will speak softly to him. I will say that I think as he does, that this royal marriage he has betrayed us for is a good thing, that it is to our advantage and well thought out. And I will ask that my children stay here. Not that I would leave my children on enemy soil for my enemies to insult. No. I ask it so that I can kill the king's daughter by a trick. I will send them carrying gifts in their hands, gifts for the bride, so that they will not be exiled from this land: a fine-woven dress and a wreath of beaten gold. And if she takes the finery and puts it on her skin, she will die horribly, and so will anyone who touches the girl. That is the kind of drug I am going to smear on my gifts.
But there I leave that part of the story. I groan at the thing that has to be done after it. I am going to kill my children. My own. There is nobody who is going to take them from me. And when I have brought Jason's whole house down in ruins, I will leave this land, running from the murder of the children I love most, having found the nerve for the most unholy act there is. Because to be laughed at by my enemies is not something I can bear, my friends. Let it come. What good is living to me? I have no country, no home, no way out of my troubles. I went wrong the day I left my father's house, talked round by the words of a Greek man, and with the god's help he is going to pay me for it. He will never see the children I gave him alive again, and he will never father a child on his new-yoked bride, because she has to die, a bad woman dying badly, by my drugs. Let no one think me weak, or feeble, or the quiet kind. I am the other kind. Heavy on my enemies, and kind to my friends. People like that are the ones whose lives are remembered.
Chorus. Since you have shared this plan with us, I forbid you to do it. I want to help you, and I am taking the side of the laws that human beings live by.
Medea. There is no other way. You are forgiven for saying it. You are not suffering what I am suffering.
Chorus. But will you have the nerve to kill your own children, woman?
Medea. Yes. That is the way my husband will be bitten deepest.
Chorus. And you would become the most wretched woman alive.
Medea. Let it come. Every word between now and then is a waste. Now go, and fetch Jason here. When I need someone I can trust, I always use you. Say nothing about what I have decided, if you are loyal to your masters, and if you were born a woman.
(The Nurse goes to fetch Jason.)
Chorus. Children of Erechtheus, blessed since the old days, children of the blessed gods, from a holy land that no enemy has ever sacked, you feed on wisdom, the most glorious there is, and you walk delicately through the brightest of air, where once, the story goes, golden-haired Harmony gave birth to the nine holy Muses, the Muses of Pieria.
Chorus. And they sing that Aphrodite draws water from the streams of the lovely-flowing Cephisus, and breathes over the country the gentle, sweet-breathing breezes of the winds, and that she always sets a fragrant wreath of rose-blossom on her hair, and sends the Loves to sit beside Wisdom, to work with her at every kind of excellence.
Chorus. So how will the city of the holy rivers, how will the country that sees its friends safe on their way, take you in, the killer of your children, the unholy woman, to live among its people? Think of the blow that falls on your children. Think of the murder you are taking on. No. By your knees, every way there is, in every way we can, we beg you: do not murder your children.
Chorus. Where will you get the boldness for it, in your mind, or in your hand, or in your heart, bringing this terrible daring down on your own children? How will you look at your children and take on the murderer's part without a tear? You will not be able to. When your children fall at your feet and beg, you will not be able to wet your hand in their blood with a hardened heart.
(Jason comes in from the palace.)
Jason. I have come, as I was told to. Even though you hate me, you shall not go without this much at least. I will hear what new thing it is you want from me, woman.
Medea. Jason, I ask you to forgive what I said. It is only fair that you should put up with my tempers, after all the love there has been between the two of us. I have been going over it with myself, and I have been telling myself off. "You wretch, why are you raving like this, and picking fights with people who are planning well? Why are you making an enemy of the rulers of this land, and of your husband, who is doing the most useful thing he could do for us, marrying a princess and fathering brothers for my children? Am I not going to let go of my anger, when the gods are providing so well? What is the matter with me? Do I not have children? Do I not know that we are exiles from this land, and short of friends?" When I thought it through, I saw how badly I had been reasoning, and how pointless my anger was.
So now I approve. I think you kept your head, taking this marriage on for us, and I was the fool. I should have been in on these plans. I should have helped to arrange the wedding, and stood beside the bed, and enjoyed looking after your bride. But we are what we are, we women. I will not say bad. But you should not have sunk to matching us at it, or answered childishness with childishness. I give in. I admit I had it wrong then, but I have thought it through better now.
Children, children, come here. Leave the house, come out, and greet your father with me, and speak to him. Make up with him, along with your mother, and put away the old hatred against the people we owe. We have made a truce, and the anger is gone.
(The children come out of the house, with the Tutor.)
Take his right hand. Oh. How I keep thinking of the troubles that are hidden. Children, will you go on living a long time, and go on holding out a loving arm like this? Poor me. How close to tears I am, how full of fear. Now that I have finally ended this quarrel with your father, I have filled this soft face with tears.
Chorus. The tears have started pale from my eyes as well. I only hope the trouble goes no further than it has.
Jason. I approve of this, woman, and I do not blame you for what went before. It is natural for the female sex to lose their tempers when a husband smuggles in another marriage on the side. But your heart has changed for the better. You have recognised the winning plan, late, but you have recognised it. That is how a sensible woman acts. And for you, children, your father has been thinking hard, and with the gods' help he has set up a great deal of security. I think that one day you will be the first men in this land of Corinth, along with your brothers. Just grow up. Your father is working out the rest, and so is whichever of the gods is kind to us. I want to see you grow up strong and come to the end of your youth, standing over my enemies. You there, why are you wetting your eyes with pale tears? Why have you turned your white cheek away? Why are you not glad to hear this from me?
Medea. It is nothing. I was thinking about these children.
Jason. Then take heart. I am going to arrange things well for them.
Medea. I will. I will not doubt what you say. But a woman is a female thing, and she is born to tears.
Jason. Then why are you groaning so much over these children?
Medea. I gave birth to them. And when you prayed for the children to live, pity came over me, wondering whether it will happen. But about the reasons you came here to talk to me: some of it has been said, and I will mention the rest now. Since the rulers of this land have decided to send me away, and since it is best for me too, I see that well enough, not to live here in your way and in the way of the rulers of the land, because they think I am an enemy to their house, I am leaving this country and going into exile. But the children. So that they can be brought up by your hand, ask Creon not to send them into exile from this land.
Jason. I do not know if I could persuade him. But I must try.
Medea. Then at least tell your wife to ask her father not to send the children into exile from this land.
Jason. Certainly. And her, I think, I will persuade.
Medea. If she is a woman like the rest of us. And I will take a share in this job with you. I will send her gifts, by far the most beautiful things there are among human beings today, I know it: a fine-woven dress and a wreath of beaten gold, and the children will carry them to her. One of the servants must go and bring the finery out here, as quickly as possible. She is going to be happy not once but ten thousand times over, getting you for a husband, the best of men, and owning the finery that the Sun, my father's father, gave to his descendants.
(A servant brings the dress and the golden wreath out of the house.)
Take these wedding gifts in your hands, children, and carry them to the happy royal bride, and give them to her. They are not gifts anybody could find fault with.
Jason. What are you doing, you foolish woman, emptying your hands of these? Do you think the royal house is short of dresses? Short of gold? Keep them. Do not give them away. If the woman thinks I am worth anything at all, she will put me before money, I know that well enough.
Medea. Do not talk to me like that. Gifts persuade even the gods, they say, and gold does more with human beings than ten thousand words. Her luck is in. A god is making her fortune grow now. She is young, and she is a queen. And to save my children from exile I would give my life, not just gold. Now, children, go into the rich house, to your father's new wife, my mistress, and beg her. Beg her not to send you into exile from this land, and give her the finery. This is the thing that matters most: she must take these gifts into her own hand. Go, as fast as you can. And may you do it well, and come back to your mother with the good news she is longing to hear.
Chorus. Now I have no hope left for the children's lives, none. They are walking to their murder already. The bride will take the golden headband, the poor girl will take her ruin in her hands, and around her yellow hair she will set the finery of Hades, herself, with her own two hands.
Chorus. The loveliness of the robe, and its shine like a god's, will talk her into putting on the crown of worked gold, and she will dress as a bride for the dead below. That is the net she will fall into, that is the death that is her share, poor girl, and she will not slip out from under the ruin.
Chorus. And you, poor man, you married badly when you married into the king's house, and you do not see that you are bringing destruction on your sons' lives and a hateful death on your wife. Poor man. How wrong you are about what is coming to you.
Chorus. And I grieve for your pain too, poor mother of these children, who will murder your sons over a marriage bed, the bed your husband left, against all law, to live with another woman.
(The Tutor comes back from the palace with the two children.)
Tutor. Mistress, these children of yours are let off their exile, and the royal bride took the gifts gladly, in her own hands. From that side, the children have peace. Hey. Why are you standing there so upset, when things are going well for you? Why have you turned your face away, and why aren't you glad to hear this from me?
Medea. Aiai.
Tutor. That does not go with the news I have brought.
Medea. Aiai, again.
Tutor. Have I reported some misfortune without knowing it? Was I wrong to think my news was good?
Medea. You reported what you reported. I don't blame you.
Tutor. Then why are your eyes on the ground? Why are you crying?
Medea. I have to, old man. I have to. The gods and I, in my bad judgement, arranged all of this.
Tutor. Take heart. Your children will bring you home again some day too.
Medea. Before that I will bring others home. Down, into the ground. The misery of it.
Tutor. You are not the only woman who was ever parted from her children. When you are mortal you have to carry your troubles lightly.
Medea. I will. But go inside, and get the children what they need for the day.
Children, children. You two have a city now, and a house, where you will live for ever without me, leaving your wretched mother behind, robbed of her. And I am going to another country, an exile, before I have had any joy of you, before I have seen you happy, before I have dressed a bride for you and made the marriage bed beautiful and held up the wedding torch. Oh, my own stubborn will, and the misery it has brought me. So it was for nothing that I brought you up, children, for nothing that I laboured and was worn to shreds with work, and bore the hard pains of childbirth. There was a time, poor fool that I was, when I had great hopes of you: that you would look after me when I was old, and when I died you would wrap my body with your own hands, which is a thing people envy. Now that sweet thought is dead. Without you two I will drag out a life that is bitter and full of pain. And you will never see your mother again with those dear eyes. You are going away into another shape of life.
Oh. Oh. Why are you looking at me like that, children? Why are you smiling at me, that very last smile? Aiai. What am I going to do? My heart has gone out of me, women, now that I have seen my children's bright faces. I could not do it. Goodbye to the plans I made before. I will take my children out of the country with me. Why should I hurt their father through their suffering, and get myself twice as much suffering as he gets? No. Not I. Goodbye to my plans.
And yet, what is happening to me? Do I want to be laughed at, and let my enemies go unpunished? I have to have the nerve for this. What a coward I am, to let soft words into my heart at all. Go into the house, children. Anyone who has no right to be present at my sacrifice, let that be his own concern. I will not let my hand go weak.
Ah. Ah. No, my heart, don't. Don't you do this. Let them be, you poor thing. Spare the children. They will live there with us, and they will make you glad. No. By the avenging spirits down in Hades, there is no way, ever, that I will hand my children over to my enemies to be outraged. They have to die, whatever happens. And since they must, I will kill them, I who gave them birth. It is all done now, whatever happens, and she will not escape. The crown is on her head already; the royal bride is dying in the robe. I know it for certain.
But I am going down the most wretched road there is, and I am sending these two down one more wretched still, so I want to speak to my children. Give me, children, give your mother your right hand to kiss. Dearest hand, dearest mouth, and the shape of you, and the noble faces of my children. Be happy, both of you. But there, not here. Everything here your father has taken away. Oh, the sweetness of holding you, the soft skin, the sweet breath of my children. Go. Go in. I cannot look at you any longer. The evil is beating me. I know what evil I am about to do, but my anger is stronger than my plans, and anger is the cause of the greatest evils human beings suffer.
(The children go into the house. Medea stays where she is.)
Chorus. Often before now I have gone into finer arguments and taken on bigger questions than the female sex ought to look into. But we have a Muse of our own, too, who keeps us company for the sake of understanding. Not all of us. It is a small breed you would find among many women, but you might find it: women the Muse has not passed by. And I say this. Of all human beings, the ones who have never had children, who know nothing at all about it, are better off in happiness than the ones who are parents. The childless never had any, so they never learn whether children turn out a sweetness to people or a grief, and they are spared a great deal of hard work. But the ones who have in their house the sweet growth of children, I see them worn down with worry the whole time. First, how to bring them up well, and how to leave them enough to live on. And after all that, whether it is worthless children or good ones they have been working for, they cannot tell. And there is one evil more, the last of all, and I will name it now for every mortal. Say they have found enough to live on, and the children's bodies have come to their prime, and they have turned out good. Then, if their luck falls that way, Death is off to Hades, carrying the children's bodies away. So what is the good of it? Why, on top of everything else, should the gods throw this one grief, the bitterest of all, for the sake of children, on mortal men and women?
Medea. Friends, I have been waiting a long time for what happens next, watching for how things turn out over there. And now I see one of Jason's men coming. He is breathing hard, and that tells me he has some new evil to report.
(A messenger runs in from the palace, out of breath.)
Messenger. Medea. You have done a terrible thing, and a lawless one. Run. Run. Whatever will carry you, take it, a ship over the sea or a wagon over the plain.
Medea. And what has happened that deserves this running away?
Messenger. The princess is dead, just now, and Creon her father with her, killed by your poisons.
Medea. That is the most beautiful thing you could have said. From now on you count among my benefactors and my friends.
Messenger. What? Are you in your right mind, woman? Not mad? You have desecrated the king's hearth, and you are glad to hear it, and not afraid?
Medea. I have something to say to that too, an answer of my own. But don't rush, friend. Tell me. How did they die? You will give me twice the pleasure if they died horribly.
Messenger. When your two children came with their father and went into the bride's house, we were glad, we slaves who had suffered along with you in your troubles. At once the word went from ear to ear all through the house that you and your husband had made up your old quarrel. One of us kissed the children's hands, another their yellow hair, and I myself was so happy that I went along with the children into the women's rooms. Our mistress, the one we honour now in your place, had her eyes fixed eagerly on Jason, before she caught sight of your two boys. But then she covered her eyes and turned her white cheek away, disgusted that the children had come in. Your husband set about taking the girl's anger and her temper away, saying this: "You won't be unkind to people who love you, will you? Stop being angry and turn your head back this way. Count as your friends the people your husband counts. Take these gifts, and ask your father to let these boys off their exile, for my sake." And when she saw the finery, she couldn't hold out. She agreed to everything her husband asked, and before the father and the children were far from the house, she took the embroidered robe and put it on, and set the golden crown around her curls, and arranged her hair in a bright mirror, smiling at the lifeless image of her own body. Then she got up from her chair and walked through the rooms, stepping delicately on her white, white feet, overjoyed with the gifts, and over and over again she stretched out her leg and looked down at the line of her ankle.
But what came after that was a terrible thing to see. Her colour changed. She staggered back sideways, her legs shaking under her, and only just managed to fall into the chair instead of onto the floor. One of the servants, an old woman, thinking, I suppose, that a fit from Pan or some other god had come on her, raised the cry of prayer. Until she saw white foam coming out of the girl's mouth, and her eyes rolling back in their sockets, and no blood left in her skin. Then instead of that prayer she sent up a great shriek of grief. Straight away one servant ran for her father's house and another for the new husband, to tell him what had happened to his bride, and the whole house rang with feet running back and forth.
By the time a fast walker could have covered the length of a running track and been reaching the far end of it, the poor girl came to, out of her silence and her closed eyes, with a terrible groan. Two torments were attacking her at once. The golden band lying round her head let loose an astonishing stream of fire that ate everything, and the fine robe, your children's gift, was eating the poor girl's soft flesh. She got up from the chair and ran, on fire, shaking her hair and her head this way and that, trying to throw the crown off. But the gold held its fastenings tight, and every time she shook her hair the fire blazed twice as bright. She fell to the floor, beaten by the disaster, and nobody could have known her except her own father. You could not make out the set of her eyes any more, or her lovely face. Blood was dripping from the top of her head, mixed with fire, and the flesh was running off her bones under the invisible jaws of the poisons, the way resin drips from a pine. A terrible sight. And everyone was afraid to touch the body. What had happened had taught us that much.
Then her poor father, knowing nothing of what had happened, came suddenly into the room and fell on the corpse. He groaned at once, and wrapped his arms round her and kissed her, and said this to her: "My poor child. Which of the gods destroyed you like this, so shamefully? Who is making an old man, with one foot in the grave, an orphan, robbed of you? Oh. Let me die with you, child." When he had stopped his crying and his wailing and wanted to lift his old body up, he was stuck to the fine robe the way ivy sticks to the shoots of a laurel, and then there was a terrible wrestling. He wanted to get up on his knee, and she held him back. If he pulled hard, he tore his old flesh off his bones. In the end he gave out, and the poor man let his life go. He could not rise above the evil any longer. So they lie there dead, the daughter and the old father, side by side, a disaster that cries out for tears.
As for you, I leave your part out of my account. You will find out for yourself how to turn the punishment aside. Not for the first time, I think human life is a shadow. And I would say without fear that the people who pass for clever, the ones who work so hard on their words, are the ones found guilty of the greatest folly. No human being is happy. When wealth pours in, one man may be luckier than another. But happy? No.
Chorus. It looks as if the god is fastening a great many evils on Jason today, and fastening them with justice. Poor woman, daughter of Creon, how we pity your disaster, gone to the house of Hades because of your marriage to Jason.
Medea. Friends, the thing is decided. I will kill the children as fast as I can and leave this land. I will not delay and hand my children over to another hand to murder, a hand that hates them more. They have to die, whatever happens. And since they must, I will kill them, I who gave them birth. Come on, then, heart. Arm yourself. Why am I waiting to do the terrible thing that has to be done? Come, my wretched hand, take the sword. Take it. Go to the starting line of a life of grief. Do not turn coward. Do not remember the children, how much you love them, how you bore them. For this one short day forget your children, and grieve afterwards. Because even if you kill them, still, they were born your own dear ones. And I am an unlucky woman.
(Medea goes into the house.)
Chorus. Io, Earth, and you, ray of the Sun that lights everything, look down, look at this ruined woman before she lays a bloody hand on her children, her own. They grew from your golden seed, and for a god's blood to be spilled by human hands is a thing to fear. Light born of Zeus, hold her back, stop her, get her out of the house, this pitiful Fury of blood that the spirits of vengeance drive.
Chorus. The labour of your children has gone for nothing. Was it for nothing you bore your dear sons, you who left behind the dark Clashing Rocks, the Symplegades, the passage that welcomes no stranger? Wretched woman, why does this heavy anger fall on your mind, why is murder, hateful murder, taking the place of love? Pollution from the blood of your own kin is hard for human beings to bear on the earth. It brings griefs from the gods down on the killers' house, to match.
Children. Aiai.
Chorus. Do you hear the cry? Do you hear the children? Io, wretched, ill-starred woman.
(The children's voices come from inside the house, first one boy and then the other.)
Children. Oh. What do I do? Where can I run from my mother's hands?
I don't know, brother, dearest. We are being killed.
Chorus. Should I go into the house? I think I should keep the children from being murdered.
Children. Yes, by the gods, keep us from it. We need you now.
The net of the sword is closing on us already. We are that near.
Chorus. Wretched woman. Then you were stone, or iron, all along, to kill the children you bore, the crop of your own body, with a death dealt by your own hand.
Chorus. One, only one woman before this have I heard of who laid her hand on her own children: Ino, whom the gods drove mad, when the wife of Zeus sent her out of her house to wander. And the poor woman fell into the sea for the unholy murder of her children, stepping off the sea cliff over the water, and died there with her two sons. What is left that could be terrible now, after this? Oh, the marriage bed of women, how much pain it costs, how much evil it has done to people already.
(Jason comes in at a run.)
Jason. Women, standing near this house. Is she still inside, Medea, the one who did these terrible things, or has she run for it? She will have to hide under the earth or lift her body on wings into the depths of the sky, if she is not going to pay the royal house what she owes it. Does she think that after killing the rulers of this land she will get away from this house unpunished? But it is not her I am thinking of. It is the children. The ones she has hurt will hurt her back. I came to save my children's lives, in case the family of the dead does something to me, taking revenge for the unholy murder their mother did.
Chorus. Poor man. You do not know how far into evil you have come, Jason, or you would not have said that.
Jason. What is it? Does she want to kill me too?
Chorus. Your children are dead. Their mother's hand killed them.
Jason. Oh. What are you saying? You have destroyed me, woman.
Chorus. Your children no longer exist. Think of them that way now.
Jason. Where did she kill them? Inside the house, or outside?
Chorus. Open the doors, and you will see your children murdered.
Jason. Slaves, undo the bolts, quick as you can. Unfasten the bars. Let me see the double evil, the two dead, and her. I will make her pay for it.
(Medea appears above the house, in a chariot drawn by dragons. The bodies of the children are beside her.)
Medea. Why are you shaking the doors and prising at the bolts, hunting for the dead and for me, who did it? Save your effort. If you want something from me, say it, if you like. But your hand will never touch me. This chariot is what my father's father, the Sun, gives me: a wall against my enemies' hands.
Jason. You hateful thing. Woman most loathed by the gods, and by me, and by the whole human race. You had the nerve to drive a sword into your own children, you, their mother, and you have destroyed me, left me childless. And having done it, you look at the sun and the earth, after having the nerve to do the most unholy thing there is. Die. I am in my right mind now. I was not then, when I brought you out of your house and your barbarian country to a Greek home, a great evil, a traitor to your father and to the land that raised you. The gods have flung your avenging spirit at me. You had already killed your brother at the hearth when you stepped aboard the Argo with its lovely prow. That is how you began. Then you married me, and bore me children, and for the sake of a bed, of sex, you have destroyed them. There is not one Greek woman who would ever have had the nerve to do this, and I passed over every one of them to marry you, a marriage that was my enemy and my ruin: a lioness, not a woman, wilder by nature than the monster Scylla in the Tyrrhenian sea. But I could not bite you with ten thousand insults; that is how bold you are by nature. Go to hell, you filth, you murderer of your children. All that is left to me is to weep over my own fortune. I will get no joy of my new marriage bed, and the children I fathered and brought up I will never speak to alive again. I have lost them.
Medea. I would have made a long speech in answer to that, if Zeus the father did not already know what you had from me and what you did to me. You were not going to dishonour my bed and then live a pleasant life laughing at me. Nor was the princess. Nor was Creon, who arranged your marriage, going to throw me out of this land and get away with it. So call me a lioness if you like, and Scylla who lives on the Tyrrhenian shore. I have got my hands on your heart, the way I had to.
Jason. You are in pain too. You share the evil.
Medea. Be sure of it. But the pain is worth it, as long as you are not laughing.
Jason. Children, what an evil mother you got.
Medea. Boys, how your father's sickness destroyed you.
Jason. It was not my right hand that killed them.
Medea. No. Your outrage did, and your new marriage.
Jason. You thought a marriage bed a good enough reason to kill them?
Medea. Do you think that is a small hurt to a woman?
Jason. To a woman who keeps herself in hand, yes. To you everything is evil.
Medea. They no longer exist. That will bite you.
Jason. They exist. Oh, they exist, as avengers on your head.
Medea. The gods know who began this pain.
Jason. They know, yes. They know your disgusting mind.
Medea. Hate me. I loathe the bitter sound of your voice.
Jason. And I loathe yours. Parting is easy.
Medea. How, then? What do I do? I want it badly enough myself.
Jason. Let me bury these dead and weep over them.
Medea. No. I will bury them myself, with this hand. I will carry them to the sacred ground of Hera of the Heights, so that none of my enemies can outrage them by tearing up their graves. And on this land of Sisyphus, on Corinth, I will lay a solemn festival and rites for all time to come, to pay for this unholy murder. I myself am going to the land of Erechtheus, to Athens, to live with Aegeus, the son of Pandion. And you, as is only right, will die a coward's death, a bad man dying badly, your head struck by a piece of the wreck of the Argo, after you have seen the bitter end of your marriage to me.
Jason. May the children's Fury destroy you, and Justice that avenges blood.
Medea. What god or spirit listens to you, you who broke your oath and cheated the house that took you in?
Jason. Ah. Ah. Filthy woman. Child-killer.
Medea. Go home, and bury your wife.
Jason. I am going. Without either of my two sons.
Medea. You are not mourning yet. Wait until you are old.
Jason. Children, dearest children.
Medea. To their mother. Not to you.
Jason. And then you killed them?
Medea. Yes. To hurt you.
Jason. Oh. I want to kiss my children's dear mouths. The misery of it.
Medea. Now you talk to them, now you want to hold them. Then, you pushed them away.
Jason. By the gods, let me touch my children's soft skin.
Medea. No. Your words are thrown away on the wind.
Jason. Zeus, do you hear how I am driven off, what I am suffering from this filthy woman, this lioness who kills her children? But as far as I can, as far as I am allowed, I mourn them, and I call on the gods, I call them to witness that you killed my children and will not let me touch them with my hands or bury their bodies. I wish I had never fathered them to see them dead at your hands.
(The chariot rises and carries Medea away. Jason is left below.)
Chorus. Zeus on Olympus keeps the store of many things, and many the things they bring about that no one expected. What we counted on did not happen, and for what no one counted on, a god found a way. That is how this business ended.
(Marathon, in the country of Athens, in front of the temple of Zeus. Iolaus, an old man, sits at the altar with the young sons of Heracles gathered around him.)
Iolaus. I made up my mind about this a long time ago. One kind of man is born fair to the people around him. Another kind has let his heart run loose after profit, and he is no use to his city and hard to deal with, and the only person he is any good to is himself. I know this. I did not learn it from talk. Out of respect, and because I honour the ties of blood, I gave up living quietly in Argos, which I could have done, and shared Heracles' labours instead, more of them than any other single man, while he was still among us. And now that he lives in the sky, I have his children here under my wings, and I keep them safe, when I need saving myself.
When their father left the earth, the first thing Eurystheus wanted was to kill us. But we got away. Our city is gone, but our lives were saved. And since then we have been on the run, wandering, driven over the border of one city after another. Because on top of everything else Eurystheus has done to us, he thought fit to add this outrage: wherever he heard we had settled, he sent heralds there, demanding us back and having us shut out of the country, holding out Argos to them, no small city to have as a friend or as an enemy, and his own good fortune along with it. And they look at me and see how little strength I have, and they see how small these children are, with no father, and they bow to the stronger side and shut us out of their land. And I share the children's exile with them, I share their bad luck with them, because I cannot bring myself to abandon them. I do not want anyone to be able to say, "Look. Now that the boys have no father, Iolaus, their own kinsman, did not stand up for them."
So, with no place left to us anywhere in Greece, we have come to Marathon and the country that goes with it, and we sit at the altars of the gods as suppliants, and ask them to help. Because they say two sons of Theseus live on the plains of this country, land that fell to them by lot out of the family of Pandion, and they are close kin to these children. That is why we have come this far, to the border of famous Athens. Two old people are the generals of this retreat. I fret over these boys here, and Alcmene, inside the temple, holds her son's daughters in her arms and keeps them safe, because we are ashamed to bring young unmarried girls near a crowd and stand them at an altar. And Hyllus and his brothers who are old enough are out looking for some walled place where we could make a home, if we are pushed out of this country by force.
Children, children, here, take hold of my robe. I can see a herald of Eurystheus coming towards us. He is the man who hunts us, the reason we are wanderers, shut out of every country on earth. You hateful thing. I hope you die, you and the man who sent you. Out of that same mouth you brought plenty of bad news to these children's noble father as well.
(The Herald comes in.)
Herald. I suppose you think you have found yourself a fine seat there, and arrived at a city that will fight on your side. You are a fool. There is not a man alive who will pick your useless strength over Eurystheus. Move. What is the point of all this effort? You have to get up and go to Argos, where the sentence waiting for you is death by stoning.
Iolaus. No, I will not. The god's altar will protect me, and so will the free ground we are standing on.
Herald. Do you want to give this hand of mine some work to do?
Iolaus. You will not take me by force. And you will not lay hands on these children and take them either.
Herald. You will find out. You were not much of a prophet about that, it seems.
(The Herald takes hold of the children and throws the old man to the ground.)
Iolaus. That will never happen while I am alive.
Herald. Out of the way. Whether you like it or not, I am taking these boys, because I count them as the property of Eurystheus, which is what they are.
Iolaus. You men who have lived in Athens so long, help us! We are suppliants of Zeus of the marketplace, and we are being dragged away by force, our wreaths defiled, a disgrace to your city and an insult to the gods.
(The Chorus, old men of Marathon, come hurrying in.)
Chorus. Ah. Ah. What is this shouting that has gone up beside the altar? What kind of trouble is it going to show us?
Chorus. Look at the old man, feeble, sprawled on the ground. Poor man. Who did this? Who threw you down so pitifully in the dirt?
Iolaus. This man, strangers. He shows your gods no respect, and he is dragging me by force from the steps of Zeus's altar.
Chorus. And where have you come from, old man, to the four towns that live here as one people? Have you put in from across the water with the oar that beats the sea, leaving the shore of Euboea behind?
Iolaus. I do not lead an islander's life, strangers. We have come to your country from Mycenae.
Chorus. And what name, old man, did the people of Mycenae call you by?
Iolaus. You know, I think, of the man who stood beside Heracles in battle, Iolaus. This body of mine is not unheard of.
Chorus. I know. I heard of you before now. But whose are these little boys you are carrying, holding them by the hand, still so young? Tell me.
Iolaus. These are the sons of Heracles, strangers. They have come as suppliants to you and to your city.
Chorus. What is it they want? Tell me. Is it a hearing with the city they are anxious to get?
Iolaus. Not to be handed over. Not to be torn from your gods by force and taken to Argos.
Herald. That will not satisfy your masters, though. They have rights over you, and they have found you here.
Chorus. It is right to respect the gods' suppliants, stranger, and not to make them leave the seats of the gods by force of your hand. Lady Justice will not put up with that.
Herald. Then send these people of Eurystheus's out of your country, and I will not use this hand on them at all.
Chorus. It is a godless thing for a city to let go of a suppliant's appeal, the plea of strangers.
Herald. It is a good thing, too, to keep your foot out of trouble, by taking the better piece of advice.
Chorus. Then you should have told the king of this land what you meant to do before you had the nerve to do it, instead of dragging strangers away from the gods by force, in a free country you ought to respect.
Herald. And who is the ruler of this land and this city?
Chorus. Demophon, son of Theseus, a good man's son.
Herald. Then it is with him that this argument really has to be fought out. Everything else has been said for nothing.
Chorus. And here he is himself, coming in a hurry, and Acamas his brother with him, to hear what is being said.
(Demophon and Acamas come in with attendants.)
Demophon. Since you got here before us, old as you are, running to help at this altar of Zeus ahead of younger men, tell me: what has happened to bring this crowd together?
Chorus. The sons of Heracles are sitting here as suppliants, my lord. They have put wreaths on the altar, as you can see. And with them is Iolaus, the man who stood faithfully at their father's side in battle.
Demophon. And why did that call for screaming?
Chorus. This man here. He was trying to drag them away from the altar by force, and he raised the shouting, and he knocked the old man's legs out from under him, so that I wept for pity.
Demophon. Well, he wears Greek clothes, and the cut of his robe is Greek, but this is the work of a barbarian's hand. Now it is your turn to speak, and no delay about it. What country's borders did you leave to get here?
Herald. I am an Argive. That is what you want to know. And I am willing to tell you what I have come for, and who sent me. Eurystheus, king of Mycenae, sends me here to bring these children back. And I have come, stranger, with plenty of justice on my side, for what I do and for what I say. I am an Argive myself, and it is Argives I am taking away, runaways from my own city, condemned to death by the laws there. We live in our own city and we have the right to pass sentences on our own people that hold good. They have come to the hearths of many other cities, and there we took our stand on these same arguments, and nobody had the nerve to bring trouble of his own making down on his own head.
So either they have spotted some foolishness in you and come here for it, or, out of sheer desperation, they are throwing the dice, whether it comes off or not. Because they surely do not expect that you, if you are in your right mind, alone in all the breadth of Greece they have travelled through, are going to pity their stupid troubles. Come on, then, weigh one thing against the other. Let them into your country, or let us take them out of it: what do you gain? Here is what you get from our side: the whole great hand of Argos, and the entire strength of Eurystheus, added to this city. But if you look at their speeches and their weeping and go soft, then this business is settled by a wrestling match of spears. Do not imagine we are going to give up this contest without cold steel.
So what will you say? What land have you been robbed of, what plunder taken off you, that you should go to war with the Argives? What allies are you defending? On whose behalf will you be burying your dead? You will get a bad name from your own citizens, if for the sake of an old man, a tomb, a nothing, to put it plainly, and these children, you wade into the bilge of a sinking ship. The best you can say is that you will find hope in them, only hope. And even that falls a long way short of what is needed now. These boys, once they are grown up, would make a poor showing in a fight against Argives under arms, if that is what raises your spirits. And there is a long stretch of time in between, in which you could be wiped out. No. Listen to me. Give me nothing. Just let me take what is mine, and you have Mycenae for a friend. And do not do the thing you Athenians love to do, taking the weaker side when you had the chance to choose the stronger as your friends.
Chorus. Who could judge a case, or understand an argument, before he has heard clearly what both sides have to say?
Iolaus. My lord, in your country I have this to begin with: I am allowed to speak and to be heard in turn, and no one will push me away before I have spoken, the way they did everywhere else. Between us and this man there is nothing in common. Since we have no share in Argos any more, since that was decided by vote and we are exiles from our own country, how can he justly take us away as Mycenaeans, when we are what we are, people they drove out of the land? We are foreigners. Or is your position that whoever is exiled from Argos is exiled from the whole of Greece? Not from Athens, at any rate. The Athenians will not drive the children of Heracles out of their country for fear of Argos. This is not Trachis, and it is not that town in Achaea, the places you drove these children from while they sat as suppliants at the altar. Not by any justice, but by puffing up Argos, exactly the way you are doing now. If that happens here, if they judge your arguments the winners, then I no longer know this Athens as a free city. But I know the spirit of these people, and their nature. They will be willing to die. Among decent men, shame is reckoned worse than death.
That is enough about the city. Too much praise is a thing people resent, and I know it myself, I have often felt the weight of being praised too much. But I want to explain to you why you are bound to save these children, since you are the one who stands at the head of this land. Pittheus was the son of Pelops. From Pittheus came Aethra, and from her your father Theseus was born. Now let me go back over these children's family for you. Heracles was the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and Alcmene was the daughter of Pelops' daughter. So your father and their father were the sons of first cousins. That is how you stand to them by blood, Demophon. But now I will tell you what you owe these children beyond what kinship demands. I say that I once sailed with their father, carrying his shield, when he went with Theseus after the Amazon queen's belt, the belt that cost so many lives. And he brought your father up out of the deep fortress of Hades. All Greece is witness to that.
In return for all this, they ask you for one favour: not to be handed over, not to be torn away from your gods by force and thrown out of the country. It would be shameful for you personally, and bad for the city, for suppliants, wanderers, your own kin, oh, look at them, look at them, to be dragged off by force. I beg you, I lay my suppliant wreath on you with my hands, I touch your beard: do not despise the children of Heracles now that you have them in your hands. Be a kinsman to them. Be their friend, their father, their brother, their master. Any one of those is better than falling into the hands of the Argives.
Chorus. Hearing what has happened to them, my lord, I pity them. Never have I seen noble birth beaten by fortune as plainly as now. These are the children of a great father, and they are suffering what they do not deserve.
Demophon. Three roads of reasoning force me, Iolaus, not to turn away these guests of yours. The greatest is Zeus. You are sitting at his altar with this flock of nestlings around you. Then there is the blood tie, and the old debt: these children have a claim on us, for their father's sake, to be treated well. And then there is the shame of it, and that is what I have to weigh most of all. If I let this altar be plundered by force, by a foreigner, then people will say the country I live in is not free, and that I handed suppliants over out of fear of Argos. That is near enough to hanging myself. I wish you had come here under a luckier star, but as it is, do not be afraid that anyone is going to tear you and these children away from this altar by force.
You. Go back to Argos and tell Eurystheus this, and tell him that if he has any charge against these strangers he will get justice. But you will never take them.
Herald. Not even if my case is just, and I win the argument?
Demophon. And how can it be just to take a suppliant by force?
Herald. Then the disgrace is mine, and no harm to you.
Demophon. Harm to me, if I let you drag them away.
Herald. Then you banish them, and we will take them from over the border.
Demophon. You are a fool by nature, thinking you know better than the god.
Herald. So it seems this is the place for criminals to run to.
Demophon. The seat of the gods is a shelter open to everyone.
Herald. The Mycenaeans may not see it that way.
Demophon. Am I not the master of what happens here?
Herald. As long as you do them no harm. If you have the sense to keep yourself in hand, you will not.
Demophon. Be harmed, then. I am not going to pollute the gods.
Herald. I do not want you at war with Argos.
Demophon. Neither do I. But I will not let go of these children.
Herald. All the same, I will take what is mine and go.
Demophon. Then you will not find it easy to get back to Argos.
Herald. I will try it and find out, right now.
Demophon. Touch them and you will be sorry, and not in a while, either. Now.
Chorus. By the gods, do not dare to strike a herald.
Demophon. I will, unless the herald learns to keep himself in hand.
Chorus. Go. And you, my lord, do not touch him.
Herald. I am going. One arm is a weak thing to fight with. But I will come back, and I will bring the whole bronze spearhead of Argive war with me. Ten thousand men with shields are waiting for me, and King Eurystheus himself in command. He is waiting on the borders of Megara, Alcathous's country, watching to see how things turn out here. When he hears of your outrage he will come down like a flash of light on you and on your citizens, on this land and on everything that grows in it. It would be a waste of all the young men we have in Argos if we did not punish you.
(The Herald turns and goes off the way he came.)
Demophon. Go to hell. I am not afraid of your Argos. You were never going to shame me and take these children out of here by force. This is not a city I hold as a subject of Argos. I hold it free.
Chorus. Now is the time to think ahead, before the Argive army comes near our borders. The war god of Mycenae is very sharp, and after this, sharper still than before. This is the way of every herald: to build what happened up to twice its size. What do you think he will tell his king, how terribly he suffered, how close he came to having the life scraped out of him?
Iolaus. There is no finer prize for children than this: to be born of a good and noble father, and to marry into good families. The man who gives in to desire and mixes his blood with the low-born, I have no praise for him. He leaves his children a disgrace for the sake of his own pleasure. Good birth stands up to misfortune better than bad birth does. Look at us. We fell to the very bottom of trouble, and we found friends and kinsmen here, the only people in the whole inhabited Greek world who stood up for these children.
Give them your right hands, children. Give them. And you, give yours to the boys, and come close to them. Children, we have put our friends to the test. If ever the day comes when you go home to your own country and live in your father's house and hold his honours, remember: these men are your saviours and your friends, always, and never lift a hostile spear against this land. Remember that for me. Count this city the dearest of all. They deserve your reverence. They took on themselves the enmity of a country as great as Argos and the whole Pelasgian people, for our sake, when they could see we were beggars and wanderers. And still they did not hand us over, and they did not drive us out of the land.
And I, alive and dead, when I die, will praise you loud and high, my friend, when I stand beside Theseus, and I will make him glad by telling him how well you took in the children of Heracles and protected them, how you are a nobleman all through Greece and keep your father's good name, and how, born of a great man, you have turned out no worse than your father. Very few can say that. Out of many men you might find one, perhaps, who is not worse than his father.
Chorus. This land has always wanted to help the helpless, where justice is on their side. That is why it has borne countless hardships for its friends, and now I see another struggle of that kind close at hand.
Demophon. You have spoken well, old man, and I promise you these children will turn out as you say. The favour will be remembered. I am going to call an assembly of the citizens and set them in order, so that I meet the Mycenaean army with a strong force. First I will send scouts out to meet it, so it does not fall on me unawares; every man in Argos is quick to answer a call to arms. And I will gather the prophets and make sacrifice. You go into the house with the children, and leave the altar of Zeus. There are people who will look after you, even if I am away. Go into the house, old man.
Iolaus. I will not leave the altar. Let us sit here as suppliants and wait, and pray the city does well. When you have come through this struggle with honour, we will go to the house. The gods on our side are no weaker than the Argives', my lord. Hera, the wife of Zeus, stands at the head of theirs. Athena stands at the head of ours. And I say that this too counts towards success, to have the better gods. Pallas Athena will not stand being beaten.
(Demophon and Acamas go off towards the city.)
Chorus. Boast as loudly as you like, there are others who care no more for you for it, stranger come from Argos. Your big talk will not frighten my heart. May it never come to that for great Athens, the city of beautiful dances. You are a fool, and so is the son of Sthenelus, the king in Argos,
Chorus. who comes into another city, one no smaller than Argos, and drags off suppliants of the gods, wanderers who are begging my land for help, a stranger using force, not giving way to our kings, not making one just argument. How could that look right to anyone with sense?
Chorus. Peace is what I like myself. But I tell you, wrong-headed king, if you come to my city, you will not get what you expect as easily as that. You are not the only one with a spear and a bronze-plated shield. No. You who love war, do not stir up with your spear this city that the Graces have blessed. Hold yourself back.
(Demophon comes back alone, with a troubled face.)
Iolaus. My boy, why have you come back with that worried look in your eyes? Is there news of the enemy? Are they on their way? Are they here? What have you heard? You are not going to tell me the herald lied. Their general has had good luck from the gods so far, and he will come against Athens, I know it, and with no small opinion of himself, either. But Zeus punishes the thoughts of people who think too much of themselves.
Demophon. The Argive army is here, and King Eurystheus with it. I saw him with my own eyes. A man who claims to know how to be a general should not look at the enemy through messengers. He has not sent his army down onto the plains of this country yet. He is sitting on a rocky ridge, looking things over, and, I am only telling you what I think, deciding which way to bring his army in without a fight, and where in this country he can pitch camp safely. As for my side, everything is already well in hand. The city is under arms, and the victims stand ready for the gods who are owed them, to turn the enemy back and save the city, and the prophets are filling the town with sacrifice.
I gathered every singer of oracles into one place and questioned them, and I went through the old prophecies, the public ones and the secret ones, the ones that keep this land safe. And the oracles differ from each other on many points, but on one thing they all say the same, and it stands out: they tell me to sacrifice a virgin to Persephone, Demeter's daughter, a girl whose father is of noble blood. Now, you can see how much goodwill I have towards you. But I will not kill my own child, and I will not force any citizen of mine to do it against his will. And who would be willing? Who is so far gone in his wits that he would hand over the children he loves most out of his own hands? Already you could see bitter meetings in the streets, some saying it was right to help strangers who are suppliants, others accusing me of folly. And if I actually do this thing, it is civil war, there and then.
So look at this yourself, and help me find a way for you to be saved, and this country too, without my being slandered before my citizens. I do not hold a tyrant's power, the way barbarians do. If I do what is just, I will be treated justly.
Chorus. Can it be that the god will not let this city help strangers, when it is eager to and wants to?
Iolaus. Children, we are like sailors who escaped the wild rage of a storm and came close enough to touch the land with their hands, and then were driven off the shore by the winds and back out to sea. That is how we are being pushed away from this country, when we were already at the shore and thought we were saved. Oh. Why did you make me so glad, then, hope, you wretched thing, when you never meant to finish the favour you started? I can forgive this man. He does not want to kill his own citizens' children. And I can find good things to say about how we were treated here. If this is what the gods want to happen to me, the thanks I owe you is not wiped out.
Children, I do not know what to do with you. Where can we turn? What god's altar have we not wreathed? What walled town have we not come to? We are finished, children. We are going to be handed over. For myself, I do not care whether I have to die, except that in dying I might please my enemies. But I weep for you, children, and I pity you, and your father's old mother Alcmene. Poor woman, for that long life of yours. And poor me, all the labour I have done for nothing. So it was our fate, after all, to fall into an enemy's hands and lose our lives in shame and misery.
But wait. Do you know how you can help me? All hope of saving these children has not left me yet. Hand me over to the Argives instead of them, my lord. Run no risk yourself, and let my children be saved. I have no business loving my own life. Let it go. Eurystheus would like nothing better than to get his hands on me, Heracles' comrade in arms, and outrage me. The man is a brute. A wise man should pray to have a wise man for his enemy, not a proud fool. From a wise enemy you would get plenty of respect, and justice.
Chorus. Old man, do not blame this city. It might be a lie, but it would still do us harm, the reproach that we betrayed strangers.
Demophon. That was nobly said, but it cannot be done. It is not for you that the king is marching his army here. What good is a dead old man to Eurystheus? It is these children he wants to kill. To an enemy, the young of a noble house are a danger as they grow up: young men, and remembering the outrages done to their father. He has to look ahead to all of that. But if you know of any other plan that fits the moment better, have it ready, because I am at a loss since I heard those oracles, and full of fear.
(Macaria, the eldest daughter of Heracles, comes out of the temple.)
Macaria. Strangers, do not put my coming out here down to boldness. That is the first thing I will ask of you. For a woman, silence and keeping herself in hand are the finest things, and staying quietly inside the house. But I heard your groaning, Iolaus, and I came out. Not because I have been appointed to take the lead in the family. But I am fit for it in a way, and my brothers matter to me more than anything, and about them and about myself I want to know: has some new pain been added to the old troubles, and is it eating at your heart?
Iolaus. My girl, it is nothing new for me to praise you, and justly, above all the children of Heracles. Our course seemed to be running well, and now it has swung back again to where there is no way out. This man says the singers of oracles are telling him to slaughter, not a bull or a calf, but a virgin of noble blood, to Demeter's daughter, if we are to live, and this city is to stand. That is what we have no answer to. He says he will not slaughter his own children, or anyone else's. And to me he says, not in so many words, but he says it all the same, that unless we find some way out of this we must go and find ourselves another country, because he wants to save this one.
Macaria. Is that the condition our safety hangs on? That one thing?
Iolaus. That is it. In everything else we have done well.
Macaria. Then stop being afraid of the enemy's Argive spear. I myself, before anyone orders me, old man, am ready to die and to stand at the altar for the knife. What are we going to say, if this city thinks it right to run a great risk for our sake, and we, who could save them, put our troubles onto other people's shoulders and run away from dying? No. It would be a joke, wouldn't it, to sit as suppliants of the gods and groan, and then, born of the father we were born of, to be seen to be cowards. Where among decent people does that look right? Better, I think, if this city were taken, and may that never happen, and I fell into the enemy's hands, and then, my noble father's daughter, suffered what I would suffer and looked on Hades all the same. Or shall I be thrown out of this country and wander? And will I not be ashamed when somebody says, "Why have you come here with your suppliant branches, when you love your own lives so much? Get out of the country. We do not help cowards."
And even if these boys died and I alone were saved, I have no hope of doing well. Many people before now have betrayed their friends in that hope. Who would want to take a girl with no family as his wife, or to have children by me? Is it not better to die than to meet with that, which I do not deserve? That might suit some other girl better, one who is not as marked out as I am.
Lead me to where this body has to die. Put the wreaths on me and begin the rite, if that is what you decide. And beat your enemies. This life is here for you, freely given and not under compulsion. I declare it: I will die for these brothers of mine and for myself. Because by not loving my life too much I have found the finest thing there is to find, a way to leave it with honour.
Chorus. Ah, ah. What am I to say, hearing this great speech from a girl who is willing to die before her brothers do? Who could speak more nobly than this? What human being could do more?
Iolaus. My child, your head comes from nowhere else. You are the seed of that godlike spirit. You are Heracles' own. I am not ashamed of your words. It is your fate that hurts me. But let me say how it could be done more fairly. All this girl's sisters should be called out here, and then the one who draws the lot should die for the family. It is not just for you to die without a lot being drawn.
Macaria. I will not die by the luck of a lot. There is no grace in that. Do not say it, old man. If you will accept me, and if you want to make use of my willingness, then I give my life for these children freely. Not because I was forced.
Iolaus. Ah. This speech of yours is nobler than the last, and the last was the best I ever heard. You outdo daring with daring, and one good speech with another. I am not ordering you to die, child, and I am not forbidding it. But your brothers are helped by your dying.
Macaria. That is a clever way to order it. Do not be afraid that you will share in the pollution of my death. Let me die free. Come with me, old man. I want to die in your arms. Be there, and cover my body with your robe. Because I am going to the horror of the knife, if I really am the daughter of the father I claim.
Iolaus. I could not stand by and watch you die.
Macaria. Then at least ask this of the king for me: that I breathe out my life in women's hands, not men's.
Demophon. It will be so, poor girl. It would be a disgrace to me too if you were not honoured properly, for many reasons: for your courage, and because it is just. You are the bravest woman my eyes have ever seen. Now, if you have anything to say, go and speak to these children and to the old man. Your last words.
Macaria. Goodbye, old man, goodbye. And teach these boys for me to be like you, clever in everything. No more than that. That will be enough for them. And try to keep them from dying, as eagerly as you are doing now. We are your children. Your hands brought us up. You can see how I am giving up my own wedding day and dying in their place. And you, my brothers, all of you here with me now, be happy. And may everything come to you that my heart is going to be cut open for. Honour this old man, and the old woman inside the house, Alcmene, my father's mother, and these strangers. And if the gods ever find you a release from your troubles and a way home, remember to give the woman who saved you the burial she is owed. The finest you can give would be only fair. I did not fail you. I stood by you, and I died for the family. That is my treasure to keep, in place of children, in place of my girlhood, if there is anything at all under the earth. I hope there is nothing. Because if we who are about to die are going to have cares there too, I do not know where a person could turn. Death is supposed to be the greatest cure there is for evil.
Iolaus. You stand out above all women for courage. Know this: living, you will be the most honoured of all to us, and dead, far more. Goodbye. I shrink from saying an ill word against the goddess your body has been consecrated to, Demeter's daughter. Children, we are finished. My limbs are coming loose with grief. Take hold of me and set me down on the seat, right here, and cover me with these robes, children. I take no pleasure in what has been done, and if the oracle is not carried out, there is no living either. The ruin would be greater. But this too is a disaster.
Chorus. No man, I say, is blessed without the gods, and no man is crushed by fate without them either. And no house walks forever on the road of good fortune. One fate after another comes hunting it down. One man it brings down from a height to a small place; the wanderer it makes prosperous. What is fated, no one is allowed to escape. No one will push it away by being clever, and the man who keeps on trying will only have the labour of it, forever, for nothing.
Chorus. So do not throw yourself down. Carry what the gods send, and do not let grief wear your mind past bearing. The poor girl has a death that is honoured, dying for her brothers and for this land, and the name she has among people will not be one without glory. Courage walks through hardship. What she has done is worthy of her father, worthy of her noble birth. And if you honour the deaths of the good, I share that with you.
(A servant of Hyllus comes in and finds the old man on the ground with his cloak over his face.)
Servant. Children, good day to you. Where is old Iolaus? And your father's mother, why has she left her place at this altar?
Iolaus. I am here. Such as my being here amounts to.
Servant. Why are you lying there? Why is your face down like that?
Iolaus. A grief came, one of the family's own, and it has hold of me.
Servant. Then lift yourself up. Get your head up.
Iolaus. I am old. There is no strength left in me at all.
Servant. Well, I have come bringing you a great piece of joy.
Iolaus. Who are you? Where did I meet you? I do not remember.
Servant. I am one of Hyllus's serfs. You are looking right at me and do not know me?
Iolaus. Dearest man. Have you come to save the two of us from harm, then?
Servant. I have. And more than that: things are going well for you now.
Iolaus. Mother of a noble son, Alcmene, I am calling you: come out, and hear the best words you could hear from this man. You have been in labour a long time over the people who have come, wasting your heart away over whether they would ever get here.
(Alcmene comes out of the temple.)
Alcmene. What is this shouting? The whole house is full of it. Iolaus, is there another herald here from Argos, using force on you? My strength is feeble, but there is one thing you should know, stranger: you will never take these children while I am alive. If you do, let nobody count me his mother any more. And if you lay a hand on them, you will have a fight on your hands with two old people, and it will not do you any credit.
Iolaus. Courage, old woman, do not be frightened. It is not a herald with hostile words from Argos.
Alcmene. Then why did you raise a shout? A shout is a messenger of fear.
Iolaus. For you. So that you would come out here in front of the temple.
Alcmene. I do not understand any of this. Who is this man?
Iolaus. He brings news that your son's son has come.
Alcmene. Then good day to you too, for that news. But if he has set foot in this country, where is he now? Why is he not here? What has happened to keep him from appearing here with you and gladdening my heart?
Servant. He is settling the army he brought with him, and setting it in order.
Alcmene. Then that is a matter that no longer concerns us.
Iolaus. It concerns us. And it is my job to find out about it.
Servant. What is it you want to know about what has been done, then?
Iolaus. How large a force of allies has he brought with him?
Servant. A lot of men. I cannot give you a number beyond that.
Iolaus. The Athenian commanders know this, I suppose?
Servant. They know. And their left wing is already in position.
Iolaus. So the army is already armed and ready for action?
Servant. Yes. And the animals for the sacrifice have already been brought up, a little way off from the ranks.
Iolaus. And how far away is the Argive army?
Servant. Close enough for their general to be seen plainly.
Iolaus. Doing what? Marshalling the enemy's lines?
Servant. That was our guess. We could not hear. But I am going. I would not want my masters going into battle without me, whatever my part in it is worth.
Iolaus. And I am coming with you. We think alike, it seems: stand by your friends and help them.
Servant. Of all people, you are the last who should be talking nonsense.
Iolaus. And the last who should stay out of a hard fight when my friends are in it.
Servant. Looks do not wound anyone. Only a hand that does something.
Iolaus. What? Could I not put a spear through a shield, even now?
Servant. You could. But you would fall first yourself.
Iolaus. Not one of the enemy will be able to look me in the face.
Servant. My friend, the strength you once had is not there any more.
Iolaus. Well, at any rate they will have one more man to fight.
Servant. It is a small weight you are adding to your friends' side of the scale.
Iolaus. Do not hold me back. I am ready to act.
Servant. Act, you cannot. Want to, perhaps.
Iolaus. Say anything else you like to me, but not that I am staying here.
Servant. Then how will you show yourself to the soldiers with no armour?
Iolaus. There are captured arms inside this temple. I will use those, and if I live I will give them back. If I die, the god will not ask for them. Go inside, take a full set of armour down off the pegs and bring it out to me as fast as you can. This is a shameful way to keep house: some men fighting, and others hanging back out of cowardice.
(The Servant goes into the temple.)
Chorus. Time has not flattened your spirit yet. That is still young. It is your body that is gone. Why work for nothing at what will hurt you and do our city very little good? At your age you should know when you are beaten and let go of what cannot be done. There is no way you will get your youth back again.
Alcmene. What are you doing? Have you lost your mind, to leave me here alone with my children?
Iolaus. Fighting is men's work. Your job is to look after them.
Alcmene. And what if you are killed? How am I to be kept safe?
Iolaus. Your son's sons, the ones who are left, will look after you.
Alcmene. And if something happens to them, which the gods forbid?
Iolaus. These strangers will not give you up. Do not be afraid.
Alcmene. That is all the courage I have. I have nothing else.
Iolaus. Zeus cares about your troubles too, I know it.
Alcmene. Ah. Zeus will hear no bad word from me. But whether he has dealt righteously with me, he knows himself.
(The Servant comes back out with a full set of armour.)
Servant. Here is your full suit of armour, you can see it. Now hurry and get your body inside it. The fight is close, and Ares hates a man who dawdles more than anything. But if you are afraid of the weight, walk there without it for now, and put this gear on when you are in the ranks. I will carry it in the meantime.
Iolaus. Good idea. Carry the armour and keep it ready to my hand. Put the spear in my grip, and take my left arm to steady me, and guide my feet.
Servant. So I am to lead a soldier about like a child?
Iolaus. For the omen's sake, we must get there without a stumble.
Servant. If only you could do as much as you want to.
Iolaus. Hurry. If I miss the battle it will be terrible for me.
Servant. You are the one who is slow, not me. You just think you are doing something.
Iolaus. Can you not see how my legs are hurrying?
Servant. I see you thinking you are hurrying. That is not the same thing.
Iolaus. You will not say that when you see me there.
Servant. Doing what? Well, I hope it is winning, whatever it is.
Iolaus. Hitting one of the enemy straight through his shield.
Servant. If we ever get there. That is what worries me.
Iolaus. Ah. Arm of mine. If only you could be the ally to me now that I remember you being in your youth, when you sacked Sparta at the side of Heracles. What a rout I would make of Eurystheus. He is too much of a coward to stand and face a spear. There is this, too, that is wrong with prosperity: it gets a man a reputation for courage. We think that someone who is doing well must know how to do everything.
(Iolaus goes off toward the battle, leaning on the Servant.)
Chorus. Earth, and moon that shines all night, and brightest rays of the god that bring the light to mortals, carry the news to me. Shout it to the sky, and beside the throne of our ruler, and in the house of grey-eyed Athena. For my fatherland, for my home, because I took in people who came begging, I am about to cut through the danger with grey iron.
Chorus. It is a fearful thing that a city as prosperous as Mycenae, so much praised for the strength of its spear, should hide its anger against my land. But it would be a wrong, my city, to hand over strangers who came begging because Argos ordered it. Zeus fights on my side. I am not afraid. Zeus is grateful to me, and rightly. Never, because of me, will the gods be shown weaker than mortals.
Chorus. Lady, this ground is yours, and the city is yours, and you are its mother, its mistress and its guard, so turn him away down some other road, the man who is wrongly leading an army of shaking spears here from Argos. After what I have done, I do not deserve to be thrown out of my house.
Chorus. For you are honoured, always, with many sacrifices, and the waning day of the month is never forgotten, nor the songs of the young men, nor the music of the dancers. On the windy hill the cries of joy ring out all night to the beat of girls' feet.
(The Servant comes back.)
Servant. Mistress, I bring you a report. It is very short for you to hear, and for me, standing here, it is the finest news there is. We have beaten the enemy, and trophies are being set up with the full armour of your enemies hung on them.
Alcmene. Dearest man. This day has brought you your freedom, for that news. But there is one trouble you have not set me free from yet. I am afraid: are the people I want alive, alive?
Servant. They are alive, and covered in glory throughout the army.
Alcmene. And the old man, Iolaus. Is he alive too?
Servant. Very much so. And the gods have done the finest thing of all for him.
Alcmene. What is it? Did he do something brave in the fight?
Servant. He has turned from an old man back into a young one.
Alcmene. That is an astonishing thing to say. But first I want you to tell me about the battle, and how our friends won it.
Servant. One speech of mine will make all of it plain to you.
When we had stretched out our lines of armed men face to face with theirs, Hyllus stepped down from his four-horse chariot and stood in the middle, in the ground between the two armies, and he said: "General, you who have come from Argos, why do we not leave this land alone? You will do Mycenae no harm by losing it one man. Fight me, one man against one. If you kill me, take the children of Heracles and go. If you die, leave me my father's honours and my father's house." The army roared its approval: that was well said, as a way out of the trouble and as a piece of courage too. But he, with no shame in front of the people who had heard the challenge, and none at his own cowardice, and he the general, did not have the nerve to come anywhere near a good spear. He was a coward, plain and simple. And that is the sort of man who had come to make slaves of Heracles's children.
So Hyllus went back to his place in the line. And the prophets, when they saw there would be no settlement by single combat, shield against shield, did not wait: they cut the victims' throats and let the blood that promised good luck run straight from a human throat. Then some were climbing into chariots, and others were tucking flank against flank under the shelter of their shields. And the king of the Athenians gave his army the order a well-born man ought to give: "Fellow citizens, the land that feeds you and the land that bore you needs every man's help today." And the other one, for his part, was begging his allies not to let Argos and Mycenae be shamed. Then the signal went up, shrill, on the Etruscan trumpet, and they came together in battle, and how loud a crash of shields do you think there was, how much groaning and screaming all at once? At first the surge of the Argive spears broke us. Then they gave way in their turn. In the second round it was foot planted against foot, man standing against man, and the battle held hard, and many were falling. And the shouts went up: "Men of Athens!" and "You who sow the fields of Argos! Will you not keep disgrace off your city?" And by doing everything, and not without hard work, we finally turned the Argive spear to flight.
At that point the old man, Iolaus, saw Hyllus charging out, and he held out his right hand and begged him to take him up into his chariot. He took the reins in his hands and went after Eurystheus's horses. From here on I can tell you what I heard from others; up to here I saw it myself. As he was crossing the sacred hill of Pallene, which belongs to Athena, he saw Eurystheus's chariot, and he prayed to Hebe and to Zeus to let him be young for one single day and make his enemies pay. Now here is a marvel for you to hear. Two stars settled on the yoke of the horses and hid the chariot in a dark cloud. Your son and Hebe, the cleverer people say. And out of that murky darkness he showed the shape of a young man, with young arms. And the famous Iolaus caught Eurystheus's four-horse chariot at the Scironian rocks, and bound his hands in chains, and is coming here bringing the general who was so prosperous before, as the finest first-fruits of the battle. And with what has happened to him now he announces plainly, for every mortal to learn: do not envy the man who seems to be doing well until you have seen him dead. Fortune lasts a day.
Chorus. Zeus, who turns the battle, now I can look on a day that is free of terrible fear.
Alcmene. Zeus, you took your time to look at my troubles, but I thank you all the same for what has been done. And my son: I did not believe before that he lived among the gods. Now I know it for certain. Children, now, now at last you will be free of your troubles, free of Eurystheus, who is going to die a bad death. You will see your father's city, and walk onto the land that is yours by lot, and sacrifice to your fathers' gods, which you were shut out from, living the miserable life of wanderers in foreign places. But tell me: what clever plan was Iolaus keeping to himself when he spared Eurystheus and did not kill him? Tell me. Because the way we see it, that is not clever, to take your enemies and not make them pay.
Servant. He was thinking of you: so that you could see him with your own eyes, beaten and under your hand. Not that Eurystheus came willingly. He yoked him by force, whether he liked it or not, because he did not want to come alive into your sight and pay the penalty. But goodbye, old lady, and remember what you said to me first, when I was beginning my story: that you would set me free. In matters like this, the mouth of the well-born should tell no lies.
(The Servant goes off to rejoin the army.)
Chorus. Dancing is sweet to me, when the clear grace of the pipe is at the feast, and may Aphrodite be there, with her grace. And it is a sweet thing, too, to see friends doing well who never expected to before. For Fate, who brings things to pass, and the long years, the children of Time, give birth to a great deal.
Chorus. You have a road that is just, my city, and you must never let go of it: honouring the gods. Anyone who says you do not is driving close to madness, with proof like this on show. For the god gives clear notice: he strips the unjust of their pride, always.
Chorus. Your son is in heaven, old woman. He has gone there. He escapes the story that he went down to the house of Hades, his body eaten by the terrible flame of the fire. He has Hebe's lovely bed in the golden court. Hymen, god of weddings, you have honoured two children of Zeus.
Chorus. Many things fall in with many others. They say Athena stood by the father of these children, and now the goddess's city and the goddess's people have saved them too, and checked the outrage of a man whose temper put violence before justice. May my heart never be like that, may my spirit never want more than it has.
(Eurystheus is brought in, bound and guarded. The Servant is with him.)
Servant. Mistress, you can see for yourself, but I will say it anyway: we have come bringing Eurystheus here to you, a sight you never hoped for, and a turn of fortune he never expected either. He never imagined he would fall into your hands when he marched out of Mycenae with his long-suffering shield-men, thinking himself too big for justice, to sack the city of Athena. But a god set things the other way round and turned his fortune upside down. Hyllus and brave Iolaus were setting up a statue of Zeus who turns the battle, for a glorious victory, and they sent me to bring this man to you, wanting to gladden your heart. It is the sweetest thing there is: to see an enemy who was prosperous fall into misery.
Alcmene. You. Hateful thing. Have you come? Has Justice caught you at last? First, turn your head this way to me, and bear to look your enemies in the face. You are the one who is ruled now, not the ruler. Are you the man, I want to know, who thought it right to heap so many outrages on my son, wherever he is now, you villain? What outrage did you not have the nerve to put on him? You sent him down alive into Hades. You sent him out with orders to kill hydras and lions. The other evils you devised I pass over; it would make a long story. And it was not enough for you to have dared that much: no, you drove me and the children out of the whole of Greece, when we were sitting as suppliants of the gods, some of us old, some still babies. But here you found men, and a free city, who were not afraid of you. You have to die, and die badly, and even then you come out ahead every way: you ought not to die just once, after all the suffering you have caused.
Chorus. It is not possible for you to kill this man.
Servant. Then we took him prisoner for nothing?
Alcmene. What law is there that stops this man from dying?
Chorus. The rulers of this land do not approve of it.
Alcmene. What does that mean? They do not think it right to kill enemies?
Chorus. Not one they have taken alive in battle.
Alcmene. And Hyllus put up with a decision like that?
Chorus. He should have disobeyed this land, I suppose?
Alcmene. This man should not be alive, or looking at the light any more.
Chorus. The first wrong done to him was that he did not die then.
Alcmene. So is it no longer the right moment for him to pay the penalty?
Chorus. There is no one who would kill him.
Alcmene. I would. And I count myself as someone, too.
Chorus. You will get a great deal of blame if you do it.
Alcmene. I love this city; there is no arguing with that. But this man, now that he has come into my hands, there is no mortal alive who will take him out of them. Let anyone who likes call me the bold woman, the one who thinks bigger than a woman should. This piece of work will be done by me.
Chorus. Your quarrel with this man is a terrible one, lady, and it is forgivable. I understand that well.
Eurystheus. Woman, understand this clearly: I am not going to flatter you, or say anything else to save my life that would earn a man the name of coward. I did not take up this quarrel by my own choice. I knew I was your cousin, and a blood relation of your son Heracles. But whether I wanted it or not, and she is a god, Hera made me sick with this sickness. And once I had taken up hostility against him, and knew that this was the contest I was going to have to fight, I became an expert in troubles. I sat up with the night and gave birth to plan after plan, for pushing my enemies aside and killing them, so that I would not have to live with fear for the rest of my life. Because I knew your son was not a mere number: he was a real man. Enemy or not, he will hear good things from me, because he was a good man.
And once he was gone, hated as I was by these children, and knowing the feud I had inherited from my father, was I not forced to move every stone, killing, banishing, plotting? As long as I did that, my position was safe. And you: if you had taken over my fortunes, would you not have hounded the hostile lion's cubs, that bad brood, with every evil you could? Would you have kept yourself in hand and let them live in Argos? You will not convince anyone of that. So now, since they did not destroy me then, when I was ready to die, by the laws of the Greeks my death is a pollution on the man who kills me. The city let me go, and kept itself in hand when it did: it honours the god far more than its hatred of me. You have spoken; you have had your answer. From here on you will have to call me two things: the avenging ghost, and the man of honour. That is how it stands with me. I do not want to die. But if I leave my life behind, I will not mind at all.
Chorus. I want to give you a small piece of advice, Alcmene. Let this man go. It is what the city wants.
Alcmene. And what if he dies, and we obey the city too?
Chorus. That would be best of all. But how could that happen?
Alcmene. I will teach you, easily. I will kill him, and then I will give the body to whichever of his friends come for it. As far as his body goes, I will not disobey this land. But he will pay me the penalty by dying.
Eurystheus. Kill me. I am not begging you. But this city, since it let me go and was too decent to kill me, I will give a present: an old oracle of Apollo, which will do it more good in time than you would think. When I am dead, you will bury me where it is fated, in front of the temple of the divine virgin at Pallene. And I will lie under the ground there forever, a foreigner settled among you, kind to you and a protection to the city, and the deadliest enemy of these children's descendants when they come here with a great army, betraying this kindness you have done them. That is the kind of strangers you have stood up for. Then why did I come here, if I knew all this, instead of respecting the god's oracle? Because I thought Hera was far stronger than any prophecy, and would not give me up. But do not let them pour drink offerings on my grave, or let blood drip on the place where I lie. I will give them a bad homecoming in return for all this. And you will have a double profit from me: by dying I will help you and I will hurt them.
Alcmene. Then what are you waiting for, when you have heard this, if you have to make the city safe, and our children after us? Kill the man. He is showing you the safest road himself. He is an enemy, and dead he is useful. Take him away, slaves. Then kill him and throw him to the dogs. Do not hope that you will live to throw me out of my father's land again.
(Eurystheus is led away.)
Half-Chorus. I think the same. Go, attendants. Nothing that comes from us will leave a stain on our kings.
(Trozen, in front of the house of Theseus. A statue of Aphrodite stands on one side of the door and a statue of Artemis on the other. Aphrodite appears.)
Aphrodite. I am a great power among mortals, and not a nameless one. My name is Cypris, the goddess of Cyprus: Aphrodite. In heaven, too. And of all the people who live between the Black Sea and the bounds of Atlas in the far west and look at the light of the sun, the ones who respect my power I put first, and the ones who think themselves too big for me I trip up. Because gods are like this too: we enjoy being honoured by human beings. And I will show you how true that is, and soon.
The son of Theseus, the boy the Amazon bore him, Hippolytus, whom holy Pittheus brought up, is the only person in this land of Trozen who says I am the vilest of all the gods. He refuses the bed. He will have nothing to do with marriage. It is Artemis he honours, the sister of Apollo, the daughter of Zeus. He counts her the greatest of the gods, and he is always with the virgin in the green woods, clearing the land of wild animals with his fast hounds, keeping company that is too high for a mortal. I do not begrudge him that. Why should I? But for the wrong he has done me, I will punish Hippolytus this very day. I cleared most of the ground a long time ago. It will not take much work.
Once, he came from Pittheus's house to the land of Pandion, to Athens, to see the holy mysteries and be initiated, and his father's noble wife saw him. Phaedra. And her heart was seized with a terrible love. That was my plan. And before she ever came to this land of Trozen, she built a temple to Cypris right beside the rock of Pallas, on the Acropolis, where it looks out over this country, because she was in love with someone who lived across the water. She named the temple after Hippolytus, and people will say for ever that the goddess was set up there for him. Then Theseus left the land of Cecrops, to escape the pollution of the blood of the sons of Pallas, whom he had killed, and sailed here to this country with his wife, accepting a year's exile from home. And here she is, groaning, struck to the heart by the goads of love, the poor woman, dying, and in silence. Not one of the household knows what her sickness is.
But this love is not going to end that way. I will reveal the matter to Theseus, and it will all come out. And the young man who is my enemy will be killed by his father, with curses. The lord of the sea, Poseidon, gave Theseus a gift: three prayers to the god that would never go to waste. As for Phaedra, she keeps her good name, but she dies all the same. I will not rate her suffering so high that I let my enemies off paying me a penalty big enough to satisfy me.
But here is the son of Theseus coming now, Hippolytus, back from the hard work of the hunt, so I will leave this place. A loud crowd of his men is coming behind him, shouting out, singing hymns in honour of the goddess Artemis. He does not know that the gates of Hades stand open for him, and that this light he is looking at is his last.
(Aphrodite goes. Hippolytus comes in with his huntsmen.)
Hippolytus. Follow me, singing, follow, for Artemis, daughter of Zeus, who lives in heaven, whose care we are.
Huntsmen. Lady, lady, most holy, child of Zeus, hail, hail to you, daughter of Leto and of Zeus, Artemis, by far the loveliest of virgins, you who live in the wide sky in your noble father's court, the golden house of Zeus. Hail to you, loveliest, loveliest of all the virgins on Olympus, Artemis.
Hippolytus. For you, mistress, I have made this woven crown of flowers from an untouched meadow, and I bring it to you. No shepherd thinks fit to graze his flock there. The iron of the scythe has never come there. Only the bee crosses that meadow in spring, untouched as it is, and Modesty tends it like a garden, watering it with river dew. Nobody who had to be taught may pick flowers there. Only those who have it in their nature, as their portion, to keep themselves in hand in everything alike. For the bad, it is not allowed. So, dear mistress, take this band for your golden hair, from a hand that reveres you. I alone of mortals have this privilege. I am with you, I talk with you and you answer me, I hear your voice, though I do not see your face. And may I round the last turn of my life the way I began it.
Servant. My lord, since only the gods should be called masters, would you take a piece of good advice from me?
Hippolytus. Of course. I would look a fool otherwise.
Servant. Then you know the rule that holds among human beings?
Hippolytus. No. What rule are you asking me about?
Servant. To hate what is stiff and proud, and does not make itself a friend to everyone.
Hippolytus. Quite right. What stiff and proud man is not a burden?
Servant. And is there a certain charm in people who are easy to talk to?
Hippolytus. A great deal of it. And profit, for very little trouble.
Servant. Do you think the same holds among the gods?
Hippolytus. Yes, if we mortals take our rules from the gods.
Servant. Then how is it that you are so stiff and proud yourself, and do not greet a goddess?
Hippolytus. Which goddess? Careful. Do not let your tongue slip.
Servant. This one. Cypris, who stands here at your gate.
Hippolytus. I greet her from a distance. I am pure.
Servant. She is a great goddess, all the same, and famous among men.
Hippolytus. Different gods for different men, and different men for different gods.
Servant. I wish you luck, and as much sense as you need.
Hippolytus. No god that is worshipped at night has any appeal for me.
Servant. The gods have their honours, boy, and we have to give them.
Hippolytus. Go on in, men, into the house, and see to the food. A full table is a pleasure after a hunt. And rub down the horses, so that when I have eaten my fill I can yoke them to the chariot and give them the exercise they need. As for your Cypris, I bid her a long goodbye.
(Hippolytus goes into the house with his huntsmen. The Servant stays behind and turns to the statue of Aphrodite.)
Servant. As for us, since the young are not to be copied when they think like that, we will speak the way slaves should speak, and pray to your image, Lady Cypris. You should forgive him. If somebody with the hot young blood in his belly talks nonsense about you, pretend you did not hear it. Gods ought to be wiser than men.
(The Servant goes in. The Chorus, women of Trozen, come in.)
Chorus. There is a rock, they say, that drips the water of Ocean, pouring a running stream from its cliff face where the pitchers are dipped. A friend of mine was there, soaking purple clothes in the river water and laying them out on the back of a warm rock in the sun. It was from her that the first word of my mistress came to me:
Chorus. that she is worn down on a bed of sickness, keeping her body inside the house, a thin veil shading her golden head. This is the third day, I hear, that she has kept her body pure of the bread of Demeter, her mouth taking nothing, wanting, with a grief she hides, to run herself aground on the wretched shore of death.
Chorus. Is a god in you, girl? Is it Pan who drives you wandering, or Hecate, or the holy Corybantes, or the Mother of the mountains? Or is it Dictynna, mistress of wild things, you have offended? Are you wasting away because you owe her offerings you never made? She ranges over the lakes and over the dry land, and across the sea, in the whirlpools of the salt water.
Chorus. Or is it your husband, the chief of the sons of Erechtheus, the well-born man, that some woman in the house is shepherding into a bed hidden from yours? Or has some sailor come from Crete and put in at the harbour that is kindest to seamen, bringing the queen news, so that grief over her troubles has tied her soul to her bed?
Chorus. A bad helplessness likes to live with the awkward temper of women, the helplessness of birth pains and of folly. That wind blew through my own womb once. And I cried out to the heavenly one who eases childbirth, Artemis, the mistress of arrows, and she comes to me always, and I envy no one, with the gods on her side.
Chorus. But here is the old nurse at the door, bringing her out of the house. The hateful cloud on her brows is growing. My soul longs to know what it is, what has ruined the queen's body and changed its colour.
(The Nurse comes out of the house with Phaedra, who is carried on a couch by her women.)
Nurse. Oh, the troubles of mortals, the hateful sicknesses. What am I to do for you? What am I not to do? Here is the bright light you wanted, here is the open sky. Your sickbed is outside the house now. Every word you spoke was about coming out here, and soon you will be in a hurry to get back to your room. You change your mind in a moment. Nothing pleases you. What you have does not please you; whatever you have not got you think you would like better. Better to be sick than to nurse the sick. The one is simple. The other joins grief in the mind to labour with the hands. The whole of human life is painful, and there is no rest from the labour. If there is anything dearer than living, darkness wraps it in clouds and hides it. And so we show ourselves badly in love with whatever this is that glitters on the earth, because we have no experience of another life, and no proof of what is under the ground. We are carried along by stories, nothing more.
Phaedra. Lift my body, hold my head up. The joints of my poor limbs have come undone. Take my arms, my lovely arms, women. The headdress is too heavy for my head. Take it off. Let my hair fall over my shoulders.
Nurse. Courage, child. Do not throw your body about so. You will bear the sickness more easily with quiet and a noble spirit. Mortals have to suffer.
Phaedra. Aiai. If only I could draw a drink of pure water from a dewy spring, and lie down under the poplars in a long-grassed meadow, and rest.
Nurse. Child, what are you saying? Do not talk like that in front of a crowd, flinging out words with madness riding on them.
Phaedra. Send me to the mountain. I will go to the woods, to the pine trees, where the hounds that kill go treading, hard on the dappled deer. By the gods, I long to shout the hounds on, to hold a Thessalian spear and throw it past my golden hair, the barbed point in my hand.
Nurse. Child, why are you fretting after these things? What do you care about hunting? Why do you long for water from a spring? There is a dewy slope right by the walls where you could have your drink.
Phaedra. Artemis, lady of the salt lagoon of Limna and of the racing grounds that thunder with hooves, if only I were on your level fields, breaking in Venetian colts.
Nurse. What is this now, another wild word flung out? A moment ago you were off to the mountain, longing to hunt; now it is colts you long for on the sand where there are no waves. It would take a great prophet to say which god is pulling on your reins and knocking your mind off its course, child.
Phaedra. I am wretched. What have I done? Where have I wandered, away from good sense? I went mad. I fell. A god's ruin struck me down. Pheu, pheu. Poor me. Nurse, cover my head again. I am ashamed of what I have said. Cover me. Tears run down from my eyes and my face is turned towards my shame. Getting your mind straight again hurts. Madness is bad. But it is better to be destroyed without knowing it.
Nurse. I cover you. And when will death cover my own body? A long life has taught me a great deal. People ought to mix their friendships in moderation, one with another, and not to the very marrow of the soul. The heart's affections should be easy to untie, easy to push away and easy to draw tight. For one soul to be in labour over two is a hard weight, as I am in pain over this one. People say that a life held to strict rules trips you up more than it delights you, and makes war on your health. So I have less praise for too much than for nothing in excess, and the wise will agree with me.
Chorus. Old woman, faithful nurse of Phaedra our queen, we see her wretched state, but we cannot tell what the sickness is. We would like to hear it from you.
Nurse. I have asked and I know nothing. She will not say.
Chorus. Not even how these troubles began?
Nurse. You come to the same answer. She is silent about all of it.
Chorus. How weak she is. How her body has been worn away.
Nurse. What do you expect? This is the third day she has eaten nothing.
Chorus. Is it ruin, some madness struck into her, or is she trying to die?
Nurse. To die. She is starving herself to be rid of life.
Chorus. That is astonishing, if her husband is content with it.
Nurse. She hides the trouble. She says she is not ill.
Chorus. And he does not read it in her face?
Nurse. He happens to be out of the country.
Chorus. And you do not force her? You do not try to find out what her sickness is, and where her mind has wandered?
Nurse. I have tried everything, and I have got nowhere. But I will not let up, even now. You are here; you can be my witness to what I am like to my master and mistress when things go badly for them.
Come, dear child. Let us both forget what was said before. You be gentler; unknot that hateful brow, and change the road your mind is on. And I, where I followed you badly before, will let that go and find a better line of talk. If your sickness is one of the ones that cannot be spoken about, here are women to help you set it right. But if your trouble can be carried out to men, say so, so that it can be told to doctors.
Well? Why are you silent? You should not be silent, child. Either correct me, if what I say is wrong, or agree with what is said well. Say something. Look over here.
Oh, I am wretched. Women, we are wasting our labour. We are as far off as we were before. Words did not soften her then, and she is not persuaded now.
But know this, and go on being more stubborn than the sea about it, if you like. If you die, you betray your children. They will get no share of their father's house. I swear it by the horse-riding queen, the Amazon, who bore a master to rule over your children: a bastard with a legitimate son's ideas of himself. You know him well. I mean Hippolytus, the one who
Phaedra. Oh.
Nurse. That touched you, did it?
Phaedra. You have destroyed me, nurse. By the gods, I beg you again: about that man, be silent.
Nurse. You see? You are in your right mind. And in your right mind, you still will not help your children and save your own life.
Phaedra. I love my children. It is another storm I am caught in.
Nurse. Your hands are clean of blood, child?
Phaedra. My hands are clean. It is my mind that carries the pollution.
Nurse. Not from some enemy's spell, brought in from outside?
Phaedra. Someone I love is destroying me. Neither of us wants it.
Nurse. Has Theseus done you some wrong?
Phaedra. May I never be seen doing wrong to him.
Nurse. Then what is this terrible thing that is driving you to die?
Phaedra. Let me do my wrong. It is not you I am wronging.
Nurse. Not willingly, no. And if I fail, the fault will lie with you.
Phaedra. What are you doing? Forcing me, hanging on to my hand?
Nurse. And your knees. And I will never let go.
Phaedra. It will be bad for you, poor woman, if you find out. Bad.
Nurse. What could be worse for me than to lose you?
Phaedra. It will kill you. And yet the thing brings me honour.
Nurse. And then you hide it, when what I beg for is good?
Phaedra. Yes. Out of what is shameful I am building something noble.
Nurse. Then if you tell it, you will look more honourable still.
Phaedra. Go away, by the gods. Let go of my right hand.
Nurse. No. Because you are not giving me the gift you should.
Phaedra. I will give it. I respect the reverence owed to your hand.
Nurse. Then I will be quiet now. From here on it is yours to speak.
Phaedra. Poor mother, what a love you loved.
Nurse. The love she had for the bull, child? Or what do you mean?
Phaedra. And you, my poor sister, wife of Dionysus.
Nurse. Child, what is wrong with you? Are you speaking ill of your own family?
Phaedra. And I am the third. Look how I am being destroyed.
Nurse. You have struck me dumb. Where is this going?
Phaedra. That is where our misfortune comes from. It is not new.
Nurse. I know no more of what I want to hear than I did.
Phaedra. Pheu. If only you could say for me what I have to say.
Nurse. I am no prophet, to know for certain what is hidden.
Phaedra. What is this thing people talk about, being in love?
Nurse. The sweetest thing there is, child, and the most painful, both at once.
Phaedra. I would say I have found the second one.
Nurse. What are you saying? You are in love, child? With whom?
Phaedra. Whoever he is, the Amazon's...
Nurse. Hippolytus, you mean?
Phaedra. You heard that from yourself, not from me.
Nurse. Oh. What are you going to say, child? You have destroyed me. Women, this is unbearable. I will not bear it and live. Hateful day, hateful light I look at. I will throw myself down, I will let my body go, I will be rid of life and die. Goodbye. I no longer exist. Because people who keep themselves in hand fall in love with evil too. Not willingly, but they do. Cypris is not a god after all. She is something greater than a god, if there is such a thing, and she has destroyed this woman, and me, and the house.
Chorus. Did you hear? Oh, did you hear the queen crying out her wretched suffering, not to be listened to? Let me die, dear one, before I come to the state of your heart. Io moi. Pheu, pheu. Poor woman, for these pains. Oh, the troubles that feed mortals. You are destroyed. You have brought your evil out into the light. What does this day, the whole long day of it, hold for you? Something new will come to its end in this house. It is no longer unclear where the fortune Cypris sends is setting, poor daughter of Crete.
Phaedra. Women of Trozen, who live here on the furthest edge of the land of Pelops, before now, in the long hours of the night, I have thought about other things: about how human life comes to be destroyed. And it seems to me that it is not by the nature of their judgement that people go wrong. Plenty of people have good sense. No, you have to look at it this way. We know what is right, and we recognise it, and we do not work it out in practice. Some from laziness. Some because they put some other pleasure ahead of what is right. And life has many pleasures: long talks, and leisure, a pleasant evil, and shame. There are two kinds of shame. One is not bad; the other is a weight on a house. If it were clear which was which, and when, there would not be two things spelt with the same letters.
Since that is what I think, then, there was no drug that could have made me change my mind and fall the other way. And I will tell you the road my judgement took. When love wounded me, I looked for the way I could carry it best. So I began with this: to be silent and hide my sickness. Because the tongue cannot be trusted. It knows how to lecture other people about their attitudes, out of doors, and it gathers the most evil of all to itself. Second, I planned to bear the madness well, and to beat it by keeping myself in hand. And third, when I could not master Cypris by those means, I decided to die. The best of my plans; nobody will say otherwise. Because I want my good acts to be seen, and when I do wrong, not to have many witnesses. I knew the act and the sickness were disgraceful, and I knew very well, on top of that, that I was a woman, a thing everyone hates. May she die the worst of deaths, whoever she was, the first woman who started shaming her bed with men from outside it. It was in noble houses that this evil began among women. Because when what is shameful looks right to the good, it will certainly look right to the bad. And I hate the women too who keep themselves in hand in words, but who have the nerve, in secret, for things that are not right. How do they ever, Lady Cypris, queen of the sea, look their husbands in the face? How do they not shudder at the darkness, their accomplice, and at the timbers of the house, in case they find a voice?
Because this is the very thing that is killing me, friends: that I never be caught shaming my husband, or the children I bore. Let them live as free men, flourishing in freedom of speech, in the city of glorious Athens, with a good name because of their mother. It makes a slave of a man, even a bold one, when he knows his mother's or his father's evil. There is only one thing, they say, that can hold its own against life: a just and good judgement, in whoever has it. Time shows up the bad among mortals when it happens to, holding up a mirror to them as if to a young girl. May I never be seen among those.
Chorus. Pheu, pheu. How beautiful self-control is, everywhere, and what a good name it harvests among men.
Nurse. Mistress, your misfortune, when I heard it a moment ago, gave me a terrible sudden fright. But now I realise I was being stupid. Among human beings, too, second thoughts are somehow wiser. Nothing has happened to you that is out of the ordinary or beyond explanation. A goddess's anger has fallen on you. You are in love. What is so astonishing about that? So are a great many people. And then you are going to destroy your life because of love? That is a poor bargain for everyone who loves their neighbour, and everyone who is going to, if they have to die for it. Cypris is not to be borne when she comes in full flood. The one who gives way she goes after gently; but whoever she finds proud and thinking himself too big, she takes hold of him and, how do you think, humiliates him. Cypris goes through the air, she is in the swell of the sea, everything is born from her. She is the one who sows love and gives it, and every one of us on the earth is her offspring.
People who have the writings of the old poets, and who live among the Muses themselves, know how Zeus once longed for the bed of Semele, and know how the lovely shining Dawn once carried Cephalus off to live among the gods, for love. And yet they live in heaven still, and do not run away from the other gods. They put up with it, I think, beaten by what happened to them. And you will not put up with it? Then your father should have begotten you on special terms, or under different gods for masters, if you will not accept these laws. How many men do you think, with perfectly good sense, see their beds sick and pretend not to see? How many fathers help their sons carry Cypris when they have gone astray? Because this is part of human wisdom: to keep what is not good out of sight. Human beings should not work too hard at getting life exactly right. They cannot even finish the roof that covers a house to the last detail. And you have fallen into a misfortune as deep as this, and think you can swim out of it? No. If you have more good in you than bad, being human, you are doing very well indeed.
Dear child, stop thinking these evil thoughts. Stop your outrage. That is all this is, outrage: wanting to be stronger than the gods. Have the nerve to love. A god has willed it. You are sick; find some good way to turn the sickness. There are charms, and words that soothe. Some cure for this sickness will be found. Men would take a long time finding it, if we women did not find the way.
Chorus. Phaedra, what she says is more useful for the trouble you are in now. But it is you I praise. And this praise is harder to hear than her words, and hurts you more.
Phaedra. This is the thing that destroys well-run cities and human houses: words that are too fine. You should not say what pleases the ear. You should say what will bring a person a good name.
Nurse. Why the solemn speech? It is not fine words you need. It is the man. We have to see it through as fast as we can, and tell him the truth about you, straight out. If your life were not in a crisis like this, if you happened to be a woman who kept herself in hand, I would never be leading you this way for the sake of your bed and your pleasure. But now it is a great struggle to save your life, and nobody can begrudge that.
Phaedra. You have said a terrible thing. Will you not shut your mouth and stop letting out these shameful words again?
Nurse. Shameful, yes. But better for you than fine ones. The deed is better, if it saves you, than the name you will die boasting of.
Phaedra. By the gods, and because what you say is well said but shameful, do not go a step further. My soul is ploughed and ready for love already, and if you dress up what is shameful in fine words, I will be spent on the very thing I am running from now.
Nurse. If that is how you see it, then you ought not to have done wrong. But since you have, listen to me. That is the next best favour. I have love charms in the house that soothe it. It has just this moment come into my head. They will end this sickness for you without disgrace and without harm to your mind, if you do not lose your nerve. But we need something from him, the one you long for, a token, a word or a scrap of his clothes, to tie the two of you into one love.
Phaedra. Is the drug something to rub on, or something to drink?
Nurse. I do not know. Want to be helped, child; do not want to be told.
Phaedra. I am afraid you will turn out too clever for me.
Nurse. Then you would be afraid of everything, believe me. What are you frightened of?
Phaedra. That you might tell any of this to the son of Theseus.
Nurse. Leave it, child. I will arrange it all well. Only you, Lady Cypris, queen of the sea, be my partner in the work. As for the rest of what I have in mind, it will be enough to tell it to our friends inside.
(The Nurse goes into the house.)
Chorus. Eros, Eros, you who drip desire down through the eyes, who bring sweet pleasure into the souls of the people you march against, never come to me with evil in your hands, never come out of measure. No shaft of fire, no shaft of the stars, hits harder than the arrow of Aphrodite that Eros, the child of Zeus, lets fly from his hands.
Chorus. It is all for nothing, all for nothing, that beside the Alpheus and at Apollo's Pythian shrine the land of Greece piles up the slaughtered oxen, while Eros, the tyrant of men, who holds the keys to Aphrodite's dearest bedrooms, we do not worship, though he lays waste, and drags mortals through every kind of disaster when he comes.
Chorus. The girl in Oechalia, a filly never yoked to a bed, no husband yet, no wedding: Cypris unhitched her from the house of Eurytus and drove her off like a running Naiad, like a Bacchant, with blood, with smoke, with murder for her wedding song, and gave her to Heracles, Alcmene's son. What a wretched wedding that was.
Chorus. Holy wall of Thebes, and mouth of the spring of Dirce, you could tell how Cypris comes creeping in. With the double-flamed thunderbolt she put Semele to bed, the mother of Dionysus, the god who was born twice, and the bed she made her was a bloody death. Terrible, the breath she blows on everything, and she flits from one to the next like a bee.
(Phaedra has gone to the door of the house and is listening. She turns to the women.)
Phaedra. Be quiet, women. It is all over for me.
Chorus. What is it, Phaedra? What is so terrible inside your house?
Phaedra. Wait. Let me hear what they are saying in there.
Chorus. I am quiet. But this is a bad beginning.
Phaedra. Io moi. Aiai. Oh, what I am suffering. What a wretched woman I am.
Chorus. What is that cry? What are you shouting? Tell me, lady, what word has rushed in on your mind and frightened you?
Phaedra. I am destroyed. Stand here at the doors and listen to the noise that is breaking over the house.
Chorus. You are at the door. It is for you to catch the words that the house sends out. Tell me, tell me, what evil has happened?
Phaedra. It is Hippolytus, the son of the horse-loving Amazon. He is shouting. He is calling my servant terrible names.
Chorus. I hear a cry, but nothing I can make out. Call out to me what came, what came through the door to you.
Phaedra. Clearly enough. He is calling her a matchmaker for evil, a woman who has betrayed her master's bed.
Chorus. Oh, this is evil. You are betrayed, my dear. What can I plan for you now? What was hidden is out in the light. You are destroyed by it,
Phaedra. Aiai. E, e.
Chorus. betrayed by the people who love you.
Phaedra. She has destroyed me by telling my trouble. She meant it kindly. It was no good way to cure this sickness.
Chorus. What now, then? What will you do? There is no way out of this.
Phaedra. I only know one thing. To die, as fast as I can. It is the only cure for the pain I am in now.
(Hippolytus bursts out of the house. The Nurse comes after him, clutching at him.)
Hippolytus. Mother Earth. Open sky, and the sun. What words have I heard? Words that should never be said.
Nurse. Quiet, boy, before somebody hears you shouting.
Hippolytus. I cannot hear things like that and keep quiet.
Nurse. Please. By your right hand, your beautiful arm.
Hippolytus. Take your hand off me. Do not touch my clothes.
Nurse. By your knees, I beg you. Do not destroy me.
Hippolytus. Why should I, if what you said was nothing evil, as you claim?
Nurse. This story, boy, is not one for everybody to hear.
Hippolytus. Good things sound even better said in front of a crowd.
Nurse. Child, do not dishonour your oath. Never.
Hippolytus. My tongue swore the oath. My mind swore nothing.
Nurse. Boy, what are you going to do? Destroy the people who love you?
Hippolytus. I spit on them. No one who does wrong is a friend of mine.
Nurse. Forgive. People make mistakes. That is what people are, child.
Hippolytus. Zeus, why did you ever settle women in the light of the sun, this counterfeit coin of an evil, for men to live with? If you wanted to sow the human race, you should not have had it come from women. Men should have been able to put down gold or iron or a weight of bronze in your temples and buy the seed of children, each man a child worth what he paid, and then live in their houses free, with no females in them. As it is, the first thing we do is fetch the evil home, and to do it we drain the wealth out of the house.
Here is the proof that a woman is a great evil. The very father who sired her and raised her adds a dowry and ships her off, to be rid of the trouble. And the man who takes the ruinous plant into his house is delighted, and hangs ornaments on his statue, a pretty face on a worthless thing, and works himself to the bone dressing it in robes, poor fool, draining his house of its wealth. And he is caught either way. Either he has married into a good family, and he is so pleased with his in-laws that he holds on to a wife who is bitter to him; or he has a good wife and useless in-laws, and presses the bad luck down with the good. The man who has it easiest is the one with a nobody in his house, a useless woman set in her home by her own simplicity.
I hate a clever woman. I will not have one in my house who thinks more than a woman should. Cypris breeds mischief more readily in the clever ones. A woman who is helpless, with only a little judgement, is kept out of folly by her own lack of wit.
Servants should never have been allowed near a wife. Women should be housed with dumb beasts that bite, so they could not speak to anyone and no one could answer them back. As it is, the bad women inside plot their bad plans, and the servants carry them out of doors. And that is how you came to me, you evil head, to bargain over my father's bed, which no one may touch. I will wash it off with running water, pouring it into my ears. How could I be evil, when just hearing about it makes me feel unclean?
Understand this, woman: it is my piety that saves you. If you had not caught me off my guard with oaths to the gods, nothing would have stopped me telling all of this to my father. As it is, I am leaving the house for as long as Theseus is out of the country, and I will keep my mouth shut. When my father comes home, I will come back with him, and I will watch how you look at him, you and your mistress. I have had a taste of your nerve already. I will know it when I see it.
Damn you both. I will never get my fill of hating women, not even if somebody says I never talk about anything else. Because they are always evil too, one way or another. Either let somebody teach them to keep themselves in hand, or let me go on trampling on them forever.
(Hippolytus goes out.)
Phaedra. Wretched, ill-fated, the lot of women. What skill do we have now, what words, when we have slipped, to untie the knot? I have got what I deserved. Io, earth and light. Where can I escape what has happened to me? How do I hide my pain, friends? What god would come to help me, what mortal would sit beside me, or lend a hand in wrong that I have done? This suffering of mine has come to the edge of my life, and there is no crossing it. Of all women I am the most unlucky.
Chorus. Pheu, pheu. It is done. Your servant's schemes have gone wrong, mistress, and things are bad.
Phaedra. You worst of all women, you destroyer of the people who loved you, look what you have done to me. May Zeus, my ancestor, blast you with his fire and wipe you out, root and all. Did I not tell you, did I not see your mind coming, to keep quiet about the very thing that is now my shame? But you could not hold back. And so I will not die with a good name after all. Now I need new plans. That man, with his mind whetted sharp on anger, will tell his father your sins and call them mine. He will tell old Pittheus what has happened. He will fill the whole country with the ugliest talk. Damn you, and damn everyone who is so eager to do good to people who do not want it, and does it badly.
Nurse. Mistress, you can blame me for the harm I have done. The sting of it is stronger than your judgement. But I have something to say to that, if you will let me. I brought you up, and I want the best for you. I went looking for a medicine for your sickness and I found what I was not looking for. If it had worked, I would have been counted very clever. We are as wise as our luck lets us be.
Phaedra. Is that fair? Is it enough for me, that you wound me first and then want to argue about it?
Nurse. We are talking too long. I did not keep myself in hand, I admit it. But there is a way to be saved even from this, child.
Phaedra. Stop talking. Your advice before was bad, and what you tried was evil. Get out of my way and go and look after yourself. I will put my own affairs in order.
(The Nurse goes into the house.)
And you, noble daughters of Troezen, grant me this one thing I ask of you. Cover what you have heard here in silence.
Chorus. I swear by holy Artemis, the daughter of Zeus, that I will never bring any of your troubles into the light.
Phaedra. Well said. I have turned it over and over, and I have found one way out of this disaster: to leave my children a life with a good name, and to get some good for myself out of the way things have fallen. I will never shame my Cretan house, and I will never come before Theseus's face with this ugly business on me, to save one life.
Chorus. What do you mean to do? Something there is no curing?
Phaedra. To die. How, I will work out for myself.
Chorus. Do not say such things out loud.
Phaedra. And you, give me good advice. As for me, I will give Cypris, the goddess who is destroying me, her pleasure today, when I am rid of my life. I will be beaten by a bitter love. But in dying I will be an evil to someone else as well, so that he learns not to stand tall over my misfortunes. When he has his share of this sickness of mine, he will learn to keep himself in hand.
(Phaedra goes into the house.)
Chorus. I wish I could hide under the sheer cliffs, I wish a god would make me a bird with wings and set me among the flying flocks. I would rise over the sea-wave of the Adriatic shore and the water of the Eridanus, where the poor girls, Phaethon's sisters, grieving for their brother, drip into their father's dark swell the amber-shining light of their tears.
Chorus. I wish I could reach the apple-sown shore of the Hesperides, the singers, where the lord of the sea grants sailors no passage over the dark water any more, where he touches the holy edge of the sky, the one Atlas holds up, and springs of ambrosia pour beside the beds in the halls of Zeus, where the holy earth that gives life makes the happiness of the gods grow.
Chorus. White-winged ship from Crete, that carried my queen through the salt sea, the beating waves, away from a happy house, to the joy of a wedding that was the worst of weddings. Bad omens flew with her from both shores, from the land of Crete to glorious Athens, and at the shore of Munychus, the harbour, they tied the twisted ends of the cables and stepped out onto the mainland.
Chorus. And that is why her mind was broken by the terrible sickness of Aphrodite, an unholy love. She is swamped by hard disaster, and from the beams of her bridal room she will fasten a hanging noose and fit it round her white neck, in shame before her hateful fate, choosing a good name instead, and ridding her heart of a love that hurts.
(The Nurse cries out from inside the house.)
Nurse. Iou, iou. Everyone near the house, come and help. The mistress has hanged herself, the wife of Theseus.
Chorus. Pheu, pheu. It is done. The queen is no more. She is hanging in a noose.
Nurse. Hurry, will you? Will somebody bring a two-edged blade, so we can cut this knot from her neck?
Chorus. Friends, what do we do? Do we think we should go into the house and get the queen down out of the noose she pulled tight?
Why should we? Are there not young servants in there? Doing too much is not a safe way to live.
Nurse. Lay her out straight, the poor dead woman. This is a bitter piece of housekeeping for my master to come home to.
Chorus. She is dead, the poor woman, from what I hear. They are already laying her out like a corpse.
(Theseus comes in, a garland of leaves on his head, back from the oracle.)
Theseus. Women, do you know what that shouting is, in the house? A heavy sound of servants has reached me. The house does not think it worth opening its doors and greeting me kindly, a man coming home from the oracle. Has something happened to old Pittheus? His life is far along already, but even so, it would hurt me if he left this house.
Chorus. This blow of yours is not aimed at the old, Theseus. It is the young who have died and will give you pain.
Theseus. Oh. Not my children. Nobody has robbed me of their lives?
Chorus. They are alive. Their mother is dead. That is the worst of it for you.
Theseus. What are you saying? My wife is dead? How did it happen?
Chorus. She fastened a hanging noose round her neck.
Theseus. Frozen with grief? Or did something happen to her?
Chorus. That is all we know. I have only just come to the house myself, Theseus, to mourn your troubles.
Theseus. Aiai. Then why is my head crowned with these woven leaves? I went to the oracle and I have come back to this. Undo the bolts on the doors, servants, unfasten them, and let me see the bitter sight of the woman who has destroyed me by dying.
(The doors open. Phaedra's body is carried out and laid down.)
Chorus. Io, io. Poor woman, your misery, your evil. What you suffered, what you did, was enough to bring this whole house down. Aiai, the daring of it. Killed by violence, an unholy end, wrestled down by your own poor hand. Who put your life out, poor woman?
Theseus. Oh, the pain. I have suffered, my city, the greatest of my evils. Fortune, how heavily you have set your foot on me and on my house, a stain from some avenging spirit, past all telling. It is the destruction of my life. No life is left. I see an ocean of evils, wretched man that I am, so wide I will never swim out of it again, never cross the wave of this disaster. What word for you, poor woman, what name for your fate, so heavy, could I find to say? You are gone from my hands like a bird, with one quick leap away from me into Hades. Aiai, aiai. Misery, misery, this. From somewhere far back I am reaping a fate the gods sent for the sins of somebody who came before me.
Chorus. Lord, these evils have not come to you alone. Many other men have lost a good wife.
Theseus. Under the earth, under the earth, in the dark, that is where I want to live, dead, in my misery, robbed of your company, the dearest I had. You have destroyed me more than you have died. Who can tell me? Where did the deadly stroke, poor woman, come from, that reached your heart? Will somebody say what happened, or is it for nothing that my royal house shelters a crowd of servants? Oh, oh, for you. The misery, what pain I have seen in this house, not to be borne, not to be spoken. I am destroyed. The house is empty, and the children are orphans. You left them, the children you bore, you left them, dearest and best of women, of all the light of the sun looks on, and the starry glow of the night.
Chorus. Io, poor man. Poor man. How much evil this house holds. My eyes are wet, flooded with tears at your fate. And the trouble after this, I have been shuddering at it a long time.
Theseus. Wait. What is this? What is this letter, hanging from her dear hand? Does it want to tell me something new? Did she write me instructions, poor woman, about my marriage and the children, asking me for something? Do not be afraid, poor girl. No woman will ever come into Theseus's bed, or into his house. But look, the marks pressed by her gold ring, and she is gone, are fawning on me, coaxing me to read. Come, let me unwind the wrapping from the seals and see what this letter wants to say to me.
Chorus. Pheu, pheu. One more new evil the god brings on, one after another. As for me, after what has happened, life is not worth living. Let it come, if it comes. I say the house of my king and queen is destroyed, pheu, pheu, it is no more. God, if there is any way, do not bring the house down. Hear me, I am begging you. I see something coming, like a prophet reading a bird, an omen of evil.
Theseus. Oh. Here is another evil on top of the evil, one that cannot be borne, cannot be spoken. Misery. I am a wretched man.
Chorus. What is it? Tell us, if we may share in it.
Theseus. It cries out, the letter cries out things that cannot be forgotten. Where can I run from the weight of these evils? I am gone, destroyed, finished. Such a song, such a song I have seen speaking in the writing, poor wretch that I am.
Chorus. Aiai. The word you bring into the light begins the evil.
Theseus. I will not hold it any longer behind the gates of my mouth, this evil there is no crossing over, this evil that destroys. Io, my city. Hippolytus has dared to touch my bed by force. He has dishonoured the holy eye of Zeus. Father Poseidon, you promised me once three curses. Use one of them to finish my son. Let him not escape this day, if the curses you gave me were real.
Chorus. Lord, by the gods, take that prayer back. You will find out later that you were wrong. Listen to me.
Theseus. It cannot be done. And more: I will drive him out of this country as well, and one of two fates will strike him down. Either Poseidon will honour my curses and send him dead to the house of Hades, or he will be thrown out of this land to wander, and drain out a miserable life on foreign soil.
Chorus. And here he is himself, your son Hippolytus, just in time. Let go of this evil anger, lord Theseus, and think what is best for your house.
(Hippolytus comes in with his companions.)
Hippolytus. I heard you shouting, father, and I came as fast as I could. But what you are groaning about, I do not know, and I would like to hear it from you. Wait. What is this? Your wife, father. I see her dead. This is past all wondering at. I left her only a moment ago; she was looking at this light not long since. What happened to her? How did she die? Father, I want to hear it from you. You say nothing. Silence does no good when things are bad. The heart that wants to know everything is caught being greedy even in trouble, I know. But it is not right, father, to hide your misfortunes from the people who love you, and more than love you.
Theseus. Human beings, you make so many mistakes, and all for nothing. Why do you teach ten thousand skills, and contrive everything, and discover everything, and there is one thing you do not know and have never yet hunted down: how to teach sense to people who have none?
Hippolytus. That would be a formidable expert, the man who could force sense into people who have none. But this is no time for hairsplitting, father. I am afraid your tongue is running away with you, in your trouble.
Theseus. Pheu. There should be some clear test for men to tell their friends by, some way of seeing into their minds, which one is a true friend and which one is not. Every man should have two voices, an honest one and the other one, whatever it happened to be, so that the one thinking dishonest thoughts could be caught out by the honest one, and we would never be deceived.
Hippolytus. Has one of your friends been whispering slander about me in your ear? Am I sick with it, when I have done nothing? I am stunned. Your words are stunning me. They wander, they are off the track of any sense.
Theseus. Pheu, the human mind. How far will it go? What limit will there be to daring and to sheer face? If it swells like this with each generation of men, and every one that comes after outdoes the one before in wickedness, the gods will have to bolt another earth onto this one to hold the people born unjust and evil.
Look at this man. My own son, and he has shamed my bed, and the dead woman convicts him, openly, as the worst of men. Show your face, then, since you have already come into pollution. Show it here, to your father. So you are the man who is too good for the rest of us, and keeps company with gods? You are the one who keeps himself in hand and is untouched by evil? I will not believe your boasting and think so badly of the gods as to credit them with stupidity. Go on, then, boast now. Peddle your meatless diet, take Orpheus for your master and rave in his rites, honouring the smoke of all his books, now that you have been caught. I warn everyone to run from men like that. They hunt you down with holy words while they are plotting filth.
She is dead. Do you think that saves you? That is what convicts you most of all, you worst of men. What oaths, what words could be stronger than she is, so that you could escape the charge? You will say she hated you, and that a bastard is born the natural enemy of the legitimate children. Then you are calling her a bad trader with her own life, if she destroyed what she loved most out of hatred of you. Or will you say that folly is not in men, but is born into women? I know young men. They are no steadier than women when Cypris shakes a young mind. Being male helps them; it is on their side. But why am I arguing against your words like this, when the corpse is here, the clearest witness there could be? Get out of this land, into exile, as fast as you can. Do not go to god-built Athens, and do not go to the borders of any land my spear rules. If I let you beat me after what you have done to me, Sinis, the robber I killed on the Isthmus, will never bear witness that I killed him. He will say I was bragging, and it was nothing. And the rocks of Sciron that live beside the sea will never say I am a hard man to the wicked.
Chorus. I don't know how I could ever call any mortal happy. What was on top has been turned over and is upside down again.
Hippolytus. Father, the anger in you, the way your mind has locked itself shut, is frightening. But this business of yours, for all it has fine arguments on its side, is not fine at all once somebody unfolds it. I am no good at making speeches to a crowd. Among people my own age, and few of them, I am cleverer. And there is a fairness in that too: the men who are nothing among the wise are the ones who sing sweetest to a mob. Still, with disaster here, I have no choice. I have to let my tongue go. I will begin where you first came at me, meaning to finish me off without my getting a word in. You see this light, and this earth. In all of it there is no man, whatever you say, who keeps himself in hand better than I do. I know, first, how to revere the gods. I know how to have friends who do not try to do wrong, friends who would be ashamed to propose anything bad or to pay back the people they deal with in shameful favours. I am not a man who laughs at his companions, father. I am the same man to my friends when they are away as when they are standing next to me. And there is one thing I have never touched, and it is the very thing you think you have caught me in. To this day my body is clean of the bed. I do not know that act at all, except by hearing it talked about and seeing it in pictures, and I am not eager to look even at those. I have a virgin's soul.
Very well. Suppose my self-control does not convince you. Let it go. Then you have to show how I was corrupted. Was her body more beautiful than every other woman's? Or did I hope to live in your house by marrying into a bed with an inheritance attached? Then I was a fool. No, worse: I was out of my mind entirely. Or is it that "being king is sweet"? Not to a man who keeps himself in hand, not in the least, unless being sole ruler has already rotted the minds of the mortals it pleases. I would want to be first at winning the games of Greece, but second in the city, and happy for ever there with the best men for my friends. You can get things done in that position, and the absence of danger gives a pleasure that no throne can match.
One of my points has not been made. You have all the others. If I had a witness to the kind of man I am, and if I were fighting this case with her alive and looking at the light, you would have gone through the facts and seen who the guilty were. As it is, I swear to you by Zeus, who keeps oaths, and by the floor of the earth, that I never touched your marriage, never wanted to, never once had the thought. If I am a bad man, let me die without fame and without a name, with no city and no home, an exile wandering the earth, and let neither sea nor land take my flesh when I am dead. Whether she was frightened and destroyed her own life, I do not know. I am not allowed to say more than that. She kept herself in hand, though she did not have it in her to. I had it in me, and I have not used it well.
Chorus. You have given a good enough answer to the charge. You have offered oaths by the gods, and that is no small pledge.
Theseus. Isn't this man a spell-singer and a sorcerer? He has dishonoured the father who made him, and he is confident he can master my spirit with his even temper.
Hippolytus. And I am astonished at the very same thing in you, father. If you were my son and I were your father, I would have killed you, not punished you with exile, if I thought you had laid a hand on my wife.
Theseus. How fitting, what you have just said. But you will not die like that. A quick death is the easiest thing for a man in trouble. No. You will wander in exile from your father's land, exactly the sentence you laid down for yourself, and drain out a bitter life on foreign soil. That is the wage for a man who has no piety.
Hippolytus. Oh. What are you going to do? You won't even wait for time to give its evidence against me? You will drive me out of the country?
Theseus. Beyond the sea. Beyond the lands of Atlas, if I had the power. That is how much I hate the sight of your face.
Hippolytus. Without testing my oath, or my pledge, or a word from the seers, you will throw me out of the land untried?
Theseus. This tablet here drew no lot for the right to speak, and it accuses you, and it is believable. As for the birds that flit about over our heads, I wish them a long goodbye.
Hippolytus. Gods. Why don't I unlock my mouth, when I am being destroyed by you, the very ones I revere? No. I won't. I would not persuade the people I need to persuade in any case, and I would be breaking the oaths I swore for nothing.
Theseus. Oh, this holiness of yours will be the death of me. Get out of your father's land. Now.
Hippolytus. Where am I supposed to turn, in the state I am in? Whose house will take me in as a guest, an exile on a charge like this?
Theseus. Somebody who enjoys entertaining the corrupters of other men's wives, and keeping house with their crimes.
Hippolytus. Aiai. That one went to the liver. It is close to tears, this, if I really look like a bad man, and you really think I am one.
Theseus. The time to groan and think ahead was when you had the nerve to outrage your father's wife.
Hippolytus. House, if only you could find a voice and speak for me, and give your evidence whether I am a bad man.
Theseus. You run to witnesses that cannot talk. Clever. But the deed does not need to talk. It informs on you, and it says you are bad.
Hippolytus. Pheu. If only I could stand opposite myself and look at me, so that I could weep at what I am suffering.
Theseus. Yes, you have practised worshipping yourself far more than you have practised being just and doing right by your parents.
Hippolytus. My poor, unhappy mother. What a bitter birth. May no friend of mine ever be a bastard.
Theseus. Drag him out of here, slaves. Didn't you hear me? I proclaimed him banished long ago.
Hippolytus. Any one of them who touches me will be sorry for it. You do it yourself, if you have the stomach for it. Push me out of the land.
Theseus. I will, if you don't obey what I have said. No pity for your exile is creeping over me.
(Theseus goes into the house.)
Hippolytus. It is fixed, then, it seems. Oh, I am wretched. I know the truth, and I do not know how to say it. Daughter of Leto, dearest to me of all the gods, you who sit beside me and hunt beside me, I am to leave glorious Athens. Goodbye, then, city and land of Erechtheus. Ground of Troezen, you have so much happiness in you for a boy to grow up in, goodbye. This is the last time I will look at you and speak to you. Come, young men of this country, my own age, say goodbye to me and see me out of the land. You will never see another man who keeps himself in hand better than I do, even if my father does not think so.
(Hippolytus goes out. His huntsmen stay behind.)
Huntsmen. Truly, when the care the gods take of us comes into my mind, it takes a great weight of grief away. But I keep a hope, deep down, that I understand something, and then I look at what happens to mortals, and at what they do, and I am left behind. One thing gives way to another, from every side, and men's lives shift, forever wandering.
Chorus. If I could pray, and fate would grant me this from the gods: luck, and wealth with it, and a heart that grief has never touched. An opinion of things neither too exact nor stamped with the false coin's mark, but easy ways, changing with tomorrow as tomorrow comes, and so, always, a life that goes well.
Huntsmen. My mind is not clear any more. What I see is past all hope. The brightest star of Athens, of the whole Greek land, we have seen him, we have seen him, driven by a father's anger away to another country. Sands of the city's shore, oak-woods on the mountain, where he killed the wild things running with his quick-footed hounds, in the company of holy Dictynna, Artemis of the nets.
Chorus. No more will you mount behind your yoked Venetian colts and hold the track round Limna under the hooves of your trained horse. The music that never slept under the frame of the strings will stop in your father's house. No garlands now at the resting places of Leto's daughter in the deep green grass. And with your exile the contest is over, the girls' race for your bed.
Chorus. And I, for your misfortune, will spend a fate that is no fate in tears. Poor mother, you gave birth for nothing. Pheu. I am raging at the gods. Io, io. Graces, who go yoked together, why do you send this poor man out of his father's land, guilty of none of this ruin, away from this house?
Chorus. And here comes one of Hippolytus's attendants, hurrying toward the house with a dark look on his face.
Messenger. Women, where would I find Theseus, the king of this land? If you know, tell me. Is he inside the house here?
Chorus. Here he is himself, coming out of the house.
Messenger. Theseus, I bring news that is worth your worry, for you and for the citizens who live in the city of Athens and within the borders of Troezen.
Theseus. What is it? Has some new disaster caught up with the two neighbouring cities?
Messenger. Hippolytus is no more. That is one way to put it. He is still looking at the light, but the scales are tipping.
Theseus. Who did it? Did somebody come at him out of hatred, somebody whose wife he had disgraced by force, the way he did his father's?
Messenger. His own chariot destroyed him. That, and the curses from your mouth, the ones you prayed to your father, the ruler of the sea, against your son.
Theseus. Gods. Poseidon. So you really are my father: you heard my prayers. How did he die? Tell me. How did the club of Justice come down on the man who disgraced me?
Messenger. We were near the shore where the waves come in, combing out the horses' manes with brushes, and crying while we did it, because a messenger had come and told us that Hippolytus would never set foot in this land again; you had sentenced him to a miserable exile. Then he came down to the beach to us himself, singing the same tearful song, and behind him walked an enormous crowd of friends and young men his own age. After a while he stopped groaning and said, "Why am I raving like this? My father's orders have to be obeyed. Harness the horses to the chariot, slaves. This city is not mine any more." From then on every man was hurrying, and faster than you could say it we had the mares harnessed and standing beside the master. He snatched the reins off the rail and fitted his feet into the footholds, boots and all. And first he spread out his hands and said to the gods, "Zeus, let me stop living if I am a bad man. And let my father come to understand how he is dishonouring me, whether I am dead by then or still looking at the light." With that he took the goad in his hands and laid it on all the mares together, and we, his servants, followed close to the chariot, by the horses' heads, along the road that runs straight to Argos and Epidaurus.
When we struck into empty country, where there is a stretch of shore beyond the border of this land, lying toward the Saronic gulf, a sound came out of the ground there, like the thunder of Zeus, a deep roar, horrible to hear. The horses put their heads straight up and their ears to the sky, and a raw panic went through us: where could that noise be coming from? We looked toward the shore where the surf pounds, and we saw a wave, unholy, propped against the sky, so high that it took the cliffs of Sciron out of my sight. It hid the Isthmus and the rock of Asclepius. Then it swelled up, foam boiling round it, the sea's breath blowing through it, and came on toward the shore where the four-horse chariot was standing. And with the surge itself, with the third wave, the great one, the sea put out a bull on the sand: a savage monster. The whole land filled with its bellowing and roared back, a horrible sound, and to us who were watching it was a sight too big for our eyes to hold.
At once a terrible fear fell on the mares. The master, who had lived with horses and their ways all his life, grabbed the reins in both hands and pulled, the way a sailor pulls an oar, throwing his body back against the straps. But the mares bit down on the fire-forged bits with their jaws and carried him off by force, not turning for the helmsman's hand or the harness or the jointed car. And if he took the steering and pointed their run toward the soft ground, the bull showed itself in front of them, to turn them back, maddening the four-horse team with terror. And if they rushed toward the rocks, out of their minds, it came up close, in silence, keeping pace with the chariot rail, until it tripped them and threw them over, driving the rim of the wheel against a stone. Everything went together in one heap. The hubs of the wheels jumped into the air, and the pins out of the axles. And he himself, poor man, tangled in the reins, was dragged along, tied in a knot he could not undo, his dear head pounded against the rocks, his flesh breaking, and he was shouting things that were terrible to hear: "Stop, you that I fed at my own mangers. Do not wipe me out. Oh, my father's wretched curse. Who is here who wants to save the best of men?" Many of us wanted to, but we were left behind, too slow. Then somehow, I do not know how, he came loose from the cut leather straps and fell, with a little life still breathing in him. And the horses vanished, and that cursed monster of a bull with them, somewhere in the rocky ground, I do not know where.
I am a slave of your house, my lord. But there is one thing I will never be able to do, and that is believe that your son is a bad man. Not if the whole race of women hanged itself, and somebody filled every pine tree on Mount Ida with writing. I know he is good.
Chorus. Aiai. The disaster has come to pass, new evils on top of the old, and there is no escape from fate and from what has to be.
Theseus. Out of hatred for the man this has happened to, I was glad of your story. But now, out of respect for the gods, and for him, because he is my son, I take no pleasure in these evils and no pain either.
Messenger. Then what? Should we bring him here, or what do we do with the poor man to please your mind? Think about it. If you take my advice, you will not be cruel to your son in his misfortune.
Theseus. Bring him here. I want to see him with my own eyes, the man who denied he had defiled my bed, and prove him wrong with words and with what the gods have done to him.
Chorus. You lead the unbending mind of gods and of mortals, Cypris, and with you goes the one with the painted wings, who wraps them round his prey on the quickest feather there is. He flies over the earth and over the loud salt sea, and Love casts his spell on whatever maddened heart he swoops down on, winged, shining gold: on the nature of the cubs in the mountains, and the creatures of the deep, and everything the earth feeds, and everything the blazing sun looks down on, and men. Over all of them the royal honour, Cypris, is yours alone. You rule them.
(Artemis appears above the house.)
Artemis. You, well-born son of Aegeus, I command you to listen. It is Leto's daughter, Artemis, who is speaking to you. Theseus, poor man, why do you take pleasure in this, when you have killed your son against everything holy, persuaded by your wife's lying words about a thing you never saw? The ruin you took on is plain enough to see. Why don't you hide your body in the pit under the earth for shame, or change your life for a bird's and go up into the air and lift your foot out of this pain? Because among good men there is no share of life you can call yours any more. Listen, Theseus, to how your troubles stand. And yet I will get nothing done by it. I will only hurt you. But this is what I came for: to show that your son's mind was just, so that he can die with a good name, and to show your wife's frenzy, or, in a way, her nobility. She was stung by the goads of the goddess most hateful to those of us who take our pleasure in staying virgin, and she fell in love with your son. She tried to beat Cypris with her judgement, and against her will she was destroyed by her nurse's scheming. The nurse bound your son by oaths, and told him the sickness. He, being the just man he is, did not go along with her words, and even when you abused him he would not tear up the pledge of his oath. He is a god-fearing man. And she, afraid she would be found out and put to the test, wrote a lying letter and destroyed your son by trickery. And she convinced you all the same.
Theseus. Oh.
Artemis. Does the story bite, Theseus? Keep still. Hear the rest, and you will have more to groan about. You know you had three curses from your father, with a sure result? You took one of them, you utter villain, and used it on your own son, when you could have used it on some enemy. Your father the sea-god meant well by you, and he gave what he had to give, since he had promised. But you have shown yourself a bad man, in his eyes and in mine. You did not wait for proof or for the voice of the seers. You did not put it to the test. You did not give it a long time's thought. Faster than you should have, you let the curse go at your son, and you killed him.
Theseus. Lady, let me die.
Artemis. What you did is terrible. But even so, you can still be forgiven for it. Cypris wanted this to happen; she was filling up her anger. And this is the law among the gods: none of us chooses to stand in the way of another god's will when that god is set on something. We always stand aside. Because, you can be sure of this, if I were not afraid of Zeus I would never have come to such shame as to let the man I loved best of all mortals die. As for your fault: not knowing, first of all, clears you of wickedness. And then your wife, by dying, used up every chance of testing her words, and so convinced your mind. These evils have broken over you most of all, but there is grief in it for me too. The gods take no pleasure when the god-fearing die. The bad, though, we destroy, children and house and all.
(Hippolytus is carried in by his huntsmen, broken, and barely alive.)
Chorus. And here he comes, the poor man, his young flesh and his fair head torn to pieces. Oh, the pain of this house. What a double grief has come down on these halls, sent by the gods, and gripping them.
Hippolytus. Aiai, aiai. I am wretched. An unjust father's unjust curse has torn me apart. I am destroyed, poor man. Oh, oh. Pains shoot through my head, a spasm jumps through my brain. Stop. Let me rest my body. It has given up. E, e. Hateful team of horses, that I fed with my own hand, you have wrecked me, you have killed me. Pheu, pheu. By the gods, slaves, gently. Touch my torn skin gently with your hands. Who is standing there on my right side? Lift me carefully. Pull me along evenly, the man the god hates, cursed by his father's mistakes. Zeus, Zeus, do you see this? This is me, the holy one, the worshipper of gods. This is me, who outdid everyone at keeping himself in hand, going down to Hades with my eyes open, my life destroyed from the top down. All my labours of piety toward mankind were for nothing.
Hippolytus. Aiai, aiai. And now the pain, the pain comes over me again. Let go of me, you poor men. Let death come to me now, death the Healer. Finish me, finish off the man the god hates. I long for a two-edged spear to cut me in pieces and lay my life down to sleep. Oh, my father's wretched curse. The evil of old blood-stained kinsmen, of ancestors long ago, is coming out past its boundary and does not wait, and it has come for me. Why, when I am guilty of none of it? Io moi moi. What can I say? How can I get my life free of this pain that has no pity? If only the black night-necessity of Hades would lay me down to sleep, the man the god hates.
Artemis. Poor man. What a disaster you have been yoked to. It was the nobility of your mind that destroyed you.
Hippolytus. Ah. A breath of divine fragrance. Even in this agony I felt you, and my body grew lighter. The goddess Artemis is here in this place.
Artemis. Poor man, she is. The dearest of the gods to you.
Hippolytus. Do you see me, lady, the state I am in, the wretch I am?
Artemis. I see you. But it is not lawful for tears to fall from my eyes.
Hippolytus. You have no huntsman now, and no servant.
Artemis. No. But you are dear to me even as you die.
Hippolytus. No one to drive your horses, or guard your statues.
Artemis. It was Cypris who plotted this. She stops at nothing.
Hippolytus. Oh. Now I understand which god destroyed me.
Artemis. She blamed you for the honour you did not pay her, and she hated you for keeping yourself in hand.
Hippolytus. Three of us. She destroyed three of us, Cypris. I see it now.
Artemis. Your father, and you, and third, his wife.
Hippolytus. Then I groan for my father's bad luck as well as mine.
Artemis. He was deceived by a goddess's design.
Hippolytus. Father, how wretched this disaster has made you.
Theseus. I am finished, child. There is no joy left in life for me.
Hippolytus. I grieve for you more than for myself, for the mistake you made.
Theseus. If only I could be the corpse, child, instead of you.
Hippolytus. Bitter gifts, the gifts of your father Poseidon.
Theseus. I wish they had never come into my mouth.
Hippolytus. Why? You would have killed me anyway, as angry as you were then.
Theseus. Yes. The gods had knocked my judgement off its feet.
Hippolytus. Pheu. If only the race of mortals could lay a curse on the gods.
Artemis. Let it be. Not even under the darkness of the earth will the angry will of the goddess Cypris come down on your body and go unavenged. You are owed that, for your piety and your good mind. I will take my revenge on her with my own hand: whichever mortal man she loves best of all, I will punish him with these arrows, which nothing escapes. And to you, poor suffering man, in return for these evils, I will give the greatest honours in the city of Troezen. Girls not yet yoked in marriage will cut their hair for you before their weddings, and through the long ages you will harvest the deepest grief of their tears. The girls will always make you their care and put you in their songs, and Phaedra's love for you will not fall nameless and be passed over in silence.
And you, child of old Aegeus, take your son in your arms and hold him close. You destroyed him without meaning to. When the gods arrange it, it is natural for human beings to go wrong. And you, Hippolytus, I advise you not to hate your father. You had a fate, and this is how it broke you. Goodbye. It is not lawful for me to look at the dead, or to stain my eye with the last breaths of the dying. And I see you are already close to that.
(Artemis is gone from above the house.)
Hippolytus. Goodbye to you too. Go, blessed virgin. You leave a long friendship easily. I end the quarrel with my father, since you want it. Before now I always obeyed what you said. Aiai. The darkness is reaching my eyes already. Take hold of me, father, and hold my body straight.
Theseus. Oh, child, what are you doing to me, the man the god hates?
Hippolytus. I am gone. I can see the gates of the dead.
Theseus. And you leave my hand unclean?
Hippolytus. No. I set you free of this killing.
Theseus. What are you saying? You let me go free of your blood?
Hippolytus. I call Artemis to witness it, Artemis who tames with the bow.
Theseus. Dearest boy. How noble you show yourself to your father.
Hippolytus. Pray for legitimate sons like this one.
Theseus. Oh, your mind, so god-fearing and so good.
Hippolytus. Goodbye to you too. Goodbye, father, many times over.
Theseus. Don't desert me now, child. Hold on.
Hippolytus. My holding on is done. I am gone, father. Cover my face with my robes, quickly.
Theseus. Glorious Athens, and the land that Pallas marked out for her own, what a man you will have lost. Oh, I am wretched. How many times, Cypris, I will remember what you have done.
Chorus. This grief has come to every citizen alike, and nobody expected it. There will be a beating of many tears. When the great fall, the news of it deserves grief, and takes a stronger hold.
(Phthia, in Thessaly, before the house of Neoptolemus. Beside the house stands the shrine of Thetis, with the statue of the goddess and an altar. Andromache is sitting at the altar.)
Andromache. City of Thebe, the pride of Asia. That is where I came from, once, to Priam's royal hearth, with a dowry heavy with gold, given to Hector as his wife, to bear his children. Andromache. In those days it was a name other women envied. Now, if any woman ever was, I am the unluckiest woman alive. There is nobody born, and nobody who ever will be, who has been through what I have. I watched my husband Hector killed by Achilles. I watched the son I bore him, Astyanax, thrown from the high towers, on the day the Greeks took the plain of Troy. And I myself, who was counted a daughter of the freest house there was, came to Greece a slave, handed over to the islander Neoptolemus as his prize of war, picked out of the Trojan plunder specially for him. So here I live, on the flat land where Phthia's ground runs into the ground of the city of Pharsalus, the place where Thetis the sea-goddess lived with Peleus, away from other people, keeping clear of the crowd. The Thessalians call it Thetideion, the goddess's ground, in memory of her wedding. This is where the son of Achilles made his home. He lets Peleus go on ruling Pharsalus: he does not want to take the sceptre from the old man while he is alive. And in this house I have given birth to a boy, by the son of Achilles. My master.
Before, bad as things were, I always had one hope to lead me on: if my child lived, I might find some defence in him, some help against my troubles. But since my master married the Spartan woman, Hermione, and pushed my slave's bed to one side, she has hounded me with cruelties. She says I am making her childless with secret drugs, and making her husband hate her, and that I want to live in this house in her place and throw her out of her own marriage bed by force. I never wanted that bed in the first place, and now I have left it altogether. Great Zeus be my witness: I did not share that bed by choice. But I cannot make her believe it. She wants to kill me, and her father Menelaus is helping his daughter do it. He is in the house right now. He came from Sparta for exactly this. I was terrified, so I have come to the shrine of Thetis, next door to the house, and here I sit, hoping it will stop them killing me. Peleus and the family of Peleus hold it sacred: it is the monument of his marriage to the Nereid. My only son I have smuggled away in secret to another house, because I am afraid they will kill him. His father is not here to help me, and he is no use to the child at all. He is away in the country of Delphi, paying Apollo for his madness: the day he went to Pytho and demanded that Apollo pay for killing his father. Now he is asking pardon for those old offences, hoping to make the god kind to him from here on.
(The Maid, one of the Trojan slaves of the house, comes out.)
Maid. Mistress. I am not afraid to call you by that name, because I thought it was your due in your own house too, when we lived in the land of Troy. I was loyal to you, and to your husband while he lived, and now I have come to you with fresh news. I am frightened, in case one of the masters notices, but I pity you. Menelaus and his daughter are planning terrible things against you, and you must be on your guard.
Andromache. Dearest fellow slave. Because that is what you are now, a fellow slave to the woman who used to be your queen, and is now in misery. What are they doing? What plots are they weaving this time, wanting to kill me, wretched as I already am?
Maid. Your son, poor woman. They are going to kill your son, the one you smuggled out of the house.
Andromache. Oh. She has found out that I sent my child away? How? From where? Oh, this is misery. I am finished.
Maid. I do not know how. But I heard it from them myself. And Menelaus has left the house to go and fetch him.
Andromache. Then I am finished. My child, the two vultures will take you and kill you, and the man they call your father is still in Delphi.
Maid. Yes. I do not think you would be treated like this if he were here. As it is, you have no friends left.
Andromache. Has there been no word about Peleus, that he is coming?
Maid. He is old. Too old to help you, even if he were here.
Andromache. And yet I have sent for him, and not just once.
Maid. You do not really think any of your messengers cares about you?
Andromache. Why would they? Well then. Will you go, as my messenger?
Maid. And what do I say, when I have been so long away from the house?
Andromache. You will find plenty of excuses. You are a woman.
Maid. It is dangerous. Hermione does not keep a careless watch.
Andromache. You see? You back out on your friends when they are in trouble.
Maid. No, I do not. Do not throw that at me. I will go. A slave woman's life is not much looked at anyway, whatever happens to me.
(The Maid goes off to find Peleus.)
Andromache. Go, then. And I will do what I always do: stretch out to the sky the laments and groans and tears I live in. It is born in women, to take a kind of pleasure in the troubles they have, keeping them always in the mouth and on the tongue. And I have not one thing to groan over but many: my father's city, Hector dead, the hard fate I was yoked to when I fell into the day of slavery, and did not deserve it. Never call any mortal happy until he is dead, and you have seen how he got through his last day and went down below.
Andromache. It was no bride Paris brought home to high Ilium. It was ruin he brought to bed in his room, when he brought Helen. For her sake, Troy, the swift war-god of Greece came with a thousand ships and took you, a prey to the spear and the fire, and took my husband, Hector, mine, unhappy woman, whom the son of Thetis of the sea dragged behind his chariot round the walls. And I was led out of my room to the edge of the sea, slavery, the hateful thing, thrown over my head. Many tears ran down my face, when I left the city and my room and my husband in the dust. Oh, unhappy me. Why did I have to go on seeing the light, as Hermione's slave? Worn down by her, I have come to this statue of the goddess and thrown my arms round it, begging, and I melt like a spring of water trickling out of the rock.
(The Chorus, women of Phthia, come in.)
Chorus. Lady, you have sat so long on the floor of Thetis's shrine and you will not leave it. I am a woman of Phthia, but I have come to you, a daughter of Asia, to see if there is anything I can do, any cure I can cut for these troubles no one can untie, the troubles that have locked you and Hermione in a hateful quarrel, poor woman, over a bed shared by two, over the son of Achilles.
Chorus. Know your luck. Reckon up the evil you have come to, where you stand. Are you a match for your masters, a girl from Ilium against a daughter born in Sparta? Leave the house where the sheep are offered, the house of the goddess of the sea. What good does it do you, terrified, to waste your body with weeping, when your masters hold the power? Power will come down on you. Why labour, when you are nothing, at a labour that comes to nothing?
Chorus. Come. Leave the shining seat of the goddess, the Nereid. Know what you are: a slave on foreign ground, in another people's city, where you see not one friend of your own, unluckiest of women, a bride of every sorrow.
Chorus. You were the most pitiful thing I ever saw, Trojan woman, when you came to my masters' house. But out of fear we keep quiet. I do pity what has happened to you, but I am afraid the child of Zeus's daughter might find out that I wish you well.
(Hermione comes out of the house, richly dressed.)
Hermione. This gold ornament on my head, and this embroidered dress on my body: I did not come out here wearing them as the first-fruits of the house of Achilles or of Peleus. They came from Sparta, in Laconia. My father Menelaus gave me them, with a great dowry besides, so that I can say what I like. That is my answer to you women. As for you: you are a slave, a woman won at spear-point, and you want to throw us out and take possession of this house. My husband hates me because of your drugs. My womb is dying, barren, because of you. The women of Asia have a terrible gift for that kind of thing. But I will put a stop to it, and this house of the Nereid will do you no good, not the altar, not the temple. You are going to die. And if some man or god does want to save you, then instead of the proud thoughts of your rich old days you will have to cower, and go down on your knees at my feet, and sweep my house, and sprinkle water from the river Achelous out of gold jugs with your own hand, and learn where on earth you are. There is no Hector here, no Priam, no gold. This is a Greek city. And you, you wretched creature, have come to such a pitch of ignorance that you have the nerve to sleep with the son of the father who killed your husband, and bear children to the murderer's blood. That is the whole barbarian race. Father sleeps with daughter, son with mother, sister with brother; the nearest and dearest kill each other, and no law stops any of it. Do not bring that in among us. Here it is not thought decent for one man to hold the reins of two women. Men here look to one wife's bed and are content with it, any man who does not want a house that is a disgrace.
Chorus. A woman's mind is a jealous thing, and always hardest on the women who share her marriage.
Andromache. Pheu, pheu. Youth is a bad thing in a human being, when youth comes with injustice in it. What I am afraid of is that my being your slave will push my arguments aside, however many good ones I have; and if I win, I am afraid I will pay for winning. People who breathe big do not take it kindly when the better argument comes from someone beneath them. Still, I will not be caught betraying my own case.
Tell me, young woman: what solid ground could have persuaded me to push you out of your lawful marriage? That Sparta is a smaller city than Phrygia? That my luck outruns yours? That you see a free woman when you look at me? Am I so puffed up with a young, firm body, a great city, and friends, that I want your house instead of you? Why, so that I can bear children in your place, slaves, a wretched string of them dragging behind me? Or will anyone put up with my sons as kings of Phthia if you have none? The Greeks love me so much, for Hector's sake? And I was a nobody, was I, no queen in Phrygia? It is not my drugs that make your husband hate you. It is that you are not fit to live with. That is a love-charm too: it is not beauty, lady, it is goodness that pleases the man in your bed. But if anything scratches you, then Sparta is a great city and Scyros is nowhere; you are rich among people who are not; Menelaus is a bigger man than Achilles. That is what your husband hates in you. A woman, even if she is given to a bad husband, has to be content, and not set herself up against him. If you had a king for a husband in Thrace, the country the melting snow pours through, where one man shares his bed with many wives in turn, would you have killed them all? You would have been caught fastening a charge of insatiable lust on every woman alive. A disgrace. And yet it is true we suffer this sickness worse than men do. But we put a good face on it. Dearest Hector, for your sake I even loved alongside you, whenever Aphrodite tripped you up, and many a time I put my breast to your bastards, so that I would never give you cause for bitterness. By doing that I bound my husband to me, by being good. But you will not let a drop of the sky's dew settle on your husband, you are so afraid. Do not try to outdo your mother, lady, in a weakness for men. Children with any sense should run from the ways of a bad mother.
Chorus. Mistress, as far as it comes easily to you, let yourself be persuaded, and come to terms with her.
Hermione. Why the high-minded speeches? Why turn this into a debate, as if you were the one who kept herself in hand, and I were the one who did not?
Andromache. You certainly do not, on the arguments you have just been standing on.
Hermione. May your kind of mind never live in my house, woman.
Andromache. You are young, and you are talking about shameful things.
Hermione. You do not talk about them. You do them to me, as far as you can.
Andromache. Can you not suffer your love-troubles in silence?
Hermione. What? Is that not the first thing for women, everywhere?
Andromache. Yes, for women who handle it well. Otherwise it is not decent.
Hermione. We do not run our city by barbarian laws.
Andromache. What is shameful there is shameful here too.
Hermione. Clever. Very clever. And you are still going to die.
Andromache. Do you see the statue of Thetis, looking straight at you?
Hermione. Yes. Hating your country, for the killing of Achilles.
Andromache. Helen destroyed him, not I. Your mother.
Hermione. Are you going to keep on poking at my wounds?
Andromache. There. I am silent. I am holding my mouth shut.
Hermione. Tell me the one thing I came out here for.
Andromache. I tell you that you have less sense than you need.
Hermione. Will you leave this holy ground of the goddess of the sea?
Andromache. If I am not going to die. Otherwise, never.
Hermione. Then that is settled. I will not wait for my husband to come.
Andromache. And I will not give myself up to you before he does.
Hermione. I will bring fire against you, and I will not stop for anything of yours.
Andromache. Burn away, then. The gods will know it.
Hermione. And the pain of terrible wounds on your skin.
Andromache. Cut my throat. Bloody the goddess's altar. She will come after you.
Hermione. You barbarian thing, hard and bold. So you will stand up to death, will you? Well, I will get you up off that seat, and soon, and you will get up willingly. I have the right bait for you. But I will keep the words to myself; the thing itself will show you soon enough. Sit tight. Even if molten lead were holding you there, I will have you up before the son of Achilles comes, the man you trust so much.
(Hermione goes back into the house.)
Andromache. I do trust him. It is a strange thing: some god found cures for men against savage snakes, but the thing that is worse than a viper, worse than fire, a bad woman, nobody has yet found a drug for that. That is how great an evil we are to human beings.
Chorus. Great griefs began, then, on the day the son of Maia and Zeus came to the glen on Ida driving the lovely three-horse team of goddesses, harnessed for a hateful quarrel over beauty, to the herdsman's steading, to the young man alone with his cattle, and the lonely hearth of his hut.
Chorus. And when they came to the wooded glen, they washed their bodies till they shone in the streams of the mountain springs, and went to the son of Priam, outbidding each other with spiteful words, and Aphrodite won with treacherous words, sweet to hear, and bitter: the wreck of a life for the luckless city of the Phrygians and the towers of Troy.
Chorus. If only the mother who bore him had struck Paris a deathblow over the head before he settled on the rock of Ida, when Cassandra at the holy laurel screamed out to kill him, the great ruin of Priam's city. Whom did she not go to? Which of the city's elders did she not beg to put the baby to death?
Chorus. Then the yoke of slavery would never have come on the women of Ilium, and you, lady, would have kept your seat in a royal house; and Greece would have been spared the painful labours of the ten years her young men wandered round Troy with their spears. Beds would never have been left empty, and old men robbed of their children.
(Menelaus comes in with attendants, leading Andromache's small son.)
Menelaus. I have come, and I have your son, the one you smuggled out to another house behind my daughter's back. You were so sure this image of the goddess would save you, and the people who hid him would save him. But you have been found out, woman, less clever than Menelaus here. And if you do not get up and clear out of this ground, his throat will be cut instead of yours. So reckon it up: do you want to die, or do you want him to die for the wrong you are doing to me and my daughter?
Andromache. Reputation. Reputation. You have puffed up ten thousand nobodies into great lives. The people whose good name rests on the truth, I call them happy; the ones who have it by lies, I will not allow that they have anything but the luck of seeming clever. So it was you, was it, who led the picked men of Greece and took Troy from Priam? A man as feeble as this? A man who has worked himself into such a rage over the words of a daughter who is barely more than a child, and gone into the ring against an unlucky slave woman? I do not think you were worthy of Troy any more, or Troy of you. The people who seem clever are bright on the outside; inside they are the same as everybody else, except perhaps in money, and money is a great strength.
Menelaus, come on, let us take this argument through to the end. Suppose I am dead at your daughter's hands, and she has destroyed me. She will never escape the stain of murder; and in most people's eyes you will stand trial for this blood too. You helped her, and the debt of it will drag you in. And suppose I slip out of dying myself: will you kill my son? Then how will his father take his child's death lightly? Troy does not call him that much of a coward. No, he will go where he must, and he will show himself worthy of Peleus and of his father Achilles in what he does, and he will throw your daughter out of his house. And you, when you are offering her to another man, what will you say? That her decency ran away from a bad husband? That is a lie, and he will find it out. Who will marry her? Or will you keep her in your house without a man, a grey-haired widow? Poor man, do you not see the flood of evils pouring in on you? How many wrongs against her marriage bed would you rather your daughter had found, than suffer what I am telling you? You should not build great evils on small grounds; and if we women are a deadly evil, men should not make their nature like ours. Because if I am drugging your daughter and aborting her womb, as she says, then willingly, not against my will, and without crouching at any altar, I will submit to justice myself at the hands of your son-in-law, to whom I owe no smaller damages for making him childless. That is what I am. But as for your mind, there is one thing I am afraid of in you: it was a quarrel over a woman that made you destroy the poor city of the Phrygians too.
Chorus. You have said too much, for a woman speaking to men. The sense that should keep you in hand has shot its last arrow.
Menelaus. Woman, these are small matters, not worth my throne, as you say, and not worth Greece. But understand this: whatever a man happens to need, that is a bigger thing to him than taking Troy. And I stand by my daughter as her ally, because I count it a great thing, being robbed of her marriage. Anything else a woman suffers comes second. When she loses her husband she loses her life. Neoptolemus should have command of my slaves, and my people and I of his, because friends, if they are really friends, have nothing of their own; everything is held in common. And if I wait for the absent instead of arranging my affairs as well as I can, I am a fool, not a wise man. So get up out of the goddess's shrine. If you die, this boy escapes his death; if you refuse to die, I kill him. One of the two of you has to leave life.
Andromache. Oh. That is a bitter lottery you are setting me, a bitter choice of life. If I draw the lot I am wretched; if I do not draw it I am destroyed. You, who are doing something enormous for a small cause: listen to me. Why are you killing me? For what? What city have I betrayed? Which of your children have I killed? What house have I burned? I was forced into bed with my masters. And then it is me you will kill, not him, the man who is to blame? You let the beginning go and rush for the end that came after it? Oh, these evils. My poor country. What terrible things I suffer. Why did I have to give birth as well, and add a second weight on top of this one? But why do I weep over that, and not wring out the evils at my feet and reckon them up? I saw Hector butchered and dragged behind the chariot wheels. I saw Ilium burning, a pitiful sight. And I went aboard the Argive ships myself, a slave, dragged by the hair, and when I got to Phthia I was married off to Hector's killers. What is sweet in life to me? What am I supposed to look at? My present luck or my past? I had one child left, this one, the eye of my life, and the people who have decided this are going to kill him. No. Not to save my miserable life. In him there is hope, if he lives; and for me it is a disgrace not to die for my son. Look. I leave the altar. I am in your hands, to cut my throat, to murder, to bind, to hang by the neck. Child, the mother who bore you is going to Hades so that you will not die. And if you slip out of your death, remember your mother, what I endured, how I died, and go to your father with kisses, pouring tears, with your arms round his neck, and tell him what happened to me. So it is true: for everyone alive, children are their life. Whoever has none and sneers at that feels less pain, but his happiness is a poor thing.
Chorus. I pitied you as I listened. Bad luck is pitiable to everyone alive, even when it falls on a stranger. But you should have brought your daughter and this woman to terms, Menelaus, and set her free of her troubles.
Menelaus. Take hold of her, slaves. Twist her arms behind her. What she is about to hear will not be to her liking. You: it was to get you off the goddess's holy altar that I held your child's death up in front of you, and that is how I drew you into my hands to be killed. So that is how matters stand with you. Understand it. As for this boy, my daughter will decide whether she wants him killed or not. Now get into the house, and learn, slave that you were born, never to insult free people again.
Andromache. Oh. You crept up on me with a trick. I have been cheated.
Menelaus. Announce it to the world. I do not deny it.
Andromache. Is this what passes for clever among you people by the Eurotas?
Menelaus. And among the people of Troy too: when you have been hurt, you hurt back.
Andromache. Do you think the gods are not gods, and that there is no justice in them?
Menelaus. When that comes, I will bear it. But you I am going to kill.
Andromache. And this chick too, that you have dragged out from under my wing?
Menelaus. No, not I. I will hand him to my daughter to kill, if she likes.
Andromache. Oh. Then why am I not mourning for you already, my child?
Menelaus. It is true that the hope waiting for him is not a bold one.
Andromache. You people of Sparta, most hated of all human beings by all human beings. Council chambers of treachery. Lords of lies. Stitchers of evil schemes. Twisted, nothing sound in you, all your thinking goes round corners: you prosper in Greece and you do not deserve to. What is there that is not found among you? The most murders? Money made by shameful means? Saying one thing with your tongue and thinking another, and being found out at it, every time? I hope you die. For me, death is not as heavy as you have decided it should be. What destroyed me was that other thing, the day the poor city of the Phrygians was wiped out, and my famous husband with it, the man whose spear so often turned you from a coward on land into a coward at sea, running for your ship. And now you show yourself a fearsome man-at-arms against a woman, and you kill me. Then kill me. You will get no flattery from my tongue, you or your daughter. You were born great in Sparta; well, I was born great in Troy. And if things are going badly for me now, do not brag about it. It could happen to you.
Chorus. Never will I praise a man for having two wives, or sons with two different mothers: feuds in the house, and hatred, and grief. Let my husband be content with one marriage, one bed, and share it with no one.
Chorus. Nor is a city easier to bear with two kings than with one: burden on burden, and the citizens divided. And when two poets are making one song, the Muses love to set them quarrelling.
Chorus. When a fast wind is carrying the sailors, two minds at the steering oar, a whole crowd of clever men in a heap, are weaker than one plainer head with sole command. One man's power, in a house and in a city, whenever people want to find the right moment.
Chorus. The Spartan woman has shown it, the daughter of Menelaus the general. She went through fire against another woman's bed, and she is killing the poor woman from Troy and her child, for the sake of a spiteful quarrel. Godless, lawless, graceless, this murder. Lady, the tide will turn on you yet for what you have done.
Chorus. And here I see them, the pair yoked together, in front of the house, condemned to death by a vote. Unhappy woman, and you, poor child, dying for your mother's bed, you who had no part in it and did no wrong to the king's family.
Andromache. Here I am, my hands bleeding, tied tight with the cords, being sent down under the earth.
Child. Mother, mother, I am going down with you, under your wing.
Andromache. A cruel sacrifice, you rulers of the land of Phthia.
Child. Father, come and help the people you love.
Andromache. You will lie, my darling child, at your mother's breast, a corpse under the earth, beside a corpse.
Child. Oh, oh, what is going to happen to me? We are lost, you and I, mother.
Menelaus. Go down below the earth. You came here from towers that were our enemies. Two of you, and you die for two reasons: my vote takes your life, and my daughter Hermione's takes the boy's. It is great folly to leave your enemies' children alive when you could kill them and take the fear out of your house.
Andromache. Husband, husband, if only I had your hand and your spear to fight beside me, son of Priam.
Child. Poor me, what song can I find to turn my death aside?
Andromache. Beg him, my child. Go up close and touch the master's knees.
Child. Friend, friend, let me off my death.
Andromache. My eyes are running with tears, I drip like a sunless spring off a smooth rock face. Poor woman that I am.
Child. Oh, oh, what way out of this evil can I ever find?
Menelaus. Why fall at my feet, begging me as if you were praying to a rock in the sea, or a wave? I have been a help to my own people; for you I have no love-charm at all. I spent a great share of my life taking Troy, and your mother with it. That is your inheritance from her: you go down to Hades under the ground.
(Peleus comes in, leaning on a staff, with an attendant.)
Chorus. And here I see Peleus close by, hurrying this way on his old legs.
Peleus. I am asking you, and the man in charge of this slaughter: what is this? How did it come to this? What is the story that has the house sick like this? What are you doing, scheming away without a trial? Menelaus, stop. Do not rush ahead of justice. You there, boy, lead me faster. This is no business for taking one's time, it seems to me. If I ever wanted my youth back, and the strength that came with it, I want it now. First of all, then, I will blow into this woman like a following wind into a sail. Tell me: by what right have these men tied your hands with cords and are marching you off, you and your child? You are being led to the slaughter like a ewe with the lamb under her, while I was away and so was your master.
Andromache. Old sir, these men are taking me, with my child, to be killed, just as you see. What can I tell you? It was not one urgent message I sent for you by, but thousands of messengers. You have heard, I expect, about the quarrel in this house with this man's daughter, and why I am being destroyed. And now they have dragged me from the altar of Thetis, who bore you your noble son, whom you worship and wonder at, and they are taking me away, with no trial to judge me, without waiting for the men who are away from home, because they knew I was alone, and this child too, who has done nothing, and whom they mean to kill along with me, his wretched mother. I beg you, old man. I fall at your knees. I cannot take hold of your dear beard with my hand. Save me, in the gods' name. If you do not, we will die, and it will be a disgrace to your house and a misery to me, old man.
Peleus. I order you to loosen those ropes before someone is sorry, and free her two hands.
Menelaus. And I forbid it. I am a second man here, no less than you, and I have far more authority over her.
Peleus. How so? Have you come here to run my house? Is it not enough for you to rule what is in Sparta?
Menelaus. I took her prisoner out of Troy.
Peleus. And my son's son received her as his prize.
Menelaus. Is not what I own his, and what he owns mine?
Peleus. Yes. To do good with, not harm. Not to kill by force.
Menelaus. You will never take her out of my hands.
Peleus. Shall I bloody your head with this staff?
Menelaus. Touch me and find out. Come one step closer.
Peleus. You, count as one of the men? You worst of men, from a family of the worst. What claim have you to a place in the company of men? A man who let a Phrygian take his wife off him. You left your house and your hearth unlocked and unguarded, as if the woman you had at home were a chaste one, when she was the worst of them all. A Spartan girl could not keep herself in hand if she wanted to. They leave home with the young men, their thighs bare and their dresses hanging loose, and they share the running tracks and the wrestling grounds with them, which I cannot stomach. And then is it any wonder that you do not bring up your women to keep themselves in hand? Helen was the one to ask that question, the woman who walked out of your house, and out from under the Zeus who guards the love between husband and wife, and went carousing off with a young man to another country. And then, for her sake, you collected that enormous crowd of Greeks and led them to Troy? You should have spat her out and never lifted a spear, once you found out what she was; you should have let her stay where she was, paid a price for the privilege, and never taken her back into your house. But that was not the way your mind's wind was blowing. Instead you destroyed many good lives, and left old women childless in their homes, and robbed grey-haired fathers of their noble sons. I am one of those wretched fathers. And I look at you as the killer of Achilles, a man polluted with his blood. You alone came home from Troy without a wound, and brought your fine armour back in its fine cases just the way it went out. And I told the boy when he was marrying: do not make a marriage tie with this man, do not take into your house the filly of a bad mother. They carry their mothers' shame out of the house with them. You young men who are looking for wives, mark this for me: get a daughter from a good mother. And besides all that, what an outrage you did to your own brother, when you told him to cut his daughter's throat, and he was fool enough to do it. That is how afraid you were of being left without your worthless wife. And when you took Troy, since I will follow you there too, you did not kill the woman when you had her in your hands. No: the moment you saw her breast, you threw your sword away and took her kiss, and fawned on the bitch who had betrayed you, because Aphrodite is stronger than you are, you worst of men. And then you come to my children's house while they are away and ransack it, and kill a poor unlucky woman without honour, and a child who will one day make you weep, you and that daughter of yours in the house, even if he were three times a bastard. Dry ground has beaten deep soil for a crop many a time, and many a bastard is a better man than the legitimate sons. Take your daughter and go. It is better for a man to have a poor honest man for a son-in-law and a friend than a rich bad one. And you are nothing.
Chorus. From a small beginning the tongue supplies people with a great quarrel. Sensible people take care about that: they do not start a fight with the people they owe.
Menelaus. Then why would anyone call old men wise, or the men the Greeks once thought had sense? When you, Peleus, born of a famous father and tied to me by marriage, say things that shame you and insult me, and all over a barbarian woman. You should have driven her out beyond the streams of the Nile, beyond the river Phasis, and cheered me on the whole way. She is a woman from the mainland of Asia, where more Greek dead fell to the spear than anywhere else, and she had a share in your own son's blood. Paris, who killed your son Achilles, was Hector's brother, and this woman was Hector's wife. And you go in under the same roof with her, and think it fit to eat at the same table with her, and let her bear children in the house who will be your worst enemies. I saw all this coming, old man, for your sake and for mine, and when I try to kill her she is snatched out of my hands. Come now. There is no shame in laying hands on the argument itself. If my daughter has no child and this woman's children grow up, will you set them up as kings of this land of Phthia, barbarians by birth, ruling Greeks? And then I am the one with no sense, because I hate injustice, and you are the one with brains? Consider this too. If you had given your daughter to some citizen and she had then been treated like this, would you have sat there in silence? I doubt it. Yet for the sake of a foreign woman you scream this at the family you are bound to. And another thing: a wife who is wronged by her husband grieves as much as a man does, and so, just the same, does a man with a wife playing the fool in his house. But he has great strength in his own hands. Her affairs rest with her parents and the people who owe her. Is it not right, then, that I should help my own? You are old, old. As for my generalship, you would help me more by talking about it than by keeping quiet. Helen's trouble was not her own choice; it came from the gods, and it did Greece the greatest good. They knew nothing of arms and battle, and they went on to manly deeds. Practice is the teacher of everything for human beings. And when I came face to face with my wife and held back from killing her, that was keeping myself in hand. I wish you had not wanted to kill your brother Phocus either. I have gone at you with all this in good sense, not out of anger. If you fly into a temper, you get a sore tongue from all your talking, and I get the profit of having looked ahead.
Chorus. Stop now, both of you. That is far the best thing: stop these useless words, before the two of you go wrong together.
Peleus. Oh, what a bad custom Greece has. When the army sets up a trophy over the enemy, people do not count it the work of the men who did the labour. The general carries off the credit. He was one man among ten thousand shaking a spear, he did no more than any one of them, and he gets more of the glory. And they sit in high office in the city, very solemn, and think themselves greater than the people, and they are nobodies. The people are ten thousand times cleverer than they are, if they had the daring and the will at the same time. That is how you and your brother sit puffed up over Troy and the generalship you had there, lifted up by other men's labour and other men's pain. I will teach you to think Paris of Ida a smaller enemy than Peleus, unless you take yourself off from under this roof as fast as you can, you and your childless daughter, whom the son of my blood will drive through this house by the hair. She is a barren heifer and she will not put up with other women bearing children when she has none of her own. But if she is unlucky about children, must we be left with none at all? Get away from her, slaves, so I can find out whether anyone is going to stop me untying her hands. Lift yourself up. I am shaking, but I will undo these plaited leather knots. Is this how you tore up her hands, you worst of men? Did you think you were tying up a bull or a lion? Or were you afraid she would grab a sword and fight you off? Come here, little one, under my arm. Help me untie your mother. In Phthia I will raise you to be a great enemy to these people. If the Spartans had not their reputation for the spear and the contest of battle, in everything else, be sure of it, you are no better than anyone.
Chorus. Old men are a thing let off the leash, and hard to hold back when their temper is up.
Menelaus. You are far too quick to rush into abuse. As for me, I came to Phthia, and I am not going to do anything shabby here by force, or have it done to me. And now, since I have no spare time to waste, I am going home. There is a city not far from Sparta which used to be friendly and is now acting as an enemy. I want to march on it with an army and bring it under my hand. When I have settled things there the way I want, I will come back. Then, face to face with my son-in-law, I will make my case and hear his. If he punishes this woman and keeps himself in hand towards us from now on, he will find us keeping ourselves in hand. If he loses his temper, he will find us losing ours, and deed will answer deed. Your speeches I can bear easily. You stand there like a shadow with a voice. You cannot do anything; all you can do is talk.
(Menelaus goes out with his men.)
Peleus. Lead the way, my child. Stand here under my arm. And you too, poor woman. You ran into a savage storm, and you have come into a harbour out of the wind.
Andromache. Old sir, may the gods be good to you and yours, for saving my child and me, the unluckiest of women. But watch out that these men do not crouch in wait for the two of us on a lonely stretch of road and take me by force, seeing that you are old and I am weak and this child is a baby. Think about that, in case we escape now and are caught later.
Peleus. Do not bring me a woman's cowardly talk. Walk. Who is going to lay a hand on you? He will be sorry if he touches you. Thanks to the gods, I command a crowd of horsemen and many armed men in Phthia. And I still stand straight. I am not the old man you think. A man like that, I need only look at him and I will set up a trophy over him, old as I am. One old man with a good heart is stronger than a lot of young ones. What use is a fine body to a coward?
(Peleus goes out, with Andromache and the child.)
Chorus. Let me not be born, or let me be born of good fathers, and share a house with plenty in it. If anything comes that cannot be mended, the well-born never lack defenders; when a man is proclaimed the son of a noble house, there is honour and glory in it. Time does not wear away what good men leave behind. Their excellence shines on when they are dead.
Chorus. Better a victory nobody thinks badly of than to trip up justice with power and spite. It tastes sweet at the time, to human beings, but in time it goes dry and hangs on the house as a reproach. This is the life I praise, this is the life I hold to: to have no power beyond what is right, in the marriage bed or in the city.
Chorus. Old son of Aeacus, I believe it: you stood with the Lapiths against the Centaurs with your spear, the most famous spear of all; and on the Argo you passed the unfriendly water of the Clashing Rocks on that famous voyage; and when, long ago, the son of Zeus, Heracles, threw a ring of slaughter round the glorious city of Troy, you came home to Europe with an equal share of the glory.
(The Nurse comes out of the house.)
Nurse. Dear women, what a train of evils this day is laying out for us, one on the heels of another. My mistress inside the house, Hermione I mean, deserted by her father and realising at the same time what she has done, planning to kill Andromache and her child, wants to die. She is terrified of her husband: that for what she has done he will send her out of this house in disgrace, or kill her, for trying to kill people it was wrong to kill. The slaves standing guard over her can barely stop her hanging herself, and they snatch the swords out of her right hand and take them off her. That is how sorry she is now, and she knows that what she did before was not well done. I am worn out, friends, keeping my mistress from the noose. You go in, into the house, and get her out of death. New faces persuade better than the friends people are used to.
Chorus. Yes, and we can hear the servants shouting in the house, about the very thing you came to tell us. The poor woman looks about to show how bitterly she grieves for the terrible things she did. She is coming out of the house, out of the servants' hands, wanting to die.
(Hermione comes out, tearing at her hair and her veil.)
Hermione. Io moi moi. I will tear my hair out in handfuls and rake my nails through my face.
Nurse. Child, what are you doing? Are you going to disfigure your own body?
Hermione. Aiai, aiai. Off my hair with you, up into the air, fine-woven veil.
Nurse. Child, cover your breasts. Fasten your dress.
Hermione. Why should I cover my breasts with a dress? What I did to my husband is plain, and in the open, and cannot be hidden.
Nurse. Does it hurt, that you stitched up a murder for the woman who shares your husband?
Hermione. Yes, I groan for it, for the cruel thing I dared to do. I am cursed. Cursed in the eyes of every human being.
Nurse. Your husband will forgive you this mistake.
Hermione. Why did you hunt the sword out of my hand? Give it back, dear, give it back, so I can drive a blow straight home. Why do you keep me from the rope?
Nurse. And if I let you go, out of your mind as you are, so that you could die?
Hermione. Oh, my fate. Where is a fire I could love, a flame for me? Where can I climb, up onto the rocks, over the sea, or into the woods on the mountains, so that I can die and belong to the dead below?
Nurse. Why are you torturing yourself like this? The blows the gods send come to everyone, sooner or later. Today, or some other day.
Hermione. You left me, you left me, father, alone on the shore, like a boat with no oar, stranded, by myself. He will kill me, he will kill me. I will never live again under this roof I was married in. Whose statue can I run to and cling to for protection? Or shall I fall at a slave's knees, a slave myself? If only I could fly out of the land of Phthia, a bird with dark wings, or be that ship of pine that was the first to row through the Clashing Rocks, the dark ones, on its first voyage.
Nurse. My child, I did not like the excess in you before, when you went too far against that Trojan woman, and I do not like it now, this terror you are working yourself into. Your husband is not going to throw away his marriage to you because a barbarian woman talked him round with some flimsy arguments. You are not a prisoner he brought back from Troy. You are a great man's daughter, and he took you with a rich dowry, out of a city that has done more than well for itself. And your father is not going to betray you and let you be thrown out of this house, whatever you are afraid of. Now go inside, and stop making a show of yourself in front of the doors. If people see you out here in front of the house, child, it will be held against you.
(The Nurse goes into the house. A young man comes in quickly, worn from the road and foreign-looking. It is Orestes.)
Chorus. Look. Here is a stranger, from some other country by the look of him, hurrying towards us as fast as he can walk.
Orestes. Women of this foreign land, is this the house of Achilles's son, the king's palace?
Chorus. It is. But who are you, to ask?
Orestes. The son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. My name is Orestes. I am on my way to the oracle of Zeus at Dodona. And since I have reached Phthia, I thought I would find out about a kinswoman of mine, whether she is alive and well: Hermione, from Sparta. She lives a long way from us, but she is dear to me all the same.
Hermione. Son of Agamemnon, you are a harbour in a storm to a sailor. By these knees of yours, I beg you, pity me. You were asking how I am. I am not doing well. And I wrap my arms round your knees, and they are as good as the wool bands a suppliant lays on an altar.
Orestes. Wait. What is this? Am I wrong, or is this the mistress of the house I am looking at, the daughter of Menelaus?
Hermione. The only daughter Helen, the child of Tyndareus, ever bore my father in his house. Have no doubt of it.
Orestes. Apollo, Healer, grant us a release from our troubles. What is the matter? Is it gods or men who are hurting you?
Hermione. Some of it is my own doing. Some of it is the man who has me. Some of it is a god's. Whichever way I look, I am destroyed.
Orestes. What disaster can happen to a woman who has no children yet, unless it has to do with her bed?
Hermione. That is exactly where I am sick. You led me straight to it.
Orestes. Your husband loves another bed instead of yours?
Hermione. The prisoner. Hector's wife.
Orestes. That is a bad thing you are telling me. One man with two beds.
Hermione. That is how it is. So I fought back.
Orestes. You plotted against the woman? The way a woman does?
Hermione. Death. For her and for her bastard child.
Orestes. And did you kill them, or did something happen and take them out of your hands?
Hermione. Old Peleus did. He took the side of the people beneath him.
Orestes. Did anyone share this killing with you?
Hermione. My father. He came from Sparta for exactly that.
Orestes. And then he was beaten by an old man's arm?
Hermione. By shame. And he is gone, and left me alone.
Orestes. I understand. You are afraid of your husband, because of what you did.
Hermione. You have it. He would be right to kill me. What is there to say? But I beg you, in the name of Zeus who watches over our family, send me as far from this country as you can, or to my father's house. Because the very walls here seem to have found a voice and are driving me out, and the whole land of Phthia hates me. And if my husband comes home from Apollo's oracle before that, he will kill me on the most shameful charge there is, or I will be a slave to a bastard bed that I used to be mistress of.
So how, as somebody is going to ask, did you go so wrong? It was women coming into the house that ruined me. Bad women. They puffed me up with this kind of talk. "You are going to put up with her? That prisoner, the lowest of the low, a slave, in your house, sharing your bed with you? By the Queen of heaven, if it were my house she would not be alive to look at the daylight and get the harvest of my marriage." And I listened to what those Sirens said, the clever, scheming, twisty chatter of them, and I filled up with folly like a sail with wind. What did I need to watch my husband for? I had everything I could want. Wealth, plenty of it. I was mistress of the house. Any children I had would be legitimate, and hers would be bastards, half slaves, and mine would own them.
Never, never, and I will not say this only once, should a man with any sense who has a wife let women come into his house to visit her. They are the teachers of everything bad. One of them is making something out of it, and helps to spoil the marriage. Another has slipped herself and wants company in her sickness. And a great many of them are simply lewd, and that is how the houses of men get infected. So guard the doors of your houses well, with bolts and bars. Nothing healthy ever comes of women visiting from outside. Only a great deal of harm.
Chorus. You have let your tongue run too freely against your own kind. We can forgive you for it, in your position. But even so, a woman ought to dress up the sickness of women, not expose it.
Orestes. It was a clever man who taught people to listen to the argument from the other side too. I knew about the turmoil in this house, and about the quarrel between you and Hector's wife, and I kept watch and waited, to see whether you would stay here, or whether you were frightened enough by the killing of a captive woman to want out of this house.
I did not come because I had any great respect for the messages you sent me. I came so that if you gave me an opening, as you are giving me one now, I could take you away from this house. Because you were mine, before. You are living with this man now because your father is a coward. Before he ever crossed into Trojan territory he gave you to me as my wife, and then afterwards he promised you to the man who has you now, if he took the city of Troy. And when Achilles's son came home here, I forgave your father, and I pleaded with the bridegroom to give up his marriage to you. I told him what had happened to me, and the god that was on me at the time: that I could marry from among my friends, but not easily from outside, being in exile from my home the way I am. And he was an outrage to me. He threw my mother's murder in my face, and the goddesses with blood in their eyes who hunt me for it. And I was low, because of what had happened to my house, and I hurt, I hurt badly, but I bore what had happened, and I went away robbed of my marriage to you, against my will.
So now, since your luck has turned upside down, and you have fallen into this disaster and have no way out, I will take you away from this house and put you in your father's hands. Blood is a strong thing. And when things go wrong there is nothing better than one of your own.
Hermione. As for my marriage, that is my father's business. It is not for me to decide. But take me out of this house as fast as you can, before my husband gets here first and comes home, or before old Peleus finds out that I am deserting the house and comes after me with horses.
Orestes. Never mind the old man's arm. And do not be afraid of Achilles's son, for all the outrage he did me. There is a machine built for him, a death trap, knotted with knots that will not slip, and this hand built it. I will not say what it is before it is done, but when it is being done, the rock of Delphi will know. If my allies in the Pythian country keep their oaths, the mother-killer will teach him that nobody marries the woman who should have been mine. He will pay bitterly for demanding that Lord Apollo answer for his father's blood. It will do him no good to have changed his mind, and to be making his peace with the god now. Between Apollo and my slanders he will die a bad death, and he will learn what my hatred is. When men hate a god, the god turns their fate upside down and does not let them think big.
(Orestes and Hermione go out together.)
Chorus. Apollo, who towered up the strong walls on the hill of Troy, and you, god of the sea, who drive your dark horses over the salt water, why did you take the work of your own hands and give it, dishonoured, to Ares, the master of the spear, and let go of Troy, poor Troy, poor Troy?
Chorus. So many chariots with fine horses you yoked on the banks of the Simois, so many bloody races of men you set going with no wreath for the winner. And the kings of Troy are dead and gone, and the fire no longer blazes on the altars in Troy for the gods, with the sweet smoke of incense.
Chorus. The son of Atreus is gone, by the hands of his wife, and she paid for his murder with her own death. Her children took it from her. A god's, a god's command turned against her, out of the oracle, when Agamemnon's son travelled from Argos and stood in the holy of holies, and became his mother's killer. God, Apollo, how am I to believe it?
Chorus. And through the market squares of Greece many women sang their groans for children lost, and wives left their homes for another man's bed. Not on you alone, and not on the people you love, did the heavy grief come down. Greece bore the plague, the plague. And it crossed over to the rich fields of the Phrygians too, a thunderbolt raining down the blood that Hades loves.
(Peleus comes in, hurrying.)
Peleus. Women of Phthia, I am asking, so tell me. I heard a report, nothing clear, that the daughter of Menelaus has left this house and gone, and I have come in a hurry to find out whether it is true. When friends are away, the people at home have to look after their affairs.
Chorus. Peleus, what you heard is right. And it would not be decent of me to hide the trouble I find myself in. The queen has fled from this house.
Peleus. Afraid of what? Tell me the whole thing.
Chorus. Afraid of her husband. That he would throw her out of the house.
Peleus. For plotting the death of his child? Surely not.
Chorus. Yes. And she was afraid of the prisoner too.
Peleus. Did she leave the house with her father, or with somebody else?
Chorus. Agamemnon's son came and took her out of the country.
Peleus. And what does he hope to get out of it? Does he mean to marry her?
Chorus. Yes. And he is arranging the death of your son's son.
Peleus. Lying in wait for him, or meeting him face to face in a fight?
Chorus. In the holy sanctuary of Apollo, with the men of Delphi.
Peleus. Oh. This is dangerous, and it is now. Will somebody go, as fast as he can, to the Pythian hearth and tell our friends there what is happening here, before Achilles's son is killed by his enemies?
(A Messenger comes in.)
Messenger. Oh, oh. What news I am bringing, and I am the unlucky one who has to bring it, to you, old man, and to everyone who loved my master.
Peleus. Aiai. My heart knows already. It is expecting something.
Messenger. You have no grandson, old Peleus. I am telling you plainly. That is how he is, cut with swords, by the men of Delphi and by the stranger from Mycenae.
Chorus. Ah, ah. What are you doing, old man? Do not fall. Hold yourself up.
Peleus. I am nothing. I am destroyed. My voice is gone, and the strength is gone out of my legs.
Messenger. Listen. If you want to avenge your own, straighten yourself up and hear what was done.
Peleus. Fate, how tightly you have wrapped me up, a miserable old man at the very end of his life. How did I lose him, the only son of my only son? Tell me. I do not want to hear it, and I want to hear it all the same.
Messenger. When we reached the famous ground of Apollo, we spent three bright circuits of the sun filling our eyes with the sights. And that, it turns out, was already suspicious. The people who live round the god's shrine began to gather in knots and circles, and Agamemnon's son went through the town whispering poison into every ear. "Do you see this man, walking in and out of the god's hollow chambers, the ones full of gold, the treasuries of the whole world? He is here for the second time, on the same errand he came on before. He wants to sack the temple of Apollo." And from that an angry surge ran through the city. The magistrates crowded into their council chambers, and the men who have charge of the god's property quietly posted a guard among the colonnades.
We knew nothing of any of this yet. We took sheep, reared on the leafy slopes of Parnassus, and went and stood at the altars, with our Delphian sponsors and the Pythian seers. And somebody said, "Young man, what shall we pray to the god for, on your behalf? What have you come for?" And he said, "I want to make amends to Apollo for a fault I committed before. I once demanded that he pay me for my father's blood." And right there Orestes's story showed how strong it was: that my master was lying, that he had come for something shameful.
He goes up inside the temple, onto its stone platform, to pray to Apollo in front of the oracle, and he is at the burnt offering. And there was an ambush waiting for him, men with swords, in the shade of the laurel, and Clytemnestra's son was one of them, the one who had stitched the whole plot together. My master stood in full view of everyone, praying to the god, and they, with their sharpened swords, stabbed Achilles's son from behind, and he had no armour on. He stepped back. He had not been hit anywhere that killed. He drew his sword, and he snatched the armour that was hanging on pegs on a pillar, and he stood on the altar, a soldier terrible to look at, and shouted at the sons of Delphi, asking them this: "Why are you killing me? I came here on a holy errand. What am I dying for?" And of all those thousands standing near, not one man said a word. They threw stones at him, instead, out of their hands.
Pounded from every side by a thick snowstorm of them, he held his armour out in front of him and guarded against the hits, stretching his shield out on this side and on that. It did no good. Everything was coming at him at once: arrows, javelins with throwing straps, spits with two points pulled loose from the fire, the butcher's knives they kill oxen with, landing in front of his feet. You would have seen your boy dance a terrible war dance then, dodging what they threw. And when they had him ringed round and were giving him no room to breathe, he left the altar hearth where the sheep are laid, and he leapt, the leap he leapt at Troy, straight at them. And they turned their backs and ran, like doves when they see the hawk. Many of them fell in the crush, from wounds, or trampled by each other in the narrow doorways, and a scream that had no holiness in it rose in that holy house and echoed off the rocks. And in a kind of calm my master stood there, shining in his bright armour.
Until a voice came out of the middle of the inner shrine, something terrible, something that made your skin creep, and it roused that crowd and turned them back to fight. Then Achilles's son fell. A Delphian struck him in the ribs with a sharpened sword, a Delphian killed him, with plenty of others to help. And when he fell to the ground, who did not bring a blade to him, who did not bring a stone, throwing, battering? That whole beautiful body was ruined with savage wounds. And when he was dead and lying beside the altar, they threw him out of the temple where the incense burns.
We snatched him up as fast as we could and we are bringing him to you, old man, to wail over and weep over, and to honour with a grave in the earth. That is what the lord who gives oracles to everyone else, the judge of right for all mankind, did to Achilles's son, when he was there to make amends. He remembered an old quarrel, the way a bad man does. So how can he be wise?
(The Messenger goes. The body of Neoptolemus is carried in on a bier.)
Chorus. And look, here is the king already, carried in, come from the land of Delphi to his home. Wretched the man it happened to, and wretched too, old man, are you. This is Achilles's cub you are taking into the house, and not the way you wanted. You have met with evil yourself, and fallen into one fate with him.
Peleus. Oh, what evil is this I am looking at, taking it into my hands and my house. Io moi moi. Aiai. City of Thessaly, we are destroyed, we are finished. There is no family left me now, no children left in the house. I am cursed with what I have suffered. Who is left, what friend, that I can turn my eyes to and be glad? Dear mouth, dear cheek, dear hands, if only a god had killed you under the walls of Troy beside the bank of the Simois.
Chorus. Then he would have died with honour, old man, and you would have been the happier for it.
Peleus. Marriage, marriage, you have destroyed this house and my city. Aiai. E, e. My child, if only that marriage with its cursed name had never wrapped my family, my children and my house, in the death that Hermione brought down on you, child. If only the lightning had killed her first. And if only you, a man, had never fastened on a god, on Apollo, the blame for the arrow that killed your father, the son of a god.
Chorus. Ottototoi. My master is dead. I begin the lament, the way the custom is for those who are gone below.
Peleus. Ottototoi. And I take it up after you, wretched as I am, an old man with no luck left, and I weep.
Chorus. It was a god's decree. A god brought this disaster about.
Peleus. Dear one, you have left the house empty. Oh, oh, and left me wretched, an old man with no children.
Chorus. You should have died, old man, died before your children.
Peleus. Shall I not tear my hair? Shall I not bring down on my head the deadly blow of my own hand? City, Apollo has robbed me of both my children.
Chorus. You have suffered so much evil, and seen so much, unlucky old man. What life will you have from now on?
Peleus. No children. Alone. No end to the evil. I will drain out my sorrows to the last drop, down to Hades.
Chorus. For nothing, then, the gods blessed you on your wedding day.
Peleus. Flown away, all of it gone. It lies far short of the high boasts.
Chorus. Alone, in a lonely house, you go up and down.
Peleus. You are gone, city, city. And this sceptre, let it go, down on the ground. And you, daughter of Nereus, in your cave in the dark, you will see me utterly destroyed, falling to the earth.
Chorus. Io, io. What is that moving? What god am I feeling near? Girls, look, look up. Some god is being ferried through the white air and coming down onto the plains of Phthia, where the horses graze.
(Thetis appears above the house.)
Thetis. Peleus, for the sake of the marriage we made long ago, I have come. I am Thetis, and I have left the house of Nereus. First, I tell you not to take the trouble you are in too hard. I too, who ought to have borne children I would never have to weep for, have lost the son I had by you, Achilles, the fast runner, the first man in Greece. Now I will tell you why I have come, and you listen.
Take this dead man, Achilles's son, to the Pythian hearth and bury him there, a reproach to Delphi, so that his grave announces the violent murder done by Orestes's hand. As for the prisoner, Andromache I mean, she must go and live in the land of the Molossians, old man, joined in a lawful marriage to Helenus, and this boy with her, the last of the line of Aeacus. From him a line of kings must come down, one after another, and rule Molossia in prosperity. Because your family and mine, old man, is not to be uprooted like this. Nor is Troy's. The gods care about Troy too, even though it fell, because Pallas Athena was set on it.
And you, so that you will know what it was worth to have shared my bed, I, a goddess born and the daughter of a god, will set free from everything that mortals suffer, and make you a god, immortal and unfading. And from then on you will live with me in the house of Nereus, a god with a goddess, for the rest of time. From there you will walk out of the sea with dry feet and see the son you and I loved best, Achilles, living in his island home on the White Shore, inside the Black Sea. But now go to Delphi, the city the gods built, and take this body with you, and when you have buried him in the earth, come back and sit down in the hollow of the old rock of Sepias, in the cave there, and wait, until I come out of the sea with fifty daughters of Nereus, dancing, to escort you. What is fated must be carried through. This is what Zeus has decided. And stop grieving for the dead. This is the vote the gods have passed on every human being. Everyone owes a death.
Peleus. Lady. Noble wife who shared my bed, daughter of Nereus, I salute you. What you are doing is worthy of you, and of the children who came from you. I stop my grieving, goddess, since you order it, and when I have buried this boy I will go to the glens of Pelion, where I first took your beautiful body in my arms.
So. Should a man with any sense not marry out of a good family, and give his daughter to good men, and have no appetite for a bad wife, not even if she brings a fortune into the house with her? Then the gods would never make things go badly for him.
(Thetis vanishes. Peleus follows the body out.)
Chorus. Many are the shapes of what the gods do, and many the things they bring about that no one expected. What we counted on did not happen, and for what no one counted on, a god found a way. That is how this business ended.
(The Greek camp on the shore of the Thracian Chersonese, in front of Agamemnon's tent. The Ghost of Polydorus appears.)
Ghost of Polydorus. I have come from the hiding place of the dead and the gates of darkness, where Hades lives apart from the other gods. I am Polydorus, the son of Hecuba, the daughter of Cisseus, and of Priam. When the city of the Phrygians was in danger of falling to the Greek spear, my father was afraid, and he sent me secretly out of the land of Troy to the house of Polymestor, his Thracian guest-friend, who sows this rich flat country of the Chersonese and rules a horse-loving people with his spear. And my father sent a great deal of gold out with me, in secret, so that if the walls of Ilium ever fell, the children who survived him would not go short of the means to live. I was the youngest of Priam's sons, and that was why he smuggled me out of the country: with a boy's arm I could carry neither armour nor spear. So as long as the boundary stones of our land stood upright, and the towers of Troy were unbroken, and my brother Hector was winning with his spear, I grew up well in the house of the Thracian, my father's guest-friend, and did well on his care, like a young shoot. Poor fool that I was. But when Troy was destroyed, and Hector's life with it, and my father's hearth was dug up out of the ground, and he himself fell at the god-built altar, butchered by the murderous son of Achilles, then my father's guest-friend killed me, for the sake of the gold. He killed a helpless boy, and when he had killed me he threw me into the swell of the sea, so that he could keep the gold in his own house. I lie on the beach, and then again in the surge of the sea, carried up and down on the long back-and-forth of the waves, unwept, unburied. And now I have left my body behind and I am hovering over my dear mother Hecuba, and this is the third day I have hung in the air, all the time my poor mother has been here in this land, the Chersonese, since she came from Troy.
All the Achaeans are sitting quietly by their ships on the shore of this Thracian country, because the son of Peleus, Achilles, appeared above his tomb and held back the whole Greek army as they were steering their oars for home across the sea. He is asking for my sister Polyxena, to have her slaughtered at his tomb as his victim and his prize of honour. And he will get it. The men who were his friends will not send him away without his gift. Fate is leading my sister to her death this very day. So my mother will look on the corpses of two children at once, mine and my poor sister's. Because I am going to appear, so that I can get the grave I am so wretched without: I will show up in the shallows at the feet of a slave woman. I begged this from the powers below, that I might get a tomb and fall into my mother's hands. So what I wanted for myself will come about. Now I will get out of the way of old Hecuba. Here she comes, stepping out from under Agamemnon's tent, terrified by my ghost.
Ah. Mother. You came from a king's house and lived to see the day of slavery. You are as badly off now as you were once well off. Some god is weighing your old good fortune against you, and destroying you to balance the scale.
(The Ghost goes. Hecuba comes out of Agamemnon's tent, held up by captive Trojan women.)
Hecuba. Lead the old woman out in front of the tent, children, lead her, hold her upright, Trojan women, your fellow slave now, and once your queen. Take me, carry me, guide me, lift me up, hold me by my old hand, and I will lean on the crooked staff of your arm and hurry my slow-footed walk along, one joint in front of the other. Oh lightning of Zeus. Oh darkness of night. Why am I lifted up like this in the night by terrors, by phantoms? Oh lady Earth, mother of the black-winged dreams, I send this vision of the night away from me, the one about my son, who is being kept safe in Thrace, and about Polyxena, my dear daughter, the terrible sight I saw in my dreams and learned and understood. Gods of the earth below, keep my son safe. He is the only anchor my house has left, and he is in snowy Thrace, in the keeping of his father's guest-friend. Something new is coming. A song of grief is coming for women who grieve. Never before has my heart been so relentless, shivering, afraid. Where, Trojan women, can I find the inspired soul of Helenus, or Cassandra, to read my dreams for me? I saw a dappled deer with a wolf's bloody claw in its throat, dragged from my knees without pity, and slaughtered. And this frightens me too: over the very top of his tomb came the ghost of Achilles, and he asked for a prize, one of the Trojan women who have suffered so much. Away from my child, away from my child, send this thing, you powers, I beg you.
(The Chorus of captive Trojan women comes in.)
Chorus. Hecuba, I have slipped away to you in a hurry, leaving my master's tent, where the lot assigned me and posted me as a slave, driven out of the city of Ilium, hunted down at the point of the Achaeans' spears. I bring nothing to lighten what you suffer. I have picked up a heavy load of news for you, lady, and I am the herald of your pain. In the full assembly of the Achaeans, they say, it was decided to make your daughter a sacrifice to Achilles. You know how he stood on his tomb and appeared in his golden armour and held back the sea-going ships, with their sails already straining at the ropes, and shouted this: "Where are you off to, Greeks, leaving my tomb without its prize?" And a wave of quarrelling broke, and opinion split in two through the Greek army of spearmen, some for giving the tomb its victim, some against. There was one man working hard for your good, Agamemnon, who keeps the bed of the god-possessed prophetess. But the two sons of Theseus, shoots of Athens, made two different speeches and agreed on one judgement: to crown the tomb of Achilles with fresh blood. They said they would never put Cassandra's bed ahead of the spear of Achilles. The heat of the argument, pulled tight, was about equal, until that shifty-minded chatterer, that sweet-talker, that pleaser of crowds, the son of Laertes, persuaded the army not to push aside the best of all the Greeks for the sake of a slave's throat, and not to have one of the dead standing beside Persephone say that the Greeks had left the plains of Troy ungrateful to the Greeks who died for Greece. Odysseus will be here any moment now, to drag the foal from your breast and tear her out of your old hand. Go to the temples, go to the altars, sit at Agamemnon's knees as a suppliant, call on the gods, the ones in heaven and the ones under the earth. Either your prayers will keep you from being robbed of your poor child, or you must watch a girl fall forward on the tomb, reddened with blood from her gold-hung throat in a dark, shining stream.
Hecuba. Oh, I am wretched. What sound can I make? What cry, what wail, miserable in a miserable old age, in a slavery that cannot be endured, cannot be borne? Oh. Who will defend me? What family, what city? The old man is gone, the children are gone. Which way am I to go, this way or that? Where can I hurry to? Where is any god or power to help me? Oh, you who have brought me evil, Trojan women, you who have brought me evil and pain, you have destroyed me, destroyed me. Life in the light is nothing I want any more. Poor foot, lead me, lead an old woman to this tent. Oh child, oh daughter of the most wretched mother alive, come out, come out of the tent. Hear your mother's voice. Oh child, so that you know what it is, what it is I am hearing said about your life.
Polyxena. Io. Mother, mother, why are you shouting? What news have you cried out, that you have scared me out of the tent like a bird, with this fright?
Hecuba. Oh, my child.
Polyxena. Why do you speak to me in that voice of bad omen? It is an evil beginning.
Hecuba. Aiai, your life.
Polyxena. Say it. Do not hide it any longer. I am afraid, I am afraid, mother, of why you are groaning like this.
Hecuba. Oh child, child of a wretched mother.
Polyxena. What is this you are going to tell me?
Hecuba. The Greeks have made up one mind and are straining to cut your throat at the tomb for the son of Peleus.
Polyxena. Oh, mother, how can you say such unenviable evils? Tell me, tell me, mother.
Hecuba. I am telling you, child, a report of bad omen. They bring me word that the Argives have voted and decided about your life.
Polyxena. Oh, you who have suffered terrible things, oh, all-wretched, oh, mother of a miserable life, what is this, what is this outrage now, most hateful, unspeakable, that some power has stirred up against you? No longer is this daughter yours, no longer will I share your slavery, wretched beside your wretched old age. Like a cub, like a calf reared on the mountain, you will see me, wretched woman, wretched girl, torn out of your hand, my throat cut, sent down to Hades under the dark of the earth, where among the dead I will lie, poor thing. And for you, mother, in your misery, I cry with every lament I have, but for my own life, its outrage and its ruin, I shed no tear. For me, dying has turned out the better fortune.
Chorus. And here is Odysseus, walking fast, Hecuba, coming to tell you something new.
(Odysseus comes in with attendants.)
Odysseus. Lady, I think you already know what the army has decided and the vote that has been passed, but I will tell you all the same. The Achaeans have voted to slaughter your daughter Polyxena on the high mound of Achilles' grave. They have appointed me to escort the girl and bring her there. The son of Achilles will preside over the sacrifice and act as priest. So you know what to do? Do not make us tear her away by force, and do not get into a wrestling match with me. Know how much strength you have, and know the trouble you are in. Even in bad times, it is clever to think the thoughts you have to think.
Hecuba. Aiai. So a great struggle is here, it seems, full of groaning and not short of tears. And so I did not die where I should have died. Zeus did not destroy me. He is keeping me alive, so that I can look at evils worse than the evils before, wretch that I am.
But if slaves may put questions to free men, questions that do not hurt them or bite at their hearts, then you should speak now and answer, and we who are asking should hear.
Odysseus. You may. Ask. I do not grudge you the time.
Hecuba. Do you remember when you came to Troy as a spy, ugly in filthy rags, with drops of blood running from your eyes down your chin?
Odysseus. I remember. It touched more than the surface of my heart.
Hecuba. And Helen recognised you, and told me, and only me?
Odysseus. I remember. I was in great danger.
Hecuba. And you took hold of my knees, and made yourself humble?
Odysseus. So humble that my hand went dead, gripping your dress.
Hecuba. And I saved you, and I sent you out of the country?
Odysseus. You did. That is why I see this light of the sun.
Hecuba. And what did you say then, when you were my slave?
Odysseus. I found a great many things to say, so as not to die.
Hecuba. Then are you not a coward, with these plans of yours? You had from me exactly what you say you had, and you do us no good in return and all the harm you can. You are an ungrateful breed, all of you who chase the honours of a public speaker. I wish I had never known you. You hurt your friends and think nothing of it, as long as you can say something to please the crowd.
But tell me, what kind of clever move did they think it was, when they voted death for this child? Was it duty that pushed them to slaughter a human being at a tomb, where an ox is the proper thing to kill? Or is it that Achilles wants to kill the people who killed him, and is aiming at her, with justice on his side? But she never did him any harm. It is Helen he should have asked for, as the victim for his grave. She destroyed him. She is the one who brought him to Troy. And if some prisoner has to be picked out to die, one who is outstanding in beauty, that does not point to us. The daughter of Tyndareus is the most striking to look at, and she was found to have done him no less wrong than we did. That is the argument I set against him, on the question of justice.
Now hear what you owe me in return, since I am asking for it. You took hold of my hand, by your own account, and you fell at my feet and touched this old cheek. Now I take hold of you in the same way, at the same places, and I ask for the favour I did you then, and I beg you: do not tear my child out of my arms. Do not kill her. There are dead enough. She is my joy, and I forget my troubles in her. She is my comfort for everything I have lost. She is my city, my nurse, my walking stick, my guide on the road. Those who have power should not use it for what is wrong, and those who are doing well should not think they will do well forever. I was somebody once, and now I am not any more. One day took all my happiness away.
Oh, by your beard, my friend, have some respect for me, have some pity. Go to the Achaean army and talk them round. Tell them how hateful it is to kill women you did not kill the first time, when you dragged them from the altars, but pitied instead. Among you the law about bloodshed is the same for the free and for slaves. Your standing will persuade them, even if you argue badly. The same speech from a nobody and from a man of reputation does not carry the same weight.
Chorus. No human nature is so hard that it could hear your groans, your long laments, your cries of grief, and not let fall a tear.
Odysseus. Hecuba, let me teach you something, and do not, because you are angry, make an enemy in your mind of a man who is talking sense. Your life, the body that did me a good turn, I am ready to save, and I say nothing different. But what I said in front of everybody I will not deny: that when Troy was taken, your daughter should be given as a victim to the first man of the army, since he asked for her. Here is where most cities go wrong: when a man who is good and willing gets nothing more than worse men do. To us, lady, Achilles is worth honouring. He died for the land of Greece, and died as well as a man can. Is it not a disgrace, if we use a man as a friend while he can see, and once he is dead, use him no more? Well then. What will people say, if once again the army musters and there is a fight with an enemy? Will we fight, or will we love our own lives, seeing the dead man gets no honour? As for me, while I live, if I had only a little to live on each day, I would have enough. But I would want my tomb to be seen to be honoured. That gratitude lasts a long time.
You say you suffer pitiably. Here is my answer. On our side there are old women and old men no less wretched than you, and young wives robbed of the best of husbands, whose bodies this dust of Ida covers. Bear it. As for us, if we are wrong to think we should honour the brave, we will be charged with stupidity. But you barbarians, go on not counting your friends as friends, and go on not admiring the men who died well, so that Greece may prosper, and you may have what your policies deserve.
Chorus. Aiai. To be a slave is always an evil thing. It puts up with what it should not, because force wins.
Hecuba. Daughter, my words about your death are gone, thrown into the air for nothing. But you, if you have some power greater than your mother's, hurry, let out every note like a nightingale's mouth, and do not be robbed of your life. Fall at the knee of this man Odysseus and make him pity you, and beg him. You have a reason to give: he has children too. Make him pity what has happened to you.
Polyxena. I see you, Odysseus, hiding your right hand under your cloak and turning your face away, so that I cannot touch your beard. Do not worry. You have escaped my Zeus, the god of suppliants. I will follow you, because I must, and because I want to die. If I were unwilling, I would show myself a coward, a woman in love with her own life. Why should I live? My father was king of all the Phrygians. That was the start of my life. Then I was brought up on fine hopes, a bride for kings, with no small rivalry over my marriage, over whose house and hearth I would come to. And I was mistress, poor thing, of the women of Ida, a girl that women and girls looked up to, equal to a goddess except for one thing: death. And now I am a slave. First of all the name makes me want to die. It is not a name I am used to. And then I might get a master with a savage heart, whoever buys me for silver, me, the sister of Hector and of so many others. He would put me to grinding grain in his house whether I liked it or not, and sweeping his floors, and standing at the loom, dragging through wretched days. And some slave, bought from who knows where, would dirty my bed, the bed that was once thought worthy of kings. No. I give up this light with eyes that are still free, and I hand my body over to Hades. Take me, Odysseus, and finish me off when you have taken me. I see nothing here, no hope and no expectation, to give me any confidence that I will ever be happy again. Mother, do not stand in my way, not with a word, not with an act. Agree with me that I should die before I meet with shameful things I do not deserve. Someone who is not used to tasting evils bears it, but it hurts to put her neck in the yoke. She would be far luckier dead than alive. To live without honour is heavy labour.
Chorus. It is a wonderful stamp, and a plain one, among mortals, to be born of good parents, and the name of good birth goes further still in those who deserve it.
Hecuba. You spoke well, daughter, but there is pain in the fine words. Odysseus, if you must do the son of Peleus a favour and escape blame, do not kill this girl. Take me to the pyre of Achilles and stab me. Do not spare me. I bore Paris, who shot the son of Thetis with his arrows and destroyed him.
Odysseus. It was not your death, old woman, that Achilles' ghost asked the Achaeans for. It was hers.
Hecuba. Then at least kill me together with my daughter, and there will be twice as much blood to drink for the earth and for the dead man who demands it.
Odysseus. Your daughter's death is enough. We need not add one death to another. I wish we did not owe this one.
Hecuba. I am absolutely bound to die with my daughter.
Odysseus. How? I did not know I had a master.
Hecuba. Like ivy on an oak. That is how I will hold on to her.
Odysseus. Not if you listen to people who are wiser than you.
Hecuba. I will not let go of this child of my own free will.
Odysseus. And I will not go away and leave her here either.
Polyxena. Mother, listen to me. And you, son of Laertes, go easy on a parent who has every reason to be angry. And you, poor mother, do not fight the people who have power over us. Do you want to be thrown to the ground, and tear your old skin, pushed about by force, and to be dragged off shamefully by a young man's arm? That is what will happen. Do not. It is not worthy of you. No, my dear mother, give me your sweet hand, and let me lay my cheek against your cheek. Because never again, but now for the very last time, I will look at the rays of the sun and its round disc. You are hearing the last of my words to you. Oh mother, oh you who bore me, I am going down below now.
Hecuba. Oh daughter. And I will go on living in the light, as a slave.
Polyxena. No bridegroom, no wedding song, none of what should have been mine.
Hecuba. You are pitiful, child, and I am a wretched woman.
Polyxena. And there in Hades I will lie apart from you.
Hecuba. Oh. What am I going to do? Where will I end my life?
Polyxena. I will die a slave, and my father was a free man.
Hecuba. And I, of fifty children, have not one.
Polyxena. What shall I say for you to Hector, or to your old husband?
Hecuba. Tell them I am the most wretched of all women.
Polyxena. Oh breast, oh the breasts that fed me so sweetly.
Hecuba. Oh daughter, oh your wretched fate, before your time.
Polyxena. Goodbye, you who bore me. Goodbye, Cassandra, from me.
Hecuba. Others say goodbye and fare well. There is no faring well for your mother.
Polyxena. And my brother Polydorus, among the horse-loving Thracians.
Hecuba. If he is alive. I doubt it. I have no luck in anything.
Polyxena. He is alive, and when you die he will close your eyes.
Hecuba. I am dead already. My troubles have killed me before my death.
Polyxena. Take me, Odysseus, and put my robe over my head. Before my throat is cut, my mother's laments have melted my heart already, and I am melting hers with my crying. Oh light. I can still speak your name, but I have no share in you except the time it takes me to walk between the sword and the pyre of Achilles.
(Odysseus and his men lead Polyxena away.)
Hecuba. Oh, I am fainting. My limbs are giving way. Daughter, touch your mother, reach out your hand, give it to me. Do not leave me childless. I am destroyed, friends. If only I could see the Spartan woman like this, Helen, sister of the sons of Zeus. With her beautiful eyes she brought Troy down, Troy that was happy once, in the ugliest way there is.
(Hecuba sinks to the ground.)
Chorus. Breeze, breeze off the sea, you who carry the quick ships over the swell of the water, where will you take me, in my misery? Whose house will I come to, bought, to be a slave in it? To a harbour in the Dorian land? Or to Phthia, where they say the Apidanus, father of the loveliest waters, makes the plains fat and rich?
Chorus. Or to the islands, sent on my miserable way by an oar that sweeps the salt, to a pitiful life in someone's house, where the first palm tree ever born, and the laurel, lifted their holy branches for Leto, whom they loved, the glory of her labour, when she bore the children of Zeus? And there, with the girls of Delos, will I sing of the golden headband and the bow of Artemis, their goddess?
Chorus. Or in the city of Pallas, on the saffron robe of Athena of the lovely chariot, will I yoke her horses, working them into the web in threads of many colours, bright as flowers? Or the race of the Titans, that Zeus, the son of Cronos, puts to sleep with his fire that burns from both ends?
Chorus. Oh, my children, oh, my fathers, and my country, crumbling in smoke, smouldering, taken by the spear of the Argives. And I, on foreign soil, am called a slave now, leaving Asia behind for a house in Europe, which is a bedroom in Hades.
(Talthybius, the herald of the Greek army, comes in. He is an old man.)
Talthybius. Where can I find Hecuba, who was queen of Troy once, girls of Troy?
Chorus. Here, Talthybius, close by you. She is lying on her back on the ground, wrapped up in her clothes.
Talthybius. Zeus, what am I to say? That you watch over human beings? Or that we hold this belief for nothing, and it is false, and there is no race of gods at all, and it is chance that oversees everything that happens to mortals? Was this not the queen of the Phrygians, with all their gold? Was this not the wife of Priam, the greatly blessed? And now the whole city has been torn up by the spear, and she lies on the ground, a slave, an old woman with no children, fouling her poor head in the dust. Pheu, pheu. I am an old man, but let me die before I fall into some shameful piece of luck like this. Get up, poor woman. Lift your side off the ground, and that head, all white.
Hecuba. Ah. Who is this, who will not let my body lie? Whoever you are, why are you moving me, when I am grieving?
Talthybius. I am Talthybius, the servant of the Greeks. Agamemnon sent me to fetch you, lady.
Hecuba. Dearest man. Have the Achaeans decided to kill me too, at the grave? Is that what you have come for? What a welcome thing to say. Let us hurry. Let us be quick. Lead the way, old man.
Talthybius. I have come to fetch you so that you can bury your daughter, lady. She is dead. The two sons of Atreus sent me, and the Achaean people.
Hecuba. Oh. What are you going to say? So you did not come to fetch us to die, but to bring bad news? You are gone, child, snatched away from your mother. And I have no children now, as far as you are concerned. Oh, wretched woman that I am. How did you finish her? Did you show her any respect? Or did you come at the terrible thing as if she were an enemy, old man, and kill her that way? Tell me, even though what you say will not be kind.
Talthybius. Lady, you want me to earn a double set of tears, out of pity for your daughter. I will wet these eyes now, telling the bad news, as I did at the tomb when she was dying.
The whole crowd of the Achaean army was there, at full strength, in front of the tomb, for your daughter's slaughter. The son of Achilles took Polyxena by the hand and stood her on the top of the mound, and I was close by. Picked young men, the pick of the Achaeans, came behind, to hold your young heifer down with their hands if she kicked. Then Achilles' son took a full cup, all gold, in his hands and lifted it, a drink offering to his dead father, and he signalled to me to proclaim silence to the whole Achaean army. I took my place in the middle of them and said this: "Silence, Achaeans. Let the whole people be silent. Silence. Quiet." And I settled the crowd until there was not a breath of wind in it. Then he spoke. "Son of Peleus, my father, accept from me these offerings that soothe the dead and draw them up. Come, and drink the black, unmixed blood of a girl, which the army and I are giving you. Be kind to us. Let us loose the sterns and the cables of our ships, and grant us all a kind homecoming from Troy, and let us all come home to our own country." That is what he said, and the whole army prayed with him.
Then he took his sword, with the gold on the hilt, by the handle, and drew it from the sheath, and nodded to the picked young men of the Argive army to take hold of the girl. And she, when she realised, spoke these words: "Argives, who sacked my city, I die of my own free will. Let no one touch my body. I will offer my neck with a good heart. By the gods, let me go free when you kill me, so that I die free. I am a king's daughter, and I am ashamed to be called a slave among the dead." The people roared their approval, and King Agamemnon told the young men to let the girl go. And as soon as they heard that last word from the man whose power was greatest, they let go. And when she heard what her masters had said, she took her dress at the top of the shoulder and tore it down to the middle of her side, beside the navel, and showed her breasts and her chest, lovely as a statue's, and she sank on one knee to the ground and spoke the bravest words of all: "Look. Here. If it is my chest you want to strike, young man, strike. If you want it under the neck, here is my throat, ready." And he, not wanting to and wanting to, out of pity for the girl, cut through the channels of her breath with the iron, and the springs ran. And she, even as she died, took great care to fall decently, hiding what should be hidden from the eyes of men.
When she had let go her breath in the deadly slaughter, no two Argives had the same task. Some of them threw leaves on the dead girl from their hands. Others were heaping up a pyre, carrying logs of pine, and the man who carried nothing heard things like this from the man who did: "Are you standing there, you worthless man, with no dress and no ornament in your hands for the girl? Are you not going to give something to the girl with the great heart beyond all others, the best in spirit?" That is what I have to say about your daughter's death, and I see you as the most blessed of all women in your children, and the most unlucky.
Chorus. Some terrible trouble has boiled over onto the sons of Priam and onto my city. The gods forced it on us.
Hecuba. Daughter, I do not know which of my evils to look at. There are so many here. If I take hold of one, this one will not let me, and then another grief calls me over from there, evil taking over from evil. And now I cannot wipe what happened to you out of my mind so as not to groan for it. But you have taken the edge off it, reported to me as noble. Is it not strange? Bad soil, if it gets its season from the gods, bears a good crop, and good soil, if it misses what it ought to get, gives bad fruit. But among human beings the worthless man is never anything but bad, and the good man is good, and no disaster ruins his nature: he is decent always. Is it the parents that make the difference, or the upbringing? Being brought up well does teach a man goodness, though; and if someone learns that lesson well, he knows what is shameful, because he has learned it by the measuring rod of the good. My mind has been shooting those arrows into the air for nothing.
You, go and tell the Argives this: no one is to touch my daughter. Keep the crowd away. In an army of tens of thousands the mob has no discipline, and sailors' lawlessness is stronger than fire, and the man who does no harm is the bad one.
(Talthybius goes.)
And you, old servant, take a jar, dip it in the salt sea and bring it here, so that I can wash my child in her last bath, a bride who is no bride, a virgin who is no virgin, and lay her out. As she deserves? Where would I get the means? I could not. But as I can. What else is there for me? And I will gather ornaments from the captive women who live beside me inside these tents, if any of them has stolen something out of her own house without her new masters knowing.
(The old Maid goes off towards the shore with the jar.)
Shape of a house. House that was happy once. Priam, who had the most of everything and the finest of it, the most blessed of fathers, and I, this old woman, the mother of your children: how we have come to nothing, stripped of the pride we had. And then we puff ourselves up, one of us in a rich house, another with a name for honour among the citizens. Those things are nothing. Plans in the mind, and boasting with the tongue. The happiest man is the one who meets nothing bad, day by day.
(Hecuba goes into the tent.)
Chorus. It had to come to me, disaster, it had to come to me, grief, the day Paris first cut the pine on Mount Ida to sail over the swell of the sea to Helen's bed, the loveliest woman the Sun with his golden light shines on.
Chorus. Because troubles, and harder than troubles, necessities, are wheeling round, and out of one man's folly came an evil shared by all, and deadly, to the land of Simois, and disaster from other men's hands. The quarrel was judged, the one that Paris, a cowherd then, judged on Ida between three daughters of the blessed gods,
Chorus. and it ended in the spear, and killing, and the wrecking of my house. And a Spartan girl is groaning too, weeping her eyes out, at home beside the lovely stream of the Eurotas, and a mother whose sons are dead lays her hand on her grey head and tears at her cheeks, and her nails are bloody with the tearing.
(The Maid comes back from the shore. Women come with her, carrying a body under a cloth.)
Maid. Women, where is Hecuba? Where is the most miserable woman alive, who beats every man and every woman ever born at suffering? Nobody is going to take that crown from her.
Chorus. What now, you poor woman, with your ugly shouting? Your painful announcements never sleep.
Maid. I am bringing Hecuba this pain. In evil times it is not easy for a mortal mouth to speak good words.
Chorus. Look, she is just coming out of the tent. She is appearing at the right moment for what you have to say.
(Hecuba comes out of the tent.)
Maid. Mistress. Wretched beyond everything, and more than I can say. You are destroyed, you no longer exist, though you are looking at the light. No children, no husband, no city. Wiped out.
Hecuba. That is nothing new. You are throwing it at people who know. But why have you come, bringing me this corpse, Polyxena's, when I was told the whole Achaean army was busy with her burial, hand to hand?
Maid. She knows nothing. She is mourning Polyxena to me, and she has not touched the new trouble.
Hecuba. Oh, wretched woman. You are not bringing me the frenzied head of Cassandra, the god-singer, here?
Maid. The one you cry out for is alive. It is the dead one here you are not groaning for. Look at the body, uncovered, and see if it strikes you as a wonder, and past all your hopes.
(She draws back the cloth.)
Hecuba. Oh. I see my son dead. Polydorus, whom the Thracian was keeping safe for me in his house. I am destroyed, wretched woman, I no longer exist. Child, child, aiai, I begin the dirge, a frenzied song I learned just now from an avenging spirit.
Maid. So you knew your son's ruin, poor woman?
Hecuba. Unbelievable, unbelievable, new, new, what I see. Evils are coming one out of another, evils out of evils. Never a day without a groan, without a tear, will hold me again.
Chorus. Terrible, poor woman. Terrible, what we are suffering.
Hecuba. Child, child of a miserable mother, how did you die? What death lays you here? At whose hands, of all men?
Maid. I do not know. I found him on the shore of the sea.
Hecuba. Thrown up by the waves, or fallen there, killed by a bloody spear, on the smooth sand?
Maid. The open swell of the sea carried him out onto the beach.
Hecuba. Oh, aiai. I understand the dream my eyes saw in my sleep. It did not pass me by, the black-winged ghost, the one I saw around you, child, no longer alive in the light of Zeus.
Chorus. Then who killed him? Can you read your dream and say?
Hecuba. My guest. Mine. The Thracian horseman, in whose house his old father put him away and hid him.
Chorus. Oh. What are you going to say? He killed him to keep the gold?
Hecuba. Unspeakable. Unnameable. Past all wondering at. Not holy, not to be borne. Where is the justice between guest and host? Cursed man, worst of men, how you carved up his flesh, cutting with an iron sword the limbs of this child, and felt no pity.
Chorus. Poor woman. Whatever god is heavy on you has made you the most suffering of mortals. But I see the shape of our master, Agamemnon, coming. From here on, friends, let us be quiet.
(Agamemnon comes in.)
Agamemnon. Hecuba, why are you delaying? Why have you not come to hide your daughter in her grave, on the terms Talthybius brought me from you, that none of the Argives should touch your girl? We let her be, then, and we did not touch her. But you are taking your time, and I am amazed at it. I have come to send you on your way. Everything over there has been well done, if any of this is well. Ah. What man is this I see by the tents, a dead Trojan? He is no Argive. The clothes wrapped round his body tell me that.
Hecuba. Wretched woman. I mean myself, Hecuba, when I say you. What am I to do? Fall at Agamemnon's knees here, or carry my troubles in silence?
Agamemnon. Why have you turned your back to my face? Why are you crying, and not saying what has happened? Who is this?
Hecuba. But if he thinks of me as a slave and an enemy, and pushes me away from his knees, I would be adding pain to pain.
Agamemnon. I was not born a prophet. If I am not told, I cannot trace the road your thoughts are taking.
Hecuba. Am I reckoning this man's mind as more hostile than it is, when he is not hostile at all?
Agamemnon. If you want me to know nothing about this, we have arrived at the same place. I have no wish to hear it either.
Hecuba. Without this man I could not avenge my children. Why am I turning it over and over? I have to have the nerve, whether I win or not. Agamemnon, I beg you, by these knees, and by your beard, and by your fortunate right hand.
Agamemnon. Looking for what? Not to make your life free? That is easy enough for you.
Hecuba. No, not that. Let me punish the wicked, and I am willing to be a slave for the whole of my life.
Agamemnon. Well then, what are you calling on us to help with?
Hecuba. None of the things you are thinking of, my lord. Do you see this corpse, that I am dripping tears on?
Agamemnon. I see it. But what comes next I cannot make out.
Hecuba. I gave birth to him once. I carried him under my belt.
Agamemnon. Which of your children is this, poor woman?
Hecuba. Not one of Priam's sons who died under the walls of Troy.
Agamemnon. You had another son, then, besides them, lady?
Hecuba. For no good, as it turns out. This one, that you are looking at.
Agamemnon. Where did he happen to be when the city was being destroyed?
Hecuba. His father sent him away, for fear he would die.
Agamemnon. Where did he send him, alone, apart from the children he had then?
Hecuba. To this country, where he was found dead.
Agamemnon. To the man who rules this land? Polymestor?
Hecuba. He was sent here to keep gold. The bitterest gold there ever was.
Agamemnon. And who killed him? What death did he meet?
Hecuba. Who else? His Thracian host destroyed him.
Agamemnon. Poor woman. Was he so greedy to get the gold?
Hecuba. Exactly that, once he learned of the Phrygians' disaster.
Agamemnon. Where did you find him? Or did someone bring the body?
Hecuba. This woman. She came upon him on the seashore.
Agamemnon. Looking for him, or busy with some other work?
Hecuba. She had gone to fetch water from the sea, to wash Polyxena.
Agamemnon. So his host killed him, it seems, and threw him out.
Hecuba. To drift in the sea. After cutting up his body like this.
Agamemnon. Cruel, what you have suffered. Troubles without measure.
Hecuba. I am destroyed, Agamemnon. There is no evil left.
Agamemnon. Pheu, pheu. What woman was ever born so unlucky?
Hecuba. There is none, unless you mean Luck herself. But hear why I am falling at your knees. If you think what I have suffered is what the gods allow, I will put up with it. But if you think the opposite, then be my avenger on this man, the most godless of hosts, who feared neither the gods below the earth nor the gods above, and did the most godless thing. He sat at my table many times. He was counted first among my friends in the tally of guest-friendship. He had everything he should have had, and then he took his precautions and killed my son. And having chosen to kill him, he did not think him worth a grave, but threw him into the sea.
We are slaves, then, and weak, perhaps. But the gods are strong, and so is what rules over them: Law. It is by law that we believe in the gods at all, and live our lives with right and wrong marked out. If that law comes up to you for judgement and is destroyed, if the men who kill their guests, or have the nerve to carry off the holy things of the gods, do not pay for it, then there is nothing fair left anywhere among human beings. Count this as a disgrace, then, and have some respect for me. Pity us. Stand back from me like a painter from his picture, and look at me, and look closely at the evils I have. I was a queen once, and now I am your slave. I had fine children once, and now I am old, and childless at the same time, with no city, alone, the most wretched of mortals.
(Agamemnon turns away.)
Oh, wretched woman. Where are you drawing your foot away from me? It seems I will get nothing. Oh, poor woman that I am. Why is it that we mortals labour at all the other kinds of knowledge, as we should, and search them out, but Persuasion, the one thing that rules human beings absolutely, we take no more trouble to learn to the end, and pay fees for it, so that a man could persuade people of whatever he wanted and get it at the same time? How can anyone hope to do well after this? The sons I had are no longer mine, and she, my daughter, is a captive, in shame. I am gone. I see the smoke of my city leaping up over there.
And then, perhaps this is an empty part of the argument, to put Aphrodite forward, but all the same it is going to be said. At your side sleeps my daughter, the god-possessed girl, the one the Phrygians call Cassandra. Where will you show that those nights were dear to you, my lord? What thanks will my daughter have for the loving embraces in your bed, and I for hers? It is out of the dark, and the love-charms of the night, that mortals get their greatest gratitude. Listen, then. Do you see this dead man? If you do right by him, you do right by a kinsman of your own bed. My speech is short of one thing still. If only I had a voice in my arms, and in my hands, and in my hair, and in the tread of my feet, by the arts of Daedalus or some god, so that all of them together could take hold of your knees, weeping, and press every kind of argument on you. Master, greatest light of the Greeks, be persuaded. Lend the old woman your hand for her revenge, even if she is nothing. Do it anyway. It is a good man's part to serve justice, and to do evil to the evil, always, everywhere.
Chorus. It is strange how everything falls together for mortals, and how the laws mark out what has to be, making friends of the bitterest enemies, and enemies of the people who used to be kind.
Agamemnon. Hecuba, I pity you, and your son, and your fortunes, and the hand you hold out to me. And for the gods' sake, and for justice, I want this godless host to pay you this penalty, if only some way could be found for it to go well for you, and for me not to look, to the army, as if I had planned this killing of the king of Thrace for Cassandra's sake. There is a point where confusion has come over me. The army counts this man a friend, and the dead man an enemy. If he is dear to you, that is a separate matter, and the army has no share in it. Think about that. You have me willing to share your work and quick to help, but slow, if I am going to be slandered to the Achaeans.
Hecuba. Pheu. There is no mortal who is free. He is a slave to money, or to luck, or the mass of the city or the written laws keep him from acting the way his own judgement tells him. Since you are afraid, and give the mob too much weight, I will set you free of that fear. Know about it, if I plan some evil against the man who killed this boy, but do not do it with me. And if there is an uproar among the Achaeans, or an attempt to rescue the Thracian while he is suffering what he is going to suffer, hold them back, without seeming to do it for my sake. The rest, take heart, I will arrange it all well.
Agamemnon. How? What will you do? Take a sword in your old hand and kill the barbarian? Or with poisons, or with somebody's help? What hand will be with you? Where will you get friends?
Hecuba. These tents hide a crowd of Trojan women.
Agamemnon. You mean the captives? The Greeks' catch?
Hecuba. With them I will punish the man who murdered my son.
Agamemnon. And how are women going to get the better of men?
Hecuba. Numbers are a terrible thing, and with cunning added, hard to fight.
Agamemnon. Terrible. Still, I have a low opinion of the female race.
Hecuba. Why? Did women not kill the sons of Aegyptus, and empty Lemnos of men, every one of them? But let it be so. Drop this argument, and send this woman safely through the army for me.
(She turns to the Maid.)
And you, go up to my Thracian guest-friend and say this: "Hecuba, who was queen of Troy once, calls for you, on your own business no less than hers, and for your children too. Your children must hear what she has to say as well."
(The Maid goes off through the camp to find Polymestor.)
And hold back the burial of Polyxena, Agamemnon, slaughtered so lately, so that these two, brother and sister, can be hidden in the earth side by side, in one flame, a double grief for their mother.
Agamemnon. It shall be so. If the army could sail, I could not have given you this favour. But as it is, since the god is sending no favouring wind, we have to wait, and watch for a calm crossing. May it turn out well, somehow. This much is common to everyone, to each man privately and to the city: that the bad man suffers something bad, and the good man prospers.
(Agamemnon goes. Hecuba waits beside the body.)
Chorus. Troy, my country, you will never again be counted among the cities nobody has sacked. Such a cloud of Greeks has closed over you, spear upon spear, and laid you waste. Your crown of towers has been cut from your head, and you are smeared with soot, a filthy, pitiful stain. Poor city, I will never walk your streets again.
Chorus. It was midnight when my ruin came, the hour when sleep after supper spreads sweetly over the eyes. The songs were over, and the sacrifice, and the dancing, and my husband lay in our bedroom with his spear hung on its peg, no longer watching for the crowd of sailors who had set foot on Trojan ground.
Chorus. And I was doing up my hair in its band, looking into the endless gleam of a golden mirror, ready to fall into my bed. And a noise went up through the city, and this was the shout that ran down the streets of Troy: "Sons of Greece, when, oh when will you sack the citadel of Troy and get home to your houses?"
Chorus. I left the bed I loved in nothing but a shift, like a Dorian girl, and sat down at the altar of holy Artemis, and it did me no good, poor woman. I saw my husband dead, and I am being carried away over the salt sea, looking back at my city, when the ship set its foot for home and cut me off from the land of Troy. Wretched. I gave in to the pain,
Chorus. cursing Helen, the sister of the twin sons of Zeus, and the cattleman of Ida, Paris, the ruin of us, because it was a marriage, a marriage that was no marriage but misery sent by some avenging spirit, that destroyed me, and tore me from my father's land, and threw me out of my home. May the salt sea never carry her back again, and may she never come to her father's house.
(Polymestor comes in with his two young sons and an armed escort. Hecuba comes out of the tent to meet him.)
Polymestor. Priam, the dearest man I knew, and you, Hecuba, dearest of women, I weep to look at you, and at your city, and at your daughter, killed just now. Pheu. There is nothing a man can trust. Not a good name. Not the idea that someone doing well will not come to do badly. The gods themselves stir everything up, backwards and forwards, throwing in confusion, so that we will worship them because we cannot understand them. But what is the use of crying over all that? It does not get us one step ahead of our troubles. As for you, if you have any complaint about my being away, hold it. I happened to be off in the middle of Thrace when you came here. When I got back, I was just lifting my foot over my own doorstep when this slave of yours ran straight into me with your message, and I heard it and came.
Hecuba. I am ashamed to look you in the face, Polymestor, lying in troubles like these. You saw me when I was doing well, and shame takes hold of me now that I have come to this, to where I am now. I could not look at you with a steady eye. But do not take it for ill will towards you, Polymestor. There is another reason besides: the custom that women do not look men in the face.
Polymestor. No wonder at all. But what do you need me for? What made you send for me to come out of my house?
Hecuba. There is something private, something of my own, that I want to say to you and to your sons. Order your attendants to stand off, away from these tents.
Polymestor. Go. There is no danger in being alone here.
(The escort goes.)
You are my friend, and this Greek army is a friend to me. But you must say what it is. How should a man who is doing well help friends who are not? I am ready.
Hecuba. First tell me about the boy you have in your house, Polydorus, from my hand and his father's. Is he alive? The rest I will ask you after.
Polymestor. Certainly. On his account, at least, you are lucky.
Hecuba. Dearest of friends, how well you speak, and how like you.
Polymestor. So what is the second thing you want to learn from me?
Hecuba. Does he remember me at all, his mother?
Polymestor. Yes. He was looking for a way to slip off and come to you here in secret.
Hecuba. And the gold he came from Troy with, is it safe?
Polymestor. Safe. Under guard in my house.
Hecuba. Then keep it safe, and do not covet what belongs to your neighbours.
Polymestor. Never. Let me enjoy what I have, lady.
Hecuba. Do you know, then, what I want to tell you and your sons?
Polymestor. I do not. Your words will show me.
Hecuba. There is, my friend, and you are as dear to me now as I am to you, there is...
Polymestor. What is it that I and my children have to know?
Hecuba. Gold. Old vaults of it, dug down under the ground by Priam's house.
Polymestor. This is what you want to pass on to your son?
Hecuba. Yes, and through you. You are a god-fearing man.
Polymestor. Then why do these children have to be here?
Hecuba. Better that they know, in case you die.
Polymestor. Well said. That is the cleverer way, too.
Hecuba. Do you know where the temple of Athena of Troy stands?
Polymestor. The gold is there? What is the mark?
Hecuba. A black rock sticking up out of the ground.
Polymestor. Is there anything else you want to tell me about that place?
Hecuba. I want you to keep safe the money I came away with.
Polymestor. Where is it? Inside your dress, or have you got it hidden somewhere?
Hecuba. It is kept safe in these tents, among a heap of spoils.
Polymestor. Where? These are the Greeks' shelters, all round their ships.
Hecuba. The captive women have tents of their own.
Polymestor. And inside, can I trust it? No men about?
Hecuba. No Greeks inside. Only us women. Come into the tent. The Argives are longing to cast off their ships and get home from Troy. Then, when you have done everything you need to, you can go back with your sons to wherever it was you settled my child.
(Hecuba takes Polymestor and his sons into the tent.)
Chorus. You have not paid yet. But perhaps you will pay.
Chorus. Like a man who falls into the bilge with no harbour near, you will pitch sideways out of everything your heart holds dear, robbed of your life. For where what is owed to Justice and what is owed to the gods fall together, there is ruin. Deadly, deadly ruin. The hope that led you down this road will cheat you. It has led you to death and to Hades, poor fool, and you will lose your life to a hand that never went to war.
(Polymestor screams from inside the tent.)
Polymestor. Oh. Oh. I am blinded. The light of my eyes. Misery.
Chorus. Did you hear the Thracian howling, friends?
Polymestor. Oh, again, again. My children. Butchered. Misery.
Chorus. Friends, something new and terrible has been done inside the tent.
Polymestor. You will not get away from me, not on your quick feet. I will smash my way in. I will break open the inner rooms of this house.
Chorus. Look. There goes a missile from a heavy hand. Shall we burst in? This is the moment. Hecuba and the women of Troy need us at their side.
(Hecuba comes out of the tent.)
Hecuba. Pound away. Spare nothing. Batter the doors down. You will never put the bright sight back in your eyes, and you will never see your sons alive. I killed them.
Chorus. Have you really brought the Thracian down, mistress? Is the stranger in your power? Have you done what you say?
Hecuba. You will see him in a moment in front of the tent, blind, coming out on blind and stumbling feet, and the bodies of his two sons, whom I killed, with the best of the women of Troy. He has paid me what he owed. Here he comes out of the house, as you see. I will get out of his way and stand clear of the Thracian while his anger is running. There is no fighting him now.
(Polymestor crawls out of the tent on his hands and knees, blood running from his eyes.)
Polymestor. Oh, oh, where can I go, where can I stand, where can I put in to shore? Down on all fours like a mountain beast, hands and feet on the track? Which way shall I take, this one or that one, hunting to catch the Trojan women, the killers of men, the women who destroyed me? Wretched daughters of Phrygia, wretched, cursed women, which corner have they run to, cowering from me? Sun, if only you would heal my eyes, heal the bleeding lids, the blindness, and give me back the light. Ah. Ah. Quiet. I can hear them, the women, their hidden step. Where can I spring and fill myself with flesh and bone, and make a wild beast's feast of them, and win back my ruin, their maiming for mine? Oh, misery. Where, where am I rushing, leaving my children alone for the Bacchants of Hades to tear in pieces, butchered, a bloody meal for dogs, thrown out on the mountainside like a savage's leavings? Where can I stand, where turn, where go, like a ship hauling in its sea ropes, furling the linen sail, rushing to that bed of death, to guard my children?
Chorus. Poor man. Unbearable things have been done to you. But you did shameful things, and the penalty is terrible. The god who is heavy on you, whoever he is, has given it.
Polymestor. Aiai. Io, Thrace, my people, spear in hand, armed, riding fine horses, in the grip of Ares. Io, Greeks. Io, sons of Atreus. I am shouting, shouting, I shout. Come. Come here, by the gods. Does anyone hear? Will nobody help? Why are you waiting? Women have destroyed me, captive women. Terrible, terrible things have been done to us. Oh, my ruin. Where can I turn, where can I go? Shall I fly up to the high roof of heaven, where Orion and Sirius shoot blazing fire from their eyes, or shall I plunge down, wretched, to the black ferry-crossing of Hades?
Chorus. When a man suffers evils too great to bear, it is forgivable if he takes himself out of a wretched life.
(Agamemnon comes in with his men.)
Agamemnon. I heard shouting and came. Echo, the daughter of the mountain rock, was not quiet about it: she shrieked it through the whole army and set off a commotion. If we did not know that the Phrygians' towers had fallen to the Greek spear, this noise would have given us a real fright.
Polymestor. Dearest of friends. I know you, Agamemnon. I heard your voice. Do you see what has been done to us?
Agamemnon. What is this? Polymestor. Poor man, who has destroyed you? Who blinded your eyes and bloodied the pupils, and killed these children? Whoever he was, he had a great anger against you and your sons.
Polymestor. Hecuba, with the captive women. She has destroyed me. Not destroyed. Worse than that.
Agamemnon. What are you saying? You did this, as he says? You, Hecuba, had the nerve for this, a thing nobody could have thought possible?
Polymestor. Oh. What are you saying? Is she near here somewhere? Show me, tell me where she is, so that I can grab her in my hands and tear her apart and bloody her flesh.
Agamemnon. You. What is the matter with you?
Polymestor. By the gods I beg you, let me loose my raging hand on her.
Agamemnon. Stop. Throw the barbarian out of your heart and speak. I will hear you and her in turn, and judge fairly why you are suffering this.
Polymestor. I will speak, then. There was a son of Priam's, the youngest, Polydorus, Hecuba's boy, and his father Priam sent him to me out of Troy to bring up in my house, because he already suspected Troy would fall. I killed him. But hear why I killed him, and how well and how cleverly I thought it out. I was afraid that if the boy was left alive as your enemy he would gather Troy together and settle it again, and that the Greeks, once they knew a son of Priam was living, would raise another expedition against the Phrygians' country, and then they would be trampling these plains of Thrace and plundering them, and the neighbours of Troy would have the same trouble we were labouring under just now, my lord.
Hecuba found out about her son's death, and she brought me here with a story: she was going to show me the hidden vaults of the house of Priam's gold in Troy. She took me into the tent alone with my children, so that nobody else would know about it. I sat down on a couch in the middle of them, with my knees bent. There were a lot of hands. The girls of Troy had their seats on my left and on my right, as if beside a friend, and they were praising the weaving of Edonian hands, holding this cloak up to the light to look at it. Others were admiring my Thracian spear, and between them they stripped me of both my defences. And the ones who were mothers were making a great fuss over my children, tossing them in their arms and passing them from hand to hand, to get them away from their father. And then, out of that calm talk, would you believe it, all at once they pull daggers from somewhere in their dresses and stab the children, and the rest of them grab me like enemies and hold my arms and legs. I wanted to help my sons, and if I lifted my face, they held me down by the hair; if I moved my hands, I could do nothing, poor man, against that crowd of women. And at the last, pain on top of pain, they did the worst of all. They took their brooches and stabbed the pupils of my eyes, my poor eyes, and made them run with blood, and then they scattered through the tent and ran. I leapt up like a wild beast and went after the murdering bitches, hunting along every wall like a huntsman, striking, battering.
That is what I have suffered for trying to do you a favour, Agamemnon, and for killing an enemy of yours. And so as not to spin out a long speech: if any man in the old days has spoken ill of women, or if any man is speaking ill of them now, or is going to, I will put it all in one sentence. Neither the sea nor the land breeds a race like them. Anyone who has ever had dealings with them knows it.
Chorus. Do not be so bold, and do not lump the whole female sex in with your own troubles and blame us all together. There are many of us. Some of us deserve to be hated, and some of us are born to be counted among the bad. But not all.
Hecuba. Agamemnon, men's tongues should never have been given more power than their deeds. If a man had done good, he should have spoken well; if he had done wrong, his words should have been rotten, and it should never have been possible to make injustice sound good. The people who have worked that art out to a fine point are clever, but they cannot go on being clever to the end. They come to a bad end. Nobody has escaped it yet.
That is my opening, and it was for you. Now I will go to this man and answer him. You say you killed my son to save the Greeks a second war, and for Agamemnon's sake. But first, you worst of men: the barbarian race never could be friends with the Greeks, and never will be. It is not possible. And what favour were you so eager to do? Were you marrying into some family? Were you a relative? What reason did you have? Or were they going to sail back here and cut down the crops of your land? Who do you think is going to believe that? If you wanted to tell the truth, it was the gold that killed my son. The gold, and your profit.
Then explain this to me. When Troy was doing well, when the wall still stood round the city, when Priam was alive and Hector's spear was in flower, why did you not kill the boy then, if you really wanted to do this man a favour? You had him in your house, you were bringing him up. Or why not come to the Argives with him alive? No. It was when we were no longer in the light, when the smoke showed that the city belonged to the enemy, that you murdered a guest who had come to your hearth.
And on top of that, listen to this, so you can be shown for what you are. If you were really a friend to the Greeks, you should have taken the gold, which you say is not yours but his, and brought it and given it to them, when they were poor and had been exiles from their own country so long. But even now you cannot bring yourself to let it out of your hand. You keep hold of it and hang on to it in your house. And consider: if you had brought up my boy the way you were bound to bring him up, and kept him safe, you would have had a fine name. It is in trouble that good men show most clearly as friends; good luck finds friends of its own accord, every time. If you had run short of money and he had prospered, my son would have been a great treasure for you to draw on. As it is, you no longer have him for your friend, the good of the gold is gone, your sons are gone, and you yourself are as you are.
And I say this to you, Agamemnon. If you help this man, you will be shown for a bad man. You will be doing good to a guest who was not god-fearing, not faithful where he should have been faithful, not holy, not just. And we shall say that you take pleasure in bad men because you are one yourself. But I do not abuse my masters.
Chorus. Pheu, pheu. A good cause always gives a man the start of a good speech.
Agamemnon. It is a heavy thing for me to judge other people's evils, but I have to all the same. It would be a disgrace to take this business into my hands and then push it away. As for my opinion, so that you know it: it does not look to me as if you killed your guest as a favour to me, or to the Greeks. It looks as if you did it to have the gold in your own house. Now that you are in trouble, you say what suits you. Perhaps among your people it is an easy thing to kill a guest. Among us Greeks it is a disgrace. How can I judge you not guilty and escape the blame? I cannot. You had the nerve to do what was not right. Now bear what you will not like.
Polymestor. Oh. Beaten by a woman, it seems, and a slave, I am to pay the penalty to people who are beneath me.
Agamemnon. And is it not just, if you did the evil?
Polymestor. Oh, my children. Oh, my eyes. Misery.
Hecuba. You are in pain? And what about me? Do you think I feel no pain for my son?
Polymestor. It makes you happy, does it, this outrage against me, you criminal?
Hecuba. And why should I not be happy, when I have my revenge on you?
Polymestor. Not for long. Not once the salt spray of the sea...
Hecuba. Carries me by ship to the borders of Greece, you mean?
Polymestor. Closes over you, when you fall from the masthead.
Hecuba. And who is going to force me to make that jump?
Polymestor. You will climb the ship's mast yourself, on your own feet.
Hecuba. With wings on my back? Or how?
Polymestor. You will turn into a dog, with eyes of fire.
Hecuba. And how do you know about this change in my shape?
Polymestor. Dionysus, the prophet of the Thracians, told me.
Hecuba. And he told you nothing about the evils you have now?
Polymestor. No. Or you would never have caught me with a trick like this.
Hecuba. Dead or alive, is it here that I will finish my life?
Polymestor. Dead. And your tomb will be given a name...
Hecuba. After my shape, you will say? Or what?
Polymestor. The Grave of the Miserable Dog. A landmark for sailors.
Hecuba. I do not care, so long as you have paid me the penalty.
Polymestor. And your daughter Cassandra will have to die too.
Hecuba. I spit on that. I give it back to you, to keep for yourself.
Polymestor. This man's wife will kill her. The bitter keeper of his house.
Hecuba. May the daughter of Tyndareus never go so mad as that.
Polymestor. And she will kill this man too, with an axe raised high over her head.
Agamemnon. You there. Are you mad? Are you asking for trouble?
Polymestor. Kill me. A bath of blood is waiting for you in Argos.
Agamemnon. Slaves, drag him out of my sight, by force.
Polymestor. Does it hurt to hear it?
Agamemnon. Shut his mouth.
Polymestor. Shut it. It has been said.
Agamemnon. Now, as fast as you can, throw him out on some deserted island, since his mouth is so very bold. And you, Hecuba, poor woman, go and bury your two dead. And you women of Troy must go to your masters' tents. I can see the wind already, the wind that will carry us home. May we sail safely home to our own country, and find everything well in our houses, set free from all this trouble.
(Agamemnon's men drag Polymestor away. Agamemnon goes. Hecuba goes to her dead.)
Chorus. Go to the harbour, friends, and to the tents, to taste the labour of slaves under masters. Necessity is hard.
(Eleusis, in front of the temple of Demeter. Aethra, the mother of Theseus, sits at the altar. Around her, in a ring, stand the old women of Argos, dressed in mourning, holding out olive branches. Adrastus lies on the ground by the gateway with his head covered, and a group of boys stands near him.)
Aethra. Demeter, keeper of the hearth of this land of Eleusis, and you servants of the goddess who look after her temple: give happiness to me, and to my son Theseus, and to the city of Athens, and to the country of Pittheus, where my father brought me up, Aethra, in a rich house, and gave me as a wife to Aegeus, the son of Pandion, because the oracle of Apollo told him to. I am making this prayer because I have been looking at these old women. They have left their homes in the land of Argos and fallen at my knees with the suppliant's olive branch in their hands, and a terrible thing has happened to them. Their seven noble sons died around the gates of Cadmus's city, and they are childless. Adrastus, the king of Argos, led those men there once. He wanted to win a share of the inheritance of Oedipus for his son-in-law Polyneices, who was an exile. Now their mothers want to bury the dead, the men the spear killed, in the earth, and the winners are stopping them. They will not allow the bodies to be taken up. They are treating the laws of the gods with contempt.
Adrastus shares the load of this appeal to me. There he lies, his eyes wet with tears, groaning over his spear, and over the most disastrous expedition he ever sent out of his house. He keeps pressing me to persuade my son with my prayers to become the man who recovers the dead and helps to bury them, either by talking or by the strength of his spear. He lays this one task on my son and on the city of Athens.
I happen to be here because I had come out of my house to this precinct to offer the first sacrifice for the ploughing of the land, here where the fruitful ear of grain first showed itself, bristling above this earth. And I am waiting, at the holy altars of the two goddesses, Persephone and her mother Demeter, holding these leaves that tie me down though they are no rope, out of pity for these grey-haired mothers whose children are gone, and out of respect for the sacred garlands. My herald has gone to the city to call Theseus here, so that he can either lift these women's grief off the land, or release me from this suppliant's hold on me, by doing something the gods approve of. For women, if they have any sense, it is right to do everything through men.
Chorus. I beg you, old woman, an old mouth begging, down on my knees at your knee. Free my children. Lawless men have left the limbs of the dead, unstrung by death, as food for the wild beasts of the mountains.
Chorus. Look at the pitiful tears welling out of my eyes and lying on the lids, the grey skin of my old flesh torn by my own fingernails. What else can I do? I never laid my dead sons out in my house, and I do not see the earth heaped up over their graves.
Chorus. You too, lady, once bore a son. You made your bed dear to your husband. So give me a share of your mind, share it with me, as much as I ache, miserable, for the dead that I bore. Persuade your son, oh, we beg you, to go to the river Ismenus and put into my arms the bodies of the dead, young men in their strength, lying about unburied.
Chorus. Not as holy custom allows, but under force, I have come, falling down and begging at the altars of the gods, where the fire is lit. My cause is just, and you have the power, in the good luck of your own child, to lift the misfortune off me. I suffer pitifully and I beg you, put my dead son into my wretched hands, let me wrap my arms round the poor limbs of my boy.
Chorus. Here comes another contest of wailing, wailing taking up the wailing. The hands of the servant women are ringing. Come, beating in time with the song, come, you who share the pain, the dance that Hades honours. Drag the white nail down the cheek and bloody it, bloody the skin. What is done for the dead is an ornament to the living.
Chorus. This pleasure in wailing is never satisfied. It carries me away, so much labour, like a wet drop running down a steep rock face, never stopping, forever. Wailing. When children die, it is a woman's nature to suffer it out in cries. That labour is laid on us. E, e. If I were dead, I could forget these pains.
(Theseus comes in.)
Theseus. What wailing was that I heard, and the beating of breasts, and dirges for the dead, echoing out of this temple? Fear gives me wings. My mother has been away from home a long time, and I have come on foot to find her, in case something has happened to her. Ah. What is this? I see a strange opening for talk. My old mother sitting at the altar, and foreign women with her, and their trouble is not all of one kind. From their old eyes they are driving pitiful tears down to the ground. Their hair is cut, and their clothes are not clothes for a festival. What is this, mother? It is yours to tell me, and mine to listen. I am expecting news.
Aethra. My son, these women are the mothers of the seven generals who died around the gates of Cadmus's city. They are holding me under guard with their suppliant branches, in a ring, child, as you can see.
Theseus. And who is this man groaning so pitifully in the gateway?
Aethra. Adrastus, they tell me. The king of Argos.
Theseus. And the boys round him? Are they his children?
Aethra. No. They are the sons of the dead men.
Theseus. Then why have they come to us, with the suppliant's hand held out?
Aethra. I know why. But from here on the story is theirs to tell, child.
Theseus. You, the man wrapped up in his cloak. I am asking you. Uncover your head and speak, and let the groaning go. Nothing gets done except by way of the tongue.
Adrastus. Glorious victor, king of the land of Athens, Theseus, I have come as a suppliant to you and to your city.
Theseus. What are you hunting for? What do you need?
Adrastus. You know about the expedition I led, and how it ended in ruin.
Theseus. You did not exactly cross Greece in silence.
Adrastus. There I lost the best men of Argos.
Theseus. That is what miserable war does.
Adrastus. I went to the city and asked for these dead men.
Theseus. Trusting to heralds, Hermes's men, so that you could bury them?
Adrastus. Yes. And even then the men who killed them would not let me.
Theseus. What do they say, when what you ask for is holy?
Adrastus. Say? They are winning, and they do not know how to carry it.
Theseus. So have you come to me for advice? Or for what?
Adrastus. I want you, Theseus, to bring the sons of Argos home.
Theseus. And where is Argos now? Was all that boasting for nothing?
Adrastus. We stumbled, and we are finished. We have come to you.
Theseus. Is this your own private idea, or the whole city's?
Adrastus. All the sons of Danaus beg you to bury the dead.
Theseus. And what made you march seven companies against Thebes?
Adrastus. I was doing a favour for my two sons-in-law.
Theseus. Which of the Argives did you give your daughters to?
Adrastus. I made no marriage for my house inside the family.
Theseus. You gave Argive girls to foreigners?
Adrastus. Yes. To Tydeus, and to Polyneices, the Theban-born.
Theseus. What made you want a marriage like that?
Adrastus. Riddles from Apollo, hard to make out. They crept up on me.
Theseus. What did Apollo say, when he settled the girls' marriage?
Adrastus. To give my two daughters to a boar and a lion.
Theseus. And how did you unwind the god's oracle?
Adrastus. Two exiles came to my gates one night, and they were both...
Theseus. Who and who? Say it. You are talking about two men at once.
Adrastus. Tydeus and Polyneices. They started fighting each other.
Theseus. And you gave your daughters to them, as if they were the beasts?
Adrastus. Yes. Watching them fight, I saw the two animals.
Theseus. And how had they come to leave the borders of their own countries?
Adrastus. Tydeus was in exile for shedding a kinsman's blood.
Theseus. And the son of Oedipus? Why had he left Thebes?
Adrastus. Because of his father's curse. So that he would not kill his brother.
Theseus. That was a sensible exile you describe, and a voluntary one.
Adrastus. But the ones who stayed at home wronged the one who was away.
Theseus. You do not mean his brother robbed him of his property?
Adrastus. I went to settle that account. And then I was destroyed.
Theseus. Did you go to the seers? Did you look at the flame of the burnt offerings?
Adrastus. Oh. You are driving me right to the place where I stumbled worst.
Theseus. You did not go, it seems, with the goodwill of the gods.
Adrastus. Worse. I went against Amphiaraus, over his head.
Theseus. You turned your back on the divine as easily as that?
Adrastus. The shouting of young men knocked the sense out of me.
Theseus. You went for courage instead of good counsel.
Adrastus. Yes. And that has destroyed many a general. But listen, bravest head in all Greece, king of Athens. I am ashamed to be falling to the ground and wrapping my hand round your knee, a grey-haired man, a king, and a fortunate one, once. But I have no choice. I have to give way to what has happened to me. Save the dead for me. Pity my troubles, and pity these women, the mothers of the men who died, whose grey old age has come to them with no children in it. They found the strength to come here and set a stranger's foot on foreign soil, barely able to move their old limbs, and not as an embassy to the mysteries of Demeter, but to bury their dead, when they themselves should have been buried by the hands of those sons, in their prime.
It is wise for a rich man to look at poverty, and for a poor man to look up at the rich, admiring them, so that the love of money takes hold of him; and for people who are not in trouble to look at pitiful things and be afraid. And a man who makes songs should be happy when he brings the songs he makes into the world. If he is not, if he is hurting at home, there is no way he can give pleasure to others. It would not even be right.
Now perhaps you will say: why pass over the land of Pelops and lay this labour on Athens? I ought to explain that. Sparta is cruel, and her ways are shifty. The other cities are small and weak. Your city is the only one that could take this labour on. It looks at what is pitiful, and it has you for a shepherd, young and good; and many cities have been destroyed for the want of one, with no general to lead them.
Chorus. And I say the same as this man does, Theseus. Take my troubles to heart, out of pity.
Theseus. I have argued this same point with other people before, and worked at it. Someone said that there is more bad than good in the lives of mortals. I hold the opposite opinion: that for human beings the good outweighs the bad. If it did not, we would not be alive in the light. I praise whichever of the gods it was who took our life out of the muddle, out of living like beasts, and set it in order. First he put understanding in us. Then he gave us a tongue, the messenger of speech, so that we could recognise words. Then food from the crops, and for the crops drops of water out of the sky, to feed what grows from the earth and water its belly. And on top of that, shelter against winter, and ways of keeping off the burning heat the god sends down; and sailing the sea, so that we could exchange with one another whatever a country lacks. And where things are unclear and we have no certain knowledge, the seers look into the fire, and into the folds of the entrails, and read the birds, and tell us in advance. Are we not spoiled, when a god has fitted life out for us like this, if it is not enough for us? But our cleverness wants to be stronger than the god, and with pride settled in our hearts we think we are wiser than the gods.
You seem to me to belong to that company. You were not born clever. You were yoked to the oracles of Apollo and gave your daughters to foreigners on the strength of them, as if the gods were real, and you mixed a bright house with a muddy one and left a running sore on your own. A wise man should never mix unjust bodies with just ones. He should get prosperous friends for his family. Because the god treats their fortunes as one, and by the pains of the sick man he destroys the man who shares his sickness and did nothing wrong. You led all the Argives out to war when the seers were telling you what the gods said, and then you dishonoured them, forced your way past the gods, and destroyed your city. You were led astray by young men, the kind who enjoy being honoured and swell wars without any justice in them, ruining the citizens: one so that he can command an army, one so that he can get power into his hands and commit outrage with it, another for profit, never looking to see whether the people are harmed by any of it.
There are three classes of citizens. The rich are useless, and always want more. The have-nots, short of a living, are dangerous. They give too big a share to envy, and they shoot evil stings at the men who have something, fooled by the tongues of bad leaders. Of the three parts, it is the one in the middle that saves cities, by keeping whatever order the city lays down. And after all that, am I to become your ally? What fine thing could I say to my citizens? Go, and good luck to you. If you did not plan well, press down on your own fortune yourself, and leave us alone.
Chorus. He went wrong. But that is in young men, and he should be forgiven. And we have come to you as a healer of these things, my lord.
Adrastus. I did not choose you as a judge of my troubles, my lord, nor, if it turns out that I did something badly, as the man to punish and correct me. I came so that I might get some good of you. If you will not, I have to be content with your decision. What else can I do? Come, old women. Go. Leave the grey-green leaves here where they lie, lay the branches down, and call the gods to witness, and the earth, and Demeter, the goddess who carries the torch, and the light of the sun, that our prayers in the gods' name did us no good at all.
Chorus. Your mother's father Pittheus was a son of Pelops, and we come from the land of Pelops. The blood of your fathers is the blood of ours. What are you doing? Will you betray these branches, and throw old women out of your land with nothing of what they had a right to? Do not. A wild beast has the rock for a refuge, and a slave has the altars of the gods, and a city, when the storm hits it, cowers up against another city. Nothing in human life is happy all the way to the end.
Chorus. Get up, poor woman, from the holy floor of Persephone, get up and go to him, lay your hand on his knees, beg him to bring home the bodies of your dead children. Oh, my misery, the boys I lost under the walls of Cadmus's city. Io moi. Take me, carry me, lead me, guide these poor old hands. By your beard, friend, most honoured man in Greece, I beg you, falling round your knee and your hand, wretched as I am. Pity me, for my children. I am a suppliant, a wanderer pouring out a pitiful lament, a pitiful one. Do not stand by, child, and let my sons lie unburied in the land of Cadmus, a joy for the wild beasts, young men your own age. I beg you. Look at the tears on my eyelids, as I fall like this at your knees, to win a grave for my children.
Theseus. Mother, why are you crying, with your thin veil pulled over your eyes? Is it because you heard these women's miserable wailing? Something went through me too. Lift your white head. Do not sit weeping at the holy altar of Demeter.
Aethra. Aiai.
Theseus. Their troubles are not yours to groan over.
Aethra. Poor women.
Theseus. You were not born one of them.
Aethra. May I say something, child, that would be good for you and for the city?
Theseus. Yes. Plenty of wisdom comes from women too.
Aethra. But the thing I am keeping back makes me hesitate.
Theseus. That is a shameful thing to say. Hiding good words from your own people.
Aethra. Then I will not keep quiet now and blame myself later for the silence I kept today, and call it a bad silence. And I will not throw away the fine thing I have to say out of the fear that it is useless for women to speak well. My son, first I tell you to look to the gods' side of this, so that you do not fall by dishonouring them. You think well about everything else. This is the one place where you have stumbled.
Beyond that: if there were no duty to have the nerve to act for people who are wronged, I would have kept very quiet. But as it is, you should understand how much honour this brings you, and it costs me no fear to advise it, child. There are men of violence keeping the dead from their share of a grave and the rites of burial. Force them, with your own hand, to do what they have to do. Stop men who are throwing the laws of all Greece into confusion. Because what holds human cities together is this: a man keeping the laws well.
And someone will say it was cowardice in your hands. That when your city could have won the crown of glory you were afraid, and stood back. That you took on the fight with a wild boar and worked hard at a cheap job, and where you should have looked at a helmet and a spear point and worked it through, you were found to be a coward. Do not do it, child. Not if you are mine. Do you see how your country, when they mock her for having no plan, looks back at the mockers with a fierce eye? Because she grows in her labours. Cities that keep quiet and do things in the dark see in the dark too, from being so careful. Will you not go, child, and help the dead, and these wretched women who need you? I am not afraid for you, since you are setting out with justice on your side. And though I see Cadmus's people doing well, I am confident they will throw the dice differently yet. The god turns everything upside down again.
Chorus. Dearest woman, you have spoken well for him and for me. This is a double joy.
Theseus. Mother, the words I said to this man were right, and I gave my opinion of the plans that made him fall. But I also see what you are warning me about: that it does not suit my character to run from danger. I have done many fine things, and I have chosen this as my habit before the Greeks: always to stand as the punisher of the wicked. So I cannot refuse labours. What will my enemies say of me, when you, my mother, who fear for me more than anyone does, are the first to tell me to take this labour on?
I will do it. I will go and free the dead by persuading them with words. If not, then by force of the spear, right away, and the gods will not begrudge it. But I want the whole city to approve of this as well. It will approve, because I want it; still, if I add an argument, I will have the people better disposed. I made the people the sole ruler here, when I set this city free and gave every man an equal vote. I will take Adrastus as the proof of what I say and go to the assembly of the citizens. When I have persuaded them, I will gather picked young Athenians and come back here, and sitting under arms I will send word to Creon, asking for the bodies of the dead.
And you, old women, take the holy garlands off my mother, so that I can take her dear hand and lead her to the house of Aegeus. A man is wretched who does not serve his parents in return. It is the finest of all repayments. What he gives, he gets back from his own children, the same as he gave to the ones who bore him.
(Theseus leads Aethra away. Adrastus and the boys stay by the altar.)
Chorus. Argos, land of horses, my father's ground, did you hear this, did you hear what the king means to do, holy toward the gods and great, for all Pelasgia, and all through Argos?
Chorus. If only he could come to the end of my troubles and past it, and still take up the mother's treasure, bloodied as it is, and make the land of Inachus his friend by helping her.
Chorus. A fine ornament for cities, a labour done in reverence, and it keeps its thanks forever. What will the city decide for me? Will it cut a treaty of friendship with me, and will we get graves for our children?
Chorus. Defend a mother, city of Pallas, defend her, so that the laws of mortals are not defiled. You honour justice, and you give the lesser share to injustice, and you always rescue the unlucky.
(Theseus comes back with an Athenian herald.)
Theseus. You have always served the city and me with this skill of yours, carrying my proclamations. Go across the Asopus and the water of the Ismenus and tell the high and mighty king of the Cadmeans this: Theseus asks you, as a favour, to let him bury the dead. He lives in the land next to yours, he thinks it a fair thing to be granted, and he would make the whole people of Erechtheus your friends. If they agree, thank them and come straight back. If they refuse, here is the second message: they can expect my revellers, and my revellers carry shields. My army is sitting here ready, round the holy spring of Callichorus, and it is being reviewed as we speak. And the city took this labour on willingly, gladly, once it saw that I wanted it.
Ah. Who is this, coming to interrupt my talk? A Cadmean, it seems, a herald, though I am not sure of it. Wait. He may save you the trouble. He has come to meet my plans halfway.
Herald. Who is the king of this country? Who do I deliver my message to? I bring the words of Creon, who rules the land of Cadmus now that Eteocles is dead at the seven gates, killed by his own brother's hand, by Polyneices.
Theseus. You have started off with a mistake, stranger, looking for a king here. This city is not ruled by one man. It is free. The people rule it, taking their turn in office year by year, and wealth does not get the biggest share. The poor man has an equal one.
Herald. Well, that is one point you hand to us, like a piece given away in a board game. The city I come from is governed by one man, not by a crowd. There is nobody there who puffs the people up with speeches and turns them this way and that for his own private profit, sweet as honey for the moment and handing out favours, and then doing them harm later, and then covering his old blunders with fresh slanders and slipping clean out of justice. Besides, how can the people steer a city straight when they cannot even judge an argument straight? Time is a better teacher than haste. A poor man who works the land, even if he happens not to be stupid, has his hands too full to keep an eye on public business. And it makes the better sort sick, I can tell you, when some worthless man who was nothing yesterday gets a position by getting hold of the people with his tongue.
Theseus. A polished herald. He does a little speech-making on the side. Well, since you have entered this contest of your own accord, listen. You set up the debate. There is nothing more hostile to a city than a tyrant. Under a tyrant, first of all, there are no laws that belong to everyone. One man rules, and the law is his private property, and right there equality is gone. When the laws are written down, the weak man and the rich man have equal justice. The weaker can answer the man who is doing well in the same terms he is spoken to in, and the little man beats the great one if he has right on his side. This is freedom: "Who has good advice for the city and wants to bring it before us?" The man who wants to speak, shines. The man who does not, keeps silent. What is fairer to a city than that?
And there is this. Where the people are masters of the land, they take pleasure in the young men coming up under them. A king sees them as enemies. He kills the best men, and any man he thinks has a mind of his own, because he is afraid for his throne. So how can a city go on being strong when someone is cutting the daring out of it, like a man scything the ears off a spring meadow, and plucking its young men away? Why gather wealth and a livelihood for your children, so a tyrant can live better on your labour? Why bring your daughters up decently at home, to be a sweet treat for a tyrant whenever he feels like it, and tears for the parents who raised them? I would rather be dead than see my children married off by force.
That is my volley, fired back at yours. Now: what do you want from this country? If your city had not sent you, you would have paid in tears for all this extra talking. A messenger's job is to say what he was told to say and get back as fast as he can. Next time Creon can send my city a messenger who talks less than you.
Chorus. Pheu, pheu. When a god gives good fortune to bad men, they turn to outrage, as if their luck would last forever.
Herald. Now I will say my piece. On the points we have been arguing, you think what you think and I think the opposite. I forbid you, I and the whole people of Cadmus, to let Adrastus into this land. If he is in it, then before the sun's light goes down, untie the holy suppliant wreaths and drive him out of it, and do not take up the dead by force. You have no business with the city of Argos. If you listen to me, you will steer your city on a calm sea. If you do not, there will be a great surge of war, for us, for you, and for your allies.
Think about it. Do not lose your temper at my words and, because you have a free city, answer me with a speech that flexes its arms. Hope is not to be trusted. It has thrown many cities into war by driving their spirit too far. When war comes up for a vote before the people, nobody reckons on his own death. He assumes that piece of bad luck belongs to somebody else. If death stood before each man's eyes as he cast his vote, Greece would not be dying of spear-madness. And yet every one of us knows which of two arguments is the better, and what is good and what is bad, and how much better peace is for human beings than war. Peace is the dearest friend the Muses have, and the enemy of the Spirits of Vengeance. She delights in fine children. She rejoices in wealth. And we throw all that away, we bad men, and take up wars, and enslave whoever is weaker, man enslaving man and city enslaving city.
And you: you are helping men who are your enemies even in death, burying them and carrying them home, when it was their own outrage that destroyed them? Then was it wrong that Capaneus's body still smokes where the lightning struck him? He set the uprights of his ladder against our gates and swore he would sack the city whether the god liked it or not. Was it wrong that the earth opened and swallowed the seer Amphiaraus, chariot and four horses and all? And that the other captains lie at the gates with the seams of their skulls torn open by rocks? So either boast that you know better than Zeus, or admit that the gods are right to destroy bad men.
A sensible man loves his children first, and then his parents and his country, and his country is something to build up, not to break down. A bold leader is a dangerous thing. A sailor who keeps quiet and knows his moment is the wise one. And to my mind that is courage: forethought.
Chorus. Zeus has punished us. That was enough. You had no need to add this outrage on top of it.
Adrastus. You worthless, worthless —
Theseus. Quiet, Adrastus. Hold your tongue. Do not put your words in front of mine. This man has not come with his proclamation to you but to me, and it is for me to answer him.
I will take your first points first. I am not aware that Creon is my master, or that he has more power than I have, so that he can force Athens to do this. Rivers would be running uphill if we took our orders that way. And I am not the one starting this war. I did not go with these men to the land of Cadmus. What I claim is the right to bury the men who have died, doing no harm to your city and bringing no man-killing battle to it, but keeping the law of all the Greeks. What is wrong with that? If the Argives did something to you, they are dead for it. You beat off your enemies with honour, and with shame to them, and justice has run its course. Let the dead be covered with earth now. Let each part of them go back where it came from when it came into the light: the breath to the air, the body to the ground. We do not own our bodies. We live in them for a while, and afterwards the earth that fed them has to take them back.
Do you think it is Argos you are hurting by refusing to bury the dead? Not at all. This is the common business of all Greece, if a man keeps the dead from what they are owed and leaves them lying unburied. Make that a law, and it will put cowardice into brave men. And you have come to me hurling dreadful threats, while your own people are afraid of a few corpses, if they are hidden in the ground? Afraid of what? That they will dig up your country from underneath, once they are buried? Or breed children in the hollows of the earth, and one of them will grow up to be an avenger? That is a stupid waste of breath, being frightened of fears that are wretched and empty.
You fools. Learn what human beings are up against. Our life is a wrestling match. Some men are lucky soon, some later, some right now, and Fortune is a pampered god. The unlucky man honours her and pays her court so that his luck will turn, and the prosperous man praises her to the sky because he is afraid her breeze will drop. Knowing that, we should bear a moderate wrong without rage, and do only such wrong as does no harm to a city. So how will it be? Give us the fallen dead to bury, since we are the ones who want to do what is right. Or else the next step is plain: I will go and bury them by force. It will never be reported around Greece that the ancient law of the gods came to me, and to the city of Pandion, and was destroyed there.
Chorus. Take heart. Keep the light of Justice burning and you will escape most of what men find to blame.
Herald. Do you want me to put your whole speech in a few words?
Theseus. Say what you like. You are not going to be silent anyway.
Herald. You will never take the sons of Argos out of our land.
Theseus. Then hear my answer to that, if you like.
Herald. I will hear it. Not that I want to, but I have to give you your turn.
Theseus. I will bury the dead. I will take them out of the land of Asopus and bury them.
Herald. You will have to risk it among the shields first.
Theseus. I have been through plenty of other labours before this.
Herald. Did your father breed you to be a match for everybody?
Theseus. For everybody who commits outrage, yes. We do not punish good behaviour.
Herald. Meddling in everything. That is your habit, and your city's.
Theseus. Which is why she works so hard, and why she does so well.
Herald. Come, then, and let the spear of the men sown in our soil catch you inside our city.
Theseus. What kind of furious war god could ever come out of a snake?
Herald. You will learn that the hard way. You are still a boy.
Theseus. You will not needle me into losing my temper with your boasting. Get out of this country, and take the empty words you brought here with you. We are getting nowhere.
(The Herald goes out, back the way he came.)
Every man in armour must move out now, and every man who rides a chariot, and the horses' bits must start to move, dripping foam on the land of Cadmus. I am going to the seven gates of Cadmus myself, with sharp iron in my hands, and I will be my own herald. You I order to stay here, Adrastus. Do not mix your luck with mine. I am going to lead this army with my own fortune beside me, a new general with a new spear. I need one thing only: to have the gods on my side, the ones who honour justice. Have those together and you have victory. Courage means nothing to human beings unless the god is willing.
(Theseus goes out to gather the army.)
Chorus. Unhappy mothers of unhappy captains, how the pale fear crouches under my heart. What is this new cry you are raising? Where will the army of Pallas be judged? Judged by the spear, do you mean, or by an exchange of words? Words would be a gain. But if the killing of battle, the fighting, the blows of hands on breasts, break out through the city again, then, poor wretch, what will they say of me, what blame will I carry, who am the cause?
Chorus. But a man who shines with good luck can be taken down by fate again. That is the thought that gives me courage. You are talking as if the gods were just. Who else deals out what happens to us? I see a great deal in the gods' dealings with us that does not agree. It is the old fear that is destroying you. Justice has called for justice, and blood for blood, and the gods give human beings a breathing space from evil. The end of everything is in their hands.
Chorus. How could we reach the plains under those fine towers, leaving the goddess's water here, the well of Callichorus? If one of the gods would give you wings, so I could come to the city of the two rivers, Thebes. Then you would know, you would know how your friends have fared. What fate, what end is waiting for the brave man who is king of this land?
Chorus. The gods we called on before, we call on again. Yes. When we are afraid, that is the first thing we trust. Io, Zeus, who fathered a child on the heifer long ago, our first mother, the daughter of Inachus: be kind to this city of mine. Fight beside it. Your pride, your foundation stone, the men on whom you built our city, I am carrying to the pyre, outraged.
(A Messenger comes in.)
Messenger. Women, I come with a great deal of good news to tell you, and I have come through alive myself. I was taken prisoner in the battle that the seven companies fought beside the stream of Dirce, the companies of the seven dead masters. And I come to announce the victory of Theseus. I will save you a long round of questions. I was the servant of Capaneus, the man Zeus burned to ash with his fiery lightning.
Chorus. Dearest of men, it is good news that you have come back, and good news about Theseus. If the army of Athens is safe as well, then everything you tell us will be good.
Messenger. Safe, and it has done what Adrastus should have done with the Argives, when he led them out from the river Inachus against the city of the Cadmeans.
Chorus. How did the son of Aegeus and the men who shared the fight with him set up Zeus's trophy? Tell us. You were there, and we were not, and you will make us glad.
Messenger. The bright ray of the sun, a clear straight line, was striking the earth. I stood by the Electran gates to watch, from a tower with a clear view. And I saw three divisions of three armies. The men in armour were stretched out up towards the hill of Ismenus, so I was told, and the king himself, the famous son of Aegeus, and the men with him, the people of the old city, were drawn up on the right wing. The men from the coast were on the left, equal in number, equipped with spears, right beside the spring of Ares, with the chariots, and the mass of the cavalry was drawn up on the edges of the camp. The people of Cadmus were sitting in front of the walls, with the dead, who were what the fight was about, placed behind them, under the holy tombs of Amphion. Horsemen were armed against horsemen, and four-horse chariots stood against chariots.
Then Theseus's herald spoke to everyone. "Silence, peoples. Silence, ranks of the Cadmeans, and listen. We have come for the dead. We want to bury them, keeping the law of all the Greeks. We have no wish to draw out the slaughter." Creon made no proclamation in answer to that. He sat there by his arms in silence. Then the drivers of the four-horse chariots began the battle. They drove their chariots through past one another and set down the fighting men who rode beside them into the line of battle. Some of these fought it out with iron, while the drivers wheeled the horses back into the fight to pick their men up again. Phorbas, who commanded the cavalry for the sons of Erechtheus, saw the mass of chariots, and so did the men guarding Cadmus's horse, and they joined battle, and they won and they lost by turns.
I saw all this. I did not hear about it. I was there, right where the chariots and the men who rode them were fighting, and out of all the misery that was there I do not know what to tell you first. The dust going up to the sky, there was so much of it? Or the men being dragged up and down in their reins, and the streams of red blood, as some fell and others were thrown headfirst out of their smashed chariots and slammed into the ground, and left their lives lying among the wreckage of the cars?
When Creon saw that our side was winning with the horse, he took a shield in his hand and went forward himself, before despair could reach his allies. And they crashed together in the middle of the whole army, and killed and were killed, and passed the order along to one another with a great shout: "Strike! Hold your spears against the sons of Erechtheus!" And Theseus's side was not lost through hesitation. He snatched up his shining armour and went straight at them. The company that grew to manhood from the serpent's teeth was a terrible wrestler. It bent our left wing back. But their left was beaten by our right and ran, so the fight was evenly balanced. And there the general deserved his praise. He did not simply take his profit from the part that was winning. He went to the part of his own army that was giving way, and he broke out in a shout that made the ground ring: "Boys, if you do not hold the stubborn spear of these sown men, the cause of Pallas is lost." That put heart into the whole army of Athens. And he took up his own weapon, the club he carried from Epidaurus, that terrible thing, and swung it round and round, and swept off necks and the heads that sat on them together, harvesting helmets and snapping them off at the stalk with the wood. Even then they barely turned and ran.
I shouted for joy and danced and clapped my hands. They were streaming for the gates. There was shouting and wailing through the city, young and old, and they crowded the temples in their fear. And though he could have gone inside the walls, Theseus held back. He said he had not come to sack the city but to ask for the dead. That is the kind of general a people should choose: a man who is brave in danger, and who hates a people that turns to outrage, that does well and then goes looking for the top rung of the ladder, and throws away the good fortune it could have used.
Chorus. Now that I have seen this day I never hoped to see, I believe in the gods. And I think my misfortune weighs less, now that these men have paid the penalty.
Adrastus. Zeus, why do they say that wretched human beings have any sense? We hang from you. We do whatever you happen to want. To us Argos was irresistible, and we were many, and young, with strong arms. When Eteocles offered terms, and moderate terms, we would not take them, and then we were destroyed. And then the winners, the ill-minded people of Cadmus, behaved like a poor man who has just come into money: they turned to outrage, and their outrage destroyed them in their turn. You men who draw the bow past the mark. You empty things, who suffer so many evils, and deserve to, who will not listen to friends but only to events. And you cities, who could bend your troubles aside with talk, and settle your business with slaughter instead of speech.
But why go on about that? What I want to know is how you got away, and then I will ask the rest.
Messenger. When the fighting threw the city into confusion, I walked out through the gates, the same gates the army was coming in by.
Adrastus. And the dead, the men the whole fight was about: are you bringing them?
Messenger. The ones who commanded the seven famous companies, yes.
Adrastus. What do you mean? The rest of the dead, all those others: where are they?
Messenger. They have been given burial in the folds of Cithaeron.
Adrastus. On that side of the mountain or this? And who buried them?
Messenger. Theseus. Where the shady rock of Eleutherae stands.
Adrastus. And the ones he did not bury: where did you leave them when you came?
Messenger. Close by. Anything you are eager for is close.
Adrastus. I suppose the servants hated bringing them in from the slaughter.
Messenger. Not one slave was set to that work.
Messenger. You would say the same if you had been there, when he tended the dead.
Adrastus. He washed those poor men's wounds himself?
Messenger. And laid out their beds, and covered their bodies.
Adrastus. That was a dreadful load to carry, and there was shame in it.
Messenger. What is shameful to men about other men's suffering?
Adrastus. Oh. How gladly I would have died with them.
Messenger. You are grieving for nothing, and you are drawing tears from these women.
Adrastus. I suppose I am. They are the ones who taught me. Well then. I raise my hand to meet the dead, and I pour out the tearful songs of Hades, calling to my friends. They have left me behind, and I am the wretch who weeps alone. This is the one expense human beings can never recover once it is spent, a human life. For money there are always ways.
Chorus. Some of it is good, some of it is grief. For the city, glory, and for the generals of the spear, honour doubled. For me, to see my children's limbs is bitter, and a fine sight, if I do see it, having seen the day I never hoped for, the greatest grief of all.
Chorus. Unmarried. Old Time, the father, should have made me that, and left me so to this day. What did I need children for? I thought it would be some terrible thing to suffer, if I were never yoked in marriage. Now I see the evil plain as day, stripped of the children I loved most.
(The bodies of the dead captains are carried in.)
Chorus. But now I see them, the bodies of my children who are gone. Wretched woman, how can I die with these children of mine, and go down to Hades with them together?
Adrastus. Mothers, the groan for the dead under the earth: cry it out, shout it back, in answer to mine, when you hear me groaning.
Chorus. Sons. Oh, sons. A bitter word for the mothers who loved you to call you by. I am speaking to you, and you are dead.
Adrastus. Io. Io.
Chorus. And I for griefs of my own.
Adrastus. Aiai.
Adrastus. We have suffered, oh,
Chorus. the cruellest pains there are.
Adrastus. City of Argos, do you not see what has become of me?
Chorus. They see me too, a wretched woman with no children, my children gone.
Adrastus. Bring them near, the bodies of the unlucky men, dripping with blood, killed as they did not deserve, by men who did not deserve to kill them, the men on whom the whole contest was decided.
Chorus. Give them to me, so that I can fold my arms around them and hold my children in my embrace.
Adrastus. You have him. You have him.
Chorus. Grief enough, and the weight of it.
Adrastus. Aiai.
Chorus. And for the parents, nothing to say?
Adrastus. Listen to me.
Chorus. You groan for the pain of us both.
Adrastus. I wish the Theban ranks had cut me down in the dust.
Chorus. And I wish my body had never been yoked to a husband's bed.
Adrastus. Look at this sea of evils, mothers, poor mothers of these children.
Chorus. We have ploughed our cheeks with our nails, we have poured ashes over our heads.
Adrastus. Io. Io moi moi. Let the floor of the earth take me down, let a whirlwind tear me in two, let the flame of Zeus's fire fall on my head.
Chorus. Bitter the marriages you saw made, bitter the word Apollo spoke. The Fury of Oedipus, heavy with groans, left his house empty and came to you.
Theseus. I was going to ask you something, while you were pouring out your laments to the army, but I let it go; I left the words unsaid where they were. Now I turn to Adrastus. Where did these men come from, who stood out among mortals for their courage? Tell it, since you are wiser, to the young men of this city. You know these things. I saw for myself their deeds of daring, more than words could describe, the deeds they hoped would take the city. But there is one thing I will not ask you, or I would make myself a laughing-stock: which enemy each of them stood against in the battle, or whose spear gave him his wound. Those are empty stories, for the ones listening and for the one telling them: a man who stood in the fight, with spears flying thick in front of his eyes, and reported clearly who the brave one was. I could not ask that, and I could not believe the men who have the nerve to say it. When you stand face to face with the enemy you can barely see even what you have to see.
Adrastus. Listen, then. You give me a task I take on gladly: to speak the truth about these friends, and speak it fairly, which is what I want to do.
Do you see that fine-looking man, the one the bolt flew through? That is Capaneus. He had a great deal to live on, and he was the last man to be proud of his wealth. He thought no more of himself than a poor man does, and he kept clear of anyone who puffed himself up over his dinner table and looked down on having enough. Goodness does not live in stuffing the belly, he used to say; a moderate amount will do. He was a true friend to his friends, whether they were there or not, and there are not many of those. A character without a lie in it, a courteous way of speaking, and no promise left unkept, to his own household or to his fellow citizens.
The second I name is Eteoclus, who practised a different kind of goodness. He was a young man short of money, and he held more offices of honour than anyone in the land of Argos. His friends kept offering him gold, and he would not let it into his house: he would not put his character under the yoke of money and make a slave of it. It was the men who did wrong that he hated, not the city, because a city is not to blame if it gets a bad name through a bad pilot.
The third of them, Hippomedon, was like this. From boyhood he had the nerve not to turn to the pleasures of the Muses and the soft side of life. He lived in the fields, gave his body hard things to do, and enjoyed it for the manliness of it: out hunting, delighting in horses, bending a bow in his hands, because he wanted to give the city a body it could use.
Then the son of Atalanta the huntress, the boy Parthenopaeus, the handsomest of them all. He was an Arcadian, but he came to the streams of Inachus and was brought up in Argos. And when he was grown, first, as a foreigner living in another people's city should, he was no nuisance to the city and gave nobody cause to resent him, and he was no wrangler in arguments, which is what makes a man hardest to bear, citizen or foreigner. He stood in the ranks like a born Argive and defended the country. When the city did well he was glad, and when anything went badly he took it hard. He had many lovers, men and as many women, and he took care to do nothing wrong.
Tydeus I will praise greatly, and briefly. He was no shining speaker, but behind a shield he was a formidable expert, clever at finding many clever things. In judgement he fell short of his brother Meleager, but he made his name the equal of his brother's through his skill with the spear, because he had worked out an exact science of fighting. An ambitious nature, and rich in ambition; a spirit that showed itself in deeds, not in words.
So from what I have told you, Theseus, do not wonder that these men had the nerve to die in front of the towers. To be brought up well brings a sense of shame with it, and every man who has practised what is good is ashamed to turn coward. Courage can be taught, if a baby can be taught to speak, and to hear things it does not yet understand. And what a person learns, he tends to keep into old age. So bring up your children well.
Chorus. Io, my child. It was for misery I raised you, carried you under my heart, bore the pains of labour. And now Hades has all my work, all my wretched labour, and I have no one to look after my old age, I who bore a son. Poor woman.
Theseus. And then there is the noble son of Oecles, Amphiaraus: the gods snatched him alive into the depths of the earth, chariot and four horses and all, and that is their praise of him, in plain sight. And the son of Oedipus, Polyneices I mean: we would not be lying if we praised him. He was my guest-friend before he left the city of Cadmus and crossed over to Argos, an exile by his own choice. But do you know what I want to do about these men?
Adrastus. I know only one thing: to do what you tell me.
Theseus. Capaneus, the one Zeus's fire struck down,
Adrastus. You want to bury him apart, as a holy corpse?
Theseus. Yes. All the others on one pyre.
Adrastus. Then where will you set his tomb, apart from them?
Theseus. Right here, beside this temple. I have built the grave.
Adrastus. That is work for the slaves, and they should be at it now.
Theseus. And these men are our work. Let the dead be carried forward.
Adrastus. Go to your children, poor mothers. Go close to them.
Theseus. Adrastus, that is the last thing you should be saying.
Adrastus. Why? Must the mothers not touch their children?
Theseus. It would kill them to see them changed like this.
Adrastus. Yes. The blood and the wounds of the dead are a bitter sight.
Theseus. Then why do you want to add to their grief?
Adrastus. You win. You must wait, and bear it. Theseus is right. When we have put them on the fire, you will gather up the bones. Wretched human beings. Why do you get yourselves spears and deal out death to one another? Stop it. Give up this labour, and keep your cities in peace, quiet people among quiet people. Life is a small thing. We should get through it as easily as we can, and not with pain.
Chorus. No longer blessed in children, no longer blessed with sons; no share for me now in the good fortune of the Argive women who have borne boys. Artemis who watches over childbirth would not speak a word to women with no children. Life is an ill wind, and like some wandering cloud I am driven along by winter storms.
Chorus. Seven mothers, and seven sons we bore, we wretched women, the most famous men in Argos. And now, no son, no child, I grow old in utter misery, counted neither among the dead nor among the living, with a fate of my own, apart from both.
Chorus. What is left to me is tears. In my house the sad memorials of my son lie stored: hair cut in mourning, garlands for his head, drink-offerings for the dead and gone, and songs, songs that golden-haired Apollo will not accept. I will wake at dawn to wail, and the fold of my dress at my breast will be wet with tears for ever.
Chorus. And look: I see the burial chamber now, the holy tomb of Capaneus, and outside the temple the offerings Theseus has set for the dead, and near this man the lightning killed his famous wife, Evadne, the daughter King Iphis fathered. Why is she standing high on the rock that towers over this temple, walking out along that path?
(Evadne appears on the rock above the temple, over the pyre of Capaneus. She is dressed as she was for her wedding.)
Evadne. What light, what brightness did the sun drive across the sky that day, and the moon through the upper air, where the swift-running nymphs ride through the dark with their torches, the day the city of Argos built the wedding songs high, the songs of my happiness, for my marriage to my husband in his bronze armour, aiai, Capaneus. To you I have come, running from my house, driven wild, out of my mind, to step into the light of your pyre and into the same grave, to end my toiling life in Hades and the labours of living. The sweetest death there is is to die with the ones you love as they die, if a god decrees it.
Chorus. There. You see the pyre, the one you are standing over, the treasure-house of Zeus: your husband is inside it, struck down by the torches of the lightning.
Evadne. I see the end, from where I stand. May luck go with my feet. For honour's sake I will launch myself from here, leap from this rock into the fire, and mix my body with my husband's in the blazing flame, my dear skin laid against his skin, and come to Persephone's bridal chambers, never betraying you, dead under the earth, to save my own life. Let the light go, and marriage with it. And in Argos, let honest weddings and honest marriages appear for my children to see. And let the husband who shares the bed be true, true, melted into one with the guileless spirit of a noble wife.
Chorus. And look, here is your own father coming this way, old Iphis, to hear news he has not heard before. It will hurt him to hear it.
Iphis. Poor women. And I am a poor old man too. I have come with a double grief in my own blood. One is my son Eteoclus, killed by the Theban spear: I have come to ship his body home to his own country. And I am looking for my daughter, the wife of Capaneus, who has rushed out of the house and gone, because she is in love with dying with her husband. Up to now she was watched, in the house. But when I let the guard drop, because of the troubles on us, she went. We think she is most likely to be here. Tell me if you have seen her.
Evadne. Why ask them? Here I am, on the rock, father, above the pyre of Capaneus, hovering like a bird, a wretched thing hanging in the air.
Iphis. Child, what wind blew you here? What journey is this? Why did you slip out of the house and come to this country?
Evadne. You would be angry if you heard my plans. I do not want you to hear them, father.
Iphis. What? Is it not right for your own father to know?
Evadne. You would not be a wise judge of my decision.
Iphis. And why have you dressed yourself up like this?
Evadne. This dress means something glorious, father.
Iphis. You do not look like a woman in mourning for her husband.
Evadne. No. I am dressed for something new.
Iphis. And you show yourself like that, beside a tomb and a pyre?
Evadne. Yes. This is where I come as the winner, wearing the crown.
Iphis. Winning what? What victory? I want to learn that from you.
Evadne. Over every woman the sun looks down on.
Iphis. In Athena's handiwork, or in good sense?
Evadne. In courage. I am going to lie down dead beside my husband.
Iphis. What are you saying? What is this rotten riddle you are hinting at?
Evadne. I am going to jump into this pyre, where Capaneus lies dead.
Iphis. Daughter, do not say that in front of all these people.
Evadne. That is exactly what I want. For every Argive to know it.
Iphis. But I will not let you do it. I will not stand for it.
Evadne. It makes no difference. You will never catch me, never get your hand on me. There. My body is let go. Not dear to you, but dear to me, and to the husband who burns with me.
(She leaps from the rock into the pyre.)
Chorus. Io. Woman, what a terrible thing you have done.
Iphis. I am finished. Daughters of Argos, I am destroyed.
Chorus. E, e. You have suffered a cruel thing, and now you will look at what she dared, poor man, the whole of it.
Iphis. You could not find another man more wretched.
Chorus. Io, poor man. You have taken your share of the fortune of Oedipus, old man, you and my poor city both.
Iphis. Oh. Why is this one thing not given to mortals: to be young twice, and old again a second time? Inside a house, if something is not right, we straighten it out with second thoughts; but a life we cannot. If we were young twice, and old twice, then whenever someone went wrong he would have a second life to put it right in. Look at me. I saw other men having children and I fell in love with children; I was dying of the longing for them. If I had come to this first, had been through it and learned what it is for a father to be robbed of his children, I would never have come to the evil I am in now: I fathered a son, and raised him to be the best young man there was, and now I am robbed of him.
Well. What should a wretched man like me do now? Go home? And look at the emptiness of all those rooms, and no way forward for my life? Or go to the house of Capaneus here? I loved to go there before, when my daughter was alive. But she is gone now. She used to draw my beard to her lips, and take this head of mine between her hands. There is nothing sweeter to an old father than a daughter. Sons have bigger spirits, but they are less sweet when it comes to fondness.
Take me home, quickly. Put me in the dark. There I will starve this old body of mine, waste it away and destroy it. What good will it do me to touch my child's bones? Old age, you are a hard wrestler. How I hate having you. And I hate the men who want to stretch out their lives, who use food and drink and magic to turn the stream aside so that they will not die. When they are no use to the earth any more they should die and be gone, and get out of the young people's way.
Chorus. Io. Io. Here they come, the bones of my dead children, carried in. Take hold of me, servants, a feeble old woman. There is no strength left in her, for grief over her sons. She has lived out the measure of a long time and wasted away with many sorrows. What greater suffering could you find for mortals than this: to see your children dead?
(The sons of the Seven come in, each carrying an urn of his father's ashes.)
Children. I carry them, I carry them, poor mother, my father's limbs out of the fire, a weight that is not light, for the pain of it, though all I have is packed into this little space.
Chorus. Io. Io. Where are you carrying tears to the loving mother of the dead? A little heap of ash, in place of the bodies of men once so well thought of in Mycenae?
Children. No child. No child. And I, robbed of my poor father, wretched, will take an empty house and be an orphan in it, not in the arms of the father who made me.
Chorus. Io. Io. Where is the labour I spent on my children, where the thanks for bearing them, a mother's nursing, the nights my eyes did not sleep, the loving kisses on their faces?
Children. They are gone. They are no more. Oh, father. They are gone.
Chorus. The air holds them now, melted to ash in the fire. On wings they have finished the journey to Hades.
Children. Father, do you hear your children crying? Will I ever stand in the line with a shield and avenge your killing? If only it could be.
Children. One day, if the god is willing, justice will come for my father.
Chorus. This evil is not asleep yet. Aiai, the wailing. I have had enough of fortune, enough of pain already.
Children. One day the bright water of the Asopus will receive me in bronze armour, leading the army of the Argives, the avenger of my dead father.
Children. I think I still see you, father, before my eyes,
Chorus. laying your loving kiss against your son's cheek.
Children. But the encouragement of your words is carried off on the wind and gone.
Chorus. He left his grief to two: to his mother, and the pain for your father will never leave you.
Children. I carry a weight as heavy as what destroyed me.
Chorus. Come. Let me lay the dear ash against my breast.
Children. I wept to hear that word, the most hateful of all. It touched my heart.
Chorus. Child, you are gone. Never again will I see you, your loving mother's darling.
Theseus. Adrastus, and you women of the Argive race: you see these boys holding in their hands the bodies of their fathers, the best of men, whom I recovered. I and the city give them to you as a gift. You must remember this and keep your gratitude for it safe, looking at what you have had from me, and say the same words to these boys: to honour this city, and to hand on from children to children for ever the memory of what you received. Let Zeus be the witness, and the gods in heaven, of the treatment you had from us as you leave.
Adrastus. Theseus, we know everything you have done, all the good to the land of Argos when it needed help, and our gratitude will never grow old. We have been treated nobly, and we owe you the same in return.
Theseus. Then what else is there that I must do for you?
Adrastus. Goodbye. You deserve it, and so does your city.
Theseus. So be it. And may the same come to you.
(Athena appears above the temple.)
Athena. Listen, Theseus, to these words from Athena: what you must do, and by doing it help this city. Do not hand these bones over to the boys to carry to the land of Argos, letting them go as lightly as that. In return for your own labours and the city's, first take an oath. Adrastus must be the one to swear it: he has the authority, being king, to swear for the whole land of the Danaans. And this is what the oath will be: that the Argives will never bring an army in full armour against this land, and that if others come, they will put their spears in the way. And if they break the oath and come, pray that the land of Argos may be destroyed again, and miserably.
Now hear me on where you must cut the throats of the victims. You have a bronze-footed tripod in your house, which Heracles once, when he had torn up the foundations of Troy and was setting off on another labour, charged you to set up at the Pythian hearth, at Delphi. Cut the throats of three sheep over it, and engrave the oath inside the hollow bowl of the tripod, and then give it to the god who cares for Delphi to keep, a memorial of the oath and a witness for all Greece. And the sharp-edged knife you open the victims with, and make the wound that kills them: hide it in the depths of the earth, right beside the seven pyres of the dead. If ever they come against the city, it will be shown to them, and it will put fear in them, and send them home the worse for it. When you have done all this, send the dead out of the land. And the sacred ground where their bodies were purified by fire, give up to the god, at the place where the three roads meet on the way to the Isthmus.
That is what I have to say to you. To the sons of the Argives I say this. When you are grown you will sack the city on the Ismenus, avenging the killing of your dead fathers: you, Aegialeus, standing in your father's place as a young general, and the son of Tydeus, coming from Aetolia, the boy his father named Diomedes. As soon as the beard shadows your cheeks you must launch the army of the Danaans, heavy with bronze, against the seven-gated fortress of the Cadmeans. You will come to them bitter, lion cubs grown up, and sack their city. It cannot be otherwise. Through all Greece you will be called the After-born, the Epigoni, and you will give the men who come after you something to sing. That is the kind of army you will lead, with the god's help.
Theseus. Lady Athena, I will do as you say. You set me straight, so that I do not go wrong. I will bind this man with oaths. Only keep me on the straight road. As long as you are kind to the city, we will live in safety from now on.
Chorus. Let us go, Adrastus, and give our oaths to this man and his city. What they have laboured for, on our behalf, deserves our reverence.
(Before a farmer's cottage in the hill country on the border of Argos. It is still dark. The Farmer comes out of the house.)
Farmer. Old plain of Argos, streams of Inachus. This is where King Agamemnon set out from, when he raised an army and sailed a thousand ships to make war on the land of Troy. He killed Priam, who ruled the land of Ilium, and took the famous city that Dardanus founded, and came home here to Argos, and hung the high temples with more plunder from the barbarians than any man before him. Over there he did well. At home, he died. His wife Clytemnestra laid the trap, and Aegisthus, the son of Thyestes, did it with his own hand. So he is gone, and the old sceptre of Tantalus went with him, and Aegisthus is king of this country, with Agamemnon's wife, the daughter of Tyndareus, for his own.
As for the children he left in the house when he sailed for Troy, a boy, Orestes, and a girl, the young shoot Electra: Orestes was about to die at Aegisthus's hands, but his father's old tutor stole him away and gave him to Strophius to bring up in the land of the Phocians. Electra stayed on in her father's house, and when she came into the full bloom of her youth, the first men of Greece were asking for her. Aegisthus was afraid she would bear a son to one of those lords, an avenger for Agamemnon, so he kept her in the house and would not match her with any bridegroom. And when even that turned out to be full of fear, because she might bear children to some nobleman in secret, he made up his mind to kill her. Her mother stopped him. Cruel as she is, her mother saved her from Aegisthus's hand. For killing her husband she had an excuse. For killing her children, she was afraid, she would be hated.
So out of all this, here is what Aegisthus worked out. Agamemnon's son had got away, an exile out of the country; Aegisthus put up gold for any man who kills him. And Electra he gave to me, to have as my wife. My people were Mycenaeans, and on that score nobody can fault me. The family was bright enough in blood, but poor in money, and that is where good birth goes to die. He gave her to a weak man so that his fear would be weak too. Because if a man of standing had got her, he would have woken the murder of Agamemnon out of its sleep, and justice would have come for Aegisthus then.
And this man here has never shamed her in bed. Aphrodite is my witness: she is still a virgin. I would be ashamed to take a rich man's daughter and outrage her, when I was not born her equal. And I grieve for poor Orestes, my brother-in-law in name, if he ever comes home to Argos and sees what a miserable marriage his sister has made. Whoever calls me a fool for having a young girl in my house and not touching her can know this: he is measuring good sense with a crooked ruler, and he is the fool himself.
(Electra comes out of the house with a water jar on her head.)
Electra. Black night, nurse of the golden stars. Under you I go to the river for water with this jar balanced on my head, not because I have come down to such need, but to show the gods what Aegisthus's outrage looks like, and I send my cries up into the wide sky, to my father. Because that murderous daughter of Tyndareus, my mother, has thrown me out of the house to please her husband. She has other children now, by Aegisthus, and Orestes and I are the leftovers of the family —
Farmer. Why do you do this, you poor thing? Why work yourself like this for my sake, taking all this labour on, when you were brought up soft? And why don't you stop when I tell you to?
Electra. To me you are as good as a god, the friend you have been to me. You did not take advantage of me when I was down. When things go badly, it is a great piece of luck for a mortal to find a healer for it, and that is what I have found in you. So even if nobody asks me to, I ought to do all I have strength for to lighten your load and carry the work alongside you, so you bear it more easily. You have enough to do out of doors. The house is my business, to keep it straight. When a working man comes in from outside, it is a pleasure to find things right indoors.
Farmer. Go, then, if that is what you want. The springs are not far from this house anyway. And I will go out at first light and put the oxen in the fields and sow the ground. No idler, however much he keeps the gods' names in his mouth, ever got a living together without work.
(The Farmer goes off to his fields, and Electra towards the river. Orestes and Pylades come in along the road.)
Orestes. Pylades, you are the first man I would name as loyal to me, a friend and a guest. You alone of my friends have stood by Orestes here, treated the way I have been treated by Aegisthus, who killed my father, he and my mother, that destroyer. I have come from the god's holy shrine to Argive soil, and nobody knows it, to pay my father's murderers back murder for murder. Last night I went to my father's grave and gave him my tears, and cut him the first lock of my hair, and killed a sheep over the mound and let its blood run, unseen by the tyrants who hold this land. And I am not setting foot inside the walls. I have come to the edge of the country with two aims at once. If some watcher recognises me, I can step over the border into another country. And I am looking for my sister. They say she is living here, yoked in marriage, no virgin any more. I want to meet her and get her to work with me on the killing, and find out for certain how things stand inside the walls.
So now, since dawn is lifting her white eye, let us step off this path. Some ploughman or some slave woman will show herself, and we can ask whether my sister lives round here. And look. I can see one now, some servant, carrying a jar of water on her cropped head. Let us sit down, and put our question to this slave woman, Pylades, in case she gives us a word about the business we came to this country for.
(They step aside and sit down out of sight. Electra comes back with the jar of water on her head, singing.)
Electra. Move your feet. It is time. Faster. Go on, go on, and weep as you go. Io moi moi. I was born Agamemnon's child, and Clytemnestra bore me, the hateful daughter of Tyndareus, and the people of the town call me Electra, the wretched one. Pheu, pheu, for the hard work and the life I loathe. Father, you lie in Hades, butchered by your wife and Aegisthus. Agamemnon.
Electra. Come, wake the same cry again, raise up the pleasure of long weeping.
Electra. Move your feet. It is time. Faster. Go on, go on, and weep as you go. Io moi moi. What city, what house, my poor brother, are you wandering in, when you left your sister behind in her father's rooms, to be pitied, with the worst of griefs on her? Come, and set me free from this work, miserable as I am. Zeus, Zeus, come and stand by my father against that most hated blood. Bring the wanderer to shore in Argos.
Electra. Take this jar off my head and set it down, so I can cry the night-cries for my father before the dawn, a wail, a song of Hades, Hades, father, for you under the earth. I say the laments I live in every day, all day, tearing my dear throat with my nails and beating my hand on my cropped head, for your death.
Electra. Ai ai. Tear your face. Like a swan crying clear by the river's streams, calling to its dearest father, dead in the treacherous meshes of a net, so I cry for you, my wretched father,
Electra. washed in your last bath, in the most pitiful bed of death. Io moi, io moi, for the bitter cut of the axe on you, father, and the bitter plan that met you on the road home from Troy. Not with garlands did your wife receive you, not with crowns, but with a two-edged sword. She made you the sorry victim of Aegisthus and took a traitor into her bed.
(The Chorus, country women of Argos, come in.)
Chorus. Daughter of Agamemnon, Electra, I have come to your country yard. A man has come, a man has come from Mycenae, a milk-drinker who walks the mountains, and he brings news: the Argives are announcing a sacrifice for the day after tomorrow, and all the unmarried girls are to walk in procession to Hera's temple.
Electra. It is not for finery, friends, that my heart goes flying out of me, not for necklaces of gold, and I will not stand in the dance with the young women of Argos and beat out the turns with my foot. I pass my nights in tears, and tears, poor thing that I am, are all my care by day. Look at my hair, filthy, and these rags I wear for a dress, and ask if they are fit for a princess, Agamemnon's daughter, or for Troy, which fell to my father once and has not forgotten him.
Chorus. The goddess is great. Come. Borrow from me a thick-woven robe to wear, and gold, do me the favour, to set off your finery. Do you think your tears will beat your enemies, if you give the gods no honour? Not with groans, child. Honour the gods with prayers, and you will see good days.
Electra. No god hears the cry of a woman the gods hate, or remembers my father, slaughtered so long ago. Oh, for the dead man, and for the living one, the wanderer, who is somewhere in another country, poor man, drifting to a hired man's hearth, and he the son of that famous father. And I live in a labourer's house, my life melting away, driven out of my father's home onto these mountain crags. And my mother, in a bed stained with blood, lives married to another man.
Chorus. Your mother's sister Helen is to blame for a great deal of evil, both to the Greeks and to your own house.
Electra. Oh. Women, I have broken off my lament. There are strangers by the house. They were lying low at the altar and now they are getting up out of their hiding place. Run. You down the path, and I into the house. Let us get away from these criminals while we can.
(Orestes and Pylades come out of hiding. Orestes has his sword drawn.)
Orestes. Stay where you are, poor woman. You have nothing to fear from my hand.
Electra. Apollo, help me. I am on my knees to you. Do not kill me.
Orestes. There are others I would rather kill. People I hate more than you.
Electra. Get away. Do not touch what you have no right to touch.
Orestes. There is nobody I have a better right to touch.
Electra. Then why are you lying in ambush at my house with a sword?
Orestes. Stay and listen, and you will soon say the same.
Electra. I am standing still. I am yours in any case. You are the stronger.
Orestes. I have come with a message for you from your brother.
Electra. Dearest of men. Is he alive, or dead?
Orestes. Alive. I want to give you the good news first.
Electra. Good luck to you, for the sweetest words I ever heard. That is your fee.
Orestes. I will take that as a gift for the two of us to share.
Electra. Where on earth is he, poor man, in his poor exile?
Orestes. He wears himself out drifting, with no one city's laws to live by.
Electra. Surely he is not short of his daily bread?
Orestes. He has that. But a man in exile is a weak man.
Electra. And what message have you come with from him?
Orestes. Whether you are alive, and if you are, how you are faring.
Electra. Well, you can see for yourself, first, how my body has dried up.
Orestes. Yes, wasted with grief. It makes me groan to look at it.
Electra. And my head, my hair, cropped with a razor like a Scythian's.
Orestes. Your brother gnaws at you, I suppose, and your dead father.
Electra. Oh. What is dearer to me than those two?
Orestes. Pheu, pheu. And what do you think you are to your brother?
Electra. He loves me from far away. He is not here to be a friend to me.
Orestes. And why do you live out here, so far from the town?
Electra. I am married, stranger. A marriage that is death.
Orestes. I groan for your brother. To which of the Mycenaeans?
Electra. Not to the one my father ever hoped to give me to.
Orestes. Tell me, so I can hear it and tell your brother.
Electra. This is his house. I live in it, far from everything.
Orestes. A ditch-digger or a cowherd would be the right man for a house like this.
Electra. A poor man, but well born, and he treats me with reverence.
Orestes. What kind of reverence does this husband of yours have?
Electra. He has never brought himself to touch my bed.
Orestes. Some holy vow he keeps? Or does he think you beneath him?
Electra. He did not think he had the right to outrage my parents.
Orestes. How could he get a marriage like that and not be delighted?
Electra. He does not think the man who gave me away had the right to, stranger.
Orestes. I see. He is afraid Orestes will make him pay for it one day.
Electra. He is afraid of that, yes. But he is also a man who keeps himself in hand.
Orestes. Pheu. That is a noble man you are describing. He should be treated well.
Electra. Yes, if the one who is away ever comes home.
Orestes. And your mother, who bore you, put up with this?
Electra. Women love their husbands, stranger, not their children.
Orestes. And why did Aegisthus do you this outrage?
Electra. He wanted me to bear weak children, so he gave me to a man like this.
Orestes. So you would never bear sons to punish him, of course.
Electra. That was his plan. And may he pay me for it.
Orestes. Does your mother's husband know you are a virgin?
Electra. He does not. We keep quiet and steal that from him.
Orestes. These women listening to us, are they friends of yours?
Electra. Friends enough to keep your words and mine well hidden.
Orestes. Then what could Orestes do about it, if he came to Argos?
Electra. You ask that? Shame on you for asking. Is now not the moment?
Orestes. And if he did come, how could he kill his father's murderers?
Electra. By having the nerve to do to them what his enemies had the nerve to do to my father.
Orestes. And would you have the nerve to kill your mother, with him?
Electra. Yes. With the same axe my father died by.
Orestes. Am I to tell him that? And that you will not waver?
Electra. Let me die, once I have spilled my mother's blood.
Orestes. Pheu. If only Orestes were standing here to hear that.
Electra. But stranger, I would not know him if I saw him.
Orestes. No wonder. You were both children when you were torn apart.
Electra. There is only one of my friends who would recognise him.
Orestes. The man they say stole him away from being murdered?
Electra. Yes. My father's tutor. An old man now, from the old days.
Orestes. And your father, when he died, did he get a grave?
Electra. He got what he got. Thrown out of the house.
Orestes. Oh. What a thing to say. It bites a man, hearing of suffering, even when the trouble is somebody else's. Tell me, so that I can know it and carry the story to your brother: not pleasant to hear, but he has to hear it. There is no pity in a stupid man. Pity lives in the wise. And even for the wise it costs something, to have a mind that is too wise.
Chorus. And we have the same longing in our hearts as this man. We live far from the town, and we do not know the evils in the city. Now we would like to learn them too.
Electra. I will tell it, if I must, and one must, to a friend: the heavy luck of my father and me. And since you are the one setting the story going, I beg you, stranger, tell Orestes what has happened to me, and to him. First, the clothes I bed down in, like an animal in a stall. The dirt I am weighed down with. The kind of roof I live under, after a king's palace. I weave my own clothes at the loom, working myself to the bone, or else I go naked and do without. I carry the water from the river myself. I have no festivals, no holy rites, no share in the dances. I turn away from the married women, because I am a virgin, and I turn away from Castor, who courted me before he went up among the gods, because I was his kin.
And my mother sits on her throne among the plunder of Troy, and beside her seat stand slave women from Asia, my father's prizes of war, their Trojan robes pinned with golden brooches. And my father's blood is still there on the walls of the house, gone black and rotten, and the man who killed him climbs into the same chariot my father rode and drives out in it, and takes the sceptre my father commanded the Greeks with in his bloodstained hands and swaggers with it. Agamemnon's grave lies dishonoured. It has never once had a drink poured on it, or a sprig of myrtle. His pyre is bare of every offering. And my mother's husband, the famous one, when he is soaked with drink, jumps on the grave, so they say, and throws stones at my father's stone monument, and has the nerve to say this about us: "Where is your boy Orestes? Is he here doing a fine job of guarding your tomb?" That is how Orestes is outraged, and he is not here to hear it.
So, stranger, I beg you, take this report back. Many voices are sending it, and I am only their interpreter: these hands, this tongue, this worn-out heart, my shaven head, and the man who fathered him. Because it is a disgrace if his father wiped out the Trojans and he cannot kill one man, one against one, when he is young and comes from a better father.
Chorus. And look, we can see him, your husband, I mean, on his way home, his work done for the day.
(The Farmer comes back from the fields.)
Farmer. What is this? Who are these strangers I see at my door? What brings them to a farmyard gate like mine? Do they want something from me? It does not look right, you know, for a woman to stand about with young men.
Electra. Dearest, do not get suspicious of me. You will hear the true story. These strangers have come to me as messengers, with news of Orestes. And strangers, forgive him for what he said.
Farmer. What are they saying? The man is alive? He sees the light of day?
Electra. So they say, and I do not think they are lying to me.
Farmer. And does he remember anything of your father's wrongs, and yours?
Electra. That is something to hope for. A man in exile is weak.
Farmer. What message from Orestes have they come to deliver?
Electra. He sent them to see for themselves how badly I am treated.
Farmer. Then they see some of it, and I suppose you are telling them the rest.
Electra. They know. There is nothing they lack of it.
Farmer. Then should the doors not have been opened to them long ago? Go inside, both of you. In return for your good news you will find whatever hospitality my house has in it. Servants, take their baggage inside. And do not argue with me: you are friends, come from a friend. I may be poor, but I will not show you the manners of a low-born man.
Orestes. By the gods, is this the man who keeps up the pretence of your marriage, the one who does not want to bring shame on Orestes?
Electra. This is the man they call my husband. Mine, in my misery.
Orestes. Pheu. There is no exact way to measure a man's worth. Human nature is a muddle. I have seen the son of a noble father turn out to be nothing, and good children come out of bad parents. I have seen famine in a rich man's mind and a great judgement in a poor man's body. So how does anyone sort them out and judge them rightly? By wealth? Then he is using a rotten judge. By having nothing? But poverty has a sickness in it: it teaches a man to be bad because he is in need. Shall I go to war for my test, then? Who, with a spear pointed at him, could stand witness to which man is brave? Best to let all that go, and leave it to chance.
Because this man here is nobody great among the Argives, and he is not puffed up with the reputation of his family. He is one of the many, and he has turned out to be the best. Will you not stop being fools, you people who wander about stuffed with empty notions, and judge men by the company they keep, and judge the noble by their habits? Men like that run cities well, and households too. The lumps of flesh with no mind in them are statues in the marketplace. A strong arm does not stand up to the spear any better than a weak one: that is a matter of a man's nature, and of his courage.
But since the son of Agamemnon deserves it, the one who is here and not here, the one we have come for, let us accept the shelter of this house. Inside, slaves. We must go in. I would rather have a poor man for my host who wants to have me than a rich one. So I am grateful for the welcome this man gives me into his house, though I would have wished your brother could have led me, prosperous himself, into a prosperous house. And perhaps he will come. Apollo's oracles are sure. It is the prophecy of men I say goodbye to.
(Orestes and Pylades go into the house with their servants.)
Chorus. Now more than ever before, Electra, our hearts are warm with joy. Perhaps our luck, after its hard slow progress, is coming to a good standing place.
Electra. You reckless man. You know how poor your house is. Why did you take in these strangers, men so far above you?
Farmer. Why not? If they are as well born as they look, will they not be just as content with small things as with great?
Electra. Well, since you have made this mistake, small man that you are, go to my father's dear old tutor. He is out by the river Tanaus, where it cuts the border between the land of Argos and the land of Sparta. He was thrown out of the city, and he keeps sheep there. Tell him these men have arrived at my house, and to come, and bring something for the strangers' meal. He will be glad, and he will pray to the gods when he hears that the child he saved once is alive. From my father's house, from my mother, we would get nothing. And it would be bitter news we brought, if that hard woman ever found out that Orestes is still alive.
Farmer. All right. If that is what you want, I will take the message to the old man. But you get into the house as fast as you can and get things ready inside. A woman who wants to can always find plenty to add to a meal. And there is still enough in the house to fill these men with food for one day at least. It is at times like this, when I fall short of what I meant to do, that I see what great power money has: to give to strangers, and to spend on saving a body when it falls ill. But when it comes to the day's food, money does not go far. Every man who has eaten his fill, rich or poor, carries the same load.
(The Farmer goes off towards the river Tanaus. Electra goes into the house.)
Chorus. Famous ships, that went to Troy once with oars past counting, leading the dance with the Nereids, where the dolphin that loves the pipe leapt at your dark-blue prows and rolled, carrying Thetis's son, Achilles, light on his leaping feet, with Agamemnon to the banks of Simois, the river of Troy.
Chorus. And the Nereids left the headlands of Euboea and carried the shield, the toil of Hephaestus's anvils, the golden armour, up Pelion, up the glens at the foot of holy Ossa, the Nymphs' lookouts, searching for the place where Chiron, the horseman who was a father to him, was raising him, the light of Greece, Thetis's son from the sea, swift-footed for the sons of Atreus.
Chorus. I heard it from a man who came from Troy and landed in the harbour at Nauplia: that on the round of your famous shield, son of Thetis, these were the signs worked in it, terrors for the Phrygians. Running round the rim, on its base, Perseus the throat-cutter, over the sea on his winged sandals, holding up the Gorgon's head, with Zeus's messenger Hermes beside him, Maia's son, the god of the countryside.
Chorus. And in the middle of the shield blazed the bright circle of the sun on his winged horses, and the dancing stars of the sky, the Pleiades and the Hyades, to turn Hector's eyes and put him to flight. On the helmet of beaten gold were Sphinxes carrying in their claws the prey their singing had won, and on the breastplate, round his ribs, a lioness breathing fire ran hard, claws out, at the sight of Pegasus, the colt of Pirene's spring.
Chorus. And on the murderous sword horses pranced on four feet, and black dust rose about their backs. The lord of warriors like these, spearmen like these, you killed, daughter of Tyndareus, with your adultery, evil-minded woman. For that the gods of heaven will send you one day to your death. Yes, and I will see it yet, I will see the blood run under your throat, spilled by the iron.
(The Old Man, who was Agamemnon's tutor, comes slowly up the path to the farmhouse, carrying a lamb, a wineskin and a basket.)
Old Man. Where is she? Where is my young lady, my mistress, Agamemnon's child, the girl I brought up once? What a steep climb this house has, for an old man with a wrinkled foot to get up. Still, when it is for the people you love, you drag the bent old spine along, and the knee that keeps giving way under you. Daughter. I have only just seen you there at the door. Here I am, and look what I have brought you from my own flock: this newborn lamb, pulled away from its mother, and garlands, and cheeses I took out of the presses, and this old treasure of Dionysus, ripe with the smell of it. Not much of it, but sweet to pour a cup of into something weaker. Someone take these into the house for the guests. As for me, I want to wipe my eyes on this rag of a cloak. They are wet.
Electra. Why are your eyes wet, old man? Have my troubles reminded you of themselves, after all this time? Or are you groaning over Orestes and his miserable exile, and over my father, whom you once held in your arms and brought up, and all for nothing: no good to you, and none to the people you love?
Old Man. For nothing. Yes. But all the same there was one thing I could not bear. I went by his grave on the way here, a little off the road, and when I found it deserted I fell on it and cried. And I opened the wineskin I am bringing for your guests and poured him an offering, and I laid sprigs of myrtle round the tomb. And on the altar itself I saw a sheep with a black fleece, slaughtered, and blood that had not been spilled long, and curls of yellow hair, cut off. And I wondered, child, who on earth had the nerve to go near that tomb. It was not any Argive, that much is certain. But perhaps your brother has come, in secret, somehow, and found his father's poor grave and paid it honour. Look at the hair. Hold it against your own and see whether the colour of the cut lock is the same as yours. It usually happens that people who share a father's blood come out alike in most parts of the body.
Electra. That is not worthy of a clever man, old man, what you are saying. Do you think my brother would come sneaking into this country, afraid of Aegisthus? Him? He has more courage than that. And then, how is a lock of hair going to match: one grown in the wrestling schools, on a well-born man, and the other soft, a woman's hair, made with combing? It is impossible. And you could find plenty of people, old man, with curls of hair exactly alike, who are no blood relations at all.
Old Man. Then go and stand in the footprint. See whether the print of his boot measures the same as your foot, child.
Electra. How could there be any print of a foot on rocky ground? And if there is one, a brother's foot and a sister's would not be the same size, a man's and a woman's. The male is bigger.
Old Man. Is there nothing, then, even if your brother has come to this country, nothing by which you could recognise the weaving of your own shuttle, the cloth I once stole him away in and saved his life?
Electra. Do you not know I was still a little girl when Orestes was driven out of the country? And even if I had woven him clothes, how could he, a child then, still be wearing the same ones now, unless his clothes grew along with his body? No. Either some stranger took pity on the grave and cut his hair for it, or else someone slipped past the watchmen of this country and —
Old Man. And where are the guests? I want to see them and question them about your brother.
Electra. Here they are, coming out of the house. Quickly, too.
(Orestes and Pylades come out of the house.)
Old Man. Well, they look well-born. But that can be counterfeit. Plenty of well-born men are bad. Still. Greetings to the guests. I wish them well.
Orestes. Greetings, old man. Electra, which of your friends does this ancient relic of a man belong to?
Electra. This is the man who brought up my father, stranger.
Orestes. What? This is the one who smuggled your brother out?
Electra. This is the man who saved him, if he is still alive.
Orestes. Ah. Why is he staring at me like that, as if he were examining the bright stamp on a silver coin? Is he comparing me to somebody?
Electra. Perhaps he is glad to see someone the same age as Orestes.
Orestes. Yes, a man I love. But why is he walking round and round me?
Electra. I am looking at it too, stranger, and I am amazed.
Old Man. My lady. Daughter. Electra. Pray to the gods.
Electra. For what? Something I have, or something I have not?
Old Man. To take hold of a treasure you love, which a god is showing you.
Electra. There. I call on the gods. Or what do you mean, old man?
Old Man. Now look at this man, child. The man you love most.
Electra. I have been looking for a while, wondering whether you have lost your mind.
Old Man. Lost my mind? When I am looking at your brother?
Electra. What did you say, old man? That is a word I never hoped to hear.
Old Man. That I see Orestes here. Agamemnon's son.
Electra. What mark have you seen, that I should believe you?
Old Man. A scar by his eyebrow. He fell and cut himself, once, in his father's house, chasing a fawn with you, and it bled.
Electra. What are you saying? I see it. I see the mark of the fall.
Old Man. And you are still slow to throw your arms round the one you love most?
Electra. Not any more, old man. My heart is convinced by your proofs. You have appeared at last. I am holding you. I never hoped —
Orestes. And I am holding you, at last.
Electra. I never thought it would happen.
Orestes. I never hoped it would either.
Electra. Are you really him?
Orestes. The one ally you have. If I can haul in the catch I have come for. And I am confident I can. Or else we should stop believing in gods at all, if wrong is going to win out over justice.
Chorus. You have come, you have come, oh, day so long in coming, you have blazed up, you have shown the city a beacon to see by: the man who long ago went out of his father's house into exile, poor wretch, and wandered. A god, my dear, a god is bringing our victory home. Lift up your hands, lift up your voice, send prayers to the gods, that with luck, with luck, your brother may walk into the city.
Orestes. Well. I have had the sweet pleasure of your welcome, and later on we will give it back to each other. But you, old man, you have come at exactly the right time, so tell me: what should I do to pay back my father's murderer, and my mother, his partner in an unholy marriage? Is there anyone in Argos who still wishes me well? Or am I bankrupt all round, the way my fortunes are? Who do I join up with? By night, or in daylight? Which road do I take against my enemies?
Old Man. Child, when you are down on your luck you have no friend. It is a rare find, believe me, someone who will share the bad with you as well as the good. As for you, you have been torn out by the roots as far as your friends are concerned, and you have left them no hope, so hear me and understand: everything you have is in your own right arm and in your luck. Your father's house and your city are yours to take with those.
Orestes. Then what do I do, to get there?
Old Man. Kill Thyestes's son, and your mother.
Orestes. That is the crown I came for. But how do I get my hands on it?
Old Man. Not by going inside the walls, even if you wanted to.
Orestes. He is well supplied with guards, and spearmen at his side?
Old Man. You have it. He is afraid of you, and he does not sleep well.
Orestes. Well. It is for you to plan the next move, old man.
Old Man. Then listen to me. Something has just come into my head.
Orestes. I hope it is something good, and I hope I see it.
Old Man. I saw Aegisthus as I was crawling along here.
Orestes. I like the sound of that. Where was he?
Old Man. Near these fields. By his horse pastures.
Orestes. Doing what? I see a hope coming out of nowhere.
Old Man. Getting up a feast for the Nymphs, it looked like to me.
Orestes. For children already born and reared, or for a birth on the way?
Old Man. I know only one thing. He was getting ready to slaughter an ox.
Orestes. With how many men? Or alone, with his slaves?
Old Man. There was no Argive there. Only his own household.
Orestes. There is nobody who will know me when he sees me, old man?
Old Man. They are slaves. Slaves who have never seen you.
Orestes. Would they be on our side, if we won?
Old Man. That is the way with slaves. And a good thing for you.
Orestes. So how do I ever get near him?
Old Man. Walk where he will see you while he is killing the ox.
Orestes. His fields are right by the road, then?
Old Man. Yes, and when he sees you there he will invite you to share the feast.
Orestes. A bitter guest he will find at his table, if a god is willing.
Old Man. From there, work it out for yourself, as it falls.
Orestes. Well said. And the woman who bore me. Where is she?
Old Man. In Argos. But she will join her husband for the feast.
Orestes. Why did my mother not set out with her husband?
Old Man. She stayed behind. She is frightened of what the people say.
Orestes. I understand. She knows the city looks at her sideways.
Old Man. Something like that. An unholy woman is hated.
Orestes. So how do I kill her and him at the same time?
Electra. I will arrange my mother's murder myself.
Orestes. And as for the other one, luck will set it right.
Electra. Let this man help us with both.
Old Man. It will be done. But how do you find a way to kill your mother?
Electra. Go to Clytemnestra, old man, and tell her this. Tell her I have had a child. A boy.
Old Man. Had it some time ago, or just now?
Electra. Ten days ago. The time a new mother keeps herself pure.
Old Man. And how does that bring your mother's death any nearer?
Electra. She will come, when she hears I have been through childbirth.
Old Man. Come? Why? Do you think she cares about you, child?
Electra. Yes. And she will cry over my child's low birth.
Old Man. Perhaps. Now bring your story round the turn again, to the finish.
Electra. Well then, if she comes, obviously, she dies.
Old Man. Yes. She will come right up to the doors of your house.
Electra. And then, is it not a small step from there to Hades?
Old Man. Let me die once I have seen that.
Electra. First of all, then, old man, take my brother the way —
Old Man. To where Aegisthus is sacrificing to the gods right now?
Electra. Then go and find my mother and tell her my news.
Old Man. So that it sounds as if the words came from your own mouth.
Electra. Your work starts now. You drew the first turn in the killing.
Orestes. I would go, if someone would show me the road.
Old Man. I will take you myself. And gladly.
Orestes. Zeus of my fathers, be the one who turns my enemies to flight —
Electra. and pity us. We have suffered pitiful things —
Old Man. Yes, pity them. They are your own descendants.
Electra. And Hera, you who rule over the altars of Mycenae —
Orestes. give us victory, if what we ask for is just.
Old Man. Yes, give them justice for their father. Give them their revenge.
Orestes. And you, father, living under the earth by an unholy act —
Electra. and Earth, our queen, whom I strike with my hands —
Old Man. defend them, defend these children. You love them best.
Orestes. Now come, and bring every dead man with you as an ally.
Electra. all the men who wiped out the Phrygians at Troy beside you, spear in hand —
Old Man. and everyone who hates unholy men with pollution on them.
Electra. Do you hear me, you who suffered dreadful things from my mother?
Old Man. Your father hears all of it, I know. But it is time to go.
Electra. And I say this to you now, in front of everyone: Aegisthus is to die. Because if you are thrown in this wrestling match and go down dead, then I am dead too. Do not call me a living woman any more. I will drive a two-edged sword through my liver. I am going into the house to get things ready. If good news comes from you, the whole house will ring with women's cries of joy. If you die, it will be the opposite. That is what I have to say to you.
Orestes. I know. All of it.
Electra. Then you must be a man now. And you, women, light me the signal fire of a shout, when this fight is decided. I will stand guard with a sword ready in my hand. Because if I am beaten, I will never let my enemies take their satisfaction out of me, and outrage my body. (Orestes and Pylades go out with the Old Man. Electra goes into the house.)
Chorus. Under the Argive hills, once, a lamb, still at its soft mother's side: the story keeps its place in the grey old tales, how Pan, who breathes sweet music on his well-fitted reeds, Pan the steward of the fields, brought it down, a lamb with a fleece of gold, beautiful curls of gold. And a herald stood up on the stone steps and cried, "To the assembly, Mycenaeans, to the assembly, come and see the wonder, the terror, that has come to our blessed kings." And the dancers paid their honours to the house of Atreus.
Chorus. Altars of beaten gold were set out, and through the town the fire blazed on the altars of the Argives. The pipe, the servant of the Muses, rang out its loveliest note, and lovely songs went swelling up in praise of the golden lamb: Thyestes's, they sang, Thyestes's luck. For he had talked the dear wife of Atreus into a secret bed, and carried the wonder off to his own house, and went into the assembly and shouted that he had the horned sheep with the golden fleece at home. His.
Chorus. Then, it was then, that Zeus changed the shining roads of the stars, and the light of the sun, and the white face of the dawn, and drove the sun across the western back of the sky with a hot flame from heaven's fire; the rain-clouds went north, and the seat of Ammon dried up and withered, knowing no dew, robbed of the lovely rain that Zeus sends.
Chorus. That is what they say. I put small faith in it myself: that the sun turned his hot golden throne around and changed his course, for the misfortune of mortals, because of one man's crime and his punishment. But stories that frighten people are good for the worship of the gods. You never gave them a thought when you killed your husband, you, the sister of the famous brothers, Castor and Polydeuces.
Chorus. Ah. Ah. Friends, did you hear a shout? Or is it an empty fancy that has crept over me? Like the thunder of Zeus, under the ground. Listen. There is a wind rising, and it is not without meaning. Mistress. Electra. Come out of the house.
(Electra comes out.)
Electra. Friends, what is it? How do we stand in the fight?
Chorus. I know one thing only. I hear a cry, and it is a cry of killing.
Electra. I heard it too. A long way off, but I heard it.
Chorus. Yes, the sound is coming from far away. But it is clear enough.
Electra. That groan was an Argive's. Was it one of ours?
Chorus. I cannot tell. The whole tune of the shouting is mixed together.
Electra. That is my death you are calling out. Why am I waiting?
Chorus. Hold on. Wait until you know your fortune for certain.
Electra. No. We have lost. Where are the messengers?
Chorus. They will come. It is no small thing to kill a king.
(A Messenger runs in.)
Messenger. Women of Mycenae, girls in glory, I bring news to all his friends: Orestes has won, and Agamemnon's murderer, Aegisthus, is lying on the ground. Now we must pray to the gods.
Electra. Who are you? How do I know this news of yours is true?
Messenger. Do you not know your brother's servant when you look at him?
Electra. Dearest of men. I was so frightened I could not place your face. Now I know you. What are you saying? Is he dead, my father's hateful murderer?
Messenger. Dead. I say it twice, since it is what you want to hear.
Electra. Gods. And Justice, who sees everything: you have come at last. How did he do it? What kind of death did he give Thyestes's son? I want to hear it.
Messenger. When we left this house we came out onto the wide cart-road, the one with the two ruts, and walked to where the famous king of Mycenae was. He turned out to be walking in a garden full of running water, picking sprays of tender myrtle to make a wreath for his head, and when he saw us he called out, "Welcome, strangers. Who are you? Where have you come from, and what country are you from?" And Orestes said, "Thessalians. We are on our way to the Alpheus to sacrifice to Olympian Zeus." When Aegisthus heard that, he said, "Then you must stay and share the feast with me, as my guests. As it happens I am sacrificing an ox to the Nymphs. Get up at dawn tomorrow and you will be no worse off. Come, let us go inside." And even while he was saying it he had taken us by the hand and was leading us off the road. "I will not have you refuse."
And when we were in the house he said, "Somebody fetch water for the guests, quickly, so they can stand round the altar by the basin." But Orestes said, "We have just purified ourselves, in clean water, in the running stream of a river. If strangers may sacrifice alongside citizens, Aegisthus, we are ready. We will not refuse you, my lord." So they let that conversation drop, out of the middle of things. The slaves who made up the master's bodyguard put down their spears, and every one of them set his hands to the work. Some brought the bowl for the blood, others lifted the baskets, others lit the fire and set the cauldrons upright round the hearth, and the whole roof rang with it.
Then your mother's bedfellow took the barley grains and threw them on the altars, and this is what he said as he did it: "Nymphs of the rocks, grant that I and my wife at home, the daughter of Tyndareus, may sacrifice like this many times over, doing as well as we are doing now, and that my enemies do badly." Meaning Orestes and you. And my master prayed for the opposite, not speaking the words out loud: to take back his father's house. Aegisthus took a long straight knife out of the basket, cut off some of the calf's hair and laid it on the holy fire with his right hand, and when the slaves had lifted the calf up on their shoulders he cut its throat. And he said this to your brother: "One of the fine things Thessalians boast of, they say, is this: a Thessalian knows how to cut up a bull properly, and how to break horses. Take the knife, stranger, and show us that the talk about Thessalians is true."
He grabbed the well-hammered Dorian blade in his hands, threw the handsome pinned cloak off his shoulders, picked Pylades to help him with the work and pushed the slaves back. Then he took the calf by the hoof and stripped the white flesh bare, arm outstretched, and he had the hide off it quicker than a runner does two laps of the horse-track, and laid the flanks open. Aegisthus took the sacred parts in his hands and studied them. And the liver had no lobe. And the portal vein and the gall-bladder beside it showed the man who was reading them bad things coming his way. He scowled, and my master asked him, "Why so downhearted?" "Stranger, I am afraid of some treachery from outside. Of all men alive the one I hate most is Agamemnon's son, and he is my house's enemy." And Orestes said, "You are afraid of treachery from an exile? You, the ruler of a city? Come. So that we can feast on the innards, will somebody bring me a Thessalian cleaver instead of this Dorian knife, and let me break the breastbone open?" He took it and chopped. Aegisthus picked up the innards and was studying them, sorting them out. And as he bent his head down, your brother rose up on the tips of his toes and struck him on the spine, and broke the joints of his backbone apart. His whole body heaved up and down, he thrashed, he screamed, he died hard, in his blood.
When the slaves saw it they ran straight for their spears, a crowd of them to fight two men. But Pylades and Orestes stood their ground like men, facing them head on, shaking their weapons. And he said, "I have not come as an enemy to this city, or to my own servants. I have paid back my father's murderer. I am Orestes, the wretched Orestes. Do not kill me, old slaves of my father's." And when they heard what he said they held their spears back, and an old man who had been in the household a long time recognised him. And at once they were putting a wreath on your brother's head, cheering, shouting for joy. And now he is coming to show you a head. Not the Gorgon's. The man you hate: Aegisthus. Blood for blood. The dead man has paid off a bitter loan today.
Chorus. Set your feet dancing, my dear, like a fawn leaping high as heaven, light with joy. Your brother has won a crown, and it outshines any that was ever won beside the streams of Alpheus. Come, sing a song of glorious victory to go with my dance.
Electra. Light. Blaze of the sun and his four horses. Earth, and the night that was all I could see before. Now my eyes are free, and I can open them, because Aegisthus, my father's murderer, has fallen. Come, friends. Whatever I own, whatever the house has hidden away, to make hair beautiful, let me bring it out, and I will crown my brother's head. He has won.
(Electra goes into the house. Orestes and Pylades come in, and behind them slaves carrying the body of Aegisthus.)
Chorus. You bring out the ornaments for his head. Our dance goes on, the dance the Muses love. Now the kings we loved before will rule this land again, and justly, having brought down the unjust. Let the shout go up, and the pipe with it, for joy.
(Electra comes out again with garlands in her hands.)
Electra. Glorious winner. Orestes, son of a father who won the war under Troy, take these bands for the curls of your hair. You have come home from the race, and it was not a useless one, not a sprint down the track for a prize: you killed our enemy, Aegisthus, who destroyed your father and mine. And you, his shield-mate, Pylades, brought up by the most god-fearing of men, take a garland from my hand. You carried an equal share of this contest with him. May I always see the two of you as lucky as you are today.
Orestes. First, Electra, think of the gods as the leaders of this good luck of ours, and then, after them, praise me, the servant of the gods and of fortune. I have come back having killed Aegisthus, and not in words. In deeds. And so that you may know it for certain, I have brought you the dead man himself. Do what you like with him. Put him out for the wild animals to tear, or drive a stake through him and set him up as a prize for the birds, the children of the air. He is your slave now, the man who used to be called your master.
Electra. I am ashamed to. But I want to say it all the same.
Orestes. Say what? Speak. You are out of reach of fear now.
Electra. To outrage the dead. I am ashamed to. Someone might throw it back in my face out of spite.
Orestes. There is no one who would blame you.
Electra. Our city is hard to please, and it loves finding fault.
Orestes. Say what you need to say, sister. The war we had with this man was one with no truce in it.
Electra. Well then. Where do I begin with your evils, and where do I end, and what do I put in the middle? Every morning, before it was light, I never once stopped going over what I wanted to say to your face, if only I were ever free of the terrors I used to live in. Well, now I am free. So I will pay you back now with everything I wanted to say to you while you were alive.
You destroyed me. You made me and my brother here orphans of a father we loved, and we had never done you any wrong. You married my mother, shamefully, and you killed her husband, the man who led the Greeks to war, when you never went near Troy yourself. And you were fool enough to hope that, marrying my mother, you would get a faithful wife, when you had been in my father's bed with her. Let every man know this: when he ruins another man's wife in secret and then finds he has to marry her, he is a miserable man if he thinks the self-control she did not have with the first husband she will suddenly have with him. You lived in misery and did not know it. You knew perfectly well you had made an unholy marriage, and my mother knew she had a godless husband. Two bad people: she took on your fortune, and you took on hers, and each of you got the other's evil. And everywhere in Argos this is what you heard: "the woman's husband," never "the man's wife." And that is a shameful thing, for the wife to be the head of the house and not the husband. I hate children who are known in the city by their mother's name and not their father's. When a man makes a grand marriage, above himself, nobody talks about the husband. The talk is all about the wife.
And here is what deceived you most, and you never saw it. You boasted that you were somebody, because you had money behind you. Money is nothing, except to keep company with for a little while. It is nature that lasts, not money. Nature stays at your side always and lifts your troubles off you; but wealth that was got unjustly, and lives with fools, flies out of the house after a short season in flower. As for what you did with women, a girl should not talk about it, so I will keep quiet; but I will hint plainly enough. You behaved with outrage, because you had a king's house and you were so good-looking. Give me a husband who does not have a girl's face but a man's ways. The sons of men like that grow up to hang on Ares and the spear; the pretty ones are only decoration at a dance.
(She kicks the corpse.)
Go to hell. You never understood what you were, until time found you out and made you pay for it. So let no criminal think, because he ran the first stretch well, that he has beaten Justice, before he comes up to the finishing line and rounds the last turn of his life.
Chorus. He did terrible things, and he has paid terribly for them, to you and to your brother. Justice has great strength.
Electra. Well then. You must carry his body inside and give it to the dark, slaves, so that when my mother comes she does not see a corpse before her own throat is cut.
Orestes. Wait. Let us talk about something else.
Electra. What is it? Those are not rescuers from Mycenae I see, are they?
Orestes. No. It is the mother who bore me.
Electra. Then she is walking beautifully into the middle of the net. And look at her, shining in her carriage and her fine clothes.
Orestes. What do we do now? Are we going to murder our mother?
Electra. Has pity taken hold of you, now that you have seen your mother in the flesh?
Orestes. Pheu. How can I kill her? She bore me. She brought me up.
Electra. The same way she killed your father and mine.
Orestes. Apollo, that was a great stupidity you prophesied.
Electra. If Apollo is a fool, who is wise?
Orestes. You told me to kill my mother, when I should not.
Electra. How are you harmed by avenging your father?
Orestes. I will be hunted as a mother-killer. I was clean before.
Electra. And if you do not defend your father, you will be godless.
Orestes. But my mother. Who will I pay the penalty to, for her blood?
Electra. And who will you pay, if you let your father's vengeance go?
Orestes. Was it some avenging spirit that said this, dressed up as the god?
Electra. Sitting on the holy tripod? I do not think so.
Orestes. I cannot believe this oracle was well prophesied.
Electra. Do not turn coward and fall into unmanliness.
Orestes. So. Am I to lay the same trap for her?
Electra. The one you brought her husband down with, when you killed Aegisthus.
Orestes. I will go in. This is a terrible business I am beginning, and I will do terrible things. If this is what the gods want, so be it. This contest is bitter to me, and sweet too.
(Orestes goes into the house. Clytemnestra's carriage comes up the road, with Trojan slave women walking beside it.)
Chorus. Io. Queen of the land of Argos, daughter of Tyndareus, sister of the two noble sons of Zeus who live in the flaming sky among the stars and hold the honour of saving mortals in the breaking waves of the sea: welcome. I worship you as I worship the blessed gods, for your wealth and your great good fortune. Now is the time to pay our court to your fortunes. Welcome, my queen.
Clytemnestra. Get down from the wagon, women of Troy, and take my hand, so that I can step out of this carriage. The temples of the gods are decorated with the spoils of Phrygia; and I have these women, the pick of the land of Troy, in exchange for the daughter I lost. A small prize, but a fine one, for my house.
Electra. Then may I, mother, since I am a slave, thrown out of my father's house and living in this wretched place, may I take that blessed hand of yours?
Clytemnestra. These slaves are here for that. Do not trouble yourself on my account.
Electra. Why not? You sent me away from home like a prisoner of war. My house was captured, and I was captured with it, like these women, and left without a father.
Clytemnestra. Well, that is what comes of the plans your father made, against the people he should least of all have made them against, his own family. I will speak. Though when a bad reputation has hold of a woman, there is a bitterness on her tongue. Wrongly, in my view. The right thing is to learn the facts, and then, if she deserves to be hated, hate her; and if not, why hate at all?
Tyndareus gave me to your father, not so that I should die, nor the children I bore. But that man took my daughter out of the house, talking her into it with a marriage to Achilles, and went off to Aulis where the fleet lay at its moorings, and there he stretched her over the altar fire and cut Iphigenia's white cheek. If he had killed one for the sake of many, to save the city from being captured, or to benefit his house, or to save his other children, he could have been forgiven. But it was because Helen could not keep herself in hand, and the man who married her had no idea how to punish a wife who betrayed him. That is why he destroyed my child. Even so, wronged as I was, I would not have gone savage over it; I would not have killed my husband. But he came home to me with a girl, a raving prophetess with a god inside her, and put her into his bed, and there we were, two brides kept in the same house.
Women are foolish. I will not say otherwise. But granted that, when a husband goes wrong and pushes away the bed he has at home, a woman wants to copy her husband and get a lover of her own. And then the blame shines out on us, and the men who caused it get no bad word. If Menelaus had been carried off from his home in secret, should I have killed Orestes to get back my sister's husband Menelaus? How would your father have stood for that? So was he not to die, for killing what was mine, while I was to suffer at his hands? I killed him. I turned the only way that was open to me: to his enemies. Which of your father's friends would have joined me in murdering him? Speak, if you want to, and answer me freely: how did your father die unjustly?
Chorus. What you say is just, but the justice is a shameful one. A woman should give way to her husband in everything, if she has any sense. Anyone who does not think so does not count in what I am saying.
Electra. Remember, mother, the last thing you said. You gave me leave to speak freely to you.
Clytemnestra. I say it again, and I do not take it back, child.
Electra. Then when you have heard it, mother, will you make me suffer for it?
Clytemnestra. No. It will be a pleasure to me to let your heart have its say.
Electra. Then I will speak. And this is where my preface begins: I wish, mother, that you had a better mind. Your looks, and Helen's, deserve the praise they get; but the two of you were born true sisters, both empty-headed, and neither of you worthy of Castor. She was carried off and was glad to be ruined; and you destroyed the best man in Greece, and you hold out the excuse that you killed a husband for the sake of a child. People do not know you as well as I do. You, before your daughter's killing had even been decided, when your husband had only just left home, were sitting at the mirror arranging the golden curls of your hair. A woman who works at her beauty while her husband is away from home, cross her off as a bad one. She has no need to show a pretty face out of doors unless she is looking for trouble. You were the only woman in all Greece, that I know of, who was glad when things went well for Troy and clouded over when they went badly, because you did not want Agamemnon to come home from Troy. And yet you had every chance to keep yourself in hand, and honourably. You had a husband who was no worse a man than Aegisthus, one whom Greece chose to be its general. And when your sister Helen had done what she did, you could have won a great name for yourself, because bad conduct gives good conduct a standard to be measured by, and something to look at.
And if, as you say, my father killed your daughter, what wrong did I do you, or my brother? Why, when you had killed your husband, did you not hand our father's house over to us? Instead you brought into your bed what belonged to someone else, and bought your marriage with wages. And why is your husband not in exile in place of your son, and why has he not died in place of me, when he has killed me, alive, twice as thoroughly as my sister was killed? If murder gives judgement, and murder answers murder, then I will kill you, and your son Orestes with me, to avenge our father. If that was just, then this is just too. Any man who looks at wealth or noble birth and marries a wicked woman is a fool. A humble wife who keeps herself in hand is better in a house than a grand one.
Chorus. Marriage is luck for women. Some, I see, fall out well, and some badly, among mortals.
Clytemnestra. Child, you were always made to love your father. That is how it is: some children belong to the men, and others love their mothers more than their father. I will forgive you. I am not really so very pleased, child, with what I did. But you, unwashed like this, in these poor clothes, when you have only just come through childbirth? Oh, I am wretched, and it is my own planning that did it. I went further in my anger against my husband than I should have.
Electra. You groan too late, when there is no cure left. Well, my father is dead. But the one outside the country, your son, wandering the world, why do you not bring him home?
Clytemnestra. I am afraid. I am looking to my own interest, not his. They say he is angry over his father's murder.
Electra. And why do you keep your husband so savage against me?
Clytemnestra. That is his way. And you were born stubborn too.
Electra. Because I am in pain. But I will stop being angry.
Clytemnestra. And then he will stop being hard on you.
Electra. He thinks he is a great man. He is living in my house.
Clytemnestra. You see? You are fanning up new quarrels again.
Electra. I am silent. I am afraid of him, exactly as afraid as I am.
Clytemnestra. Enough of this talk. Why did you send for me, child?
Electra. You have heard, I think, that I have had a child. Make the sacrifice for me, because I do not know how, on the tenth moon after the birth, the way it is done for a child. I have no experience of it. I never had a child before.
Clytemnestra. That is a job for someone else, the woman who delivered you.
Electra. I delivered myself. I gave birth to the baby alone.
Clytemnestra. Is this house set so far from any friendly neighbour?
Electra. Nobody wants poor people for friends.
Clytemnestra. Well, I will go in and make the sacrifice to the gods for the child's full count of days. And when I have done you this favour, I will go on to the field where my husband is sacrificing to the Nymphs. Attendants, take this team away and put them in the stalls. And when you judge that I have finished this sacrifice to the gods, be back here. I have to please my husband as well.
(Clytemnestra goes into the house.)
Electra. Go into my poor house. And be careful, please, that the smoke-blackened roof does not smear soot on your dress. You will make the sacrifice you owe to the gods. The basket is begun and the knife is sharpened, the same knife that brought down the bull; you will fall beside him, struck down. And in the house of Hades you will be the bride of the man you slept with in the light. That is the favour I will do you, and you will pay me justice for my father.
(Electra follows her in.)
Chorus. Evil paid back for evil. The winds of the house have turned and blow the other way. Once, in his bath, my king, my own king, fell, and the roof cried out, and the stone coping of the house, as he said: "Cruel woman, why are you murdering me, come home to my own dear country after ten years of harvests?"
Chorus. Justice flows back like the tide and drags her under, the wife who ran from her bed, who killed her husband when at last he came home to the towering walls the Cyclopes built. With her own hand, with a sharp-edged weapon, the axe in her two hands, she killed him. Poor husband, whatever the evil was that had hold of that wretched woman. Like a mountain lioness that ranges the oak woods in the meadows, she did this thing.
(Clytemnestra's voice is heard from inside the house.)
Clytemnestra. Children, by the gods, do not kill your mother.
Chorus. Do you hear a cry under the roof?
Clytemnestra. Io moi moi.
Chorus. I groan too, for a woman overpowered by her children. A god deals out justice, when the time comes. You suffered cruelly, but what you did to your husband was unholy, poor woman.
Chorus. But here they come out of the house, spattered with their mother's fresh blood, trophies on show of a pitiful sacrifice. There is no house more wretched than the descendants of Tantalus, and there never was.
(Orestes and Electra come out of the house. The two bodies are carried out after them and laid on the ground.)
Orestes. Io, Earth, and Zeus who sees everything that mortals do, look at this bloody, polluted work: two bodies lying on the ground, struck down by my hand, the price I have paid for my sufferings.
Electra. Too many tears, brother, and I am the cause. I came through fire in my rage at this woman, wretched that I am, at the mother who bore me, her daughter.
Chorus. Io, your fate, your fate, mother who bore unforgettable griefs, unforgettable and worse, and suffered them at your own children's hands. But you paid for their father's murder, and justly.
Orestes. Io, Apollo, the justice you sang of was dark, and the griefs you have brought about are plain to see, and the lot you gave me is a killer's, far from the land of Greece. What other city can I go to? What host, what god-fearing man will look me in the face, a man who killed his mother?
Electra. Io, io moi. And where can I go, to what dance, to what wedding? What husband will take me into a bride's bed?
Chorus. Again, again your mind has shifted with the wind. What you think now is holy; it was not then, and you did terrible things, my dear, to a brother who did not want to.
Orestes. Did you see how she threw open her dress, poor woman, and showed her breast as she was being killed, io moi, letting the limbs that gave me birth sink to the ground? And her hair, I —
Chorus. I know it well. You went through agony, hearing the wail of grief from the mother who bore you.
Orestes. She screamed this, and put her hand on my chin: "My child, I beg you." And she hung from my cheeks, so that the weapon fell out of my hands.
Chorus. Poor woman. How could you bear to see with your own eyes the blood of your mother as she breathed out her life?
Orestes. I threw my cloak over my eyes and began the sacrifice with my sword, driving it into my mother's throat.
Electra. And I urged you on, and I took hold of the sword with you.
Chorus. You have done the most terrible thing anyone can suffer.
Orestes. Take her. Cover our mother's limbs with her dress and close up the wounds. So it was your own killers you gave birth to.
Electra. There. Loved and not loved, we wrap this cloak around you.
Chorus. The end of the great evils of the house.
Chorus. But look, over the top of the roof, who are these appearing? Spirits, or gods from heaven? This is no road for mortals. Why are they coming into the open sight of men?
(Castor and Polydeuces, the Dioscuri, appear above the house.)
Castor. Son of Agamemnon, listen. The twin sons of Zeus, your mother's brothers, are calling you: Castor, and this is my brother Polydeuces. We had just stilled a swell in the sea that was terrible for ships when we came to Argos, because we saw the killing of our sister here, your mother. She has her justice now; but what you did was not just. And Apollo, Apollo. But he is my lord, so I keep quiet. He is wise, but the oracle he gave you was not. Still, we have to accept it. From here on you must do what Fate and Zeus have settled for you.
Give Electra to Pylades, to take home as his wife. You, leave Argos. You cannot set foot in this city; you have killed your mother. The terrible Fates, the goddesses with the faces of dogs, will drive you round and round like a wheel, a madman wandering. Go to Athens, and hold on to the holy image of Pallas Athena. She will keep them off you, fluttering as they are with their terrible snakes, so that they cannot touch you, holding her round shield with the Gorgon's face over your head. There is a hill of Ares there, where the gods first sat to vote on a killing, when savage Ares killed Halirrhothius, the son of the lord of the sea, in anger at the unholy rape of his daughter; and from that day the vote given there is the most god-fearing and the most secure that exists. There you too must run your risk for this murder. An equal count of votes will save you from dying by the verdict, because Apollo will take the blame on himself, since it was his oracle that commanded your mother's murder. And this law will be laid down for everyone who comes after: an equal vote always acquits the defendant. Then the terrible goddesses, struck with grief at that, will sink into a cleft in the earth beside that very hill, and it will be a holy oracle, revered by mortals. You must go and live in a city of the Arcadians, by the streams of the Alpheus, near the sanctuary of Zeus of Mount Lycaeon; and the city will be called after your name.
That is what I have to say to you. As for this corpse, Aegisthus, the citizens of Argos will cover it in the earth with a grave. Your mother will be buried by Menelaus, who has only now reached Nauplia, all this time after he took the land of Troy, and by Helen with him. She has come from the house of Proteus, leaving Egypt; she never went to Troy. Zeus, to make strife and slaughter among mortals, sent a phantom of Helen to Troy in her place. So let Pylades take the girl who is also a wife, and go home from the land of Achaea, and let him take the man who is your brother-in-law in name only to the land of Phocis, and give him riches by the weight. And you, set out along the neck of the Isthmus, and go to the blessed hill of Cecrops, in Athens. Once you have filled up the measure of murder that was fated for you, you will be happy, released from these troubles.
Chorus. Sons of Zeus, is it lawful for us to come near enough to speak with you?
Castor. It is lawful. You are not polluted by this killing.
Electra. May I have a share in the talk too, sons of Tyndareus?
Castor. You too. I lay this bloody deed at Apollo's door.
Chorus. How is it that you, two gods, brothers of the woman who lies dead here, did not keep the Fates away from her house?
Castor. Fate, and necessity, led to what had to be, and the unwise sounds from Apollo's tongue.
Electra. But what Apollo, what oracles, made me my mother's murderer?
Castor. Shared deeds, shared dooms: one ruin, handed down from your fathers, has ground you both to pieces.
Orestes. Sister, I have seen you again after so long, and at once I lose your love, and I will leave you, and be left by you.
Castor. She has a husband and a house. She has suffered nothing to pity, except that she is leaving the city of the Argives.
Electra. And what greater thing is there to groan for than leaving the borders of your own country?
Orestes. But I am going out of my father's house, and I will stand trial for my mother's blood before the votes of strangers.
Castor. Courage. You will come to the holy city of Pallas. Only hold out.
Electra. Press your chest against my chest, dearest brother. The bloody curses of our mother are cutting us apart from our father's house.
Orestes. Throw your arms around me. Hold me. And mourn over me as you would over a dead man's grave.
Castor. Pheu, pheu. That is a terrible thing you have said, even for gods to hear. Because in me too, and in the gods of heaven, there is pity for mortals, who suffer so much.
Orestes. I will never see you again.
Electra. And I will never come near your eyes again.
Orestes. These are the last words I will ever say to you.
Electra. Goodbye, my city. Goodbye, and goodbye again, women of my city.
Orestes. Most faithful of all, are you going already?
Electra. I am going, and the tears are wetting my soft eyes.
Orestes. Pylades, go, and be happy. Marry her. Take Electra as your bride.
Castor. Their marriage will be their concern. But you, run from these dogs and go on to Athens. They are on your trail, and it is terrible, the snake-handed ones with the black bodies, carrying the fruit of terrible pains. And we two must hurry over the Sicilian sea to save the prows of ships in the water. As we go across the plain of the sky we do not help the polluted; but those who hold holiness and justice dear in their lives, those we set free from hard troubles, and save. So let no one choose to do wrong, or sail with men who break their oaths. I am a god, and I say this to mortals.
Chorus. Goodbye. And whoever among mortals can fare well, and is not worn down by some blow of fortune, that is the one who lives a happy life.
(Thebes, in front of the house of Heracles. Amphitryon, an old man, sits at the altar of Zeus the Saviour with Megara and her three small sons. Their clothes are in rags.)
Amphitryon. Is there anyone alive who has not heard of the man who shared his wife with Zeus? Amphitryon of Argos, the son Alcaeus fathered, and Alcaeus was the son of Perseus. The father of Heracles. That is me. I settled here in Thebes, where the crop of Sown Men sprang up out of the ground, grown from the dragon's teeth. Ares spared a handful of that race, and their children's children fill the city of Cadmus now. Creon came from that stock, the son of Menoeceus, the king of this country, and Creon is the father of Megara here, the woman every Theban once sang the wedding song for, to the sound of the pipe, on the day the famous Heracles brought her home to my house.
Then my son left Thebes, where I had settled, left Megara and her family, and set his heart on living in Argos, inside the walls the Cyclopes built. I am an exile from that city, because I killed Electryon. So to lighten my troubles, and because he wanted to live in his own country, he offered Eurystheus a great price for my return: he would clear the earth of its monsters. Whether Hera's goad drove him to it or whether it was simply what had to be, I cannot say. He worked his way through all the other labours, and for the last of them he went down through the mouth of Taenarus into the house of Hades, to bring the three-bodied dog up into the light. And from there he has not come back.
There is an old story the Thebans tell, that once upon a time a man called Lycus was Dirce's husband and ruled this city of seven towers, before Amphion and Zethus, the two sons of Zeus who rode the white horses, became kings of the land. That Lycus had a son with his father's name. He is no Theban; he came here from Euboea. He killed Creon, and having killed him he rules the country, because he fell on a city that was sick with civil strife. So our tie to Creon by marriage is turning out, it seems, to be the worst thing that could have happened to us. With my son deep in the earth, this new master of the land, Lycus, means to wipe out Heracles' children, and kill his wife, to put out one killing with another, and kill me too, if a useless old man still counts as a man at all, so that these boys never grow up and make him pay in blood for what he did to their mother's family.
So here I am. My son left me in this house when he went down into the black dark under the earth, to keep it and to look after his children. And so that Heracles' children should not die, I have sat down with their mother at this altar of Zeus the Saviour, which my noble son set up as a monument to his victorious spear when he beat the Minyans. We keep our place here in want of everything: food, drink, clothes. We lay our ribs on the bare ground. The house is sealed against us, and we sit here because there is nowhere else safe to go. As for friends, some of them I can see now were never real friends, and the ones who are real cannot do anything to help us. That is what bad luck does to a person. I hope it never comes to anyone who has even half a kind thought for me. There is no truer test of your friends.
Megara. Old soldier, who once took the city of the Taphians, leading the Theban army in a famous campaign: how little we humans can be sure of about what the gods are doing. Take me. On my father's side, fortune never shut me out. He was counted a great man once, for his wealth. He had a throne, and a throne is the thing long spears go leaping at, aimed at the lives of the lucky men who hold one, out of love for it. And he had children. And he gave me to your son. He married me to Heracles, a brilliant match. Now all that has died and flown away, and you and I are about to die, old man, and Heracles' children with us, the ones I am keeping safe under my wings like a bird crouched over her chicks. And they keep coming at me, one from this side and one from that, with their questions. "Mother, where has Father gone? What is he doing? When is he coming back?" They are too young to understand, and they look for their father everywhere. I put them off with words. I make up stories. But every time the doors creak they are startled, and every one of them is up on his feet, ready to run and throw himself at his father's knees.
So now, old man, what hope, what road to safety are you working out for us? I am looking to you. We cannot get across the border unseen: there are guards at every way out, and they are too strong for us. And there is no hope of rescue from our friends any more. Whatever your judgement is, say it, out loud, for all of us. Otherwise our death is as good as ready.
Amphitryon. Daughter, it is not easy to give offhand advice in a case like this, to be serious without doing the work. But we are weak, and let us make the time last.
Megara. Do you need more grief? Or are you that fond of the daylight?
Amphitryon. I enjoy the light. And I am fond of my hopes.
Megara. So am I. But you must not expect what cannot be expected, old man.
Amphitryon. In putting evils off there is a cure for them.
Megara. It is the time in between that bites me. It hurts.
Amphitryon. Daughter, there could still be a fair wind for you and me out of this trouble. My son, your husband, could still come. So be quiet, and dry the streams of tears running from your children's eyes, and soothe them with words, tell them stories, steal their fear away. A poor kind of theft, but steal it anyway. Even human misfortunes get tired, you know. The winds do not always blow at full strength, and the people who are doing well do not do well to the end. Everything changes places with everything else. The best man is the one who trusts in his hopes, always. Giving up is the mark of a bad one.
(The Chorus, old men of Thebes, come in slowly, leaning on their sticks.)
Chorus. To the high roof, to the old man's bed, propped on my stick, I have set out, a singer of wailing songs, like a grey old bird. I am nothing but words, a shape seen at night in a night-time dream, trembling, yes, but willing. Children, children with no father, old man, and you, poor mother, groaning for your husband in the house of Hades.
Chorus. Do not let your feet give out, or your heavy legs, like a colt under the yoke, dragging the weight of a wheeled cart up a rocky slope. Take hold of a hand, take hold of a cloak, whoever feels his dim footsteps failing. Old man, help an old man along, the one whose young spear stood by your young spear long ago, in the labours of your age-mates, and was never a shame to a country whose glory was second to none.
Chorus. Look. The fierce flash of their eyes, how like their father's. The bad luck has not left these children, and neither has the grace. Greece, what allies, what allies you will be robbing yourself of if you lose these boys.
(Lycus comes in with armed men.)
Chorus. But I see Lycus, the ruler of this land, coming past the house towards us.
Lycus. The father of Heracles, and his wife. I have a question for you, if I may. And I may, since I have made myself your master, and I ask what I like. How long do you mean to spin out your lives? What hope, what defence do you see that will keep you from dying? Do you believe the father of these children, who is lying dead in the house of Hades, is going to come back? You make far more of dying than it deserves, both of you, if you have to die. You, who scattered your empty boasts across Greece, that Zeus shared your wife and had a child with you. And you, who were called the wife of the finest man alive.
What was the great thing your husband did, after all? He killed a water-snake in a marsh? Or the beast of Nemea, which he caught in a snare and then said he strangled with his bare arms? Is that what you are fighting me with? Is that why Heracles' children should not die? The man made a name for courage he never had, fighting animals. In everything else he was nothing. He never held a shield on his left arm, never came near a spear. He carried a bow, the most cowardly weapon there is, and he was always ready to run. A bow is no proof of a man's courage. The proof is the man who stands his ground in the ranks and looks straight at the fast furrow the spear cuts, and does not blink.
And what I am doing, old man, is not shamelessness. It is caution. I know that I killed Creon, this woman's father, and that I hold his throne. So I have no wish to let these boys grow up and be left behind to take vengeance on me for what I did.
Amphitryon. Let Zeus defend the part of his son that is Zeus's. As for my part, Heracles, it falls to me to show, with words, on your behalf, what an ignorant man this is. I cannot let you be spoken of like that. First, then, the thing that should never be said at all, because calling you a coward, Heracles, is among the things that cannot be said. I have to clear you of that, and the gods are my witnesses. I call on the thunderbolt of Zeus, and on the four-horse chariot he rode in when he drove his winged arrows into the ribs of the Giants, the earth's children, and then sang the victory song with the gods. Or go to Pholoe, you worst of kings, and ask that four-legged outrage, the tribe of Centaurs, whom they would pick as the bravest man alive. Would it not be my son, the one you say only seems to be brave? Ask Dirphys, the mountain of the Abantes that raised you, and it would not sing your praises. There is nowhere in your own country you could point to and say, here I did one brave thing, and call the land as a witness.
Then you sneer at the cleverest invention there is, the archer's gear. Listen to me now and learn something. A man who fights in armour is the slave of his weapons. If the men in line beside him are not brave, he dies himself, through his neighbours' cowardice. And if he breaks his spear, he has nothing to keep death off his body: one defence, and that is all. But every man with a good aim and a bow in his hand has the one best thing, which is this. He can let fly ten thousand arrows, and there are still others to keep his body from death. He stands well back and fights the enemy off, wounding men who can see with shafts they cannot see coming, and he never gives the other side his body. He keeps it well guarded. And that is the cleverest thing in battle: to hurt the enemy and keep yourself alive, and not be anchored to luck. So much for that. My argument and yours take opposite views of the matter in hand.
And now, these children. Why do you want to kill them? What have they done to you? I will grant you are clever in one thing: you are a coward yourself, and you are afraid of the children of the best. But it is hard on us all the same, if we have to die for your cowardice, when you should have suffered that at our hands, since we are the better men, if Zeus had any fair feeling towards us. If you want the sceptre of this land for yourself, then let us go, let us leave the country as exiles. Do nothing by force, or you will suffer force yourself, when the god's wind changes for you.
Pheu. Land of Cadmus, because I am coming to you too, I am handing out my share of blame: is this how you defend Heracles and his children? The man who went alone into battle against the whole Minyan army and made it possible for Thebes to look out at the world with a free eye? And I cannot praise Greece either, and I will never keep quiet about it: I have found her at her worst towards my son. She should have come to these chicks with fire and spears and armour, to pay him back for clearing the sea and the land of their filth. That was the labour, and that was the thanks he earned. But you get none of that, children, not from the city of Thebes and not from Greece. You look to me, a feeble friend, and I am nothing but the noise of a tongue. The strength I had once is gone; old age has left my limbs shaking and my power dim. If I were young, if I still had my body under me, I would have picked up a spear and reddened that yellow hair of his with blood, so that he would be running from my spear this minute, out past the borders of Atlas, for cowardice.
Chorus. Do good men not find an opening for speech, even when they are slow to start?
Lycus. Go on, say what you like about me with the words you have built your tower out of. I will answer your words with something worse. You men, go, some of you to Helicon, some to the folds of Parnassus. Tell the woodcutters to fell oak logs and bring them into the city. Then stack the wood round the altar on every side, and light it, and burn their bodies, all of them, so that they learn that it is not the dead man who rules this land now. It is me.
And you, old men, you have set yourselves against my wishes. You will not only be mourning Heracles' children. You will be mourning what happens to your own houses too, whenever anything happens to them, and you will remember that you are slaves, and that I am your king.
Chorus. You children of the Earth, you men Ares sowed, when he tore the teeth out of the dragon's greedy jaw: will you not lift up the staffs your right hands lean on and bloody the unholy head of this man, who is no Theban, a foreigner, the lowest of the low, and lords it over the young men here? You will never be my master and enjoy it.
You will not have what I sweated for with my own hands either. Go back where you came from and do your outrages there. As long as I live you will never kill Heracles' children. He is not buried so deep under the ground as all that, when he left his children behind.
You hold this land, and you ruined it to get it. The man who did it good gets nothing that he deserves.
And am I meddling, because I do good to my friends when they are dead, when a friend is needed most?
Right hand, how you long to take hold of a spear. But you are weak, and the longing has died. Otherwise I would have stopped you calling me a slave, and we would have lived in this city of Thebes with honour, the city you are enjoying now. Because a city that is sick with civil strife and bad counsel is not in its right mind. If it were, it would never have taken you for its master.
Megara. Old men, thank you. It is right for friends to feel a just anger on their friends' behalf. But do not get yourselves hurt on our account, raging at your masters. Amphitryon, listen to my judgement, if you think there is anything in what I say. I love my children. How could I not love the ones I bore, the ones I laboured for? And I think dying is a terrible thing. But a person who strains against what has to be, I count a fool. Since we must die, we should die without being shredded by fire, giving our enemies something to laugh at, and to me that is a worse evil than the dying. We owe this house a great deal, and all of it fine. You have a glorious name as a soldier, so it is not to be borne that you should die a coward's death. And my husband needs no witness to his good name. He would never want these children saved at the price of a bad one. Noble men suffer when their children shame them, and I will not push my husband's example aside.
And look at your hope, the way I reckon it. You think your son is coming back from under the ground? Who ever came back out of Hades from among the dead? Or do we soften this man with words? Never. An enemy who is a brute, you run from. It is clever men, men who were raised well, that you give way to: touch their sense of shame and you can cut a friendly bargain more easily. It has already crossed my mind to beg him for exile for the children. But that is misery too, to wrap their rescue in pitiful poverty. They say a host's face is sweet to look at for exactly one day, when the friend at his door is a fugitive. Have the nerve to die with us. Death is waiting for you anyway. I am calling on your noble blood, old man. Whoever struggles against what the gods have fixed is keen, but the keenness is madness. What must be, no one will ever make not be.
Chorus. If my arms were strong and someone were insulting you, it would have been easy to stop him. Now we are nothing. From here on, Amphitryon, it is for you to see how to push this fate aside.
Amphitryon. It is not cowardice, and it is not any love of life, that keeps me from dying. I want to save my son's children. But it seems I am in love with the impossible. Look. Here is my neck, ready for the sword, to stab, to kill, to throw off a rock. One favour for the two of us, king. We beg you. Kill me and this poor woman before you kill the children, so we do not have to watch them, an unholy sight, gasping out their lives and calling for their mother and their father's father. The rest, if you are set on it, do. We have no defence against dying.
Megara. And I beg you to add a second favour to the first, so that one man can do both of us a double service. Let me put on my children the dress of the dead. Open the house, because we are locked out of it now, so that at least they have that much of their father's house.
Lycus. It shall be done. I tell my men to undo the bolts. Go in and dress yourselves. I do not begrudge you clothes. And when you have put your finery on your bodies, I will come back and give you to the world below.
(Lycus goes out with his men. The doors of the house are opened.)
Megara. Children, follow your poor mother's steps into your father's house. Other men own what is in it. The name is still ours.
(Megara goes in with the children.)
Amphitryon. Zeus, it was for nothing, then, that I had you as a partner in my marriage. For nothing that we called you the joint father of my son. You turned out to be less of a friend than you seemed. I am a mortal and you are a great god, and I beat you in goodness, because I did not betray Heracles' children. You knew how to sneak into a bed, to take another man's wife with nobody's leave. But your own friends you do not know how to save. You are a stupid god, or you were born unjust.
(Amphitryon goes in.)
Chorus. Ai. Linus: Apollo sings the lament for him, after the happy song, dead in his beauty, driving the strings with his golden pick. But I want to sing of the man who went down into the dark of the earth and the dead below, call him the son of Zeus or the child of Amphitryon, and put a crown of praise on his labours. The courage of noble work is the glory of the dead.
Chorus. First he emptied the grove of Zeus of its lion, and wrapped his back in the tawny hide, his yellow head hooded in the terrible gape of the beast's jaws.
Chorus. And the mountain tribe of wild Centaurs he laid low one day with his murderous bow, killing them with winged arrows. Peneus knows it, the river of beautiful eddies, and the long fields of the plain that bear no crop, and the farms on Pelion, and the glens of Homole next door, where they filled their hands with pine trees and rode down on the land of Thessaly and broke it under their horses' hooves.
Chorus. And the golden-horned deer with the dappled back, that plundered the farmers, he killed, and gave the glory to the goddess who kills wild beasts, Artemis of Oenoe.
Chorus. He mounted the four-horse chariot and tamed with the bit the horses of Diomedes, that champed at their bloody mangers unbridled, greedy, meat with the blood still on it between their jaws, an ugly table, glad to be eating men. Then over the banks of the Hebrus that runs with silver he crossed, still labouring for the king of Mycenae.
Chorus. And on the shore under Pelion, by the springs of Anaurus, he killed Cycnus with his arrows, the murderer of guests, who lived at Amphanae and mixed with no one.
Chorus. And he came to the singing girls in their garden in the west, to pick with his hand the golden fruit from the leaves of the apple tree, killing the dragon with the fiery back that coiled round it, guarding it, a thing no one could come near. And he went into the deep places of the salt sea and made it calm for the oars of men.
Chorus. And under the middle of the sky he drove his hands to hold up its seat, when he came to the house of Atlas, and with a man's strength he carried the starry homes of the gods.
Chorus. And the mounted army of the Amazons round the Maeotic lake, fed by so many rivers, he went to find, through the swell of the Black Sea that welcomes no one, gathering a company of friends from all Greece. Who did he leave out? After the gold-worked cloak of the war-god's daughter, the deadly hunt for a belt. Greece took the famous spoils of the barbarian girl, and they are kept safe in Mycenae.
Chorus. And the hound of Lerna with its thousand heads, the many-murdering water-snake, he burned out with fire, and dipped his arrows in its poison, and with those he killed the three-bodied herdsman of Erytheia.
Chorus. And other races he ran, and came through them with glory and good luck. And then he sailed to Hades, the place of many tears, the end of his labours, and there, poor man, he finishes his life, and has not come back. The house is empty of friends, and Charon's oar is waiting for his children, a road out of life with no return, godless, unjust. The house looks to your hands, and you are not here.
Chorus. If I had the strength of my youth and could shake a spear in the fight, with the Thebans who were young with me, I would have stood in front of these children and defended them. But now I am left behind by my lucky youth.
(Megara comes out of the house with the children, all dressed for burial, and Amphitryon behind them.)
Chorus. But look. I see them coming, dressed in the clothes of the dead, the children of the man who was so great once, Heracles, and his dear wife, dragging the children along at her feet like a team on a rope, and Heracles' old father. I am wretched. I cannot hold back the springs of tears in my old eyes any more.
Megara. Well, then. Who is the priest? Who is the butcher for these unlucky children? Who is the murderer of my miserable life? The victims are ready. Lead them to the house of Hades. Children, we are being led away, an ugly team of corpses, old men and young and mothers all together. My poor fate, and my children's. I am looking at you for the very last time. I gave you birth, and I raised you for our enemies, to be their outrage and their laughing-stock and their prey.
Pheu. How far my hopes have knocked me from what I expected, the things I once hoped for from your father's words. To you, your father who is dead was giving Argos. You were going to live in Eurystheus's house and rule the rich fields of the Pelasgian land, and he used to throw the lion's skin over your head, the beast's hide that he armed himself with. And you were going to be king of Thebes, the city that loves its chariots, with my land, the plains that came to me, for your inheritance, because that is what you talked your father into. And into your right hand he used to lower the carved club, the wood that kept him safe, pretending to give it to you. And you: he promised he would give you Oechalia, the city his far-shooting arrows once destroyed. Three of you, and three kingdoms your father was building up for you, proud of his own courage. And I was picking out the best brides, tying you by marriage to Athens and Sparta and Thebes, so that you would ride at anchor on stern-cables and live a happy life. All gone. Fortune has turned round and given you Deaths for brides instead, and given me tears for the wedding bath. I was a fool to hope. And your grandfather here is hosting the wedding feast, with Hades for the father of the brides. A fine match.
Oh. Which of you do I take to my breast first, which last? Which of you do I kiss? Which do I hold? If only I were a bee with brown wings and could gather up the grief from all of you and carry it into one place and give it back as one flood of tears. Dearest, if any mortal voice is heard in the house of Hades, I am saying this to you, Heracles. Your father is dying, and your children, and I am done for, I who was once called blessed among mortals because of you. Help us. Come. Show yourself, even as a shadow. Your coming would be enough, even as a dream, because the men who are killing your children are cowards.
Amphitryon. You see to the things below, woman. And I, Zeus, throw up my hand to the sky and call on you: if you mean to do anything for these children, help them now, because very soon you will be no use at all. And yet you have been called on many times. I am working for nothing. It seems we have to die.
Well, old men. Life is a small thing. Get through it as pleasantly as you can, and do not grieve from morning to night. Time does not know how to keep our hopes safe. It hurries about its own business and flies away. Look at me. Everyone looked at me once. I did things men talked about. And in one day fortune took it all from me, like a feather blown up into the sky. Great wealth and a great name: I do not know anyone whose are certain. Goodbye. You are looking at your old friend, my age-mates, for the very last time.
(Heracles comes in along the road, carrying his bow and his club. Megara sees him first.)
Megara. Ah. Old man, am I looking at the people I love most? Or what am I to say?
Amphitryon. I do not know, daughter. I cannot find my voice either.
Megara. This is the man they told us was under the earth. Unless we are seeing some dream in broad daylight. What am I saying? What kind of dreams am I seeing, in my fear? This is nobody else, old man. This is your son. Come here, children, hang on to your father's clothes. Go on, quickly, and do not let go. He is every bit as good to you as Zeus the Saviour himself.
Heracles. Greetings, my house, and the gates of my hearth. How glad I am to see you, coming back into the light. Ah. What is this? I see my children in front of the house with their heads wreathed in the dress of the dead, and my wife in a crowd of men, and my father in tears. What has happened? Let me go closer to them and find out. Wife, what new trouble has come to the house?
Megara. Dearest of men.
Amphitryon. Light, come back to your father.
Megara. You are here? You are safe? You have come in time for the people you love?
Heracles. What are you saying? What is this confusion I have walked into, father?
Megara. We are being destroyed. Old man, forgive me if I have snatched first what was yours to tell him. A woman is somehow quicker to cry than a man, and it was my children who were dying, and I was dying with them.
Heracles. Apollo. What an opening to your story.
Megara. My brothers are dead, and my old father.
Heracles. What? What did he do? Whose spear did he meet?
Megara. Lycus killed them. The new master of the country.
Heracles. In open battle, or was the land sick?
Megara. Civil war. He holds the power now, over Cadmus's city of the seven gates.
Heracles. Then why did the fear come to you and the old man?
Megara. He was going to kill your father, and me, and the children.
Heracles. What? What did he have to fear from my fatherless children?
Megara. That one day they would make him pay for Creon's death.
Heracles. And this dress the children are wearing, fit for the dead?
Megara. We have already put on the wrappings of death.
Heracles. And you were being put to death by force? Oh, this is hard to bear.
Megara. With no friends left. And we heard that you were dead.
Heracles. Where did that despair come from? Who told you?
Megara. The heralds of Eurystheus kept announcing it.
Heracles. And why did you leave my house and my hearth?
Megara. By force. Your father was thrown out of his bed.
Heracles. And he had no shame? He could treat an old man like that?
Megara. Shame? He lives a long way from that goddess.
Heracles. Were we so short of friends while I was away?
Megara. What friends does a man have when his luck turns?
Heracles. The battles I fought against the Minyans. They spat on those?
Megara. Bad luck has no friends. I will say it to you again.
Heracles. Throw those wrappings of Hades off your heads, and look up at the light. Instead of the dark down there, your eyes are getting a welcome exchange. And I, since now this is work for my own hand, will first go and tear down the house of the new king, cut off his unholy head and throw it to the dogs to drag about. And every Theban I find who turned bad after I did him good, I will bring down with this club that has won so many victories. The rest I will scatter with feathered arrows and fill the whole Ismenus with the corpses of the dead, and the white stream of Dirce will run with blood. Who should I defend, if not my wife and my children and my old father? Goodbye to my labours. I did them for nothing, if I did them instead of this. And I must die defending them, if they were going to die for their father. Or what will we call fine in going to fight a hydra and a lion on Eurystheus's orders, if I do not work to save my own children from death? Then I will not be called Heracles the glorious victor any more, the way I was before.
Chorus. It is right that children help the people who made them, and an old father, and the woman who shares a man's marriage.
Amphitryon. It is like you, my boy, to be a friend to your friends and to hate what is hateful. But do not be in too much of a hurry.
Heracles. And what am I doing faster than I should, father?
Amphitryon. The king has a lot of allies, poor men who pass for rich by the way they talk. They started the civil war and wrecked the city so they could plunder their neighbours, because what they had at home was gone, spent, run through by idleness. You were seen coming into the city. And since you were seen, watch out that you do not gather your enemies together and fall when you never expected it.
Heracles. I do not care if the whole city saw me. But I saw a bird sitting in an unlucky quarter of the sky, and I knew some trouble had fallen on the house. So I came into the country secretly, on purpose.
Amphitryon. Good. Now go in and greet your hearth, and let your father's house see your face. The king is coming here himself, to drag out your wife and children and butcher them, and to cut my throat over them. If you stay right here, everything will fall into your hands, and you gain safety into the bargain. And do not stir up your city before you have settled this well, child.
Heracles. I will do that. You are right. I will go into the house. I have come back at last from the sunless corners of Hades and of Persephone, down below, and I will not fail to greet the gods under my own roof first.
Amphitryon. Did you really go to the house of Hades, child?
Heracles. Yes, and I brought the three-headed beast up into the light.
Amphitryon. Did you beat him in a fight, or was he a gift from the goddess?
Heracles. A fight. And I was lucky: I had already seen the rites of the mysteries, the ones the initiated see at Eleusis.
Amphitryon. And is the beast in Eurystheus's house now?
Heracles. The grove of Demeter of the Underworld has him, and the town of Hermione.
Amphitryon. And Eurystheus does not know you have come back up onto the earth?
Heracles. He does not. I came here first, to find out how things stood.
Amphitryon. And why were you so long under the earth?
Heracles. I stayed to bring Theseus back out of Hades, father.
Amphitryon. And where is he? Has he gone off to his own country?
Heracles. He has gone to Athens, glad to have escaped from down below. But come, children, walk into the house with your father. Your going in is going to be a better thing than your coming out was. Take heart, and stop letting the streams run from your eyes. And you, wife, gather your courage, stop trembling, and let go of my clothes. I have no wings, and I have no wish to run away from the people I love. Ah. They will not let go. They cling to my clothes all the harder. Were you standing so close to the edge of the razor? Then I will take these little boats by the hand and tow them along, the way a ship tows its dinghies. I do not refuse to take care of my children. Everything human is the same. The best of men love their children, and so do men who are nothing at all. Money makes them different, some have it and some do not, but the whole race loves its children.
(Heracles goes into the house, leading the children by the hand. Megara and Amphitryon follow him.)
Chorus. Youth is what I love, always. Old age is a weight on my head, heavier than the crags of Etna, and it lays a dark veil over the light of my eyes. Never let me have the wealth of an Asian king's throne, never a house piled with gold, if the price is my youth. Youth is the loveliest thing there is when you are rich, and the loveliest when you are poor. But old age, grim and deadly, I hate it. Let it sink under the waves. It should never have come to the houses and cities of men. It should be out over the sky forever, carried along on wings.
Chorus. If the gods had any understanding, any wisdom, as men reckon such things, they would have given a second youth, a visible mark of goodness, to whoever had goodness in him, and when they died they would have run back up into the sunlight on a second lap of the course, while a bad nature had to make do with a single stretch of life. That way you could tell the bad from the good, the way sailors can count the stars through a gap in the clouds. As it is, the gods have set no clear line between good men and bad. Time turns and turns, and only piles up wealth.
Chorus. I will not stop mixing the Graces in with the Muses, the sweetest pairing there is. Let me not live without music. Let me always wear a garland. The old singer still sings of Memory, the mother of the Muses. I still sing the glorious victory of Heracles, beside Dionysus the giver of wine, beside the song of the seven-stringed shell and the Libyan pipe. Not yet will I put down the Muses, who set me dancing.
Chorus. The girls of Delos sing their hymn around the temple gates for Leto's lovely son, whirling in their beautiful dance. And I, an old singer, like a swan, will sing my hymns at your doors out of a grey-bearded throat. There is good matter here for a song: he is the son of Zeus. But his goodness rises higher than his birth. He laboured, and he made life calm for men, and killed the beasts they were afraid of.
(Lycus comes in with his men. Amphitryon comes out of the house to meet him.)
Lycus. Amphitryon. You are coming out of the house just in time. It is a long while now that you have been dressing your bodies in the clothes and ornaments of the dead. Come on. Tell the children and the wife of Heracles to show themselves outside this house, on the terms you offered, of your own free will, to die.
Amphitryon. My lord, you hound me when I am already broken, and you heap outrage on me on top of my dead. You should be more measured in your eagerness, even if you do hold the power. But since you lay the necessity of dying on us, we have to accept it. What you decide has to be done.
Lycus. Where is Megara, then? Where are the children of Alcmene's son?
Amphitryon. I think she, as far as I can guess from out here.
Lycus. What is this guess of yours? What proof have you got?
Amphitryon. Is sitting as a suppliant at the holy steps of the hearth.
Lycus. Begging, and getting nothing for it. It will not save her life.
Amphitryon. And calling on her dead husband. For nothing.
Lycus. Who is not here, and who will never come.
Amphitryon. No. Unless some god should raise him up.
Lycus. Go to her and bring her out of the house.
Amphitryon. If I did that I would be a partner in the murder.
Lycus. Then since you have that on your conscience, we will do it, we who are past being afraid. We will bring the children out, and their mother with them. Follow me, men. Let us cut this delay short and get the work done, and gladly.
(Lycus goes into the house with his men.)
Amphitryon. Go on, then. Go where you have to go. The rest, perhaps, someone else will see to. You have done evil; expect some evil to come to you. Old men, he is walking in beautifully. He is going to be tangled in the nooses of a net with swords in it, when he thought he was going to kill his neighbours, the vilest man alive. I am going in to watch him fall dead. There is pleasure in an enemy dying and paying the penalty for what he has done.
(Amphitryon goes into the house.)
Chorus. The evil has changed sides. The great king of before turns his life back round, up out of Hades. Io. Justice, and the tide of the gods, turning back. You have come at last to where you will pay for it with your death, for the outrages you did to your betters. Joy has made my tears break out. He has come back, the thing I never once, in my heart, hoped to live to see: the king of this land. But come, old friends, let us watch what is going on inside the house too, and see whether a certain man is faring the way I want him to.
Lycus. Io moi moi.
Chorus. This is the song, beginning now, that I love to hear inside the house. Death is not far off. The king cries out, groaning the first notes of his murder.
Lycus. Oh, all the land of Cadmus, I am being killed by a trick.
Chorus. Yes, because you killed. Endure it, as you pay it back, pay the penalty for what you did. Who was he, a mortal man, who stained the gods with his lawlessness, who threw a mindless slander at the blessed ones in heaven, that the gods, after all, have no strength? Old men, the godless man is no more. The house is silent. Let us turn to the dance. The friends I want to prosper are prospering.
Chorus. Dances, dances and feasting are what matter now all through the holy town of Thebes. A change from tears, a change of fortune, has given birth to new songs. The new king is gone, and the old one rules, back from the harbour of Acheron. Hope has come beyond anything I counted on.
Chorus. The gods, the gods take care to notice the unjust and the holy. Gold and good luck drag men out of their right minds and haul unjust power along after them. No one dared to look at what Time brings round again. He left the law behind, he gave his favour to lawlessness, and he smashed the black chariot of his prosperity.
Chorus. Ismenus, put on your garlands. Polished streets of the seven-gated city, break out into dancing, and Dirce with your lovely stream, and you, the daughters of Asopus, leave your father's water and come and sing with us, nymphs, of the glorious victory Heracles has won. Wooded rock of Pythian Apollo, and you houses of the Muses on Helicon, oh, come with glad shouting to my city, to my walls, where the Sown Men sprang out of the ground, the crop that grew from the dragon's teeth Cadmus planted, a troop with bronze shields, who hand this land down to their children's children, a holy light for Thebes.
Chorus. Oh, the two beds that shared one marriage, a mortal's and Zeus's, who came to the bed of the bride descended from Perseus. How I believe now, Zeus, in that old story of your bed; it turned out true beyond my hope, and time has shown bright and clear the strength of Heracles, who came up out of the earth's chambers, leaving the house of Pluto down below. You are a better king to me than that low-born lord, as anyone can see now from this contest of drawn swords, which showed whether justice still pleases the gods.
(Iris and Madness appear above the house.)
Chorus. Ah. Ah. Have we come into the same fit of fear again, old men? What is that thing I see over the house? Run, run. Lift your slow legs and get out of the way. Lord Healer, turn this disaster away from me.
Iris. Courage, old men. The one you are looking at is Madness, the daughter of Night, and I am Iris, the servant of the gods. We have not come to do the city any harm. Our campaign is against one man's body, the man they say was born from Zeus and Alcmene. Until he had finished his bitter labours, what had to be kept him safe, and his father Zeus never let me or Hera hurt him. But now that he has come through the tasks Eurystheus set him, Hera wants to fasten fresh blood on him: he is to kill his own children. And I want it too. Come, then, daughter of black Night, who never married, take your heart and make it hard. Drive madness into this man, a child-killing confusion of the mind, and set his feet leaping. Drive him, shake him, let out the murderous sail. When he has ferried his fine garland of children across the strait of Acheron, killed by his own hand, then let him know what Hera's anger against him is like, and learn what mine is. Otherwise the gods are nowhere, and mortal men will be great, if he does not pay.
Madness. I come from a noble father and a noble mother. I am of the blood of Night and of Heaven. And the office I hold is not one to turn against friends in anger, and I take no joy in visiting the houses of men. I want to give Hera some advice, before I see her stumble, and you too, if you will listen to what I say. This man, whose house you are sending me into, is no nobody, on earth or among the gods. He tamed the trackless country and the wild sea, and by himself he set the honours of the gods back on their feet when they were falling, brought down by unholy men. So I advise you: do not wish great evils on him.
Iris. Do not lecture us about Hera's plans and mine.
Madness. I am setting your foot on the better path instead of the evil one.
Iris. It was not to keep yourself in hand that the wife of Zeus sent you here.
Madness. I call the Sun to witness that I am doing what I do not want to do. But if I really must serve Hera and you, and follow you at full speed, in full cry, like hounds after the huntsman, then I will go. Not the sea, groaning so wildly with its waves, not the earthquake, not the sting of the thunderbolt breathing out its pangs, will be anything like the sprint I am going to make into the chest of Heracles. I will smash the roof and bring the house down on top of him, once I have killed his children first. And the killer will not know that he is cutting down the children he fathered, until my madness lets him go. Look, there. Already he is tossing his head at the starting line, and rolling his eyes, twisted, glaring like a Gorgon, without a word. He cannot keep his breathing in hand; he is like a bull about to charge, terrible, and he bellows, calling up the Fates out of Tartarus. Soon I will make you dance harder still, and pipe terror into your ears. Go up to Olympus, Iris, lift your noble foot. I am going down into the house of Heracles, where no one will see me.
(Iris goes. Madness goes down into the house.)
Chorus. Ototototoi. Groan. He is being cut down, the flower of your city, the son of Zeus. Poor Greece, you are going to throw away the man who did you good, and destroy him, dancing to the mad pipes of Madness. She is off in her chariot, the lady of many groans, she puts the goad to her horses as if to outrage them, the Gorgon daughter of Night, with the hissing of a hundred snake heads, Madness with the flashing eyes. Quickly the god has turned his good luck over, quickly the children will breathe out their lives at their father's hand.
Amphitryon. Io moi. Wretched man that I am.
Chorus. Io, Zeus. Your child will have no children now; the mad, unjust Avengers who eat raw flesh are about to lay him out flat in misery.
Amphitryon. Io, roof of my house.
Chorus. The dance begins, without the drums, without the wand Dionysus loves,
Amphitryon. Io, my house.
Chorus. for blood, and not for the pouring of Dionysus's wine, the juice of the grape.
Amphitryon. Run, children. Get out of there.
Chorus. Deadly, this deadly tune the pipe is playing. He is hunting his children down like game. Never in vain will Madness run wild through a house.
Amphitryon. Aiai. The evil of it.
Chorus. Aiai indeed. How I groan for the old man, the father, and for the mother who raised the children, who bore them for nothing. Look. Look. A storm is shaking the house. The roof is falling in.
Heracles. E, e. What are you doing, daughter of Zeus, to my house? You are sending the turmoil of Tartarus into my house, Pallas, the way you did once against Enceladus.
(The Messenger comes out of the house.)
Messenger. Old men, bodies white with age.
Chorus. What is this cry you are calling me with?
Messenger. Unspeakable things in the house.
Chorus. I need no other prophet to tell me that.
Messenger. The children are dead.
Chorus. Aiai.
Messenger. Groan. There is reason to groan.
Chorus. Deadly murders, deadly hands of a parent. Oh.
Messenger. No one could say more than what we have suffered.
Chorus. How can you show us this ruin, this ruin of a father over his children, that we must groan for? Tell us how these evils rushed down, sent from a god, onto the house, and how the children met what they suffered.
Messenger. The sacrifice was set out in front of the altar of Zeus, to purify the house, because Heracles had killed the king of the land and thrown him out of this house. The children stood there, a beautiful group, with his father and Megara. The basket had already gone round the altar, and we were keeping the holy silence. Alcmene's son was about to take up the torch in his right hand, to dip it in the water of purification, when he stood still without a word. And as their father went on standing there, the children looked up at him. He was not himself any more. He was gone, ruined, in the rolling of his eyes; the roots of his eyes stood out bloodshot, and foam ran down into his thick beard. And he spoke, with a laugh that had gone wrong. "Father, why am I sacrificing and lighting the purifying fire before I have killed Eurystheus? Why have the work twice over? It is a job for one hand of mine to settle all this. When I bring the head of Eurystheus back here, I will wash my hands clean for the men who have just died, and for him together. Pour out the water. Throw the baskets out of your hands. Who is giving me my bow? Who is giving me the weapon for my hand? I am going to Mycenae. I need crowbars and pickaxes, to smash back down with bent iron the foundations the Cyclopes fitted together with their red plumb-line and their hammers."
Then he set off. He had no chariot, but he said he had one, and he stepped up onto the rail of a chariot that was not there and struck with his hand, as if he were holding a goad. The servants felt two things at once, laughter and fear together. And one man looked at another and said, "Is the master playing with us, or is he mad?" And he went pacing up and down through the house, and burst into the middle of the men's hall and said he had reached the city of Nisus, Megara, on the road south. Then, going further inside, he lay down on the floor, just as he was, and set about preparing himself a feast. And after he had passed a short while there, he said he was coming to the wooded flats of the Isthmus. And there he stripped his body of its clothes and their fastenings and wrestled with nobody, and had himself proclaimed the glorious victor over no one, by himself, to himself, after calling for silence from a crowd that was not there. Then, roaring terrible threats at Eurystheus, he was in Mycenae, by his own account. But his father took hold of his strong hand and said this to him. "My son, what is the matter with you? What is this strange journey you are on? It is not the blood of the men you have just killed that has driven you into this frenzy?" But he thought it was the father of Eurystheus, frightened, touching his hand to beg for mercy, and he pushed him away, and got his quiver ready, and his bow, against his own children, thinking he was killing the sons of Eurystheus. And they were terrified, and bolted, one this way and one that: one into the dress of his poor mother, one into the shadow of a pillar, and the other crouched under the altar like a bird. And their mother screamed, "You, their father, what are you doing? Are you killing your children?" And the old man screamed, and the whole crowd of slaves.
But he chased the boy round and round the pillar, a terrible circling of feet, and came face to face with him and shot him in the liver. He fell on his back, and soaked the stone pillars with his blood as he breathed out his life. And Heracles shouted in triumph and boasted. "There. One of Eurystheus's chicks is dead, fallen at my feet, paying for his father's hatred." Then he aimed the bow at another, who had crouched down at the base of the altar, thinking he was hidden. But the poor boy got to him first. He fell at his father's knees and threw his hand up to his beard and his neck, and said, "Dearest father, do not kill me. I am yours. I am your boy. It is not Eurystheus's son you are killing." But he turned that wild Gorgon eye on him, and since the boy was standing too close for the deadly bow, he lifted his club over his head, like a smith striking hot iron, and brought it down on the child's fair head and broke the bones. With the second boy taken, he goes for the third, to butcher him on top of the other two. But the poor mother was too quick for him. She snatched the child away inside the house and shut the doors. And he, as if he really were at the walls the Cyclopes built, dug and levered at the doors, tore the doorposts out, and laid his wife and his child flat with a single arrow. Then he goes galloping off to kill the old man. But an image came, or so it looked to us who were watching: Pallas, shaking her spear, the crest of her helmet nodding, and she threw a rock at Heracles's chest, and it stopped him in the middle of his frenzy for killing and sent him down into sleep. He fell to the floor, and hit his back against a pillar that had broken in two when the roof fell in and was lying across its base. Then we got our feet free of running away, and with the old man we tied him with bonds of knotted rope to the pillar, so that when he woke from his sleep he could not add anything to what he had done. He is sleeping, poor man, a sleep that is no blessing, after murdering his children and his wife. And I do not know any mortal more wretched than he is.
Chorus. The murder that the rock of Argos remembers, the daughters of Danaus killing their husbands in one night, was once the most famous crime in Greece, the hardest to believe. This has gone past it. It has outrun those old horrors, and it fell on the wretched son of Zeus. I could tell of Procne, who had one child and killed him, and made a sacrifice of him to the Muses. But you, you butcher, fathered three, and a raging fate worked beside you and finished them all. Aiai. What groan, what wail, what song for the dead, what dance of Hades am I to sound? Pheu, pheu. Look. The bolts are drawn, the doors are parting, the doors of the high-gated house. Io moi. Look at the children lying in front of their father, pitiful, in front of that wretched man, who sleeps a terrible sleep after murdering his sons. And round him the bonds, the ropes with all their knots, propping up the body of Heracles, lashed to the stone pillars of the house.
(The doors of the house stand open. Heracles lies asleep, roped to a broken pillar, with the bodies of his wife and children round him. Amphitryon comes slowly towards him.)
Chorus. And here is the old man, like a bird crying over a nest of young that never flew. He comes after his son on slow old feet, down a bitter road. Here he is.
Amphitryon. Old men of Thebes, quiet. Quiet. Will you not let him lie there, gone limp with sleep, and forget his evils?
Chorus. I weep for you, old man, and I groan, and for the children, and for that head that won every victory.
Amphitryon. Go further off. Do not stamp, do not shout, do not wake him. He is sleeping easy, sunk deep in sleep, on his bed.
Chorus. Oh. All this blood, that he...
Amphitryon. Ah. Ah. You will be the death of me.
Chorus. ...spilled, is rising up against him.
Amphitryon. Can you not keep your dirge quiet, old men, when you cry Aiai? Or he will wake and burst his bonds and destroy the city, and tear his father apart, and bring the house down.
Chorus. I cannot. I cannot.
Amphitryon. Quiet. Let me learn how he is breathing. Here. Let me put my ear to him.
Chorus. Is he asleep?
Amphitryon. Yes. He is asleep, a sleep that is no sleep, a deadly sleep, the man who killed his wife, who killed his children, shot them down to the twang of his bow.
Chorus. Groan, then...
Amphitryon. I am groaning.
Chorus. ...for the children's destruction...
Amphitryon. Omoi.
Chorus. ...and for your son's.
Amphitryon. Aiai.
Chorus. Old man...
Amphitryon. Quiet. Quiet. He is turning over, he is waking, he is turning round. Here, let me hide myself out of sight, under the roof.
Chorus. Courage. Night still holds your son's eyes.
Amphitryon. Look. Look. To leave the light after evils like these, I do not shrink from it, wretched as I am. But if he kills me, his father, he will pile evil on evil, and on top of the Furies he has already, he will carry a father's blood.
Chorus. You should have died back then, when you went out to take payment for your wife's murdered brothers and sacked the Taphians' city, the city ringed by the sea.
Amphitryon. Run, run, old men, away from the house, get away. Run from a raving man as he wakes. Or soon he will throw fresh murder on the old murder and run wild through the city of the Thebans again.
Chorus. Zeus, why did you hate your own son so much, with such rage? Why did you lead him into this sea of evils?
Heracles. Ah. I am breathing. And I can see what I ought to see: the sky, and the earth, and these arrows of the Sun. But I have fallen into some kind of surge, some terrible churning of the mind, and the breath I breathe comes up hot from my lungs, in gasps, and will not hold steady. Look at this. Why am I sitting here, moored with ropes like a ship, my strong young chest and my arm tied fast to a half-smashed block of cut stone, with corpses for neighbours? And here are winged shafts, and my bow, scattered over the floor, the ones that used to stand beside my arms like shield-bearers, and kept my ribs safe, and were kept safe by me. Surely I have not gone down to Hades again? Run Eurystheus's double course a second time? To Hades? How? No. I do not see the rock of Sisyphus, or Pluto, or the sceptre of Persephone, Demeter's daughter. I am stunned. Where on earth am I, so helpless? Hey. Is any of my friends near, or far off, who can cure me of this not knowing? Because I know nothing clearly. Nothing of the things I used to know.
Amphitryon. Old men, shall I go closer to my own evils?
Chorus. And I will go with you. I will not desert you in your trouble.
Heracles. Father, why are you crying, and covering your eyes, standing so far away from the son you love best?
Amphitryon. My child. You are mine, even when things go badly for you.
Heracles. And what is going badly for me, that you are pouring out tears?
Amphitryon. Something even a god would groan over, if he learned of it.
Heracles. Big words. But you still have not said what has happened.
Amphitryon. You can see it for yourself, if you are in your right mind by now.
Heracles. Speak, if you are sketching some new turn in my life.
Amphitryon. If you have stopped raving, like one of Hades' own madmen, I will tell you.
Heracles. Papai. There it is again, that riddle. It makes me suspicious.
Amphitryon. And I am still watching to see whether you are steadily in your senses.
Heracles. I do not remember going out of my mind, if that is what you mean.
Amphitryon. Old men, shall I untie my son's bonds? Or what should I do?
Heracles. Yes, and tell me who tied me. It shames me.
Amphitryon. Know this much of your evils, and let the rest go.
Heracles. Is silence enough to teach me what I want to know?
Amphitryon. Zeus, do you see this, done from Hera's throne?
Heracles. Has something hostile come at us from there?
Amphitryon. Leave the goddess alone and look after your own evils.
Heracles. Then I am finished. You are going to tell me of some disaster.
Amphitryon. Look. Look at these. Your children, fallen.
Heracles. Oh. What sight is this I am looking at? What is this?
Amphitryon. My boy, you rushed into a war on your children that was no war.
Heracles. War? What do you mean, war? Who killed these?
Amphitryon. You, and your bow, and whichever of the gods is to blame.
Heracles. What are you saying? What did I do? Father, what evil news you bring.
Amphitryon. You were mad. It is a wretched explanation you are asking for.
Heracles. Am I my wife's murderer too?
Amphitryon. All of this is the work of one hand. Yours.
Heracles. Aiai. A cloud of groaning is closing round me.
Amphitryon. That is why I groan for what has happened to you.
Heracles. Did I smash my house as well, in my madness?
Amphitryon. I know one thing only. Everything of yours is ruined.
Heracles. Where did the madness take hold of me? Where did it destroy me?
Amphitryon. When you were purifying your hands with fire at the altar.
Heracles. Oh. Then why am I sparing my own life, when I have become the murderer of the children I loved most? Why do I not go and jump from some sheer rock, or drive a sword into my liver and be the judge who avenges my children's blood, or burn this flesh that she drove mad, and push away from my life the disgrace that is waiting for me? But here is Theseus, coming to stand in the way of my plans for dying, my kinsman and my friend. I will be seen. The pollution of a child-killer will come before the eyes of the dearest of my friends. Oh, what am I going to do? Where can I find a place empty of evils? Grow wings, or go under the ground? Here, let me throw some darkness over my head. I am ashamed of the evils I have done, and I have taken this blood on me that cries out for vengeance, and I do not want to harm anyone who is innocent.
(He covers his head with his robe. Theseus comes in.)
Theseus. I have come with others, armed young men of the land of Athens, who are waiting by the streams of the Asopus. I am bringing your son an allied spear, old man. Word came to the city of Erechtheus's people that Lycus had snatched the sceptre of this country and set himself against you in war and open battle. So I came, to pay something back for what Heracles did for me first, when he saved me from the world below, in case you need anything, old man, from my hand or my allies. Ah. Why is the floor so thick with these dead? Surely I have not been left behind, arrived too late for some newer evil? Who killed these children? Whose wife is this I am looking at? Boys do not stand anywhere near the spear. No, this is some other, some strange new evil I have found here.
Amphitryon. King, whose home is the hill where the olive grows.
Theseus. Why do you call on me with such a pitiful opening?
Amphitryon. We have suffered. Wretched sufferings, from the gods.
Theseus. These children. Whose are they, that you are crying over them?
Amphitryon. My son fathered them, my wretched son, and having fathered them he killed them. He had the heart for that blood.
Theseus. Do not say such things. Speak well.
Amphitryon. You are telling people who wish they could.
Theseus. You have said a terrible thing.
Amphitryon. We are gone, gone, flown away.
Theseus. What are you saying? What did he do?
Amphitryon. He went astray in a stroke of madness, with arrows dipped in the hundred-headed hydra.
Theseus. This is Hera's fight. But who is this among the dead, old man?
Amphitryon. Mine. He is mine, this son of mine, who has laboured so much, who went with the gods to the plain of Phlegra with his shield, to the spear-fight that killed the giants.
Theseus. Pheu, pheu. Was any man ever born so hated by his god?
Amphitryon. You could not find another among mortals who has laboured more, or been driven further.
Theseus. Why is he hiding his wretched head in his robe?
Amphitryon. He is ashamed to meet your eye, ashamed before a kinsman's love, and the blood of his children.
Theseus. But I came to share his pain. Uncover him.
Amphitryon. My child, take the robe away from your eyes, throw it off, show your face to the sun. A grief as heavy as yours is wrestling with your tears. I beg you, at your beard, at your knee, at your hand, falling before you, letting fall an old man's grey tears. Io, my boy, hold down the wild lion's temper in you. You are being driven to a roar of unholy bloodshed, wanting to join evils to evils, child.
Theseus. Well then. You, sitting there in that wretched posture. I am calling to you: show your face to your friends. There is no darkness with a cloud black enough to hide the disaster of your evils. Why are you waving your hand at me, signalling murder? So that the pollution of speaking to you will not fall on me? It is nothing to me to share in your bad fortune. I had good fortune with you once. I have to carry my mind back to that, to the time you brought me safe up from the dead into the light. I hate a friend's gratitude that grows old. I hate the man who wants to enjoy his friends' good things and will not sail in the same ship with them when they are in trouble. Stand up. Uncover your wretched head. Look at us. A man who is well born bears what the gods throw down on him, and does not refuse it.
Heracles. Theseus, did you see this struggle? My children?
Theseus. I heard of it. And now you are showing evils to a man who can see.
Heracles. Then why have you uncovered my head to the sun?
Theseus. Why not? You are mortal. You cannot pollute what belongs to the gods.
Heracles. Run, you poor man, from my unholy pollution.
Theseus. No avenging spirit passes from friend to friend.
Heracles. Thank you for that. And I do not regret the good I did you.
Theseus. And I, who had good done to me then, pity you now.
Heracles. I am to be pitied. I killed my own children.
Theseus. I weep for you, now that your fortune has turned to this.
Heracles. Have you ever found another man in greater evils?
Theseus. Your misfortune reaches from the earth up to the sky.
Heracles. Then I am ready. I mean to die.
Theseus. Do you think the gods care anything for your threats?
Heracles. The god is stubborn. So I will be stubborn with the gods.
Theseus. Hold your tongue. Big talk brings bigger suffering.
Heracles. I am full of evils already. There is no room left to stow another.
Theseus. What will you do, then? Where is this anger carrying you?
Heracles. I will die, and go back under the earth, where I came from.
Theseus. That is the talk of any ordinary man.
Heracles. And you are standing outside the disaster, lecturing me.
Theseus. Is this Heracles talking, who has endured so much?
Heracles. Not this much. Not if suffering is measured by any scale.
Theseus. The benefactor of mankind? Their great friend?
Heracles. Mankind is no help to me. Hera is winning.
Theseus. Greece would never stand by and let you die of your own folly.
Heracles. Listen to me, then, so I can compete in argument against your lectures. I will unfold it for you: my life was unlivable, now and before. First, I was born from this man, who killed my mother's old father and had that blood on him when he married Alcmene, who bore me. When the foundation of a family is not laid straight, the descendants are bound to come to grief. And Zeus, whoever Zeus is, begot me as an enemy to Hera. Do not be hurt, old man. I count you my father, not Zeus. While I was still at the breast, the woman who shares Zeus's bed slipped snakes with Gorgon eyes into my swaddling clothes, to kill me. And when I got the covering of flesh a grown man has, the labours I endured, what need to tell them? What lions, what three-bodied Typhons, what Giants, what war against the four-legged crowd of Centaurs did I not finish? And the hydra, the dog with heads all round that grew back as I cut them, I killed it, and I went through herds of countless other labours and came to the dead, to bring Hades' gatekeeper, the three-headed dog, up to the light, at Eurystheus's orders. And this last labour I endured, wretched man: I killed my children, and set the coping stone of evils on my house.
I have come to this by necessity. It is not holy for me to live in Thebes, which I love. And if I do stay, what temple or gathering of friends can I go to? The curses I carry do not invite greetings. Shall I go to Argos? How, when I am in exile from my country? Well then, shall I rush off to some other city? And then be looked at sideways as a marked man, and held in check by the bitter goads of tongues: "Isn't this the son of Zeus, who once killed his children and his wife? Won't he get himself out of this land and perish?" For a man who was once called happy, changes are painful. The man who is always badly off feels nothing; he was born to be wretched. And I think I will come to this point of misfortune: the earth will send out a voice forbidding me to touch the ground, and the sea and the springs of the rivers will forbid me to cross, and I will be an Ixion, driven round in chains on his wheel. And so this is best: that none of the Greeks see me, the people I lived among when I was happy and fortune was good. Why should I live? What gain is there in owning a useless, unholy life? Let the famous wife of Zeus dance, then, and stamp her shoe on the floor of Olympian Zeus. She has done what she wanted. She has turned the first man in Greece upside down, foundations and all. Who would pray to a goddess like that? A goddess who, because of a woman, out of jealousy over Zeus's bed, destroyed the benefactors of Greece, who were guilty of nothing.
Chorus. This fight is no other god's than the wife of Zeus's. You have judged that rightly.
Theseus. I would rather advise you than watch you suffer. No mortal is untouched by fortune, and no god either, if what the poets sing is not false. Have they not gone to bed with each other in ways no law allows? Have they not put their fathers in chains and disgraced them, to get a throne? And yet they live on Olympus all the same, and they have put up with their own wrongdoing. And what will you say, then, if you, born a mortal, take your fortunes too hard, and the gods do not? Leave Thebes, then, for the law's sake, and come along with us to the city of Pallas. There I will purify your hands of the pollution, and I will give you a house and a share of what I own. And the gifts I have from the citizens for saving the fourteen children, when I killed the bull of Cnossos, I will give to you. Everywhere in the country I have been allotted precincts of land, and from now on people will call them by your name while you live. And when you die and go down to Hades, the whole city of the Athenians will raise you up in honour with sacrifices and monuments of stone. It is a fine crown for citizens to win from the Greeks, a good name, for helping a good man. And I will give you this in return for saving me. Because now you need friends. When the gods honour a man, he has no need of friends. The god's help is enough, when he chooses to give it.
Heracles. Oh. All this is beside the point of my evils. I do not believe the gods love beds that are not lawful. I never thought it worth believing that they fasten chains on one another's hands, and I will not be persuaded of it now, or that one god is born the master of another. A god, if he is truly a god, needs nothing. These are the wretched tales of poets. But I have considered, even in my evils, whether I would be convicted of cowardice if I left the light. Whoever cannot stand up under disasters could not stand up to a man's weapon either. I will hold out. I will endure life. I will go to your city, and I owe you thanks for countless gifts.
Well. I have tasted countless labours, and I refused none of them, and I never let a spring run from my eyes. I never thought I would come to this, to let tears fall. But now, it seems, I must be a slave to fortune. So be it. Old man, you see me going into exile. You see that I am the murderer of my own children. Give them to the tomb and lay them out, and honour them with your tears, since the law does not let me. Lay them against their mother's breast and put them in her arms, a wretched partnership, which I in my wretchedness destroyed without meaning to. And when you have hidden the dead in the earth, live on in this city, wretchedly, but all the same force your soul to carry my evils with me. Children, the father who begot you and fathered you has destroyed you, and you got no good from my fine deeds, from all the labour and the force I spent to lay up a good name for you, a fine thing to have from a father. And you, poor woman, I destroyed you too, and not as you deserved, you who kept my bed safe and faithful, and bore the long watch of keeping my house. Oh, my wife and my children. Oh, myself, how wretchedly I have done, and how I am unyoked from my children and my wife. Bitter, the sweetness of these kisses. Bitter, the partnership of these weapons. I do not know whether to keep them or let them go. They will knock against my side and say this to me: "With us you took your children and your wife. You are keeping us. Your children's killers." Then am I to carry them on my arm? Saying what? But strip myself of the weapons I did the finest things in Greece with, throw myself under my enemies' feet, and die in shame? I must not leave them. Wretchedly, I must keep them. In one thing, Theseus, share the labour with me: come with me to Argos and help me settle the business of the wretched dog I have to deliver there, so that grief for my children does not make me do something, if I am alone. Land of Cadmus, and all the people of Thebes, cut your hair, mourn with me, come to my children's burial. You will mourn all of us together, in one word: the dead, and me. We have all perished, all of us wretched, struck down by one blow of Hera's.
Theseus. Stand up, you poor man. Enough of tears.
Heracles. I cannot. My joints have frozen.
Theseus. Yes. Misfortune brings down the strong as well.
Heracles. Pheu. I wish I could turn to stone right here, and forget my evils.
Theseus. Stop that. Give your hand to a friend who wants to help.
Heracles. No. I will wipe the blood off on your clothes.
Theseus. Wipe it off. Do not spare them. I do not refuse you.
Heracles. I have lost my sons, and I have you for a son.
Theseus. Put your arm round my neck, and I will lead you.
Heracles. A loving pair we make. And one of us is broken. Old man, this is the kind of man to have for a friend.
Amphitryon. The country that bore him is blessed in her sons.
Heracles. Theseus, turn me round again, so I can see my children.
Theseus. What for? Do you think that is a charm that will make you feel better?
Heracles. I long for it. And I want to hold my father to my chest.
Amphitryon. Here I am, my boy. What you want is what I want.
Theseus. Have you no memory left of your labours, that you carry on like this?
Heracles. Everything I endured then was less than this.
Theseus. If anyone sees you acting like a woman, they will not admire it.
Heracles. Am I so low in your eyes, alive? I don't think I was before.
Theseus. Far too low. Sick like this, you are not the famous Heracles.
Heracles. And what were you like, down below, in your evils?
Theseus. When it came to nerve, I was the least of men.
Heracles. Then how can you still say that I have been shrunk by my evils?
Theseus. Walk on.
Heracles. Goodbye, old man.
Amphitryon. And goodbye to you, my child.
Heracles. Bury the children as I told you.
Amphitryon. And who will bury me, my child?
Heracles. I will.
Amphitryon. When will you come back for me?
Heracles. When you have buried the children.
Amphitryon. How will you manage that?
Heracles. I will send for you, from Thebes to Athens. But carry the children in. The earth will find them a heavy load. And I, who have wasted my house in shame, will follow Theseus like a little boat towed behind, a total wreck. Whoever wants wealth or strength more than good friends has not thought it through.
(Heracles goes out, leaning on Theseus. Amphitryon and the Chorus turn to the bodies.)
Chorus. We go, pitiful, with many tears, having lost the greatest of our friends.
(The Greek camp on the shore at Troy, the morning after the city fell. Smoke rises from the ruins behind. In front of the tents where the captured women are kept, Hecuba lies on the ground. Poseidon appears.)
Poseidon. I am Poseidon. I have come up from the salt depths of the Aegean, where the Nereids dance in their choruses and their feet trace the loveliest of patterns. Ever since the day Apollo and I set the stone towers round this land of Troy, straight and true to the line, my heart has never once lost its goodwill towards the city of my Phrygians. And now it is smoking. It has been sacked and destroyed by the Argive spear. Epeius of Phocis, from under Parnassus, built a horse by Athena's contrivance, pregnant with weapons, and sent the deadly image in through the towers; and men in later days will call it the Wooden Horse, for the spears it hid inside it.
The groves are deserted, and the temples of the gods are running with blood. Priam has fallen dead on the steps of the altar of Zeus who guards the courtyard. Gold in heaps and Phrygian plunder are being carried down to the Achaean ships, and the Greeks who came against this city are waiting for a wind at their sterns, so that after ten seasons of sowing they can see their wives and children again and be glad. And I am leaving famous Troy and my altars, because I have been beaten, by Hera, the Argive goddess, and by Athena, who destroyed the Phrygians between them. When a cruel emptiness takes hold of a city, the worship of the gods sickens, and nobody wants to honour them any more.
The Scamander is loud with the wailing of the captive women as their masters are allotted. Some have gone to the Arcadians, some to the men of Thessaly, some to the sons of Theseus, the leaders of the Athenians. The Trojan women not yet allotted are under these roofs here, set aside for the chief men of the army, and with them Helen, the Spartan, Tyndareus's daughter, quite rightly counted as a captive. And if anyone wants to look at misery, here it is. Hecuba, lying in front of the gates, crying many tears for many reasons. Her daughter Polyxena has been killed at the mound of Achilles's tomb, a wretched death, and in secret; Hecuba does not know it. Priam is gone, and her children. And the girl the lord Apollo let run wild, Cassandra: Agamemnon is going to force her into his bed in the dark, and never mind the god, or what piety requires.
Goodbye, city that was happy once. Goodbye, towers of smooth-cut stone. If Athena, Zeus's daughter, had not destroyed you, you would be standing on your foundations still.
(Athena appears.)
Athena. Am I allowed to speak to my father's nearest kinsman, a great god, honoured among the gods, if I set aside the hatred between us?
Poseidon. You are. Talk between relatives, Lady Athena, is no small charm on the heart.
Athena. I am glad you are in a gentle mood. I bring proposals, my lord, that concern us both, and I want to put them between us.
Poseidon. Is it a new word from some god? From Zeus, or from one of the other powers?
Athena. No. It is about Troy, whose ground we are standing on. I have come to your power, to make it one with mine.
Poseidon. Don't tell me you have thrown away the old hatred and come round to pitying the city, now that it is burned to ashes?
Athena. Go back to the first point. Will you share in my plans, and help me do what I want done?
Poseidon. Certainly. But I want to know your side of it too. Have you come here for the Achaeans, or for the Phrygians?
Athena. I want to give my old enemies the Trojans some joy, and to give the Achaean army a bitter journey home.
Poseidon. Why do you leap about like this, from one mood to another? You hate too hard and you love too hard, whoever it happens to be.
Athena. Do you not know the outrage that was done to me, and to my temples?
Poseidon. I know. When Ajax dragged Cassandra away by force.
Athena. And the Achaeans did nothing to him. Said nothing to him.
Poseidon. And yet it was your strength that sacked Troy for them.
Athena. Which is exactly why I want to hurt them, with your help.
Poseidon. Whatever you want from me is ready. What will you do?
Athena. I want to give them a homecoming that is no homecoming.
Poseidon. While they are still on land, or out on the salt sea?
Athena. When they have sailed from Troy for home. Zeus will send rain, and hail past counting, and black blasts of wind out of the sky. And he says he will give me his lightning-fire, to strike the Achaeans and burn their ships. You do your part. Make the Aegean crossing roar with towering waves and whirlpools of brine, and fill the hollow bay of Euboea with corpses, so that from now on the Achaeans learn to respect my temples, and to honour the other gods as well.
Poseidon. It will be done. A favour like this does not need long speeches. I will stir up the open Aegean. The beaches of Myconos, the reefs of Delos, Scyros and Lemnos and the headlands of Caphereus will hold the bodies of many dead men. Go to Olympus, take the lightning bolts from your father's hands, and watch for the moment when the Argive army lets out its cables.
He is a fool, whoever among mortals sacks cities, and temples, and tombs, the holy places of the dead. He gives them over to emptiness, and later he is destroyed himself.
(The gods go. Hecuba stirs on the ground and lifts her head.)
Hecuba. Up, unlucky woman. Lift your head off the ground. Lift your neck. This is not Troy any more, and we are not the royal family of Troy. The god's luck has turned. Bear it. Sail with the current, sail with the luck you have, do not set the prow of your life against the wave. Sail as chance takes you. Aiai. Aiai. What is there for me not to groan about, in my misery, when my country is gone, and my children, and my husband? The great swollen pride of my ancestors, shrunk down to this. So you were nothing all along. What should I keep quiet about? What should I not keep quiet about? What should I sing a dirge for? Wretched woman that I am, my heavy-fated limbs lie the way they lie, my back stretched out on a hard bed. Oh, my head. Oh, my temples, and my ribs. How I long to roll over and shift my back and my spine from one side to the other, always to the sound of my own weeping. But even this is music to the wretched, to sing of ruin without a dance.
Hecuba. Prows of the ships, that came with your quick oars to holy Troy over the purple sea, past the good harbours of Greece, with the hateful war-song of the pipes and the sweet voice of the flutes, and hung out your hawsers of woven Egyptian rope, aiai, in the bays of Troy. You came after the hated wife of Menelaus, the shame of Castor, the disgrace of the river Eurotas, the woman who cut the throat of Priam, the father of fifty children, and ran me, wretched Hecuba, aground on this ruin. Oh. What a seat I sit on, camped here beside the tents of Agamemnon. I am being led away as a slave, an old woman out of her house, my head shorn pitifully in mourning. Wretched wives of the bronze-speared Trojans, and girls, girls, unlucky brides, Troy is smouldering. Let us cry aiai. Like a mother bird over her winged nestlings, I will lead the cry, the song, and not the same song as once, when I leaned on Priam's sceptre and led the Phrygian gods their proud music, my foot beating the time, the first in the dance.
(Some of the captive women come out of the tents.)
First Half-Chorus. Hecuba, why are you crying out? Why are you shouting? What does it mean? Through the walls I heard the pitiful sounds you were making, and fear shot through the breasts of the Trojan women who sit inside these tents and cry aiai for their slavery.
Hecuba. My children, already, at the ships of the Argives...
First Half-Chorus. The rowers' hands are moving? Oh, no. What do they want? Are they really going to ship me away from my own country now?
Hecuba. I do not know. But I can guess. Ruin.
First Half-Chorus. Io. Io. Wretched Trojan women, come out of the tents and hear what is going to happen to you. The Argives are making ready to sail home.
Hecuba. Ai, ai. Not her. Do not send Cassandra out to me, raving, out of her mind, a shame in front of the Argives, a madwoman. Do not add pain to my pain. Io. Troy, Troy, unlucky Troy, you are gone, and unlucky the people who are leaving you, the living and the dead alike.
(The rest of the women come out.)
Second Half-Chorus. Oh. I have left the tents of Agamemnon, trembling, to hear from you, my queen. Have the Argives decided to kill me, wretched as I am? Or are the sailors at the sterns already getting ready to move the oars?
Hecuba. My child, you woke before dawn and your heart woke with you.
Second Half-Chorus. I came out because I was shaking with terror. Has a herald come already from the Greeks? Whose slave am I to be, poor wretch?
Hecuba. You are not far, I think, from being allotted.
Second Half-Chorus. Io. Io. Which of the Argives, or the men of Phthia, or some island country, is going to take me, unlucky as I am, far from Troy?
Hecuba. Ah. Ah. And I, poor wretch, whose slave will I be, and where, in what country, an old woman, useless as a drone, the shape of a corpse, the feeble image of the dead, aiai, set to keep the watch at somebody's front door, or to nurse their children, I who held the highest honours in Troy?
Chorus. Aiai, aiai. What laments can you find to cry aiai for the ruin they have made of you? No more will I twirl the shuttle back and forth on the looms of Ida. I look my last on the bodies of my children, my last. And there is worse work coming. Either I am forced into some Greek's bed, and may that night be damned, and the luck that brings it, or I fetch the water from Peirene, a pitiful servant of the holy spring. If only we could come to the famous blessed country of Theseus. But never, never the swirl of the Eurotas, the hateful home of Helen, where I would meet Menelaus as his slave, the man who sacked Troy.
Chorus. The holy country of the Peneus, the loveliest footstool of Olympus, I have heard is heavy with wealth and with fine harvests. That would be my second choice, after the holy, sacred country of Theseus. And the land of Hephaestus under Etna, across the water from Phoenicia, the mother of the Sicilian mountains, I hear is proclaimed for its crowns of courage. And the land that sailors find nearest on the Ionian sea, watered by the Crathis, that loveliest river, that turns the hair red-gold and feeds a country of good men with its holy springs, and makes it rich.
Chorus. And here, from the army of the Greeks, comes a herald, carrying fresh news, hurrying, making his quick feet fly. What is he bringing? What is he going to say? We are slaves of the Dorian land already.
(Talthybius comes in from the camp, with soldiers.)
Talthybius. Hecuba, you know me. I have come many times to Troy as a herald from the Achaean army, and you knew me before this, lady. I am Talthybius, and I have come with fresh news.
Hecuba. Aiai. It has come, friends, Trojan women. It has come, the thing I have been afraid of for so long.
Talthybius. You have been allotted already, if that was what you were afraid of.
Hecuba. Aiai. Which city did you say? Somewhere in Thessaly, or Phthia, or the land of Cadmus?
Talthybius. You have gone to your masters one by one, not all together.
Hecuba. Then who has drawn whom? Which of the women of Troy has a lucky fate waiting for her?
Talthybius. I know. But ask me one at a time, not all at once.
Hecuba. Then my child. Who drew her? Tell me. Poor Cassandra.
Talthybius. King Agamemnon took her, as a prize set apart for himself.
Hecuba. As a slave for his Spartan wife? Io moi moi.
Talthybius. No. For his bed, in the dark, as a bride nobody will speak of.
Hecuba. Apollo's virgin? The girl the god with the golden hair gave the gift of a life with no man in her bed?
Talthybius. Desire shot him. Desire for the god-possessed girl.
Hecuba. Throw them away, child, the holy keys, tear off your body the sacred wreaths you wear, the garlands you are dressed in.
Talthybius. What, is it nothing to her, to win a king's bed?
Hecuba. And the child you took from me the other day, the youngest? Where is she?
Talthybius. You mean Polyxena? Or who is it you are asking about?
Hecuba. Her. Who did the lot yoke her to?
Talthybius. She has been appointed to serve at Achilles's tomb.
Hecuba. Oh. I gave birth to a servant for a grave. But what law is this, what custom of the Greeks is this, my friend?
Talthybius. Count your daughter lucky. She is well off.
Hecuba. What is that you said? Tell me, does she still see the sun?
Talthybius. Her fate has her now. She is free of all her troubles.
Hecuba. And the wife of Hector, the master of bronze? Poor Andromache. What fortune has she got?
Talthybius. Achilles's son took her too, as a prize set apart.
Hecuba. And I, whose servant am I, I who need a stick in my hand for a third foot, with my old grey head?
Talthybius. Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, drew you, to have as his slave.
Hecuba. E, e. Beat the shorn head, tear both cheeks with your nails. Io moi moi. I have drawn a slave's lot under a filthy, treacherous man, the enemy of justice, a beast with no law in him, who turns everything from there to here, and then back from here to there again, with his two-faced tongue, and makes every friend he had before into an enemy. Weep for me, women of Troy. I am gone, and my luck has gone. I am finished, poor wretch. The lot I have fallen on is the worst of all.
Chorus. You know your own fate, my queen. But mine? Which of the Achaeans, which of the Greeks, holds my fortune in his hands?
Talthybius. Go, slaves. Bring Cassandra out here to me as fast as you can, so that I can put her into the general's hands, and then take the rest of the captive women to the other chiefs, whoever drew them.
Hold on. What is that light of pine torches blazing inside there? Are they setting fire to the tents? What are the Trojan women doing? Are they burning themselves alive because they are about to be taken away from this country to Argos? Do they want to die? People who have been free take very badly to trouble like this. It is a stiff neck that cannot bend. Open up. Open up. What suits them may not suit the Achaeans, and I do not want the blame for it landing on me.
Hecuba. No. Nobody is setting fires. It is my daughter Cassandra. She is running this way, out of her mind.
(Cassandra bursts out of the tents, carrying a lighted torch and dressed as a priestess of Apollo, with garlands in her hair.)
Cassandra. Lift it high. Bring it here. Bring the light. Oh. I worship. I set it blazing, look, look, this holy place, with torches. Lord Hymen. Blessed is the bridegroom, and blessed am I, to be married into a royal bed in Argos. Hymen, oh Lord Hymen. Since you, mother, with your tears and your groans keep mourning my dead father and the country we loved, I light the fire for my own wedding, and set its light blazing into brightness, into glory, giving it, Hymen, to you, giving it, Hecate, a light for a virgin's marriage bed, as the custom is. Lift your foot. Dance. Lead the dance up to the sky. Euan, euoi. As if it were for my father's happiest of fortunes. The dance is holy. Lead it, Apollo, now. In your temple among the laurel trees I serve as your priestess. Hymen, oh Hymen, Hymen. Dance, mother, laugh out loud, twine your feet with mine, this way, that way, carrying the step I love best. Shout Hymen, oh, with blessed songs and cries for the bride. Come, girls of Phrygia in your fine dresses, sing of my marriage, sing the husband fate has laid down for my bed.
Chorus. My queen, will you not take hold of the girl? She is possessed. She will go running with those light feet of hers straight into the Argive army.
Hecuba. Hephaestus, you carry the torch at the weddings of mortals, but this is a miserable flame you are fanning up here, and nothing like the great hopes we had. Oh, my child. I never dreamed you would be married like this, at the point of a spear, by an Argive's sword. Give me the light. You are not carrying the fire straight, running about in your madness, and your troubles have not brought you to your senses, child. You are just as you were. Take the torches inside, women of Troy, and answer her wedding songs with your tears.
Cassandra. Mother, crown my head. I have won. Be glad for me, for my royal wedding. Send me off, and if you find me at all unwilling, push me there by force. Because if Apollo is any prophet at all, Agamemnon, the famous king of the Achaeans, is marrying a wife who will cost him more than Helen did. I am going to kill him. I am going to wreck his house in return for mine, and take the price of my brothers and my father.
But I will let that go. I will not sing about the axe that is going to come down on my neck, and on other necks; or the killing of a mother that my marriage will set going; or the overturning of the house of Atreus. What I will do is show you that this city is luckier than the Achaeans. I am possessed by the god, yes, but for this much I will step outside my raving.
They came hunting Helen, and for one woman, for one bout of desire, they lost men by the tens of thousands. Their general, the clever one, destroyed what he loved most for the sake of what he hated most: for a woman, he gave up to his brother the joy of his own children at home. And she went of her own free will. Nobody carried her off by force. Then, when they reached the banks of the Scamander, they started dying, and not because anyone was robbing them of their frontiers or their high-towered homeland. The men Ares took never saw their children again. No wife's hands wrapped them in their shrouds. They lie in a foreign country. And at home it was the same story. Women died widows; fathers died childless in their houses, having brought up sons for other people; and there is nobody at their graves to pour blood on the ground for them. That is the praise their army has earned. Better to say nothing about the shameful part. I would not want my Muse to be a singer of evil things.
The Trojans, now. First, they were dying for their country, and there is no finer glory than that. The ones the spear took were carried home dead by the people who loved them, and lay wrapped in the earth of their fathers' land, laid out by the hands that should have laid them out. And the Phrygians who did not die in battle lived every day with their wives and children beside them, which is a joy the Achaeans went without. As for Hector, and the grief you feel about him, listen to how it really stands. He is dead and gone, and he is known as the best man there was, and it was the Achaeans' coming that did that. If they had stayed at home, nobody would ever have found out how good he was. And Paris married the daughter of Zeus. If he had not, nobody would ever have talked about the marriage he made.
So anyone with any sense should keep clear of war. But if it comes to war, it is no shameful crown for a city to die well, and dying badly is the disgrace. So do not pity your country, mother, and do not pity my bed. With this marriage of mine, I am going to destroy the people you and I hate most.
Chorus. How sweetly you laugh at the disasters of your own house. And how sweetly you sing of things that you may not be able to show are true.
Talthybius. If Apollo had not driven your wits wild, you would not be sending my commanders out of this country with prophecies like that and getting away with it free of charge. But there it is. The grand people, the ones with the reputation for cleverness, turn out to be no better than the nobodies. The greatest king of all the Greeks, the dear son of Atreus, has fallen for a passion he set apart for himself: for this madwoman. And I am a poor man, but I would not have taken her into my bed. As for you, since your wits are not all there, your insults to Argos and your praises of the Phrygians I hand over to the winds to carry off. Follow me to the ships, a fine bride for the general.
And you, when the son of Laertes wants to take you, go with him. You will be the servant of a woman who keeps herself in hand, or so they say, the ones who came to Troy.
Cassandra. A clever servant, this one. Why do heralds have the name they have, these errand boys of kings and cities, the one thing the whole human race agrees on hating? You say my mother is going to end up in the halls of Odysseus? Then where are Apollo's words, the ones he made clear to me, that she will die here? I will not throw the rest of it in her face.
Poor man. He does not know what suffering is waiting for him. The day will come when my troubles and the Phrygians' look like gold to him. On top of his ten years here, he will fill out another ten before he reaches his own country, and he will reach it alone. He will come to the narrow passage between the rocks where the terrible Charybdis lives; and the Cyclops, who walks the mountains and eats men raw; and Circe of Liguria, who turns men into pigs; and wrecks on the salt sea; and the lotus, and the longing to eat it; and the holy cattle of the Sun, whose flesh will one day find a voice and speak, and Odysseus will not like what it says. To cut it short: he will go down alive into the house of Hades, and when he has escaped the water of the lake he will come home and find ten thousand troubles waiting in his house.
Cassandra. But why am I shooting off Odysseus's troubles like arrows? Go, as fast as you can. Let me marry my bridegroom in the house of Hades. You are a bad man and you will get a bad burial, at night, not in the daylight, you commander of the Greeks who thinks he is doing something grand. And me, the gullies will throw out my corpse naked, running with the winter rains, near my bridegroom's grave, for the wild beasts to tear at. Apollo's servant.
Garlands of the god I loved best, holy ornaments of my ecstasy, goodbye. I have left your festivals behind, where I used to be so glad. Off my body, go, I tear you off, so that while my flesh is still pure I can give them to the racing winds to carry to you, lord of prophecy. Where is the general's ship? Where must I go to board her? You cannot be too quick now in watching for a wind for your sails, since when you carry me out of this country you carry one of the three Furies with you. Goodbye, mother. Do not cry. Oh, my dear country, and my brothers under the earth, and my father who begot us, it will not be long before you welcome me. I will come down to the dead in victory, when I have destroyed the house of the sons of Atreus, who destroyed us.
(Talthybius leads Cassandra away towards the ships. Hecuba sinks to the ground.)
Chorus. You women who attend old Hecuba, do you not see your mistress has fallen full length, without a word? Will you not take hold of her? Are you going to let an old woman lie where she fell, you useless things? Lift her up.
Hecuba. Let me lie where I fell, girls. Help I do not want is no help. What I am suffering, and have suffered, and am still going to suffer, has earned me the right to lie here. Gods. They are poor allies, the ones I am calling on. But there is a certain form to it, calling on the gods, when one of us falls into bad luck. So first I want to sing of the good things. That way I will stir up more pity for the bad ones.
I was royal, and I married into royalty, and there I had children, the best of men, not just a number to be counted, but the finest in all Phrygia. No woman in Troy or in Greece, no barbarian woman either, could ever boast of giving birth to sons like them. And I saw them fall to the Greek spear, and I cut off this hair of mine at their graves. And Priam, who fathered them, I did not weep for him because somebody brought me the news. I saw him with these eyes, myself, his throat cut at the altar of the courtyard, and I saw the city taken. And the girls I brought up to be prizes worth having for bridegrooms of the highest rank, I brought them up for other men, and they were torn out of my hands. There is no hope that they will ever see me, and I will never see them again.
And the last thing, the coping stone on all my wretched troubles: I am going to Greece, a slave, an old woman. And they will set me to the work that suits old age worst of all: to keep the door and mind the keys, I, the mother of Hector, or to bake the bread, and to sleep on the floor with my wrinkled back, after a royal bed, in torn rags wrapped round a torn body, in scraps of a dress that the fortunate would not think fit to wear. Oh, poor wretch that I am. All this I have had, and all this I have coming, because one woman got married once.
Oh, my child. Oh, Cassandra, who danced with the gods in their ecstasy, what a disaster has undone your purity. And you, poor girl, where are you, Polyxena? Of all the children I bore, the sons and the daughters, so many of them, not one is any help to their wretched mother now. So why lift me up? What is there to hope for? Take me, the feet that once stepped so delicately in Troy and are a slave's feet now, to a bed of straw on the ground and a pillow of stone, so that I can fall on it and be destroyed, worn away with crying. Of all the people who are fortunate, count none of them lucky until he is dead.
Chorus. Sing me a song of Troy, Muse, a new kind of song, a song for a funeral, with tears in it. Now I will raise my voice for Troy and tell how the four-footed thing on wheels, the Argives' horse, destroyed me, a wretched woman, taken by the spear: when the Achaeans left that horse at the gates, rumbling up to the sky, its harness gold, and armed men inside it. And the people shouted, standing up on the rock of Troy, "Go on, your troubles are over, take this holy carving up the hill to the virgin daughter of Zeus, who watches over Troy." Which of the young women did not go? Which old man stayed in his house? And singing for joy they took in the trick that was their ruin.
Chorus. Every soul in Phrygia hurried to the gates to give the goddess her present: the Argive ambush, hidden in the polished mountain pine, the ruin of Dardanus's land, a gift for the virgin goddess whose horses never die. They put twisted ropes of flax around it and hauled it, like the dark hull of a ship, up to the stone seat and the stone floor of Pallas's temple, the floor that was going to drink our country's blood, and set it there. And on top of the work and the joy the darkness of night came down, and the Libyan pipe was sounding, and Phrygian songs, and the girls lifted their feet high and beat the ground and sang a happy song, and in the houses the bright blaze of the fire threw its dark glow and gave everyone over to sleep.
Chorus. And I was dancing then, round the house, singing for the virgin of the mountains, the daughter of Zeus, when a shout, a shout of blood, went through the town and took hold of the citadel of Pergamum. Babies threw their frightened arms round their mothers' dresses. War came out of its hiding place: the work of the virgin Pallas. Phrygians were slaughtered round the altars, and in the beds, where men lay with their heads cut off, the emptiness gave Greece a crown of young women, to breed her sons, and gave the fatherland of the Phrygians grief.
(A cart is drawn in, piled with Hector's bronze armour and the spoils of Troy. Andromache sits on it, holding the child Astyanax.)
Chorus. Hecuba, do you see Andromache there, carried along in a foreigners' cart? And at her heaving breast, held close, dear Astyanax, Hector's son. Where are they taking you on the back of that cart, poor woman, sitting beside Hector's bronze armour and the spoils of the Phrygians, hunted down at spear-point, the ones Achilles's son will hang up in the temples of Phthia, brought home from Troy?
Andromache. The Achaeans, my masters, are taking me away.
Hecuba. Oh.
Andromache. Why are you groaning? That is my song of grief, not yours.
Hecuba. Aiai.
Andromache. For these pains.
Hecuba. Oh, Zeus.
Andromache. And for this disaster.
Hecuba. Children.
Andromache. We were your children, once.
Hecuba. Gone, the happiness. Gone, Troy.
Andromache. Poor Troy.
Hecuba. And the noble blood of my children.
Andromache. Pheu, pheu.
Hecuba. Pheu, yes, for my
Andromache. sufferings.
Hecuba. Pitiful, the luck
Andromache. of the city,
Hecuba. which is going up in smoke.
Andromache. Come to me, husband, come to me.
Hecuba. You are calling for my son, and he is in Hades, poor woman.
Andromache. Come and shield your wife.
Hecuba. And you, scourge of the Achaeans, master of my children and their father, old Priam, first of my house, lay me down to sleep in Hades.
Andromache. This is a great longing,
Hecuba. Poor woman. These are the pains we suffer,
Andromache. for a city that is gone,
Hecuba. and pain lies on top of pain.
Andromache. because the gods turned against us, from the day that son of yours, Paris, cheated the death he was meant for, the one who, for a hateful bed, destroyed the towers of Troy. And the bloody bodies of the dead lie stretched out beside the goddess Pallas for the vultures to carry off, and Troy has been brought under the yoke of slavery.
Hecuba. Oh, my country. Oh, poor
Andromache. I am crying for you, left behind,
Hecuba. now you see the pitiful end,
Andromache. and for my house, where I gave birth.
Hecuba. Children, your mother has no city, and now she is losing you. What a wailing there is, what grief, tears falling out of tears in our houses. But the dead forget their pain. The dead do not cry.
Chorus. How sweet tears are to people who have come to grief, and the wailing of the dirge, and the music that has sorrow in it.
Andromache. Mother of the man who once killed more Argives with his spear than anyone alive, mother of Hector, do you see this?
Hecuba. I see the way the gods work. What was nothing they build up into a tower, and what looked like something they destroy.
Andromache. We are being led away as plunder, my child and I. Nobility has come down to slavery. That is how great the change is.
Hecuba. Necessity is a terrible thing. Just now Cassandra was torn from me too, dragged off by force.
Andromache. Pheu, pheu. It seems your daughter has found a second Ajax, another man to drag her off by force. But you are sick in other ways as well.
Hecuba. Yes, and there is no measure to my sicknesses, and no number. Evil comes racing against evil.
Andromache. Your daughter is dead. Polyxena. They cut her throat at Achilles's tomb, a gift to a dead man who cannot feel it.
Hecuba. Oh, I am wretched. So that is what Talthybius meant, the riddle he told me a while ago, so unclearly, and so clearly.
Andromache. I saw her myself. I got down from this cart and covered her body with my dress and beat my breast for her.
Hecuba. Aiai, child, for that unholy slaughter. Aiai, again and again, for the evil way you died.
Andromache. She died the way she died. But even so, dying like that, she got a happier fate than I have, alive.
Hecuba. Being dead and looking at the light are not the same thing, my child. One is nothing. The other has hope in it.
Andromache. Mother, you who gave birth to her, listen to the best argument I have. I want to put a little pleasure into your heart. I say that never to have been born is the same thing as being dead, and that dying is better than living in misery. The dead feel no pain. They know nothing of their troubles. But the man who was happy once and has fallen into unhappiness, his mind wanders off, back to the good life he had before. Polyxena is dead, and it is as if she had never seen the light: she knows nothing of what has happened to her. But I aimed at a good name, and I hit it, and I won more of it than most women ever do, and that is exactly how I missed my luck.
Everything that has ever been found out to help a woman keep herself in hand, I worked at, in Hector's house. First: whether or not there is any real blame in it for a woman, the mere fact of not staying at home brings a bad name with it, so I put the wish to go out of my mind and stayed in the house. And I did not let the clever talk of women in through the door either. I had my own mind as a teacher, a good one, from home, and that was enough for me. I gave my husband a quiet tongue and a calm eye. I knew where I should win against my husband, and where I should let him have the victory.
And the report of all this went out to the Achaean army and destroyed me. Because when I was taken, Achilles's son wanted me for his wife. I am going to be a slave in the house of the men who murdered mine. And if I push away my dear Hector's face and open my heart to the husband I have now, I will look like a traitor to the dead man. And if I hate this one, my own masters will hate me. And yet they say a single night undoes a woman's dislike of a man's bed. I spit on the woman who throws away the husband she had for a new bed and loves another man. Not even a horse, if it is separated from the one it grew up with, will pull the yoke easily. And a horse is a dumb beast: it has no reason, and nature has given it less than us.
But you, Hector, my dear, you were a husband who was enough for me, great in understanding, in birth, in wealth, in courage. You took me untouched from my father's house, and you were the first to yoke my virgin bed. And now you are dead, and I am being shipped off to Greece, a prisoner of war, to the yoke of slavery. So tell me: the death of Polyxena, that you are groaning for, is it not less to bear than what I have? I do not even have the one thing that is left to every human being alive, hope. I do not fool myself into thinking that I will ever do well again. And even the thinking would have been sweet.
Chorus. You have come to the same point of disaster we have. Mourning your own troubles, you are teaching us where we stand in ours.
Hecuba. I have never set foot on the hull of a ship myself, but I have seen them in pictures and heard about them, and so I know. When the storm is moderate enough to bear, sailors have the will to work their way out of trouble: one at the tiller, one up on the sails, one keeping the bilge water out of the ship. But when the sea is thrown into a great confusion and comes over them, they give in to luck and let themselves go to the running of the waves. And that is how I am. I have so many troubles that I am dumb. I have let go. I leave my mouth alone. The wretched wave the gods have sent is too strong for me.
But, my dear child, let Hector's fate alone. Your tears will not save him. Honour the master you have now. Offer the man the sweet bait of your ways. If you do that, you will make everyone who loves you glad, all of us together, and you may bring up this child, my son's son, to be the greatest help Troy could have, so that one day, perhaps, children born from you might settle Troy again, and there might still be a city. But one thing leads to another. Who is this Achaean servant I see coming now, bringing news of new decisions?
(Talthybius comes in, with soldiers.)
Talthybius. Wife of Hector, who was once the best of the Phrygians, do not hate me. I am not bringing this news because I want to. The Greeks, and the sons of Pelops with them, have a joint decision to announce.
Andromache. What is it? The way you are starting sounds like the beginning of something bad.
Talthybius. It has been decided that this boy, how am I going to say this?
Andromache. Not that he is to have a different master from mine?
Talthybius. No Achaean will ever be this boy's master.
Andromache. Then they are leaving him here, the last remnant of the Phrygians?
Talthybius. I do not know how to tell you the bad news gently.
Andromache. I thank you for your decency. Unless what you have to tell is good.
Talthybius. They are going to kill your son. There. Now you know the worst of it.
Andromache. Oh. That is a worse evil than my marriage.
Talthybius. Odysseus won the argument, speaking in front of the whole Greek army.
Andromache. Aiai, again. What we suffer is beyond all measure.
Talthybius. He said that the son of so great a father should not be brought up.
Andromache. May he win arguments like that about his own children.
Talthybius. And that he must be thrown from the towers of Troy. Let it happen that way, and you will show yourself the wiser for it. Do not cling to him. Grieve for your troubles like the well-born woman you are, and do not imagine you are strong when you have no strength at all. You have no defence anywhere. You must look at it clearly: your city is destroyed and your husband is dead, you are in our power, and we are quite able to fight one woman. So I do not want you to want a fight, or to do anything shameful or hateful, or to throw curses at the Achaeans. If you say anything that angers the army, this child will not be buried, and there will be no pity for him. But if you keep quiet and take what has happened to you as it should be taken, you will not leave his body unburied, and you will find the Achaeans kinder to you.
Andromache. My darling. My child, honoured beyond all children. You are going to die at the hands of your enemies and leave your miserable mother behind. Your father's nobility is killing you, the thing that saves other people. Your father's greatness came at the wrong time for you. My unlucky bed, my unlucky marriage, that brought me once into Hector's house. I did not come there to bear a son for the Greeks to slaughter, but a king of Asia with its rich harvests.
Child, are you crying? Do you understand what is happening to you? Why are you gripping me with your hands and holding on to my dress, like a chick huddling under my wings? Hector is not going to come up out of the ground with his famous spear in his fist and save you. No kinsman of your father's is coming, no Phrygian army. You will fall from the height, a hideous drop, headfirst onto your neck, with nobody to pity you, and the breath will be broken out of you. Little body in my arms, the dearest thing your mother has. The sweet smell of your skin. You smell so sweet. So it was for nothing that this breast fed you in your baby clothes. For nothing I laboured and wore myself to rags with work. Now, never again, hold your mother. Fall on the woman who bore you, wind your arms round my back, and put your mouth to mine.
Greeks. You have invented barbarian cruelties. Why are you killing this child? He has done nothing. And you, seed of Tyndareus, you were never Zeus's daughter. I say you had many fathers: the Avenging Spirit first, and then Envy, and Murder, and Death, and every evil the earth breeds. I will never boast that Zeus fathered you, you who have been death to so many barbarians and Greeks. Damn you. Out of those beautiful eyes of yours you have brought a shameful ruin on the famous plains of Phrygia. Go on, then. Take him. Carry him off. Throw him, if throwing him is what you have decided. Feast on his flesh. The gods are destroying us, and I cannot keep death away from my own child. Cover up my wretched body and throw it in the ship. I am going to a fine wedding, now that I have lost my child.
Chorus. Poor Troy. You have lost thousands of men, for one woman and her hateful bed.
Talthybius. Come, boy. Let go of your poor mother, let go of her arms around you, and walk to the very top of your father's towers, where the vote has decided you are to let your breath go. Take him. This kind of message should be carried by a man with no pity in him, a man who is a better friend to shamelessness than my mind is.
(The soldiers take the child from her. Talthybius goes out with Andromache and Astyanax.)
Hecuba. Child. Son of my poor son. They are robbing your mother and me of your life, and it is not just. What can I do? What can I do for you, unlucky boy? All we can give you is this: blows on the head, fists on the breast. That much is ours to give. Oh, for my city. Oh, for you. What do we not have? What is missing now, to make our ruin total, and complete, and fast?
Chorus. Telamon, king of Salamis, where the bees are kept, you made your home on an island the waves wash round, leaning against the holy hills where Athena first showed the branch of the grey olive, a crown from heaven and a glory for shining Athens. You came, you came, sharing the glory with the archer, the son of Alcmene, Heracles, to sack Troy, Troy, our city, long ago, when you came from Greece.
Chorus. That was when he led the first flower of Greece, furious over the horses Laomedon had promised him and never paid, and at the broad-flowing Simois he rested the oar that had carried him across the sea, and tied the ship's cables to the stern, and took out of the ship the sure aim of his hand, his bow, to be the death of Laomedon. And the stonework Apollo had squared to the line he brought down with the red breath of fire and sacked the land of Troy. Twice now, with two strokes, around the walls of Dardanus's country, the bloody spear has brought them down.
Chorus. So it was for nothing, then, that you walk so delicately among the golden wine-jugs, Ganymede, Laomedon's boy, filling the cup of Zeus, the loveliest of services. The city that bore you is burning in the fire, and the shores of the sea cry out, the way a bird shrieks over her young: here for husbands, here for children, here for old mothers. Your dewy baths, the running tracks where you exercised, are gone, and you, beside the throne of Zeus, keep your young face calm and lovely with its graces, while the spear of Greece has destroyed the land of Priam.
Chorus. Love, Love, who came once to the halls of Dardanus, when the gods in heaven had you on their minds, how high you built Troy then, binding her to the gods by marriage. I will not say it as a reproach to Zeus any more. But the light of the white-winged Dawn, which is dear to mortals, looked on this land and saw it die, saw the towers destroyed, she who had a husband from this land in her bedroom, Tithonus, the father of her children, the one the golden chariot of the stars, four horses, snatched up and carried off, a great hope for his fatherland. But the love the gods had for Troy is gone.
(Menelaus comes in, with his men.)
Menelaus. Bright light of the sun, this day, when I get my hands on my wife. Helen. I am Menelaus, the man who has done all the work, and this is the Achaean army. I came to Troy not, as people think, for a woman, but after a man: the man who cheated his host and robbed my house of my wife. Well, he has paid the price, with the gods' help, he and his country, fallen to the Greek spear. And I have come to take the wretched woman away. I do not enjoy saying the word "wife" of a woman who was once mine. She is in these prisoners' tents, counted in with the other Trojan women. The men who fought for her with the spear have given her to me to kill, or, if I choose not to kill her, to take back to the land of Argos. And I have decided to let Helen's death in Troy go, and to carry her by ship to Greece, and there hand her over to be killed, as payment to all the men whose friends died at Troy. Right. In you go, men, into the tent. Bring her out here by that hair of hers, foul with murder. And when the winds blow fair, we will send her to Greece.
Hecuba. You who carry the earth, and have your seat on the earth, whoever you are, hard to guess at and hard to know, Zeus, whether you are the necessity of nature or the mind of mortal men, I pray to you. You go along a soundless road, and you guide everything human toward justice.
Menelaus. What is this? You have found a new way to pray to the gods.
Hecuba. I praise you, Menelaus, if you will kill your wife. But do not look at her. Run from the sight of her, or she will take you with longing. She takes men's eyes. She takes cities. She burns down houses. That is the kind of spell she has. I know her. So do you. So does everyone who has suffered by her.
(Helen is brought out of the tent by Menelaus's men.)
Helen. Menelaus, this is an opening that might well frighten me. Your servants have laid hands on me and driven me out in front of these tents by force. Still, I am fairly sure you hate me. But I want to ask, all the same: what have the Greeks decided, and you, about my life?
Menelaus. Your case did not need a precise ruling. The whole army, the army you wronged, has given you to me to kill.
Helen. Then am I allowed to answer that, and argue that if I die, I am dying unjustly?
Menelaus. I did not come here to argue. I came to kill you.
Hecuba. Hear her out, Menelaus. Do not let her die without that. And then give us the other side, the case against her. You know nothing of what she did in Troy. Put the whole story together and it will kill her. There will be nowhere for her to run.
Menelaus. That is a gift that takes time. Still, if she wants to speak, she may. Understand that I am giving her this for the sake of what you have to say, so that she can hear it. Not as a favour to her.
Helen. Perhaps you will not answer me at all, whether you think I argue well or badly, because you have made up your mind that I am your enemy. Very well. I will guess at the charges you would bring against me if we went through it point by point, and I will set my answers against them, my accusations against yours.
First. This woman here gave birth to the beginning of all the trouble, when she gave birth to Paris. Second, it was the old man who destroyed Troy, and me with it: Priam, who did not kill the baby, the child his wife had dreamed of as a burning torch, a bitter dream and a true one, the child who was Alexander then. Now hear how the rest of it goes. This man was made the judge of three goddesses, a team of three. And Athena's gift to Alexander was this: he would lead the Phrygians in war and root Greece out of the ground. Hera promised he would hold Asia, and the farthest edges of Europe, as his kingdom, if Paris judged for her. And Aphrodite went into raptures over my looks, and promised him me, if she outran the other goddesses in beauty. Now look where the argument goes from there. Aphrodite beat the goddesses. And this is how much my marriage did for Greece: you are not ruled by barbarians. You did not go down in battle, and you do not live under a tyrant. What was good luck for Greece was my ruin. I was sold for my beauty, and I am reviled for the very thing that should have set a crown on my head.
You will say I have still not come to the point, the thing in front of us: how I slipped away from your house in secret. He came with no small goddess at his side, this woman's curse, the ruin of her house, call him Alexander if you like, or Paris, whichever name you please. And you, you worst of men, you left him behind in your house and sailed off from Sparta to Crete.
Well, then.
It is not you I will put the next question to. It is myself. What was I thinking, when I left my home and followed a stranger, betraying my country and my house? Punish the goddess. Be stronger than Zeus. He has power over every other god, and he is her slave. So forgive me.
Here is a respectable argument you might use against me next. When Paris was dead and gone down into the earth, and my marriage was no longer the gods' doing, then I should have left his house and gone to the Argive ships. I tried. That is exactly what I tried to do. My witnesses are the gatekeepers on the towers and the sentries on the walls. Time and again they caught me letting my body down from the battlements to the ground on knotted ropes. And then this new husband took me by force, Deiphobus, and kept me as his wife, against the wishes of the Phrygians. So how could you justly put me to death, husband, and be in the right, when one man married me by force, and my life here, instead of a victor's prize, was a bitter slavery? If you want to be stronger than the gods, then wanting it shows how little you understand.
Chorus. Queen, defend your children and your country. Break this woman's persuasion. She speaks well, and she is a criminal. That is a dangerous thing.
Hecuba. First I will take the goddesses' side, and show that what she says about them is not just. I do not believe Hera and the virgin Athena could ever have been so foolish, one of them to sell her Argos to barbarians, and Athena to make her Athens a slave of the Phrygians one day, if they came to Ida over their looks, as if for a game, out of vanity. Why would the goddess Hera have fallen so in love with beauty? So she could get herself a better husband than Zeus? And Athena, which of the gods was she hunting for a husband, she who begged her father to let her stay a virgin, because she wanted no man's bed? Do not make the goddesses fools to dress up your own crime. You will not persuade anyone with sense.
And then you said, and this is the laughable part, that Aphrodite came with my son to the house of Menelaus. Could she not have stayed quietly in heaven and brought you to Troy, and all Amyclae along with you? No. My son was extraordinarily handsome, and when your mind saw him, your mind turned into Aphrodite. Every piece of foolishness people commit, they call Aphrodite, and rightly: her name is the beginning of the word for having no sense. You looked at him, blazing in his barbarian clothes and his gold, and you went out of your mind. In Argos you had lived on little. Once you were free of Sparta, you hoped to drown the Phrygians' city, flowing with gold as it was, under your spending. Menelaus's house was not big enough for you to run riot in with your luxuries.
Well, then. You say my son took you by force. Which Spartan noticed? What cry did you ever raise? Castor was still alive, a young man, and his twin brother too, not yet among the stars. Then when you came to Troy, with the Argives on your track, and the struggle was on, spear against spear, whenever the news that came to you said this man was winning, you praised Menelaus, so that my son would suffer, having so great a rival in love. And if the Trojans were doing well, this man was nothing. You kept your eye on luck, and you made a practice of following wherever she went. Virtue you did not want.
And then you say you let yourself down from the towers on ropes, stealing your body away, as if you were staying against your will? Where were you ever caught knotting a noose, or sharpening a sword, the things a noble woman would do if she missed her first husband? And yet I told you, over and over. "Daughter, leave. My sons will find other brides. I will help you slip away and send you to the Achaean ships. End this war between the Greeks and us." But that was bitter to you. In Alexander's house you did as you pleased, and it was outrage, and you wanted barbarians bowing down to you. That was a great thing to you. And after all that, you have come out with your body groomed, and you look at the same sky as your husband. You disgusting thing. You should have come out humble, in rags, shaking with fear, your head shaved, with more decency about you than shamelessness, after everything you did before. Menelaus, so that you know where my speech ends: crown Greece, as you deserve to, and kill this woman. And make it a law for every other woman: whoever betrays her husband dies.
Chorus. Menelaus, be worthy of your ancestors and your house. Punish your wife. Clear yourself, before Greece, of the charge that you are soft, and show your enemies you are well born.
Menelaus. You have come round to the same conclusion as I have: that she left my house of her own free will for a stranger's bed, and Aphrodite has been dragged into the speech for show. Go on. Go to the men who will stone you. Pay back the long labours of the Achaeans in one short death, and learn not to bring shame on me.
Helen. No. By your knees, do not lay the gods' sickness on me and kill me for it. Forgive me.
Hecuba. And do not betray the allies this woman killed. I beg you for their sake, and for my children's.
Menelaus. Enough, old woman. I am not thinking about her. I am telling my men to take her to the sterns of the ships, where she will sail.
Hecuba. Then do not let her set foot on the same ship as you.
Menelaus. What is this? Does she weigh more than she used to?
Hecuba. There is no lover who does not go on loving.
Menelaus. That depends on how the minds of the ones we loved turn out. But you shall have what you want. She will not board the same ship as I do. What you say is not bad. And when she gets to Argos she will die badly, as she deserves, a bad woman, and she will teach every woman to keep herself in hand. That is not easy. But her destruction will throw a fright into their folly, even if they are worse than she is.
(Menelaus goes out, and his men take Helen after him.)
Chorus. So this is how you handed over the temple in Troy and the altar smoking with incense to the Achaeans, Zeus, and the flame of the offering cakes, and the smoke of myrrh rising into the sky, and holy Pergamos, the citadel, and Ida, the glens of Ida thick with ivy, running with rivers of melting snow, the edge of the world, first struck by the sun, a holy place, shining, where the gods were served.
Chorus. Gone, the sacrifices to you, gone the dancers' glad singing, gone the all-night vigils for the gods in the dark, the images shaped in gold, and the Phrygians' holy moons, twelve of them, twelve full moons together. I wonder, I wonder, lord, whether you think of this, seated on your throne in the sky, in the upper air, while the city dies, brought down by a rush of blazing fire.
Chorus. My love, my husband, you are dead and you wander, unburied, unwashed, and a ship on the sea will carry me, darting on its wings, to Argos, where horses graze, where stone walls built by Cyclopes reach up to the sky. And the crowd of children at the gates hang on us and cry, they weep and weep, and one cries out, cries out: "Mother, oh, the Achaeans are taking me alone, out of your sight, onto a dark ship with oars for the sea, to holy Salamis or the ridge between two seas, the Isthmus, where the gates of Pelops's land stand."
Chorus. And when Menelaus's boat is out in the middle of the sea, may the holy fire of the Aegean, the two-forked lightning, fall between the banks of oars, as he takes me from Troy in tears, uproots me from my country, a slave for Greece, while the daughter of Zeus still holds her golden mirrors, the toys of girls. May he never reach the land of Laconia, his father's hearth and his bedroom, nor the town of Pitane, nor the goddess with the bronze gates, now he has taken back the disgrace whose marriage shamed great Greece and brought miserable suffering to the streams of Simois.
(Talthybius comes in with soldiers, who carry the body of Astyanax on Hector's shield.)
Chorus. Io, io. New disasters, one on top of another, changing places on this land. Look, wives of Troy, miserable women, look at Astyanax, dead, the bitter thing the Greeks threw from the towers like a discus, killed, and now they bring him here.
Talthybius. Hecuba, one ship is still here, its oars waiting. It is about to carry the rest of the spoils of Achilles's son to the coast of Phthia. Neoptolemus himself has already put out to sea. He had news of fresh trouble for Peleus: Acastus, the son of Pelias, has driven him out of the country. So he is gone, faster than that, with no time to spare for waiting, and Andromache with him. She drew a great many tears from me when she set out from this land, crying for her country and speaking to Hector's tomb. And she asked him to let this body be buried, your Hector's son, who fell from the walls and gave up his life. And this shield, the terror of the Achaeans, backed with bronze, that the boy's father used to sling round his side: she asked him not to carry it to the hearth of Peleus, nor into the same bedroom where she, the mother of this dead child, is to be married, so that she will not have to look at it and grieve. Instead of a cedar coffin and a ring of stone, the boy is to be buried in this. And it is to be put into your arms, so that you can wrap the body in robes and garlands, as far as you have the means, given how things are with you. Because she is gone, and her master's hurry kept her from burying the child herself. So then, when you have dressed the body, we will heap earth over him and raise our spears. Do what you have been told, as fast as you can. One task I have spared you already: as I crossed the streams of the Scamander there, I washed the body and cleaned the wounds. Now I will go and break open a grave in the ground for him, so that my work and yours between them are finished quickly, and the ship can start for home.
(Talthybius goes.)
Hecuba. Set Hector's round shield down on the ground. A painful sight, and not one I love to see. Achaeans. Your spears weigh more than your minds. What were you afraid of in this child, that you committed a murder never seen before? That some day he would raise fallen Troy up again? Then you were nothing, after all. When Hector had the luck in battle, and ten thousand other hands with him, we were still being destroyed. And now the city is taken and the Phrygians are dead, and you were frightened of a baby this size. I have no praise for a fear that is afraid without ever reasoning it through.
My darling, what a wretched death came to you. If you had died for the city, once you had had your youth, and marriage, and the kingship that makes a man like a god, you would have been blessed, if any of those things is a blessing. As it is, you saw them and you knew them in your soul, child, but you do not know them. You had them in your house and got no use of them. Poor boy. How cruelly your father's walls have shorn your head, the towers Apollo built. The curls your mother tended so often and kissed, and now, where they were, murder grins out from the broken bones. I will not say the ugly thing. Hands, how sweetly you keep the likeness of your father's hands, and you lie in front of me loose at every joint. Dear mouth, that threw out so many big promises: you are gone, and you lied to me. You used to fall into my dress and say, "Mother, I will cut a great lock of my hair for you, and I will bring my friends in a procession to your tomb, and speak to you with love." But you are not burying me. I am burying you, the young one, and I am old, with no city and no children, and you are a pitiful corpse. Oh, all those kisses, all my nursing of you, those sleeps we had. Gone. What would a poet ever write on your tomb? "The Argives killed this child once, because they were afraid of him"? An inscription that shames Greece. Still, you did not get your father's property, but you will have his bronze-backed shield to be buried in. Shield, you kept Hector's beautiful arm safe, and you have lost your best guardian. How sweet the print of him lies in your handle, and on your well-turned rim, the sweat that Hector let drip from his brow so often in the thick of the work, when he pressed you to his chin.
Bring things, bring what you can, to dress this pitiful body out of what we have. The god is not giving us the luck for anything beautiful. But what I have, you will get. Anyone is a fool who thinks he is doing well and takes it for safe and is glad. Luck is like a man with a wild temper: she jumps this way one moment and that way the next, and nobody is lucky all the way through.
Chorus. Here are the women, ready at hand, bringing you ornaments out of the Phrygian spoils to hang on the dead.
Hecuba. Child, it is not for winning a horse race, or for beating your friends with the bow, the customs the Phrygians honour without chasing them to excess, that your father's mother puts these fine things on you, out of what once was yours. Helen, whom the gods hate, has robbed you of them now, and killed your life besides, and destroyed your whole house.
Chorus. E, e. You touched my heart, you touched it. You, who would have been to me one day the great lord of the city.
Hecuba. What you should have put on your body at your wedding, marrying the highest-born woman in Asia, these Phrygian robes, the pride of our weaving, I hang on your body. And you, who were glorious in victory once, mother of ten thousand trophies, Hector's beloved shield: take your crown. You will die with this body without dying. You are far more worth honouring than the arms of Odysseus, clever and evil.
Chorus. Aiai, aiai. The earth will take you, child, a bitter thing to mourn. Cry out, mother,
Hecuba. Aiai.
Chorus. the song for the dead.
Hecuba. Oh, oh.
Chorus. Oh, yes. For your evils that cannot be forgotten.
Hecuba. Some of your wounds I will heal with bandages, a wretched doctor, a doctor in name and not in fact. The rest your father will see to, among the dead.
Chorus. Beat, beat your head, your hands falling like oars, io moi moi.
Hecuba. Dearest women.
Chorus. Hecuba, say what is yours to say. What is the cry you are making?
Hecuba. So the gods had nothing in mind but my suffering, and Troy, the one city out of all of them they hated. We slaughtered oxen for them for nothing. And yet, if the god had not turned everything upside down and thrown us under the earth, we would have been nobodies, unsung, never giving the Muses of later generations a song to sing. Go and bury the body in its poor tomb. It has the garlands the dead need. I think it makes little difference to the dead whether anyone gets rich funeral gifts. That is empty pride, and it belongs to the living.
(The women carry the body away to be buried.)
Chorus. Io, io. Miserable mother, who has seen the great hopes of her life torn to rags in you. Counted so happy in your birth from noble fathers, you have died a terrible death. Ea, ea. Who are those I see on the heights of Troy, hands darting to and fro with blazing torches? Some new evil is about to fall on Troy.
Talthybius. Captains, you who have been ordered to burn this city of Priam's, I am speaking to you. Do not keep the flame idle in your hands any longer. Throw the fire in, so that we can raze the city of Troy to the ground and set off for home from Troy, glad to go. And you, so that one order does two things, daughters of Troy, when the leaders of the army sound the trumpet, loud and high, go to the Achaean ships and be taken out of this land. And you, old woman, most unlucky of women, come. These men have come for you from Odysseus. The lot sends you out of your country as his slave.
Hecuba. Oh, I am wretched. So this is the last thing, the very end of all my evils. I am leaving my country, and the city is being set alight. Old foot, hurry, hard as it is, so that I can say goodbye to my poor city. Troy, you who once breathed so grandly among the barbarians, they will soon take away your famous name. They are burning you, and they are leading us out of the land already, as slaves. Io, gods. But why do I call on the gods? They did not hear us before, when we called. Come. Let us run into the fire. The finest thing for me would be to die with my country as it burns.
Talthybius. You are out of your mind with your own sorrows, poor woman. Take her, men, do not hold back. She has to be put into Odysseus's hand and sent to him as his prize.
Hecuba. Ottototototoi. Son of Cronos, lord of Phrygia, father who begot our race, do you see what we suffer, things the blood of Dardanus never deserved?
Chorus. He sees. And the great city is no city. It is destroyed. Troy is no more.
Hecuba. Ottototototoi. Troy is blazing, the roofs of Pergamos are burning in the fire, the city, and the tops of the walls.
Chorus. Like smoke on a wing of wind, rising to the sky, the land fallen to the spear wastes away. The houses are overrun with raging fire and the enemy's spear.
Hecuba. Io, land that nursed my children.
Chorus. E, e.
Hecuba. Children, hear me, know your mother's voice.
Chorus. You are calling the dead with a song of grief.
Hecuba. Yes, laying my old limbs on the ground and beating the earth with both my hands.
Chorus. After you I set my knee on the earth, calling my own miserable husband up from below.
Hecuba. We are led, we are carried off,
Chorus. Pain, it is pain you cry.
Hecuba. under a slave's roof.
Chorus. Out of my country.
Hecuba. Io. Priam, Priam, dead, unburied, without a friend, you know nothing of my ruin.
Chorus. Black death has closed his eyes, a holy man, an unholy slaughter.
Hecuba. Io, houses of the gods, and my dear city,
Chorus. E, e.
Hecuba. the murdering flame is yours, and the point of the spear.
Chorus. Soon you will fall to the dear ground, and have no name.
Hecuba. And the dust, rising to the sky on a wing like smoke, will hide my own house from my eyes.
Chorus. The name of the land will vanish. Everything is gone, one thing here and one thing there, and poor Troy is no more.
Hecuba. Did you feel that? Did you hear?
Chorus. The citadel crashing down.
Hecuba. The earth shaking, shaking, the whole
Chorus. city, it will wash over the whole city like a wave.
Hecuba. Io. Trembling limbs, carry my steps. Go on, poor limbs, to the day of slavery that is your life.
Chorus. Io, poor city. And still, set your foot forward, to the Achaean ships.
(The land of the Taurians, on the shore of the Black Sea. In front of the temple of Artemis stands an altar, stained dark, with trophies hung on the wall above it. Iphigenia, the priestess, comes out of the temple.)
Iphigenia. Pelops, the son of Tantalus, came to Pisa with his fast horses and married the daughter of Oenomaus. From her Atreus was born, and the sons of Atreus were Menelaus and Agamemnon. Agamemnon is my father. I am Iphigenia, his child, and my mother was the daughter of Tyndareus. And my father killed me. Or so he believes. He cut my throat for Artemis, for Helen's sake, in the famous bay of Aulis, beside the narrows where the Euripus spins in its whirlpools and twists the dark blue water round in the constant winds.
That is where lord Agamemnon gathered his fleet, a thousand Greek ships, wanting to take the victor's crown of Troy for the Achaeans and to punish the outrage done to Helen's marriage. He was doing Menelaus a favour. But the winds turned terrible and the ships could not sail, and he went to the burnt offerings to find out why, and Calchas told him this. "Agamemnon, commander of this Greek army, you will not get your ships off this shore until Artemis has your daughter Iphigenia, with her throat cut. You made a vow once, to sacrifice to the goddess who carries the torch the most beautiful thing the year brought forth. Well, that year your wife Clytemnestra bore you a child in your house" (and there he was handing the prize for beauty to me) "and that child you must sacrifice." So Odysseus worked one of his tricks, and they took me away from my mother on the pretext that I was to marry Achilles.
I came to Aulis. Poor girl. They lifted me high over the altar and were killing me with the sword. But Artemis stole me away. She gave the Achaeans a deer in my place, and carried me through the bright air and set me down to live here, in the land of the Taurians, where a barbarian rules barbarians: Thoas, whose name means Swift, and who earned it because he runs as fast as a bird flies. She made me priestess in this temple. And so, by the customs Artemis takes pleasure in, I preside at a festival whose name is the only fine thing about it. The rest I keep quiet about; I am afraid of the goddess. I sacrifice, by a law this city had before I came, any Greek man who lands in this country. I begin the rite, that is all. The killing itself is other people's business, inside the goddess's temple, and it is not to be spoken of.
But the night has brought me strange visions, new ones, and I will tell them to the open air, if telling them is any cure. I dreamed I had left this country and was living in Argos, sleeping among the unmarried girls, and the back of the earth shook and heaved, and I ran, and stood outside, and watched the cornice of the house come down and the whole roof thrown to the ground in ruins from its high pillars. One pillar was left standing, I thought, one, out of my father's whole house, and yellow hair came down from its capital and it took a human voice. And I, keeping up this trade of mine, this killing of strangers, sprinkled it with the holy water as if it were about to die, and I was crying.
This is how I read the dream. Orestes is dead, and I was the one who began the rite over him. The pillars of a house are its sons; and whoever my holy water touches, dies. I cannot make the dream fit anyone else I love: Strophius had no son when I was killed. So now I want to pour the offerings for my brother, he far away and I here, since that much at least I can do, with the attendants the king gave me, Greek women. But why are they not here yet? What is keeping them? I will go inside, into the goddess's temple, where I live.
(She goes into the temple. Orestes and Pylades come in cautiously from the direction of the shore.)
Orestes. Look. Watch out. Make sure there is nobody on the path.
Pylades. I am looking. I am turning my eyes every way and checking.
Orestes. Pylades, do you think this is the goddess's house? The one we launched the ship from Argos to find?
Pylades. I do, Orestes. And you had better think so too.
Orestes. And the altar, where Greek blood drips down?
Pylades. Well, the hair hanging on it is red with blood, at any rate.
Orestes. And do you see the spoils hanging under the cornice itself?
Pylades. Trophies. The first pickings from the strangers who died here. But we ought to keep our eyes moving and look carefully all round.
Orestes. Apollo, where have you led me this time, into what net, with your oracles? Ever since I avenged my father's blood by killing my mother, I have been hunted by Furies, relay after relay of them, an exile driven off my own land, and I have run many a long lap of the course. I came to you and asked you how I could reach the end of this madness that spins me like a wheel, and of the labours I had worked through, wandering all over Greece. And you told me to go to the borders of the Taurian country, where your sister Artemis has her altars, and take the statue of the goddess, which they say here fell into this temple from the sky; and when I had taken it, by cunning or by some stroke of luck, and come through the danger, to give it to the land of Athens. What came after that, you did not say. And if I did this, I would have a breathing space from my labours.
So I have come, obedient to what you said, to a country I do not know and that does not welcome strangers. And I am asking you, Pylades, because you are my partner in this labour: what do we do? You see how high the walls are all round. Do we climb the steps up to the house? And how would we not be seen? Or do we break the bronze-forged bolts of the doors with crowbars, when we know nothing about them? If we are caught opening the gates and rigging a way in, we die. No. Before we die, let us run for the ship, the one we sailed here in.
Pylades. Running is not to be borne, and we are not in the habit of it. And the god's oracle is not to be turned into a coward's excuse. Let us leave the temple and hide ourselves in the caves, where the black sea washes in with its spray, well away from the ship, so that nobody sees the hull and tells the king, and then we are taken by force. And when the eye of dark night comes on, then we have to have the nerve to take the polished statue out of the temple, whatever it takes. Look there, between the triglyphs: there is a gap where a man could let himself down. Good men have the nerve for hard labours. Cowards are nothing, anywhere.
Orestes. No. We did not row all this way to turn round at the finish line and head for home. You are right; we do as you say. We must go wherever on this land we can hide ourselves and not be seen. It will not be the god's fault that his sacred oracle falls useless to the ground. We must have the nerve. No labour is an excuse when you are young.
(They go out toward the shore. The Chorus, Greek women who are slaves of the temple, come in.)
Chorus. Keep holy silence, you who live by the twin rocks that clash together over the Unfriendly Sea. Daughter of Leto, Artemis of the nets, goddess of the mountains, to your court, to the gold cornices of your temple with its beautiful pillars, I bring my virgin step, holy to the holy one, I, the slave of the holy keeper of your keys. I have left the towers and the walls of Greece, the land of fine horses, and Europe, with its forests and its pastures, the home of my fathers. I am here. What is it? What is on your mind? Why have you called me, called me to the temple, daughter of the man who went against the towers of Troy with his famous fleet, a thousand ships, ten thousand spears, the son of Atreus, that famous house?
Iphigenia. Io, women, slaves of this house, how I am caught in dirges that are hard to sing, in the cry of a song no Muse would own, in laments with no lyre, aiai, aiai, in wails for the dead. Ruin has come down on me. I am mourning my brother, mourning his life. Such a sight, such a sight I saw in my dreams in the night whose darkness has just gone out. I am lost. I am lost. My father's house is no more. Oh. Oh. The family is gone. Ah, ah, for the sorrows of Argos. Io, fate, who rob me of my only brother and send him to Hades. For him I am going to pour these offerings, the bowl of the dead, over the back of the earth: streams of milk from the cows on the mountain, the wine that Dionysus gives, poured out, and the labour of the tawny bees. These are the things that soothe the dead. Give me the golden vessel now, and the offering for Hades. Child of Agamemnon under the earth, I send you these, as to a dead man. Take them. To your grave I will never bring my yellow hair, or my tears. I live too far, far from your country and mine, where they believe I lie, poor woman, with my throat cut.
Chorus. I will answer you, mistress, song for song, a barbarian cry, the hymns of Asia, I will sing it out for you: the music that belongs to the dead in laments, the music Hades sings in his songs, with no note of triumph in it. Oh, for the house of the sons of Atreus. The light of the sceptre is gone, oh, the light of your father's house. Once there was a rule in Argos of kings the gods had blessed, and now trouble darts out of trouble: Pelops on his wheeling winged horses, and the man he threw into the sea; and the Sun, who moved out of his seat the holy, holy eye of his light. And pain came on pain to the house, for the golden lamb, killing on killing, grief on grief, and out of the Tantalids who died before the punishment comes down on the house, and fate hurries against you what no one would hurry to meet.
Iphigenia. From the beginning my fate went wrong, from my mother's belt undone and that first night; from the beginning the Fates who stand by at a birth pulled my upbringing tight and hard, the girl the Greeks came courting, the first-born child in the house, whom Leda's unhappy daughter bore and reared, because of her father's outrage, as a victim, a sacrifice with no joy in it, the answer to a vow. In a chariot drawn by horses they set me down on the sands of Aulis, a bride, oh, no bride at all for the son of Nereus's daughter, aiai. And now I live a stranger by the Unfriendly Sea, the sea that is no friend to strangers, in a house on barren ground, no husband, no child, no city, no friend, not singing to Hera at Argos, not weaving on the sweet-sounding loom with my shuttle the picture of Athenian Pallas and the Titans. No. I stain the altars with the blood of strangers, a ruin that drips blood and no lyre could play, and they cry out, and the cry is pitiful, and the tears they shed are pitiful. And now I forget all of that, and I weep for the brother who died in Argos, the one I left at the breast, still a baby, still small, still a young shoot in his mother's arms, at her breast, Orestes, who holds the sceptre in Argos.
Chorus. Look, here comes a herdsman. He has left the shore of the sea, and he is coming to tell you something new.
Herdsman. Daughter of Agamemnon and of Clytemnestra, hear the news I am bringing. It is strange.
Iphigenia. What is there in it to startle anyone?
Herdsman. Two young men have come to this country in a ship, escaping the dark Clashing Rocks. An offering the goddess will love, a sacrifice for Artemis. You cannot be too quick getting the holy water ready, and the first cuttings for the rite.
Iphigenia. Where are they from? What country's dress do the strangers wear?
Herdsman. Greeks. That one thing I know, and nothing beyond it.
Iphigenia. You did not hear a name? You cannot tell me what the strangers are called?
Herdsman. One of them was called Pylades by the other.
Iphigenia. And his partner, the other stranger, what was his name?
Herdsman. Nobody knows. We did not hear it.
Iphigenia. How did you see them? How did you come across them and catch them?
Herdsman. On the edge of the breakers, on the Unfriendly Sea.
Iphigenia. And what do herdsmen have to do with the sea?
Herdsman. We went down to wash the cattle in the salt water.
Iphigenia. Go back to what I asked. How did you catch them, and in what way? That is what I want to know. They have been a long time coming. Not once yet has the goddess's altar been reddened with streams of Greek blood.
Herdsman. We were driving our cattle, the ones that feed in the woods, into the sea that flows in through the Clashing Rocks. There is a cleft there, a hollow in the rocks broken open by the constant pounding of the waves, where the men who dive for purple shellfish shelter. And there one of our herdsmen saw two young men, and came tiptoeing back to us, ferrying his footsteps on the very tips of his toes, and said, "Don't you see them? Those are gods, of some kind, sitting there." And one of us, a god-fearing man, lifted his hands when he saw them and prayed. "Son of Leucothea the sea-goddess, guardian of ships, lord Palaemon, be kind to us. Or is it you two sitting on our shore, the twin sons of Zeus? Or the darlings of Nereus, who fathered the noble chorus of the fifty Nereids?"
But another man, an idiot, with the nerve that comes from having no respect for any law, laughed at the prayers and said they were shipwrecked sailors sitting in the cleft, afraid of our custom, because they had heard that we sacrifice strangers here. Most of us thought he was talking sense, and that we should hunt down the victims the goddess is owed by the custom of the country.
And just then one of the two strangers left the rock and stood up, and shook his head up and down, and groaned, and his hands shook to the fingertips, wandering in a fit of madness, and he shouted like a hunter: "Pylades, do you see her? This one? Don't you see her, the she-dragon of Hades, how she wants to kill me, with her terrible vipers, mouths open at me? And that one, breathing fire and slaughter out of her robes, rowing the air with her wings, with my mother in her arms, a mass of rock, to throw down on me. Oh, she is going to kill me. Where can I run?" There were no such shapes there to see. He was turning the lowing of the calves and the barking of the dogs into what he said were the noises the Furies send out.
We huddled together, and sat there in silence, amazed. And he drew his sword and rushed into the middle of the calves like a lion and struck at them with the iron, into their flanks, driving it into their ribs, thinking that this was how he was fighting off the Furies, the goddesses, until the sea itself blossomed red with blood. Then every man of us, seeing the herd falling and slaughtered, armed himself, and blew the conch shells, and gathered the neighbours; because we thought herdsmen would make a poor fight of it against strangers who were young and well fed. It took a long time, but we filled our numbers. And the stranger fell. The pulse of the madness let go of him, and the foam ran down from his chin. And when we saw him fallen, so conveniently, every man went to work, throwing, battering. The other stranger wiped the foam away and looked after his body and covered him with the fine weave of his cloak, watching for the blows as they came and doing everything he could for his friend, tending him. Then the stranger came to his senses and leapt up from where he had fallen, and saw the wave of enemies breaking over them, and the disaster that was on the two of them right there, and he groaned. And we did not let up. We kept throwing stones, pressing in from every side. And then we heard that terrible cry of his: "Pylades, we are going to die. But let us die the best way we can. Draw your sword and follow me."
When we saw the two enemy swords swinging, we ran and filled the rocky gullies. But if some ran, others pressed in and threw at them; and if they drove those off, the ones who had just given way came back and pelted them with stones again. And it was unbelievable: with all those thousands of hands, not one of us managed to hit the goddess's victims. In the end we got them, but hardly by courage. We circled round and with the stones we knocked the swords out of their hands, and they sank on their knees to the ground, worn out. And we brought them to the king of this land. He looked at them, and as fast as he could he sent them to you, for the holy water and the slaughter. This is what you have been praying for, lady, strangers like these, for victims. Kill strangers like these, and Greece will have paid for your murder. It will be justice done for the slaughter at Aulis.
Chorus. That is an amazing story you have told about the madman, whoever he is, who has come from Greece to the Unfriendly Sea.
Iphigenia. Well. You go and bring the strangers here. We will see to the holy business at this end.
(The Herdsman goes back toward the shore to fetch the prisoners.)
Poor heart of mine. Until now you were calm with strangers, and always full of pity, and you measured out your tears for our shared blood whenever Greek men came into your hands. But now, because of the dreams that have made me savage, believing Orestes no longer looks at the sun, you will find me hard, whoever you are who have come here. And this is true, I see it now, my friends: people who are unlucky, when they are doing badly themselves, have no kind thoughts for people who are more unlucky still.
But no wind from Zeus has ever come, no ship, that carried Helen here through the Clashing Rocks, the woman who destroyed me, and Menelaus with her, so that I could pay them back, and set an Aulis here against the one there, where the Greeks took hold of me like a calf and cut my throat, and the priest was my own father, the man who begot me. Oh. I have not forgotten the evils of that day. How many times I threw my hands at his beard, and clung to his knees, the knees of the father who made me, and said things like this: "Father, this is a shameful wedding you are marrying me into. While you are killing me, my mother and the women of Argos are singing wedding hymns, and the whole house is full of flutes, and I am being destroyed by you. Achilles was Hades after all, then, not the son of Peleus, the husband you offered me, when you brought me in your chariot to a bloody marriage by a trick." And I was looking out through a fine veil, and I did not take my brother up in my arms, and now he is dead, and I did not kiss my sister, out of modesty, because I was going to the house of Peleus. I put off so many embraces until later, thinking I would come back again to Argos.
Poor Orestes. If you are dead, what good things you have lost, what a father's greatness you had coming to you.
And the goddess: I blame her cleverness. Any mortal who touches blood, or lays a hand on a woman in childbed or on a corpse, she bars from her altars, and calls him polluted. And she herself takes pleasure in sacrifices of human beings. It is not possible that Leto, Zeus's bride, gave birth to anything so stupid. For my part, I do not believe the story of the feast Tantalus gave the gods, that they enjoyed eating his son. And I think the people here, who are killers of men themselves, put their own vile behaviour onto the goddess. I do not believe any god is evil.
Chorus. Dark, dark, the meeting-place of two seas, where the gadfly that flew from Argos drove Io across the unfriendly swell, when she changed the land of Europe for the land of Asia. Who can they be, who left the reedy green waters of the Eurotas or the holy streams of Dirce, and came, came to this land that mixes with no one, where for the daughter of Zeus the blood of mortals wets the altars and the pillared temples?
Chorus. Was it to the double beat of pinewood oars in the surf that they sailed over the waves of the sea, a ship for a chariot, in breezes that fill the linen sails, racing each other for riches, to make their houses greater? Hope is a sweet thing, and it never has enough, and it is the ruin of human beings, the ones who carry off the weight of wealth, wandering over the swell, crossing to barbarian cities, all with the one idea. And for some the thought of wealth comes at the wrong time, and for others it comes in due measure.
Chorus. How did they pass the rocks that run together, how did they pass the sleepless shores of the sons of Phineus, running along the salt beach on the surf of Amphitrite, where the fifty daughters of Nereus dance in a ring and sing, with the wind filling the sails and the rudder creaking in its bed at the stern, on the south wind, or on the breath of the west wind, to the land of many birds, the white beach, the beautiful race-course of Achilles, along the Unfriendly Sea?
Chorus. If only, as my mistress prays, Helen, Leda's darling child, would leave the city of Troy and come here, and here, with the bloody water wound round her hair, die by my mistress's hand, her throat cut, and pay the penalty that matches her crime. But the sweetest news I could hear would be that someone had come from the land of Greece, a sailor, to put an end to my miserable slavery. Even in dreams let me be in my home, in my father's city, enjoying the pleasure of sleep, a happiness that belongs to everyone.
Chorus. But here they come, the two of them, their hands tied tight together, a fresh offering for the goddess. Be quiet, my friends. The first pickings of Greece are walking up to the temple now. The herdsman's report was no lie. Lady, if this city does these things in a way that pleases you, accept the sacrifice that the custom here holds out to you, the sacrifice that Greeks call unholy.
(Orestes and Pylades are brought in by the temple guards, their hands bound. Iphigenia comes out of the temple.)
Iphigenia. Well. First I must see that the goddess's business is done properly. Untie the strangers' hands. They are consecrated now, and they should not be in chains any longer. Go inside the temple and get ready what is needed, and what the custom is, for what we have to do.
(The guards free the prisoners' hands and go into the temple.)
Ah. Who was the mother who bore you two, who was your father? And your sister, if you happen to have one: what a pair of young men she is going to lose, and be left without a brother. Who knows whom fortunes like these will fall on? Everything the gods do creeps along in the dark, and nobody knows what evil is coming; luck leads us off where we cannot see. Where have you come from, poor strangers? You sailed a long way to reach this country, and you will be a long way from home for a long time. For ever. Down below.
Orestes. Why are you crying over this, woman, whoever you are, and grieving in advance for the evils that are coming to the two of us? I do not call it clever, when a man is about to be killed, to try to conquer his fear of dying by crying about it. Nor when a man with Hades this close and no hope of safety pities himself; he makes two evils out of one, he gets convicted of foolishness and he dies all the same. Let fate be. Do not mourn for us. We know the sacrifices they do here. We understand them.
Iphigenia. Which of the two of you is the one they call Pylades? That is the first thing I want to know.
Orestes. This man. If knowing it gives you any pleasure.
Iphigenia. And a citizen of what Greek city, by birth?
Orestes. What would you gain by learning that, woman?
Iphigenia. Are you brothers, from one mother?
Orestes. In love, yes. We are not brothers by birth, woman.
Iphigenia. And you, what name did your father give you?
Orestes. If I got my rights, I would be called Unlucky.
Iphigenia. That is not what I asked. Put that down to fortune.
Orestes. If we die without a name, nobody can laugh at us.
Iphigenia. Why so grudging about it? Are you so proud?
Orestes. It is my body you will be sacrificing, not my name.
Iphigenia. Will you not even tell me what city is yours?
Orestes. There is no profit in what you are asking. I am going to die.
Iphigenia. And what stops you doing me this one favour?
Orestes. Famous Argos. That is the country I claim as mine.
Iphigenia. By the gods, stranger, is it true? You were born there?
Orestes. From Mycenae, yes. It was a rich place once.
Iphigenia. Did you leave your country as an exile? Or what happened to you?
Orestes. I am in exile, in a way. Against my will, and willingly.
Iphigenia. Then would you tell me some things I want to know?
Orestes. It would be a small thing, beside my own bad luck.
Iphigenia. I am so glad you have come from Argos. I have longed for it.
Orestes. I have not. If you have, enjoy it.
Iphigenia. Perhaps you know Troy. Everyone everywhere talks about it.
Orestes. I wish I did not. Not even in a dream.
Iphigenia. They say it is gone. Nothing left. Taken by the spear.
Orestes. That is how it is. What you heard was not empty talk.
Iphigenia. And Helen has come home again to Menelaus's house?
Orestes. She has. And her coming was an evil to someone I love.
Iphigenia. And where is she? She owes me an evil turn as well.
Orestes. She lives in Sparta, with the man whose bed she shared before.
Iphigenia. Thing that all Greece hates. Not only me.
Orestes. I have had a taste of that woman's marriage myself.
Iphigenia. And the Achaeans came home, as they are saying?
Orestes. You bundle everything up and ask me all of it at once.
Iphigenia. Before you die, I want to get some good out of you.
Orestes. Cross-examine me, then, since you want it so much. I will tell you.
Iphigenia. A prophet called Calchas: did he come back from Troy?
Orestes. He is dead. That was the story in Mycenae.
Iphigenia. Lady goddess, how good that is. And Odysseus, the son of Laertes?
Orestes. He has not come home yet. But he is alive, they say.
Iphigenia. Let him die. Let him never reach his country.
Orestes. Do not curse him. Everything he has is sick.
Iphigenia. And is the son of Thetis, the Nereid, still living?
Orestes. He is not. The marriage he made at Aulis was for nothing.
Iphigenia. It was a trick. The people it was done to know that.
Orestes. Who are you, anyway? You know exactly what to ask about Greece.
Iphigenia. I am from there. I was lost when I was still a child.
Orestes. Then you have every right to want to know what happened there, woman.
Iphigenia. And the general? The one they say is so fortunate?
Orestes. Which one? The one I knew was not one of the fortunate.
Iphigenia. There was a king, they used to say. Agamemnon, the son of Atreus.
Orestes. I do not know. Leave that subject alone, woman.
Iphigenia. No, by the gods. Tell me, stranger. Let me have the pleasure of it.
Orestes. He is dead. Poor man. And he took somebody else down with him.
Iphigenia. Dead? How? What happened to him? Oh, I am wretched.
Orestes. Why did you groan at that? Was he something to you?
Iphigenia. I am groaning for the good fortune he used to have.
Orestes. Yes. He died horribly. A woman cut his throat.
Iphigenia. Oh, pitiful. Pitiful, the woman who killed him, and the man she killed.
Orestes. Stop now. Do not ask me any more.
Iphigenia. Just this one thing. Is the poor man's wife alive?
Orestes. She is not. The son she bore killed her. He did it.
Iphigenia. Oh, a house turned upside down. What did he want with that?
Orestes. To pay her back for his father's death.
Iphigenia. Ah. How thoroughly he collected the debt. A just thing, and an evil one.
Orestes. Just he may be. The gods have given him no luck for it.
Iphigenia. Did Agamemnon leave any other child in the house?
Orestes. One. Electra. A girl, unmarried.
Iphigenia. And what about the daughter who was sacrificed? Is there any word of her?
Orestes. None. Only that she is dead and does not see the light.
Iphigenia. Poor girl. And the father who killed her, poor man.
Orestes. She died for a worthless woman. A favour that earned no thanks.
Iphigenia. And the dead man's son. Is he in Argos?
Orestes. He is alive. Miserable. Nowhere, and everywhere.
Iphigenia. Lying dreams. Goodbye to you. You were nothing after all.
Orestes. And the gods, the ones people call wise, are no more truthful than dreams with wings. There is a great deal of confusion in the affairs of the gods, and in the affairs of men too. Only one thing really hurts: a man who was no fool listened to what the prophets said, and it destroyed him. How completely, the people who know can tell you.
Chorus. Ah, ah. And what about us? And the parents who bore me? Are they alive? Are they dead? Who could tell us?
Iphigenia. Listen. I have come round to a plan that would help you, strangers, and at the same time help me. A good thing is best of all when the same business pleases everyone. Would you be willing, if I saved your life, to go to Argos and take a message to the people I love there, and to carry a letter? A prisoner wrote it for me, out of pity. He did not think of my hand as the murderer. He thought the goddess's victims die by the law, and that the goddess holds it just. Because I have had nobody who could go back to Argos and take my message, nobody who might be saved and send my letter on to somebody I love. But you: you are not, it seems, my enemy, and you know Mycenae and the people I want you to know. So be saved. And take a reward that is nothing to be ashamed of: your life, for the sake of a little writing. But this man, since the city demands it, must be the goddess's sacrifice, apart from you.
Orestes. That was all well said, stranger, except one thing. For this man to be slaughtered is a heavy weight on me. I am the captain of this voyage of misfortunes; he only sailed with me for the sake of my troubles. So it is not right that I should do you a favour at the price of his death and slip out of trouble myself. No. Do it this way. Give him the letter. He will take it to Argos, and you will have what you want. And me, let anyone who wants to kill me kill me. It is the most shameful thing there is, for a man to throw his friends' lives into disaster and save his own. This man is my friend, and I want him to see the light every bit as much as I want to see it myself.
Iphigenia. What a spirit. What noble root you must have grown from, to be so true a friend to your friends. I hope the one brother I have left is a man like you. Because I am not without a brother either, strangers, except that I do not see him. Since this is what you want, we will send this man with the letter, and you will die. It seems you have a great longing for it.
Orestes. And who will sacrifice me? Who will have the nerve for something so terrible?
Iphigenia. I will. I hold the office of this goddess.
Orestes. No one would envy you that, young woman. No one would call it blessed.
Iphigenia. But I am bound to a necessity, and I have to keep it.
Orestes. You yourself, with a sword? A woman, sacrificing men?
Iphigenia. No. I sprinkle the holy water round your hair.
Orestes. And who does the killing? If I may ask that.
Iphigenia. Inside this temple there are men whose business it is.
Orestes. What sort of grave will take me, when I am dead?
Iphigenia. The holy fire inside, and a wide cleft in the rock.
Orestes. Ah. If only my sister's hand could lay my body out.
Iphigenia. That was a useless prayer, poor man, whoever you are. She lives a long way from this barbarian land. Still, since you happen to be an Argive, I will not leave undone any favour I can do. I will put a great deal of ornament on your grave. I will quench your body with yellow oil, and I will throw onto your pyre the honey of the tawny mountain bee, the gleaming stuff that streams from flowers. Now I will go and bring the letter out of the goddess's temple. Do not hold any of this against me. Guard them, attendants. Without chains. Perhaps I am about to send news nobody hoped for to someone I love in Argos, the one I love most of all, and the letter, telling him that the people he thinks are dead are alive, will bring him a joy he can believe.
(Iphigenia goes into the temple.)
Chorus. I mourn for you, the one the drops of holy water will claim, mixed with blood.
Orestes. This is no case for pity. Goodbye to you, strangers.
Chorus. And you, young man, we honour you for your blessed luck: one day you will set foot on your own country again.
Pylades. No friend would envy it, when his friend is dying.
Chorus. Oh, cruel journeys. Ah, ah. You are being destroyed. Aiai, aiai. Which of you is worse off? My mind is still torn two ways, in doubt: shall I groan first for you, or for you?
Orestes. Pylades, by the gods, do you feel what I feel?
Pylades. I do not know. You are asking a man who has no answer.
Orestes. Who is that young woman? How Greek her questions were: the labours at Troy, the Achaeans' journey home, Calchas the reader of birds, Achilles by name; and how she pitied poor Agamemnon, and asked me about his wife and children. This stranger is an Argive by birth. She is from there. Otherwise she would never be sending a letter and finding all this out, as if Argos doing well were her own business.
Pylades. You got there a little ahead of me. You have said what I was going to say, except one thing: everyone who has moved about in the world knows what has happened to kings. But I have been going over another thought as well.
Orestes. What? Share it, and you will understand it better yourself.
Pylades. It is shameful for me to go on looking at the light when you are dead. I sailed with you. I ought to die with you. I will be called a coward and a wretch, in Argos and in the folded hills of Phocis. Most people will think, because most people are bad, that I betrayed you and came home alone, saved; or even that I murdered you, while your house was sick, and stitched up your death for the sake of your throne, since I married your sister, the heiress. That is what I am afraid of, and it shames me. There is no way round it. I must breathe my last with you, be slaughtered with you, and have my body burned with yours. I am your friend, and I am afraid of what people would say.
Orestes. Do not talk like that. I have to carry my own troubles, and when the grief could be single I will not carry it double. What you call painful and shameful, that is what it would be for me, if I got you killed, you who have shared every labour with me. As for me, it is no bad thing, doing as badly as I am at the gods' hands, to let go of my life. But you are fortunate. Your house is clean; it is not sick. Mine is impious and unlucky. If you are saved, and get sons from my sister, whom I gave you for a wife, my name would live on, and my father's house would never be wiped out for want of a child. Go. Live. Live in my father's house. And when you come to Greece, and to Argos, the land of horses, by this right hand I charge you: heap up a grave mound for me and set a memorial on it, and let my sister give her tears and her hair to the tomb. Tell them I died at the hand of an Argive woman, at an altar, purified for the slaughter. And never betray my sister, when you see how lonely the house is, my father's house, that you married into.
And goodbye. I found you the dearest of all my friends, you who hunted with me and grew up with me, you who carried so much of the weight of my troubles. Apollo the prophet lied to me. He worked out his scheme and drove me as far from Greece as he could, ashamed of what he had prophesied before. I gave him everything I had, I trusted what he said, I killed my mother, and now I am destroyed in my turn.
Pylades. You will have your grave, and I will never betray your sister's bed, poor friend, since I will hold you dearer dead than I did living. But the god's prophecy has not destroyed you yet, though you are standing very close to the slaughter. There are, there really are, great changes that come out of trouble when the trouble is too great. When luck allows.
Orestes. Quiet. Apollo's words are no help to me. Here is the woman, coming out of the temple.
(Iphigenia comes out of the temple with the letter in her hand.)
Iphigenia. You, go inside and get things ready for the men who are in charge of the slaughter. Here is the letter, strangers, folded, with all its leaves. But listen to what I want as well. No man is the same when he is in trouble and when he has fallen out of fear into confidence. I am afraid that the one who is going to carry this letter to Argos will get away from this country and then count my message as nothing.
Orestes. What do you want, then? What is the difficulty?
Iphigenia. Let him give me his oath that he will ferry this writing to Argos, to the people I want to send it to.
Orestes. And will you give him the same words back?
Iphigenia. To do what, or not do what? Tell me.
Orestes. To send him out of this barbarian land alive.
Iphigenia. That is fair. How else could he deliver it?
Orestes. And will the king agree to it?
Iphigenia. Yes. I will persuade him, and I will put this man aboard the ship myself.
Orestes. Swear, then. And you, lady, lead him in an oath that a god would respect.
Iphigenia. You must say: I will give this to your friends.
Pylades. I will give this letter to your friends.
Iphigenia. And I will bring you safe out past the dark rocks.
Pylades. What god do you swear by, to witness this oath?
Iphigenia. Artemis. I hold my office in her house.
Pylades. And I by the lord of heaven, holy Zeus.
Iphigenia. And if you abandon your oath and wrong me?
Pylades. May I never get home. And you, if you do not save me?
Iphigenia. May I never set foot in Argos alive.
Pylades. Now listen. There is one point we passed over.
Iphigenia. Then let it be a new one. As long as it is good.
Pylades. Grant me this one exception. If something happens to the ship, and the letter goes down in the waves with the cargo, and I save nothing but my own body, then let this oath no longer bind me.
Iphigenia. Do you know what I will do? Many attempts hit many marks. I will tell you in words everything that is in there, written in the folds of the letter, so you can report it to my friends. That way it is safe. If you save the writing, it will tell them what is written in it by itself, silently. And if this writing is lost in the sea, then by saving your body you will save my words.
Pylades. Well said, for the gods' sake and for mine. Tell me who I am to take this letter to, in Argos, and what I am to say, once I have heard it from you.
Iphigenia. Take this message to Orestes, the son of Agamemnon. "The girl who was slaughtered at Aulis sends you this. Iphigenia, alive, though to the people there she is alive no longer."
Orestes. Where is she? Has she come back from the dead?
Iphigenia. The woman you are looking at. Do not confuse me with your talk. "Bring me to Argos, my brother, before I die. Take me away from this barbarian land and from the goddess's sacrifices, where my office is the killing of strangers."
Orestes. Pylades, what am I to say? Where are we? Where have we found ourselves?
Iphigenia. "Or I will be a curse on your house."
Pylades. Orestes?
Iphigenia. Yes. So that you learn the name, hearing it twice.
Pylades. Oh, gods.
Iphigenia. Why are you calling on the gods in my business?
Pylades. No reason. Go on. My mind was somewhere else. If I keep asking you questions I will probably come out at something impossible to believe.
Iphigenia. Tell him that the goddess Artemis saved me. She put a deer in my place; my father sacrificed it, thinking he was driving the sharp sword into me, and she settled me in this country. That is my message. That is what is written in the letter.
Pylades. Oh, what an easy oath you have bound me with. And how beautifully you swore your own. I will not take long. I will make good the oath I swore. Here, Orestes: I bring you a letter, and I hand it over to you, from your sister. This woman here.
Orestes. I take it. And I will let the folds of the letter wait, and take my joy first, not in words. Dearest sister, I am stunned, and still I am going to put my arms round you, arms that cannot believe it, and have my delight, now that I have learned things that astonish me.
(He goes to take her in his arms.)
Chorus. Stranger, you are wrong to pollute the goddess's servant, putting your arm round robes that must not be touched.
Orestes. My own sister, born from the same father, Agamemnon, do not turn away from me. You have your brother, and you never thought you would.
Iphigenia. I have you? My brother? Will you stop talking like that? Argos is full of him, and so is Nauplia.
Orestes. Your brother is not there, poor woman.
Iphigenia. But the Spartan woman, the daughter of Tyndareus, was your mother?
Orestes. And my father was the grandson of Pelops. That is where I come from.
Iphigenia. What are you saying? Do you have any proof of this to give me?
Orestes. I do. Ask me something about our father's house.
Iphigenia. Then you must talk, and I must learn.
Orestes. I will say first what I heard from Electra. You know about the quarrel between Atreus and Thyestes?
Iphigenia. I heard of it. The dispute was over a golden ram.
Orestes. And you know you wove it, in a fine-spun cloth?
Iphigenia. Oh, dearest. You are steering very close to my heart.
Orestes. And the sun, in the middle of the loom, turning back in its course?
Iphigenia. I wove that picture too, in fine threads.
Orestes. And you got the wedding bath from your mother, for Aulis?
Iphigenia. I know. The marriage was not so happy that it took the memory away.
Orestes. And this? You gave your mother a lock of your hair to take home?
Iphigenia. As a memorial to put in a tomb, instead of my body.
Orestes. And now what I have seen myself, I will tell you as proof. Pelops's old spear, in our father's house, the one he shook in his hand when he won Hippodamia, the girl from Pisa, and killed Oenomaus. It was hidden in your rooms, in the girls' quarters.
Iphigenia. Oh, dearest. Nothing else: you are the dearest. I have you, Orestes, my darling, from far away, from our father's country, from Argos, my love.
Orestes. And I have you, the one who was thought dead. Tears, and groaning mixed with joy, are wetting your eyes, and mine the same way.
Iphigenia. You were still a baby when I left you, tiny in the nurse's arms, tiny in the house. Oh, my soul, you are luckier than words can say. What can I say? This has gone past wonder, past anything words can reach.
Orestes. From now on, may we be lucky, together.
Iphigenia. A joy I have no place for has taken hold of me, my friends. I am afraid he will fly out of my hands up into the sky and be gone. Io, hearth the Cyclopes built. Io, my country, Mycenae, my dear, I thank you for his life, I thank you for his rearing, because you raised this brother for me in your house, this light of the family.
Orestes. In our birth we are lucky, sister. In what has happened to us, our life was born unlucky.
Iphigenia. I know it, wretched as I am, I know it: when my father, with wretchedness in his heart, put the sword to my throat.
Orestes. Oh. I was not there, and I think I see you there.
Iphigenia. No wedding song, brother, when I was led to the tent of Achilles, to a marriage bed that was a trick. Beside the altar there were tears and groans. Ah, ah, for the holy water there.
Orestes. I groaned too, for the daring our father dared.
Iphigenia. Fatherless, fatherless, the lot I drew. One thing comes out of another, by the luck some god sends.
Orestes. Yes: if you had killed your brother, poor woman.
Iphigenia. Oh, wretched, for the terrible thing I dared. Terrible, what I dared, terrible, oh, my brother. By a hair you escaped an unholy death, cut down by my hands. And what is the end of all this to be? What luck will come my way? What road can I find for you, to send you back from this city, away from the slaughter, to your Argive homeland, before the sword comes near your blood? This, this is your task, poor soul, to find that out. By land, not by ship? But then, on the rush of your own feet, you will come near to death, among barbarian tribes and along roads that are no roads. And through the dark rocks of the narrow strait it is a long way for a ship to run. Wretched, wretched woman. Who, then, what god, or what mortal, or what thing that nobody expects, could work a way out where there is no way, and show the last two children of Atreus's house a release from evil?
Chorus. Among wonders, beyond anything in the stories: I saw this with my own eyes, and I will tell it not as something I heard.
Pylades. When friends come into the sight of friends, Orestes, it is reasonable to throw your arms round each other. But now you must leave off the weeping and come to this: how we are going to win the glorious name of safety and get out of this barbarian land. That is what clever men do. They do not step outside their luck; they seize the moment when it comes, and leave their other pleasures for later.
Orestes. Well said. But I think luck will look after that part, along with us. When a man is eager, the gods' strength is likely to be the greater for it.
Iphigenia. Nothing is going to stop me, nothing is going to keep me from speaking, until I have first found out what lot in life Electra has drawn. You are all dear to me.
Orestes. She lives with this man. She has a happy life.
Iphigenia. And where is he from, and whose son is he?
Orestes. Strophius of Phocis is his father's name.
Iphigenia. Then he is the son of Atreus's daughter. My own kin.
Orestes. A cousin. And my one certain friend.
Iphigenia. He was not born yet when my father killed me.
Orestes. He was not. Strophius was childless for a while.
Iphigenia. Greetings, husband of my sister.
Orestes. And my saviour. Not only a relation.
Iphigenia. But that terrible business with our mother. How did you have the nerve?
Orestes. Let us say nothing about it. I was avenging my father.
Iphigenia. And her reason? Why did she kill her husband?
Orestes. Leave our mother's affairs alone. It is not good for you to hear them either.
Iphigenia. I am silent. And does Argos look to you now?
Orestes. Menelaus rules there. I am an exile from my country.
Iphigenia. Surely our uncle has not done our sick house an outrage?
Orestes. No. It is fear of the Furies that drives me out of the land.
Iphigenia. That was the madness they reported, on the shore here?
Orestes. It is not the first time I have been seen in my misery.
Iphigenia. I understand. The goddesses were hounding you, for our mother.
Orestes. To force a bloody bit between my teeth.
Iphigenia. And why did you ferry your steps to this land?
Orestes. I came at the command of Apollo's oracles.
Iphigenia. To do what? Can it be spoken, or must it be kept silent?
Orestes. I will tell you. This is where my many labours began. When my mother's evil, the evil we are keeping silent about, came into my hands, I was driven into exile, hounded by relay after relay of Furies, until Apollo sent my steps to Athens, to stand trial before the goddesses who are not to be named. There is a holy court there, which Zeus once set up for Ares when his hands were polluted with a killing.
I went there. At first not one host would take me in willingly; I was a man the gods hated. Then some who felt ashamed set out a guest's table for me, a table by myself, under the same roof as themselves but apart, and by their silence they built a wall round me so that I could not speak, so that I would be separate from them in food and in drink; and they filled a separate cup for every man there with an equal measure of wine, and enjoyed themselves. And I did not think it right to call my hosts to account. I suffered in silence and pretended not to notice, groaning deep down because I was my mother's murderer. I hear that my misfortune has become a festival at Athens, and that the custom still stands: the people of Pallas honour the cup of the Feast of Pitchers.
Then when I came to the hill of Ares I stood my trial. I took one platform, and the eldest of the Furies took the other. I spoke, and I heard the case against me, about my mother's blood, and Apollo saved me by giving evidence, and Pallas counted out the votes with her arm, equal on both sides, and I left the trial for murder a winner. Those Furies who sat there and were persuaded by the verdict marked out a holy place for themselves right beside the court. But those who were not persuaded by the law hounded me on and on, in a chase that never settled, until I came again to Apollo's holy ground and stretched myself out in front of his inner shrine, fasting, and swore that I would break off my life and die there if Apollo, who had destroyed me, did not save me. Then Apollo cried out a voice from the golden tripod and sent me here, to take the statue that fell from the sky and set it up in the land of Athens.
So help me to the safety he marked out for me. If we get hold of the goddess's image, I will be free of my madness, and I will put you aboard my ship with its many oars and settle you back in Mycenae. Sister, my love, my own sister, save our father's house, and save me. Because I am finished, all of me, and the whole line of Pelops with me, unless we take the goddess's image that came down from heaven.
Chorus. Some terrible anger of the gods has boiled up against the seed of Tantalus and drives them through labour after labour.
Iphigenia. The wish was mine before you ever came here, to be in Argos and to see you, brother. I want what you want: to release you from your labours and set our father's sick house upright again. I hold no anger against the man who killed me. I want it. It would take my hand out of your slaughter, and it would save our house. But how am I to hide it from the goddess, and from the king, when he finds the stone base standing empty with no statue on it? That is what I am afraid of. How can I not be killed? What excuse could I have? But if the one thing happens, if it all happens together, and you carry off the statue and take me away on your fine ship, then the risk is a fine one. If I am cut off from that, then I am lost, but you might settle your own business well and get home. Not that I am running from it. Not even if I have to die to save you. No. When a man dies and is gone from a house, he is missed. A woman is a weak thing.
Orestes. I will not be your murderer as well as my mother's. Her blood is enough. I want to be of one mind with you, and either live with you or, dying, share the same lot. I will take you home, if I get out of here myself, or I will die and stay here with you. But listen to my judgement. If this were against Artemis's will, how could Apollo have prophesied that I would bring the goddess's statue to Pallas's city, and see your face? Putting all of that together into one, I have hope that we will get home.
Iphigenia. Then how can we arrange it so that we do not die, and still get what we want? That is where our journey home is sick. The wanting is there.
Orestes. Could we kill the king?
Iphigenia. That is a terrible thing to say. Strangers who have landed in a country, murdering the man who rules it.
Orestes. But if it will save you and me, we have to risk it.
Iphigenia. I could not do it. But I admire the spirit.
Orestes. What if you hid me secretly in the temple?
Iphigenia. So that we could take the dark and slip away?
Orestes. Night belongs to thieves. The light belongs to truth.
Iphigenia. There are temple guards inside. We would never get past them.
Orestes. Oh. Then we are finished. How can we be saved?
Iphigenia. I think I have found something. Something new.
Orestes. What kind of thing? Share the idea, so I can learn it too.
Iphigenia. I am going to use your sufferings as my trick.
Orestes. Women are terribly good at inventing schemes.
Iphigenia. I will say that you have come from Argos, and that you killed your mother.
Orestes. Use my troubles, if you can make a profit on them.
Iphigenia. And that it is not lawful to sacrifice you to the goddess.
Orestes. On what grounds? I have a suspicion.
Iphigenia. Because you are not clean. Their sense of what is holy I will turn into fear.
Orestes. And how does that get us any nearer to taking the goddess's image?
Iphigenia. I will say I want to wash you clean in the springs of the sea.
Orestes. The statue we sailed here for is still inside the house.
Iphigenia. I will say that has to be washed too, because you touched it.
Orestes. Where? Do you mean the wet inlet where the sea runs out?
Iphigenia. Where your ship rides at anchor on its linen cables.
Orestes. And will you carry the image in your own hands, or someone else?
Iphigenia. I will. I am the only one who may touch it.
Orestes. And Pylades here, where does he fit into our labour?
Iphigenia. He will be said to carry the same pollution on his hands as you do.
Orestes. Will you do all this behind the king's back, or with his knowledge?
Iphigenia. I will talk him into it. I could never hide it from him.
Orestes. Well, the ship is there, and her oars are ready to strike.
Iphigenia. The rest is yours to see to. Make sure it goes well.
Orestes. One thing more is needed: these women have to keep the secret with us. Go to them and find the words that will persuade them. A woman has power when it comes to pity. As for the rest, perhaps. May it all turn out well.
Iphigenia. My dearest women, I am looking to you. Everything I am is in your hands now: whether I come through this, or become nothing and lose my country, and my dear brother, and my dearest sister. Let me begin what I have to say with this. We are women, a race that loves its own kind, and there is nobody safer at keeping a common secret safe. Keep silent for us, and work with us for our escape. A tongue that can be trusted is a fine thing for the one who has it.
You see how one fortune holds three people who love each other more than anyone: either we reach our fathers' land, or we die. And if I am saved, you will share my fortune. I will bring you safely home to Greece. So I beg you, by your right hand, and you, and you; you by your dear cheek, and you by your knees, and by everything you love at home, mother and father and children, whoever has them. What do you say? Which of you says yes to this, and which of you is not willing? Speak. If you do not agree to what I ask, I am destroyed, and my poor brother with me.
Chorus. Take heart, dear mistress. Only save yourself. Everything you charge us with will be kept silent, as far as I am concerned. Great Zeus be my witness.
Iphigenia. May you have joy of those words, and be happy. Now it is your work, and yours, to go into the house. The ruler of this land will be here any moment, to check whether the strangers' sacrifice has been done.
Lady, you who saved me in the terrible clefts of Aulis from my father's murdering hand, save me now too, and these men. Or else, because of you, mortals will never again believe that Apollo's mouth tells the truth. Come away kindly from this barbarian land to Athens. It is not right for you to live here, when a happy city is yours to have.
(Orestes and Pylades go into the temple. Iphigenia follows them.)
Chorus. Bird by the rocky ridges of the sea, halcyon, sea-kingfisher, who sing your fate as a lament, a cry the wise understand, always calling in your songs for your husband: I set my own dirges beside yours, a bird without wings, longing for the gatherings of Greece, longing for Artemis who helps women in childbirth, who lives by the Cynthian hill on Delos, by the palm with its soft leaves and the strong young laurel and the holy shoot of the grey-green olive, the tree Leto held when her pains came, and the lake that rolls its water round in a ring, where the singing swan serves the Muses.
Chorus. Oh, the streams of tears that fell on my cheeks when the towers came down and I went in the enemy's ships, among oars and spears. Bought and sold for gold, I came to a barbarian home, where I serve the girl who attends the goddess who kills the deer, Agamemnon's daughter, and altars where it is not sheep that die, and I envy the woman whose luck was bad from the start: if you grow up in hardship you do not tire under it. Bad luck changes. It is being brought low after happiness that is a heavy life for mortals.
Chorus. And you, lady, the Argive ship with its fifty oars will carry home. The wax-bound reed of Pan of the mountains will whistle and call the time to the rowers, and Apollo the prophet, with the ring of his seven-stringed lyre, will sing you all the way to the shining land of the Athenians. You will leave me here and go with the oars splashing. In the breeze the forestays will spread the sail's foot over the prow, past the beak of the fast ship.
Chorus. If only I could walk the bright race-course where the fire of the sun goes, and over the rooms of my own home fold the wings on my back and stop beating them. If only I could stand in the dances again, where I stood as a girl at glorious weddings, whirling beside my dear mother's feet with the bands of girls my own age, rising up to the contest of grace, the rich rivalry of hair, and shadowed my cheeks with my many-coloured veil and the curls I wound about them.
(Thoas comes in with his attendants.)
Thoas. Where is the woman who keeps the gate of this house, the Greek? Has she begun the rite on the strangers yet? Are their bodies blazing in the fire in the holy inner room?
Chorus. Here she is, my lord. She will tell you everything plainly.
(Iphigenia comes out of the temple with the image of the goddess in her arms.)
Thoas. Ah. Daughter of Agamemnon, why are you lifting the goddess's image in your arms, off the base it is never moved from?
Iphigenia. My lord, stop where you are. Stay in the doorway.
Thoas. What is it, Iphigenia? What is new in the house?
Iphigenia. I spit it out. Pollution. That word I give to Holiness, the goddess.
Thoas. What is this strange opening of yours? Say it plainly.
Iphigenia. The victims you caught for me are not clean, my lord.
Thoas. What taught you that? Or are you just telling me your opinion?
Iphigenia. The goddess's image turned round on its base and faced the other way.
Thoas. By itself? Or did an earthquake turn it?
Iphigenia. By itself. And it closed its eyes.
Thoas. And the cause? Was it the filth on the strangers?
Iphigenia. That, and nothing else. They have done terrible things.
Thoas. What, did they kill one of our barbarians on the shore?
Iphigenia. They came here with a murder from home already on them.
Thoas. What murder? I want to know. I have fallen in love with knowing.
Iphigenia. They cut their mother down. The two of them, with one sword.
Thoas. Apollo. Not even among barbarians would anyone have dared that.
Iphigenia. They have been hunted and driven out of the whole of Greece.
Thoas. And is that why you are carrying the image outside?
Iphigenia. Yes, under the holy open sky, to move it away from the blood.
Thoas. How did you find out the strangers' pollution?
Iphigenia. I questioned them, when the goddess's image turned its back.
Thoas. Greece has brought you up clever. How well you saw it.
Iphigenia. And yet they dangled a sweet bait for my heart.
Thoas. Bringing you some charm of news from Argos?
Iphigenia. That Orestes, my only brother, is doing well.
Thoas. So that you would save them, for the pleasure of their news.
Iphigenia. And that my father is alive and prospering.
Thoas. But you swam back to the goddess's side, and rightly.
Iphigenia. Yes. I hate all Greece. It destroyed me.
Thoas. Then what do we do about the strangers? Tell me.
Iphigenia. We are bound to respect the law as it stands.
Thoas. Then why are the holy water and your sword not at work?
Iphigenia. First I want to wash them clean, with a holy purification.
Thoas. In spring water, or the spray of the sea?
Iphigenia. The sea washes away all the evils of mankind.
Thoas. They would certainly fall holier for the goddess that way.
Iphigenia. And my own business would go better that way too.
Thoas. But does the surf not break against the temple itself?
Iphigenia. It needs solitude. There are other things we have to do as well.
Thoas. Take them wherever you want. I have no wish to see what may not be seen.
Iphigenia. The goddess's image must be purified too.
Thoas. Yes, if the stain of a mother's blood has fallen on it.
Iphigenia. I would never have lifted it off its base otherwise.
Thoas. Your piety is right, and so is your forethought.
Iphigenia. Now, do you know what I need done?
Thoas. It is for you to tell me.
Iphigenia. Put chains on the strangers.
Thoas. Where could they run from you?
Iphigenia. Greece knows nothing about keeping faith.
Thoas. Go and fetch chains, attendants.
Iphigenia. And have them bring the strangers out here.
Thoas. It will be done.
Iphigenia. With their heads covered in their robes.
Thoas. Out of the sun's blaze.
Iphigenia. And send some of your servants with me.
Thoas. These men will go with you.
Iphigenia. And send someone to the city to announce...
Thoas. Announce what?
Iphigenia. That everyone is to stay indoors.
Thoas. So that they do not run into the murder?
Iphigenia. Yes. Things like this are polluting.
Thoas. You. Go and announce it.
Iphigenia. That nobody is to come near the sight.
Thoas. You take good care of the city.
Iphigenia. And of the friends I owe the most to.
Thoas. You mean me by that.
Thoas. The whole city admires you, and it has good reason.
Iphigenia. And you, stay here in front of the temple, and for the goddess...
Thoas. Do what?
Iphigenia. Purify the house with a torch.
Thoas. So that it is clean when you come back.
Iphigenia. And when the strangers come out through the door...
Thoas. What must I do?
Iphigenia. Hold your robe in front of your eyes.
Thoas. So that I do not take the killer's stain.
Iphigenia. And if I seem to be taking too long...
Thoas. How long should I allow?
Iphigenia. Do not be surprised at anything.
Thoas. Do the goddess's business well. There is no hurry.
Iphigenia. If only this purification would fall out as I want it.
Thoas. I pray for that with you.
(Orestes and Pylades are brought out of the temple by the guards, in chains, their heads covered, with attendants carrying lambs and torches.)
Iphigenia. Here they come, the strangers, out of the house now, and the goddess's ornaments, and the new-born lambs, so that I can wash polluted blood away with blood, and the blaze of the torches, and everything else I set out to purify the strangers and the goddess. I proclaim to the citizens: keep clear of this pollution. Any keeper of the temple who keeps his hands clean for the gods, anyone on his way to make a marriage, any woman heavy with a child: run, stand back, so that this filth does not fall on anyone.
Lady, virgin daughter of Zeus and Leto, if I wash the blood off these men and make the sacrifice where it should be made, you will live in a clean house, and we will be fortunate. The rest I do not say. But I signal it to the gods, who know more, and to you, goddess.
(Iphigenia goes out toward the shore, carrying the image, with the prisoners and Thoas's men behind her. Thoas goes into the temple.)
Chorus. A fine child, the son of Leto, whom the Delian mother bore once in the fruitful valleys, golden-haired, clever with the lyre; and with him the sister who glories in the true aim of her arrows. And the mother left the famous place of her labour and carried him from the ridge by the sea to the peak of Parnassus, with its rushing waters, where the dances run wild for Dionysus. There the wine-dark serpent with the dappled back, armoured in bronze under the shady, leafy laurel, the earth's enormous monster, kept guard over the oracle of Earth. Still a baby, still a baby, still leaping in your dear mother's arms, you killed him, Apollo, and stepped into the holy oracle, and you sit on the golden tripod, on the throne that never lies, dealing out to mortals the prophecies the gods send, up from the inner shrine, neighbour of Castalia's streams, holding the house at the centre of the earth.
Chorus. But when he came and drove Themis, the daughter of Earth, away from the holy oracle of Pytho, Earth gave birth to phantoms, dreams of the night, which told the cities of men what had been, and what came after, and everything that was going to happen, in the dark beds of sleep on the ground. So Earth took the honour of prophecy away from Apollo, out of jealousy for her daughter. And the lord ran fast to Olympus and wound his baby arm round the throne of Zeus, to have the earth-goddess's anger lifted from the Pythian house, and the night voices silenced. And Zeus laughed, that the child had come so quickly wanting the worship that pays in gold. He shook his hair, and the voices of the night stopped, and he took away from mortals the truth that shows its face in the dark, and gave the honours back to Apollo, and to mortals confidence in the songs of prophecy at the throne where so many strangers come.
(A Messenger, one of the king's men, runs in from the shore.)
Messenger. You, guards of the temple, you who stand by the altar, where has Thoas, the lord of this land, gone? Open the well-bolted gates and call the ruler of the country out of this house.
Chorus. What is it, if I may speak without being told to?
Messenger. The two young men are gone. Away. By the plotting of Agamemnon's daughter they are escaping from this country, and they have the holy image with them, in the hold of a Greek ship.
Chorus. That is an unbelievable story. But the man you want to see, the lord of this country, has left the temple in a hurry.
Messenger. Where? He has to know what is being done.
Chorus. We do not know. But go and chase after him, and wherever you find him, give him your news.
Messenger. Look at that. What a faithless race you women are. You have your share in what has been done as well.
Chorus. You are out of your mind. What do we have to do with the strangers' escape? Go to the king's door, as fast as you can.
Messenger. No. Not until this interpreter tells me the word: is the ruler of the land inside, or is he not? Hey there. Undo the bolts, I am talking to you inside, and tell the master I am at the gates with a cargo of fresh bad news.
(Thoas comes out of the temple.)
Thoas. Who is raising this shouting round the goddess's house, hammering on the gates and sending the noise inside?
Messenger. Ah. These women told me you had gone out, and they were driving me away from the house. And you were inside all along.
Thoas. What profit were they expecting? What were they hunting?
Messenger. I will explain about them later. Hear what is at your feet now. The young woman who stood at these altars, Iphigenia, has gone out of the country with the strangers, and she has the goddess's holy image with her. The purification was a fraud.
Thoas. What are you saying? What wind of fortune got into her?
Messenger. She is saving Orestes. That will amaze you.
Thoas. Which Orestes? The one the daughter of Tyndareus bore?
Messenger. The one the goddess had consecrated to herself at these altars.
Thoas. A wonder. What bigger name can I find for it?
Messenger. Do not turn your mind to that. Listen to me. Look at it clearly, hear it out, and then think out a pursuit that will hunt the strangers down.
Thoas. Speak. You are right. It is no short crossing they are running for, no voyage that will get them out of range of my spear.
Messenger. When we came to the shore of the sea, where Orestes's ship had been moored out of sight, Agamemnon's daughter signalled to us, the men you sent along holding the strangers' chains, to stand well back, as if she were about to make the secret fire-sacrifice and the purification she had come for. And she went on alone behind them, holding the two strangers' chains in her hands. It looked suspicious, my lord. But your servants let it pass.
After a while, so that we would think she was doing something, she raised the ritual cry, and chanted barbarian songs, working her witchcraft, as if she were really washing away the murder. When we had been sitting a long time, it came into our minds that the strangers might have got loose, killed her, and run for it. But we were afraid of seeing what we were not supposed to see, and we sat still and kept quiet. In the end we all said the same thing: go to where they were, whether we were allowed or not.
And there we saw the hull of a Greek ship, winged with the oar-blades fitted along her sides ready for the stroke, and fifty sailors at the tholes with their oars in their hands, and the two young men standing free of their chains at the stern. Some were holding the bow steady with poles. Others were hauling the anchor up to the cat-heads. Others were running the stern-cables through their hands and hurrying to let down the ladders and drop them into the sea for the strangers.
We did not spare ourselves. When we saw the trick they had worked, we grabbed the woman and the stern-cables, and we tried to pull the steering-oars out through the sockets of that fine stern. And words went back and forth. "What right have you to carry off images and priestesses, stealing them out of this land? Whose son are you? Who are you, to smuggle this woman out of the country?" And he said, "Orestes, her brother, so you know it. The son of Agamemnon. I am taking my sister home, the sister I lost from my house." But we held on to the woman just the same, and were trying to force her to come with us to you. And that is where the terrible blows to my face came from. They had no iron in their hands, and neither did we. But there were fists, pounding, and the two young men's legs came at us together, kicking at our ribs and our livers, so that the moment we got to grips with them our limbs were done for. Stamped with terrible marks, we ran for the cliff, some with bloody wounds on their heads, some in their eyes. When we stood on the heights we fought more carefully, and threw rocks. But there were archers standing on the stern who kept us off with their arrows and drove us further back.
And then a terrible swell ran the ship aground towards the land, and the girl was afraid to wet her feet. So Orestes took her on his left shoulder, walked into the sea, jumped onto the ladder, and set his sister down inside that well-marked ship, with the thing that fell out of the sky, the image of the daughter of Zeus. And from the middle of the ship a voice shouted, "Sailors of Greece, take hold of the ship with your oars and whiten the surf. We have what we sailed through the unfriendly strait for, in past the Clashing Rocks." And they gave a deep, glad groan, and struck the salt water.
The ship, while she was inside the harbour, made for the mouth. But as she was crossing out she met a violent swell and was thrown hard, because a terrible wind came up all at once and drove the sails back stern-first. The men held on, kicking against the wave. But the swell, running back, was carrying the ship towards the land again. And Agamemnon's daughter stood up and prayed. "Daughter of Leto, bring me, your priestess, safe to Greece out of this barbarian land, and forgive me my thefts. You love your brother too, goddess. Believe that I love my own blood as well." And the sailors answered the girl's prayer with the Healer's hymn, and set their shoulders, bare out of their clothes, to the oar at the word of command. But nearer and nearer to the rocks the hull kept going. One man jumped into the sea, another was making loops of rope fast.
And I was sent straight off here to you, my lord, to tell you what has happened down there. Go. Take chains and nooses in your hands. Unless the swell goes calm, there is no hope of safety for the strangers. Holy Poseidon, the lord of the sea, watches over Troy, and he is the enemy of the house of Pelops. Now, it seems, he will give the son of Agamemnon into your hands, and the people's, and his sister with him, the woman who forgot the slaughter at Aulis, and betrayed the goddess, and is caught.
Chorus. Poor Iphigenia. You will die with your brother, if you come back into your masters' hands.
Thoas. All you citizens of this barbarian land, go on, throw the reins on your horses. Ride along the coast and take whatever the Greek ship throws up. Hurry, with the goddess beside you, and hunt down these godless men. And the rest of you, drag the fast ships down to the sea. By sea, and by land on horseback, we will take them, and throw them down the rough rock, or fix their bodies on stakes.
And you women, who knew about these plots, I will punish you later, when I have the time. Now, with this business in front of us, we will not sit still.
(Athena appears above the temple.)
Athena. Where, where are you carrying this pursuit, lord Thoas? Listen to the words of Athena. I am here. Stop hunting them. Stop pouring out this flood of an army. Orestes came here because Apollo's oracles ordained it, running from the anger of the Furies, to bring his sister home to Argos and carry the holy image to my land, and so find a breathing space from the sufferings he has now. That is my word to you. And Orestes, whom you think you will catch in the sea's swell and kill: Poseidon, as a favour to me, is already making the sea's back smooth and waveless for his oars to cross.
And you, Orestes, learn my orders, because you can hear the goddess's voice even where you are. Go, and take the image and your sister with you. When you come to Athens, the city the gods built, there is a place at the farthest borders of the Attic land, next to the ridge of Carystus across the water, a holy place, and my people call it Halae. Build a temple there and set the image up in it, and let it carry the name of the Taurian land, and of the labours you toiled through, wandering all over Greece under the Furies' goads. From now on mortals will sing hymns to her there as Artemis Tauropolos, the goddess of the Taurians. And lay down this law: whenever the people keep her festival, in payment for your slaughter let a sword be held to a man's throat, and let blood be drawn, so that holiness is satisfied and the goddess keeps her honours.
And you, Iphigenia, must keep the keys for this goddess on the holy steps of Brauron. There you will die, and there you will be buried, and they will dedicate to you, as an ornament, the fine-woven robes that women who die in childbirth leave behind in their houses. And I charge you to send these Greek women out of this land, because their judgement was right. I saved you once before, Orestes, on the hill of Ares, when I judged the votes equal. And that will be the custom from now on: whoever gets an equal count of votes wins. Now take your sister out of this country, son of Agamemnon. And you, Thoas, do not be angry.
Thoas. Lady Athena, whoever hears the words of the gods and does not believe them is not thinking straight. I am not angry with Orestes for going off with the goddess's image, or with his sister. What good is there in wrestling with the gods, who have the strength? Let them go to your land with the goddess's image, and let them set it up there, and good luck to them. I will send these women too to happy Greece, as your command lays it on me. And I will lower the spear I was raising against the strangers, and the ships' oars, since that is how you judge it, goddess.
Athena. Good. Necessity rules you, and it rules the gods too. Go, winds, carry the son of Agamemnon over the sea to Athens. I will travel with them, and keep my sister's holy image safe.
Chorus. Go, and be happy in your luck, in the destiny that has saved you. Pallas Athena, holy among the immortals and holy among mortals, we will do as you command. For the news that has come to my ears is glad beyond anything I hoped. Great Victory, holy one, stay with me all my life, and never stop crowning me.
(Delphi, in front of the temple of Apollo. It is not yet light. Hermes comes in.)
Hermes. Atlas, who wears down the sky, that old house of the gods, on his bronze back, fathered Maia on one of the goddesses, and Maia bore me, Hermes, to great Zeus, to run the gods' errands. I have come to this country, Delphi, where Apollo sits on the navel of the world and sings to mortals, forever telling them what is and what is coming. There is a city in Greece that is not without a name, the city called after Pallas Athena of the golden spear. There Apollo took Creusa, the daughter of Erechtheus, by force, under the hill of Pallas in the land of Athens, at the rocks that face north, the ones the lords of Attica call the Long Rocks, the Macrae. Her father never knew. The god wanted it that way. She carried the weight in her belly to term, and when her time came she gave birth to a boy in the house, and then she carried the baby out to the same cave where the god had bedded her, and she put him out there to die, in the rounded hollow of a cradle, keeping an old custom of her ancestors and of Erichthonius, who was born from the earth. When Athena, the daughter of Zeus, gave that child to the daughters of Aglaurus to keep safe, she set two snakes beside him to guard his body, and that is why the descendants of Erechtheus still have a custom of raising their children with snakes of beaten gold. But Creusa tied what finery a girl had on her baby, and left him to die.
Then Apollo, who is my brother, asked me this. "Brother, go to the people who grew out of the soil of famous Athens, you know the goddess's city, and take a newborn baby out of a hollow rock, cradle and swaddling clothes and all, and bring him to my oracle at Delphi, and set him down right at the entrance to my house. The rest, because the boy is mine, you should know that, will be my business." So I did my brother Apollo the favour. I picked up the woven cradle and brought it here, and I set the boy down on the steps of this temple, and I opened the lid of the curved wicker cradle, so the child could be seen.
And it happened that just as the sun's chariot was setting out on its round, the priestess was going into the god's shrine. Her eye fell on the little baby, and she was amazed that any girl of Delphi would have the nerve to throw the child of a secret labour into the god's house, and she was all for putting him out beyond the altar. But pity got the better of her hardness, and the god was working alongside her, so that his child would not be thrown out of his own house, and she took him up and raised him. She does not know that Apollo fathered him, or who the mother was, and the boy does not know his parents either. While he was small he wandered and played round the altars that fed him, and when his body grew to a man's, the Delphians made him keeper of the god's gold and trusted steward of everything, and he lives here in the god's halls to this day, a holy life.
Creusa, meanwhile, the young man's mother, is married to Xuthus, and this is how that came about. A wave of war broke between Athens and the people of Chalcodon, who hold the land of Euboea. Xuthus fought it through with the Athenians and helped them win it with his spear, and his reward was the honour of marrying Creusa, though he was not Athenian-born but an Achaean, a son of Aeolus, who was a son of Zeus. He has been sowing that marriage bed for years and has no child, and neither has Creusa. That is why they have come here, to this oracle of Apollo: they want children. And Apollo is driving their luck to this point. Nothing has escaped him, whatever people think. When Xuthus goes into this oracle, the god will give him his own son and say the boy is Xuthus's, so that the boy can go to his mother's house and be known to Creusa, and Apollo's bed stays a secret, and the boy gets what is coming to him. And he will see to it that all Greece calls the boy Ion, the founder of a country in Asia.
But I will step into this laurel grove and find out what is decided about the boy. I can see Apollo's son coming out now, to make the doorway in front of the temple bright with sprigs of laurel. And the name he is about to have, Ion: I am the first of the gods to call him by it.
(Hermes hides among the laurels. Ion comes out of the temple with a broom made of laurel branches and a bow over his shoulder. Temple servants follow him out.)
Ion. Here it comes, the bright chariot and the four horses: the Sun is already shining down on the earth, and the stars are running from this fire in the sky into holy night. The peaks of Parnassus, where nobody may walk, are catching the light, and taking the first arch of day on behalf of mortals. The smoke of dry myrrh flies up to the roof of Apollo. The woman of Delphi sits on the holy tripod, singing out to the Greeks whatever cries Apollo sounds in her. But you, Delphians, servants of Apollo, go down to the silver swirl of Castalia, wash yourselves in its clean dew, and then walk up to the temple. Guard your mouths. Say nothing of bad omen. Give a good word from your own tongues to the people who want to ask the god a question. And I will do the work I have done since I was a child, the work I never stop doing. With sprigs of laurel and holy garlands I will make Apollo's doorway clean, and wet the floor with drops of water, and the flocks of birds that foul the sacred offerings I will put to flight with my bow. Because I was born with no mother and no father, and it is the temple of Apollo I serve, the temple that brought me up.
Ion. Come, fresh-grown shoot of the most beautiful laurel, come and do your service to the god. You sweep the altar of Apollo under his temple. You come from gardens that never die, where holy dews are always wetting the sacred foliage of the myrtle, sending out a stream from a spring that never fails. With you I sweep the god's floor all day long, from the moment the sun lifts its swift wing, my service, every day. Healer, Healer, be blessed, be blessed, son of Leto.
Ion. It is fine work I do for you, Apollo, here in front of your house, honouring the seat of your prophecy. And it is a glorious thing to me, this work, to give my hands as a slave gives them, to gods, not to mortals, but to the deathless ones. I never tire of working at work that is holy. Apollo is my father. It was Apollo who begot me, because I bless the one who feeds me, and it is that helpful name, father, that I give to Apollo, who lives in the temple. Healer, Healer, be blessed, be blessed, son of Leto.
Ion. But now I will let the laurel broom rest, and from golden jugs I will fling out the spring water of Earth, the water the eddies of Castalia pour down. I throw the wet drops and I am clean: no one has ever shared my bed. Let me go on serving Apollo like this forever, and never stop, or stop only when my luck is good. Ah. Ah. Here they come already, the birds, leaving their beds on Parnassus. I am telling you, do not come near the cornices, do not go into the golden house. I will catch you with my arrows again, herald of Zeus, you who beat the strength of every other bird with those hooked claws. Here is another one rowing towards the altar, a swan. Will you not take those red feet somewhere else? Apollo's lyre, that sings along with your song, will never save you from my bow. Turn your wings aside. Go and settle on the lake at Delos. If you do not do as I say, you will bleed, and your beautiful songs will end in blood. Ah. Ah. What is this? A new bird coming? Are you going to build a nest of dry straw for your chicks under the eaves? The twang of my bowstring will keep you off. Will you not listen? Go and raise your young in the swirling water of the river Alpheus, or in the wooded valley at the Isthmus, so that the offerings and Apollo's temple come to no harm. I hate to kill you. You carry the gods' messages to mortals. But I am bound to my work. I will slave for Apollo, and I will never stop serving the ones who feed me.
(The Chorus, Creusa's Athenian serving women, come in as sightseers, and go from sculpture to sculpture on the temple front.)
Chorus. So it is not only in holy Athens that the gods have courtyards with fine columns, and the god of the roadways gets his worship. Here too, at the house of Apollo, Leto's son, the two faces of the temple shine with the light of beautiful eyes. Look at this one. Look: the son of Zeus is killing the water snake of Lerna with a golden sickle. Look at it, my dear, with your own eyes.
Chorus. I see it. And next to him another man is lifting a blazing torch. Is it the one whose story I weave at my loom, Iolaus with his shield, who took up the labours alongside the son of Zeus and bore them with him? And look at this one too, the man on the winged horse. He is killing the fire-breathing thing with the three bodies.
Chorus. I am chasing my eyes everywhere. Look at the battle of the Giants on the stone walls. We are looking, friends, right here. Do you see her, then, over Enceladus, shaking her shield with the Gorgon's face on it? I see Pallas, my own goddess. And what about this? The thunderbolt, fire at both ends, heavy, in the far-shooting hands of Zeus? I see it. He is burning Mimas, his enemy, to ash. And Dionysus is killing another of Earth's children with his staff of ivy, a stick that was never made for war.
Chorus. You there, by the temple. I am talking to you. Is it allowed to step inside the shrine, with our white feet?
Ion. It is not allowed, strangers.
Chorus. Could we have a word from you, then, and ask you something?
Ion. What is it you want?
Chorus. Is it true that the house of Apollo really holds the very navel of the earth?
Ion. It does. Wrapped in garlands, with Gorgons all round it.
Chorus. That is what people say, too.
Ion. If you have offered the holy cake in front of the house and there is something you want to ask Apollo, come up to the altar. But do not go into the inner house unless sheep have been slaughtered.
Chorus. I understand. We will not step over the god's law. What is outside will be a feast for the eyes.
Ion. Look at everything your eyes are allowed to see.
Chorus. Our masters let me come and look at these shrines of the god.
Ion. And whose house do you belong to? Whose slaves are you called?
Chorus. The house that raised the lords I serve shares its roof with Pallas. But the one you are asking about is here herself.
(Creusa comes in. She stops at the sight of the temple, in tears.)
Ion. There is breeding in you, and the way you carry yourself is proof of your character, whoever you are, lady. You can usually tell about a person, whether they were born well, just by looking at how they hold themselves. Oh, but you have startled me. You shut your eyes, and your well-bred cheek is wet with tears, the moment you saw Apollo's holy oracle. What is it, lady, that has brought you to this point of worry? Everyone else who looks at the god's shrine is glad. And here your eye is streaming.
Creusa. Stranger, there is nothing ill-bred in your surprise at my tears. When I saw this house of Apollo, I measured out an old memory all over again, and my mind was at home, though I am standing here. Poor women. Poor us. And the gods, and the things they have the nerve to do. What then? Where are we to take our case for justice, if it is the injustice of the ones in power that destroys us?
Ion. What is this, lady? Why so low, over something you will not explain?
Creusa. Nothing. I have shot my arrow, and that is all. About the rest I say nothing, and you stop thinking about it.
Ion. Who are you? Where have you come from? What country were you born in? What name should we call you by?
Creusa. My name is Creusa. I am the daughter of Erechtheus, and my country is the city of Athens.
Ion. A famous city to live in, and noble fathers to be raised by. How I admire you, lady.
Creusa. That is as far as my luck goes, stranger. No further.
Ion. By the gods, is it true, the story mortals tell?
Creusa. What are you asking, stranger? What do you want to know?
Ion. Your father's grandfather grew out of the earth?
Creusa. Erichthonius did, yes. My family is no help to me.
Ion. And Athena really lifted him up out of the ground?
Creusa. Into the hands of unmarried girls, yes. She had not given birth to him.
Ion. And she handed him over, the way the paintings usually show it?
Creusa. To the daughters of Cecrops, yes, to keep him and never look at him.
Ion. I have heard that the girls opened the goddess's chest.
Creusa. And so they died, and their blood stained the face of the rock.
Ion. I see. And what about this one? Is it true, or an empty story?
Creusa. What are you asking? I have the time. I am not tired of it.
Ion. Your father Erechtheus sacrificed your sisters?
Creusa. He had the heart to kill them, girls, as victims for the country's sake.
Ion. And how was it that you alone of the sisters were saved?
Creusa. I was a newborn baby in my mother's arms.
Ion. And is it true that a chasm in the earth hides your father?
Creusa. The blows of the sea god's trident destroyed him.
Ion. And there is a place there they call the Long Rocks?
Creusa. Why are you asking about that? You have reminded me of something.
Ion. The Pythian god honours it, and the Pythian lightning.
Creusa. Honours it. Honours it. I wish I had never set eyes on it.
Ion. What? You hate the thing the god loves most?
Creusa. No. But that cave and I know something shameful together.
Ion. And which Athenian married you, lady?
Creusa. Not a citizen. A man brought in from another country.
Ion. Who? He must be someone of good birth.
Creusa. Xuthus. He is descended from Aeolus, and from Zeus.
Ion. And how did he, a foreigner, get you, when you were born in the country?
Creusa. Euboea is a city next door to Athens.
Ion. With a boundary of water between them, so they say.
Creusa. He sacked it, sharing the war with the sons of Cecrops.
Ion. He came as an ally? And then married into your bed?
Creusa. Yes. It was his dowry from the war, the prize for his spear.
Ion. Have you come to the oracle with your husband, or alone?
Creusa. With him. But he is going round the shrine of Trophonius, the oracle in the cave.
Ion. As a sightseer, or for the sake of an oracle?
Creusa. He wants to hear one and the same word from him and from Apollo.
Ion. Have you come about the crops of the land, or about children?
Creusa. We have no children, though we have shared a bed for years.
Ion. You have never given birth? Never at all? You are childless?
Creusa. Apollo knows about my childlessness.
Ion. Poor woman. Lucky in everything else, and not in this.
Creusa. But who are you? What a lucky woman your mother is.
Ion. I am called the god's slave, lady, and that is what I am.
Creusa. An offering from a city, or sold to him by someone?
Ion. I know only one thing. I am called Apollo's.
Creusa. Then it is my turn to pity you, stranger.
Ion. Because I do not know who bore me or who my father is.
Creusa. Do you live in this temple, or under a roof of your own?
Ion. The whole house of the god is mine, wherever sleep catches me.
Creusa. Did you come to the temple as a child, or as a young man?
Ion. A baby, say the people who think they know.
Creusa. And which woman of Delphi fed you her milk?
Ion. I never knew a breast. But the one who raised me —
Creusa. Who, poor boy? I came here sick, and I have found sickness.
Ion. Apollo's priestess. I think of her as my mother.
Creusa. And till you came to be a man, how did you live?
Ion. The altars fed me, and whatever stranger came along.
Creusa. Poor woman, your mother. Who could she have been?
Ion. Some wrong done to a woman, perhaps. That is what I was born from.
Creusa. But you have a living. You are well dressed.
Ion. I am dressed in the god's clothes. I am his slave.
Creusa. And you never rushed to search out your birth?
Ion. I have nothing to go on, lady. No proof at all.
Creusa. Ah. Another woman has suffered what your mother did.
Ion. Who? If she would share the work with me, I would be glad.
Creusa. She is the reason I came here ahead of my husband.
Ion. What does she want? Tell me, lady, and I will help.
Creusa. She wants to learn a secret answer from Apollo.
Ion. Tell me, then. I will see to the rest, as your host here.
Creusa. Then listen to the story. But I am ashamed.
Ion. Then you will get nothing done. Shame is a lazy goddess.
Creusa. A friend of mine says she went to bed with Apollo.
Ion. Apollo, with a mortal woman? Do not say that, stranger.
Creusa. And she had a child by the god, without her father knowing.
Ion. Impossible. Some man wronged her, and she is ashamed of it.
Creusa. She says not. And she has suffered terribly.
Ion. Suffered how, if a god took her to bed?
Creusa. The child she bore, she put out of the house.
Ion. And the child who was put out, where is he? Is he looking at the light?
Creusa. Nobody knows. That is exactly what I am here to ask the oracle.
Ion. And if he is not alive, how did he die?
Creusa. She supposes that wild animals killed him, poor thing.
Ion. What proof did she use to decide that?
Creusa. She went to the place where she left him, and he was not there any more.
Ion. Was there any drop of blood on the path?
Creusa. She says not. And she went over the ground many times.
Ion. How long is it since the boy was done away with?
Creusa. If he were alive, he would be just your age.
Ion. The god has wronged her. And the mother, poor woman.
Creusa. And she never had another child after that.
Ion. But what if Apollo took him and is raising him in secret?
Creusa. Then he is doing wrong, enjoying alone what should be shared.
Ion. Oh. Her luck sings the same tune as my own trouble.
Creusa. And you too, stranger, I think: somewhere a poor mother misses you.
Ion. No. Do not lead me back to a grief I had forgotten.
Creusa. I am quiet. Finish what I am asking you about.
Ion. Do you know where your story limps worst?
Creusa. What is there in that poor woman's case that is not sick?
Ion. How is the god going to prophesy the very thing he wants hidden?
Creusa. He will, if he sits on a tripod that belongs to all Greece.
Ion. He is ashamed of the business. Do not put him on trial.
Creusa. And the woman it happened to is in pain at her luck.
Ion. There is nobody who will prophesy this for you. If Apollo were shown up as a villain in his own house, he would be right to do some harm to the man who gave you the answer. Go away, lady. We must not ask the oracle for things the god does not want. Think how far we would have gone in stupidity, if we worked the gods over against their will to tell us what they do not want to tell, whether by slaughtering sheep in front of the altars or by the flight of birds. The good things we chase by force, when the gods do not want it, we hold against their will, lady. What they give us willingly, that does us good.
Chorus. Many are the things that happen to the many kinds of mortals, and the shapes of them are all different. But one piece of good luck in a human life: you would hardly find that anywhere.
Creusa. Apollo, there and here you are unjust to the woman who is not here, whose words are. You did not save your son, when you were bound to save him, and you are a prophet, and you will not tell his mother when she asks, so that if he is no longer alive he could be given a mound of a grave, and if he is alive —
But I have to let this be, if the god blocks me from learning what I want to know. Stranger. I can see my husband, the noble Xuthus, close by, coming from the chambers of Trophonius. Say nothing to him about what has been said. I do not want the shame of being caught running secret errands, or the story going off in some direction other than the one we have been unwinding it in. Things go hard for women with men. The good ones are mixed in with the bad, and we are hated for it. That is the luck we were born to.
(Xuthus comes in.)
Xuthus. First, the god: let him have the first fruits of my greeting, and good day to him. And to you, wife. Did I take so long that I frightened you?
Creusa. Not at all. But you have come at an anxious moment. Tell me, what oracle do you bring from Trophonius? How are we two going to mix our seed and make children?
Xuthus. He did not think it right to get ahead of the god's prophecies. But he did say one thing: that I will not go home from the oracle childless, and neither will you.
Creusa. Lady Leto, mother of Apollo, let us come to a good end, and let the dealings we had with your son before change to something better.
Xuthus. It will be so. But who speaks for the god here?
Ion. I do, stranger, for the outside. Inside is other men's business, the ones who sit close to the tripod, the best men of Delphi, the ones the lot chose.
Xuthus. Good. Then I have everything I needed. I will go in. I am told a victim has been slaughtered in front of the temple, on behalf of all the visitors together, and I want to take the god's oracle today, because it is a lucky day. You, wife, take laurel branches and go round the altars, and pray to the gods that I bring an answer out of Apollo's house that promises children.
Creusa. It will be so. It will. And if Apollo is willing now, at last, to make up for his old wrongs, he could never be a complete friend to us. But whatever he is willing to give, he is a god, and I will take it.
(Xuthus goes into the temple. Creusa goes off to pray at the altars.)
Ion. Why does this foreign woman keep dropping hints against the god, in secret words, abusing him? Is it out of love for the woman she is consulting the oracle for? Or is she keeping quiet about something that had better be kept quiet? But what is the daughter of Erechtheus to me? Nothing. She is nothing to do with me. I will go and fill the basins for the sprinkling, with water from the golden jugs.
But I have a word to say to Apollo. What is the matter with him? He rapes girls and then abandons them? He fathers children in secret and lets them die, and does not care? Not you. No. You have the power, so go after goodness. Any mortal who turns out bad, the gods punish him. So how can it be just that you, who write the laws for mortals, should stand guilty of breaking the law yourselves? And if — it will never happen, but I will follow the argument — you paid mortals the penalty for rape, you and Poseidon and Zeus who rules the sky, you would empty your temples paying the fines for your injustice. You chase pleasure before you think, and that is wrong. It is no longer fair to call human beings bad, when we are only copying the fine things the gods do. Blame the ones who teach us.
(Ion goes.)
Chorus. You who were born without the pains of labour, with no goddess of childbirth to help, my Athena, I beg you, you whom the Titan Prometheus delivered from the very crown of the head of Zeus. Blessed Athena, Lady of Victory, come to the Pythian house. Fly from the golden chambers of Olympus down to these streets, where Apollo's hearth, at the navel of the earth, beside the tripod and the dancing round it, makes the prophecies come true. You, and Leto's daughter with you, two goddesses, two virgins, the holy sisters of Apollo. Girls, pray with me that the old house of Erechtheus hears at last, in clear oracles, that children are coming.
Chorus. Because there is a happiness beyond all others, a footing that does not shift, for mortals in whose fathers' halls the young lives of children shine, ripening like fruit, to take over the wealth from their fathers and pass it on to children of their own. A child is a defence in trouble, a joy when luck is good, and brings his father's country the saving strength of a spear. Give me, before wealth, before the bedchambers of kings, the loving work of raising good children. The childless life I loathe, and anyone who thinks well of it, I blame. Let me have what I need, and no more, and a life with good children in it.
Chorus. Seat of Pan, and rock that stands beside the caves, the hollows of the Long Rocks, where the three daughters of Aglaurus tread out their dances with their feet on the green ground in front of Pallas's temple, to the shifting cry of your pipes, when you, Pan, are piping in your sunless caves: there a girl who had a baby by Apollo, poor girl, put it out as a feast for the birds, a bloody meal for the beasts, the outrage of a bitter bed. Not at the loom, not in any story, have I heard it said that children born to mortals from the gods get any share of happiness.
(Ion comes back.)
Ion. Women in service, you who stand guard here at the steps of this house of incense and keep watch for your mistress: has Xuthus left the holy tripod and the oracle yet, or is he still inside, asking about his childlessness?
Chorus. He is inside, stranger. He has not crossed this threshold yet. But he must be at the door. We can hear the doors knocking, and now you can see the master coming out.
(Xuthus comes out of the temple and goes straight to Ion.)
Xuthus. My child. Good day to you. That is the right way for me to begin.
Ion. Good day to you too. Keep your head, and we will both do fine.
Xuthus. Give me your hand to kiss, and your body to put my arms round.
Ion. Are you in your right mind? Or has some god struck you and driven you mad, stranger?
Xuthus. I am in my right mind. I have found what I love most, and I am not going to run from it.
Ion. Stop. Do not touch the god's garlands. You will tear them with your hand.
Xuthus. I will touch. I am not stealing. I am finding what is mine, and I love it.
Ion. Get away from me, before you get an arrow in the lungs.
Xuthus. Why are you running from me? When you have found what is dearest to you —
Ion. I do not enjoy teaching manners to boorish strangers who have gone mad.
Xuthus. Kill me, then, and burn me. If you kill me, you will be your father's murderer.
Ion. Where is my father? You? Is that not a joke, to make me laugh?
Xuthus. No. If the story runs on, it will show you what I mean.
Ion. And what are you going to tell me?
Xuthus. I am your father, and you are my child.
Ion. Who says so?
Xuthus. Apollo, who raised you, when you were mine.
Ion. You are your own witness, then.
Xuthus. I have learned the god's oracle, yes.
Ion. You heard a riddle and got it wrong.
Xuthus. Then I am not hearing straight.
Ion. And what did Apollo say?
Xuthus. That the man who met me —
Ion. Met you how?
Xuthus. — as I came out of this house of the god —
Ion. What was going to happen to him?
Xuthus. — he was my son by birth.
Ion. Born yours, or a gift from somewhere else?
Xuthus. A gift. But born from me.
Ion. And I am the first person you set foot near?
Xuthus. Nobody else, child.
Ion. Where does this luck come from?
Xuthus. Two of us wondering at the same thing.
Ion. Ah. And what mother did you have me by?
Xuthus. I cannot tell you that, child.
Ion. Apollo did not say either?
Xuthus. I was so pleased with this that I did not ask that.
Ion. Then I was born from the earth, and she is my mother.
Xuthus. The ground does not bear children.
Ion. Then how could I be yours?
Xuthus. I do not know. I refer it to the god.
Ion. Come. Let us take hold of the question another way.
Xuthus. This way is better, child.
Ion. Did you ever go to a bed that was not your wife's?
Xuthus. In the foolishness of youth, yes.
Ion. Before you married the daughter of Erechtheus?
Xuthus. Never since, anyway.
Ion. So that is where you fathered me?
Xuthus. The time fits, at any rate.
Ion. And then how did I get here —
Xuthus. That I cannot work out at all.
Ion. — travelling such a long road?
Xuthus. That puzzles me just as much.
Ion. Did you ever come to the Pythian rock before?
Xuthus. Yes. For the torchlight festival of Dionysus.
Ion. Did you stay with one of the official hosts?
Xuthus. Yes. A man who, with some girls of Delphi —
Ion. Got you into the revels? Or what are you saying?
Xuthus. Into the Maenads of Dionysus, yes.
Ion. Were you sober, or in your wine?
Xuthus. In the pleasures of Dionysus.
Ion. That was it. That is where I was sown.
Xuthus. Fate found you out, child.
Ion. And how did I get to the temple?
Xuthus. Some girl's cast-off, perhaps.
Ion. So I have escaped being a slave's child.
Xuthus. Then take your father, my boy.
Ion. Well, it makes no sense to doubt the god.
Xuthus. Now you are thinking straight.
Ion. And what more could I want—
Xuthus. Now you are seeing what you ought to see.
Ion. —than to be the son of a son of Zeus?
Xuthus. Which is exactly what you are.
Ion. Then may I really touch the man who fathered me?
Xuthus. Yes. Trust the god.
Ion. Father. I greet you—
Xuthus. That is a word I am glad to hear.
Ion. —and this day—
Xuthus. —has made me a happy man.
Ion. Mother. My dear mother, when will I see your face as well? I long to look at you now more than ever, whoever you are. But perhaps you are dead, and there is nothing at all we can do.
Chorus. The good luck of the house is ours to share. All the same, I wish my mistress had been lucky in children too, and the house of Erechtheus with her.
Xuthus. My son, the god has brought his oracle out true as far as finding you goes. He has joined you to me, and you have found the thing you love most without ever knowing it before. And the thing you rushed at just now, quite rightly, is the thing I long for too: that you should find your mother, boy, and that I should find out what woman gave you to me. Give it time and perhaps we will find that out as well. But now leave the god's floor and your wandering life and come to Athens, of one mind with your father. Your father's sceptre is waiting for you there, and it is a fortunate one, and great wealth with it. You will not be sick with one of the two diseases, low birth and poverty, and called both names at once. You will be a nobleman, and rich. You are silent? Why do you keep your eyes fixed on the ground? You have gone off into your thoughts, and by swinging back like this from joy you are frightening your father.
Ion. Things do not look the same when they are far off and when you see them close up. I welcome what has happened. I have found a father in you. But listen, father, to what I am working out.
They say that the famous Athenians are born from their own soil, not a race brought in from somewhere else. So I will land among them carrying two diseases: a father who is an import, and myself a bastard. With that reproach on me, while I am still weak, I will be called a nobody, and a nobody's son. And if I push my way toward the front bench of the city and try to be somebody, the people with no power will hate me, because a man above you is galling. And the good men, the men who could be clever if they chose, but who keep quiet and do not rush into public business: among them I will be a laugh, and a fool, for not keeping my head down in a city full of fear. And as for the speakers, the men who use the city and make their careers in it, the higher I climb in rank the more they will guard against me with their votes. That is how it goes, father. The men who hold the cities and the offices are deadliest of all to anyone who competes with them.
Then there is the house. I come into another man's house as an outsider, and to a childless woman, who shared your troubles with you before, and who now has lost her share and will bear her fate alone and bitterly. How can she help hating me, and fairly, when I stand there at your elbow, and she, with no child, looks at the thing you love with bitter eyes? And then you must either betray me and look to your wife, or honour me and throw your whole house into confusion. How many killings, how many deadly poisons, women have found to destroy their husbands with. And besides, I pity your wife, father, growing old without a child. She comes from noble fathers, and she does not deserve to sicken with childlessness.
And kingship, which everybody praises for no reason: its face is sweet, but inside the house it is misery. Who is blessed, who is happy, who spins out his life afraid, glancing sideways? I would rather live as a happy commoner than as a tyrant, who takes pleasure in having bad men for friends and hates the good ones because he is afraid of being killed. You will tell me gold outweighs all that, and that being rich is pleasant. I do not like hearing noises in the night while I clutch my fortune in both hands, and I do not like the work of it either. Let me have a moderate amount, and no grief.
Now listen, father, to the good things I had here. First, leisure, the dearest thing a man can have, and not much of a crowd. No villain ever shoved me off the road, and that is the one unbearable thing, to give way and step aside for men worse than yourself. I was either at my prayers to the gods or in talk with people, and the people I served were happy people, not people in mourning. I was always seeing one set of strangers off as the next set arrived, so I was always welcome, a new face among new faces. And the thing people pray for even when they do not want it, to be honest: custom and my own nature together made me honest in the god's sight. When I add all that up, father, I think things are better here than there. Let me live here. The pleasure is the same either way: to enjoy great things, or to have small ones and like them.
Chorus. Well said, so long as the people I love find their happiness in what you say.
Xuthus. Stop this talk and learn how to be happy. I want to begin right here, my boy, where I found you: a shared table, a feast we sit down to together, and the birth-sacrifice for you that I never made before. For now I will bring you to my hearth as if you were a guest, and give you a good dinner, and take you to the land of Athens as a visitor, supposedly, and not as my own son. I do not want to hurt my wife with my own good luck while she has no child. In time, when the moment is right, I will bring her round to letting you hold my sceptre over the land. And I name you Ion, to fit what happened: you were the one coming toward me, the first to meet my step, as I came out of the god's shrine. Now gather the whole company of your friends, and over the pleasure of a roasted ox say your goodbyes, since you are about to leave the city of Delphi.
And you slave women, I am telling you: keep silent. Say one word of this to my wife and it is death.
Ion. I will go. But one piece of my luck is still missing. If I do not find the woman who bore me, father, my life is not worth living. And if I may pray for it, let the mother who bore me be a woman of Athens, so that I get the right to speak my mind from my mother's side. When a stranger lands in a city that keeps its blood pure, he may be a citizen in name, but his mouth is a slave's mouth, and he cannot speak freely.
(Xuthus and Ion go out together. The Chorus are left alone.)
Chorus. I see tears, and cries of mourning, and the first breaking-out of groans, when my queen learns that her husband has a fine son, and she herself is childless, left without children. What song was that you prophesied, prophetic son of Leto? Where did this boy come from, this foster-child raised around your temple? What woman's son is he? The oracle does not win me over. There may be a trick in it. I am afraid of what is coming, wherever it is going to land. A strange god is giving me strange things, and what he says still sounds fair, but the boy raised from another's blood is a trick and a stroke of luck together. Who will not agree with me?
Chorus. Friends, shall we say it plainly, straight into our mistress's ear? Her husband, in whom she had everything, whose hopes she shared, poor woman— and now she is wrecked by misfortune, and he is prospering, she is sliding into grey old age, and her husband has no honour for the people he owes. A wretch, who came into the house from outside, into great wealth, and did not hold to her fortune, who tricked my lady. Let him die. Let him die. And may the gods never accept from him the fair-flamed cake he burns on their fire. He will find out what I am, how much I was born a friend to my queen's royal house. Now they are near the feast already, father and son, the new man and the new.
Chorus. Io, ridges of Parnassus, you rock that holds the peak and the seat in the sky, where Bacchus lifts his two flaring pine-torches and leaps, light-footed, with the Bacchants who roam the night: may that boy never come to my city. Let him die and leave his young day behind him. Our city would have every reason to groan at a foreigner pushing in, the city that lord Erechtheus, our first ruler, gathered into one.
(Creusa comes in, leading the Old Man who was her father's servant slowly up the steep path.)
Creusa. Old man, you were tutor to my father Erechtheus once, when he was still in the light. Climb up to the god's oracle with me, so that you can share my joy, if lord Apollo has given any word about the birth of children. It is sweet to do well when your friends are with you, and if something bad turns up, which I pray it does not, it is sweet to look into the eyes of someone who wishes you well. You looked after my father once. I am your mistress, but all the same I look after you now, in his place.
Old Man. Daughter, you keep the ways your parents kept, and they were worthy of you and you of them. You have never shamed your ancestors, the children of this soil. Pull, pull me toward the temple, carry me up. The oracle is a steep place. Work with my old age. Be the doctor for my leg.
Creusa. Follow me, then. Watch where you put your feet.
Old Man. There. The foot is slow. The mind is quick.
Creusa. Lean on your stick. The path winds round.
Old Man. The stick is blind too, when I see so little.
Creusa. True. But do not give up because you are tired.
Old Man. Not willingly. But I am not master of what I no longer have.
Creusa. Women, faithful slaves of my loom and my shuttle, what fortune did my husband take away with him about the children we came here for? Tell me. If you bring me good news, you will not be throwing your favour to masters who forget it.
Chorus. Io. Our fate.
Old Man. That is not a lucky opening to a speech.
Chorus. Io. Poor lady.
Old Man. Is there something in the masters' oracles that hurts me too?
Chorus. Well then. What do we do? There is death hanging over this.
Creusa. What is this tune? And what is the fear about?
Chorus. Do we speak or keep silent? What are we going to do?
Creusa. Speak. You have some misfortune for me. I can see it.
Chorus. Then it will be said, even if I have to die twice for it. Mistress, you will never take a child in your arms, or hold one to your breast.
Creusa. Oh. Let me die.
Old Man. Daughter.
Creusa. Poor me, and my misfortune. I have taken it, I have suffered it, a pain no one could live with, friends. We are finished.
Old Man. Child.
Creusa. Aiai. Aiai. The pain has gone straight through me, deep inside my lungs.
Old Man. Do not groan yet—
Creusa. But the grief is here already.
Old Man. —until we learn—
Creusa. Learn what? What news is there for me?
Old Man. —whether the master is in the same case and shares the misfortune with you, or whether you are unlucky alone.
Chorus. To him, old man, Apollo has given a son. He is lucky on his own account, apart from her.
Creusa. This on top of that. The very peak of evil you have cried out, a pain for me to groan over.
Old Man. This boy you speak of: is he still to be born, from some woman, or did the god prophesy one already born?
Chorus. Already born, and fully grown, a young man. Apollo gives him to him. I was there.
Creusa. What are you saying? Unspeakable. Unspeakable. A word that should never be spoken, and you cry it at me.
Old Man. And at me. But how is the oracle being carried out? Tell me more clearly. And who is the boy?
Chorus. Whoever your husband met first as he came hurrying out from the god, that man the god gave him for a son.
Creusa. Ottotottotoi. Then it is a childless life, childless, that he has cried out for me? And I will live in a lonely house, with no one to come after me.
Old Man. Then who was the oracle about? Whose step did the poor woman's husband fall in with? How, and where, did he see him?
Chorus. Dear mistress, you know the young man who was sweeping this temple? He is the son.
Creusa. Let me fly up through the wet air, far from the land of Greece, out to the evening stars. Such pain, such pain I have suffered, friends.
Old Man. And what name does his father call him? Do you know, or is that still unsettled, and unsaid?
Chorus. Ion, because he was the first to meet his father coming out.
Old Man. And what mother is he—
Chorus. I cannot tell you. But so that you know everything I know, old man, her husband has gone off to the sacred tents, without telling her, to make the guest-offerings and the birth-offerings for the boy, and to sit down to a feast with his new son.
Old Man. Mistress, we are betrayed. I say we, because I am sick with the same sickness as you. Betrayed by your husband. It was planned. We are being outraged and thrown out of the house of Erechtheus. And I do not say this because I hate your husband. I say it because I love you more than him. He came into this city as a stranger, married you, took over your house and your whole inheritance, and now it turns out he has been secretly harvesting children from another woman. How secretly? I will tell you. When he saw you were childless, he was not content to be like you and carry an equal share of your fortune. He took a slave to his bed, married her in secret, and fathered the boy, and then he sent him out of the way and gave him to some Delphian to raise. And the boy was let loose in the god's house, so nobody would notice, and brought up there. Then when he heard the boy had grown to be a young man, he persuaded you to come here about your childlessness. So the god did not lie. He lied. He had been raising the boy all these years, and he wove his plots like this: if he was caught, he would put it all down to the god; if he got away with it, he would come home, and take his time about it, and wrap the kingship of the land round the boy. And the new name, shaped to fit after all this time: Ion, because supposedly he met him coming.
Chorus. Oh, how I have always hated wicked men, who put an injustice together and then dress it up with schemes. I would rather have a plain honest man for a friend than a bad one who was cleverer.
Old Man. And of all these evils you will suffer the last and worst: to bring into your house as its master a nobody with no mother and no name, some slave woman's child. The evil would have been a simple one if he had talked you round, pleading your childlessness, and settled a nobly born mother's son in the house. And if that was too bitter for you, he should have gone and asked for a marriage among the daughters of Aeolus. So now you must do something, and do it the way a woman does. Take a sword, or use some trick, or poison, and kill your husband and the boy before death comes to you from them. If you hold back from this, you will lose your life. When two enemies come under one roof, one of them has to go down, or the other. I am willing to work at this with you, and to share in killing the boy. I will go into the house where he is laying on his feast, and pay my masters back for my keep, and either die or live to look at the light. There is one thing, and one only, that brings shame on a slave, and that is the name. In everything else a slave is no worse than a free man, if he is a good one.
Chorus. And I too, dear mistress, want to share in this fortune with you, and either die or live with honour.
Creusa. My soul, how can I keep silent? But how can I bring that dark bed into the light and be left with no shame at all? What is there still standing in my way? Who is it I am competing with, to be the better woman? Has my husband not turned traitor to me? I am robbed of my house, robbed of children, and the hopes are gone, the hopes I wanted to settle well and could not, keeping silent about that coupling, silent about that birth, with all its tears. No. By the starry seat of Zeus, and by the goddess who stands on my cliffs, and by the holy shore of the Tritonian lake, I will hide that bed no longer. Once I have taken it off my chest I will breathe easier. My eyes are streaming with tears, my soul is in pain from the evil that was planned against me by men and by immortals both, and I will show them up for what they are, traitors to the bed, and ungrateful. You who sing to the voice of the seven-stringed lyre, who make the Muses' hymns ring sweet on horns from the fields, on dead horn, son of Leto, it is you I will accuse, out loud, here in this daylight. You came to me with your hair shining gold, when I was gathering saffron petals into the folds of my dress, flowers that flashed the gold back at the sun. You gripped my white wrists, you dragged me to a bed in the cave while I screamed "Mother! Mother!", you, a god, to lie with me, with no shame in you, doing Aphrodite a favour. And I bore you a son, poor wretch that I am, and in terror of my mother I threw him onto that bed of yours, where you had yoked me, miserable, in a miserable coupling. Oimoi. And now he is gone, snatched up as a feast for birds, my boy, and yours, poor thing. And you play your lyre, and sing your songs of healing. Ohe. You, son of Leto, I am calling you, you who deal out your voice from your golden throne, your seat at the centre of the earth: into your ear I will shout it. Io. You were a bad lover. You settle a son in my husband's house when he has done nothing to earn it, and my child, and yours, the poor ignorant thing, is gone, torn up by birds, stripped of the swaddling clothes his mother wrapped him in. Delos hates you now, and the young laurel beside the palm with its soft hair, where Leto bore you in her holy labour, the fruit of Zeus.
Chorus. Oh, what a great storehouse of evils has been opened. Anyone would weep at it.
Old Man. Daughter, I cannot get my fill of looking at your face, and my mind has gone out from under me. I had just bailed one wave of evils out of my thoughts, and another lifts me from astern, from your words. You have flung off the troubles in front of us and gone down some other evil road, into other griefs. What are you saying? What charge are you bringing against Apollo? What child do you say you bore? Where in the city did you lay him down, a tomb for wild beasts to enjoy? Go back over it for me.
Creusa. I am ashamed in front of you, old man. But I will say it all the same.
Old Man. I know how to grieve with the people I love, and grieve properly.
Creusa. Then listen. You know the cave on the north side of Cecrops's rock, the cliffs we call the Long Rocks?
Old Man. I know it. The shrine of Pan is there, and the altars near it.
Creusa. That is where I fought a terrible fight.
Old Man. What fight? My tears are coming out already to meet your words.
Creusa. Apollo forced me. I lay with him against my will.
Old Man. Daughter, was this the thing I noticed at the time?
Creusa. I do not know. If you are telling the truth, I would say yes.
Old Man. When you were groaning in secret over some hidden sickness?
Creusa. That was the time. That was the evil I am showing you plainly now.
Old Man. And then how did you hide what Apollo had done?
Creusa. I gave birth. Bear with me, old man, while you hear this.
Old Man. Where? Who delivered you? Or did you labour through it alone?
Creusa. Alone, in the cave where I was yoked to him.
Old Man. And the child? Where is he, so that you need not be childless any longer?
Creusa. He is dead, old man. I put him out for the wild beasts.
Old Man. Dead? And Apollo, the bad god, gave no help at all?
Creusa. None. My boy is being raised in the house of Hades.
Old Man. Who put him out, then? Surely not you.
Creusa. I did. In the dark, after I had wrapped him in my robes.
Old Man. And nobody at all knew you had left the baby out?
Creusa. Only my misfortune, and the darkness.
Old Man. How did you have the heart to leave your own child in that cave?
Creusa. How? I said a great many pitiful things over him with this mouth—
Old Man. Pheu. You had a hard heart, and the god's was harder than yours.
Creusa. If you had seen the baby stretching out his hands to me.
Old Man. Looking for the breast? Or to fall into your arms?
Creusa. For the place he never got to, where I did him such a wrong.
Old Man. And what put it into your head to throw your child away?
Creusa. I thought the god would save his own son.
Old Man. Oh, what a storm is battering the good fortune of your house.
Creusa. Why have you covered your head, old man? Why are you weeping?
Old Man. Because I see you and your father brought low.
Creusa. That is what it is to be mortal. Nothing stays in the same place.
Old Man. Then let us hold on to our grieving no longer, daughter.
Creusa. What am I supposed to do? To be unlucky is to have no way out.
Old Man. Pay back the god who wronged you first.
Creusa. And how am I, a mortal, going to outrun the powers above me?
Old Man. Set fire to Apollo's holy oracle.
Creusa. I am afraid. I have grief enough already.
Old Man. Then dare what you can. Kill your husband.
Creusa. I respect the bed we shared in the days when he was good.
Old Man. Then at least the boy who has appeared to take your place.
Creusa. How? If only it were possible. How I would love to.
Old Man. Arm your attendants with swords.
Creusa. I would go and do it. But where is it to happen?
Old Man. In the sacred tents, where he is feasting his friends.
Creusa. The murder would be seen by everyone, and slaves are weak.
Old Man. Oh, now you are losing your nerve. Come on then, you think of something.
Creusa. As it happens I do have something. It is a trick, and it works.
Old Man. Then I am your servant for both, the trick and the work.
Creusa. Then listen. You know the battle of the earth-born giants?
Old Man. I know it. At Phlegra, the Giants stood up against the gods.
Creusa. That is where Earth gave birth to the Gorgon, a terrible monster.
Old Man. To fight beside her own children, and make trouble for the gods?
Creusa. Yes. And the goddess Pallas, the daughter of Zeus, killed it.
Old Man. What shape did it have, this wild thing?
Creusa. A breastplate armoured with coils of vipers.
Old Man. Is this the story I heard long ago?
Creusa. That Athena wears its skin over her chest.
Old Man. The thing they call the aegis, Pallas's armour?
Creusa. That is the name it got the day she rushed into the gods' battle.
Old Man. But daughter, how does this hurt your enemies?
Creusa. You know Erichthonius, or— But of course you do, old man.
Old Man. The first of your ancestors, the one Earth sent up?
Creusa. When he was newborn, Pallas gave him—
Old Man. Gave him what? You are slow bringing this word out.
Creusa. Two drops of blood from the Gorgon.
Old Man. And what power do they have over a human body?
Creusa. One kills. The other cures diseases.
Old Man. What did she fasten them in, to hang them round the baby's body?
Creusa. Gold bands. And he gave the thing to my father.
Old Man. And when he died, it came to you?
Creusa. Yes. I wear it here, on my wrist.
Old Man. So how does the goddess's double gift work?
Creusa. The drop that ran from the hollow vein when she killed it—
Old Man. What is that one used for? What power does it carry?
Creusa. It keeps off disease, and it feeds life.
Old Man. And the second one you spoke of, what does that do?
Creusa. It kills. It is the venom of the Gorgon's snakes.
Old Man. And do you carry them mixed into one, or separate?
Creusa. Separate. Good does not mix with evil.
Old Man. My dearest child, you have everything you need.
Creusa. The boy will die by this. And you will be the one who kills him.
Old Man. Where, and how? Yours is to say it, mine is to dare it.
Creusa. In Athens, when he comes to my house.
Old Man. That is not well said. You found fault with my plan, and I find fault with yours.
Creusa. How? Do you suspect the same thing that is coming into my own mind?
Old Man. You will get the blame for the boy's death even if you do not kill him.
Creusa. True. They say stepmothers are jealous of their husbands' children.
Old Man. Then kill him here, where you can deny the murder.
Creusa. And I get the pleasure of it sooner, too.
Old Man. And you will keep your husband in the dark, in exactly the way he is trying to keep you.
Creusa. Then you know what to do? Take this from my hand, this gold thing of Athena's, the old work, and go to where my husband is secretly sacrificing his oxen. When they have finished dinner and are about to pour their libations to the gods, have this ready in the folds of your clothes, and drop it into the young man's cup. His alone, not everyone's. Keep a separate drink for the man who means to be master of my house. And once it is down his throat, he will never reach famous Athens. He will die here, and here he will stay.
Old Man. Now you go inside, to the house of our hosts. I will finish the work I have been set. Come on, old foot, be young in what you do, even if time will not allow you to be young in years. Go with your masters against their enemy, and help to kill him, and help to clear him out of the house. Piety is a fine thing to honour when you are prospering. But when a man wants to hurt his enemies, there is no law that stands in the way.
(Creusa goes into the house of her Delphian hosts. The Old Man goes off toward the feast.)
Chorus. Goddess of the crossroads, daughter of Demeter, who rule the attacks that walk by night and the attacks that walk by day, guide the filling of the death-cups to where my queen, my queen, is sending them: the drops from the cut throat of the Gorgon, earth's child, for the man who is laying hands on the house of Erechtheus's sons. Let no one from any other house ever rule my city except the nobly born sons of Erechtheus.
Chorus. And if the death miscarries, and my mistress's efforts, and the moment for daring passes, the moment where her hope showed itself just now, then either a sharpened sword, or a noose that fate will knot around her neck. She will finish one suffering with another and go down to another shape of life. Because she would never, while she lived, with her eyes open in the bright light, put up with strangers from another land ruling her house, she who was born of the noble houses.
Chorus. I am ashamed before the god of the many hymns, if this boy is to stand beside the fair-dancing springs and watch the torches on the twentieth night, sleepless, awake till morning, when the starry sky of Zeus takes up the dance too, and the moon dances, and the fifty daughters of Nereus, who dance across the sea and in the eddies of the ever-flowing rivers, in honour of Persephone with her crown of gold and her holy mother. That is where he hopes to be king, dropping onto other men's labour, Apollo's vagabond.
Chorus. Look at us, all you poets who go against us with your ugly music, singing of our beds, and our loves, Aphrodite's lawless, unholy loves. See how far we outdo in decency the unjust sowing that men do. Let the song turn round. Let the ugly music about beds go against men now. Because this man from the sons of Zeus shows how forgetful he is: he never fathered on his house a child his mistress could share, he paid his court to another love instead, and got himself a bastard son.
(A Servant of Creusa runs in.)
Servant. Noble women, where can I find my mistress, the daughter of Erechtheus? I have searched every corner of the town for her and I cannot lay hands on her.
Chorus. What is it, fellow slave? Why the hurry in your feet? What news are you carrying?
Servant. We are being hunted. The rulers of this land are looking for her, to put her to death by stoning.
Chorus. Oh. What are you going to tell us? Surely we have not been caught plotting the secret murder of the boy?
Servant. You have guessed it. And you will not be the last to share in the trouble.
Chorus. How were the hidden schemes seen?
Servant. The god found them out. Injustice lost to justice. He would not have his temple polluted.
Chorus. How? I beg you, I go down on my knees to you, tell us. If we have to die anyway, we would die more gladly knowing, or go on looking at the light.
Servant. When Creusa's husband left the god's oracle, he took his new son off to the dinner and the sacrifices he was preparing for the gods. Then Xuthus himself went up to where the god's Bacchic fire leaps, to wet the two rocks of Dionysus with blood, as a thank-offering for the sight of his son. He said, "You stay here, my boy, and have the builders put up the tents, walled in on every side. If I take a long time over the sacrifice to the gods of birth, let the friends who are here begin the feast without me." Then he took the calves and went.
The young man set about the enclosure of the tents, and he did it with ceremony: no walls, upright posts, and he watched the angle of the sun carefully, so that the tent faced neither the burning rays of midday nor the rays of the end of the day. He measured out a square a hundred feet on each side, ten thousand square feet inside it, as the experts put it, as though he were inviting the whole people of Delphi to the feast. Then he took sacred weavings from the treasuries and roofed it with them, and they were a wonder for men to look at.
First he spread over the roof a great wing of woven cloth, the gift of the son of Zeus, the spoils Heracles took from the Amazons and brought to the god. There were pictures woven into it, like this. Heaven, gathering the stars into the circle of the sky. The Sun driving his horses toward the last of the flame, drawing the bright light of the Evening Star behind him. Night in her black robe, driving her chariot with a single pair of horses and no outrunners, and the stars keeping the goddess company. The Pleiades going through the middle of the sky, and Orion with his sword, and above them the Bear, wheeling her golden tail round the pole. The full round moon that cuts the month in half, shooting her light upward, and the Hyades, the clearest sign a sailor has, and Dawn, the light-bringer, chasing the stars away.
On the walls he hung other weavings, barbarian work: ships with fine oars facing Greek ships, and men who were half beast, and huntsmen on horseback chasing deer, and hunts of wild lions. At the entrances, Cecrops, coiling in his serpent spirals, with his daughters beside him, the gift of some Athenian. And in the middle of the dining space he set up gold mixing-bowls.
A herald stood up on tiptoe and announced that any man of the country who wished could come to the feast. When the tent was full, they put on their garlands and filled themselves with good rich food. And when they had had their fill of the pleasure of it, the old man came forward and took his stand in the middle of the floor, and he gave the diners a great deal to laugh at with his busyness. He poured water for their hands from the pitchers, he burned the sweat of the myrrh tree for incense, he put himself in charge of the gold cups, all a job he had assigned to himself. And when they came to the flutes and the shared bowl, the old man said, "Away with these little wine-cups. Bring the big ones, so these gentlemen can get to the pleasures of the mind a little faster." Then there was hard work carrying round the cups of beaten silver and of gold. And he picked out one cup in particular, as though he were doing a favour to his new master, and handed it full, and into the wine he had dropped what they say the mistress gave him, a poison that does its work, so that the new son would leave the light. Nobody knew any of this.
The son that had just been revealed was holding his libation in his hands with the others when one of the household slaves let slip a word of bad omen. And the boy, raised in a temple among good seers, took it as a sign. He ordered a fresh bowl to be filled, and the first libation to the god he gave to the ground, and he told everyone else to pour theirs out. Silence fell. We filled the sacred bowls again with water and with wine from Byblos. And while we were at it, a winged revel of doves came tumbling into the tent, for in Apollo's house they live without fear. When the men had poured out their wine, the doves, thirsty, dipped their beaks into it and drew it up into their fine-feathered throats. For all the others the god's libation was harmless. But the one that settled where the new son had poured his, and tasted the drink: at once she shook her feathered body and went into a frenzy, and screamed out a cry that meant nothing, a wailing, and the whole crowd of diners stared in astonishment at the bird's agony. She died gasping, and her red claws went slack.
Then the son the oracle had given flung his arms bare out of his robes across the table and shouted, "Which of you men was going to kill me? Tell me, old man. The eagerness was all yours. It was from your hand I took the cup." And at once he grabbed the old arm and searched him, to catch the old man red-handed, with the thing on him. He was found out, and forced to it, and slowly, unwillingly, he confessed Creusa's daring and the trick of the cup. Straight away the young man Apollo's oracle had given ran out, taking the diners with him, and stood before the lords of Delphi and said, "Holy Earth, the daughter of Erechtheus, a woman from another country, is killing me with poison." And the lords of Delphi voted, not one vote against, that my mistress should die by being thrown from the rock, for trying to kill the god's own boy, and for planning a murder inside the sanctuary. Now the whole city is hunting her, the wretched woman who rushed so wretchedly down that road. She came to Apollo wanting children, and along with the children she has lost her own life.
Chorus. There is no way, no way out of death for me. Wretched woman that I am. It is plain now, all of it plain: the drink-offering from Dionysus, the grape mixed with the quick viper's drops of blood, for a killing, the offering to the dead brought out into the light. Disaster for my life, and death by stoning for my mistress. What flight on wings can I find, or what dark hollow under the earth to go down into, to escape the ruin of death by stones? Should I climb into a chariot behind the fastest team of four, or up onto the stern of a ship?
Chorus. There is no hiding, unless a god wants you hidden and steals you away. Poor mistress, what is left for your heart to suffer? And we who wanted to do our neighbour harm, will we be harmed ourselves, the way justice says we should?
Creusa. Women. They are hunting me down to cut my throat. The vote at Delphi has gone against me, and I am handed over to die.
Chorus. We know, poor lady. We know what has happened to you, and where you stand.
Creusa. Then where do I run? I barely got a foot out of the house ahead of them, before they could kill me. I have come this far by slipping past my enemies unseen.
Chorus. Where else but to the altar?
Creusa. And what good does that do me?
Chorus. It is forbidden to kill a suppliant.
Creusa. And it is by the law that I am dying.
Chorus. Only if they take you by force.
Creusa. Well, here they come, the bitter champions of the case, hurrying this way with their swords out.
Chorus. Sit down on the altar, now. If you die there, you fix the guilt of your blood on the men who kill you, and it will hunt them. Whatever comes, you have to bear it.
(Creusa sits down on the altar in front of the temple. Ion comes in with armed men of Delphi.)
Ion. Cephisus, old bull-faced river, this woman's grandfather. What a viper you bred here. What a snake, with fire in it, looking up with murder in its flame. There is no daring she does not have. She is every bit as deadly as the Gorgon's blood she meant to kill me with. Take hold of her. Let the ledges of Parnassus comb out that untouched hair of hers, when she is flung off them and goes bouncing down the rock. I have had good luck, meeting you before I ever got to Athens and fell into a stepmother's hands. I took the measure of your mind here, among friends: how much harm you wished me, how much you hated me. If you had got me inside your walls, you would have shipped me off to the house of Hades whole, with nothing left over. But no altar is going to save you, and no house of Apollo. That pity you are asking for belongs to me, more than to you, and to my mother. She may not be here in body, but her name is never far from me. Look at her, all of you. Look at the schemer, and the trick she has woven out of the last trick. She is cowering at the god's altar so she will not have to pay for what she did.
Creusa. I forbid you to kill me. I say it for myself, and for the god whose altar I am standing at.
Ion. What do you and Apollo have in common?
Creusa. I give my body to the god. It is sacred now. It is his to keep.
Ion. And yet you were poisoning the god's own servant?
Creusa. You were not Apollo's any more. You were your father's.
Ion. But I was his, as good as born to him. That is what I really was, whatever I was called.
Creusa. You were, then. Now I am his, and you are not any more.
Ion. Not with clean hands, you are not. Mine were clean, then.
Creusa. I tried to kill you because you were the enemy of my house.
Ion. I never marched into your country with weapons.
Creusa. You certainly did. And you were setting fire to the house of Erechtheus.
Ion. With what torches? What kind of flame?
Creusa. You were going to live in what is mine, after taking it from me by force.
Ion. When my father was giving me land he had won for himself.
Creusa. And what share did the sons of Aeolus ever have in the land of Pallas Athena?
Ion. He saved it with weapons, not words.
Creusa. A hired ally does not get to settle in the country he was paid to defend.
Ion. So you tried to kill me out of fear of what I might do?
Creusa. So that I would not die myself, when you stopped meaning to and did it.
Ion. You are childless, and jealous, because my father found me.
Creusa. And you? Are you going to snatch the house out of a childless woman's hands?
Ion. Was there no share at all of my father's for me?
Creusa. Whatever his shield and his spear won. That is your whole inheritance.
Ion. Leave the altar. Leave the god's seat.
Creusa. Go and lecture your own mother, wherever she is.
Ion. And you will pay no penalty for trying to kill me?
Creusa. Only if you are willing to butcher me inside this sanctuary.
Ion. What pleasure is there for you in dying among the god's sacred wreaths?
Creusa. I will hurt somebody who has hurt me.
Ion. Ah. It is a terrible thing, how badly the god has made the laws for mortals, with no clever judgement behind them. Criminals should not be allowed to sit at an altar. They should be driven off. It is not right for a dirty hand to touch what belongs to the gods. The just, the people who have been wronged, should have the sacred seats. Not this, where the good man and the bad walk up to the same place and get the same treatment from the gods.
(The Priestess of Apollo comes out of the temple carrying an old wicker cradle.)
Priestess. Stop, my son. I have left the tripod where the oracles are given and stepped across this threshold. I am Apollo's Priestess, the keeper of the tripod's ancient custom, chosen out of all the women of Delphi.
Ion. Welcome, mother. My dear mother, though you never bore me.
Priestess. Well, that is what I am called, and I do not mind the name.
Ion. Did you hear how this woman schemed to kill me?
Priestess. I heard. And you are in the wrong as well, being so savage.
Ion. Should I not kill the people who try to kill me?
Priestess. Wives always hate the children of an earlier marriage.
Ion. And we hate our stepmothers, when they treat us badly.
Priestess. Do not. You are leaving the temple and going home to your own country, and so you should—
Ion. What should I do, then, if I am to be advised?
Priestess. Go to Athens with clean hands, under good omens.
Ion. Anyone who kills his enemies has clean hands.
Priestess. Not you. Take the words I have for you, and listen.
Ion. Say them. You mean me well. Whatever you say will come from that.
Priestess. Do you see this basket I am carrying in the crook of my arm?
Ion. I see an old cradle, with the sacred wool bands still tied round it.
Priestess. This is what I found you in, once, a new-born baby.
Ion. What? That is a new story you are bringing in.
Priestess. I kept it quiet. Now I am showing it.
Ion. Why did you hide it, all those years ago, when you took me in?
Priestess. The god wanted to keep you as his servant in his house.
Ion. And now he does not? How am I supposed to know that?
Priestess. He has told you who your father is. He is sending you out of this country.
Ion. Did he order you to keep this, or how do you come to have it?
Priestess. Apollo put it into my mind, that day—
Ion. To do what? Say it. Finish what you are saying.
Priestess. To keep what I had found, until the time that is here now.
Ion. And what does it hold for me? Gain, or harm?
Priestess. Hidden in here are the baby-clothes you were wrapped in.
Ion. You are bringing me clues to find my mother?
Priestess. Yes, because now the god wants it. Before, he did not.
Ion. This is a day of blessed things to see.
Priestess. Take them, then, and work hard at finding the woman who bore you.
Ion. I will search all of Asia, and to the borders of Europe.
Priestess. You will find that out for yourself. I brought you up for the god's sake, my child, and for his sake I am giving these back to you. He wanted me to take them and keep them safe, without ever telling me to; why he wanted it, I cannot say. No living person knew that we had them, or where they were hidden. Goodbye. I kiss you as your own mother would. Start your search for her where you have to start: first, was it some girl of Delphi who bore you and left you in this temple; and after that, was it any Greek girl at all. That is everything you will get from me, and from Apollo, who has had a share in your fortune.
(The Priestess goes back into the temple, leaving the cradle with Ion.)
Ion. Ah. Ah. The tears are running down my face. My mind has gone back to the day when the woman who bore me, married in secret, sold me off in secret and never gave me her breast. I had no name. I lived a servant's life in the god's house. What came from the god was good; what came from my luck was heavy. The time when I should have been spoilt in a mother's arms, tasting some pleasure in life, I was robbed of the dearest thing there is, a mother's care. And she is wretched too, the woman who bore me. She has suffered the same thing: she lost the joy of a son.
Now I will take this cradle and carry it to the god as an offering, so that I do not find anything in it I do not want to find. If it turns out some slave woman bore me, finding my mother would be worse than leaving her alone in silence. Apollo, I dedicate this to your temple. And yet, what am I doing? I am fighting the god's own wish. He kept my mother's tokens for me. It has to be opened. I have to have the nerve. Whatever is fated, I could never step past it. Sacred bands, what have you been hiding from me? And you, fastenings, that guarded what was mine and dear to me? Look at the lid on this rounded cradle. By some miracle it has not aged. There is no mould on the wickerwork, and yet a long time has gone by over these treasures.
Creusa. What am I seeing? A vision I never hoped for.
Ion. You be quiet. You have known plenty before this that—
Creusa. Silence is not for me. Do not tell me what to do. I can see the basket I once left you in, my child, when you were a baby still, no bigger than that, in the cave of Cecrops under the Long Rocks. I am leaving this altar, even if I have to die for it.
(Creusa comes down from the altar and runs to the cradle.)
Ion. Take hold of her. The god has driven her mad. She has leapt off the altar and left the carved images. Tie her arms.
Creusa. Go on and cut my throat, do not stop. I am going to hold on to this cradle, and to you, and to the things hidden in it that are yours.
Ion. Is this not monstrous? I am being seized and claimed with a story.
Creusa. No. You are being found. Found by the people who love you, as one of their own.
Ion. I am one of yours? And you were trying to murder me behind my back?
Creusa. You are my son, if a son is what parents hold dearest.
Ion. Stop weaving. I will catch you out, properly.
Creusa. Let me come to that. That is the mark I am shooting at, child.
Ion. Is this basket empty, or does it have something in it?
Creusa. Your clothes. The ones I left you in, once.
Ion. And you will name them before you see them?
Creusa. If I cannot describe them, I agree to die.
Ion. Speak. There is something frightening about your nerve.
Creusa. Look. A piece of weaving I made when I was a child—
Ion. What kind? Girls weave plenty of things.
Creusa. Not finished. A first lesson at the shuttle, more like.
Ion. What pattern? You will not catch me that way.
Creusa. A Gorgon, in the middle of the threads of the cloth.
Ion. Zeus. What fate is hunting me down?
Creusa. And the edge is fringed with snakes, like an aegis.
Ion. Look. There it is. The weaving. It is like finding an oracle come true.
Creusa. Oh, the work of my girlhood at the loom, after all this time.
Ion. Is there anything besides this, or does your luck stop at one?
Creusa. Snakes. An old thing, made of solid gold: Athena's gift. She tells us to bring our children up wearing them, copies of the snakes she set to guard Erichthonius, long ago.
Ion. To do what with? What are they for, the golden things? Tell me.
Creusa. Necklaces, for a new-born child to wear, my son.
Ion. Here they are, inside. The third thing. I want to know the third.
Creusa. I put a wreath of olive round you then, from the tree Athena first brought to her rock. If it is there, it has never lost its green. It is flourishing still, because it came from an olive that nothing can touch.
Ion. Mother. My dearest mother. I am so glad to see you, and I am kissing your face, and your face is glad too.
Creusa. My child. My light, brighter to your mother than the sun — the god will forgive me for that — I have you in my arms, found when I had stopped hoping, when I thought you were living under the ground with the dead and with Persephone.
Ion. But here I am, dear mother, in your arms, the one who died and did not die.
Creusa. Io, io. Wide bright folds of the sky, what voice can I find, what cry can I shout? Where did it come from, this pleasure I never looked for? Where did we get this joy?
Ion. Anything could have happened to me, mother, sooner than this: that I turn out to be yours.
Creusa. I am still trembling with fear.
Ion. That you are holding me and do not have me?
Creusa. I had thrown my hopes far away from me. Io, woman, where, where did you take my baby up into your arms? Whose hand carried him into the house of Apollo?
Ion. A god did this. But for the rest of our luck, let us be as fortunate as we were unfortunate before.
Creusa. Child, you were born in tears, and taken from your mother's arms with wailing, and now I breathe against your cheek and I have found the most blessed happiness there is.
Ion. When you say what you feel, you say it for both of us.
Creusa. I am not childless any more. No more without a son. The house has its hearth again, the land has its kings, Erechtheus is young again, and the house that was born from the earth no longer looks at night: it looks up at the sun's torches.
Ion. Mother, my father is here too. Let him share this happiness I have given the two of you.
Creusa. My child, what are you saying? How I am found out, how I am found out.
Ion. What do you mean?
Creusa. You come from somewhere else. Somewhere else.
Ion. Oh. Did you bear me as a girl, a bastard?
Creusa. No torches, no dancing, no wedding song of mine, child, when your head came into the world.
Ion. Aiai. My birth is shameful. Mother, where am I from?
Creusa. Let the Gorgon-killer be my witness—
Ion. What are you saying?
Creusa. She who sits on my rocks, on the hill where the olive grows, Athena, on her throne there—
Ion. You are speaking in riddles to me, not plainly.
Creusa. Beside the rock where the nightingales sing, with Apollo—
Ion. Why do you name Apollo?
Creusa. I lay in a bed he kept secret.
Ion. Go on. You are about to tell me something good, something lucky for me.
Creusa. And when the tenth month came round, I bore you, a hidden labour, to Apollo.
Ion. The dearest thing I have ever heard, if it is true.
Creusa. And as your baby-clothes I wrapped round you this, my girl's work, done in secret from my mother, the wanderings of my shuttle. I gave you no milk, no breast, none of a mother's nursing, no water from my hands to wash you. In an empty cave you were thrown out to be killed by the beaks of birds, a feast for them, thrown out to Hades.
Ion. Mother, what a terrible thing you had the heart to do.
Creusa. I was bound fast in fear, child, and I threw your life away. I killed you, and I did not want to.
Ion. And I nearly killed you. That would have been unholy.
Creusa. Io. Terrible, our fortunes then, and terrible these now. We are spun round from there to here, from bad luck into good luck again, and the winds are shifting. Let them hold. What went before was evil enough. Now let a fair wind rise out of the evil, my boy.
Chorus. Let no one, ever, think anything is past hoping for, when they look at what is happening now.
Ion. Fortune. You have already changed thousands of lives, into misery and then back into doing well. Look at the line my life came to: killing my mother, and suffering what I never deserved. Ah. Is this the kind of thing you can learn every day, inside the bright circle of the sun? Mother, I have found you, and finding you is dear to me, and as far as I am concerned there is nothing to complain of in my birth. But the rest I want to say to you alone. Come here. I want to say it in your ear and throw a cover of darkness over the whole business. Be careful, mother. Did you slip, the way girls do, into a secret affair, and then pin the blame on the god? Are you saying you bore me to Apollo to escape the shame of my birth, when it was not a god who fathered me?
Creusa. No. By Athena, Victory, who once stood shield to shield with Zeus in his chariot against the giants born from the earth: no mortal man is your father, my son. The one who brought you up is. Lord Apollo.
Ion. Then how could he give his own child to another father, and say I was Xuthus's son by birth?
Creusa. He did not say born. He is giving you, his own son, as a gift. A friend might give his own son to a friend, to be master of his house.
Ion. Whether the god speaks the truth or gives empty oracles, that is what is troubling my mind, mother, and it is a fair thing to be troubled by.
Creusa. Then listen to what has just come to me, child. Apollo is doing you a kindness. He is settling you in a noble house. If you had been called the god's son, you would never have had a house and a whole inheritance, or a father's name. How could you, when I was hiding the marriage myself, and killing you in secret? He is helping you, by handing you over to another father.
Ion. I am not going to chase this so lightly. I will go into the temple and ask Apollo himself whether I am a mortal man's son or his. Ah. Who is that, above the house where the incense burns, showing a face like the sun, a god's face? Run, mother. We should not be looking at the gods' business. Unless it is right that we see it.
(Athena appears above the temple.)
Athena. Do not run. I am not an enemy you are running from. I am well disposed to you in Athens and here alike. I am Pallas Athena, and your country is named after me. I have come at a run, sent by Apollo. He did not think it right to come into your sight himself, in case blame for what happened before came up between you. So he sends me to give you his words. This woman bore you, and Apollo is your father. He gives you to the man he gave you to, who did not beget you, so that you can be counted as belonging to a house of the noblest blood. When the business was uncovered and reported, he was afraid you would die by your mother's plotting and she by your hand, and he saved you both by his devices. The lord meant to keep all this silent and make it known in Athens: that she is your mother, and you were born of her and of Apollo, your father. But to finish the matter, and the god's oracles, which are why I yoked my chariot, listen, both of you.
Creusa, take this boy and go to the land of Cecrops, and set him on the royal throne. He is of Erechtheus's line, and he has the right to rule my country, and he will be famous through all Greece. His sons, four of them from one root, will give their names to the land and to the tribes of the people who live on my rock. Geleon will be the first. Then the second, the Hopletes, and the Argades, and the Aegicores, whose tribe takes its name from my aegis. And their children in turn, when the fated time comes, will settle the island cities of the Cyclades and the coasts of the mainland, which gives my country strength. They will settle the plains on either side of the strait, on the two continents, Asia and Europe, and for this boy's name's sake they will be called Ionians, and they will be famous. To you and Xuthus together a family is coming too: Dorus, from whom the Dorian city will be sung of through the land of Pelops; and the second, Achaeus, who will be king of the coast near Rhium, and a people will be marked out to carry his name. Apollo has done everything well. First, he brought you through childbirth without sickness, so that the people around you never knew. Then, when you had borne this child and put him out in his baby-clothes, he ordered Hermes to snatch the baby up in his arms and ferry him here, and he brought him up, and did not let him breathe out his life. So now, keep silent about this boy being yours, so that Xuthus can enjoy his belief in peace, and you, lady, can go home with your blessings in your hands. And goodbye to you both. After this breathing-space from your troubles, I announce a happy fate for you.
Ion. Pallas Athena, daughter of Zeus the greatest, we accept your words without disbelief. I am convinced that I am Apollo's son, and hers. And even before, that was not hard to believe.
Creusa. Now hear from me. I praise Apollo, who I never praised before, because the child he neglected once, he is giving back to me. These gates look beautiful to me now, and the god's oracle too, when they were hateful before. Now I even hang gladly from the knockers on the doors, and I greet the gates.
Athena. I approve of your change, and of your speaking well of the god. What the gods do is always slow, somehow. But in the end it is not weak.
Creusa. My child, let us go home.
Athena. Go. I will follow you.
Creusa. A guide who is worthy of us.
Athena. And one who loves your city.
Creusa. Go and sit on the ancient throne.
Ion. It is a possession worth having.
Chorus. Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto, goodbye. Whoever's house is being driven hard by disaster should honour the gods and keep his courage. In the end the good get what they deserve, and the bad, being what they are, never do well.
(Egypt, on the island of Pharos, in front of the royal palace. The tomb of Proteus stands before the doors. Helen is sitting on it.)
Helen. This is the Nile, the river of the lovely nymphs. There is no rain from heaven here; when the white snow melts, it is the Nile that waters the plain of Egypt and its fields. Proteus, while he lived, was king of this land; he lived on the island of Pharos and was lord of Egypt, and he married one of the girls of the sea, Psamathe, after she had left the bed of Aeacus. She bore him two children in this house: a son, Theoclymenus, so called because he honoured the gods all his life, and a noble daughter, her mother's pride, who was called Eido when she was a baby. When she grew up and reached the age for marriage, they called her Theonoe, because she knew everything the gods know, everything that is and everything that is to come. That was an honour handed down to her from her ancestor Nereus.
As for me, my own country is not a nameless one: it is Sparta, and my father is Tyndareus. Though there is a story that Zeus flew to my mother Leda in the shape of a swan, pretending to run from an eagle, and got into her bed by that trick. If the story is true. My name is Helen. And what I have suffered, I will tell you.
Three goddesses came to a hollow on Mount Ida, to Paris, over the question of beauty: Hera, and Aphrodite, and the virgin daughter of Zeus. They wanted a judgement on their looks, and they wanted it settled. Aphrodite held out my beauty as the prize, if a thing that brings such misery can be called beauty: Paris was to have me for his wife. And she won. So Paris of Ida left his cattle stalls and came to Sparta, to take me to bed. But Hera was angry at losing to the other two, and she turned my marriage to Paris into a puff of wind. She gave the son of King Priam not me, but a breathing image, put together out of the sky and made to look like me. He thinks he has me. It is an empty thought. He has nothing.
And on top of these troubles Zeus had plans of his own. He brought a war on the land of the Greeks and on the poor Phrygians, to lighten mother earth of the swarming mass of mortals on her, and to make the strongest man in Greece famous. So I was set up as the prize the Greeks fought for, to test the courage of the Phrygians. Not me. My name. Hermes took me up into the folds of the air and wrapped me in a cloud, because Zeus had not forgotten me, and set me down here in the house of Proteus, whom he had picked out of all mankind as the most self-controlled man alive, so that I could keep my bed untouched for Menelaus. So here I am. And my poor husband gathered an army and went off to the towers of Troy, hunting for the wife who had been snatched from him. Many lives have been lost because of me on the banks of the Scamander. And I, who have endured all of it, am cursed. Everyone thinks I betrayed my husband and started a great war for the Greeks.
Then why am I still alive? Because I heard the god Hermes say that I would live again on the famous plain of Sparta, with my husband, since he knew I never went to Troy, and that I would never lie in another man's bed. Well, as long as Proteus was alive and saw this sunlight, I was safe from marriage. But now he is hidden in the dark of the earth, and the dead man's son is hunting me for his wife. So, for the sake of the husband I married long ago, I have thrown myself down here at Proteus's tomb as a suppliant, so that it will keep my bed safe for my husband. If I carry a filthy name all over Greece, at least my body will not bring me disgrace here.
(Teucer comes in, a bow in his hand. He stares at the palace, then sees Helen.)
Teucer. Who holds the power in this fortress of a house? You could set it beside the house of Wealth himself: the royal walls, the fine cornices on the buildings. Ah. Oh gods, what am I looking at? I see the murderous likeness of the woman I hate most in the world, the woman who destroyed me and every Achaean with me. May the gods spit you out, for how much you look like Helen. If I were not standing on foreign soil, this well-aimed arrow would have killed you by now, as your reward for looking like the daughter of Zeus.
Helen. Poor man. Whoever you are, why turn away from me like that, and hate me for the disasters that woman caused?
Teucer. I was wrong. I gave in to anger more than I should have. All Greece hates the daughter of Zeus. Forgive me for what I said, lady.
Helen. Who are you? Where have you come from, to set foot in this country?
Teucer. One of the Achaeans, lady. One of the unlucky ones.
Helen. Then it is no wonder you hate Helen. But who are you, and where from? Whose son should I call you?
Teucer. My name is Teucer. The father who begot me is Telamon, and Salamis is the land that raised me.
Helen. Then why are you visiting these fields of the Nile?
Teucer. I am an exile. I have been driven out of my father's country.
Helen. That is hard on you. Who threw you out of your homeland?
Teucer. Telamon, my own father. Who could be closer to you than that?
Helen. But why? There is some disaster in this somewhere.
Teucer. My brother Ajax died at Troy, and that destroyed me.
Helen. How? You did not take his life with your own sword, surely?
Teucer. He threw himself on his own sword. That is what killed him.
Helen. Was he mad? Who in his right mind would have the nerve to do that?
Teucer. You know of a certain Achilles, the son of Peleus?
Helen. Yes. He came to Sparta once as a suitor for Helen, so we hear.
Teucer. When he died, he left his allies a quarrel over his armour.
Helen. And how did that turn into harm for Ajax?
Teucer. Somebody else got the armour, and he left his life.
Helen. So you are sick with his sufferings?
Teucer. Yes. Because I did not die along with him.
Helen. So you went to the famous city of Troy, stranger?
Teucer. I did, and I helped to sack it, and I was destroyed in return.
Helen. Has it been set on fire already, and burned to the ground?
Teucer. So that not a trace of the walls can be seen.
Helen. Poor Helen. Because of you the Phrygians are dead.
Teucer. And the Achaeans too. Great evils have been done.
Helen. How long is it since the city fell?
Teucer. Nearly seven years. Seven rounds of harvests.
Helen. And how long were you at Troy before that?
Teucer. Many moons. Ten years' worth of them.
Helen. And did you take the Spartan woman?
Teucer. Menelaus took her. He dragged her off by the hair.
Helen. Did you see the wretched woman yourself? Or is it something you heard?
Teucer. With my own eyes. As plainly as I see you now, no less.
Helen. Consider whether what you saw was an illusion sent by the gods.
Teucer. Talk about something else. Not that woman. Not any more.
Helen. You are that sure your illusion was solid?
Teucer. I saw it with my own eyes. And the mind has eyes too.
Helen. And Menelaus is home already, with his wife?
Teucer. No. He is not in Argos, and not by the streams of the Eurotas.
Helen. Aiai. That is bad news, for anyone it is bad news for.
Teucer. The story is that he vanished, and his wife with him.
Helen. Did all the Argives not sail home the same way?
Teucer. They did. But a storm scattered them, each one somewhere different.
Helen. On what stretch of the salt sea?
Teucer. Crossing the open Aegean, midway over.
Helen. And since then nobody has seen Menelaus come to land?
Teucer. Nobody. All over Greece they say he is dead.
Helen. I am finished. And the daughter of Thestius, is she alive?
Teucer. Leda, you mean? She is dead and gone.
Helen. It was not Helen's shameful name that killed her, surely?
Teucer. They say it was. She tied a noose round her noble neck.
Helen. And the sons of Tyndareus, are they alive or not?
Teucer. Dead, and not dead. There are two stories.
Helen. Which is the stronger? Oh, what a wretched heap of evils I have.
Teucer. They say the two of them have become gods, in the shape of stars.
Helen. That is good to hear. And the other story?
Teucer. That they cut their own throats because of their sister. But enough talk. I do not need to grieve twice over. As for why I came to this royal house: I want to see the prophetess Theonoe. Be my sponsor here and introduce me, so I can get an oracle from her about which way to steer my ship's sail on a fair wind to Cyprus, the island in the sea where Apollo has told me I am to live, and to give the place the island name of Salamis, in memory of the homeland I left behind.
Helen. The voyage will show you the way itself, stranger. But leave this country, get out, before the son of Proteus sees you. He rules this land. He is away just now, out with his hounds, killing wild animals and trusting them to do it. He kills every Greek stranger he catches. Why he does it, do not try to find out, and I will not say. What good would it do you?
Teucer. Well said, lady. May the gods pay you back with good things for your kindness. You have Helen's body, but you do not have her heart. Yours is a very different one. May she die badly, and never reach the streams of the Eurotas. And may you have good luck always, lady.
(Teucer goes.)
Helen. Oh. As I lay the foundations of a great lament for great griefs, what kind of cry shall I struggle to raise? What Muse shall I go to with tears, or dirges, or mourning? Aiai.
Helen. Winged girls, virgin daughters of the Earth, Sirens, come to my crying, and bring the Libyan flute, or the pipes, or the lyre, and tears to match my wailing griefs. Pain for pain, song for song, let Persephone send a choir of the dead to sing along with my mourning, so that under her dark roof she may have from me, along with my tears, a hymn of thanks for the dead who are gone.
Chorus. Beside the dark blue water, on the curling grass, I was spreading purple cloaks in the sun's golden rays to dry among the young reeds, and I heard my mistress cry out in misery from where she sat: a wail, a song with no lyre in it, a shriek of grief, as she groaned her cries of Aiai, the way a nymph, a Naiad, up in the mountains, running, throws out a wailing note, and under the hollows of the rocks screams that Pan has caught her and forced her.
Helen. Io, io. Girls of Greece, the catch of a barbarian oar, a sailor came, an Achaean sailor, he came, he came, bringing me tears on top of tears. Troy is torn down, and it belongs to the enemy's fire, because of me, the killer of so many, because of my name, the cause of so much pain. And Leda died in a noose, from the agony of my disgrace. And my husband, after all his wandering on the sea, is dead and gone, and Castor and his brother, the twin glory of their homeland, have vanished, vanished, and left the plains that rang under their horses, and the wrestling grounds along the reedy Eurotas, where the young men trained.
Chorus. Aiai, aiai. Lady, what a fate you were dealt, what a destiny of groans. A life that is no life fell to you, fell to you, when Zeus begot you on your mother, flashing through the sky on the snow-white wing of a swan. What evil have you been spared? What life have you not endured? Your mother is gone, the twin sons of Zeus, your dear brothers, have no happiness, you cannot see your own country, and through the cities runs a rumour that hands you over, my lady, to a barbarian's bed. Your husband has left his life in the sea and the waves, and never again will you make your father's halls glad, or Athena of the Bronze House.
Helen. Pheu, pheu. Who was it, a Phrygian or someone from the land of Greece, who cut the pine that brought tears to Troy? From it the son of Priam built his deadly boat, and rowed with barbarian oars to my hearth, after my beauty, the most unlucky beauty there ever was, to take me for his bride. And with him came the trickster, the killer of so many, Aphrodite, bringing death to the sons of Danaus and the sons of Priam. Oh, I am wretched in my misfortune. And Hera, holy Hera, whom Zeus holds in his arms on her golden throne, sent the swift-footed son of Maia, and he found me gathering fresh rose petals into the fold of my dress, on my way to Athena of the Bronze House, and snatched me up through the sky to this luckless land, and made me a quarrel, a wretched quarrel between Greece and the sons of Priam. And my name by the streams of the Simois carries a story that is a lie.
Chorus. You have pain, I know. But it is best to bear the things life forces on us as lightly as we can.
Helen. Dear friends, what a fate I am yoked to. Did my mother give birth to me as a freak, for people to stare at? No woman, Greek or barbarian, lays a white egg with chicks in it, and they say that is what Leda bore me in, to Zeus. My whole life, everything about me, is a freak, partly because of Hera, and partly because my beauty is to blame. If only I could be wiped out like a painting and drawn again, uglier this time, instead of beautiful, and the Greeks would forget the evil luck I have now and remember what is not evil in me, the way they now remember only the evil.
When someone fixes his eyes on a single misfortune and is ill-treated by the gods, it is heavy, but it can be borne. But I lie under a whole heap of troubles. First: I have done nothing wrong, and my name is filth. And that is worse than the truth would be, to be saddled with evils that are not your own. Second: the gods have taken me out of my own country and set me down among barbarian ways, and stripped of everyone I owe, I have become a slave, though I was born of free people, because among barbarians everyone is a slave except one man. And the one anchor that held my fortunes steady, the hope that my husband would come one day and free me from my troubles: he is dead. He does not exist any more. My mother is dead, and I am her murderer. Unjustly, but the injustice is mine to carry. The child who was born to be the glory of the house and of me, my daughter, is going grey as an unmarried virgin. And the two they call the Dioscuri, the sons of Zeus, are no more. With everything I have gone wrong, I am dead as far as my circumstances go, though not in fact. And this is the last and worst of it: if I ever did get home, they would bar the doors against me, thinking I was that Helen from Troy, coming home at Menelaus's side. If my husband were alive, we could have recognised each other by falling back on the tokens only the two of us know. But now that is gone, and he will never be saved.
Then why am I still alive? What fortune is left for me? Shall I choose marriage as a way out of my troubles, and live with a barbarian man, sitting at his rich table? But when a woman lives with a husband she hates, her own body becomes hateful to her too. Death is best. And how could I die well? Hanging, high in the air, is ugly; even slaves think it is beneath them. The knife has something noble and fine about it, and the moment when the flesh is set free from life is a short one. That is how deep into evil I have come. Other women are lucky because of their beauty. Mine is the very thing that has destroyed me.
Chorus. Helen, whoever that stranger was who came here, do not assume that everything he said was true.
Helen. And yet he said quite clearly that my husband is dead.
Chorus. A great many words can be said that turn out to be lies.
Helen. And the opposite of a lie is plain, and true.
Chorus. You are being carried towards the disaster, instead of the good.
Helen. Yes. Fear has wrapped its arms round me and is leading me straight to the thing I am afraid of.
Chorus. How much goodwill do you have in this house?
Helen. Everyone is my friend, except the one who is hunting me for his bed.
Chorus. Then do you know what you should do? Leave your seat on this tomb and
Helen. And what advice are you creeping towards?
Chorus. Go into the house and ask Theonoe, who knows everything, the daughter of the sea nymph, the child of Nereus's line, about your husband: whether he is still alive or has left the light of day. And when you know for certain, then rejoice or mourn, whichever fits your luck. Before you know anything for sure, what good does it do you to grieve? Listen to me. Leave this tomb and go and join the girl. You have someone in this house who can tell you the whole truth; why look any further? And I want to go in with you, and hear the girl's prophecies with you. Women should share each other's troubles.
Helen. Friends, I take your advice. Go in, go into the house, and inside these walls learn how my struggle ends.
Chorus. You are calling one who is more than willing.
Helen. Io. What a wretched day. What word, what tearful word am I going to hear, wretched as I am?
Chorus. Do not go prophesying pain, dear friend, and mourn before the time.
Helen. What has my poor husband suffered? Does he see the light, and the sun's four-horse chariot, and the paths of the stars, or down among the dead under the earth does he have his lasting fate?
Chorus. Put the best face on what is coming, whatever it turns out to be.
Helen. I call on you, I swear by you, Eurotas, green with your watery reeds: if this report is true that my husband is dead, and what was hard to understand in it? I will stretch a deadly noose round my neck, or drive a sword to the kill, a thrust through my throat gushing blood, iron forced into flesh, a race to the end, a sacrifice to the three goddesses and to the son of Priam who used to sit in the hollows of Ida beside his cattle stalls.
Chorus. May the evil be turned away somewhere else, and may your luck be good.
Helen. Io, poor Troy. For things that were never done, you are destroyed, and you have suffered pitiably. The gift Aphrodite gave me brought forth blood, so much blood, and so many tears. Grief on grief, tears on tears it took, and pain: mothers lost their sons, and girls cut off their hair for their dead brothers, by the swollen Phrygian water of the Scamander. And Greece cried out, cried out, and broke into wailing, and laid her hands on her head, and with her nails she drenched her soft cheeks in bloody blows. Oh, Callisto, girl of Arcadia, blessed once, who climbed into the bed of Zeus on four paws, how much better your lot was than my mother's: you took the shape of a shaggy-limbed beast, the form of a lioness with a fierce eye, and traded your load of grief for it. And the one Artemis once drove out of her dancing, the Titan girl, the daughter of Merops, as a deer with golden horns, because of her beauty: she was blessed too. But my body has destroyed, destroyed the towers of Dardanus's city and the Achaeans, who are gone.
(Helen and the Chorus go into the house. Menelaus comes in alone, in rags.)
Menelaus. Pelops, you who raced Oenomaus long ago in the four-horse chariot race at Pisa: if only, on the day they talked you into giving the gods a banquet, you had left your life then and there, among the gods, before you ever fathered my father Atreus, who begot Agamemnon and me, Menelaus, from his marriage to Aerope. A famous pair. I believe, and I say it without boasting, that I carried the largest army that ever crossed the sea by oar to Troy, and I was no tyrant driving troops by force; the young men of Greece came because they wanted to, and I led them. Some of them can be counted among the dead now. Others were glad to escape the sea, and brought home the names of the dead. But I have been wandering wretchedly over the swell of the grey salt sea ever since I sacked the towers of Troy, and though I long to reach my own country, the gods do not think I deserve to get there. I have sailed to every desolate, unfriendly landing place in Libya, and whenever I get near my homeland the wind shoves me back again, and never once has a fair breeze filled my sail and let me come home.
And now I am thrown up on this coast, a wretched shipwrecked man who has lost his friends. My ship is smashed against the rocks into more pieces of wreckage than I can count. Out of all its clever joinery only the keel was left, and on it I was saved, barely, by a luck I never hoped for. I, and Helen, whom I tore away from Troy and have with me. What this country is called and what people live here, I do not know. I was ashamed to be seen by a crowd and ask, so I hid these rags of mine, out of shame for my bad luck. When a man of high position does badly, the strangeness of it hits him harder than it hits a man who has been unlucky all along. Need is grinding me down. There is no food, and there are no clothes on my body; you can judge for yourself, what I have on is what the ship threw up. The fine robes and bright cloaks and luxuries I used to wear, the sea has snatched all of them. I have hidden the woman who started every one of my troubles deep in a cave, and I have made the friends I have left guard my wife, and I have come here alone, looking for what those friends of mine over there need, if I can find it by searching. When I saw this house with its cornice running round it, and the grand gates of some prosperous man, I came up to it. Sailors can hope to get something from a wealthy house. From people with no living of their own, they could not help us even if they wanted to.
Hey! Is there a doorkeeper who could come out of the house and take word of my troubles in to the people inside?
(An Old Woman opens the door and stands in it.)
Old Woman. Who is at the door? Get away from the house. Do not stand there at the courtyard gate making a nuisance of yourself to my masters. Or you will die, because you were born a Greek, and Greeks have no business here.
Menelaus. Old woman, you could say all of that in a different tone. I will do what you tell me. Just stop shouting.
Old Woman. Get away from here. That is my one job, stranger: no Greek comes near this house.
Menelaus. Ah. Keep your hands off me. Do not shove.
Old Woman. You will not listen to a word I say. That is your own fault.
Menelaus. Go inside and tell your masters that I am here.
Old Woman. And I would be the one to pay for it, I think, if I carried your message in.
Menelaus. I am a shipwrecked man, a stranger and a guest. People like me are not to be touched.
Old Woman. Then go and find some other house instead of this one.
Menelaus. No. I am going in. Do as I tell you.
Old Woman. You are being a nuisance, I warn you. And you will be thrown out any minute now, by force.
Menelaus. Aiai. Where are my famous armies now?
Old Woman. You were somebody over there, I suppose. You are nobody here.
Menelaus. Oh, my fortune. To be treated with this contempt, and deserve none of it.
Old Woman. Why are you wetting your eyes with tears? Who are you crying to?
Menelaus. To the way things used to be. To my old happiness.
Old Woman. Then go away and give your tears to your friends.
Menelaus. What country is this? Whose palace is this?
Old Woman. Proteus lives in this house. The country is Egypt.
Menelaus. Egypt? Oh, misery. Look where I have sailed to.
Old Woman. And what is wrong with the shining Nile, that you complain of it?
Menelaus. I was not complaining about the Nile. I am groaning at my own luck.
Old Woman. Plenty of people are doing badly. You are not the only one.
Menelaus. So is he in the house, this king you named?
Old Woman. This is his tomb. His son rules the country.
Menelaus. And where would the son be? Out, or in the house?
Old Woman. Not inside. And he is the worst enemy the Greeks have.
Menelaus. What has he got against them? I am the one who has paid for it.
Old Woman. Helen is in this house. The daughter of Zeus.
Menelaus. What did you say? What are you telling me? Say it again.
Old Woman. Tyndareus's daughter, the one who used to live in Sparta.
Menelaus. Where did she come from? What is the story?
Old Woman. She came here from the land of Lacedaemon.
Menelaus. When? I have not had my wife stolen out of the cave, have I?
Old Woman. Before the Achaeans went to Troy, stranger. Now get away from the house. Something is going on inside, a stroke of luck that has the whole house in an uproar. You have come at the worst possible moment. If my master catches you, death is the gift you will get as his guest. I am on the Greeks' side myself, whatever bitter things I said to you. That was fear of my master talking.
(The Old Woman goes back into the palace.)
Menelaus. What can I say? What can I make of this? After everything that went before, what I am hearing now is one more misery to add to the pile. I come here bringing my wife, the wife I took back from Troy, and she is safe in the cave, and some other woman with the same name as my wife is living in this house. The old woman said she was born a daughter of Zeus. Is there some man by the banks of the Nile with the name Zeus? There is only one in the sky. And where on earth is there a Sparta, except the one place, by the streams of the Eurotas with its lovely reeds? Tyndareus is a name one man has, and no other. What country shares a name with Lacedaemon, or with Troy? I do not know what to say.
But then, there are probably many people in the wide world who have the same names, one city with another and one woman with another. There is nothing to be amazed at. And I am not going to run away from a servant's frightening talk, either. No man alive is so barbarian in his heart that he would hear my name and refuse me a meal. The fire of Troy is famous, and so am I, the man who lit it: Menelaus, and not unknown in any country on earth. I will wait for the master of the house. He gives me two things to watch for. If he is a savage sort of man, I will keep myself out of sight and go back to the wreck. If he shows some softness, I will ask him for what my present trouble calls for.
This is the last and worst of the evils that have come on me in my misery, to go begging my living from other kings when I am a king myself. But it has to be. The saying is not mine, but it is a wise one: nothing is stronger than dreadful Necessity.
Chorus. I heard the girl who sings the god's answers, what she made plain to the royal house: that Menelaus is not yet gone down into the dark where light goes black, hidden in the earth. No. He is still out on the salt swell, worn to nothing, and has not yet touched the harbours of his own country. Wandering for his living, wretched, with no friend left of all his friends, setting his foot on every kind of shore, his oar in the sea, out of the land of Troy.
(Helen comes back from the palace towards the tomb.)
Helen. Here I am, back again to my seat at this tomb, and I have heard the words I wanted from Theonoe, who knows everything, and knows it truly. She says my husband is alive and in the light, and looking at the sun. She says he has sailed the straits of the sea ten thousand times over, driven this way and that, and that he is no beginner at wandering by now, and that he will come here, when his troubles find their end. One thing she did not say: whether, once he has come, he will get away alive. And I held back from asking her that outright. I was so glad when she told me he was safe. She said he was somewhere near this country, thrown up on the shore, shipwrecked, with a few friends. Oh, when will you come? How I have longed for you to come.
Ah. Who is this? I am not being ambushed, am I, by some scheme of Proteus's godless son? Shall I not run for the tomb like a racing filly, or a Bacchant of the god, and throw my legs at it? There is something wild about the look of this man who is hunting me down.
Menelaus. You there. The woman straining so desperately to reach the base of the tomb and the pillars where the offerings are burned. Stop. Why are you running? You have shown me your body, and the sight has knocked me senseless. I cannot speak.
Helen. Women, I am being wronged. This man is keeping me from the tomb. He wants to catch me and hand me over to the king, whose marriage I have been running from.
Menelaus. I am no thief, and I do not do bad men's dirty work.
Helen. And yet the clothes on your body are ugly enough.
Menelaus. Stop running. Let go of your fear and stand still.
Helen. I am standing still, now that I have my hand on this place.
Menelaus. Who are you? Whose face is this I am looking at, woman?
Helen. And who are you? The same question fits us both.
Menelaus. I have never seen a body so like hers.
Helen. Oh, gods. Recognising the people you love is a god too.
Menelaus. Are you a Greek woman, or from this country?
Helen. Greek. But I want to hear about you too.
Menelaus. You look more like Helen than anyone I have ever seen, woman.
Helen. And you like Menelaus. I do not know what to say.
Menelaus. You have recognised him right. The unluckiest man alive.
Helen. Oh, at last. At last you have come to your wife's arms.
Menelaus. Wife? What wife? Do not touch my clothes.
Helen. The wife Tyndareus, my father, gave you.
Menelaus. Hecate, torch-bearer, send me visions that mean me no harm.
Helen. You are not looking at a ghost of the night, one of the servants of the goddess of the crossroads.
Menelaus. One man cannot be the husband of two women. I am not.
Helen. And what other bed are you master of?
Menelaus. The woman the cave is hiding. The one I am bringing home from the Phrygians.
Helen. There is no other wife of yours. There is only me.
Menelaus. Am I in my right mind, and it is my eyes that are sick?
Helen. When you look at me, do you not think you are looking at your wife?
Menelaus. The body is the same. What I know for certain takes it away again.
Helen. Look. What more do you need? Who knows better than you do?
Menelaus. You are like her. That much I will not deny.
Helen. Then who is going to teach you, if not your own eyes?
Menelaus. That is where I am sick. I have another wife.
Helen. I never went to Troy. That was a phantom.
Menelaus. And who manufactures bodies that can see?
Helen. The air. That is where your wife came from. The gods laboured over her.
Menelaus. Which god shaped her? You are telling me things nobody could hope for.
Helen. Hera. A substitute, so that Paris would not get me.
Menelaus. Then how could you be here and in Troy at the same time?
Helen. A name can be in many places at once. A body cannot.
Menelaus. Let go of me. I came here with grief enough already.
Helen. You are going to leave me? And take away that empty bed?
Menelaus. Yes. And good luck to you, for looking so like Helen.
Helen. I am finished. I found my husband, and I will not have him.
Menelaus. The size of what I went through over there convinces me. You do not.
Helen. Oh, no. Was any woman ever more wretched than I am? The people I love most are leaving me, and I will never reach the Greeks, or my own country. Never.
(Menelaus's old sailor comes in, hurrying.)
Messenger. Menelaus. I have found you at last. I have been searching for you all over this barbarian country. The comrades you left behind sent me.
Menelaus. What is it? You are not being robbed by the barbarians?
Messenger. It is a marvel. And the word is smaller than the thing.
Menelaus. Tell me. Hurrying like that, you are bringing something new.
Messenger. I am telling you that you went through ten thousand labours for nothing.
Menelaus. You are mourning old troubles. What is your news?
Messenger. Your wife is gone. She was lifted up into the folds of the air and vanished. The sky is hiding her. She left the holy cave where we were guarding her, and this is all she said. "Poor Phrygians, and all you Achaeans. It was for me that you kept dying on the banks of the Scamander, by Hera's contriving, thinking Paris had Helen when he did not. And I, now that I have stayed as long as I was meant to stay and kept what fate required, am going away to the sky, to my father. And the poor daughter of Tyndareus has heard evil said of her name for nothing. She was not to blame at all."
(He turns and sees Helen standing there.)
Well. Greetings, daughter of Leda. You were here all the time, were you? I was just announcing that you had gone off to the hidden places of the stars, and I had no idea you were carrying a body with wings on it. I am not going to let you make fools of us like this a second time. You gave your husband and his allies trouble enough at Troy.
Menelaus. That is it. That is the answer. Her words fit together, and they are true. Oh, the day I longed for, that has given you to my arms to hold.
Helen. Menelaus, dearest of men, the time was long, but the joy is here now, at last. I have my husband back, friends, and I am glad, and I have wrapped my loving arms around him, after the long fire of so many days' light.
Menelaus. And I have you. And there is so much to say between us that I do not know where to begin.
Helen. I am so happy the hair stands up on my head and my tears run down. I have thrown my arms round your body, husband, to take my joy.
Menelaus. Dearest sight. I have no complaint. I have the daughter of Zeus and Leda, the girl her brothers on their white horses blessed, and blessed, under the torches, long ago. The god who took you out of my house is driving us on now to another fortune, better than this one. An evil that turned good has brought you together with me, your husband, after so long. Still, let me get some good of my luck.
Chorus. Good luck to you. I pray the same thing. When there are two of you, the one cannot suffer and the other not.
Helen. Friends, my friends, the old things: I do not groan for them any more. It does not hurt. I have my husband, I have him, the man I waited for, waited for, all those years, to come from Troy.
Menelaus. You have me, and I have you. Ten thousand suns I barely lived through, and now I understand what the goddess did. My tears are tears of joy. There is more gladness in them than grief.
Helen. What can I say? What mortal ever hoped for this? I hold you against my breast, and never thought I would.
Menelaus. And I hold you, the woman I thought had gone to the city under Ida and the wretched towers of Troy. By the gods, how were you taken out of my house?
Helen. E, e. That is a bitter beginning you are starting on. E, e. That is a bitter story you are asking for.
Menelaus. Tell it. Everything the gods give has to be heard.
Helen. I spit on the story I am about to tell. The very story.
Menelaus. Tell it anyway. It is sweet, hearing about hard times.
Helen. Not to the bed of a young barbarian, on flying oars, on the flying wings of a lust for a lawless marriage.
Menelaus. Then what god, or what fate, robbed you from your country?
Helen. The son of Zeus, of Zeus, my husband: Hermes. He brought me to the Nile.
Menelaus. Astonishing. And who sent him? What a dreadful story.
Helen. I have wept and wept, and my eyes are wet with tears now. The wife of Zeus destroyed me.
Menelaus. Hera? What did she want with heaping evil on the two of us?
Helen. Oh, my dreadful story. The baths and the springs where the goddesses made their beauty shine, and from there the judging came.
Menelaus. And the judging. Hera made it the cause of all this for you?
Helen. To take me away from Paris.
Menelaus. How? Tell me.
Helen. The man Aphrodite had promised me to.
Menelaus. Oh, poor woman.
Helen. Poor, poor. And so she brought me to Egypt.
Menelaus. Then she gave him a phantom in your place, from what I hear from you.
Helen. And the sufferings in your house, the sufferings, mother. Oh, no.
Menelaus. What do you mean?
Helen. My mother is dead. She tied a strangling noose round her neck, for shame of my disgraceful marriage.
Menelaus. Oh. And our daughter Hermione. Is she alive?
Helen. Unmarried, childless, husband, she mourns my marriage that was no marriage.
Menelaus. Paris, who sacked my whole house from top to bottom, this destroyed you too, and tens of thousands of Greeks in their bronze armour.
Helen. And me the god threw out of my country, cursed, doomed, out of my city and away from you, when I left my house and my bed, and did not leave them, for a shameful marriage.
Chorus. If the rest of your luck turns out happy, it might make up for what went before.
Messenger. Menelaus, give me a share of this happiness too. I can see it for myself, but I do not understand it clearly.
Menelaus. Come, old man. You join the conversation too.
Messenger. This woman here is not the one all that trouble at Troy was fought over?
Menelaus. No, she is not. We were tricked by the gods. What we had in our arms was the grim image of a cloud.
Messenger. What are you saying? We went through all that for a cloud? For nothing?
Menelaus. Hera's work. And the quarrel of the three goddesses.
Messenger. And this woman here really is your wife?
Menelaus. She is. Take my word for it.
Messenger. Daughter, what a complicated thing the god is, how hard to make out. Somehow, and for the good, he turns everything over, carrying it this way and that. One man labours. Another never laboured at all, and comes to a bad end just the same, with nothing to hold on to in a fortune that never stops changing. You and your husband have had your share of trouble, you in what people said of you, he in the heat of his fighting. When he pushed, and pushed hard, he got nothing. Now he has the best good fortune there is, and it came to him of its own accord.
So you never disgraced your old father after all, or the twin sons of Zeus, and you never did the things they say you did. I am seeing your wedding all over again now. I remember the torches I carried, running beside the four-horse team, and you in the chariot, a bride, leaving your happy home with this man here. A servant who does not care about his master's affairs, who does not rejoice with him and ache with him when things go wrong, is worthless. I was born a slave, but let me be counted among the noble slaves all the same. I do not have the name of a free man. I have the mind of one. That is better than the double evil of one man carrying a rotten heart and, slave that he is, taking orders from everyone around him too.
Menelaus. Come, old man. You have carried out plenty of hard labour beside my shield, sweating it out for me. Now share my good fortune too. Go and tell the friends I left behind how you found things here, and where our luck stands. Tell them to wait on the shore and keep watch for the struggles that I expect are waiting for me; and if we can find some way to steal this woman out of the country, tell them to stand guard, so that we can throw our luck in together and get away from the barbarians, if we can.
Messenger. It will be done, my lord. But I tell you, I have seen now how worthless the prophets' business is, and how full of lies. There was nothing sound, after all, in the flame of the burnt offering, or in the cries of birds. To think that birds can help human beings is simple-minded. Calchas never said a word, never gave the army a sign, when he saw his friends dying for a cloud. Nor did Helenus. The city was torn down for nothing. You might say: because the god did not want them to. Then why do we consult prophets at all? We should sacrifice to the gods and ask them for good things, and leave prophecy alone. It was invented as a bait, a way of making a living and nothing more, and no one ever got rich from burnt offerings by being lazy. Good judgement and good sense are the best prophets there are.
(The Messenger goes off towards the shore.)
Chorus. My opinion of prophets comes out exactly where this old man's does. Whoever has the gods for friends has the best prophecy there is, at home.
Helen. Well. So far, everything is going well. But how you came out of Troy alive, poor man: there is nothing to gain from knowing it, but people who love you long to hear what the people they love have suffered.
Menelaus. That is a great deal to ask in one question and one breath. Why should I tell you about the wrecks in the Aegean, and Nauplius's false beacons on Euboea, and Crete, and the cities of Libya I put in at, and the lookout of Perseus? I could never fill you up with stories, and telling you the evils I would suffer them all over again, as I did when I was living through them. I would grieve twice over.
Helen. That is a better answer than my question. Leave out all the rest and tell me one thing: how long were you worn down on the back of the sea, wandering the salt water?
Menelaus. On top of the ten years at Troy, I went through seven circling years on board ship.
Helen. Pheu, pheu. That is a long time you name, poor man. And after coming out of that alive, you have come here to be slaughtered.
Menelaus. What do you mean? What are you going to say? You have finished me, woman.
Helen. Run. Get out of this country as fast as you can. The man whose house this is will kill you.
Menelaus. What have I done to deserve that?
Helen. You have turned up, out of nowhere, in the way of my marriage.
Menelaus. What? Someone wants to marry my wife?
Helen. And to do me the outrage I have been putting up with.
Menelaus. Some private strongman, or the man who rules the country?
Helen. The man who is king of this land. The son of Proteus.
Menelaus. That is the riddle I heard from the servant.
Helen. Which of the barbarian's gates were you standing at?
Menelaus. This one. I was being driven off it like a beggar.
Helen. You were not begging for food? Oh, misery.
Menelaus. That is what it was. It just did not have that name.
Helen. Then you know everything about my marriage, it seems.
Menelaus. I know. What I do not know is whether you escaped his bed.
Helen. You can be sure your bed has been kept for you. Untouched.
Menelaus. What proves it? If you are telling the truth, it is sweet to hear.
Helen. Do you see my miserable seat here at this tomb?
Menelaus. I see a wretched bed of straw. What has it got to do with you?
Helen. This is where I have been begging, as a suppliant, to escape his bed.
Menelaus. For lack of an altar? Or is that the barbarians' custom?
Helen. This has protected me as well as the temples of the gods.
Menelaus. So I cannot even sail you home?
Helen. A sword is waiting for you, sooner than my bed.
Menelaus. Then I would be the most wretched of mortals.
Helen. Do not be ashamed now. Run. Get out of this country.
Menelaus. And leave you? I sacked Troy for your sake.
Helen. Yes. Better that than let my marriage kill you.
Menelaus. That is a coward's talk, and unworthy of Troy.
Helen. You could not kill the king, which is what you have in mind, I suppose.
Menelaus. What, has he got a body that iron cannot wound?
Helen. You will find out. But daring the impossible is not what a clever man does.
Menelaus. So I am to hold out my hands and let them be tied, in silence?
Helen. You are at a dead end. We need some contrivance.
Menelaus. Yes. Better to die doing something than doing nothing.
Helen. There is one hope. Only one way we could be saved.
Menelaus. Do we buy it, or dare it, or talk our way to it?
Helen. If the king never found out that you had come.
Menelaus. And who is going to tell him? He will not know who I am.
Helen. He has an ally inside the house, as good as a god.
Menelaus. Some voice, settled in the inner rooms?
Helen. No. His sister. Theonoe, they call her.
Menelaus. The name says she is an oracle. Tell me what she does.
Helen. She knows everything. And she will tell her brother you are here.
Menelaus. Then we die. There is no way I can hide from her.
Helen. Perhaps we could persuade her, if we begged her.
Menelaus. To do what? What hope are you leading me towards?
Helen. Not to tell her brother that you are in the country.
Menelaus. And if we persuade her, could we get our feet out of this land?
Helen. Easily, with her on our side. Behind her back, no.
Menelaus. That is your job. Woman to woman is the fitting way.
Helen. My hands will be on her knees. Count on it.
Menelaus. Right. And if she refuses to hear us?
Helen. You die. And I am married by force. Poor me.
Menelaus. Then you would be a traitor. The force is just your excuse.
Helen. But I have sworn a holy oath, on your head.
Menelaus. What? To die? And never to trade my bed for his?
Helen. By the same sword, yes. And I will lie beside you.
Menelaus. Then on those terms, touch my right hand.
Helen. I touch it. If you die, I leave the light.
Menelaus. And when I have lost you, I will end my own life too.
Helen. Then how do we die so that it does us some credit?
Menelaus. I will kill you on the back of this tomb, and then kill myself. But first I am going to fight a great fight for the right to your bed. Anyone who wants it, let him come and get it. I am not going to disgrace the name I made at Troy, or go home to Greece and take a load of blame with me. I am the man who robbed Thetis of Achilles. I saw Ajax, Telamon's son, cut his own throat. I saw Nestor, Neleus's son, left without his boy. And I am not to think my own wife worth dying for? Of course she is. If the gods have any sense, when a brave man dies at his enemies' hands they cover him in his tomb with a light earth, and the cowards they throw out onto a hard bare ridge of rock.
Chorus. Oh gods, let the family of Tantalus be lucky for once, and step clear of its evils.
Helen. Oh, I am wretched. That is the kind of luck I have. Menelaus, we are finished. The prophetess Theonoe is coming out of the house. I can hear the house ring as the bolts are drawn. Run. But what is the point of running? Whether she is here or not, she knows you have come. Oh, I am lost, I am lost. You came safe out of Troy, out of a barbarian country, and now you have walked onto barbarian swords all over again.
(Theonoe comes out of the house with her attendants. One carries a torch, another a brazier with sulphur burning in it.)
Theonoe. You, lead the way with the torchlight, and burn the sulphur, as the holy rule requires, to cleanse the deep corners of the air, so that I can breathe the pure breath of heaven. And you, if anyone has damaged the path by treading on it with an unholy foot, put the purifying flame to it. Beat the pine torch on the ground ahead of me, so that I can pass through. When you have paid the gods the rite I owe them, carry the fire back inside to the hearth.
Helen. My prophecies. How do they stand now? Your husband Menelaus has come, here he is in plain sight, stripped of his ships and of the copy of you. Poor man. What troubles you have escaped to get here, and you do not know whether you go home or stay where you are. Because there is a quarrel among the gods over you, and a council is sitting beside Zeus, on your account, this very day. Hera, who was your enemy before, is your friend now. She wants to bring you safe home with this woman, so that Greece can learn that the marriage of Paris, Aphrodite's gift to him, was no marriage: he was married to a fake. And Aphrodite wants to wreck your journey home, so that she is never shown up, never proved to have bought the prize for beauty with a marriage to Helen that came to nothing. And the decision is mine. Either I do what Aphrodite wants, and tell my brother you are here, and destroy you. Or I take Hera's side and save your life by hiding you from him, my own brother, who has given me orders to tell him the moment you set foot in this country. One of you go and tell my brother that this man is here, so that I am safe.
Helen. Lady, I fall at your knees and beg you. I take my seat here, at this unhappy station, for myself and for this man, whom I have found at last, after so long, only to see him killed. Do not tell your brother that my husband has come back to my arms, into the hands that love him. Save us. I am begging you. Do not sell your own goodness to your brother, buying favours from him that are wicked and unjust. God hates force. He orders everyone to get what they get without robbery. Wealth that is unjust is wealth to be left alone. The sky is common to all mortals, and so is the earth, and on it people should fill their houses without holding what belongs to somebody else, or taking it by force. Hermes gave me to your father to keep safe for my husband, at the right moment for the gods and the worst possible moment for me. And here is my husband, and he wants me back. How can he take me back if he is dead? And how could your father ever give a living woman back to a dead man? Think now about what the god wants, and what your father wants. Would the god, would the dead man, want a neighbour's property given back to its owner, or would they not? I think they would. So you ought not to give more weight to a foolish brother than to a good father. You are a prophetess. You believe in the things of the gods. If you wreck your father's justice and do a favour to your unjust brother, it is a disgrace: to know everything divine, what is and what is to come, and not know what is right.
Take me out of this, wretched as I am, out of the evils I am sunk in. Give me this, as a little something thrown in on top of my luck. There is not a person alive who does not hate Helen. All over Greece I am known as the woman who betrayed her husband and went to live in the golden houses of the Phrygians. If I get to Greece and set foot in Sparta again, they will hear, they will see with their own eyes, that it was a trick of the gods that destroyed them, and that I was never a traitor to the people I owe. They will bring me back to a good name, and I will find a husband for my daughter, whom nobody will marry now, and I will leave this bitter beggar's life behind and enjoy the property that is sitting in my house. If this man had been killed and burned on a pyre, I would be loving him with my tears from far away. But he is alive, he is safe, and I am to have him taken from me? No, lady. No. I beg you for this one thing. Give me this favour, and copy your father's ways, a just man's ways. Because that is the finest glory children have: the child of a good father, who grows up to match the character of the parents who made him.
Chorus. The words you have laid before us are pitiful, and so are you. But I want to hear what Menelaus will say to save his own life.
Menelaus. I could not bring myself to fall at your knees, or to get tears in my eyes. If we turned coward we would disgrace Troy worse than anything. And yet they say it becomes a well-born man to let the tears fall from his eyes when things go wrong. Well, I will not choose that fine thing, if it is fine, ahead of courage. If you think it right to save a stranger who has come, in justice, to get back his own wife, then give her back and save us into the bargain. If you do not think so, then I am not wretched for the first time, I have been wretched often enough, but you will be shown up as a bad woman. What I think is worthy of me and just, and what will get its grip on your heart most of all, I will say at your father's grave, since I miss him.
Old man, living in this tomb of stone: give her back. I am demanding my wife from you, the wife Zeus sent here for you to keep for me. I know you will never give her back to me yourself, because you are dead. But this woman will not think it right that her father, whom I am calling up from below, once the most honoured of men, should get a bad name. She is the one in charge now. And you, Hades under the ground, I call you as my ally too. You took plenty of bodies for this woman's sake, killed by my sword. You have had your pay. Either give those men back alive, here and now, or make this woman show that she is better than her god-fearing father, and give me back my wife.
And if you two rob me of my wife, I will tell you the thing she left out of her speech. I am bound by an oath, lady, so that you know it. First, to fight your brother, hand to hand. He dies or I do. It is as simple as that. And if he will not put his foot beside mine and fight, but tries to starve us out, two suppliants at this tomb, then I have decided: I kill this woman, and then I drive this two-edged sword into my own liver, on the back of this tomb, so that the streams of blood run down the grave. We will lie there, two corpses side by side on this polished stone, a grief for you that never dies and a reproach to your father. Your brother is not going to marry her, and neither is anybody else. I am taking her away, and if I cannot take her home, I will take her to the dead.
What am I doing? If I went soft and womanish and wept, I would get more pity and less done. Kill me, if you like. You will not be killing people without a name. But better to do what I say. Then you are just, and I get my wife back.
Chorus. It is for you to judge these speeches, young lady. Judge them in a way that pleases everyone.
Theonoe. I was born god-fearing and I want to be. I love myself, and I would not stain my father's good name, or do my brother a favour that would show me up as a disgrace. There is a great sanctuary of justice in my nature. I have it from Nereus, and I will try to keep it, Menelaus. Since Hera wants to do you good, I will cast my vote with her. As for Aphrodite, may she be gracious to me, but she and I have never had anything to do with each other, and I will try to stay a virgin all my life. As for what you say to reproach my father at this tomb, I have the same words to say myself. I would be doing wrong if I did not give her back. Because if he were alive and looking at the light, he would have given her back to you to have, and you to her. There is a reckoning for these things among the dead below and among all of us up here. The mind of the dead does not live, but it keeps its judgement, and that is immortal, once it has fallen into the immortal air.
So, not to make a long sermon of it: I will keep silent about what you have begged me, and I will never be an adviser to my brother's folly. I am doing him good, though he will not think so, if I turn him from godlessness to something holy. You two find some way out yourselves. I will stand aside, out of the way, and say nothing. Begin with the gods. Pray to Aphrodite to let you go home to your country, and pray to Hera that her mind stays where it is, set on saving you and your husband. And you, my dead father: as long as I have the strength, you will never be called godless instead of god-fearing.
(Theonoe goes back into the house with her attendants.)
Chorus. No one who was born lawless has ever prospered. Hope of safety lies in a just cause.
Helen. Menelaus, as far as the lady goes, we are safe. From here on it is for you to put forward the ideas and stitch together a plan of escape for the two of us.
Menelaus. Listen, then. You have been a long time in this house, and you have grown close to the king's servants.
Helen. What do you mean by that? You are dangling hopes in front of me, as if you were about to do something useful for us both.
Menelaus. Could you persuade one of the men who look after the four-horse chariots to give us a chariot?
Helen. I could. But what escape is there for us? We do not know the plains or the roads of this barbarian country.
Menelaus. Impossible, as you say. Well then, what if I hid in the house and killed the king with this two-edged sword?
Helen. His sister would never put up with that, or keep quiet, if you meant to kill her own brother.
Menelaus. And there is no ship, either, to get us away safe. The sea has the one we had.
Helen. Listen to me, in case even a woman can say something clever. Are you willing to be dead in word, without being dead?
Menelaus. A bad omen. But if it gets me something, I am ready to be called dead in word, without being dead.
Helen. And then I would mourn you the way women do, with my hair cut short and my songs of grief, in front of that godless man.
Menelaus. And what cure for our two lives is in that? There is something rather old and worn about the story.
Helen. I will ask the king of this country to let me bury you in an empty tomb, as if you had really died at sea.
Menelaus. Suppose he allows it. Then how do we get away without a ship, once we have put my body in an empty grave?
Helen. I will tell him to give me a boat, so that I can let down the offerings for your tomb into the arms of the sea.
Menelaus. Well said, all but one thing. If he tells you to set up the tomb on dry land, your excuse comes to nothing.
Helen. But I will say that it is not the custom in Greece to bury under the earth people who have died at sea.
Menelaus. You have straightened that one out too. Then I will sail with you, and help let down the offerings, in the same boat.
Helen. You must be there above all, and your sailors too, the ones who escaped from the wreck.
Menelaus. Once I have a ship at anchor, they will stand there, man beside man, each with a sword in his hand.
Helen. You must be in charge of all of it. Only let the winds fill our sail and carry us, and let the ship run fast.
Menelaus. It will. The gods are going to end my troubles. But who will you say you heard of my death from?
Helen. From you. Say that you were the only one who escaped death when you were sailing with the son of Atreus, and that you saw him die.
Menelaus. And these rags I have wrapped round my body will back me up as evidence of a shipwreck.
Helen. They have come in useful now, though losing everything looked so untimely then. That misery may turn out to be luck.
Menelaus. Should I come into the house with you, or sit quietly here at the tomb?
Helen. Stay here. If he tries anything ugly on you, this tomb will protect you, and so will your sword. I will go into the house and cut off my hair, and change my white dress for a black one, and drag my nails down my cheek till the skin bleeds. Because the contest is a great one, and I can see the scale tipping two ways: either I have to die, if I am caught in my scheming, or I go home to my country and bring your body safe out of this.
Lady Hera, you who lie in the bed of Zeus, give two pitiful people a breathing space from their troubles. We ask you, throwing our arms straight up to the sky, where you live among the embroidered stars. And you, who won the prize for beauty at the price of my marriage, Aphrodite, Dione's daughter, do not finish me off. You have done me damage enough already, handing over my name to the barbarians, though not my body. If you want to kill me, let me die in my father's country. Why can you never get enough of evil, working at your loves and your lies, your cunning inventions and your love-charms that bring blood into houses? If you only knew where to stop, you would be, in every other way, the sweetest of the gods to human beings. I do not say otherwise.
(Helen goes into the house. Menelaus stays by the tomb.)
Chorus. You who sit in your place of song under the leafy halls of the trees, I call on you, you, the most musical bird that sings, the nightingale, the bird of tears: come, trilling through your brown throat, and help me in my mourning, as I sing the pains of poor Helen and the tearful fate of the women of Troy under the spears of the Achaeans. When he raced the roaring plains of the sea with his barbarian oar, when he came, he came, bringing Priam's sons a misery, your bed, Helen, carried out of Sparta, Paris, whose marriage was a curse, and Aphrodite showed him the way.
Chorus. Many of the Achaeans, by the spear and the flung stones, breathed out their last, and a wretched Hades holds them now, and their unhappy wives have cut off their hair, and their houses stand with no bride in them. And many more one man destroyed, alone in his one boat, lighting a blazing fire on Euboea, the island in the sea, and flinging the Achaeans onto the rocks of Caphereus and the shores of the Aegean, with the treacherous star he lit. And the harbourless hills of Malea, in the blast of the storm, when he was swept far from his homeland, Menelaus, carrying on his ships the prize of a barbarian expedition, no prize but a quarrel with the Greeks, Hera's holy phantom.
Chorus. What is god, what is not god, and what lies between, which mortal can say he has searched and found the farthest end of it, when he sees the gods' business leaping this way, and back again that way, and round again, in luck that contradicts itself and nobody expected? You, Helen, were born the daughter of Zeus: a winged father begot you in Leda's womb. And then you were shouted across Greece as traitor, faithless, lawless, godless. I do not know what is certain among mortals any more. The word of the gods I have found true.
Chorus. Fools, all of you who go after honour through war and the spear-points of a strong army, stupidly putting an end to human troubles that way. If a contest of blood is to decide it, strife will never leave the cities of men. That is how they came by their bedrooms in Priam's earth, when they could have settled your quarrel with words, Helen. And now they are in the keeping of Hades below, and fire like the lightning of Zeus has swept over the walls, and you bring sufferings on sufferings, miseries on miseries, and a song of grief.
(Theoclymenus comes in from hunting, with servants carrying nets and leading dogs. He stops at the tomb.)
Theoclymenus. Greetings, my father's tomb. I buried you here at the doorway, Proteus, so that I could speak to you, and every time I go out of the house and come back in, I, your son Theoclymenus, say a word to you, father. You slaves, take the dogs and the hunting nets into the royal house. I have called myself a fool over and over. Do we not punish criminals with death? And now I hear that some Greek has landed in this country in broad daylight and slipped past the guards, a spy, or a thief on the hunt for Helen. He dies, if I can only catch him.
Ah. It seems I have arrived to find the whole business done. The daughter of Tyndareus has left her seat at the tomb empty and been shipped out of the country. Ho there. Undo the bars. Loose the horses from their stalls, men, and bring out the chariots, so that the wife I want does not get carried off out of this land for want of effort on my part.
Wait. I see the people we are chasing, and they have not run. They are here in the house.
(Helen comes out of the house in a black dress, with her hair cut short.)
You. Why have you put black clothes on your body instead of white? Why have you taken a knife to that noble head and cut off your hair, and why are you wetting your cheeks with fresh tears, and weeping? Is it a dream in the night that has persuaded you to groan like this, or have you heard some rumour from inside the house that has broken your heart with grief?
Helen. My lord, and yes, now I call you by that name, I am destroyed. All that was mine is gone, and I am nothing any more.
Theoclymenus. What disaster are you lying under? What has happened?
Helen. Menelaus, oh, how can I say it, is dead. My husband is dead.
Theoclymenus. I take no pleasure in your words, though they are good luck for me. How do you know? Did Theonoe tell you this?
Helen. She says so, and so does a man who was there when he died.
Theoclymenus. Someone has come who brings this news for certain?
Helen. Someone has come. And may he go where I want him to go.
Theoclymenus. Who is he? Where is he? I want to know this more exactly.
Helen. That man, sitting huddled at the tomb there.
Theoclymenus. Apollo! What a sight he is, in those filthy clothes.
Helen. Oh. I think my husband must have looked like that too.
Theoclymenus. Where is this man from, and from where did he put in to land here?
Helen. He is a Greek, one of the Achaeans who sailed with my husband.
Theoclymenus. What kind of death does he say Menelaus died?
Helen. The most pitiful. In the wet waves of the sea.
Theoclymenus. Where was he sailing, on what barbarian waters?
Helen. He was thrown onto the harbourless rocks of Libya.
Theoclymenus. And how did this man not die, if he shared the same oar?
Helen. Sometimes worse men are luckier than their betters.
Theoclymenus. Where did he leave the wreck of his ship before he came here?
Helen. Where I hope it rots. But not Menelaus.
Theoclymenus. Menelaus is finished. What boat did this man come in?
Helen. Sailors happened on him and picked him up, he says.
Theoclymenus. Then where is the evil thing that was sent to Troy in your place?
Helen. You mean the image made of cloud? It has gone off into the air.
Theoclymenus. Oh Priam, and land of Troy, how you were destroyed for nothing.
Helen. And I had my share in the ruin of Priam's family.
Theoclymenus. Did he leave your husband unburied, or did he put him under the earth?
Helen. Unburied. Oh, the misery of it, on top of all my evils.
Theoclymenus. Is that why you cut the curls of your golden hair?
Helen. Because he is dear to me, whoever he is, and he is here.
Theoclymenus. She is right to weep over this misfortune, if it is true.
Helen. Oh yes, it is so easy to fool your sister.
Theoclymenus. Hardly. Well, what now? Are you going to go on living at this tomb?
Helen. Why do you mock me? Can you not leave the dead man alone?
Theoclymenus. Because you are faithful to your husband, and you keep running from me.
Helen. Not any more. Begin my wedding now.
Theoclymenus. It has been a long time coming, but I am glad of it all the same.
Helen. Do you know what you should do? Let us forget the past.
Theoclymenus. On what terms? One favour deserves another.
Helen. Let us make peace. Be reconciled with me.
Theoclymenus. I let my quarrel with you go. Let it fly away on wings.
Helen. Then by your knees, since you are a friend to me now.
Theoclymenus. What are you hunting, reaching out to me like a suppliant?
Helen. I want to bury my dead husband.
Theoclymenus. What? Is there a tomb for the absent? Are you going to bury a shadow?
Helen. It is the custom among Greeks, when someone dies at sea.
Theoclymenus. To do what? The sons of Pelops are clever at that kind of thing.
Helen. To hold the funeral with empty woven robes.
Theoclymenus. Then hold your funeral. Raise the tomb wherever in the land you like.
Helen. That is not how we bury sailors who have died at sea.
Theoclymenus. How, then? I know nothing of the customs of the Greeks.
Helen. We take everything the dead are owed out to sea, and give it to the water.
Theoclymenus. Then what am I to give you for the dead man?
Helen. This man knows. I do not. I never had to learn, in my lucky days.
Theoclymenus. Stranger, the news you brought was welcome, at least.
Menelaus. Not to me. And not to the dead man.
Theoclymenus. How do you bury men who have died at sea?
Menelaus. Each according to what he can afford.
Theoclymenus. Then never mind the cost. Name what you want, for her sake.
Menelaus. First, blood is shed for the powers below.
Theoclymenus. The blood of what? Tell me, and I will do it.
Menelaus. Decide that yourself. Whatever you give will be enough.
Theoclymenus. Among us barbarians the custom is a horse or a bull.
Menelaus. Whatever you give, give nothing that is low-bred.
Theoclymenus. Our herds are rich. We are not short of those.
Menelaus. Then a bed is carried out, made up and spread, with no body on it.
Theoclymenus. It will be done. What else does custom require?
Menelaus. Weapons of beaten bronze. He loved the spear.
Theoclymenus. What we give will be worthy of the house of Pelops.
Menelaus. And whatever else the earth brings up that is beautiful.
Theoclymenus. And then? How do you let it all down into the swell?
Menelaus. There must be a ship, and men to work the oars.
Theoclymenus. How far from the land does the ship stand off?
Menelaus. Far enough that the wash of the oars can barely be seen from the shore.
Theoclymenus. Why is that? Where did Greece get this custom from?
Menelaus. So the waves cannot throw the pollution back onto the land.
Theoclymenus. You will have a fast Phoenician ship.
Menelaus. That would be good. And it would please Menelaus.
Theoclymenus. Can you not do all this well enough without her?
Menelaus. This is work for a mother, or a wife, or children.
Theoclymenus. So it is her task, you say, to bury her husband.
Menelaus. It is. Piety says the dead are not to be robbed of what is theirs.
Theoclymenus. Let her go, then. It is in my interest to keep a wife who honours the gods. Go into the house and choose the ornaments for the dead man. And I will not send you away from this country empty-handed either, since you have done her this kindness. You brought me good news, and for that you will have clothes instead of the rags you stand in, and food, enough to get you home to your own country. I can see the state you are in.
And you, poor woman, stop wearing yourself out over what cannot be helped. Menelaus has met his fate. A dead husband cannot come back to life.
Menelaus. That is your part now, young woman. You must love the husband you have and let go of the one who no longer exists. That is the best thing for you, as things have turned out. And if I reach Greece and come through alive, I will put an end to the bad name you had before, if you are the kind of wife to your husband that you ought to be.
Helen. I will be. My husband will never have cause to complain of me. You will be close enough to see it for yourself. But go inside now, you poor man, and take a bath and change your clothes. I am not going to put off doing good to you. You will do what is due to my dearest Menelaus with a better heart if you get from me what you deserve.
(Theoclymenus, Helen and Menelaus go into the house.)
Chorus. Once the mother of the gods, the mountain mother, ran on racing feet through the wooded valleys, along the running streams of the rivers and the deep-thundering waves of the sea, aching for her daughter who was gone, the girl whose name is not spoken. The clattering rattles cried out a piercing sound when the goddess yoked wild beasts to her chariot and two goddesses ran with her, quick as the wind, after the girl who had been snatched out of the circling dances of the young women: Artemis with her bow, and the grim-eyed one, Athena, in full armour with her spear. But Zeus, looking down from his seat in heaven, was bringing about another fate.
Chorus. And when the mother gave up the racing, far-wandering labour of hunting for her daughter, stolen by a trick, she crossed the snow-fed lookouts of the nymphs of Mount Ida and threw herself down in her grief among the rocks and the snowbound thickets. And for mortals she would not let the ploughed fields of the earth bear crops, and they lay brown and bare, and she was killing off the race of men. She sent up no fresh pasture, no leafy curling shoots for the flocks, and the life was going out of the cities. There were no sacrifices to the gods, and on the altars the cakes lay unburnt. She stopped the dewy springs from throwing up their clear water, in grief for her child, an avenger.
Chorus. And when she had put an end to the feasts for gods and the race of men alike, Zeus spoke, softening the mother's hateful anger: "Go, holy Graces, go, and take the grief out of Demeter, who is furious over her girl, with a great shout of joy, and you Muses, with the songs of the dancers." Then Aphrodite, most beautiful of the blessed gods, first took up the bronze with its deep voice and the drums with their tight-stretched hide. And the goddess laughed, and took into her hands the deep-booming pipe, delighted with the noise.
Chorus. Child, you burned in the gods' inner rooms offerings that were not right and not holy, and you brought on yourself the anger of the great mother by not honouring the goddess's rites. The dappled fawnskin robes have great power, and the green ivy wound around the sacred wands, and the whirling of the bull-roarer spinning its circle in the air, and hair streaming loose for Dionysus, and the goddess's all-night festivals, and the moon that rides high over those nights. You trusted in your beauty alone.
(Helen comes out of the house.)
Helen. Inside the house, friends, everything is going our way. The daughter of Proteus is in the theft with us. When her brother questioned her, she said nothing about my husband being here. For my sake she told him he is dead and under the earth, and does not see the light of day.
And my husband has snatched a piece of luck as fine as any. The weapons he was supposed to let down into the sea, he is carrying himself. He has put his good arm through the shield strap and taken the spear in his right hand, as if he were helping with the honours for the dead. He has fitted his body out with weapons ready for a fight, so that when we step onto the oared ship his one hand can set up trophies over countless barbarians. And I have taken the clothes the shipwreck left him in and dressed him in fresh ones, and given his skin the bath it has waited so long for, in water from the river.
But I must be quiet. The man who thinks he has my wedding safe in his hands is coming out of the house. And I ask you for your good will, and to keep your mouths shut, so that if we save ourselves we may one day save you too.
(Theoclymenus comes out of the house, with slaves carrying the offerings.)
Theoclymenus. Move along in order, slaves, as the stranger told you, carrying the gifts for the burial at sea. And you, Helen, if you do not think I am talking nonsense, listen to me and stay here. You will do the same service to your husband whether you are there or not. I am afraid some sudden longing will come over you and persuade you to throw yourself into the swell of the sea, struck down by love for your first husband. You grieve for him too much, for a man who is not even here.
Helen. My new husband, I cannot help honouring my first marriage bed and the man I lay beside as a bride. Because I loved my husband, I could even die with him. But what thanks would he have from me if I died with him, dead as he is? Let me go myself and give the dead man his funeral gifts. And may the gods give you what I wish for you, and this stranger too, for the help he is giving. And you will have in me the kind of wife you ought to have in your house, since you are doing this good to Menelaus and to me. All this is leading somewhere, to some good fortune. Now, whoever is to give us the ship we will carry these things in, appoint him, so that I have your kindness in full.
(He turns to one of his men.)
Theoclymenus. You. Go and give these people a Sidonian ship with fifty oars, and men to row it.
Helen. And this man, who is arranging the funeral, will be in command of the ship?
Theoclymenus. Certainly. My sailors are to obey him.
Helen. Give the order again, so they understand you clearly.
Theoclymenus. I give it again. And a third time, if you like.
Helen. May it bring you good. And me too, for my plans.
Theoclymenus. Now do not spoil your skin with too much crying.
Helen. This day will show you how grateful I am.
Theoclymenus. The dead are nothing. All this is work for nothing.
Helen. There is something to what I say, both down there and up here.
Theoclymenus. You will find me no worse a husband than Menelaus.
Helen. I have no complaint of you. All I need is luck.
Theoclymenus. That is in your hands, if you give me your good will.
Helen. I do not need lessons now in how to love the people I owe.
Theoclymenus. Do you want me to work alongside you, and see the expedition off myself?
Helen. Certainly not. Do not turn slave to your own slaves, my lord.
Theoclymenus. Well then. I let the customs of the house of Pelops be. My house is clean: Menelaus did not breathe his last here. Let someone go and tell my chieftains to bring wedding gifts to my house. The whole land must ring with songs of blessing for the wedding of Helen and me, so that everyone envies it. And you, stranger, go, and give these things into the arms of the sea for the man who was once her husband, and then hurry back to the house with my wife, so that you can share her wedding feast with me and set out for home, or stay here and live well.
(Theoclymenus goes into the house.)
Menelaus. Zeus, they call you father, and a wise god. Look at us, and turn our troubles aside. We are dragging our fortunes up a cliff of rock. Put your shoulder to it with us. Touch us with only your fingertip and we will reach the place we want to be. We have laboured enough already, in the labours we went through before. Gods, I have called on you many times, and you have heard hard things from me as well as good. I am not owed bad luck for ever. I am owed a straight step forward. Grant me this one favour, and you will make me a lucky man for the rest of my life.
(Menelaus and Helen go out towards the shore.)
Chorus. Phoenician ship of Sidon, swift oar, mother of the foam the rowers make, dear to the beat of the blades, leader of the dance of the lovely dancing dolphins, when the sea lies windless and the grey-eyed daughter of the Sea, Calm, says this: "Let out the sails, leave them to the sea breezes, and take up your oars of pine, sailors, sailors, and carry Helen to the good harbours and the shores where the house of Perseus stood."
Chorus. Perhaps you will find the daughters of Leucippus beside the swell of the river, or in front of the temple of Athena, when at last you join the dances again, or the revels for Hyacinthus and their night-long joy: Hyacinthus, whom Apollo killed with the discus, throwing for the longest cast, and so the son of Zeus declared a day of ox sacrifice in the land of Sparta. And you may find the calf you left at home, Hermione, for no torch has yet been lit to light her to her wedding.
Chorus. If only we could fly through the air the way the cranes, the birds of Libya, go, in their long ranks, leaving the winter rain behind, following the whistle of their oldest leader, the shepherd of the flock, who cries out as he flies over the dry plains and the fields that bear the crops. Long-necked birds, winged ones, who run with the racing clouds, go, under the Pleiades in the middle of the sky and Orion of the night, and shout the news as you settle on the banks of the Eurotas, that Menelaus has taken the city of Dardanus and is coming home.
Chorus. And you, come at last, driving your horses down the road through the sky, sons of Tyndareus, under the whirling of the bright stars, you who live in heaven, Helen's saviours. Come over the grey-green swell and the dark blue waves, the white-crested surf of the sea, sending the sailors fair winds from Zeus. And throw off your sister the bad name of a barbarian's bed, the punishment she was given for the quarrel on Ida, though she never went to the land of Troy, to the towers Apollo built.
(A Messenger, one of the Egyptian sailors, comes running in. Theoclymenus comes out of the house to meet him.)
Messenger. My lord, the worst has happened to this house. You are about to hear strange new troubles from me.
Theoclymenus. What is it?
Messenger. Set to work courting another woman. Helen has left the country.
Theoclymenus. Lifted on wings, or walking on her own feet?
Messenger. Menelaus has carried her off by sea, out of the land. He was the man who came to announce his own death.
Theoclymenus. That is a terrible thing to say. What ship took her away from this country? I cannot believe what you are telling me.
Messenger. The one you gave to the stranger. And he has gone with your own sailors, to put it briefly.
Theoclymenus. How? I want to know. I never dreamed one pair of hands could get the better of all those sailors you were sent out with.
Messenger. When the daughter of Zeus left this royal house and set out for the sea, she stepped along on delicate feet and mourned, very cleverly, for the husband who was right beside her and not dead at all. When we came to the wall of your dockyard, we hauled down the Sidonian ship for her first voyage, fitted with her fifty benches and her full count of oars. Then one job followed another. One man set the mast, another set the oars, the blades in his hands; the white sails were made ready; the steering oars were let down on their straps.
And in the middle of this work, watching for exactly this, it seems, Greeks who had sailed with Menelaus came along the shore, dressed in the rags of shipwrecked men, good-looking men but filthy to look at. The son of Atreus saw them coming and spoke to them, putting on a false show of pity for everyone to hear. "Poor men, how did you get here? What Achaean ship was wrecked under you? Have you come to help bury the son of Atreus, who is lost, and whose empty grave this daughter of Tyndareus is honouring, without a body?" And they shed tears to order, and went on board the ship carrying the offerings that were to go into the sea for Menelaus. We were suspicious, and we said to each other that there were a great many of these extra passengers. But we kept our mouths shut all the same, out of respect for your orders. When you told the stranger to command the ship, you threw the whole thing into confusion.
The rest of the offerings we got aboard easily enough; they were light. But the bull's hoof would not go straight up the gangplank. He bellowed, rolling his eyes round, and arched his back, and glared along his horns, and would not let us touch him. Then Helen's husband called out, "You men who sacked the city of Troy, come on, pick up the bull's body on your young shoulders, the way Greeks do, and heave him into the bow, and have a sword ready to hand at the same time, for the victim's throat, for the dead man." They came at his order, lifted the bull clean off the ground, carried him aboard and set him down on the benches. And Menelaus stroked the horse's neck and forehead, and coaxed him up into the ship.
At last, when the ship had taken everything, Helen climbed the rungs of the ladder with her fine ankles and sat down in the middle, between the rowers' benches, and Menelaus, the man who was dead by all accounts, sat close beside her. The others sat down along the right and the left sides in equal numbers, man beside man, with swords hidden under their clothes, and the water filled with the noise of oars as we heard the voice of the man calling the stroke.
When we were neither very far from the land nor very near, the helmsman asked, "Do we sail farther out, stranger, or is this far enough? The command of the ship is yours." And he said, "This is enough for me." He took his sword in his right hand and went forward to the bow, and stood over the bull for the sacrifice, and with no dead man in his mind at all he cut its throat and prayed. "Poseidon of the sea, who live in the salt water, and you holy daughters of Nereus, bring me and my wife safe out of this country to the shore of Nauplia." And the jets of blood spurted into the swell, a good omen for the stranger.
Then someone said, "There is treachery in this voyage. Row back. You, give the order to the right side. You, turn the steering oar." But the son of Atreus stood up from the bull he had killed and shouted to his friends, "Why are you waiting, you pick of the land of Greece? Cut the barbarians' throats, kill them, throw them off the ship into the sea." And the man calling the stroke shouted the opposite order to your rowers: "Come on, one of you grab a spar from the stern, another break up a bench, another pull an oar out of its socket, and bloody the heads of these foreign enemies." They were all on their feet at once, some with the ship's timbers in their hands, others with swords, and the ship ran with blood. And Helen was cheering them on from the stern: "Where is the glory you won at Troy? Show it to these barbarians." In the rush men fell, and men got up again, and you would have seen others lying there dead. Menelaus in his armour watched for wherever his friends were in trouble, and there he brought his sword in his right hand, so that men dived off the ship, and he swept the benches clean of your rowers. Then he went to the helmsman and told him to steer the ship straight for Greece. They raised the mast, and a fair wind came.
They are gone, out of the country. I escaped the killing by letting myself down into the sea beside the anchor, and when I was at the end of my strength a fisherman with his line pulled me out and put me ashore to bring you this news. There is nothing more useful to human beings than a sensible refusal to believe.
Chorus. I would never have believed, my lord, that Menelaus could be here without your knowing it or ours. But he was, and he stood right in front of us.
Theoclymenus. Caught by a woman's tricks. God help me. My marriage has run away from me. If the ship could be caught by chasing it, I would go to the trouble and have those strangers in my hands soon enough. As it is, I will punish the sister who betrayed me. She saw Menelaus in this house, and she did not tell me. She will never fool another man with her prophecies again.
(He starts towards the house with his sword drawn. A Servant of Theonoe's blocks the doorway and takes hold of his clothes.)
Servant. You. Where are you going, master? What killing are you off to?
Theoclymenus. Where justice tells me. Out of my way.
Servant. I am not letting go of your clothes. You are in a hurry to do something terrible.
Theoclymenus. You are a slave. Are you going to give orders to your masters?
Servant. Yes. Because I am in my right mind.
Theoclymenus. Not to my way of thinking. Not unless you let me...
Servant. No. We will not let you.
Theoclymenus. Kill a sister who is the worst of women...
Servant. The most god-fearing of women, you mean.
Theoclymenus. Who betrayed me...
Servant. A fine betrayal, doing what is right.
Theoclymenus. Giving my bride to another man.
Servant. To the man with the better right to her.
Theoclymenus. And who has a right to what is mine?
Servant. The man who received her from her father.
Theoclymenus. But fortune gave her to me.
Servant. And what had to be took her away.
Theoclymenus. It is not for you to judge my affairs.
Servant. It is, if what I say is better.
Theoclymenus. So I am the one being ruled here. I am not the ruler.
Servant. Ruled when it comes to doing right. Not to doing wrong.
Theoclymenus. You seem to be in love with dying.
Servant. Kill me. You will not kill your sister while I have any say in it. Kill me instead. For a slave of the right kind, dying for his masters is the finest end there is.
(The Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces, appear in the air above the house.)
Castor. Hold back the anger that is carrying you where it should not, Theoclymenus, king of this land. We are the two sons of Zeus, and we are calling you: the twins Leda bore, along with Helen, who has fled from your house. You are angry over a marriage that was never fated to be yours. And your sister Theonoe, the daughter of the Nereid goddess, is doing you no wrong when she honours what the gods have ordered and the just commands of her father. It was right that Helen should live in your house up to now, up to this present time. But once the foundations of Troy were torn up, and she had lent her name to the gods for their purposes, it was right no longer. Now she has to be yoked in her own marriage again, go home, and live with her husband.
So keep your black sword away from your sister, and believe that in this she has acted with good sense and kept herself in hand. We would have saved our sister long ago, before all this, since Zeus made us gods. But we were weaker than what was fated, and than the gods, who decided things should go this way.
That is what I have to say to you. To my sister I say this. Sail on with your husband. You will have a fair wind. We, your two brothers, your saviours, will ride the sea beside you and bring you home. And when you round the last turn and come to the end of your life, you will be called a goddess, and share the drink offerings with the Dioscuri, and receive the gifts men give to guests, along with us. That is the will of Zeus. And the place where the son of Maia, Hermes, first set you down on your journey through the sky, when he took you from Sparta and stole your body away so that Paris should not have you, the island that lies like a sentry along the coast of Attica, will be called by your name, Helen, among men from now on, because it took you in when you were stolen from your home. As for Menelaus the wanderer, the gods have fixed it that he will live on the island of the blessed. The gods do not hate the well-born. It is the nameless multitude whose troubles are greater.
Theoclymenus. Sons of Leda and Zeus, I let go my old quarrel over your sister. And my own sister I will not kill now. Let Helen go home, if the gods think it right. Know this, both of you: the same blood that made you made a sister who is the best of women and the most self-controlled. Go, then, and fare well, for the sake of Helen's noble mind, a thing not to be found in many women.
(The Dioscuri disappear into the sky above the house.)
Chorus. Many are the shapes of what the gods do, and many the things they bring about that no one expected. What we counted on did not happen, and for what no one counted on, a god found a way. That is how this business ended.
(Thebes, in front of the royal house. Jocasta, an old woman dressed in black, comes out of it alone.)
Jocasta. Sun, cutting your road through the stars of the sky, standing in your chariot inlaid with gold, whirling your flame along behind your fast horses: what an unlucky beam you sent down on Thebes the day Cadmus came to this country, leaving Phoenicia and its sea-coast behind him. He married Harmonia, Aphrodite's daughter, and fathered Polydorus, and from Polydorus, they say, came Labdacus, and from Labdacus, Laius. I am known as the daughter of Menoeceus, and Creon is my brother, born of the same mother. They call me Jocasta. That is the name my father gave me. Laius married me. And when he had had me in his bed for years and there were still no children in the house, he went and asked Apollo, and begged him at the same time for sons, for the two of us to share. And the god said, "King of Thebes, city of fine horses, do not sow that furrow for children against the will of the gods. If you father a son, that son will kill you, and your whole house will wade through blood." But he gave in to pleasure one night when the wine had him, and sowed a child in me. And once he had done it, and knew his mistake and what the god had said, he gave the baby to herdsmen to leave out to die in Hera's meadow, on the rocks of Cithaeron, after driving iron spikes through the middle of his ankles. That is why Greece named him Oedipus, the boy with the swollen feet. Polybus's horse-herders found him and carried him home and put him in their mistress's arms. And she put the child I had laboured to bear to her own breast, and persuaded her husband that she had given birth to him.
When my son was a grown man, with a red-gold beard on his cheeks, either he guessed it or somebody told him, and he set out for Apollo's temple, wanting to find out who his parents were. And Laius, my husband, set out too, to ask whether the child he had left out to die was dead by now. And the two of them came together at the same spot, where the road splits in Phocis. Laius's driver called out to him, "Stranger, out of the road for the king." He walked on without a word, proud man. And the colts' hooves bloodied the tendons of his feet. And then, but why should I tell what lies outside our troubles? The son killed the father, and took the chariot and gave it to Polybus, who had raised him.
Then the Sphinx was crushing the city with her raids, and my husband was gone, and my brother Creon put my marriage up as a prize: whoever could solve the clever girl's riddle would have me. And somehow it happened that my son Oedipus understood the Sphinx's song. So he was made king of this land, and took the sceptre of this country as his prize. He married his own mother, poor man, and did not know it, and his mother did not know she was sleeping with her son. I bore my son children: two boys, Eteocles and Polyneices, the strong and the famous, and two girls; one of them her father named Ismene, and the other, the elder, I named Antigone. When Oedipus, who had endured everything, learned that his marriage was a marriage to his mother, he did a terrible slaughter on his own eyes, bloodying the pupils with pins of beaten gold. And when my sons' cheeks darkened with their beards, they hid their father behind locked doors, so that what had happened to him, which took a great deal of cleverness to hide, might be forgotten. He is alive, in the house. And sick with what fate has done to him, he calls down the most unholy curses on his sons: that they should divide this house between them with sharpened iron.
The two of them were afraid the gods would bring those prayers to fulfilment if they went on living together, so they made an agreement: Polyneices, the younger, would leave this country first, an exile of his own free will, and Eteocles would stay and hold the sceptre, and they would change places every year. But once Eteocles was seated on the bench of power he would not get off the throne, and he drove Polyneices out of this land as an exile. Polyneices went to Argos, married into Adrastus's family, gathered a great mass of Argive shields, and is leading them here. He has come against these very walls, the walls with the seven gates, and he is demanding his father's sceptre and his share of the land. And I, to undo their quarrel, have persuaded one son to come to the other under truce, before either of them touches a spear. The messenger I sent says he will come.
Zeus, you who live in the bright folds of the sky, save us. Give my sons an agreement. If you are wise, as they say you are, you must not let the same mortal go on being unlucky for ever.
(Jocasta goes back into the house. The Tutor, an old slave, comes out onto the flat roof above the door, and Antigone climbs after him.)
Tutor. Antigone, glorious child of your father's house. Your mother let you leave the girls' rooms and come up to the top storey of the house because you begged her, to look at the Argive army. But wait a moment, so I can look over the path first and see whether any of the townspeople is in sight on the road. Blame would be a small thing to me, a slave. To you, a princess, it would not. When I have looked at everything, I will tell you what I saw and heard from the Argives, when I carried the terms of the truce from here to your brother over there, and back again from them to here. No. There is nobody from the town anywhere near this house. Come up the old cedar ladder. Look out over the plain, along the streams of Ismenus and the spring of Dirce, and see how big the enemy army is.
Antigone. Reach me your hand now, reach it, an old hand to a young one, down from the ladder, and lift my foot up the last step.
Tutor. There. Take hold of it, girl. You have come at the right moment. The Argive army is just on the move, and they are separating the companies from each other.
Antigone. Oh, Lady Hecate, daughter of Leto, the whole plain is one sheet of bronze, and it flashes like lightning.
Tutor. Polyneices has not come back to this country in any small way. Many horses, weapons by the thousand, and the roar of all of them.
Antigone. Are the gates barred? Are the bolts with their bronze bands fitted into the stone of the walls Amphion built?
Tutor. Don't worry. Inside, the city is safe. But look at the first one, if you want to know who he is.
Antigone. Who is that one with the white plume, who marches out in front of the army with a shield of solid bronze carried light on his arm?
Tutor. A captain, mistress.
Antigone. Who is he? Where is he from? Say it, old man. What is his name?
Tutor. He calls himself a Mycenaean by birth, and he lives by the streams of Lerna. Lord Hippomedon.
Antigone. E, e. How proud he is, how frightening to look at, like one of the giants born from the earth in the paintings, with stars across his shield, nothing like the race of men, who live for a day.
Tutor. And the one crossing the water of Dirce. Do you see him?
Antigone. Different. This one's armour is quite different. Who is he?
Tutor. He is the son of Oeneus, Tydeus, and he carries the war-god of Aetolia in his chest.
Antigone. Is this the one, old man, who married the sister of Polyneices' wife? How foreign his armour looks. Half barbarian.
Tutor. All the Aetolians carry the big shield, child, and there are no surer hands with a throwing spear.
Antigone. And you, old man, how do you know all this so exactly?
Tutor. I saw the devices on their shields then, when I went to your brother carrying the terms of the truce, and I recognised them. I looked at them closely, so I know the men inside the armour.
Antigone. And who is this one going past the tomb of Zethus, the young one with the long curls and the fierce look in his eyes, a captain, since a crowd in full armour follows at his heels?
Tutor. That is Parthenopaeus, Atalanta's son.
Antigone. Then may Artemis, who runs the mountains with his mother, bring him down with her arrows and destroy him, for coming against my city to sack it.
Tutor. May it be so, child. But they have come to this land with justice on their side, and that is what I am afraid of: that the gods will see it the right way.
Antigone. And where is the one who was born from the same mother as me, to a life of pain? Dearest old friend, tell me. Where is Polyneices?
Tutor. He is over there, near the tomb of Niobe's seven unmarried daughters, standing close beside Adrastus. Do you see him?
Antigone. I see him. Not clearly. But I see something, the shape of a body, the outline of a chest. If only I could run the road a cloud runs before the wind, on my own feet, through the air, to my brother, my own blood, and throw my arms round his dear neck at last, the poor exile. How he stands out in his golden armour, old man, blazing like the first rays of the morning sun.
Tutor. He will come to this house under truce, and fill you with joy.
Antigone. And that one, old man. Who is he, standing in a chariot, driving white horses?
Tutor. That is the prophet Amphiaraus, mistress. And the animals for the sacrifice are with him, the streams of blood the earth loves to drink.
Antigone. Moon, daughter of the Sun with the shining belt, circle of golden light, how quietly he drives, how steady the goad, shifting it from one horse to the other, keeping them straight. And where is the one who shouts those terrible insults at this city?
Tutor. Capaneus? That is him, working out the ways up the towers, measuring our walls from top to bottom.
Antigone. Io. Nemesis, and deep-roaring thunders of Zeus, and smoking light of the lightning, it is you who put boasts too big for a man to sleep. This is the man who says he will give the women of Thebes to the women of Mycenae, prisoners of his spear, to Lerna's trident and the waters of Amymone that Poseidon loves, once he has thrown slavery round them. Never, never, Lady, golden-haired child of Zeus, Artemis, let me endure that slavery.
Tutor. Child, go inside the house and stay in your own rooms under the roof, now that you have had what you longed for and seen what you wanted to see. There is a crowd of women coming towards the royal house, now that confusion has got into the city. And women are a fault-finding lot by nature. Give them the smallest opening for talk and they bring in more of it, and there is a kind of pleasure women take in saying nothing good about each other.
(Antigone and the Tutor go down from the roof. The Chorus come in, young women of Phoenicia on their way to Apollo's temple at Delphi, held up at Thebes by the war.)
Chorus. I left the swell of the Tyrian sea and came, the choicest of offerings for Apollo, from the island of Phoenicia, to be a slave in Apollo's house, where he has settled under the snowy ridges of Parnassus. Over the Ionian sea I sailed, the oars driving me through the water that rings us round, over the plains nobody harvests off Sicily, while the west wind rode the sky, the loveliest music in the heavens.
Chorus. Chosen out of my city, the finest thing it had to give Apollo, I came to the land of Cadmus, sent here to the towers of Laius, the home of the famous sons of Agenor, who are my own blood. I have become Apollo's servant, like his statues of worked gold. But the water of Castalia is still waiting for me, to drench the girlish glory of my hair for the service of Apollo.
Chorus. Oh, rock that shines with fire, the double-peaked blaze above the heights where the women of Dionysus dance, and vine that every day drips the rich cluster, letting the grape-flower loose, and holy cave of the serpent, and watchtowers of the gods in the hills, and sacred mountain under its snow. If only I could be whirling in the deathless god's dance with nothing to fear, in Apollo's valley at the navel of the world, with Dirce left behind me.
Chorus. But now Ares has come in his fury to the front of the walls, and he is kindling the blood of war against this city. May it never happen. The pain of friends is shared, and shared too, if this land of seven towers suffers anything, with the country of Phoenicia. Pheu, pheu. One blood, one family of children, born from Io, the girl who wore the horns: their troubles are mine as well.
Chorus. And round the city a thick cloud of shields is blazing, the shape of bloody battle, and Ares will soon know it, when he brings down on the sons of Oedipus the ruin the Furies have planned. Argos, Pelasgian Argos, I am afraid of your strength, and of what comes from the gods. Because the son who comes in arms to claim his house is not rushing into an unjust fight.
(Polyneices comes in through the gate, his sword drawn, looking about him.)
Polyneices. The gatekeepers' bolts let me in easily enough, inside the walls. Which is exactly what I am afraid of: that they have me in the net now, and will not let me out again without blood on my skin. So I have to keep my eyes moving everywhere, this way and that, in case there is some trick. With this sword in my hand I can give myself the confidence that comes from daring. Hey. Who is that? Or is it just a noise I am afraid of? Everything looks dangerous to a man who is daring something, once his feet are moving through an enemy's country. I trust my mother, and at the same time I do not trust her, the woman who persuaded me to come here under truce. Still, help is close. The altar hearths are right beside me, and the house is not empty. Come on. Let me put the sword back into its dark sheath and ask these women standing at the house who they are.
Ladies, strangers, tell me: what country do you come from, to be at the door of a Greek house?
Chorus. Phoenicia is my country, the land that raised me. The descendants of Agenor sent me here to Apollo, as the pick of the spoils their spears had won. And the famous son of Oedipus was about to send me on to Apollo's holy oracle and his altars when the Argives marched against the city. Now you answer me in return. Who are you, who have come to the fortress of the Theban land, with its seven gates?
Polyneices. My father is Oedipus, the son of Laius. My mother is Jocasta, the daughter of Menoeceus. And the people of Thebes call me Polyneices.
Chorus. Kinsman of the children of Agenor, my kings, the ones who sent me here.
Chorus. I go down on my knees before you, my lord, honouring the custom of my home. You have come at last to your father's land. Io. Io. Lady, come out to the front of the house. Throw the gates open. Do you hear, mother, you who gave birth to this man? Why are you slow to leave the rooms under your roof and put your arms round your son?
(Jocasta comes out of the house, her white hair cut short.)
Jocasta. I heard your Phoenician voices, girls, and I am dragging my old foot out here, one shaking step at a time. Oh, my child. At last, after so many thousand days, I see your face. Put your arms round me, hold your mother to your chest, reach me your cheeks, let the dark curls of your hair fall over my neck and shade it. Io, io. You have barely appeared, beyond all hope, beyond all expecting, in your mother's arms. What can I say to you? How can I take it all, with my hands and with my words, the pleasure that winds round and round, dancing this way and that way, the delight I had in the old days, the old joy? Oh, my child, you left your father's house empty when you were sent away into exile by your brother's outrage. How your friends missed you. How Thebes missed you. That is why I cut off my white hair and let it fall, in tears, for grief, and I wear no white clothes now, my child, but these dark rags instead, black round me, in the dark. And the old man in the house, his eyes gone, always holding on to his longing, all tears, for the pair of you, the matched team that was unyoked and driven from the house, he rushed at the sword to cut his own throat, at the rope over the roof-beams, groaning his curses on his sons, and now with cry after cry of pain he hides himself in the dark. And you, my child. I hear you are yoked in marriage, and have the pleasure of making children in a stranger's house, and are tending a stranger's kinship, a thing your mother cannot bear, that Laius, your ancestor, cannot bear, the ruin a marriage brought in from outside. I never lit the fire for you, the torch a wedding calls for, the way a happy mother should. Ismenus was never asked to the wedding, never asked to bring the water for the bath, the luxury of it, and through the city of Thebes there was silence when your bride came in. Curse them all. Whether iron is to blame, or strife, or your father, or the god who came dancing drunk into the house of Oedipus, the pain of all these evils has come to me.
Chorus. Giving birth, with all its pains, is a powerful thing for women. The whole female race is somehow in love with its children.
Polyneices. Mother, whether it was sense or folly, I have come among enemies. But everyone has to love his country; there is no choice about it, and a man who says otherwise enjoys the words, but his mind is somewhere else. I was so frightened, so full of fear that some trick of my brother's would kill me, that I came through the city with my sword in my hand, turning my face in every direction. One thing helps me: the truce, and your promise, which brought me inside my father's walls. And I came in tears. It has been so long since I saw the house and the altars of the gods and the training grounds where I was brought up and the water of Dirce, and I was driven away from them unjustly to live in a foreign city, with a stream of tears running from my eyes. But now, pain on top of pain, I look at you with your head shaved and your black dress. Oh, my troubles. How terrible hatred is, mother, between people of one family, and how hard it makes the making of peace. What is my old father doing in the house, staring at darkness? And what of my two sisters? They must be grieving over my exile, poor things.
Jocasta. Some god is destroying the house of Oedipus out of malice. That is how it began: I gave birth against every law, your father made an evil marriage, and you were born. But what is the use of this? What the gods send has to be borne. I am afraid to ask you what I want to ask, in case I bite into your heart. But I long to.
Polyneices. No. Ask. Leave nothing out. What you want, mother, is what I want.
Jocasta. Then here is the first thing I want to know. What is it, to be robbed of your country? Is it a great evil?
Polyneices. The greatest. And it is worse in the living than in the telling.
Jocasta. What is it like? What is the hard part, for exiles?
Polyneices. One thing above all. You cannot say what you think.
Jocasta. That is a slave's condition you are describing. Not saying what you think.
Polyneices. You have to put up with the stupidity of the people in power.
Jocasta. That is painful too, to play the fool alongside fools.
Polyneices. But for profit you have to be a slave, against your nature.
Jocasta. Hopes feed exiles, they say.
Polyneices. They look at you with lovely eyes. But they keep you waiting.
Jocasta. Doesn't time show them up for the empty things they are?
Polyneices. They have a sweetness of their own for a man in trouble, like love does.
Jocasta. And where did you get your living, before your marriage found you one?
Polyneices. Some days I had enough for the day. Some days I had nothing.
Jocasta. Your father's friends, his guest-friends, did they not help you?
Polyneices. Be prosperous. Friends are nothing once you are down.
Jocasta. Did your good birth not lift you up high?
Polyneices. Having nothing is the evil. My birth did not feed me.
Jocasta. So a man's country, it seems, is the dearest thing he has.
Polyneices. You could not even put into words how dear it is.
Jocasta. How did you come to Argos? What was your idea?
Polyneices. Apollo gave Adrastus an oracle.
Jocasta. What oracle? What are you telling me? I do not follow.
Polyneices. To marry his daughters to a boar and a lion.
Jocasta. And what did you have to do with the names of animals, my child?
Polyneices. I do not know. The god called me to my fate.
Jocasta. Yes, the god is wise. But how did you win your wife?
Polyneices. It was night. I came to Adrastus's porch.
Jocasta. Looking for a bed, wandering, an exile?
Polyneices. That was it. And then another exile came there after me.
Jocasta. Who was that? He was miserable too, then.
Polyneices. Tydeus. They say Oeneus is his father.
Jocasta. And why did Adrastus compare the two of you to wild animals?
Polyneices. Because we came to blows over the bed.
Jocasta. That was when the son of Talaus understood the oracle?
Polyneices. Yes. And he gave the two of us his two daughters.
Jocasta. So are you lucky in your marriage, or unlucky?
Polyneices. I have no complaint against it, so far.
Jocasta. And how did you persuade an army to follow you here?
Polyneices. Adrastus swore this to his two sons-in-law, Tydeus and me, since he is married to my wife's sister: that he would bring us both back home, and me first. Many of the leading men of Argos and of Mycenae are here with me, doing me a favour I hate and cannot do without, because it is my own city I am marching against. I have sworn to the gods that I lifted the spear against the people I love most against my will, when they were willing enough. But the undoing of these evils comes down to you, mother: reconcile the people of one blood, and put an end to the trouble for me and for you and for the whole city. It has been sung a long time, but I will say it anyway: money is what people value most, and of everything in human life it has the most power. That is what I have come here for, with ten thousand spears at my back. A man of good family who is poor is nothing.
Chorus. And here is Eteocles coming to the reconciliation. It is your job, Jocasta, their mother, to say the kind of words that will bring your sons together.
(Eteocles comes in from the city, armed.)
Eteocles. Mother, I am here. I came to do you this favour. What do I have to do? Let somebody start the talking. I broke off posting the citizens in double companies round the walls to come and hear this arbitration of yours between us, the one you persuaded me to admit this man inside the walls under truce for.
Jocasta. Wait. Speed does not carry justice with it. Slow words get the most wisdom done. Loosen that terrible look on your face and the breath of your anger. You are not looking at the severed head of the Gorgon. You are looking at your brother, who has come. And you, Polyneices, turn your face towards your brother. If you look at the same point he is looking at, you will speak better and take in what he says better. I want to give you both one piece of good advice. When a man is angry with a friend and meets him face to face and looks him in the eye, he should consider only what he has come about, and keep no memory of the old evils. Polyneices, my child, your speech comes first, because you have come leading an army of Argives, and you say you have been wronged. May some god be the judge, and reconcile these evils.
Polyneices. The words of truth are simple. What is just does not need elaborate explanations; it carries its own fitness inside it. It is the unjust argument that is sick inside, and needs clever medicines. I looked ahead, for my father's house, to what was mine and what was his. I wanted to escape the curses Oedipus once spoke against us, so I left this country of my own free will, and I let him rule our homeland for the circle of one year, on the understanding that I would take my turn and rule again after him, and not come at him in hatred and envy, and do some harm and suffer some, which is what happens. He agreed to it. He swore it by the gods. And he has done nothing that he promised. He is holding the throne himself, and my share of our house along with it.
And I am ready, even now: give me what is mine, and I will send the army out of this country, and live in my own house for my turn, and hand it back to him for an equal time, turn and turn about. I will not sack my homeland, and I will not bring the fixed ladders up against its towers. Only if I do not get justice will I try to. I call the gods to witness this: that I am acting justly in everything, and it is without justice that I am being robbed of my homeland, the most unholy thing there is. That is the whole of it, mother, point by point. I have not wrapped it in twisted phrases. It is just, to the clever and to the simple alike, or so it seems to me.
Chorus. I was not brought up in the land of the Greeks. But to me, what you say makes sense.
Eteocles. If the same thing were fine and clever to everyone, there would be no disputed quarrels among human beings. As it is, there is nothing alike and nothing equal among mortals, except in the names. The thing itself does not exist. I will hide nothing from you, mother. I would go to where the stars and the sun rise, and under the earth, if I were able to do it, to hold Power, the greatest of the gods. So this good thing, mother, I have no wish to hand to another man rather than keep it for myself. It is cowardice to lose the greater and take the less. And there is this besides: I would be ashamed to let him come with weapons and ravage the land and get what he wants. That would be a disgrace to Thebes, if I gave up my sceptre to him out of fear of a Mycenaean spear. He should not have tried to make terms with weapons, mother. Words can do everything that an enemy's iron could do. Still, if he wants to live in this land on any other footing, he may. But that one thing I will not willingly let go. When I can rule, am I to be his slave? So let the fire come, let the swords come, harness your horses, fill the plains with chariots: I will not hand my power to him. If a man must do wrong, then to do wrong for the sake of power is the finest wrong there is. In everything else, let him be pious.
Chorus. Fine words should not be spent on deeds that are not fine. That is not fine. It is bitter to justice.
Jocasta. My child, Eteocles, not everything about old age is bad. Experience has something to say that is wiser than the young. Why are you reaching for Ambition, the worst of all the gods, my boy? Do not. She is an unjust goddess. She has gone into many homes and many prosperous cities, and come out again, and left the people who dealt with her in ruins. And she is the one you are mad for. It is a finer thing, my child, to honour Equality, who binds friend to friend, city to city, ally to ally, always. Equality is what holds steady among human beings, whereas the less is always the enemy of the more, and that is where the day of hatred begins. It was Equality that laid down measures for men, and the divisions of weights, and marked out numbers. The lightless eye of night and the light of the sun walk their yearly circle as equals, and neither of them is jealous when it has to give way. So the sun and the night are servants of mortals, and you will not put up with holding an equal share of the house and giving the same to him? Then where is justice?
Why do you honour Power so far beyond what she deserves, injustice with luck on its side, and think her such a great thing? Is it worth so much to be stared at? That is empty. Or do you want a great deal of trouble to go with a great deal of property in your house? What is "more"? It is only a name. What is enough is plenty, for people who keep themselves in hand. Mortals do not own their possessions. We hold what belongs to the gods, and look after it, and when they want it, they take it back. Wealth is not sure. It lasts a day.
Come, suppose I put two questions to you at once and ask you: do you want to be king, or do you want to save your city? Will you say, to be king? And what if he beats you, and the Argive spears beat down the spear of Cadmus's men? You will see this city of Thebes broken, and you will see many captive girls forced by enemy men and ravaged. So this wealth you are looking to hold will turn out to be a pain to Thebes. And you, you have your Ambition.
That is what I say to you. And to you, Polyneices, I say this. Adrastus did you a stupid favour, and you were a fool too, coming to lay waste your own city. Come, if you take this land, which may it never happen, then by the gods, how will you set up a trophy to Zeus? How will you begin the sacrifice after conquering your own homeland, and what will you write on the spoils by the streams of Inachus? "Polyneices burned Thebes and dedicated these shields to the gods"? My child, may you never win a name like that from the Greeks. And if instead you are beaten, and his side comes out on top, how will you go back to Argos, leaving ten thousand dead behind you? Someone is sure to say, "Adrastus, that was an evil match you made. For one bride's wedding, we are all destroyed." You are chasing two evils, my child: to lose what you have there, and to fall in the middle of what you are trying here.
Let it go, both of you, this too much. Let it go. When the folly of two men meets in the same place, it is the most hateful evil there is.
Chorus. Gods, turn these evils away, and give the sons of Oedipus some way to come to terms.
Eteocles. Mother, this is no longer a contest of words. The time we spend in between is wasted, and all your good will accomplishes nothing. We will never come to terms on anything but what has been said already: that I hold the sceptre and am king of this land. So spare me your long lectures, and let me be. And you: get outside these walls, or die.
Polyneices. At whose hands? Who is so impossible to wound that he could drive a murderous sword into me and not carry off the same death himself?
Eteocles. He is near. Not far off. Do you see my hands?
Polyneices. I see them. But wealth is a coward, and it loves its own life. That is the evil in it.
Eteocles. Then why did you bring so many men to fight a man who is nothing?
Polyneices. Because a safe general is better than a bold one.
Eteocles. You are a boaster, trusting in the truce that keeps you from dying.
Polyneices. It keeps you alive too. For the second time, I demand the sceptre and my share of the land.
Eteocles. I take no demands. I am going to live in my own house.
Polyneices. Holding more than your share?
Eteocles. I am. Now get out of the country.
Polyneices. Altars of my fathers' gods —
Eteocles. Which you are here to sack.
Polyneices. Hear me —
Eteocles. Who would hear you? You have marched against your homeland.
Polyneices. And temples of the gods who ride white horses —
Eteocles. Who hate you.
Polyneices. I am being driven out of my homeland —
Eteocles. Yes. Because you came to drive us out.
Polyneices. Unjustly, gods.
Eteocles. Call on the gods in Mycenae, not here.
Polyneices. You were born unholy —
Eteocles. But not my homeland's enemy, as you are.
Polyneices. You, who are driving me out with no share.
Eteocles. And I will kill you as well.
Polyneices. Father, do you hear what is being done to me?
Eteocles. Yes. And he hears what you are doing.
Polyneices. And you, mother?
Eteocles. It is forbidden for you to speak the name of your mother.
Polyneices. My city.
Eteocles. Go to Argos, and call on the waters of Lerna.
Polyneices. I am going. Do not trouble yourself. Mother, I thank you.
Eteocles. Get out of the land.
Polyneices. I am going. But let me see my father.
Eteocles. You will not get that.
Polyneices. Then my sisters, the unmarried girls.
Eteocles. You will never see them either.
Polyneices. My sisters.
Eteocles. Why are you calling on them? You are their worst enemy.
Polyneices. Mother, at least you: be well.
Jocasta. Well. Yes, I am doing wonderfully well, child.
Polyneices. I am your son no longer.
Jocasta. I was born to a great deal of misery.
Polyneices. Because this man is treating me with outrage.
Eteocles. And I am being outraged in return.
Polyneices. Where will you take your stand in front of the towers?
Eteocles. Why do you ask me that?
Polyneices. I will set myself opposite you, to kill you.
Eteocles. I have the same desire.
Jocasta. Oh, I am wretched. What are you going to do, my children?
Polyneices. It will show for itself.
Jocasta. Will you not run from your father's Furies?
Eteocles. Let the whole house go to ruin.
Polyneices. Yes. Soon enough my sword will not lie idle any longer. It will be red with blood. I call the land that raised me to witness, and the gods, that I am being driven out of this country dishonoured, suffering pitiful things, like a slave, and not a son of the same father, Oedipus, just as much as he is. And if anything happens to you, my city, do not blame me. Blame him. I did not come willingly, and unwillingly I am driven out of the land. And you, Lord Apollo, guardian of the streets, and these halls, goodbye, and the friends I grew up with, and the statues of the gods where the sheep are offered. I do not know whether I will ever speak to you again. But my hopes are not asleep yet. I trust in them, and in the gods, that I will kill this man and be master of this land of Thebes.
Eteocles. Get out of the country. It was a true name our father gave you, with a god's foresight: Polyneices, the man of many quarrels.
(Jocasta goes into the house. Polyneices goes out toward the Argive camp, and Eteocles into the palace.)
Chorus. Cadmus came to this land from Tyre, and a four-footed heifer, never broken, dropped itself down at his feet, and fulfilled the oracle, for the god's word had told him to settle there, on the plains that carry wheat, and make his home where the lovely river water comes up over the fields, the fields of Dirce, green, the deep-sown fields. There his mother bore Dionysus, from her marriage to Zeus, and the ivy wound its curling wreath round him, still a baby, and covered him with its green shoots, shade over shade, and blessed him: a Bacchic dance for the girls of Thebes and the women who cry Euoi.
Chorus. There was the murderous dragon of Ares, a savage-hearted guard, watching the running springs and the green streams with the wandering pupils of its eyes. Cadmus came for water to wash his hands and destroyed it with a lump of marble, striking the murderous head with a throw of his beast-killing arm, and at the word of Pallas, Zeus's daughter who had no mother, he threw the teeth into the deep-sown fields, to fall on the ground. And out of it the earth sent up a sight in full armour, over the topmost edge of the soil, and iron-hearted slaughter joined them to the dear earth again. It wet the ground with their blood, the ground that had shown them to the sunlit breath of the air.
Chorus. And you, Epaphus, born long ago from Io, our first mother, child of Zeus: I called you, I called you, with a barbarian cry, io, with barbarian prayers. Come, come to this land. Your descendants founded it, and the goddesses of the two names, Persephone and dear Demeter, the goddess who is queen of all, Earth, the nurse of all, took it for their own. Send the goddesses who carry the torches, and defend this land. Everything is easy for the gods.
(Eteocles comes out of the palace with a servant.)
Eteocles. You, go and fetch Creon, the son of Menoeceus, my mother Jocasta's brother. Tell him this: that I want to put my head together with his about the city's business, private and public, before we go into battle and set the army in its ranks. But no. He is sparing your feet the trouble. He is here; I can see him walking toward my house.
Creon. I have been a long way round looking for you, my lord Eteocles. I have been all round the gates of Thebes and the guard posts, hunting for you.
Eteocles. And I wanted to see you, Creon. When I went and put it to Polyneices face to face, I found the terms of peace a long way short.
Creon. I hear he has his mind set on more than Thebes, trusting in his marriage tie with Adrastus and in his army. But that we must leave hanging on the gods. What stands most in our way is what I have come to tell you.
Eteocles. What is it? I do not follow you.
Creon. Someone has come in, a prisoner taken from the Argives.
Eteocles. And what does he say is the latest news from there?
Creon. That the Argive army means to wrap the city of Cadmus's people in weapons, right round the towers, at once.
Eteocles. Then the city of Cadmus must carry its weapons out.
Creon. Out where? Are you so young you cannot see what you should see?
Eteocles. Out beyond those trenches, to fight straight away.
Creon. This country's numbers are small. Theirs are endless.
Eteocles. I know those men. They are bold in words.
Creon. Argos carries some weight among the Greeks.
Eteocles. Do not worry. I will soon fill the plain with their dead.
Creon. I would like that. But I see a great deal of hard work in it.
Eteocles. I will not keep my army inside the walls, I tell you.
Creon. And yet winning is all a matter of good planning.
Eteocles. So you want me to turn to some other road?
Creon. Every road, before the whole risk is run at once.
Eteocles. What if we attacked them at night, from ambush?
Creon. Yes, if you can get back here safely when it goes wrong.
Eteocles. Night is even-handed, but it gives more to the man who dares.
Creon. The dark of night is a terrible place to meet disaster.
Eteocles. Then shall I attack them with the spear while they are at their dinner?
Creon. That would give them a fright. But we need to win.
Eteocles. The ford of Dirce is deep, though, if they have to fall back across it.
Creon. Nothing is as good as keeping a good guard.
Eteocles. What if we rode the Argive army down with the cavalry?
Creon. There too the army is fenced all round with chariots.
Eteocles. Then what am I to do? Hand the city to the enemy?
Creon. Certainly not. Think it through. You are a clever man.
Eteocles. And what forethought is cleverer than mine?
Creon. Seven men, they say, or this is what I have heard —
Eteocles. Assigned to do what? Seven is not much strength.
Creon. To command companies, one posted at each of the seven gates.
Eteocles. Then what do we do? I will not sit and wait for the moment when there is nothing left to be done.
Creon. You choose seven men too, to set against them at the gates.
Eteocles. To lead companies, or to fight alone with the spear?
Creon. To lead companies. Pick out the very bravest.
Eteocles. I understand. To stop them scaling the walls.
Creon. And second-in-commands with them. One man does not see everything.
Eteocles. Do I pick them for courage, or for a clear head in planning?
Creon. Both. Either one, left on its own, is nothing.
Eteocles. It will be done. I will go to the city of seven towers and post the captains at the gates, as you say, matching them man for man against the enemy. To tell you each man's name would take a long time, with the enemy camped under our very walls. But I will go, so that my hands do not lie idle. And may I get my brother face to face, stand up to him in battle, take him with my spear, and kill him, for coming to sack my homeland.
The marriage of my sister Antigone and your son Haemon: if I stumble in my luck somehow, that is yours to see to. The promise I made before, I confirm now, as I go out. You are my mother's brother; why make a long speech of it? Look after her in a way that is worthy of you, for your own sake and for mine. As for my father, he has been convicted of folly against himself, blinding his own eyes. I do not have much praise for him. And if he gets the chance, he will kill us with his curses.
One thing we have left undone: to find out from the bird-reader Teiresias whether he has any prophecy to tell. I will send your son Menoeceus, who carries your father's name, to bring Teiresias here, Creon. He will come and talk to you gladly. I have found fault with his prophet's craft before this, to his face, so he has a grievance against me.
And this charge I lay on the city and on you, Creon: if my side wins, the body of Polyneices is never to be buried in this Theban soil, and whoever buries him dies, even if it is one of our own. That is what I have to say to you. And to my servants I say this: bring out my weapons and the armour that goes all round me, so that we can set out now for the contest of the spear that is waiting for us, with Justice on our side to bring the victory. And to Caution, the most useful of the gods, we pray: bring this city safely through.
(Eteocles goes out with his servants. Creon stays.)
Chorus. Ares, god of so much suffering, why, why are you possessed by blood and death, out of tune with the feasts of Dionysus? Not for the dances where the young girls wear their garlands, in the beauty of their youth, do you let your hair fly loose and sing to the breath of the pipe a song with the Graces in it, who make the dance. No. You breathe on the Argive army, armed men, with a thirst for the blood of Thebes, and lead your revel out in front of them, the revel with no flute at all. You do not come in the whirl of the fawnskin and the madness of the wands. You come on chariots, with bridles, four-hooved, uncut horses, riding down to the waters of Ismenus, breathing into the Argives hatred of the Sown Men, dressing an armed troop of shield-bearers in bronze to face our walls of stone. Strife is a terrible god, who planned these sorrows for the kings of this land, the sons of Labdacus, who have suffered so much.
Chorus. Cithaeron, valley of holy leaves, full of wild beasts, the snow-fed eye of Artemis: if only you had never raised the child put out to die, Jocasta's baby, Oedipus, thrown out of his home, his ankles marked by gold-bound pins. And if only the winged girl had never come, that monster from the mountains, a grief to this land, the Sphinx with her songs that had no music in them, who once came right up to our walls and with her four clawed feet carried off the sons of Cadmus into the untrodden light of the sky, sent up against the people of Cadmus by Hades under the ground. And now another strife, god-cursed, is coming into flower between the children of Oedipus, in the house and in the city. What is not fine can never be fine, and neither can children born against the law, a mother's labour, a father's pollution. She came to the bed of her own blood.
Chorus. You bore them, Earth, you bore them once, I learned it, I learned it once at home, the story told in a barbarian tongue, the race grown from the teeth of the dragon with the red crest, the eater of beasts: the finest disgrace Thebes ever had, its glory and its shame. Once the children of heaven came to the wedding of Harmonia, and to the lyre, to Amphion's lyre, the walls of Thebes rose, and its towers stood up between the crossing of the two rivers, where Dirce waters the green plain in front of Ismenus. And Io, the horned first mother, gave birth to the kings of Cadmus's line. And this city, changing from one blessing to another, ten thousand of them, stands on the heights, crowned with the wreaths of Ares.
(Teiresias comes in, old and blind, led by his daughter, with Creon's son Menoeceus beside them. He wears a golden crown.)
Teiresias. Lead the way, daughter. You are the eye for my blind feet, the way a star is to sailors. Set my steps here, on the level ground, and walk ahead, so we do not stumble; your father is weak. And keep the lots safe for me in your girl's hand, the ones I drew when I read the signs of the birds, sitting in the holy seat where I give my prophecies. Menoeceus, my boy, son of Creon, tell me: how much of the road through the city is left, to reach your father? My knees are failing me. I have come a long, hard walk, and I can barely get through it.
Creon. Courage, Teiresias. You are near your friends. You have brought your foot into harbour. Take hold of him, child. Every wagon, and every old man's foot, likes to wait for a hand from outside to lighten the load.
Teiresias. Well, then. Here we are. Why did you send for me in such a hurry, Creon?
Creon. I have not forgotten. But first gather your strength and get your breath back, and shake off the steep climb of the road.
Teiresias. I am worn through with tiredness, I admit it. I was brought here only yesterday from the land of Erechtheus's sons, from Athens. There was a war there too, against the spear of Eumolpus, and I gave the people of Cecrops their glorious victory. And this golden crown, which you can see, I have as the first fruits of the spoils taken from the enemy.
Creon. I take your crown of victory as an omen. We are lying in the surge of a war, as you know, against the spear of the Argives, and it is a great contest for Thebes. Our king, Eteocles, has already gone, dressed in his armour, to fight the strength of Mycenae. He has charged me to learn from you what we should do to have the best chance of saving the city.
Teiresias. For Eteocles' sake I would have shut my mouth and kept my prophecies to myself. But you want to learn, so I will tell you. This land has been sick a long time, Creon, ever since Laius fathered a child in the teeth of the gods, and begot poor Oedipus to be his own mother's husband. The bloody destruction of his eyes was the gods' clever device, and a lesson held up to Greece. The sons of Oedipus wanted to cover it over with time, as if they could outrun the gods, and they made a stupid mistake. They gave their father no honours and no way out of the house, and they turned an unlucky man savage; so he breathed terrible curses at them, in his sickness, and in the disgrace they had added to it. And I, what did I not do, what words did I not say, that I ended up hated by the sons of Oedipus?
Death is close to them, Creon, each at the other's hand. Many dead will fall on top of many dead, Argive weapons mixed with the weapons of Cadmus's men, and they will give the land of Thebes bitter cause for mourning. And you, poor city, you are being dug up by the roots along with them, unless someone listens to what I say. The first thing would have been for none of Oedipus's blood to be a citizen of this land, or its king, since they are possessed by a god and will turn the city over. But since the evil is stronger than the good, there is one other way to save it. But no. It is not safe for me to say it, and it is bitter for the people whose luck it is to supply the city with its saving medicine. I am going. Goodbye. I am one man among many, and what is coming I will suffer, if I have to. What else can I do?
Creon. Stop there, old man.
Teiresias. Do not grab at me.
Creon. Wait. Why are you running away?
Teiresias. It is your luck that is running from you. Not me.
Creon. Tell the citizens and the city how they can be saved.
Teiresias. You want that now. Very soon you will not want it.
Creon. How could I not want to save my father's land?
Teiresias. You really want to hear it, then? You are set on it?
Creon. What should I be more eager about than that?
Teiresias. Then you may hear my prophecies now. But first there is one thing I want to know for certain. Where is Menoeceus, who led me here?
Creon. He is not far off. He is right beside you.
Teiresias. Then let him go away, well out of hearing of my prophecies.
Creon. He is my son. He will keep quiet about what needs keeping quiet.
Teiresias. You want me to tell you with him standing here?
Creon. Yes. He will be glad to hear how the city is going to be saved.
Teiresias. Then hear the road my prophecies take. This is what you must do to save the city of Cadmus. You must cut the throat of Menoeceus here, your own son, for his country. You asked for your luck yourself.
Creon. What are you saying? What is this story you are telling me, old man?
Teiresias. What is so, is so. And you must do it.
Creon. So much evil, said in so short a time.
Teiresias. Evil for you. For your country, great good, and her salvation.
Creon. I did not hear it. I did not listen. Goodbye to the city.
Teiresias. This is not the same man. He is backing away from it.
Creon. Go, and good luck to you. I do not need your prophecies.
Teiresias. Has the truth died, because you have had bad luck?
Creon. By your knees, by your grey hair, I beg you—
Teiresias. Why are you falling at my feet? You are asking for evils that cannot be kept off.
Creon. Be quiet. Do not tell the city any of this.
Teiresias. You are telling me to do wrong. I will not be quiet.
Creon. What are you going to do to me, then? Kill my child?
Teiresias. That will be other people's business. Mine is to speak.
Creon. And where did this evil come from, on me and on my son?
Teiresias. You are right to ask me that, and to come into the argument. This boy must be killed in the den where the earth-born dragon was born to keep watch over the springs of Dirce, and his throat must give its blood to the ground as a drink-offering to Cadmus's earth. It is because of the old anger of Ares, who is avenging the killing of his earth-born dragon. Do this and you will have Ares as your ally. If the earth takes fruit for fruit and human blood for blood, you will have her kind to you again, the earth who once sent up for us a crop of Sown Men in golden helmets. But one of that race has to die, one who was born from the dragon's jaw. And you are the last of the Sown Men left to us here, pure on both sides, your mother's and your father's, you and your sons. Haemon's marriage keeps him from the knife. He is not unmarried: even if he has not touched the bed yet, he has a wife. But this boy is a colt still loose, and he belongs to this city. If he dies, he can save his father's land. He will make a bitter homecoming for Adrastus and the Argives, throwing a black death over their eyes, and he will make Thebes famous. Choose one of these two fates. Save your son, or save the city.
That is everything I have for you. Lead me home, child. Anyone who practises the art of reading the burnt offerings is a fool. If he happens to see something his clients hate, he is hated by the people he reads the birds for. And if he takes pity on the people consulting him and lies to them, he wrongs the gods. Apollo should have been the only prophet men had. He is afraid of nobody.
(Teiresias goes, led by his daughter.)
Chorus. Creon, why are you silent? Why have you let your voice fall dead? I am no less stunned than you are.
Creon. What is there to say? It is plain enough what my answer is. I will never come to such a pass that I cut my son's throat and hand him to the city. Every human being alive loves his children, and nobody would give his own son to be killed. Let nobody praise me for it while he kills my children. I myself, since I am standing in the ripe part of my life, am ready to die to set my country free.
Come on, boy. Before the whole city hears this, forget the wild prophecies of seers, and run. Get out of this country as fast as you can. He will go to the rulers and the generals and the captains at the seven gates and tell them all of it. If we are ahead of him, you are safe. If you are late, we are finished, and you die.
Menoeceus. Where am I to run to, then? What city? Which of our guest-friends?
Creon. Wherever you will be furthest out of the way of this country.
Menoeceus. Then it is for you to say where, and for me to get there.
Creon. Go past Delphi—
Menoeceus. And where do I go then, father?
Creon. Into the land of Aetolia.
Menoeceus. And from there, where do I cross to?
Creon. The soil of Thesprotia.
Menoeceus. The holy floor of Dodona?
Creon. You have it.
Menoeceus. And what protection will that be for me?
Creon. The god will send you on your way.
Menoeceus. And money? Where does that come from?
Creon. I will send the gold along.
Menoeceus. Good, father. That is a good plan. Go now. I am going to your sister, Jocasta, I mean, the woman whose breast I first sucked when I lost my mother and was left an orphan, unyoked. I will say goodbye to her and then I will save my life. Go on, go. Do not let anything of yours hold me back.
(Creon goes.)
Women, how neatly I took my father's fear away, stealing it with words, so that I get what I want. He is smuggling me out of the country, robbing the city of its luck and handing me over to cowardice. In an old man that is forgivable. In me there is no forgiveness for it: to turn traitor to the country that gave me birth. So that you know, then: I am going to save the city, and I am going to give my life and die for this land. It would be shameful otherwise. Men who are free of any prophecy, who have not come under any necessity laid on them by the gods, stand shield to shield and are not afraid to die, fighting for their country in front of her towers. And I, betraying my father and my brother and my own city, walk out of the country like a coward? Wherever I lived, I would be shown for a bad man. No. By Zeus among the stars, and by Ares the blood-red, who set the Sown Men up as lords of this land when they rose out of the earth, I will go, and I will stand on the top of the battlements, and I will cut my own throat over the dragon's deep black den, where the seer said, and I will set this land free. That is the whole speech. I am going now, to give the city a gift that is nothing to be ashamed of, my death, and to rid this country of its sickness. If every man took whatever good he could do and worked it through to the end and brought it in to the common store for his country, cities would have fewer evils to live through, and they would do well from then on.
(Menoeceus goes.)
Chorus. You came, you came, winged thing, child of the earth and of the snake-woman down below, to snatch the sons of Cadmus, all death, all groaning, half a girl, a monster made to kill, with wings that never rested and claws that ate raw meat. From the country round Dirce's stream you lifted young men into the air, with a song no lyre would play, a Fury of destruction, and you brought, you brought grief to our country, murderous grief. Murderous was the god who did this to us. Mothers' wailing, girls' wailing, went groaning through the houses. A cry of woe, a song of woe, one after another took it up in turn across the town. The groaning, and the echo of it, were like thunder every time the winged girl carried one more man out of the city.
Chorus. And in time there came, sent out from Delphi, Oedipus, the long-suffering man, to this land of Thebes. We were glad then. Then came the grief. He won the riddle, and the prize for winning was a marriage, an unholy marriage, with his mother, poor wretch, and he stained the city with it. And through blood he passes on into a filthy contest, throwing his sons down into it with his curses, the miserable man. We admire him, we admire him, the boy who is going to his death for his father's land, leaving Creon his tears, but making the seven-towered gates of this country victorious. Let us be mothers like that, let us have children like that, dear Pallas, you who brought the dragon's blood to the ground with a thrown stone, when you set Cadmus's mind moving to the deed, from which some ruin sent by the gods came rushing on this land, to snatch and tear.
(A Messenger, one of Eteocles's men, comes in and beats on the door.)
Messenger. Hey. Who is at the gates of the house? Open up. Bring Jocasta out of the house. Hey, again. It is taking a long time, but come out all the same. Listen to me, famous wife of Oedipus. Stop your mourning and your tears of grief.
(Jocasta comes out.)
Jocasta. My dear friend, you have not come with news of disaster, have you? Eteocles dead? You have always marched beside his shield, keeping the enemy's spears off him. What is this new word you have come to bring me? Is my son dead or alive? Tell me.
Messenger. He is alive. Do not be afraid of that. Let me take that fear off you.
Jocasta. Well? How are the walls with the seven towers holding?
Messenger. They stand unbroken. The city has not been taken.
Jocasta. Did they come into danger from the Argive spear?
Messenger. To the very edge of it. But the fighting men of Cadmus proved stronger than the spear of Mycenae.
Jocasta. Tell me one thing, by the gods, if you know anything about Polyneices. That matters to me too, whether he still sees the light.
Messenger. Your sons are alive, the pair of them, as of today.
Jocasta. Bless you. How did you drive the Argive spear back from the gates, shut in behind the towers as you were? Tell me, so that I can go into the house and cheer the old blind man, now that this land is safe.
Messenger. After Creon's son, the boy who died for his country, had stood on the top of the towers and driven a black-hilted sword through his throat to save this land, your son divided the army into seven companies with seven captains and posted them at the seven gates to guard against the Argive spear. He set horsemen in reserve behind horsemen, and armed men behind the shield-bearers, so that wherever the wall was sick, help with the spear would be close at hand. From the high citadel we watched the Argive army with its white shields leave Teumessus, and near the ditch they closed on the town of Cadmus's land at a run. The war-cry and the trumpets rang out together from their side and from our walls.
First to the Neistan gate came Parthenopaeus, the huntress's son, leading a company bristling with close-packed shields. He had his own family emblem in the middle of his shield: Atalanta bringing down the Aetolian boar with a long-range bow. To the Proetid gate went the prophet Amphiaraus, with the animals for sacrifice on his chariot. He carried no boastful emblem. His weapons were modest and plain. To the Ogygian gate marched lord Hippomedon, with an emblem in the middle of his shield: Argus who sees everything, staring out of eyes stippled all over him, some of the eyes open with the rising of the stars and some closing as they set, as we could see afterwards, when he was dead. At the Homoloid gate Tydeus had his post, a lion's skin on his shield with the mane bristling, and in his right hand the Titan Prometheus carried a torch, as if to burn the city. Your own Polyneices brought the fighting to the Crenaean gate. The emblem on his shield was the mares of Potniae, running mad and leaping with fright, turned somehow by pivots on the inside, right under the handgrip, so that they seemed to have really gone mad. And Capaneus, who thinks himself no less than Ares when it comes to a fight, led his company against the Electran gate. On the iron back of his shield was stamped an earth-born giant carrying a whole city on his shoulders, levered up off its foundations with crowbars: a hint to us of what our city was going to suffer. And at the seventh gate was Adrastus, with a hundred snakes painted to fill his shield, the hydra on his left arm, the pride of Argos, and out of the middle of the walls the snakes were carrying off the children of Cadmus in their jaws. I had a view of every one of them, because I was carrying the password along the line to the captains of the companies.
To begin with we fought them with bows and thonged javelins, with long-range slings and crashing stones. And as we were winning the fight, Tydeus and your son suddenly shouted out: "Sons of Danaus, before you are shredded by their missiles, why are you waiting? All of you, together, throw yourselves at the gates, light troops, horsemen, the men on the chariots." When they heard that cry there was not one of them idle. Many fell with their heads streaming blood, and on our side too you could have seen men in front of the walls tumbling to the ground like acrobats, thick on the ground, breathing their last, and wetting the dry earth with streams of blood.
Then the Arcadian, not an Argive, Atalanta's son, threw himself at the gates like a whirlwind and shouted for fire and pickaxes, to dig the city up out of the ground. But Periclymenus, the sea-god's son, stopped him in his frenzy by dropping a stone on his head that would have filled a wagon, a coping-stone off the battlements. It smashed his fair-haired head to powder and burst the seams of the bones of his skull, and the cheek that had only just turned red with youth ran with blood. He will not carry his life home to his mother with the lovely bow, the girl of Maenalus.
When your son saw that this gate was doing well, he went on to the others, and I followed him. I saw Tydeus and a close-packed line of his shield-men hurling their Aetolian spears up into the very mouth of the towers, so that our men left the edge of the battlements and ran. But your son gathered them again, like a huntsman calling in his dogs, and posted them back on the towers. And we hurried on to other gates, once we had stopped the sickness there.
And Capaneus. How can I tell you how mad he was? He came on carrying the climbing-rungs of a long-necked ladder, and this was his boast: that not even the holy fire of Zeus would keep him from taking the city from the top of its citadel. And he was still shouting it as he climbed, under a rain of stones, with his body wound up under his shield, changing his footing rung by smooth rung up the ladder. And just as he was stepping over the coping of the wall, Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt. The earth boomed, so that everyone was afraid, and from the ladder his limbs were slung apart from each other like slingshot, his hair to Olympus and his blood to the ground, and his arms and legs went spinning round like the wheel of Ixion, and the body fell to the earth on fire.
When Adrastus saw that Zeus was his army's enemy, he pulled the Argive force back outside the ditch. But our men had seen the sign from Zeus was on our side, and they drove out the chariots, horsemen and armed men together, and closed their spears with the Argives in the middle of their ranks. And every kind of evil was there at once. Men were dying, men were pitched over chariot-rails, wheels leaped into the air, axles piled on axles, and the dead were heaped on the dead. So we have kept the towers of this land from being dug up, for today. But whether this country will have good luck from now on rests with the gods. Even today it was one of the gods who saved her.
Chorus. Winning is a fine thing. And if the gods have a better judgement in store for us, I would be a lucky woman.
Jocasta. The gods and luck have done well by us. My sons are alive, and the land has escaped. But it is Creon who seems to have got the bitter fruit of my marriage to Oedipus, poor man, and lost his son: good luck for the city, and grief for him alone. But go back over it for me. What do my two sons mean to do next?
Messenger. Leave the rest alone. So far you are lucky.
Jocasta. Now you have made me suspicious. I cannot leave it alone.
Messenger. What more do you want than your sons safe?
Jocasta. To hear whether I am going to be lucky from here on too.
Messenger. Let me go. Your son is out there without his shield-bearer.
Jocasta. You are hiding some evil, and covering it up in the dark.
Messenger. I would not tell you bad news on top of your good news.
Jocasta. You will, unless you sprout wings and fly off into the sky.
Messenger. Aiai. Why did you not let me go after my good news, instead of making me tell the bad? Your two sons mean to do a thing of the most shameful daring: to fight one against one, apart from the whole army. They said this to the Argives and the men of Cadmus together, a speech I wish they had never made. Eteocles began it. He stood up on a high tower, ordered silence to be proclaimed to the army, and said: "Generals of the land of Greece, chiefs of the Danaans who came here, and people of Cadmus, do not sell your lives for Polyneices' sake, or for mine. I am going to take this danger off you myself, and fight my brother alone. If I kill him, I will keep my house alone. If I lose, I will hand it over to him alone. Argives, give up the contest and go home to your country, and do not leave your lives here. And there are enough of the Sown Men lying dead already." That was his speech. Your son Polyneices came running out of the ranks and approved it. And all the Argives roared their approval, and the people of Cadmus too, because they thought it was fair. On those terms they made a truce, and in the ground between the two armies the generals swore oaths to keep it.
And then the two young men, old Oedipus's sons, were covering themselves in bronze armour, and their friends were dressing them: the best of the Sown Men dressing the champion of this land, and the leading Argives dressing the other. There they stood, shining, and their colour did not change, and they were wild to let fly their spears at each other. Their friends came up to them from either side, one after another, and encouraged them with words, and this is what they said: "Polyneices, it rests with you to set up a statue of Zeus as a trophy and to give Argos a glorious name." And to Eteocles: "Now you are fighting for your city. Now, win this and you hold the sceptre." That is what they said, urging them on to the fight. And the prophets were killing sheep, and watching the points of the flames on the fire, and the cracks, and the wet reek that means defeat, and the peak of the flame, which marks two things at once: the sign of victory and the sign of the losers.
So if you have any strength, or any clever words, or any love-spell of a charm, go. Hold your children back from this terrible contest. The danger is very great, and the terrible prize you will win for it is tears, if you are robbed of both your sons on this one day.
(The Messenger goes back the way he came, toward the field.)
Jocasta. Antigone, my child, come out of the house. The way the gods have set things for you now is no time for dancing or the things girls do. There are two brave men, and they are your brothers, and they are swerving toward death, and you and your mother must stop them from dying at each other's hands.
(Antigone comes out of the house.)
Antigone. Mother who bore me, what new terror are you crying out to your friends in front of this house?
Jocasta. Daughter, your brothers' lives are going down.
Antigone. What do you mean?
Jocasta. They have set themselves to fight one spear against one.
Antigone. Oh, no. What are you going to tell me, mother?
Jocasta. Nothing kind. Follow me.
Antigone. Where? Leaving the women's rooms?
Jocasta. Through the army.
Antigone. I am ashamed to face the crowd.
Jocasta. There is no room for shame in your position now.
Antigone. But what am I to do?
Jocasta. You will end your brothers' quarrel.
Antigone. Doing what, mother?
Jocasta. Falling at their knees, with me.
Antigone. Take me to the ground between the armies. We must not wait.
Jocasta. Hurry, hurry, daughter. If I can get to my sons before the spears, my life stays in the light. If they die, I will lie down dead with them.
(Jocasta and Antigone hurry out.)
Chorus. Aiai, aiai. My heart is shaking, shaking with the cold of fear. Through my flesh pity has come, pity for the wretched mother. Twin sons. Which of them, then, will bloody the other, io, for the pain of it, io Zeus, io Earth, a brother's throat, a brother's life, through the shields, through the blood? I am wretched, wretched. Which of them will I cry over as a corpse when he is gone?
Chorus. Pheu, Earth. Pheu, Earth. Twin beasts, two murderous souls with spears shaking in their hands, in a moment now will bloody the enemy fallen, fallen. Poor wretches, that it ever came into their heads to fight one against one. In a foreign voice I will raise the groaning cry that is owed to the dead, and weep it through. Fortune stands close, close to murder. The light of this day will decide it. Doomed, doomed is this killing, for the Furies' sake.
(Creon comes in, carrying the body of Menoeceus.)
Chorus. But here is Creon. I see him coming this way to the house, with a cloud on his face, and I will stop the grieving I am in the middle of.
Creon. Oh. What am I going to do? Which do I cry for, myself or the city, which has a cloud round it thick enough to be going through the river of Acheron? My son is dead. He died for this land, and he won a noble name for it, and a painful one for me. I have just taken him from the dragon's cliffs, where he cut his own throat, and I carried him here in my own arms, wretched as I am, and the whole house is crying out. And now I have come, an old man, for my old sister, for Jocasta, so that she can wash my boy and lay him out. He is gone now. Those who are not yet dead have to pay the dead their honours. It is how we show respect to the god under the ground.
Chorus. Your sister has left the house, Creon, and her daughter Antigone went out with her, the two of them together.
Creon. Where to? What has happened? Tell me.
Chorus. She heard that her sons were about to meet shield to shield, in single combat, for the royal house.
Creon. What are you saying? I was cradling the body of my own boy. I never got as far as hearing this too.
Chorus. Your sister has been gone a long while, Creon. I think the fight for life and death between the sons of Oedipus has already been fought.
Creon. Oh. And there is the sign of it, I can see it: the dark look on the face of a messenger, coming this way. He will tell us everything that has been done.
(A Messenger comes in from the battlefield.)
Messenger. God help me, what story do I tell? What grief do I cry out first?
Creon. We are finished. That is no fair face to put on the start of a speech.
Messenger. God help me, I say it twice. What I am carrying is a great evil.
Creon. On top of the evils already done. What is it? Say it.
Messenger. Your sister's sons are no longer in the light, Creon.
Creon. Aiai. That is a great grief you are crying out, for me and for the city. House of Oedipus, did you hear this? Both sons dead, and dead the same way?
Chorus. Enough to make it weep, if it happened to have feelings.
Creon. Oh, the heaviest blow fortune ever struck. Oh, the evils. I am a wretched man. God help me.
Messenger. You would say so, if you knew the evils on top of these.
Creon. How could anything be worse fortune than this?
Messenger. Your sister is dead. She died with her two sons.
Chorus. Raise it, raise the cry of mourning, and beat your heads with your white arms.
Creon. Jocasta, poor woman, what an end you came to. Your life and your marriage together, the whole of what you had to bear from the Sphinx and her riddles, over. And how was it done, the killing of the two boys, the curse of Oedipus fighting itself out? Tell me.
Messenger. You know how the fighting in front of the towers went for us. The circuit of the walls is not far off, so none of that was hidden from you. But once the young sons of old Oedipus had fitted their bodies with bronze armour, they came out and took their stand in the middle ground between the two armies, two captains, two generals, ready for the contest, ready to settle it with the strength of one spear each.
Polyneices looked towards Argos and made his prayer. "Lady Hera. I am your man, since I married the daughter of Adrastus and live in your country. Grant me this: let me kill my brother, and let my right hand, raised against his, come home red with his blood and victorious." He was asking for the most shameful crown there is, to kill his own blood. Tears came to many eyes at the size of the misfortune, and men looked at one another, passing the glance from face to face.
Eteocles looked towards the temple of Athena with the golden shield and prayed. "Daughter of Zeus, grant that this arm of mine throws the winning spear from my hand into my brother's chest, and kills the man who came to sack my country."
Then the call of the Tuscan trumpet was let loose like a torch, the signal for the bloody fight, and they went at each other at a terrible run. Like two boars whetting their savage jaws they closed, beards soaked with foam. They lunged with their spears, but each crouched down under the circle of his shield, so the iron would slide off and find nothing. If either saw the other's eye showing above the rim, he worked his lance towards it, hoping to get in first with the point. But they both kept their eyes so close to the spy-holes of their shields that the spears had nothing to do. More sweat ran off the men watching than off the men fighting, out of fear for the friends they loved.
Then Eteocles kicked aside a stone that had rolled under his foot, and in doing it he put his leg out beyond his shield. Polyneices saw a blow offered to his iron and met it with his spear, and the Argive point went through the shin. The whole army of the Danaids roared. But in the same effort the man who had been wounded first saw a shoulder left bare, and drove his lance with all his weight into Polyneices' chest, and gave the citizens of Cadmus their joy back, and snapped the head off his spear doing it. Left without a weapon he backed away step by step, then snatched up a lump of marble and threw it and broke the other's javelin in the middle. Now Ares had made it even. Both of them had lost the shaft out of their hand.
So they grabbed the hilts of their swords and came together, and their shields clashed, and they set up a great turmoil of fighting, round and round each other. Then Eteocles somehow thought of the Thessalian trick, and brought it in; he knew it from time spent in that country. He broke off from the struggle in front of him and drew his left foot back, watching the hollow of the other man's belly from a distance, then stepped in on his right leg and drove the sword through the navel and lodged it in the spine. Ribs and belly folded together, and Polyneices went down, poor man, in a spray of blood.
And the other, as if he had won now, as if the fight were over, threw his sword down on the ground and started stripping him, with his whole mind on that and none of it on himself. And that was what brought him down. Polyneices was still breathing, a little, and he had kept hold of his iron through his miserable fall, and with difficulty, but he did it, he pushed the sword up into Eteocles' liver: Polyneices, the one who had fallen first. And they lie there, both, biting the earth, close beside each other, and they have not decided who was the stronger.
Chorus. Ah. Ah. Oedipus, how I groan for your evils. It looks as if a god has filled your curses to the brim.
Messenger. Now hear the evils that came on top of these. When the two sons had fallen and were letting go of life, at that moment their wretched mother came rushing up, with the girl beside her, as fast as her feet would take her. She saw them, wounded, the wounds that kill, and she wailed: "Children, I have come to help you and I have come too late." She threw herself on each of her children in turn and wept and keened, groaning over all the long labour of the breasts that fed them, and their sister, standing at her side like a shield-bearer, cried with her: "You two were meant to keep our mother in her old age. My dearest brothers, you have thrown my marriage away."
Then lord Eteocles let a hard dying breath out of his chest, and heard his mother, and laid a wet hand on her. He sent no voice out, but he spoke to her with tears, from his eyes, so as to show that he loved her. And the other was still breathing, and Polyneices looked at his sister and his old mother and said this: "We are finished, mother. I pity you, and this sister of mine, and my brother lying dead. The one I loved became my enemy, but I loved him all the same. Bury me, mother, mother who bore me, and you too, sister, in the land of my fathers, and talk the city out of its anger, so that I get at least this much of my father's country, even if I have lost the house. Close my eyelids with your hand, mother" (and he put her hand on his eyes himself) "and goodbye. The dark is closing round me already." Then both of them, at the same moment, breathed out their wretched lives.
And the mother, when she saw what had happened, was past bearing it. She snatched a sword from the dead and did a terrible thing. She drove the iron straight through the middle of her throat, and she lies there dead among the people she loved most, with an arm thrown round each of them.
Then the whole crowd of soldiers leapt to their feet and fell to arguing: we said my master had won, they said theirs had. And the generals quarrelled too, some saying Polyneices had struck first with the spear, others that since both were dead there was no victory anywhere. In the middle of it Antigone slipped away from the army. Then they ran for their weapons. But by some good forethought the people of Cadmus had stayed sitting under their shields, and we got in first, and fell on the Argive army before it had got itself fenced in armour. Not a man stood his ground. They filled the plain, running, and the blood ran from the countless dead going down under our spears. And when we had won the battle, some set up an image of Zeus as a trophy, and some stripped the shields off the Argive dead and sent the spoils inside the walls. And others are coming here now with Antigone, carrying the dead, for the people who loved them to mourn over. So for the city these contests came out two ways: the luckiest that could be, and the unluckiest.
(The Messenger goes. The bodies of Eteocles, Polyneices and Jocasta are carried in, with Antigone walking beside them.)
Chorus. The bad luck of this house no longer reaches us as a rumour. Look, you can see it: three bodies of the dead, here already, at the palace door, who drew one death between them and a lifetime in the dark.
Antigone. I am not veiling the soft cheek with its curls. I am not hiding, like a modest girl, the crimson under my eyes, the blush on my face. I am carried along, a bacchant of the dead, throwing the veil off my hair, letting the fine saffron of my dress fall loose, an escort for the dead, full of groaning. Aiai. Io moi. Polyneices, Man of Many Quarrels, your name came true. Omoi moi, Thebes. Your quarrel, no, not a quarrel, murder on top of murder, has destroyed the house of Oedipus, finished it in terrible blood, in grievous blood. What singer, what music-maker's groan over tears and more tears, house, oh house, shall I call in, carrying these three bodies of my own blood, a mother and her children, the Fury's delight? She wrecked the house of Oedipus from top to bottom, the day he understood the song nobody understood, the song of the wild Sphinx, and killed the singer where she sat. Io moi moi, father. What Greek, what barbarian, what nobleman of the old days ever bore such evils of a single day's blood, such griefs laid out in plain sight? Poor girl, how I cry. What bird, sitting up in the high-leaved branches of an oak or a fir, will sing along with my grief, a girl mourning a mother who is gone? Ailinon, with these wails I cry out ahead of time for the solitary life I will lead for the rest of time, in tears that never stop dripping. On whom shall I throw the first offerings torn out of my hair? On the two breasts of my mother that gave me milk, or on my brothers' bodies, on the ruin of their wounds? Ototototoi. Come out of your house, carrying your blind eyes, old father, show yourself, Oedipus, show your wretched life, you who threw a misty darkness over your own eyes inside that house and go on dragging out a long-drawn breath of living. Do you hear, you wandering the courtyard on your old feet, or lying wretched in your bed?
(Oedipus comes out of the palace, feeling his way with a staff.)
Oedipus. Girl, why have you brought me out into the light, me, a blind man and his stick, out of my bed in the dark rooms, with these most pitiful tears of yours, a grey unseen phantom of air, or a corpse from under the earth, or a dream with wings?
Antigone. It is bad news you are going to hear, father. Your children no longer look at the light, and neither does your wife, who worked for ever at your side like a second staff, tending your blind feet. Father. Omoi.
Oedipus. Omoi for what I suffer. I have cause to groan at this, to cry out. Three lives. By what fate, how, did they leave the light? Child, tell me.
Antigone. I do not say it to reproach you or to mock you, I say it in pain: your own avenging spirit, heavy with swords and fire and pitiless fighting, came down on your sons. Father. O moi.
Oedipus. Aiai.
Antigone. Why do you groan at that,
Oedipus. My children.
Antigone. You have gone through pain. But if you could still see the sun's four-horse chariot and turn the light of your eyes onto these dead bodies here...
Oedipus. What happened to my children is plain enough. But my poor wife, child, by what fate did she die on me?
Antigone. Weeping, wailing, where everyone could see, she carried her breast to her children, carried it, a suppliant running to beg them. She found her children at the Electran gate, in the meadow where the lotus grows, at spear-point, at war with each other, the mother did, like lions in a den, fighting on over their wounds, their blood already a cold murderous offering that Hades took and Ares poured. And she took a beaten-bronze sword from the dead men and dipped it into her flesh, and in grief for her children she fell across her children. All of it, father, in this one day, the god who is finishing this has heaped up the griefs on our house.
Chorus. This day has been the beginning of many evils for the house of Oedipus. May the life that is left be luckier.
Creon. Stop the mourning now. It is time to think about burial. And you, Oedipus, hear this. Your son Eteocles gave me the rule of this land when he gave it as a dowry to Haemon, along with your daughter Antigone's hand in marriage. So I will not let you live in this country any longer. Teiresias said it in plain words: this city will never do well while you are living in it. So get out. And I say this without any outrage, and not as your enemy. It is those avenging spirits of yours. I am afraid the land will suffer some evil from them.
Oedipus. Fate, how you made me from the very start, wretched and miserable, if ever a man was born so. Before I had even come out of my mother's womb into the light, when I was not yet born, Apollo told Laius that I would be my father's killer. God help me. Then, once I was born, the father who begot me tried to kill me, in his turn, because he took me for his enemy, since he was fated to die at my hands. So he sent me out, still crying for the breast, to be a wretched meal for wild animals. And I was saved from that. I wish Cithaeron had sunk into the bottomless gulf of Tartarus for not finishing me off there, and instead my fate handed me over to a life in another man's house, with Polybus for a master.
And I killed my own father, I, the man the god hates, and went into the bed of my poor mother, and fathered sons who were my brothers, and I have destroyed them, by taking over the curses of Laius and handing them on to my children. I was not born such a fool that I could have devised all this against my own eyes and my own children's lives without some god being in it.
Well, then. What am I to do now, the man the god hates? Who will walk beside me and guide my blind feet? This woman lying dead? If she were alive, I know very well she would. My fine pair of sons? I have none. Am I still young enough to find my own living? Where would I find it? Why are you killing me outright like this, Creon? You will be killing me, if you throw me out of the country. But I will not wrap my arms round your knees and show myself a coward. I would not betray what I once was, a man of good birth, even now that I am doing badly.
Creon. Well said, on your side, that you will not touch my knees. And on mine, I could not let you go on living in this land. As for these dead, one of them must be taken into the house now. The other, the one who came with strangers to sack the city of his fathers, Polyneices: throw his body out unburied, beyond the borders of this country. And this will be proclaimed to every man of Thebes: whoever is caught laying wreaths on this corpse, or covering it with earth, will pay for it with his death. Leave him unwept, unburied, food for birds. And you, Antigone, leave off your keening for these three dead and take yourself indoors, and live as a girl should until the day that is coming, the day the bed of Haemon waits for you.
Antigone. Father, what evils we lie in, the two of us, wretched as we are. How I groan for you, more than for the dead. It is not as if one of your evils weighs heavy and another does not. You were born unlucky in everything, father. But I have a question for you, our brand-new ruler. Why are you outraging my father here by sending him out of the country? Why are you making laws over a poor dead body?
Creon. This was Eteocles' decision. Not ours.
Antigone. A senseless one, and you are a fool to obey it.
Creon. How so? Is it not right to carry out what you have been ordered to do?
Antigone. Not if the orders are wicked, and wickedly given.
Creon. What? Is it not justice for this man to be given to the dogs?
Antigone. No. The justice you are taking from him is against the law.
Creon. Not if he was an enemy of his city, when he was not born one.
Antigone. And so he has paid his fate over to fortune. He is dead.
Creon. Then let him pay the penalty in his burial too.
Antigone. What did he do wrong, if he came for his share of the land?
Creon. This man will go unburied. You may as well learn that now.
Antigone. I will bury him, even if the city forbids it.
Creon. Then you will be burying yourself beside him.
Antigone. It is an honour, for two people who love each other to lie side by side.
Creon. Take hold of her and bring her into the house.
Antigone. No. I will not let go of this body.
Creon. The god has decided this, girl. Not you.
Antigone. And this has been decided too: that the dead are not to be outraged.
Creon. Nobody is going to put damp earth round this man.
Antigone. Yes, they are. I beg you, Creon, by my mother Jocasta lying here.
Creon. You are wasting your effort. You will not get it.
Antigone. Then at least let me wash the body.
Creon. That would be one of the things forbidden to the city.
Antigone. Then let me put bandages round his terrible wounds.
Creon. There is no way you are going to pay this corpse any honour.
Antigone. My dearest. Then I will kiss your mouth, at least.
Creon. Do not go buying yourself a disaster for your wedding with all this grieving.
Antigone. Do you really think I will marry your son while I am alive?
Creon. You will have to. Where would you run away from the marriage bed?
Antigone. Then that wedding night will make me one of the daughters of Danaus, who killed their husbands in the dark.
Creon. Did you hear the nerve of that? Did you hear the insult?
Antigone. Let the iron witness it. Let the sword be my oath.
Creon. Why are you so anxious to be out of this marriage?
Antigone. I am going into exile with him. With my father, the most wretched man alive.
Creon. There is nobility in you. And there is some foolishness too.
Antigone. And I will die with him, so that you learn the rest of it.
Creon. Go, then. You will not murder my son. Leave the country.
(Creon goes into the palace.)
Oedipus. Daughter, I honour you for your loyalty.
Antigone. And what should I do, father, get married while you go into exile alone?
Oedipus. Stay, and be happy. I will put up with my own evils.
Antigone. And who will look after you, father, blind as you are?
Oedipus. I will fall where my fate decides, and lie on the ground.
Antigone. And where is Oedipus then, and the famous riddle?
Oedipus. Gone. One day made me rich, and one day destroyed me.
Antigone. Then should I not share in your evils too?
Oedipus. It is a shameful thing, a daughter in exile with a blind father.
Antigone. Not if she keeps herself in hand. Then it is a noble thing, father.
Oedipus. Lead me over, then, so I can touch your mother.
Antigone. There. Put your hand on her. The old woman you loved most.
Oedipus. Mother. Wife. The most wretched woman alive.
Antigone. She lies there pitifully, with every evil on her at once.
Oedipus. And where are they, the fallen bodies of Eteocles and Polyneices?
Antigone. The two of them lie stretched out here, close together.
Oedipus. Put my blind hand on their unlucky faces.
Antigone. There. Touch your dead children with your hand.
Oedipus. Dear fallen bodies. Wretched sons of a wretched father.
Antigone. And you, Polyneices, the dearest name of all to me.
Oedipus. Now Apollo's prophecy is coming true, child.
Antigone. Which one? Do you have more evils to tell me, on top of these?
Oedipus. That I would die in Athens, a wanderer.
Antigone. Where? What walled town in Attica will take you in?
Oedipus. Holy Colonus, the home of the god of horses. But come, be a servant to your blind father here, since you are so eager to share this exile.
Antigone. Go, then, into wretched exile. Stretch out your dear hand, old father. I will carry you along the way a wind carries a ship.
Oedipus. Look, look, I am walking. Child, be the guide for my feet, poor girl.
Antigone. I am, I am. Poor girl, yes, the poorest of all the girls in Thebes.
Oedipus. Where do I put my old feet down? Hand me my staff, child.
Antigone. This way, this way, step to me, this way, this way, put your foot here, with a strength like a dream's.
Oedipus. Io, io. Driving an old man out of his country into the most miserable exile there is. Io, io. Terrible, terrible, what I have endured.
Antigone. Endured? Endured? Justice does not see the wicked, and does not pay mortals back for their folly.
Oedipus. I am the man who rose up to the song of victory that reached the sky, when I solved the riddle nobody could solve, the riddle of the girl who was half a girl.
Antigone. You are bringing up the Sphinx again, that old reproach. Enough talk of the good luck you used to have. This was what was waiting for you all along, this misery: to become an exile from your own country, father, and die somewhere or other. I leave my dear friends, the girls I grew up with, tears and longing, and go away, far from the land of my fathers, to wander as no girl should. Ah, this dutiful heart of mine, in my father's misfortunes, will make me famous. Poor me, for the outrages done to you and to my brother, who goes out from the house a corpse, unburied, poor boy. And him, even if I have to die for it, father, I will cover with earth in the dark.
Oedipus. Go and show yourself to the girls your own age.
Antigone. I have had enough of my own laments.
Oedipus. Then the prayers at the altars...
Antigone. They have had their fill of my evils.
Oedipus. Then go at least to Dionysus, and his sanctuary that no foot may enter, in the mountains of the maenads.
Antigone. Dionysus, for whom I once tied on the Theban fawnskin and danced, up in the mountains, in the holy company of Semele's son? And give the gods a thanks that is no thanks?
Oedipus. Citizens of a famous country, look at me. This is Oedipus, who solved the famous riddles and was the greatest of men, who alone put down the power of the murdering Sphinx. And now I am driven from the land, myself, stripped of honour, a pitiful thing. But why am I keening over this, and mourning for nothing? A man is mortal, and what the gods make necessary he has to bear.
(Oedipus and Antigone go out together, towards the road out of Thebes.)
Chorus. Great Victory, holy one, stay with me all my life, and never stop crowning me.
(Argos, in front of the palace of Agamemnon. Orestes lies asleep on a bed that has been carried out of the house, wrapped in his cloak. Electra sits beside him.)
Electra. There is nothing so terrible you could put it into words, no suffering, no disaster the gods send down, that human nature cannot take the weight of. Take Tantalus, the blessed one, and I am not mocking his bad luck. He was born from Zeus, they say, and now he floats in the air with a rock hanging over his head, in terror of it. That is the price he pays, and the reason, they say, is this: he was a man, and the gods let him sit at their table as an equal, and he could not keep his tongue under control. The most shameful sickness there is. Tantalus was the father of Pelops, and Pelops of Atreus, and for Atreus the goddess carded her wool and spun out strife: a war with his own brother, Thyestes. Why should I go back over things that are better not said? Atreus killed Thyestes's children and served them to him at dinner. And from Atreus, passing over what came in between, came Agamemnon the famous, if he really was famous, and Menelaus, and their mother was Aerope, from Crete. Menelaus married Helen, whom the gods hate, and lord Agamemnon married Clytemnestra, a marriage all Greece knew about. And she bore him three daughters, Chrysothemis, Iphigenia, and me, Electra, and one son, Orestes. All from one mother, and no mother was ever less holy. She wrapped her husband in a robe he could not find his way out of, and killed him. Why she did it is not a thing an unmarried girl should say. I leave it unclear, for people to work out for themselves.
And Apollo. What is the point of accusing Apollo of injustice? But he did persuade Orestes to kill the mother who gave birth to him, and not everyone thinks that a glorious thing to have done. Still, he killed her, because he would not disobey the god. And I had a share in the killing, as much as a woman can. And Pylades, who did the work with us. Since then poor Orestes here has been melting away in a savage sickness. He fell on this bed and he lies there, and his mother's blood drives him round and round in fits of madness. I am ashamed to name the goddesses who are racing him to death with terror. The Kindly Ones, people call them. This is the sixth day since our mother's throat was cut and her body was purified with fire, and in all that time he has not let a mouthful of food down his throat or put water on his skin. He hides inside his cloak, and when his body gets some relief from the sickness he comes to his senses and cries, and then at other times he leaps off the bed and runs, like a colt getting out from under the yoke.
And this city of Argos has decreed that no one is to take us in under a roof or at a fire, and no one is to speak to us. We killed our mother. And today is the day that decides it. Today the city of Argos votes on whether the two of us must die, under a pile of stones, or by sharpening a sword and driving it into our necks. There is one hope we have of not dying. Menelaus has landed here from Troy. His oars fill the harbour at Nauplia and he is riding at anchor off the shore, after wandering a long time on his way home from Troy. As for Helen, the woman so many people have groaned over, he waited for night and sent her on ahead to our house, in case somebody whose sons died at Troy saw her walking about in daylight and started throwing stones. She is inside, crying for her sister and for the ruin of the house. She does have one comfort in her grief. The daughter she left at home when she sailed for Troy, Hermione, whom Menelaus brought from Sparta and gave to my mother to bring up, is here. Helen is happy in her, and forgets her troubles.
So I am watching every road, for the moment I see Menelaus coming. Because otherwise we are riding on very little strength, unless he is the one who saves us. A house that has run out of luck has run out of everything.
(Helen comes out of the house.)
Helen. Daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. Electra. Still unmarried, after all this time. How are you, you poor thing, you and your brother, poor Orestes here, who killed his mother? I am not polluted by speaking to you, because I put the blame for the sin on Apollo. And yet I do grieve for the death of Clytemnestra, my sister. I never saw her again after I sailed for Troy, the way I did sail, because a god had driven me out of my mind. And now I am left behind without her, and I weep for what has happened to us.
Electra. Helen, why should I tell you what you can see for yourself, standing here? The house of Agamemnon in ruins. I sit up all night beside a miserable corpse, because a corpse is what he is, for all the little breath that is in him. I am not blaming him for his troubles. But you are blessed, and your husband is blessed, and the two of you have come to us when we are as badly off as we could be.
Helen. How long has he been lying on that bed?
Electra. Ever since he shed the blood he was born from.
Helen. Oh, poor man. And his mother. What a way to die.
Electra. That is how it is. He has given in to his troubles.
Helen. By the gods, would you do something for me, girl?
Electra. As far as I have time, sitting here with my brother.
Helen. Will you go to my sister's tomb for me?
Electra. To my mother's tomb, you mean? What for?
Helen. To take her a lock of my hair, and my offerings to pour.
Electra. Is it not allowed for you to go to the tomb of your own family yourself?
Helen. I would be ashamed to show my face to the Argives.
Electra. A little late to be thinking straight, when you left your home in such a shameful way back then.
Helen. That is true. But it is not kind of you to say it.
Electra. What is this shame that comes over you in front of the people of Mycenae?
Helen. I am afraid of the fathers of the men who died at Troy.
Electra. And you should be. In Argos your name is shouted from every mouth.
Helen. Then do me this favour and set me free from my fear.
Electra. I could not bring myself to look at my mother's tomb.
Helen. But it would be a disgrace to have slaves carry these things.
Electra. Then why not send your daughter Hermione?
Helen. It is not nice for an unmarried girl to go creeping into a crowd.
Electra. And yet she would be paying the dead woman back for bringing her up.
Helen. That is true, and you have convinced me, girl. Yes, I will send my daughter. You are quite right. Hermione, child, come out here in front of the house.
(Hermione comes out.)
Take these offerings in your hands, and this hair of mine, and go to Clytemnestra's tomb, and pour round it a mixture of honey and milk, and the foam of wine, and stand on the top of the mound and say this: "Your sister Helen sends you these offerings as a gift. She is afraid to come to your grave herself, because she is frightened of the Argive crowd." And ask her to keep kind thoughts towards me, and towards you, and towards my husband, and towards these two poor things, whom a god has destroyed. And whatever it is right for me to do for a sister, promise it all, every gift that is owed to the dead. Go on, my child, hurry. Give the offerings at the tomb, and then remember the road back as fast as you can.
(Hermione goes off with the offerings. Helen goes back into the house.)
Electra. Nature. What a great evil you are among human beings, and what a salvation, to the people who were born with a good one. Did you see how she cut her hair just at the very tips, to keep it beautiful? She is the same woman she always was. May the gods hate you, for what you have done to me, and to him, and to the whole of Greece. Oh, I am so tired of this. And here they are again, my friends, the women who sing my laments with me. They will shake him out of his sleep in a moment, this quiet man lying here, and melt my eyes with tears, when I see my brother mad. Dearest women, walk softly. Make no noise. Not a sound. Your friendship is kind, I know, but if you wake him it will be a disaster for me.
(The Chorus, women of Argos, come in on tiptoe.)
Chorus. Quiet. Quiet. Set the soles of your shoes down lightly. Not a sound.
Electra. Further off. Over there. Away from the bed, I beg you.
Chorus. There. I am doing as you say.
Electra. Ah. Ah. Like the breath through a pipe of thin reed, my dear. Speak to me like that.
Chorus. Listen. I am bringing my voice down, low as a whisper under a roof.
Electra. Yes. Like that. Down, keep it down. Come close, gently. Gently, come. Now tell me what it is you have come here for. Because at last, after so long, he has fallen down and is asleep.
Chorus. How is he? Tell me, my dear. What am I to say has happened? What disaster?
Electra. He is still breathing. But his groans are getting faint.
Chorus. What are you saying? Oh, the poor man.
Electra. You will kill him, if you make his eyelids move while he is being carried on the sweetest grace sleep gives.
Chorus. Poor man. For the most hateful deeds, and a god behind them. Poor man.
Electra. Ah, the pain of it. Unjust. It was an unjust thing he cried out then, cried out, when Apollo sat on the tripod at Delphi that was Themis's once and decreed it: the killing of my mother. A killing against nature.
Chorus. Do you see? He is moving under his clothes.
Electra. That was you, you poor fool. You shouted, and threw him out of his sleep.
Chorus. No. I think he is sleeping.
Electra. Will you not go away from us, away from the house, turn round on your heel and go back, and stop that noise?
Chorus. He is dozing.
Electra. You are right. Lady. Lady Night, who gives sleep to human beings who labour so hard, come up from Erebus, from the dark below, come, come on your wings to the house of Agamemnon. Because under our griefs, under our disaster, we are going, we are gone. You made a noise. Will you not be quiet, quiet, keep a guard on your mouth, keep your clatter away from his bed, and let him have the quiet grace of sleep, my dear?
Chorus. Tell me. What end is waiting for his troubles?
Electra. Death. Death, what else? He does not even want food any more.
Chorus. Then his end is plain to see.
Electra. Apollo sacrificed us, when he handed us the blood of a mother who killed our father. Pitiful blood. Blood against nature.
Chorus. It was just.
Electra. But it was not well done. You killed, and you died, mother who gave birth to me, and you destroyed a father, and these children of your own blood. We are gone, as good as corpses, gone. You are among the dead, and the greater part of my life is gone too, in groaning and wailing and tears in the night, unmarried, childless, dragging out a miserable life for ever and ever.
Chorus. Electra, you are close to him. Look and make sure your brother has not died without your noticing. I do not like how limp he has gone.
Orestes. Sweet spell of sleep, the sick man's helper, how sweetly you came to me, and just when I needed you. Lady Forgetfulness, who takes away our troubles, what a clever goddess you are, and how the unlucky pray to you. Where did I come here from? How did I get here? I cannot remember. The mind I had before has gone from me.
Electra. My dearest, how happy you made me when you fell asleep. Do you want me to take hold of you and lift you up?
Orestes. Yes, take hold of me, take hold, and wipe the crust of foam off my poor mouth, and off my eyes.
Electra. There. It is a sweet service. I do not mind nursing a brother's body with a sister's hand.
Orestes. Put your side under mine, and get this filthy hair off my face. I can hardly see.
Electra. Oh, your poor head, your hair all matted and dirty. How wild you look, after so long without washing.
Orestes. Lay me back on the bed again. When the fit of madness lets go of me there is no strength in my joints and my limbs go weak.
Electra. There. A sick man loves his bed. It is a painful thing to own, but he cannot do without it.
Orestes. Sit me upright again. Turn my body round. Sick people are hard to please. It is because they cannot help themselves.
Electra. Do you want to set your feet on the ground and take a step, after all this time? Any change is sweet.
Orestes. Yes, very much. It has the look of health about it. And looking well is better than being well, even if the truth is nowhere near.
Electra. Then listen to me now, brother, while the Furies are letting you think straight.
Orestes. You have some news. If it is good, I will thank you for it. If it is going to hurt, I have had enough of bad luck.
Electra. Menelaus has come. Your father's brother. His ships are moored at Nauplia.
Orestes. What did you say? He has come, a light in my troubles and yours, a man of our own blood, who owes our father his thanks?
Electra. He has come, and here is your proof that I am telling the truth: he is bringing Helen with him, from the walls of Troy.
Orestes. If he had come home safe by himself, he would be more to be envied. If he is bringing his wife, he has come home with a great evil in his luggage.
Electra. Tyndareus fathered a brood of daughters marked out for blame, and infamous all through Greece.
Orestes. Then you be different from the bad ones. You can. And do not just say it. Think it.
Electra. Oh, no. Brother, your eyes are going strange. You were sane a moment ago, and now you are turning back into madness so fast.
Orestes. Mother, I beg you, do not shake them at me, those girls with the blood in their faces and the snakes in their hair. There they are. There, right beside me, jumping at me.
Electra. Stay where you are, you poor man. Lie still on your bed. You are seeing nothing of what you think you see so clearly.
Orestes. Apollo. They are going to kill me, the dog-faced ones, with the Gorgon's stare, the priestesses of the dead. The terrible goddesses.
Electra. I will not let you go. I am going to wind my arm round you and stop you making these miserable leaps.
Orestes. Let go of me. You are one of my Furies. You have got me round the middle to throw me into Tartarus, into the pit.
Electra. Oh, what am I going to do? Where can I turn for help, when it is the gods themselves we have against us?
Orestes. Give me the bow, the horn-tipped bow Apollo gave me. He told me to fight the goddesses off with it if they tried to frighten me out of my mind with their raving. One of the gods is going to be shot by a mortal hand, if she does not get out of my sight. Do you not hear me? Do you not see the feathered notches of the arrows springing out from my bow, the bow that shoots so far? Ah. Ah. What are you waiting for? Up. Skim the sky on your wings, and take it up with Apollo's oracles.
Ah. What is this? What am I raving about, gasping the breath out of my lungs? Where, where did I jump to, off my bed? The waves have gone down. I can see calm water again. Sister, why are you crying with your head inside your dress? I am ashamed in front of you, giving you a share in my troubles, making a girl who has never married carry the weight of my sickness. Do not waste away because of my troubles. You nodded yes to it, but the blood of our mother was shed by me. And I blame Apollo. He set me on to the most unholy deed there is, and he cheered me on with words, and with deeds he has done nothing. I believe that if I had asked my father to his face whether I had to kill my mother, he would have begged me, over and over, by this chin of mine, never to push a sword into the throat of the woman who bore me. Because he was never going to get back into the light either way, and I, poor fool, would be filling myself up with evils like these.
So now, sister, uncover your head, and come away from the tears, however badly off we are. And when you see me lose heart, it is your job to calm down the terrible broken part of my mind and soothe it, and when you are the one groaning, I have to be there and talk you kindly out of it. That is the kind of help that is good between people who belong to each other. Now, my poor sister, go into the house. Lie down and give your sleepless eyes some sleep. Reach for some food, and put some water on your skin. Because if you leave me before the end, or catch some sickness from sitting up with me, we are finished. You are the only helper I have. Everyone else has left me, as you can see.
Electra. No. I am not going. I will choose to die with you, and to live with you, because it comes to the same thing. If you die, what am I going to do, a woman? How will I survive on my own, with no brother, no father, no friends? But if you think it is right, I must do as you say. But lie down on the bed, and do not take the thing that terrifies you and scares you up off your bed so seriously. Stay on your bed where it is made up. Because even if you are not sick, and only think you are sick, that alone wears a person out and leaves them helpless.
(Electra goes into the house.)
Chorus. Aiai. Running goddesses, wings on your backs, goddesses of frenzy, whose company is a company that has nothing to do with Dionysus, a company of tears and groans, black-skinned Kindly Ones, who go bounding across the long stretch of the sky, exacting the price of blood, exacting the price of murder, I beg you, I beg you, let the son of Agamemnon forget the madness that hunts him, the raving and the wandering. Ah, the pain, what pains you reached for, poor man, and are lost, when you took the word from the tripod that Apollo cried out on the floor of his house at Delphi, where they say the hollows are, at the navel of the earth.
Chorus. Io, Zeus. What pity is this, what struggle for blood is this coming on, driving you, poor man, on whom some avenging spirit is heaping tears on tears, carrying into the house your mother's blood, and the blood is what sends you raving? Great good fortune does not stay put among human beings. I mourn for it, I mourn for it. Some god shook it like the sail of a fast boat and sank it under terrible labours, as the sea sinks a boat under its wild and deadly waves. Because what other house should I honour above this one, the house that came from a marriage with a god, the house of Tantalus?
Chorus. And look, here comes the king, Menelaus the king, and anyone can see from all that luxury that he is of the blood of Tantalus. You who launched an army in a thousand ships against the land of Asia, welcome. Good fortune is your companion. The gods have given you everything you prayed for.
(Menelaus comes in, with his attendants.)
Menelaus. My house. In one way I am glad to look at you, coming home from Troy. In another I look at you and groan. Because I have never seen another hearth so wretchedly wrapped round with evils. I knew what had happened to Agamemnon, and how he died, at his wife's hands, as I was bringing my prow in to Cape Malea. The sailors' prophet told me it out of the waves, Glaucus, the seer of Nereus, a god who does not lie. He stood up in plain view and said this to me: "Menelaus, your brother is lying dead. His wife gave him his last bath, and he fell into it." He filled me and my sailors with a great many tears. And when I touched land at Nauplia, with my wife already setting out for this house, I was expecting to throw my arms round Orestes, Agamemnon's son, and round his mother, and find them doing well, when I heard from one of the fishermen about the unholy murder of Tyndareus's daughter. So now tell me where he is, young women, Agamemnon's son, the one who had the nerve to do these terrible things. He was a baby in Clytemnestra's arms when I left the house on my way to Troy, so I would not know him if I saw him.
Orestes. Here he is, Menelaus. I am Orestes, the one you are asking about. I will tell you my troubles myself, and willingly. But first, before anything else, I touch your knees as a suppliant, and I hang my prayers from a mouth that has no olive branch to hold. Save me. You have come, in person, at the crisis of my troubles.
Menelaus. Gods, what am I looking at? Which of the dead is this I see?
Orestes. Well said. I am not alive, for all my troubles. But I see the light.
Menelaus. How wild you look, poor man, with your hair all dry and filthy.
Orestes. It is not my looks that torture me. It is what I did.
Menelaus. That is a terrible stare, out of eyes with no tears in them.
Orestes. The body is gone. The name has not left me yet.
Menelaus. I never expected you to look like this. What a ruin.
Orestes. Here I am, the man who killed his poor mother.
Menelaus. I have heard. Spare me. Evils should be spoken of as little as possible.
Orestes. I will spare you. But the god who has me is rich in evils, and spends them on me.
Menelaus. What is wrong with you? What is this sickness that is destroying you?
Orestes. Understanding. I understand what I have done, and it was terrible.
Menelaus. What do you mean? Being clear is clever. Being unclear is not.
Orestes. Grief, mostly. That is what is destroying me.
Menelaus. Grief is a terrible goddess. But she can be cured, all the same.
Orestes. And fits of madness. My mother's blood, taking its revenge.
Menelaus. When did the madness begin? What day was it?
Orestes. The day I was heaping up the earth on my poor mother's grave.
Menelaus. In the house, or sitting up by the pyre?
Orestes. At night. Waiting to gather up her bones.
Menelaus. Was anyone else there, to hold you up?
Orestes. Pylades. He did the blood with me. My mother's murder.
Menelaus. So it is visions that make you sick. What kind?
Orestes. I thought I saw three girls, as dark as night.
Menelaus. I know the ones you mean. I would rather not name them.
Orestes. No. They are holy. You were well brought up, to turn away from saying it.
Menelaus. And these are what drive you mad, over the blood of your own family?
Orestes. Oh, the hunting. The way they hunt me, and drive me. Poor fool that I am.
Menelaus. It is not strange for people who have done terrible things to suffer terrible things.
Orestes. But there is somewhere I can shift this disaster.
Menelaus. Do not say death. That is not clever.
Orestes. Apollo. He ordered me to carry out my mother's murder.
Menelaus. Then he knew less than he should about what is right and what is just.
Orestes. We are slaves to the gods. Whatever the gods are.
Menelaus. And then Apollo does nothing to defend you in your troubles?
Orestes. He is taking his time. That is what the divine is like, by nature.
Menelaus. How long is it since your mother stopped breathing?
Orestes. This is the sixth day. The pyre at her grave is still warm.
Menelaus. How fast the goddesses came after you for your mother's blood.
Orestes. I am not clever. But I was born a true friend to the people I owe.
Menelaus. And your father? Does it do you any good that you avenged him?
Orestes. Not yet. And I call what is still to come the same thing as nothing.
Menelaus. And the city? How do you stand with it, after doing this?
Orestes. They hate us so much that nobody will speak to us.
Menelaus. You have not even washed the blood off your hands, as the custom is?
Orestes. Wherever I go, the door is shut in my face.
Menelaus. Which of the citizens are pushing to have you driven out of the country?
Orestes. Oeax. He has a grudge from Troy, and he lays it on my father.
Menelaus. I understand. He is making you pay for his brother Palamedes, who was killed there.
Orestes. Which I had nothing to do with. But there are three things destroying me.
Menelaus. Who else? Some of Aegisthus's friends, I suppose?
Orestes. Those are the ones. They are treating me with outrage, and it is them the city listens to now.
Menelaus. And will the city let you hold Agamemnon's sceptre?
Orestes. How would it, when they will not even let us go on living?
Menelaus. What are they doing? Is there anything you can tell me plainly?
Orestes. There is a vote being taken against us. Today.
Menelaus. On what? Banishment from the city? Or whether you live or die?
Orestes. Whether I die. At the hands of the citizens, under a heap of stones.
Menelaus. Then why not get over the border and run for it?
Orestes. Because we are ringed round with men in bronze armour.
Menelaus. Your own private enemies, or the armed force of Argos?
Orestes. Every citizen in the place, so that I die. It is a short story.
Menelaus. Poor man. You have come to the very end of misfortune.
Orestes. You are the hope I have left. You are where I run to, out of all this. You have come home lucky, and you find us in misery. Share your good fortune with the people you owe. Do not take the good thing you have got and keep it to yourself. Take your turn at carrying the trouble too, and pay back what my father did for you to the people you owe it to. Friends who are not friends when the trouble comes have the name of friends and nothing else.
Chorus. And here is Tyndareus the Spartan, hurrying this way as fast as an old man's legs will carry him, dressed in black, his hair cropped in mourning for his daughter.
Orestes. I am finished, Menelaus. This is Tyndareus coming towards us, and of all men alive he is the one I am most ashamed to look in the face, after what I have done. He brought me up when I was small. He covered me with kisses, carrying Agamemnon's boy round in his arms, and Leda did the same, and the two of them made as much of me as they did of their own sons, Castor and Polydeuces. And I have paid them back, oh my wretched heart, my wretched soul, with this. Where is there a darkness I can pull over my face? What cloud can I put between me and him, so that I get away from the old man's eyes?
(Tyndareus comes in, an old man in black with his hair cut short, led by his attendants.)
Tyndareus. Where is he, where is my daughter's husband? Where can I see Menelaus? I was pouring the offerings on Clytemnestra's grave when I heard that he had put in at Nauplia, with his wife, safe after all these years. Take me to him. I want to stand at his right hand and greet him. It is a long time since I set eyes on a friend.
Menelaus. Greetings, old man. You shared a wife with Zeus.
Tyndareus. Greetings to you too, Menelaus, my daughter's husband. Ah. What an evil thing it is, not to know the future. There he is, the mother-killer, in front of the house, a snake, flashing the sick light out of his eyes. I loathe him. Menelaus, are you speaking to him? To that godless thing?
Menelaus. Why not? He is the son of a man I loved.
Tyndareus. That is Agamemnon's son? This thing here?
Menelaus. It is. And when he is down on his luck, he is owed respect.
Tyndareus. You have been too long among barbarians. You have turned into one yourself.
Menelaus. It is the Greek way, surely, always to honour your own blood.
Tyndareus. And it is the Greek way not to want to put yourself above the laws.
Menelaus. The wise say that anything done under necessity is a slave to it.
Tyndareus. Then you keep that piece of wisdom. I will not have it.
Menelaus. No, because you are angry, and old age and anger together are not wise.
Tyndareus. An argument about wisdom, with him standing there? If everyone can see what is right and what is not, was there ever a man more senseless than this one? He never once looked at what justice required. He never went to the law that all Greeks share. When Agamemnon breathed out his life, struck over the head by my daughter, a filthy deed, and I will never defend it, he should have brought a charge for the blood, a holy prosecution, and thrown his mother out of the house. That would have been the disciplined course, instead of a disaster: he would have kept to the law, and he would have kept his hands clean before the gods. As it is, he has walked into the same fate as his mother. He was right to think her wicked. He became more wicked than she was, by killing her.
Let me ask you one thing, Menelaus, just this. Suppose this man's wife kills him. And his son kills his mother to pay for it. And then that man's son wipes out killing with another killing. Where does it end? Where is the last of the evil? Our fathers long ago settled this the right way. A man with blood on his hands was not allowed into their sight, was not allowed to cross their path; they made him clean by exile. They did not kill him back. Otherwise there is always going to be one more man liable for a killing, the one who took the last stain onto his hands.
Now, I hate godless women, and my own daughter first of all, who killed her husband. And Helen, your wife: I will never say a good word for her, and I would not so much as speak to her, and I do not envy you your trip to Troy for a worthless woman. But the law I will defend with everything I have, to put a stop to this savagery, this bloodlust, which is always the ruin of countries and of cities.
(Tyndareus turns away from Menelaus and speaks to Orestes directly.)
What kind of heart did you have in you, you wretched man, when your mother bared her breast and begged you? I was not there, I did not see the horror of it, and it still melts these old eyes of mine with tears. And here is one thing that agrees with what I say: the gods hate you. You are paying for your mother, wandering about in fits of madness and terror. What do I need other witnesses for, when I can see it for myself?
So understand this, Menelaus. Do not set yourself against the gods by wanting to help this man. Leave him to the citizens, to be stoned to death, or never set foot on Spartan soil again. My daughter died, and she deserved to die. But it should not have been by his hand. In everything else I have been a happy man. Except in my daughters. There I have had no luck at all.
Chorus. The one to envy is the man who has been lucky in his children and has never had a famous disaster in his house.
Orestes. Old man, I am afraid to speak to you, because whatever I say I am going to hurt you, and hurt your heart. I know: I am unholy, because I killed my mother. But there is another name for me too, and it is holy: I avenged my father. Let your old age get out of the way of my argument. It is your years that knock the words out of me. If they were not standing there I would go straight down the road; as it is, I am afraid of your grey hair.
What should I have done? Set one thing against the other. My father planted me. Your daughter bore me: she was the field that took the seed from someone else. Without a father there would never be a child. So I reasoned it out: I owed more to the founder of my line than to the woman who took on the job of feeding me. And your daughter, I am ashamed to call her my mother, went to a man's bed in a private wedding of her own, and not a decent one. I speak against myself when I speak badly of her. I know that. I will say it anyway. Aegisthus was the husband hidden in the house. I killed him. And on top of that I sacrificed my mother. An unholy thing to do, yes. But I was avenging my father.
And now, as to the reason you say I should be stoned, hear how I am doing every Greek a service. If women get the nerve to go this far, to murder their husbands, and then run to their children for shelter and hunt for pity with their bared breasts, then killing a husband would be nothing to them. Any charge that came to hand would do. I did a terrible thing, as you keep announcing, and I put a stop to that custom. I hated my mother and I destroyed her, and I was within my rights. While her husband was away from home under arms, leading the army for the whole of Greece, she betrayed him. She did not keep his bed clean. And when she realised she had been caught out, she did not punish herself. No. To keep from being punished by her husband, she punished my father. She killed him.
By the gods, and this is not the moment to be bringing up the gods, when I am arguing a case of murder, but if I had kept my mouth shut and gone along with what my mother did, what would the dead man have done to me? Would he not have hated me, and set the Furies dancing round me? Or are there goddesses on my mother's side and none on his, when he was wronged far worse than she was? You are the one, old man. You fathered a wicked daughter, and you destroyed me. It was her nerve that took my father from me, and made me my mother's killer.
Look at Telemachus. He did not kill the wife of Odysseus, because she did not marry a second husband on top of the first. The bed in her house stayed sound. And look at Apollo, who lives at the navel of the earth and gives mortals the clearest word there is, the god we obey in everything he says. I obeyed him, and I killed the woman who bore me. Call him the unholy one. Kill him. It was his mistake, not mine. What should I have done? Or is the god not good enough to take the pollution off me when I hand it over to him? Where is anyone supposed to run, then, if the one who gave the order will not save me from death? So do not say that what was done was done badly. Say that for the ones who did it, it has turned out unhappily. When people's marriages are well made, their life is blessed. When they fall out badly, everything goes wrong for them, at home and outside it.
Chorus. Women are always getting in the way of what men do, and always to make things worse.
Tyndareus. Since you are so bold about it, since you will not tone down a word, and you answer me in a way that is meant to hurt, you are making me all the more eager to go and see to your death. And I will count it a fine extra piece of work on top of the business I came here for, which was to dress my daughter's grave. I am going to the assembly of the Argives, and I will set the city on you, willing or not, on you and on your sister, to pay the penalty of stoning. She deserves to die more than you do. She is the one who made you savage against your mother, always dripping stories into your ear to make you hate her more, telling you about dreams sent by Agamemnon, and about Aegisthus's bed, may the gods below loathe it, because it was bitter enough up here, until she set the house on fire with a fire no forge ever lit.
Menelaus, I say this to you, and I will do it as well. If you count my hatred for anything, or the marriage that binds us, do not defend this man from death against the gods. Leave him to the citizens to be stoned to death, or never set foot on Spartan soil. You have heard it. Now you know it. And do not choose godless friends and push the god-fearing ones aside. Take me away from this house, servants.
(Tyndareus goes, led away by his attendants.)
Orestes. Go, then. Let the rest of what I have to say reach this man without a disturbance, and without your old age in the way. Menelaus, why are you pacing round in circles, thinking, going up one road and back down the other, with two cares pulling at you?
Menelaus. Leave me alone. I am turning something over in my mind, and I cannot see which way to turn, the way things stand.
Orestes. Do not finish deciding yet. Hear what I have to say first, and then make up your mind.
Menelaus. Speak, then. You are right. There are times when silence is better than talk, and times when talk is better than silence.
Orestes. Then I will speak now. A long speech has the advantage over a short one, and is clearer to listen to. Give me nothing of your own, Menelaus. Pay back what you took from my father. I am not talking about money. Or rather, money is exactly what it is, if you save my life, because my life is the dearest thing I own.
I did wrong. And I need to get a little wrong from you in return for that evil. Because my father Agamemnon did wrong too, when he gathered Greece together and went to Troy. Not a fault of his own. He was trying to heal your wife's fault, and your wife's wrong. That is one thing, and you owe me one thing back for it. And he gave up his body, truly, as friends should for friends, slogging beside your shield so that you could get your wife back. So pay me back the very thing you got there. Work hard for one day, standing up as my saviour, not ten full years. And what Aulis took, my sister's blood: I let you keep that. Do not kill Hermione. When I am doing as badly as I am doing now, you have to come out ahead, and I have to let it pass.
But give my life to my poor father, and my sister's life, a girl who has gone unmarried too long. If I die I leave my father's house with no one in it. You will say it is impossible. That is just it. It is when things are bad that friends have to help friends. When the god gives freely, what do you need friends for? The god is enough by himself, when he is willing to help.
Every Greek believes you love your wife, and I do not say that to crawl to you or to flatter you. By her, I beg you. Oh, the misery of my troubles, and where I have come to. What of it? I have to suffer this. I am begging for the whole house. Uncle, my father's own brother, imagine that the dead man under the ground can hear this, that his spirit is hovering over you and saying what I am saying, the same words, for tears and groans and disasters. I have spoken. I have asked for my life. I am hunting what everybody hunts, not only me.
Chorus. And I beg you too, a woman though I am, to help people who need it. And you can.
Menelaus. Orestes, I do respect you, and I want to share the labour of your troubles. And that is what you are supposed to do: carry the evils of your own blood together, when a god gives you the power for it, dying and killing the other side. But the power is what I would need to get from the gods. I have come home with a spear and no allies behind it, worn down by ten thousand troubles, with the small strength of the friends I have left. In a battle, then, we could never beat Pelasgian Argos. If we could win with soft words, that is where our hope comes in. How does anyone take a great thing with small means? By hard work? It is stupid even to want it.
When the people are in the flush of their anger, it is like trying to put out a raging fire. But if a man goes quietly, slackens off and gives way while they are pulling hard, and watches for his moment, they might blow themselves out. And once they let their breath go, you can easily get whatever you want from them. There is pity in them, and there is a great temper in them too, and to a man who watches and waits that is the most valuable possession there is. I will go and try to persuade Tyndareus and the city for you, to use their excess well. A ship dips too, when the sheet is hauled hard against the wind, and rights itself again when the sheet is let go. The god hates too much eagerness, and so do the citizens. I have to save you, and I say it straight out, by cleverness, not by force against people who are stronger than we are. By strength I could not save you, whatever you may imagine. It is not easy for one spear to set up a trophy over the troubles you are in. We never approached the land of Argos with softness before. But now it has to be done. The wise are slaves to fortune.
(Menelaus goes out, in the direction of the town.)
Orestes. You are no use for anything except leading an army for a woman's sake. You worst of men at defending your friends. You turn your back on me and run, and what Agamemnon did for you is gone with the wind? So you had no friends after all, father, when things went badly. Oh. I am betrayed. There is no hope left, nowhere to turn to get away from the Argives' death sentence. He was my refuge. He was my safety. But look: here is the man I love best in the world, Pylades, running this way from Phocis. A sweet sight. A man you can trust when things are bad is a better sight than a calm sea is to sailors.
(Pylades comes in on foot, out of breath from running.)
Pylades. I came through the town faster than I should have. I heard the city was gathering, and then I saw it for myself, plainly: it is against you and your sister, to kill you at once. What is this? How are you? What is happening to you, dearest of all the friends my age, dearest of my friends and my kin? Because you are all of those things to me.
Orestes. We are finished. That is my trouble for you, in short.
Pylades. Then you would be pulling me down with you. Friends have everything in common.
Orestes. Menelaus is the worst of men, to me and to my sister.
Pylades. Naturally. A bad woman's husband turns into a bad man.
Orestes. He came, and he paid me back exactly as if he had never come.
Pylades. So he really has arrived in this country?
Orestes. After a long time. But he was found out very quickly as a bad friend.
Pylades. And did he sail here with that wife of his, the worst of women?
Orestes. He did not bring her here. She brought him.
Pylades. Where is she, the one woman who destroyed more Achaeans than anyone?
Orestes. In my house. If I am supposed to call this house mine.
Pylades. And what did you say to your father's brother?
Orestes. Not to stand there and watch me and my sister killed by the citizens.
Pylades. By the gods, what did he say to that? That is what I want to know.
Orestes. He was careful. That is what bad friends do to their friends.
Pylades. And what excuse did he take cover behind? Once I know that, I know everything.
Orestes. He arrived. The father who sowed those excellent daughters.
Pylades. You mean Tyndareus. Angry with you, I suppose, over his daughter?
Orestes. You have got it. And Menelaus chose the marriage tie to him over the one to my father.
Pylades. He did not have the nerve to take up a share of your troubles, when he was standing right here?
Orestes. No. He was not born a fighter. He is brave among women.
Pylades. Then you are in the worst trouble there is. And you have to die?
Orestes. The citizens have to cast their vote on us, about the killing.
Pylades. And what does the vote decide? Tell me. I am frightened.
Orestes. Death or life. A short speech about a long matter.
Pylades. Then leave the house with your sister and run.
Orestes. Can you not see? There are guards on us in every direction.
Pylades. I saw the streets of the town blocked with armed men.
Orestes. We are besieged, like a city with the enemy round its walls.
Pylades. Now ask me what is happening to me. I am finished too.
Orestes. Who did it? That would be a new evil on top of mine.
Pylades. Strophius, my father. He lost his temper and drove me out of the house, into exile.
Orestes. On a charge of his own, or one the citizens share?
Pylades. That I helped you kill your mother. He calls it unholy.
Orestes. You poor man. It looks as if my troubles are going to hurt you as well.
Pylades. I do not go about things the way Menelaus does. This has to be borne.
Orestes. Are you not afraid Argos will want to kill you too, as well as me?
Pylades. It is not their place to punish me. I belong to the land of Phocis.
Orestes. The mob is a terrible thing, when it has villains for leaders.
Pylades. But when it gets honest ones, its decisions are always honest.
Orestes. Right. We need to talk this through together.
Pylades. What is it we have to decide?
Orestes. Suppose I went to the citizens and told them —
Pylades. That what you did was just?
Orestes. Avenging my own father?
Pylades. They might be only too glad to lay hands on you.
Orestes. So I cower here in silence and die?
Pylades. That is cowardly.
Orestes. Then what should I do?
Pylades. If you stay here, have you any way of saving yourself?
Orestes. I have none.
Pylades. And if you go, is there any hope of coming out of this alive?
Orestes. With luck, there might be.
Pylades. Then that is better than staying.
Orestes. Then I will go.
Pylades. At least if you die that way, you die better.
Orestes. You are right. That way I get clear of cowardice.
Pylades. More than by staying.
Orestes. And what I did was just.
Pylades. Just pray it looks that way to them.
Orestes. And somebody might pity me —
Pylades. Yes. Your birth counts for a great deal.
Orestes. — someone angry about my father's death.
Pylades. All of that is plain to see.
Orestes. I have to go. To die without honour is not a man's death.
Pylades. I agree.
Orestes. Then shall we tell my sister?
Pylades. No. By the gods, no.
Orestes. There would be tears, certainly.
Pylades. And that is a bad omen. A big one.
Orestes. Clearly better to keep quiet.
Pylades. And you will gain time.
Orestes. There is only one thing in my way.
Pylades. What is this new thing now?
Orestes. That the goddesses might take hold of me and drive me mad.
Pylades. But I will take care of you.
Orestes. It is an unpleasant business, handling a sick man.
Pylades. Not for me. Not when it is you.
Orestes. Be careful. You could catch my madness.
Pylades. Let that go.
Orestes. Then you will not hesitate?
Pylades. No. Hesitation is a great evil between friends.
Orestes. Then walk on, and steer my feet.
Pylades. Gladly, when the man I am caring for is a friend.
Orestes. And take me to my father's tomb.
Pylades. Whatever for?
Orestes. So that I can beg him to save me.
Pylades. Yes. That is right and proper.
Orestes. But my mother's grave: I do not even want to see it.
Pylades. No. She was your enemy. But hurry, or the vote of the Argives will get to you first. Put your side against my side, slow as it is with the sickness. I will carry you through the town, and think very little of the crowd, and not be ashamed of it. Where would I ever show myself a friend, if I did not stand by you when you are in terrible trouble?
Orestes. That is the old saying exactly: get yourself friends, not only relations. A man whose ways are melted into yours, even if he is from outside the house, is a better friend for a man to have than ten thousand of his own blood.
(Orestes and Pylades go out together, Orestes leaning on his friend.)
Chorus. The great wealth and the courage that held its head high through Greece and by the streams of the Simois turned back, for the sons of Atreus, out of good fortune, long ago, from an old disaster in the house, when the quarrel over a golden lamb came to the sons of Tantalus: the most pitiful feasts, and the slaughter of high-born children. And from that day killing pays for killing through blood, and does not let go of the two sons of Atreus.
Chorus. The fine thing was not fine: to cut a parent's flesh with a hand and a forged blade, and hold the sword up black with blood to the rays of the sun. Doing evil well is a many-coloured impiety, the madness of men whose minds have gone wrong. In her terror of death the poor daughter of Tyndareus screamed: "Child, this is not holy, what you dare, killing your own mother. Do not, for honouring your father, fasten a disgrace on yourself for ever."
Chorus. What sickness, what tears, what pity is greater anywhere on earth than to take a mother's blood on your hands? Look at what he did, and now he is raving in fits of madness, the Furies' prey, whirling murder in his racing eyes, Agamemnon's son. Poor man. When he saw his mother's breast rising out of her gold-threaded dress, he saw it, and he made his mother the sacrifice, to pay back what was done to his father.
Electra. Women, has poor Orestes gone out of the house? Has the madness the gods sent got the better of him?
Chorus. Not at all. He has gone to the people of Argos, to stand the trial that has been set for his life, the one where you and he must live or die.
Electra. Oh. What has he done? Who talked him into it?
Chorus. Pylades. But here is a messenger, and it looks as if he will soon be telling us what happened there to your brother.
(An old man comes in from the direction of the town.)
Messenger. Poor girl. Unhappy daughter of Agamemnon the general, my lady Electra, listen to the news I have come to bring you. It is bad.
Electra. Aiai. Then we are finished. Your words make it plain. You have come with bad news, by the look of you.
Messenger. The Argives have voted. Your brother is to die, and you too, poor girl, this very day.
Electra. Oh. So it has come, the thing I expected. I have been afraid of it for so long, wasting away with weeping for what was going to happen. But what was the trial like? What did the Argives say that brought us down and confirmed our deaths? Tell me, old friend. Is it stones that will knock the breath out of me, or the knife? Since I share my brother's misfortunes, whatever they are.
Messenger. I happened to be coming in from the country, through the gates, wanting to find out how things stood with you and with Orestes. I was always well disposed to your father, and your house fed me: a poor man, but a loyal one where his friends were concerned. And I saw a crowd on the move, going up to sit on the hill where they say Danaus first gathered the people into a public assembly, when he was on trial against Aegyptus. When I saw the crowd I asked one of the townsmen, "What is happening in Argos? Has some news from the enemy got the city of Danaus all in a flutter?" And he said, "Don't you see Orestes there, coming this way, on his way to a race where the prize is his life?" And then I saw a sight I never expected, and wish I had never seen: Pylades and your brother coming along together, the one with his head hanging, slack with sickness, and the other grieving for his friend as if he were his own brother, nursing him along like a tutor with a child.
When the crowd of Argives was complete, a herald stood up and said, "Who wishes to speak on the question, whether Orestes should be put to death or not, for killing his mother?" And at that Talthybius got up, the man who was with your father when he sacked the Phrygians. He is always on the side of whoever holds the power, and he spoke to face both ways. He was full of admiration for your father, and then he had nothing good to say about your brother, winding fine words and foul words together: that Orestes was setting up a bad precedent about how to treat parents. And the whole time his eye kept flicking, bright and friendly, towards the friends of Aegisthus. That is what the breed is like. Heralds are always jumping across to whoever is on top. Their friend is the man who has the power in the city and the office to go with it.
After him lord Diomedes spoke. He said they should kill neither you nor your brother, but punish you with exile and keep themselves clean before the gods. Some shouted that this was well said, and others did not like it. And then up gets a man with no door on his mouth, a man whose strength is his cheek. An Argive, but no Argive, a man they had been forced to take in. He trusts in noise and in the ignorant freedom of his own tongue, and he is just persuasive enough to get them into some serious trouble one of these days. Because when a man who talks pleasantly and thinks badly persuades the crowd, it is a great evil for the city, whereas the men who give good advice with their brains switched on may not look useful at the moment, but are useful to the city later. That is how you should judge a leader, if you have your eyes open, because the same thing happens to a man who makes speeches as to a man in office. He said that they should stone you and Orestes to death. And it was Tyndareus who kept feeding him his lines, the arguments the man used to get you both killed.
Then another man stood up and said the opposite. Not much to look at, but a man. He does not often come near the town or the round of the marketplace. A farmer, one of the men who work their own land, and they are the only ones who keep this country alive. But he had his wits about him, and he wanted to close with the arguments and fight them. A clean man, who had lived a life nobody could point a finger at. He said they ought to put a crown on Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, for being willing to avenge his father by killing a wicked, godless woman, one who would have put a stop to men ever arming themselves and leaving home to go on campaign, if the men left behind at home were going to ruin the household and seduce the soldiers' wives. And the decent people, at least, thought he spoke well.
Nobody spoke after him. Then your brother came forward and said, "You who hold the land of Inachus, Pelasgians in the old days and Danaids after, it was in your defence as much as my father's that I killed my mother. Because if killing men is going to be a holy act for women, you had better hurry up and die, all of you, or else be the slaves of your wives. And that is the opposite of what you ought to do. As things stand, the woman who betrayed my father's bed is dead. But if you kill me, the law goes slack, and none of you can die too soon, because there will be no shortage of women with the nerve for it." He seemed to speak well, but he did not persuade the crowd. The other one won, that bad man who spoke to the mob, who called for the death of you and your brother.
Poor Orestes only just talked them out of stoning. He promised that he would leave life today, by his own hand, and you with him. Pylades is bringing him home from the assembly now, in tears, and their friends are walking with them, weeping and pitying them. So he is coming to you, a bitter thing to look at, a wretched sight. Get the sword ready, or the noose for your neck, because you have to leave the light. Your noble blood was no use to you, and neither was Apollo, sitting on his tripod at Delphi. He destroyed you.
(The old man goes.)
Chorus. Poor girl. You have hidden your face and bent it to the ground and you have gone silent, as if you were about to break into groans and weeping.
Electra. I begin the groaning, Pelasgian land. I set my white nails to my cheeks, bloody ruin, and beat my head, the beating that falls to the share of the goddess under the earth, Persephone, lovely child of the dead. Let the land the Cyclopes built cry out too, and set the iron to its head and crop the hair, for the ruin of our house. Pity, pity: this is what comes for those who are about to die, who were once the generals of Greece.
Electra. It is gone, gone, it has vanished, the whole line of the children of Pelops, and the glory that once made the house a thing to envy. The jealousy of the gods took hold of it, and the hateful bloody vote of the citizens. Io, io, you tribes of creatures who live for a day, full of tears and full of trouble, look how fate walks past all your hopes. Each of you takes his turn of different sorrows, in the long run of time, and nothing in the whole life of mortals stands still.
Electra. Let me go to the rock that hangs stretched out between sky and earth, swinging on its chains, a lump broken off Olympus, carried round on golden links, so that I can shout out my lament to the old man, my father's father, Tantalus, who fathered, fathered the founders of my house, who saw ruin come. The winged flight of horses, when Pelops in his four-horse chariot drove across the sea, and threw the body of murdered Myrtilus into the swell of the deep, racing his chariot along the shore at Geraestus, where the white waves of the sea come rolling in. From that came the curse on my house, the curse of many groans, when a lamb was born among the flocks, by the doing of Hermes, a lamb with a golden fleece, a portent of destruction, destruction, for Atreus, the breeder of horses. From that came Strife, who turned round the winged chariot of the sun and fitted the westward road of the sky to the single horse of the Dawn. And Zeus turned the seven Pleiades off their course onto another road, and after that he hands out death for death, the feast that carries the name of Thyestes, and the bed of Aerope of Crete, who was false, false to her marriage. And at the very last it has come to me and to my father, by the pitiless necessity of our house.
Chorus. And look, here comes your brother, condemned to death by the vote, and with him Pylades, the most faithful man alive, as good as a brother, steadying the sick limbs of Orestes, yoked beside him, and setting his feet with care.
(Orestes comes in, supported by Pylades.)
Electra. Oh, no. I am groaning because I see you standing at your grave, brother, in front of the pyre of the dead. Oh, no, again. I have looked at you for the very last time, and I am out of my mind.
Orestes. Will you not be quiet, and drop this women's wailing, and put up with what has been decided? It is pitiful, yes. But all the same you have to bear the luck we have.
Electra. And how am I supposed to keep quiet? We are not going to look at this light of the sun any more, we two poor wretches.
Orestes. Do not you kill me too. It is enough that the hand of Argos has killed me already. Leave what we have now alone.
Electra. Oh, your youth, Orestes, and your fate, and your death before its time. You ought to have been living, and now you are gone.
Orestes. By the gods, do not wrap me in cowardice, ferrying me over into tears by reminding me of everything that has gone wrong.
Electra. We are going to die. I cannot help groaning about it. Everyone alive finds it pitiful to lose his own dear life.
Orestes. This is our appointed day. We have to fasten a noose to hang from, or sharpen a sword for our hands.
Electra. Then you kill me, brother. Do not let some Argive kill me and make an outrage of the child of Agamemnon.
Orestes. I have enough of my mother's blood on me. I will not kill you. Die by your own hand, whichever way you like.
Electra. So be it. I will not be a step behind your sword. But I want to put my arms round your neck.
Orestes. Enjoy the empty pleasure, if there is any pleasure in putting your arms round someone when you are this close to death.
Electra. My dearest, the one who has the name that is sweetest to your sister and the one she misses most, and one soul with her.
Orestes. You will melt me. And I want to give you back the love of my arms. Why should a wretch like me be ashamed any more?
(He takes her in his arms.)
Oh, my sister's breast, how dear it is to hold you. This is what the two of us have, poor wretches, instead of children and a marriage bed: these words of greeting.
Electra. Ah. If only the same sword could kill us both, if it is allowed, and one tomb receive us, a coffin made of cedar wood.
Orestes. That would be the sweetest thing of all. But you can see how short of friends we are, when we cannot even share a grave.
Electra. Did he not even speak for you, or make any effort to save your life, Menelaus, that bad man, the traitor to my father?
Orestes. He never showed his face. He has his hopes set on the throne, and he was careful not to save his friends. Well then, let us see that we do something noble, something worthy of Agamemnon, and die doing it. I will show the city what my blood is worth, driving the sword into my liver. And you must match my daring with your own. Pylades, you be the umpire of our deaths. When we are both dead, lay our bodies out properly, and carry us to our father's tomb and bury us there together. And goodbye. I am going to the work, as you see.
Pylades. Stop. First there is one thing I have to blame you for. Did you think I would want to go on living when you were dead?
Orestes. Why? What is it to you to die with me?
Pylades. You ask? What is life to me without your company?
Orestes. You did not kill your mother. I did, poor wretch.
Pylades. With you, together. So I have to suffer the same as you.
Orestes. Give your body back to your father. Do not die with me. You have a city. I do not, not any more. You have your father's house, and a great harbour of wealth. You have lost your marriage to this unlucky sister of mine, whom I promised to you out of respect for your friendship. So take another bride and have children with her. The tie between my house and yours does not exist any more. Goodbye, dearest face of my company. That word is not for us, but it is still for you. The dead are robbed of joys.
Pylades. You are a long way from understanding what I mean. May the fruitful earth refuse to take my blood, and the bright sky too, if I ever betray you: if I ever get myself free and leave you behind. I helped with the killing, I will not deny it, and I planned the whole thing you are now paying for. So I have to die with you, and with her. Because I count her as my wife, the woman whose bed I agreed to. What am I going to say one day, when I come home to Delphi, the citadel of the Phocians? That I was your friend before your troubles, and now that you are in trouble I am your friend no longer? It is not possible. No. This is my business too. But since we are going to die, let us put our heads together and see how Menelaus can share our bad luck.
Orestes. Dearest friend. If only I could see that before I die.
Pylades. Then listen to me, and put off the stroke of the sword.
Orestes. I will, if there is any way to get back at my enemy.
Pylades. Quiet, now. I have very little trust in women.
Orestes. Do not be afraid of these. They are our friends.
Pylades. Let us kill Helen. A bitter grief for Menelaus.
Orestes. How? I am ready, if there is a chance of it coming off.
Pylades. Cut her throat. She is hiding in your house.
Orestes. She certainly is. And she is already putting her seal on everything in it.
Pylades. Not any more, once she has Hades for a bridegroom.
Orestes. But how? She has barbarian slaves around her.
Pylades. Who? I would not be afraid of any Phrygian alive.
Orestes. The kind who are in charge of mirrors and perfume.
Pylades. So she has come here with her Trojan luxuries?
Orestes. So much of it that Greece is too small a house for her.
Pylades. A race of slaves is nothing against men who are not slaves.
Orestes. If I can do this, I am not afraid to die twice over.
Pylades. Nor am I, if it is you I am avenging.
Orestes. Then lay the thing out for me, and go on to the end of it.
Pylades. We go into the house, as if we were going in to die.
Orestes. I have that much. The rest I do not.
Pylades. We pour out our sorrows to her, everything we are suffering.
Orestes. So that she cries for us, while inside she is delighted.
Pylades. And we will be doing exactly what she is doing, at the same time.
Orestes. And then how do we fight the fight?
Pylades. We will have swords hidden in these cloaks.
Orestes. But before that, how do we get rid of her attendants?
Pylades. We shut them out, one here, one there, in different parts of the house.
Orestes. And any one of them who will not keep quiet, we have to kill.
Pylades. And then the work itself shows us where to aim.
Orestes. At Helen. Kill Helen. I understand the signal.
Pylades. You have it. Now hear how good my plan is. If we drew the sword on a woman with more decency in her, the killing would be a disgrace. But as it is, she is going to pay the penalty on behalf of all Greece, for the fathers she killed and the children she destroyed, and the brides she made widows of their husbands. There will be shouts of joy. They will light fires to the gods, and pray for every blessing on your head and mine, because we took a wicked woman's blood. And when you have killed her you will not be called the man who killed his mother. You will leave that name behind you and rise to a better one: the man who killed Helen, the killer of so many. It is not right, it can never be right, that Menelaus should do well while your father and you and your sister die, and your mother, but I let that pass, it is not a fitting thing to say, and that he should hold your house, when it was Agamemnon's spear that won him back his bride. Let me not live another day if I do not draw the sword on her. And if we do not manage to kill Helen, then we set fire to this house and die. One of two things we will not fail to get, and either one is glory: to die well, or to be saved well.
Chorus. The daughter of Tyndareus has earned the hatred of every woman alive. She has shamed her whole sex.
Orestes. Ah. There is nothing better than a friend you can be sure of. Not wealth, not a throne. And the crowd is a stupid thing to trade for one noble friend. You were the one who worked out what we did to Aegisthus, and you stood next to me in the danger, and now once again you are handing me my revenge on my enemies and you are not stepping out of the way. But I will stop praising you. There is something heavy about it, being praised too much. Now I am going to breathe out my life whatever happens, and I want to do something to my enemies before I die, so that I can pay back the people who betrayed me with ruin of their own, and so that the ones who made me miserable will have something to groan about. I am the son of Agamemnon, who was judged worthy to rule Greece, no tyrant, but a man who had something like a god's strength in him. I will not shame him by dying a slave's death. I will let go of my life like a free man, and I will make Menelaus pay. Because if we could get hold of one thing, we would be lucky men: if rescue fell into our lap from somewhere, unlooked for, and we turned out the killers and not the killed. That is my prayer. And what I want is a pleasant thing to say, it costs nothing, and it cheers the heart with words that fly out of the mouth.
Electra. Brother, I think I have it. That very thing. A rescue for you, and for him, and thirdly for me.
Orestes. You are talking about the foresight of a god. But where is it? Since I know the good sense you carry in that soul of yours.
Electra. Listen to me, then. And you, over here. Pay attention.
Orestes. Say it. There is a certain pleasure in waiting for good news.
Electra. You know Helen's daughter? Of course you do. I am asking a man who knows.
Orestes. I know her. Hermione. My mother brought her up.
Electra. She has gone to the tomb of Clytemnestra.
Orestes. To do what? What hope are you putting in front of me?
Electra. To pour drink-offerings on our mother's grave.
Orestes. Well, and how does what you have just said get us to safety?
Electra. Seize her as a hostage, when she comes back.
Orestes. What sort of cure is that, for the three of us?
Electra. Once Helen is dead, if Menelaus tries to do anything to you, or to Pylades, or to me, because the three of us are one friend now, tell him you will kill Hermione. You have to draw your sword and hold it right against the girl's throat. And if Menelaus, when he sees Helen lying in her blood, wants the girl to live and offers to save you, then let her father have his daughter's body back. But if he cannot hold his hot temper in hand and tries to kill you, then you cut the girl's throat. And I think that if he blusters a great deal at first, he will soften in time. He was not born bold, and he was not born brave. That is the rampart I have for our safety. My speech is finished.
Orestes. You have the mind of a man, and the body that belongs among women. How much more you deserved to live than to die. Pylades, this is the woman you will lose, poor man. Or else you will live, and have a blessed marriage.
Pylades. If only it could be so, and she could come to the city of the Phocians with a fine wedding song, and the honour she deserves.
Orestes. How soon will Hermione get back to the house? Because everything else you said was perfect, if our luck holds, and we catch the cub of that unholy father.
Electra. I think she must be near the house by now. The time it would take matches exactly.
Orestes. Good. Then you, Electra, my sister, stay here in front of the house and wait for the girl to arrive. And keep watch, in case anyone, some ally of his, or our father's brother himself, gets into the house before the killing is finished. If so, shout into the house, or bang on the door, or send word in to us. We are going inside, Pylades, to arm our hands with swords for the last fight. Because you are sharing this labour with me.
Father, you who live in the house of the dark night, your son Orestes is calling you to come and help the people who need you. It is because of you that I am suffering this, wretched and wrongly. I have been betrayed by your brother for doing what was right. I want to take his wife and kill her. Be our partner in it.
Electra. Father, come. Come, if you can hear under the ground your children calling, who are dying for your sake.
Pylades. Agamemnon, kinsman of my father, hear my prayers too. Save your children.
Orestes. I killed my mother —
Electra. And I put my hand to the sword —
Pylades. And I made the plan, and cut them loose from their fear —
Orestes. For you, father. To help you.
Electra. And I did not betray you either.
Pylades. Will you hear these reproaches and not rescue your children?
Orestes. I pour you a drink-offering of tears.
Electra. And I pour you one of laments.
Pylades. Stop now, and let us get on with the work. If prayers can pierce the ground like spears, he hears. And you, Zeus, our ancestor, and you, holy Justice, give good luck to him, and to me, and to her. One fight for three friends, one judgement: either all of us live, or we pay the debt of death.
(Orestes and Pylades go into the house.)
Electra. Women of Mycenae, my friends, first in rank in Argos, where the Pelasgians made their home.
Chorus. What are you calling out to us, mistress? That name is still yours, in the city of the Danaids.
Electra. Stand there, some of you on this cart road, and the rest of you over here on the other path, to keep watch over the house.
(The Chorus divides. Half of them go to watch each road.)
Chorus. Why are you calling on me for this duty? Tell me, my dear.
Electra. I am afraid that someone will come to the house and stand over the fresh blood and find trouble on top of trouble.
First Half-Chorus. Go on, hurry. I will keep guard on this road, the one toward the rising sun.
Second Half-Chorus. And I on this one, the one that leads toward the west.
Electra. Now turn your eyes sideways, this way and that.
Chorus. From there to here, and then back again we turn to look, as you tell us.
Electra. Roll your eyes about now, look at everything, through your hair.
First Half-Chorus. Someone is coming along the road. Who is this country man wandering about your house?
Electra. Then we are finished, friends. Any moment now he will show our enemies the armed beasts we have hidden.
First Half-Chorus. Do not be afraid. The path is empty, my dear. It is not what you think.
Electra. And you? Is your side still safe for me? Give me some good news, tell me the ground in front of the courtyard is deserted.
Second Half-Chorus. All is well on this side. But watch your own. Not one of the Argives is coming near us.
First Half-Chorus. Same here. There is no crowd on this side either.
Electra. Well then, let me put my ear to the gates.
Chorus. You inside the house, why are you so slow to redden the blade with the victim's blood, while all is quiet?
Electra. They do not hear me. Oh, I am wretched. Has her beauty blunted their swords? Any moment now some Argive will come running in full armour to the rescue and close in on the house. Watch more carefully. This is no contest for sitting still. Turn about, some of you this way, the rest of you that way.
Chorus. I am going up and down the road, watching everywhere.
(Helen screams from inside the house.)
Helen. Io, Pelasgian Argos! I am being murdered, foully murdered.
Chorus. Did you hear? The men have their hands in the killing. That is Helen screaming, if I can judge.
Electra. Zeus, oh Zeus, power that never runs dry, come and help the people I love, whatever it takes.
Helen. Menelaus, I am dying, and you are right here and do nothing for me.
Electra. Murder her, kill her, destroy her, drive the two double-edged swords out of your hands into the woman who left her father, left her husband, who killed so many Greeks by the spear, dead beside the river, where tears fell on tears from the iron arrows around the eddies of Scamander.
Chorus. Quiet, quiet. I heard a footstep. Someone is coming down the road to the house.
Electra. Dearest women, it is Hermione, walking right into the middle of the killing. Let us stop shouting. She is stepping into the meshes of the net. A fine catch she will make, if she is taken. Back to your places, with calm eyes, and nothing in your faces to show what has been done. I will keep my own eyes down and gloomy, as if I knew nothing of what has happened here.
(Hermione comes in from the direction of Clytemnestra's tomb.)
Girl, are you back from wreathing Clytemnestra's grave and pouring drink-offerings to the dead below?
Hermione. I am back. I won her goodwill. But a kind of fear has come over me. I heard a cry from the house while I was still a long way off.
Electra. Why not? What is happening to us deserves groans.
Hermione. Say something better than that. What is the news?
Electra. This country has voted that Orestes and I must die.
Hermione. No. Not my own kin.
Electra. It is fixed. We are standing under the yoke of necessity.
Hermione. Is that the reason for the cry inside the house?
Electra. Yes. A suppliant fell at Helen's knees and was crying out—
Hermione. Who? I know nothing more unless you tell me.
Electra. Poor Orestes. Begging not to die, and for me too.
Hermione. Then the house has good reason to be shouting.
Electra. What else would anyone cry out about, if not that? But come and join your friends in begging. Fall at your mother's feet, blessed as she is, so that Menelaus does not have to watch us die. You were nursed in my mother's arms. Pity us, and lift some of this evil off us. Come here, into the struggle, and I will lead the way. You alone hold the end of our safety in your hands.
Hermione. Look, I am hurrying my feet into the house. As far as it lies with me, count yourselves saved.
Electra. You inside the house, friends with your swords, will you not seize the prey?
Hermione. Oh, no. Who are these men I see?
(Armed men seize Hermione at the door. Orestes speaks from inside.)
Orestes. Quiet. You have come here for our safety, not for yours.
Electra. Hold her, hold her. Put a sword to her throat and then keep quiet, so that Menelaus learns he has found men here, not Phrygian cowards, and has been treated the way cowards deserve.
(They drag Hermione into the house. Electra goes in after them, and the doors are shut.)
Chorus. Io, io, friends, raise a noise, a noise and a shout in front of the house, so that the murder that has been done does not throw the Argives into a terrible panic and bring them running to the royal house, before I see for certain that Helen lies murdered and bloody in the house, or hear the story from one of her servants. Part of what has happened I know. The rest I do not know for sure. Through justice the vengeance of the gods has come to Helen. She filled all Greece with tears because of that cursed, cursed Paris of Ida, who brought Greece to Troy.
Chorus. But the bolts of the royal doors are rattling. Be quiet. One of the Phrygians is coming out. We can ask him how things stand inside.
(A Phrygian slave scrambles down from the roof of the porch and tumbles out in front of the house.)
Phrygian. I have escaped the Argive sword, out of death, in my barbarian slippers, over the cedar beams that roof the porch, over the Doric triglyphs, gone, gone, oh Earth, Earth, a barbarian's flight. Aiai. Where can I run, strangers? Into the grey air, fly up, or into the sea, that the Ocean with the bull's head winds round the earth in his arms?
Chorus. What is it, Helen's servant, you head from Ida?
Phrygian. Ilium, Ilium, oh, oh, city of Phrygia, and holy Ida with your rich soil, how I groan for your ruin, a chariot-song, a chariot-song of grief in my barbarian cry, over the beauty born of a bird, the swan-feathered face, Leda's cub, Helen the ruin, Helen the ruin, a Fury for Apollo's towers of polished stone. Ottotoi. Wailing, wailing, poor Dardania, for Ganymede and his horses, the boy who shared the bed of Zeus.
Chorus. Tell us clearly, one thing after another, what happened in the house. Up to now I have only been guessing, and I cannot make it out.
Phrygian. Ailinon, ailinon: that is how the barbarians begin a death, aiai, in the tongue of Asia, whenever the blood of kings is poured on the ground by the iron swords of Hades. They came into the house, to tell you one thing after another, two twin lions of Greece. One of them, they said, had the general for his father. The other was the son of Strophius, a man of evil cunning, like Odysseus, treacherous in his silence, but true to his friends, bold in a fight, clever in war, and a deadly snake. Curse him for his quiet planning, the villain. They went in to the throne of the woman Paris the archer married, their eyes smeared with tears, and sat down, humble, one on this side, one on that, each guarding his own flank. And they threw, they threw their suppliant hands round Helen's knees, both of them. And up leapt the Phrygian slaves, leapt running, and each one said to the next, dropping in fear, that this might be a trick. Some thought not, but others thought the snake who killed his mother was tangling the daughter of Tyndareus in the meshes of a trap.
Chorus. And where were you then? Or had you already run away in fear?
Phrygian. It happened I was, in the Phrygian way, the Phrygian way, stirring the air, the air beside Helen's curl, Helen's, with a round fan of feathers, well made, in front of her cheek, waving it, the way barbarians do. And she was twisting flax on her spindle with her fingers, letting the thread fall to the floor, because she wanted to stitch ornaments for the tomb out of the Phrygian spoils, with her flax, purple robes, a gift for Clytemnestra. Orestes spoke to the Spartan girl: "Daughter of Zeus, set your foot on the floor here, get up off your chair, and come to the seat of Pelops our forefather, the old hearth, so that you can hear what I have to say." And he led her, led her, and she followed, no prophet of what was coming. And his partner in the work was busy elsewhere, the evil Phocian, going about: "Out of the way! Phrygians. Cowards, always." And he locked us up, one here and one there, all over the house: some in the horse stables, some in the outer rooms, one this way and another that, posting each of us far away from our mistress.
Chorus. And what came next, in this disaster?
Phrygian. Mother of Ida, mother, mighty, mighty, aiai, the bloody sufferings, the lawless evils I saw, I saw in the house of kings. From under the shadow of their purple-bordered cloaks they pulled their swords, and each one spun his eye a different way, in case anyone was near. Like boars of the mountain they stood facing the woman and said: "You will die, you will die. Your coward husband is killing you, because he betrayed his brother's son to die in Argos." And she screamed, she screamed: "Oh, oh." She struck her white arm on her breast and beat her poor head with the blow, and turned her gold-sandalled foot to flight, to flight. But Orestes stepped after her in his Mycenaean boot, threw his fingers into her hair, bent her neck back over her left shoulder, and was about to drive the black sword into her throat.
Chorus. And where were you Phrygians in the house, to defend her?
Phrygian. With a scream we broke out the doors and doorposts with bars, from the rooms where we were waiting, and came running to help from every corner of the house, one with stones, one with javelins, one with a sword drawn in his hands. And against us came Pylades, unflinching, like, like Hector the Phrygian, or Ajax of the triple crest, whom I saw, I saw at the gates of Priam. And we met, point to point of our swords. And then, then it was very plain what Phrygians are, how much less than Greek spears we were in the strength of Ares: one gone, running; one a corpse; one carrying a wound; one begging, holding that up against death. We ran for cover in the dark. Corpses were falling, others were about to fall, others lay still. And poor Hermione came into the house just as her mother fell to the floor, murdered, the poor woman who bore her. And like Bacchants without their wands, the two of them ran at her and caught her up, a mountain cub in their hands, and turned back to the daughter of Zeus to slaughter her. But she, out of the bedroom, straight through the house, she vanished, oh Zeus and Earth and light and night, by drugs, or the arts of magicians, or the gods stealing her away. What came after I no longer know. I stole my runaway foot out of the house. So Menelaus, after all his troubles, all his troubles, took his wife Helen back from Troy and got nothing for it.
Chorus. And here is a new thing on top of new things. I see Orestes coming out in front of the house with a sword in his hand, walking with a wild step.
(Orestes comes out of the house with a drawn sword.)
Orestes. Where is the man who ran out of the house to get away from my sword?
Phrygian. I bow down to you, my lord, falling at your feet the way barbarians do.
Orestes. This is not Ilium. This is the land of Argos.
Phrygian. Everywhere, a man with sense finds living sweeter than dying.
Orestes. You did not by any chance raise that shout for Menelaus to come running?
Phrygian. No, for you. To help you. You deserve it more.
Orestes. So the daughter of Tyndareus died justly?
Phrygian. Most justly. Even if she had three throats to die with.
Orestes. It is cowardice that makes your tongue so obliging. You do not think so inside.
Phrygian. Don't I? The woman who ruined Greece, and the Phrygians along with it?
Orestes. Swear it, or I kill you. Swear you are not saying it to please me.
Phrygian. I swear by my life. That is an oath I would keep.
Orestes. Was it like this at Troy too? Were all the Phrygians this afraid of iron?
Phrygian. Take the sword away. This close, it flashes back a terrible death.
Orestes. Afraid you will turn to stone, as if you had looked at a Gorgon?
Phrygian. Into a corpse, more likely. I do not know anything about the Gorgon's head.
Orestes. You are a slave, and you are afraid of Hades, who would set you free from your troubles?
Phrygian. Every man, even a slave, likes looking at the light.
Orestes. Well said. Your good sense saves you. Go inside the house.
Phrygian. You are not going to kill me, then?
Orestes. You are let off.
Phrygian. That is a fine thing to say.
Orestes. But we may change our minds.
Phrygian. That is not a fine thing to say.
Orestes. Fool. Do you think I could bring myself to bloody your throat? You were not born a woman, and you do not count among men either. I came out of the house to stop your shouting, and for nothing else. Argos wakes up fast when it hears a cry for help. As for Menelaus, I am not afraid to take him on within reach of my sword. Let him come, proud of the yellow curls on his shoulders. If he gathers the Argives and brings them against this house to avenge Helen's murder, and refuses to save me, and my sister, and Pylades who did this with me, he will have two corpses to look at, his daughter's and his wife's.
(Orestes drives the Phrygian into the house ahead of him. The doors are shut.)
Chorus. Io, io, fortune. Into another struggle, another one, the house is falling, a fearful one, around the sons of Atreus. What do we do? Report this to the city? Or keep quiet? That is safer, friends. Look, in front of the house, look, smoke is rushing up into the air. It is telling the story already. They are lighting torches to burn the house of Tantalus, and they do not hold back from murder. A god holds the end for mortals, the end where he wants it. Great is the power. Through avenging spirits this house has fallen, fallen, through blood, ever since Myrtilus was thrown from the chariot.
Chorus. But here comes Menelaus too. I see him near the house, moving fast. He has heard, I suppose, about the luck that stands here now. You sons of Atreus inside, you had better hurry and fix the bolts across the doors. A man who is doing well is a terrible thing to men who are doing badly, and you are doing badly now, Orestes.
(Menelaus comes in with armed servants.)
Menelaus. I have come because I heard of the terrible, violent deeds of a pair of lions. I will not call them men. What I heard was that my wife is not dead but has vanished, gone out of sight. An empty rumour, that. Someone brought it to me who had lost his head from fear. No, this is one of the mother-killer's tricks, and a great joke. Someone open the house. I am telling my servants: force these gates, so that at least we can rescue my daughter out of the hands of these blood-stained men, and take up my poor, wretched wife, and the men who destroyed her can die alongside her, by my hand.
(Orestes appears on the roof of the house, holding Hermione with a sword at her throat. Pylades and Electra are beside him with torches.)
Orestes. You there. Keep your hand off those bolts. I mean you, Menelaus, towering up there in your nerve. Or I will smash your skull with this coping-stone, tearing off the old cornice, the masons' work. The doors are fixed fast with bars, which will keep your rescuing zeal locked out and stop you getting inside the house.
Menelaus. Ah. What is this? I see the glare of torches, and men on top of the house, standing at bay as if it were a fort, and a sword guarding my daughter's throat.
Orestes. Do you want to ask questions, or to hear me?
Menelaus. Neither. But I have to hear you, it seems.
Orestes. I am going to kill your daughter, if you want to know.
Menelaus. You murdered Helen, and now you are adding murder to murder?
Orestes. If only I had done it, instead of being robbed by the gods.
Menelaus. You deny killing her? You say this to outrage me?
Orestes. It is a painful denial. If only I had—
Menelaus. Had done what? You are frightening me.
Orestes. Thrown the polluter of Greece down into Hades.
Menelaus. Give me my wife's body back, so I can heap a tomb over her.
Orestes. Ask the gods for it. But I will kill your daughter.
Menelaus. The mother-killer adds murder to murder?
Orestes. The man who avenged his father, whom you betrayed to death.
Menelaus. Was your mother's blood not enough for you, the blood you have on you already?
Orestes. I would never get tired of killing evil women.
Menelaus. And you, Pylades, are you a partner in this killing too?
Orestes. He says yes by his silence. I will do the talking, and that will be enough.
Menelaus. You will not enjoy it, unless you can fly away on wings.
Orestes. We will not run. We will set the house on fire.
Menelaus. What, you will destroy your father's house?
Orestes. So that you cannot have it. And I will cut her throat over the fire.
Menelaus. Kill her, then. Kill her, and you will pay me for it.
Orestes. So be it.
Menelaus. Ah, ah. No. Do not do it.
Orestes. Be quiet, then, and bear it. You are suffering justly.
Menelaus. Is it just that you should live?
Orestes. Yes, and rule a country.
Menelaus. Which country?
Orestes. This one. Pelasgian Argos.
Menelaus. You would be a fine one to touch the holy water—
Orestes. Why ever not?
Menelaus. And to kill the victims before a battle.
Orestes. And you would be fit for it?
Menelaus. My hands are clean.
Orestes. But not your mind.
Menelaus. Who would speak to you?
Orestes. Anyone who loves his father.
Menelaus. And anyone who honours his mother?
Orestes. Was born lucky.
Menelaus. Not you, then.
Orestes. No. I do not like evil women.
Menelaus. Take that sword away from my daughter.
Orestes. You were born a liar.
Menelaus. So you will kill my daughter?
Orestes. Now you are not lying.
Menelaus. Oh, what am I to do?
Orestes. Go to the Argives and persuade them—
Menelaus. Persuade them of what?
Orestes. Not to kill us. Beg the city.
Menelaus. Or you will murder my child?
Orestes. That is how it is.
Menelaus. Poor Helen—
Orestes. And I am not poor?
Menelaus. I brought you back from Phrygia to be a victim—
Orestes. If only that were true.
Menelaus. After a thousand labours.
Orestes. Except for me. Not one on my account.
Menelaus. I have suffered terribly.
Orestes. Yes. Because back then you were no use.
Menelaus. You have me.
Orestes. You caught yourself, by being a coward. Come on, Electra, set fire to the house from below. And you, Pylades, the truest friend I have, burn the cornice of these walls.
Menelaus. Land of the Danaans, you who founded Argos, city of horses, come on, will you not come running in arms to help? This man is forcing your whole city to let him live, when he has shed his mother's polluted blood.
(Apollo appears above the house, with Helen beside him.)
Apollo. Menelaus, stop. Put away that sharpened temper. I am Apollo, the son of Leto, here close beside you, and I am calling you by name. And you, Orestes, standing over this girl with your sword, listen, so that you know what words I have brought. Helen, whom you were so eager to destroy, to make Menelaus angry, and failed: here she is, the woman you see in the folds of the sky, saved, and not killed by you. I rescued her. I snatched her from under your sword at the order of Zeus my father. She is Zeus's child, and she must live and never die. She will sit with Castor and Polydeuces in the folds of the sky, a saviour to sailors. Take another bride into your house, Menelaus. The gods used her beauty to bring Greeks and Phrygians together in one place and set deaths going, to drain off from the earth the outrage of mortals swarming in numbers without end.
That is how it stands with Helen. As for you, Orestes, you must cross the borders of this land and live on the soil of Parrhasia for the circle of one year. The Azanians and the Arcadians will name it after your exile and call it Oresteion. From there go to the city of the Athenians and stand trial for your mother's blood before the three Kindly Ones, the Furies. The gods will be the judges of your trial, on the hill of Ares, and they will cast a most righteous vote, and there you must win. And the girl at whose throat you are holding the sword, Orestes, Hermione: it is fated that you will marry her. Neoptolemus thinks he will marry her; he never will. It is his fate to die by a Delphian sword when he comes to demand satisfaction from me for his father Achilles. Give your sister to Pylades in marriage, as you once promised. A happy life waits for him. Menelaus, let Orestes rule Argos. Go and be king in the land of Sparta, and keep it as the dowry of a wife who never stopped handing you troubles by the thousand, until this very day. I will set things right between him and the city. It was I who forced him to murder his mother.
Orestes. Apollo, prophet, your oracles. You were no lying prophet after all, but a true one. And yet a fear had crept into me, that I was listening to some avenging spirit and only thought I heard your voice. But it is ending well, and I will obey your words. Look: I release Hermione from the slaughter, and I agree to the marriage, whenever her father gives her.
Menelaus. I greet you, Helen, daughter of Zeus, and I envy you your home in the blessed house of the gods. Orestes, I pledge my daughter to you, since Apollo says so. Well born yourself, marrying a well-born wife, may you have joy of her, and I too, who give her.
Apollo. Go now, each of you, where I have ordered, and let your quarrels dissolve.
Menelaus. We must obey.
Orestes. I am of the same mind. I make my peace with what has happened, Menelaus, and with your oracles, Apollo.
Apollo. Go your ways now, and honour Peace, the most beautiful of the gods. And I will bring Helen to the halls of Zeus, when I have crossed the vault of the bright stars. There, beside Hera and Hebe, the wife of Heracles, she will sit enthroned, a goddess to men, honoured with drink-offerings forever, with the sons of Tyndareus, the sons of Zeus, keeping watch over the sea for sailors.
(Apollo and Helen vanish above. The others go their separate ways.)
Chorus. Great Victory, holy one, stay with me all my life, and never stop crowning me.
(Thebes, in front of the royal house of Pentheus. To one side is the tomb of Semele, fenced off, still smoking, with vines trained over it. Dionysus comes in, in the shape of a young man with long hair, a fawnskin over his shoulders and an ivy wand in his hand.)
Dionysus. I have come to this land of Thebes, and I am the son of Zeus. I am Dionysus. Semele, Cadmus's daughter, gave birth to me once, in a labour brought on by a flash of lightning. I have changed my shape from a god's to a man's, and here I am, at the springs of Dirce and the waters of the Ismenus. And I can see my mother's tomb, the mother the thunderbolt struck, right here beside the house, and the ruins of her home, still smoking with the living flame of Zeus's fire: Hera's outrage against my mother, and it never dies. I give Cadmus credit. He has made this ground off limits, a shrine for his daughter, and I have covered it over with the green of the vine and its clustering grapes.
I left the gold-rich fields of Lydia and Phrygia behind me, and the sun-beaten plains of Persia, and the walled towns of Bactria, and the bitter winter country of the Medes, and Arabia the blessed, and all of Asia that lies along the salt sea with its fine-towered cities full of Greeks and barbarians living side by side. I set every one of those places dancing and established my rites there, so that mortals could see me for the god I am. And then I came to this city, the first in Greece. Thebes was the first town in this Greek land that I made shriek my cry. I tied the fawnskin on their bodies and put the thyrsus in their hands, the ivy-tipped wand that is my weapon. Because my mother's sisters, the last women on earth who should have said it, said that I, Dionysus, was no son of Zeus at all. They said Semele had been to bed with some mortal man and was laying the blame for it on Zeus, and that the whole story was a clever invention of Cadmus's. That was why Zeus killed her, they crowed: for lying about who was in her bed.
So I have driven those same women stinging mad out of their houses. They are living on the mountain, out of their minds, and I have made them wear the dress of my rites. Every woman of the seed of Cadmus, every one of them, I have sent raving out of her home. They are sitting up there with the daughters of Cadmus among them, under the green firs, on rocks with no roof over them. Because this city has to learn, whether it likes it or not, what it means to be left outside my rites, and I have to speak up for my mother Semele by showing myself to mortals as the god she bore to Zeus.
Now Cadmus has handed his honours and his throne to Pentheus, his daughter's son. And Pentheus is fighting a god, where I am concerned. He shoves me away from his sacrifices, and there is no mention of me anywhere in his prayers. So I am going to show him, and every Theban with him, that I was born a god. And when I have put things right here, I will move on to another country and reveal myself there. But if the city of Thebes loses its temper and tries to bring the Bacchants down off the mountain by force of arms, I will take the field against it with the Maenads as my army. That is why I have taken on a mortal appearance and changed my shape into a man's.
But you, women who left Tmolus behind, the mountain fortress of Lydia. My own company. I brought you from among the barbarians to sit at my side and travel with me. Take up the drums, the drums that belong to the Phrygian towns, that Mother Rhea and I invented between us, and come round this royal house of Pentheus and beat them, so that Cadmus's city can see. As for me, I am going to the folds of Mount Cithaeron, where the Bacchants are, to join in their dances.
(Dionysus goes. The Chorus come in, Asian women in fawnskins, carrying ivy wands and drums.)
Chorus. From the land of Asia, leaving holy Tmolus behind, I hurry to do sweet work for Bromius, the Roarer, which is one of the names of Dionysus, labour that is no labour at all, crying his cry, Euoi. Who is in the road? Who is in the road? Who? Get indoors, out of the way. Let every mouth keep itself clean and holy, because I am going to sing the hymn to Dionysus the way it has always been sung.
Chorus. Oh, happy is the man who is blessed, who knows the rites of the gods, who keeps his life pure and gives his soul to the company, dancing for Dionysus on the mountains in holy purifications, who keeps the mysteries of Cybele, the Great Mother, as they should be kept, shaking the thyrsus high, crowned with ivy, serving Dionysus. Go, Bacchants, go, Bacchants, bring Dionysus home, the god who is a god's son, down from the mountains of Phrygia into the wide streets of Greece, the god who roars.
Chorus. Once his mother carried him, and her time came on her, the pains of birth forced on her early by the thunder of Zeus flying at her, and she pushed him out of her womb and left her life behind under the stroke of the lightning. And at once Zeus, the son of Cronus, took him into a birth-chamber of his own. He hid him in his thigh and pinned him in with golden clasps, out of Hera's sight. And when the Fates had brought him to his term, Zeus gave birth to him, the god with the horns of a bull, and crowned him with crowns of snakes. That is why the Maenads catch wild snakes and twist them into their hair.
Chorus. Thebes, you who nursed Semele, crown yourself with ivy. Burst into leaf, burst into leaf, with green bryony and its lovely berries, and go mad for Dionysus with branches of oak or fir. Trim your spotted fawnskins with tufts of white wool, and make yourselves holy with the wild fennel wands. In a moment the whole earth will be dancing, and whoever leads the dance is Dionysus himself, to the mountain, to the mountain, where the crowd of women waits, driven from their looms and their shuttles, stung mad by Dionysus.
Chorus. Cave where the Curetes hid the child, holy caverns of Crete where Zeus was born: there, in their caves, the Corybantes in their triple helmets invented this for me, this circle of stretched hide, the drum. And in the strain of their Bacchic dance they blended its beat with the sweet-voiced breath of Phrygian pipes, and put it in the hand of Mother Rhea, to pound out time for the Bacchants' cries. And the Satyrs in their madness got it from the Mother goddess, and joined it to the dances of the festival that comes every second year, the festival Dionysus loves.
Chorus. He is sweet on the mountains, when he drops to the ground out of the running companies, wearing the holy fawnskin, hunting the blood of the slaughtered goat, the joy of raw flesh, racing for the mountains of Phrygia, of Lydia, and the leader of the dance is Dionysus. Euoi. The ground runs with milk, it runs with wine, it runs with the nectar of bees. And the god of the Bacchants lifts high the blazing flame of the pine torch on his wand, like the smoke of Syrian frankincense, and he darts, running and dancing, stirring up the stragglers, tossing them with his shouts, flinging his soft hair into the air. And over the cries he roars out this: "Oh, go, Bacchants, go, Bacchants, pride of Tmolus where the river runs gold, sing Dionysus to the deep growl of the drums, Euoi, glorying in the god of Euoi with Phrygian shouts and calls, when the holy pipe, sweet-sounding, sounds its holy games, keeping time with the women who wander to the mountain, to the mountain." And then she is glad, like a foal at pasture beside its mother, and the Bacchant throws her quick feet into leaps.
(Teiresias comes in, blind, very old, dressed in a fawnskin with ivy on his head and a wand in his hand.)
Teiresias. Who is at the gates? Call Cadmus out of the house, Agenor's son, the man who left the city of Sidon and built this towered town of Thebes. Somebody go. Tell him Teiresias is looking for him. He knows what I have come about, and what I agreed with him, one old man with an older one: to wind the ivy on the thyrsus, to wear the skins of fawns, and to crown our heads with sprigs of ivy.
(Cadmus comes out of the house, dressed the same way.)
Cadmus. My dear old friend. I was inside, and I heard your voice and knew it, a clever voice from a clever man. And here I am, ready, with the god's outfit on. He is my daughter's son, this Dionysus who has shown himself to mankind as a god, and we have to make him as great as we possibly can. Where do we dance? Where do I put my feet and shake this grey head? You show me, Teiresias, one old man leading another. You are the clever one. I could keep this up all night and all day and never get tired, beating the ground with the thyrsus. It is a pleasure to forget how old we are.
Teiresias. Then you feel exactly what I feel. I am young again too, and I am going to try the dancing.
Cadmus. So shall we go up the mountain in a carriage?
Teiresias. No. The god would not get the same honour from that.
Cadmus. One old man leading another by the hand like a schoolboy. That will be me, leading you.
Teiresias. The god will lead us both up there, and it will cost us nothing.
Cadmus. Are we the only men in the city who are going to dance for Dionysus?
Teiresias. Yes. We are the only ones thinking straight. The rest are thinking wrong.
Cadmus. We are wasting time. Here, take my hand.
Teiresias. There. Take hold, and yoke your hand to mine.
Cadmus. I was born a mortal. I do not look down on the gods.
Teiresias. We do not play clever with the gods. The traditions our fathers handed down to us, as old as time itself, no argument is going to knock down, not even if some brilliant mind has thought its way to the very top of cleverness. Will somebody say I have no shame about my old age, going out to dance with ivy on my head? Let him. The god drew no line. He did not say the young should dance and the old should not. He wants his honours from everybody alike. He wants to be made great, and he counts nobody out.
Cadmus. Since you cannot see this daylight, Teiresias, I will be your prophet and tell you what is happening. Here comes Pentheus, hurrying to the house, Echion's son, the man I gave the rule of this land to. Look how worked up he is. What is the news this time?
(Pentheus comes in with his attendants. At first he does not notice the two old men.)
Pentheus. I happened to be out of the country, and I hear there is new trouble in this city. The women have left our homes for a Bacchic worship they have made up themselves, and they are running about in the shadowy mountains, honouring this new god with dances, this Dionysus, whoever he is. They set up mixing bowls full of wine in the middle of their gatherings, so I hear, and then they slink off one by one to some lonely spot to serve a man in bed. Maenads at their sacrifices, that is the story. Aphrodite comes before Dionysus with them.
Every one I have caught, my servants are holding in the public prison with her hands tied. The ones still out I will hunt down off the mountain. Ino, and Agave, who bore me to Echion, and Actaeon's mother, I mean Autonoe. I will clamp them in iron nets, and that will put a quick stop to this vicious Bacchic business.
And they say some stranger has come, a sorcerer, a chanter of spells from the land of Lydia, with golden curls and scented hair and the wine-dark charms of Aphrodite in his eyes, who spends his days and his nights with young girls, dangling his rites of joy in front of them. If I catch him inside this house, I will stop him banging his thyrsus and tossing his hair. I will cut his head off his neck. This is the man who says Dionysus is a god. He says he was once stitched into the thigh of Zeus. Dionysus, who was burnt to nothing by the lightning along with his mother, because she lied about being Zeus's bride. Does that not deserve a hanging, and a hard one, whoever this stranger is? Outrage on top of outrage.
But here is another wonder. I see the prophet Teiresias in a spotted fawnskin, and my own mother's father, and this is too funny, playing the Bacchant with a fennel wand. Father, I am ashamed to look at you. Two old men, and no sense between you. Shake that ivy off. Let go of the thyrsus, grandfather. Empty your hand.
You talked him into this, Teiresias. You want to bring in one more new god for mankind so that you can watch more birds and rake in more fees from burnt offerings. If your grey hairs were not protecting you, you would be sitting in chains among the Bacchants for importing these vicious rites. Because when women get the gleam of the grape at a feast, I say there is nothing healthy left in any of their worship.
Chorus. What blasphemy. Stranger, have you no respect for the gods, or for Cadmus, who sowed the crop of men that grew out of the earth? You are Echion's son, and you are shaming your own family.
Teiresias. When a clever man has a good case to argue, it is no great feat to speak well. You have a tongue that runs smoothly, as if you had sense, but there is no sense in what it says. A man who is strong in nerve and knows how to speak, and has no judgement, makes a bad citizen.
This new god you are laughing at: I could not begin to tell you how great he is going to be all over Greece. Two things, young man, come first for human beings. The goddess Demeter, and she is the earth, call her by whichever name you like, feeds mortals on dry food. And then the one who came after her, Semele's son, found the match to it, the wet drink of the grape, and brought it to mortals. It puts an end to grief for poor suffering men, when they are filled with the stream of the vine, and it gives them sleep, and forgetfulness of the day's troubles, and there is no other medicine for hardship. He is a god, and he is poured out in offering to the gods, so that through him mankind gets its good things.
And you laugh at him for being stitched into Zeus's thigh? I will teach you how that story makes good sense. When Zeus snatched him out of the lightning-fire and carried the baby up to Olympus as a god, Hera wanted to throw him out of heaven. Zeus made a counter-plan, the way a god does. He tore off a piece of the sky that wraps round the earth and gave that to Hera as a hostage, a Dionysus for her to quarrel with, and kept the real one safe. And in time people said he had been stitched into Zeus's thigh. They changed a word. The god had been a hostage, a homeros, to the goddess Hera, and the word for a thigh is meros, and the one slid into the other and they made a story out of it.
And this god is a prophet. Bacchic frenzy and madness have a great deal of prophecy in them. When the god comes into a body in full force, he makes the people he has maddened tell the future. He has taken over a share of Ares's business too. An army standing armed and in its ranks has been scattered by panic before a spear was touched, and that is madness too, and it comes from Dionysus. One day you will see him on the rocks of Delphi as well, leaping across the plateau between the two peaks with pine torches, whirling and shaking the Bacchic branch, great all over Greece.
Listen to me, Pentheus. Do not go boasting that power is what counts among men, and do not imagine you are thinking straight when your thinking is sick. Take the god into your land. Pour him wine, be a Bacchant, crown your head. It is not Dionysus who will force women to keep themselves in hand where Aphrodite is concerned. That lives in a woman's nature, always, in everything she does, and that is where you have to look. Even in the middle of a Bacchic revel, a woman who keeps herself in hand will not be ruined.
You see? You enjoy it when a crowd stands at your gates and the city makes the name of Pentheus great. Well, he enjoys being honoured too, I imagine. So Cadmus, whom you are laughing at, and I are going to put ivy on our heads and dance, a grey team in harness, but dance we must. And I will not fight a god because you talked me into it. You are mad, in the most painful way there is. No drug will cure you, and yet it is a kind of drug that has made you ill.
Chorus. Old man, you do no shame to Apollo with those words, and when you honour Dionysus you are keeping yourself in hand. He is a great god.
Cadmus. My boy, Teiresias has given you good advice. Live with us, inside the laws, not outside them. Right now you are all up in the air. You think you are thinking, and you are thinking nothing. Even if this god is no god, as you say, tell people he is. Tell the lie, and tell it well, so that Semele can be said to have given birth to a god, and the honour comes to our whole family. You know how Actaeon died, poor man, torn to pieces in the meadows by the flesh-eating hounds he had raised himself, because he boasted he was a better hunter than Artemis. Do not let that happen to you. Come here, let me crown your head with ivy. Give the god his honour, along with us.
Pentheus. Do not lay a hand on me. Go and play the Bacchant, and do not wipe your idiocy off on me. As for the man who taught you this folly, I am going to make him pay. Somebody go, quickly, to the seat where he sits and watches his birds. Lever it up with crowbars, tip it over, turn the whole place upside down, everything in a heap, and throw his holy ribbons to the winds and the storms. That is where I can hurt him most. And the rest of you, go through the city and track down this womanish stranger who is bringing a new disease to our women and fouling our beds. If you catch him, tie him up and bring him here, so that he can be sentenced to death by stoning and die that way. He will find his Bacchic revels in Thebes a bitter business.
(Pentheus's men go off in different directions. Pentheus goes into the house.)
Teiresias. You poor fool, you have no idea what you are saying. You are mad now, and you were out of your mind before. Let us go, Cadmus, and pray to the god for this man, savage as he is, and for the city, that he does nothing terrible. Follow me, with your ivy staff. Try to hold me up, and I will hold you up. It would be a disgrace if two old men fell over. But never mind that. We have to serve Dionysus, the son of Zeus. And Cadmus, watch that Pentheus does not bring grief into your house. His name means grief. I am not saying that as a prophet. I am looking at the facts. A fool talks folly.
(The two old men go off together, slowly, holding each other up.)
Chorus. Holiness, queen among the gods, Holiness, who carry your golden wing low over the earth, do you hear what Pentheus is saying? Do you hear his unholy outrage against Dionysus, Semele's son, the god who comes first among the blessed at the feast where the garlands are lovely? This is his office: to dance with the company, to laugh with the pipe, to put an end to worry, whenever the gleam of the grape comes to the feast of the gods, and at the ivy-wearing banquets the wine bowl wraps men in sleep.
Chorus. Mouths without a bridle and folly without a law end in disaster. But the quiet life and good sense stay unshaken, and hold a house together. The gods live far off in the sky, but they still see what mortals do. Being clever is not being wise, and neither is thinking thoughts too big for a mortal. Life is short. A man who chases great things on that short lease loses what is in his hands. That is how madmen behave, people whose judgement is bad, if you ask me.
Chorus. Let me go to Cyprus, Aphrodite's island, where the Loves live who charm the hearts of mortals, and to Paphos, where no rain falls and the hundred mouths of a foreign river make the land fruitful. And where Pieria is, the loveliest, the seat of the Muses, the holy slope of Olympus: take me there, Dionysus, Dionysus, leader of the Bacchants, god of the cry. There are the Graces, there is Desire, and there the Bacchants are allowed their rites.
Chorus. The god, the son of Zeus, is glad at the feast, and he loves Peace, the giver of riches, the goddess who rears the young. To the rich man and to the poorer one alike he gives the joy of wine, that has no grief in it. And he hates the man who does not care for this: to live a life of happiness, by daylight and through the dear nights, and to keep a wise heart and mind clear of men who want too much. Whatever the ordinary crowd believes and lives by, that is good enough for me.
(Pentheus comes out of the house. A Servant arrives with other guards, leading the stranger, whose hands are bound.)
Servant. Pentheus, here we are. We have caught the prey you sent us after, and we did not go out for nothing. But this animal was gentle with us. He did not pull his foot back and run. He held out his hands, and not unwillingly either. He did not go pale. He did not lose the wine colour in his cheeks. He laughed, and told us to tie him up and take him away, and he stood still and made my job easy. I felt ashamed, and I said to him, "Stranger, I am not doing this by choice. Pentheus sent me. These are his orders."
And the Bacchants you locked up, the ones you rounded up and chained in the public prison: they are gone. They are loose, and they are skipping off to the meadows calling on their god Dionysus. The chains fell off their feet by themselves, and the keys turned in the doors without a mortal hand touching them. This man has come to Thebes full of wonders. What happens next is your business.
Pentheus. Let go of his hands. He is in my net now, and he is not so quick that he can get away from me. Well. You are not bad-looking, stranger, not to a woman's eye, which is what you came to Thebes for. That long hair, for one thing, and no wrestler's crop either, spilling down along your cheek, full of longing. And the white skin, carefully kept. You have stayed out of the sun, in the shade, hunting Aphrodite with your good looks. First of all, then, tell me who your people are.
Dionysus. No boasting about it. It is easy to say. You have heard of Tmolus, I expect, the mountain covered in flowers.
Pentheus. I know it. It circles the city of Sardis.
Dionysus. That is where I am from. Lydia is my country.
Pentheus. And why are you bringing these rites into Greece?
Dionysus. Dionysus sent us on our way. The son of Zeus.
Pentheus. Is there some Zeus over there who breeds new gods?
Dionysus. No. The same one who married Semele here.
Pentheus. And did he force this on you at night, in a dream, or with your eyes open?
Dionysus. Face to face. He saw me and I saw him, and he gave me the rites.
Pentheus. These rites of yours. What form do they take?
Dionysus. That may not be spoken to any mortal who is not a Bacchant.
Pentheus. And what good do they do the people who hold them?
Dionysus. It is not lawful for you to hear it. But it is worth knowing.
Pentheus. Nicely faked. Now I want to hear it.
Dionysus. The god's rites hate a man who practises impiety.
Pentheus. You say you saw the god plainly. What was he like?
Dionysus. Whatever he wanted to be like. I did not give the orders.
Pentheus. You have channelled that one round me too, very neatly, and said nothing.
Dionysus. Talk wisdom to an ignorant man, and he will think you a fool.
Pentheus. Is this the first place you have come to, bringing your god?
Dionysus. Every barbarian is dancing these rites already.
Pentheus. Because they have far less sense than Greeks.
Dionysus. In this they have more. Their customs are different, that is all.
Pentheus. These rites of yours. Do you hold them at night, or by day?
Dionysus. At night, mostly. Darkness has a solemnity to it.
Pentheus. Where women are concerned, that is a trick, and a rotten one.
Dionysus. Anyone who wants something shameful can find it in daylight too.
Pentheus. You are going to pay for these dirty clever tricks of yours.
Dionysus. And you for your ignorance, and for insulting the god.
Pentheus. How bold the Bacchant is. And not out of practice at talking, either.
Dionysus. Tell me what I have to suffer. What is this terrible thing you are going to do to me?
Pentheus. First, I will cut off that soft curl of yours.
Dionysus. The hair is holy. I grow it for the god.
Pentheus. Next, hand over that thyrsus.
Dionysus. Take it from me yourself. It is Dionysus's wand, and I carry it.
Pentheus. And we will keep your body inside, in a cell.
Dionysus. The god himself will set me free, whenever I want.
Pentheus. Yes. When you stand among your Bacchants and call him.
Dionysus. He is close by right now, and he sees what is being done to me.
Pentheus. And where is he? He is not visible to my eyes.
Dionysus. Here, with me. You are godless yourself, so you cannot see him.
Pentheus. Seize him. This man is sneering at me, and at Thebes.
Dionysus. I tell you not to bind me. I have myself in hand, and you do not.
Pentheus. And I say bind him. I have more authority here than you.
Dionysus. You do not know what your life is, or what you are doing, or who you are.
Pentheus. Pentheus, the son of Agave, and my father is Echion.
Dionysus. Pentheus. Grief. You have a name that fits a man about to come to grief.
Pentheus. Go. Lock him up near the horses' stalls, where he can look at nothing but darkness. Dance in there. As for these women you have brought with you, your partners in crime, either we will sell them off, or I will stop their hands from this thumping and this beating on drumskins and keep them as slaves at my looms.
Dionysus. I will go. What is not going to happen, I do not have to suffer. But Dionysus, the god you say does not exist, will come after you to make you pay for these outrages. When you wrong me, it is him you are putting in chains.
(The guards take Dionysus into the house. Pentheus follows.)
Chorus. Daughter of Achelous, lady Dirce, lovely girl of a river, it was in your springs, once, that you took the baby of Zeus, when Zeus his father snatched him out of the deathless fire and hid him in his thigh, and shouted this: Come, Dithyrambus, child of the double door, come into this male womb of mine. I show you to Thebes, Bacchic one, so that they will call you by this name. And you, blessed Dirce, you push me away, when I come to your banks with my worshippers in garlands. Why do you refuse me? Why do you run from me? A day is coming, I swear it by the clustered grapes, the grace of Dionysus's vine, a day is coming when you will care about Dionysus.
Chorus. What rage, what rage he shows, the breed that came out of the earth, Pentheus, sprung from the snake that Echion planted, Echion the earth-born, a wild-faced monster, not a mortal man, a killer, like one of the giants who fought the gods. He will have me in ropes soon, me, who belong to Dionysus, and he already has my fellow-worshipper inside his house, hidden in a dark cell. Do you see this, Dionysus, son of Zeus, your prophets wrestling with force? Come, lord, down from Olympus, shaking your gold-faced thyrsus, and put a stop to the outrage of a murderous man.
Chorus. Where are you, Dionysus? On Nysa, that nurses the wild beasts, leading your worshippers with the thyrsus, or on the Corycian peaks? Or perhaps in the deep-wooded hollows of Olympus, where once Orpheus played his lyre and drew the trees together with his music, drew the wild beasts of the fields to him. Blessed Pieria, the god of the cry honours you: he will come to dance his revels there, and cross the fast-running Axius and bring his whirling Maenads, and cross the Lydias too, the father who gives mortals their wealth, the river I have heard makes a country of fine horses rich with the loveliest of waters.
(The voice of Dionysus is heard from inside the house.)
Dionysus. Io. Hear my voice, hear it, io, Bacchants, io, Bacchants.
Chorus. Who is that? Who? Where did it come from, the shout that called me up, the shout of the god of the cry?
Dionysus. Io, io, I call again, the son of Semele, the son of Zeus.
Chorus. Io, io, master, master, come to us now, to your worshippers, Dionysus, Dionysus.
Dionysus. Shake the floor of the earth, Lady Earthquake.
Chorus. Ah. Ah. Soon the house of Pentheus will be shaken down in ruins. Dionysus is in the house. Worship him. We worship him, oh. Did you see the stone lintels on the pillars there, splitting apart? Dionysus is shouting his victory inside the roof.
Dionysus. Light the blazing torch of the lightning. Burn, burn down the house of Pentheus.
Chorus. Ah. Ah. Do you not see the fire? Do you not see it, round the holy tomb of Semele, the flame the thunderbolt of Zeus left there when it struck her? Throw your trembling bodies on the ground, throw them down, Maenads. The lord is coming against this house and turning it upside down, the son of Zeus.
(The women fall to the ground. Dionysus comes out of the ruined house, unbound.)
Dionysus. Barbarian women, are you so struck with fear that you have fallen to the ground? You felt Dionysus shake the house of Pentheus, it seems. Get up. Lift yourselves and take heart, and let the trembling go out of your flesh.
Chorus. Greatest light of our joyful worship, how glad I am to see you. I was alone, and I had nobody.
Dionysus. Did you lose heart when I was taken inside, on my way to fall into Pentheus's dark cells?
Chorus. How could I not? Who was there to protect me if something happened to you? But how did you get free, after falling into that godless man's hands?
Dionysus. I saved myself. Easily. No trouble at all.
Chorus. Did he not tie your hands together in knotted ropes?
Dionysus. That was exactly where I made a fool of him. He thought he was tying me up, and he never touched me, never laid a hand on me. He was feeding on hope. He found a bull by the stalls where he had taken me to lock me up, and it was the bull he threw his ropes round, knees and hooves, panting out his rage, sweat dripping off his body, biting his lips with his teeth. And I sat quietly close by and watched.
In the middle of this Dionysus came and shook the house and lit a fire on his mother's tomb. When Pentheus saw it, he thought the house was burning, and he ran this way and that, shouting to the slaves to bring water, and every slave in the place was hard at work, and all for nothing. Then he dropped that job, since I had escaped, snatched up a dark sword and rushed into the house. And then Dionysus, this is how it looked to me, I am only giving you my opinion, made a phantom of me in the courtyard. Pentheus went for it. He charged and stabbed at the bright air, as if he were cutting my throat. And on top of this, Dionysus did him other damage. He brought the house down to the ground. It lies in ruins, all of it. Pentheus has seen what my chains cost: they turned out very bitter for him. Worn out, he has dropped his sword and gone limp. He is a man, and he had the nerve to go into battle against a god.
I walked quietly out of the house and here I am with you, and Pentheus does not worry me at all. I think, I can hear a boot inside the house, anyway, that he will be out at the front any moment. What on earth is he going to say after all this? I will take him easily, even if he comes out breathing hard. A clever man keeps his temper in hand.
(Pentheus comes out of the house.)
Pentheus. Something terrible has happened to me. The stranger has got away, the one I had in chains a minute ago. Ah. Ah. There he is. What is this? How are you out here, standing in front of my house? How did you get outside?
Dionysus. Stand still. Set your anger down and walk quietly.
Pentheus. How did you slip your chains and get out here?
Dionysus. Did I not say, or were you not listening, that someone would set me free?
Pentheus. Who? You keep bringing in new stories.
Dionysus. The one who grows the clustering vine for mortals.
Dionysus. You meant that as an insult. It is Dionysus's glory.
Pentheus. I order every tower in the wall shut fast, all the way round.
Dionysus. What for? Do gods not climb over walls too?
Pentheus. Clever. You are very clever, except in the one thing you ought to be clever in.
Dionysus. In the thing that matters most, I was born clever. But first listen to this man and hear what he has to say. He has come from the mountain with news for you. I will wait for you. I am not going to run.
(A Messenger comes in, a herdsman down from the mountain.)
Messenger. Pentheus, ruler of this land of Thebes, I have come from Cithaeron, where the bright falls of white snow never let go.
Pentheus. And what is this urgent news you have come to bring?
Messenger. I have seen the holy Bacchants, the women who shot out of this country like arrows, white legs flying, stung mad, and I have come to tell you and the city, my lord, that they are doing terrible things, things beyond wonder. But I want to hear first whether I should tell you freely what is happening up there, or trim my story. I am afraid of the quickness of your mind, my lord, and your sharp temper, and too much of the king in you.
Pentheus. Speak. Whatever you say, you will go unpunished by me. It is wrong to be angry with people who do right. And the more terrible the things you tell me about the Bacchants, the harder I will make this man pay, the one who taught the women their tricks.
Messenger. The herds of grazing cattle were just climbing up towards the high ground, the calves with them, at the hour when the sun sends out its rays and warms the earth. And I see three companies of women dancers. Autonoe led one, your mother Agave the second, and Ino the third. They were all asleep, their bodies gone slack, some leaning their backs against the foliage of a pine, others with their heads dropped anyhow on the oak leaves on the ground. Decently. Not as you say: drunk on the wine-bowl and the noise of the pipe, hunting Aphrodite alone through the woods.
Your mother heard the lowing of the horned cattle, and she stood up in the middle of the Bacchants and gave the cry, to get their bodies moving out of sleep. And they threw the fresh sleep off their eyes and sprang upright, a marvel of good order to look at: young women, old women, and girls still unyoked, unmarried. First they let their hair down over their shoulders, and those whose fawnskins had come loose at the knots fastened them up again, and belted the dappled hides with snakes that licked their cheeks. Some of them held a fawn, or the wild cubs of wolves, in their arms and gave them white milk: the ones who had left new babies at home and whose breasts were still swollen. They put on garlands of ivy and oak and flowering bryony. One took a thyrsus and struck it against a rock, and a dewy stream of water leapt out of it. Another set her wand down against the ground, and there the god sent up a spring of wine for her. Whoever wanted the white drink scraped the earth with the tips of her fingers and had milk in streams; and from the ivy on the thyrsus-wands sweet rivers of honey dripped. If you had been there and seen this, the god you are abusing now, you would have gone to him with prayers.
We herdsmen and shepherds came together to argue about it, trading talk about the terrible, wonderful things they were doing. And one man, a wanderer about the town with a practised tongue, said to all of us: "You who live on the holy uplands of the mountains, what do you say? Shall we hunt Agave, Pentheus's mother, out of her revels, and do the king a favour?" We thought he talked sense, and we lay in ambush, hiding ourselves in the leaves of the bushes. At the appointed hour they began to shake the thyrsus for the revels, calling with one voice on the son of Zeus, calling him Iacchus, calling him Dionysus, and the whole mountain went mad along with them, and the wild animals with it, and nothing stood still: everything was running. Agave happened to come leaping past close to me, and I jumped out, wanting to grab her, and left the thicket where I had hidden myself empty. And she screamed: "My running hounds! We are being hunted, by these men. Follow me, follow me, with your thyrsus-wands for weapons in your hands."
We ran, and we got away from being torn to pieces by the Bacchants. But they went for the heifers that were grazing the grass, with no iron in their hands. You could have seen one woman holding a young cow, fat with milk, bellowing, and tearing it in two with her bare hands. Others were ripping full-grown cows apart, piece from piece. You would have seen ribs, or a cloven hoof, flung up and down; they hung in the pine branches, dripping, smeared with blood. Bulls, the arrogant ones who had done all their fighting with their horns before, stumbled forward onto the ground, dragged down by ten thousand girls' hands. The coat of flesh was pulled off them faster than you could close your royal eyes.
Then they were off, like birds rising into flight, over the low plains that grow the fine Theban corn along the streams of the Asopus; and they fell on Hysiae and Erythrae, the towns that lie down below the crag of Cithaeron, like an enemy army, and turned everything upside down. They snatched children out of the houses. Whatever they put on their shoulders stayed there without being tied and did not fall to the black ground, not bronze, not iron. They carried fire in their hair and it did not burn them. The townspeople, in a rage at being plundered by Bacchants, ran for their weapons, and that, my lord, was the terrible thing to see. The men's pointed spears drew no blood, but the women threw their thyrsus-wands from their hands and wounded them, and turned them, and put them to flight. Women did that to men. Not without some god's help. Then they went back to where they had started from, to the very springs the god had sent up for them, and washed off the blood, and snakes licked the drops off their cheeks with their tongues and made their skin clean.
So whoever this god is, master, receive him into this city. He is great in other ways, and they say this too of him, as I hear it: that he gave mortals the vine that puts an end to grief. And where there is no wine there is no Aphrodite either, and nothing else that gives human beings any pleasure.
Chorus. I am afraid to speak freely in front of the king, but it will be said all the same: Dionysus is second to none of the gods.
Pentheus. It is close now, this outrage of the Bacchants, catching like fire, a great disgrace to us in the eyes of the Greeks. No time for hesitating. Go to the Electran gates. Order out every man who carries a shield, and the riders of the fast horses, and everyone who swings a light shield and plucks a bowstring with his hand. We are marching against the Bacchants. It is past all bearing, if we are to suffer what we are suffering at the hands of women.
Dionysus. You hear my words, Pentheus, and you take in none of them. You have treated me badly, and still I say it: you should not take up arms against a god. Keep still. Dionysus will not stand for you driving his Bacchants off the mountains where they cry his name.
Pentheus. Do not lecture me. You escaped your chains; be content with that. Or shall I turn the punishment back on you?
Dionysus. I would sacrifice to him, rather than kick against the goad in a temper, a mortal against a god.
Pentheus. Sacrifice? I will. A slaughter of women, which is what they deserve, and plenty of it, in the folds of Cithaeron.
Dionysus. You will all run. And it will be a disgrace, bronze shields turning tail from the thyrsus-wands of Bacchants.
Pentheus. There is no getting anywhere with this stranger I am tangled up with. Whatever is done to him, whatever he does, he will not be quiet.
Dionysus. My friend, there is still a way to set all this right.
Pentheus. Doing what? Being a slave to my own slaves?
Dionysus. I will bring the women here, without any weapons.
Pentheus. Oh. Now you are working some trick against me.
Dionysus. What kind of trick, if I want to save you with my skills?
Pentheus. You made this agreement together, so you can go on with your revels forever.
Dionysus. I did make an agreement, that is true. With the god.
Pentheus. Bring my armour out here. And you, stop talking.
Dionysus. Ah. Would you like to see them, sitting together up in the mountains?
Pentheus. Very much. I would give a great weight of gold for it.
Dionysus. Why have you fallen into such a passion for that?
Pentheus. It would pain me to see them drunk.
Dionysus. And yet you would gladly see what pains you?
Pentheus. Yes. Be sure of it. Sitting quietly under the pines.
Dionysus. But they will track you down, even if you come secretly.
Pentheus. Then openly. You are right about that.
Dionysus. Shall I lead you, then? Will you take the road?
Pentheus. Lead me. As fast as you can. I resent every minute you waste.
Dionysus. Then put on a dress of fine linen.
Pentheus. What? Am I to stop being a man and be counted among the women?
Dionysus. So they do not kill you, if you are seen there as a man.
Pentheus. Right again. You have been clever all along.
Dionysus. Dionysus taught me all of it.
Pentheus. So how is this good advice of yours to be carried out?
Dionysus. I will go inside the house and dress you.
Pentheus. Dress me in what? A woman's dress? No. Shame stops me.
Dionysus. Then you are not so eager to watch the Maenads any more.
Pentheus. What dress is it you say you would put on my body?
Dionysus. I will spread long hair over your head.
Pentheus. And the second piece of my outfit?
Dionysus. A robe down to your feet, and a headband round your hair.
Pentheus. And will you add anything else to these?
Dionysus. A thyrsus for your hand, and a spotted fawnskin.
Pentheus. I could not put on a woman's dress.
Dionysus. Then you will shed blood, if you fight the Bacchants.
Pentheus. True. First I must go and spy.
Dionysus. Cleverer, anyway, than hunting evil with evil.
Pentheus. And how will I get through the city without the Thebans seeing me?
Dionysus. We will go by empty roads. I will lead you.
Pentheus. Anything is better than having the Bacchants laugh at me. We will go into the house, and I will decide what seems best.
Dionysus. You may. Whatever you decide, I am ready for it.
Pentheus. I will go in. Either I march with my armour on, or I follow your advice.
(Pentheus goes into the house.)
Dionysus. Women, the man is walking into the net. He will go to the Bacchants, and there he will pay the penalty with his death. Dionysus, now it is your work. You are not far off. Let us punish him. First, drive him out of his mind: put a light madness into him. In his right mind he will never agree to put on a woman's dress; driven out of his senses, he will put it on. And I want him laughed at by the Thebans, led through the city in a woman's shape, after those threats of his that made him so terrible before. Now I am going in to dress Pentheus in the costume he will wear down to Hades, slaughtered by his mother's hands. He will come to know the son of Zeus, Dionysus, who is a god in the fullest sense: most terrible, and to human beings most gentle.
(Dionysus goes into the house after him.)
Chorus. Will I ever, in the all-night dances, set my white foot to the beat of the god, and throw back my throat to the dewy air, like a fawn playing in the green joys of a meadow when it has escaped the terror of the hunt, clear of the watchers, over the well-woven nets, and the huntsman shouting drives his hounds to run harder, and she, straining, fast as a gale, leaps along the plain beside the river, glad of the places empty of men and the young shoots of the shadowy wood? What is cleverness? What finer gift do the gods give to mortals than to hold a hand that is stronger over the heads of your enemies? What is fine is loved forever.
Chorus. The strength of the gods moves slowly, but it is sure, all the same. It straightens out those mortals who honour their own stupidity and do not, in their mad conceit, make the things of the gods greater. The gods have many ways of hiding the long foot of time, and they hunt the godless man down. Never know, never practise anything stronger than the laws. It costs little to believe that whatever the divine is, it has power, and that what has been law through long time is law forever, and rooted in nature. What is cleverness? What finer gift do the gods give to mortals than to hold a hand that is stronger over the heads of your enemies? What is fine is loved forever.
Chorus. Happy the man who has run from a storm at sea and reached the harbour. Happy the man who has got above his troubles. In one way or another each man passes another in wealth or power. And there are hopes, ten thousand of them, for ten thousand men: some of them end in wealth for mortals, and some go nowhere. But the man whose life is happy day by day: that man I call blessed.
(Dionysus comes out of the house.)
Dionysus. You there, the man so eager to see what he should not see, so hot for what nobody should chase, I mean you, Pentheus: come out in front of the house. Let me look at you, in the costume of a woman, a Maenad, a Bacchant, a spy on your mother and her company.
(Pentheus comes out of the house, dressed as a woman.)
You look exactly like one of Cadmus's daughters.
Pentheus. Look. I think I see two suns, and two Thebes, two cities with seven gates. And you seem to be a bull walking ahead of me, and horns seem to have grown on your head. Were you an animal before? You certainly are a bull now.
Dionysus. The god is walking with us. He was not kind before; now he is on our side. Now you see what you should see.
Pentheus. So how do I look? Do I not stand just the way Ino stands, or Agave, my own mother?
Dionysus. Looking at you, I think I am seeing them. But this curl of yours has slipped out of place, not the way I set it under your headband.
Pentheus. Inside, I was tossing it forward and back, shaking my head and playing the Bacchant, and I shook it out of its place.
Dionysus. Then I will put it back in place. Looking after you is my business now. Hold your head up.
Pentheus. There. You dress me. I have handed myself over to you.
Dionysus. Your belt has come loose, and the pleats of your gown are not hanging straight all the way down to your ankles.
Pentheus. I think so too, at least by my right foot. On this side the robe sits properly along the back of my heel.
Dionysus. You will count me the first of your friends, I think, when you see the Bacchants behaving decently, against everything you expected.
Pentheus. Should I take the thyrsus in my right hand, or this one, to look more like a Bacchant?
Dionysus. In the right hand, and you lift it at the same moment as your right foot. I am glad your mind has changed.
Pentheus. Could I carry the glens of Cithaeron on my shoulders, Bacchants and all?
Dionysus. You could, if you wanted to. The mind you had before was not sound. Now you have the mind you ought to have.
Pentheus. Shall we bring levers? Or shall I tear them up with my hands, putting a shoulder or an arm under the peaks?
Dionysus. Do not wreck the shrines of the Nymphs, or the places where Pan sits and plays his pipes.
Pentheus. Well said. Women are not to be beaten by strength. I will hide myself in the pines.
Dionysus. You will be hidden in the hiding place you have earned, coming as a treacherous spy on the Maenads.
Pentheus. Yes. I imagine them in the thickets like birds, held in the sweetest grip of their lovemaking.
Dionysus. And that is exactly what you are being sent out to watch for. Perhaps you will catch them. If you are not caught first.
Pentheus. Take me through the middle of Thebes. I am the only man of them with the nerve for this.
Dionysus. You alone wear yourself out for this city, you alone. So the struggle waiting for you is the one you had coming. Follow me. I am your escort and I will bring you there safely. Someone else will bring you back.
Pentheus. My mother, you mean.
Dionysus. And every eye will be on you.
Pentheus. That is what I am going for.
Dionysus. You will come home carried.
Pentheus. You are promising me luxury.
Dionysus. In your mother's arms.
Pentheus. You will force me to be spoiled.
Dionysus. Spoiling of a kind.
Pentheus. I am laying my hands on what I deserve.
Dionysus. You are terrible. Terrible, and the suffering you are walking into is terrible, and out of it you will find a fame that stands up as high as heaven. Reach out your hands, Agave, and you too, her sisters, the daughters of Cadmus. I am taking this young man to a great contest, and the winner will be me, and Dionysus. The rest the thing itself will show.
(Dionysus leads Pentheus away towards the mountain.)
Chorus. Go, fast hounds of Madness, go to the mountain, where the daughters of Cadmus hold their company, and sting them into a rage against the man in a woman's dress, the raving spy on the Maenads. His mother will be the first to see him, from a smooth rock or a broken stump, watching them, and she will call out to the Maenads: Who is this who has come to the mountain, to the mountain, Bacchants, hunting for the mountain-running women of Thebes? Who bore him? He was not born out of a woman's blood. He is the offspring of some lioness, or of the Gorgons of Libya. Let Justice go out where all can see her, let her go with a sword, killing him straight through the throat, the godless, lawless, unjust son of Echion, born out of the earth.
Chorus. The man who with an unjust mind and a lawless temper sets out against your rites, Dionysus, and your mother's, with a maddened heart and a wrecked purpose, meaning to master by force what cannot be mastered: death takes those plans in hand and listens to no excuses, where the business of the gods is concerned. To live the way a mortal lives is a life without pain. I do not grudge anyone cleverness. I am glad to go hunting the other things, the great ones, the plain ones: to let a life run towards what is fine, to be clean and worship, day and night, to throw out the customs that lie outside justice, and to honour the gods. Let Justice go out where all can see her, let her go with a sword, killing him straight through the throat, the godless, lawless, unjust son of Echion, born out of the earth.
Chorus. Show yourself as a bull, or a snake with many heads to look at, or a lion breathing fire. Come, Dionysus, with a laughing face throw the noose of death round the hunter of the Bacchants as he goes down under the herd of Maenads.
(A Second Messenger comes down from the mountain.)
Second Messenger. House that was fortunate once in all Greece, house of the old man from Sidon, who sowed the earth-born crop of the snake in this ground: how I groan for you. I am a slave, but even so, a good slave takes his masters' troubles for his own.
Chorus. What is it? Do you have news from the Bacchants?
Second Messenger. Pentheus is dead. Echion's son.
Chorus. Lord Dionysus, you are showing yourself a great god.
Second Messenger. What are you saying? What was that? Are you glad, woman, when things go badly for my masters?
Chorus. I am a stranger here and I shout for joy in a foreign song. I do not cower in fear of chains any more.
Second Messenger. And do you think Thebes is so short of men?
Chorus. Dionysus, Dionysus, not Thebes, has the power over me.
Second Messenger. You can be forgiven. But it is not right, women, to be glad about things as evil as this, once they have actually been done.
Chorus. Tell me. Say it. What kind of death did he die, the unjust man who did unjust things?
Second Messenger. We left the farms of Theban country behind and crossed the streams of the Asopus, and started up the crags of Cithaeron, Pentheus and I, for I was following my master, and the stranger who was guiding us to the show. First we sat down in a grassy hollow, keeping our feet quiet and our tongues quiet, so that we could see without being seen. There was a gorge with cliffs on both sides of it, running with water, shaded over with pines, and there the Maenads were sitting with their hands busy at work they enjoyed. Some of them were binding a worn-out thyrsus and making it leafy with ivy again. Others, like colts let out of the painted yoke, were singing Bacchic music back and forth to each other. And poor Pentheus, who could not see the crowd of women, said this: "Stranger, from where we are standing I cannot reach these fake Maenads with my eyes. But up on the bank, if I climbed a pine with a high neck to it, I could see the Maenads and their filthy business properly."
And then I saw the stranger do a marvellous thing. He took hold of the topmost branch of a pine, high up in the sky, and pulled it down, and down, and down to the black ground. It curved like a bow, or like a wheel whose curve a compass draws round in a circle. That is how the stranger dragged the mountain branch down with his hands and bent it to the earth, doing work that is no mortal's work. He set Pentheus on the pine boughs, and let the trunk go straight back up through his hands, steadily, taking care not to throw him off, and it stood upright into the upright sky with my master sitting on its back.
He was seen more than he saw. He had hardly come into view up there when the stranger was nowhere to be seen at all, and out of the sky a voice, Dionysus, I suppose, shouted: "Young women, I bring you the man who made a laughing-stock of you, and of me, and of my rites. Punish him." And as he was saying it, a light of holy fire stood fixed between the sky and the ground. The air went silent. The wooded glen held its leaves silent. You would not have heard an animal's voice. The women had not caught the sound clearly with their ears, and they stood up straight and turned their eyes this way and that. He called again. And when the daughters of Cadmus recognised the clear command of Dionysus, they shot forward, as fast as doves, running on straining feet: his mother Agave, her sisters born of the same womb, and all the Bacchants. Through the torrent gorge, over the broken rocks, they went leaping, mad with the god's breath in them.
When they saw my master sitting up in the pine, first they climbed a rock that stood opposite it like a tower and began throwing stones at him, hard enough to smash him, and they threw pine branches at him like javelins, and others sent their thyrsus-wands flying through the air at Pentheus, a miserable target. But they were not getting there. The poor man was sitting at a height above their eagerness, trapped, with nothing he could do. In the end they smashed oak branches down like lightning and began to prise the roots up with levers that were not iron. When all that work came to nothing, Agave said: "Come, Maenads, stand round in a circle and take hold of the trunk, so we can catch the beast that has climbed up there, and stop him telling anyone about the god's secret dances." They put ten thousand hands on the pine and tore it up out of the earth, and down from his high seat, all that way to the ground, Pentheus fell, with ten thousand cries out of him, because he was close enough to the evil now to understand it.
His mother began the killing, as the priestess of it, and fell on him. He threw the headband off his hair, so that poor Agave might recognise him and not kill him, and he touched her cheek and said: "It is me, mother. I am your son. Pentheus. The one you bore in Echion's house. Pity me, mother. Do not kill your own child because of my mistakes." But she was foaming at the mouth, rolling her eyes round in her head, not thinking what she ought to have thought, and Dionysus had hold of her, and Pentheus did not persuade her. She took his left arm at the wrist, and set her foot against the wretched man's ribs, and tore his shoulder out. Not by her own strength: the god put the ease into her hands. Ino was working on the other side of him, ripping the flesh open, and Autonoe, and the whole crowd of Bacchants were pressing in. Every kind of noise at once: Pentheus groaning for as long as he had breath left in him, the women shrieking in triumph. One of them was carrying an arm. Another had a foot with the boot still on it. His ribs were stripped bare by the tearing. And every one of them, with blood all over her hands, was tossing Pentheus's flesh about like a ball.
His body lies in pieces in different places, some of it under the hard rocks, some in the deep leaves of the wood, and it will not be an easy thing to look for. His poor head: his mother happened to take that in her hands, and she has fixed it on the point of a thyrsus, and she is carrying it through the middle of Cithaeron like the head of a mountain lion, leaving her sisters behind in the Maenads' dances. She is coming inside these walls, glorying in her disastrous hunt, calling on Dionysus, her fellow huntsman, her partner in the chase, the winner, the beautiful winner. And the victory she wins in his service is tears.
As for me, I am getting out of the way of this disaster before Agave reaches the house. To keep yourself in hand, and to reverence what belongs to the gods, is the finest thing there is; and I think it is the cleverest thing a mortal can own, for anyone who uses it.
(The Second Messenger goes back towards the mountain, away from the house.)
Chorus. Let us dance for Dionysus, let us shout out what has happened to Pentheus, the snake's descendant, who put on a woman's clothes and took up the fennel wand, the fine thyrsus, which was death, and could be trusted to be death, with a bull walking ahead of him into disaster. Bacchants of Thebes, you have made your famous victory end in groaning, and in tears. A fine contest: to close a hand dripping with blood round your own son.
Chorus. But I can see Pentheus's mother Agave hurrying towards the house, with her eyes rolling in her head. Welcome the reveller of the god of the cry.
(Agave comes in, carrying the head of Pentheus on a thyrsus.)
Agave. Bacchants of Asia.
Chorus. Why do you call me out? Oh.
Agave. I am bringing home from the mountain a fresh-cut tendril to the house. A blessed catch.
Chorus. I see it. I will take you in as a fellow reveller.
Agave. I caught him without any snares: the young cub of a wild lion. Look at him.
Chorus. Out of what wilderness?
Agave. Cithaeron.
Chorus. Cithaeron?
Agave. Killed him.
Chorus. Who struck him first?
Agave. Mine was the first honour. Blessed Agave, they call me in the company.
Chorus. Who else?
Agave. Cadmus's.
Chorus. Cadmus's what?
Agave. Children. After me, after me, they got their hands on this animal. This was a lucky hunt.
Agave. Take your share of the feast, then.
Chorus. Share it? Share it, you poor woman?
Agave. The bull is young. The down is only just coming up on his cheek under the soft-haired crest of his head.
Chorus. Yes, the hair is like a wild animal's.
Agave. Dionysus, the clever huntsman, cleverly set the Maenads on to this beast.
Chorus. Our lord is a hunter.
Agave. Do you praise me?
Chorus. I praise you.
Agave. And soon the Thebans.
Chorus. And your son Pentheus too.
Agave. Will praise his mother for taking this lion of a catch.
Chorus. Extraordinary.
Agave. Extraordinarily taken.
Chorus. Are you proud of it?
Agave. I am delighted. Great things, great things, and plain for anyone to see, done in this hunt.
Chorus. Then show the citizens, poor woman, the prize you have brought home in victory.
Agave. You who live in the fine-towered city of Thebes, come and see this catch, the animal we hunted down, we the daughters of Cadmus. Not with the looped javelins of Thessaly, not with nets, but with the sharp tips of our own white arms. And after that, why should men boast, and buy the spear-makers' tools for nothing? We took him with our own bare hands, and we pulled the beast's joints apart. Where is my old father? Let him come here. And where is my son Pentheus? Let him take a ladder, and put it up against the house, and climb it, so he can nail this lion's head to the beam, the head I have come home from hunting.
(Cadmus comes in. Slaves follow him, carrying the pieces of Pentheus's body on a bier.)
Cadmus. Follow me. Carry the miserable weight that is Pentheus, follow me, slaves, and set it down in front of the house. I am bringing his body here, worn out with searching a thousand times over. I found it in the folds of Cithaeron, torn to pieces, no two parts of it in the same place, lying in woodland where nothing is easy to find. I heard what my daughters had dared to do when I was already back inside the city walls with old Teiresias, coming home from the Bacchants. So I turned round and went back up the mountain, and here I am bringing home my child, killed by Maenads. I saw Autonoe, the woman who once bore Actaeon to Aristaeus, and Ino with her, still in the thickets, still stung out of their minds, poor creatures. And somebody told me Agave was coming this way with her Bacchic step. What I heard was true. I can see her, and it is not a happy sight.
Agave. Father, you have the greatest boast in the world to make: that you fathered daughters who are by a long way the best of all mortal women. I mean all of us, and myself most of all. I left my shuttle at the loom and went on to greater things: catching wild animals with my two hands. And here in my arms, as you can see, I am carrying the prize I won, to be hung up on your house. Take it, father, take it in your hands. Be proud of what I hunted, and call your friends to a feast, because you are blessed. Blessed, now that we have done this.
Cadmus. Grief past all measuring, and I cannot bear to look at it: a murder, done by miserable hands. This is the fine victim you have brought down for the gods, and it is on this that you are inviting Thebes and me to a banquet. Oh. Your trouble first, and then my own. The god has destroyed us justly, and much too far: Lord Dionysus, who was born into our own family.
Agave. How bad-tempered old age is in a man, and how sour in the face. I hope my son turns out a good hunter, and takes after his mother's ways, when he goes after wild animals with the young men of Thebes. But all he can do is fight with the gods. You must have a word with him, father. Somebody call him here where I can see him, so he can see how lucky I am.
Cadmus. Ah. Ah. When you understand what you have done, you will suffer a terrible pain. If you stayed in the state you are in now, right through to the end, you would not be fortunate, but you would not think you were unfortunate either.
Agave. What is wrong with any of this? What is there in it to be sad about?
Cadmus. First lift your eyes up to this sky.
Agave. There. Why did you tell me to look at it?
Cadmus. Is it still the same, or does it seem to you to have changed?
Agave. It is brighter than it was before, and clearer.
Cadmus. And that fluttering in your mind. Is it still there?
Agave. I do not know that word of yours. But somehow I am coming to my senses. Something has shifted out of the mind I had before.
Cadmus. Can you hear me, then, and answer me clearly?
Agave. Yes. I have forgotten what we said before, father.
Cadmus. Whose house did you come to when you married?
Agave. You gave me to Echion, they say. One of the Sown Men.
Cadmus. And what son was born in that house to your husband?
Agave. Pentheus. From me and his father together.
Cadmus. Then whose face is it you are holding in your arms?
Agave. A lion's. That is what the women who hunted him said.
Cadmus. Look at it properly, then. It takes very little effort to see.
Agave. Ah. What am I looking at? What is this I am carrying in my hands?
Cadmus. Look hard at it. Learn it more clearly.
Agave. I see the greatest grief there is. I am ruined.
Cadmus. Does it still look like a lion to you?
Agave. No. It is Pentheus's head I am holding, and I am the most miserable woman alive.
Cadmus. Yes, and it was mourned over before ever you recognised it.
Agave. Who killed him? How did he come into my hands?
Cadmus. Miserable truth, what a moment you have picked to arrive.
Agave. Say it. My heart is jumping at what is coming.
Cadmus. You killed him. You and your sisters.
Agave. Where did he die? At home? In what place?
Cadmus. Where the dogs once shared Actaeon out between them.
Agave. And why did the poor man go to Cithaeron?
Cadmus. He went to mock the god, and to mock your worship.
Agave. And how did we come to be up there?
Cadmus. You went mad. The whole city was raving with the god.
Agave. Dionysus destroyed us. I understand it now.
Cadmus. Outrage was done to him. You would not count him a god.
Agave. And my child's body, father, the dearest body there is. Where is it?
Cadmus. I hunted it out. It was hard. I have brought it here.
Agave. Is all of it fitted properly together, joint into joint?
Agave. And what part did Pentheus have in my foolishness?
Cadmus. He was the same as you. He would not reverence the god. And so the god joined us all together in one ruin, you and him alike, and destroyed this house, and me with it. I had no sons of my own, and now I see this shoot of your womb, poor woman, killed in the most shameful and the ugliest way there is. You were the eye the house looked out of. You held my roof together, child, my daughter's son, and the city was afraid of you. Nobody who saw your face wanted to insult the old man, because you would have given him the punishment he deserved. And now I will be thrown out of my own house without honour: Cadmus the great, who sowed the people of Thebes and reaped the finest crop there ever was. Dearest of men, and even now you are gone I still count you among the dearest, child, you will never again put your hand to my chin and hold me and call me your mother's father and say: "Who is wronging you, old man? Who is dishonouring you? Who is upsetting your heart and giving you trouble? Tell me, father, so that I can punish the man who wrongs you." Now I am wretched, and you have suffered, and your mother is pitiful, and your aunts have suffered too. If there is anybody who looks down on the gods, let him look at this man's death and believe in them.
Chorus. I am sorry for your part in it, Cadmus. Your daughter's son has the punishment he deserved, and it is a hard one for you.
Agave. Father, you can see for yourself how far everything of mine has been turned upside down.
(Dionysus appears above the ruined house, no longer disguised.)
Dionysus. Cadmus, hear what is left for you. You will change your shape and become a snake, and your wife will be turned into an animal and take the form of a serpent: Harmonia, the daughter of Ares, whom you married while you were a mortal man. You will drive a wagon of oxen, with your wife beside you, at the head of a barbarian army. That is what the oracle of Zeus says. You will sack many cities with a force nobody can count. And when they plunder the oracle of Apollo, they will have a miserable journey home. But Ares will rescue you and Harmonia, and settle your life in the land of the blessed. I say this as Dionysus, and my father was no mortal. I was born from Zeus. If you had learned to keep yourselves in hand when you refused to, you would have had the son of Zeus for an ally, and you would be happy now.
Cadmus. Dionysus, we beg you. We were wrong.
Dionysus. You learned what I am too late. When you should have known it, you did not.
Cadmus. We understand that now. But you are coming after us too hard.
Dionysus. I am a god by birth, and you did me outrage.
Cadmus. Gods should not be like mortals in their anger.
Dionysus. My father Zeus nodded to all this long ago.
Agave. Aiai. It is decided, old man. Exile, and misery in it.
Dionysus. Then why put off what has to happen?
Cadmus. Child, what a terrible evil we have all come to: you, poor girl, and your sisters, and me. I will go to a foreign country, an old man living among strangers. And there is more foretold for me: that I will bring a mixed barbarian army into Greece. I will lead them under arms, with Harmonia beside me, the daughter of Ares, my wife, with the wild nature of a serpent on her, and I a serpent myself, against the altars and the tombs of Greece. I will never have any rest from my troubles. Not even when I have sailed down the Acheron will I be at peace.
Agave. Father, and I will go into exile without you.
Cadmus. Why do you put your arms round me, poor child, like a young swan round its useless grey-feathered parent?
Agave. Where am I to turn, thrown out of my own country?
Cadmus. I do not know, child. Your father is a poor ally.
Agave. Goodbye, house. Goodbye, city of my fathers. I am leaving you in disaster, an exile out of my own room.
Cadmus. Go now, child, to the country of Aristaeus.
Agave. I grieve for you, father.
Cadmus. And I for you, child, and I have wept for your sisters.
Agave. Terribly, terribly has lord Dionysus carried this humiliation into your house.
Dionysus. Yes, because I suffered terribly at your hands. My name had no honour in Thebes.
Agave. Goodbye, father.
Cadmus. Goodbye, my miserable daughter. You will not easily come to any good.
Agave. Take me, escorts, to where I can find my sisters, my pitiable companions in exile. Let me come somewhere where filthy Cithaeron cannot see me, and my eyes cannot see Cithaeron, and where no thyrsus stands as a memorial. Let those be some other Bacchant's business.
(Agave goes out one way, Cadmus the other. Dionysus is gone from above the house.)
Chorus. Many are the shapes of what the gods do, and many the things they bring about that no one expected. What we counted on did not happen, and for what no one counted on, a god found a way. That is how this business ended.
(Night, on the beach at Aulis, in front of Agamemnon's tent. The Greek fleet lies drawn up along the shore. Agamemnon comes out carrying a folding writing tablet and a lamp.)
Agamemnon. Leda, the daughter of Thestius, had three girls: Phoebe, and Clytemnestra, who is my wife, and Helen. And it was Helen the young men of Greece came courting, the ones who had had the best of life so far. There were terrible threats between them, and blood, each one of them ready to kill the rest if he did not get the girl. Her father Tyndareus could see no way through it. Give her, do not give her, how to take hold of his luck and come off best. And then this came to him. The suitors should swear oaths to one another, and clasp right hands, and pour offerings over a burnt sacrifice, and bind themselves with this curse: whichever of them got Tyndareus's daughter for a wife, they would all stand by that man, if anybody ever took her out of his house and went off with her and pushed the husband out of his own bed. They would march against that man in armour and level his city to the ground, Greek or barbarian, it would make no difference. And once they had given their word — and the old man had come at them well, and worked round them with a shrewd mind — he let his daughter choose one of the suitors for herself, whichever one the sweet breezes of Aphrodite carried her toward.
And she chose. I wish to god he had never taken her. She chose Menelaus. And then out of Phrygia came the man who judged between the goddesses, Paris, the way the story runs among the Argives, and he came to Sparta: flowering in his clothes, a blaze of gold on him, barbarian luxury. He was in love with her and she was in love with him, and he snatched her up and was gone with her to the cattle pens of Ida, and he took his moment while Menelaus was away from home. And Menelaus went running the length of Greece like a beast with a sting in it, calling Tyndareus's old oath to witness, saying they were bound to help a man who had been wronged.
So the Greeks came at it with the spear. They took up their armour and came here, to the narrow water at Aulis, with ships and shields together, with plenty of horses and chariots. And they picked me to be general, and they did it for Menelaus's sake, because I am his brother. I wish somebody else had picked up that honour instead of me.
Then, with the army gathered and standing together, we sat here at Aulis and could not sail. We were at a loss, and Calchas the prophet told us this: sacrifice Iphigenia, my own daughter, to Artemis, who lives in this country. If we sacrificed her, we would sail and we would tear the Phrygians' city down; if we did not sacrifice her, none of it would happen. And when I heard it, I told Talthybius to give the order out at the top of his voice and let the whole army go home, because I would never have the nerve to kill my daughter. And then my brother came at me with every argument there is, and talked me into daring a terrible thing. So I wrote it in the folds of a tablet and sent it to my wife: send our daughter here to be married to Achilles. I made a great deal of the man's standing, and I said he refused to sail with the Achaeans unless a bride out of our house went home with him to Phthia. That was the persuasion I used on my wife. I put a marriage together for the girl out of nothing.
Of all the Achaeans, only we know how it really stands: Calchas, Odysseus, Menelaus, and I. And what I decided badly then, I have now written out again, and written it well, in this tablet here — the one you saw me untying and tying up again in the shadow of the night, old man. Come on, take these letters and go to Argos. And what the tablet keeps hidden in its folds, I will tell you out loud, all of it, every word that is written there. You are loyal to my wife and to my house.
Agamemnon. Old man, come out here, out in front of the tent.
Old Man. I am coming. What is the new plan, Agamemnon, my lord?
Agamemnon. Will you hurry?
Old Man. I am hurrying. Old age gets very little sleep, and it keeps a sharp watch on my eyes.
Agamemnon. What star is that, the one steering across up there?
Old Man. Sirius, running close to the seven roads of the Pleiades, still high at the middle of the sky.
Agamemnon. No sound of birds, then, and no sound from the sea. The winds are keeping their silence over this water, over the Euripus.
Old Man. Then why are you rushing about outside the tent, Agamemnon, my lord? It is still quiet here in Aulis and the guard on the walls has not stirred. Let us go inside.
Agamemnon. I envy you, old man. I envy any man who comes to the end of a life with no danger in it, unknown, with no fame. The ones with honours I envy less.
Old Man. And yet that is where the beauty of a life is.
Agamemnon. That beauty is a thing a man slips on, and being honoured above other men is sweet, and it hurts when it stands close to you. Sometimes it is the gods' business, not set straight, that turns a life over; sometimes it is people, their many opinions, hard to please, grinding you away.
Old Man. I do not admire this in a man who is the best of us. Atreus did not father you, Agamemnon, for nothing but good things. You have to feel joy and you have to feel pain. You were born mortal. Even if you do not want it, that is what the gods want, and that is how it will be. And you have opened out the light of the lamp and you are writing that tablet, the one you are still carrying there in your hands, and then you smear out the same letters again, and seal it, and untie it again afterwards, and throw the pinewood down on the ground, crying, the tears coming thick, and there is nothing in the whole list of helpless things that you are leaving out. You look like a madman. What is the trouble? What is new with you, king? Come on, share the story with me. You will be telling it to a good man, and a loyal one. Tyndareus sent me along with your wife once, as part of her dowry, to look after the bride, and to do it honestly.
Agamemnon. I am sending you word, on top of the letters I sent before, daughter of Leda —
Old Man. Say it, spell it out, so that my tongue can say the same thing your writing says.
Agamemnon. Do not send your girl to the deep-bayed wing of Euboea, to Aulis, where no wave comes. We will hold our child's wedding feast in some other season.
Old Man. And Achilles, cheated of his bride — how will he not swell up with a huge anger against you and against your wife? That is dangerous too. Tell me what you mean.
Agamemnon. Achilles is lending a name, not a deed. He knows nothing about a wedding, or about what we are doing, or that I promised the girl to him, that I would give her over to a bridegroom's arms and a bridegroom's bed.
Old Man. That was a terrible thing to dare, Agamemnon, my lord. You said your daughter was a wife for the goddess's son and you were bringing her here as a throat to cut for the Greeks.
Agamemnon. Oh. I have gone out of my mind. Aiai. I am falling into ruin. Go on now, row your feet along, and give nothing away to your age.
Old Man. I am hurrying, king.
Agamemnon. Do not sit down beside the springs in the woods and do not let sleep charm you.
Old Man. Do not say such things.
Agamemnon. And wherever the road splits, cross it looking hard, keeping watch that no wagon slips by you on its rolling wheels and gets past, bringing my child here to the ships of the Greeks.
Old Man. It will be done.
Agamemnon. And if you meet her with her escort already out through the gates, turn them back, shake the reins, send them off to the walls the Cyclopes built.
Old Man. Tell me, when I say all this, how am I to be believed by your daughter and your wife?
Agamemnon. Keep the seal, the one on the tablet you are carrying. Go. The dawn is whitening this light already, burning, and so is the fire of the Sun's four horses. Take some of this labour off me. No mortal is fortunate all the way to the end. Nobody is happy. No one was ever born without pain.
(The Old Man hurries away. Agamemnon goes into the tent. It is daylight. A group of young women from Chalcis come along the shore, looking at the ships.)
Chorus. I came down to the sandy beach beside the sea at Aulis, sailing across the currents of the narrow Euripus, leaving Chalcis behind me, my own city, that feeds the waters of Arethusa, the famous spring beside the sea, so that I could see the army of the Achaeans and the oared ships of the Achaeans that carry the half-gods across, the ones our husbands say fair-haired Menelaus and high-born Agamemnon are leading to Troy in a thousand ships of fir, after Helen, whom Paris the herdsman took from the reedy banks of the Eurotas, a gift to him from Aphrodite, when beside the dripping spring she stood up against Hera and Pallas in a quarrel, a quarrel about beauty.
Chorus. I came through the grove of Artemis, where so much is killed on the altars, running, and my cheek went red with a shame that was new to me, because I wanted to see the wall of shields and the tents of the Greeks under arms and the crowd of their horses. I saw the two Ajaxes sitting together, the son of Oileus and the son of Telamon, the crown of Salamis; and Protesilaus and Palamedes, whose father was Poseidon's son, enjoying themselves over a board at a game of counters with complicated shapes; and Diomedes, taking his pleasure in the throwing of the discus; and beside him Meriones, a shoot of the war god, a wonder to look at; and the son of Laertes, Odysseus, down from his island hills, and with him Nireus, the best-looking man among the Achaeans.
Chorus. And Achilles, quick as the wind on his feet, the light-running one, whom Thetis bore and Chiron finished, I saw him along the beach, down on the shingle, running a race in his armour. He was working his feet against a four-horse chariot, wheeling round the turn for the win. And the driver was shouting, Eumelus, the grandson of Pheres, and I saw his horses, the loveliest, their bits worked in gold, taking the goad: the middle pair, the yoke-horses, dappled, with white flecks in their coats, and the outside pair, the trace-horses, leaning into the bends of the course, fire-red, with spotted skin above their single hooves. And beside them the son of Peleus was springing along in his armour, level with the rail and the axle-box of the car.
Chorus. And I came to count the ships, a sight there are no words for, to fill a girl's eyes with looking, a sweet pleasure, like honey. The right wing was held by the war of the Myrmidons out of Phthia, fifty ships that come on hard, and high on the sterns stood Nereid goddesses in gold, the badge of Achilles' fleet.
Chorus. Next to them the Argive ships lay, with as many oars as those, and the son of Mecisteus commanded them, whom his grandfather Talaus brought up, and Sthenelus, the son of Capaneus. And next in the line, with sixty ships out of Attica, the son of Theseus was anchored, and he had the goddess Pallas set on a winged chariot drawn by whole-hoofed horses: a lucky sign for men at sea.
Chorus. And I saw the sea-armour of the Boeotians, fifty ships dressed out with their signs. Theirs was Cadmus, holding a snake of gold, up at the beaks of the ships, and Leitus, who was born out of the earth, was in command of that fleet. And from the land of Phocis, and from Locris, with as many ships as those, came the son of Oileus, who had left the famous town of Thronium.
Chorus. And from Mycenae, the city the Cyclopes built, the son of Atreus sent his crews, a hundred ships gathered together, and Adrastus was with him as a leader, friend beside friend, so that Greece could take payment for the woman who ran out of her house for the sake of a barbarian marriage. And out of Pylos I saw, on the sterns of Nestor of Gerenia, the sign of his neighbour the Alpheus, a river drawn with a bull's feet.
Chorus. And there was a squadron of twelve Aenianian ships, with lord Gouneus in command of them. And near those, the rulers of Elis, whom all the people call the Epeians, and Eurytus was their master. And he led the white-oared war of Taphos, whose lord was Meges, the child of Phyleus, who had left the Echinae behind, islands where a sailor cannot put in.
Chorus. And Ajax, brought up in Salamis, was joining his right wing to the left of the fleet he was moored nearest to, locking them in with his outermost oars, twelve ships, the handiest that turn. That is what I heard, and I saw the men who row them. If anyone brings barbarian boats up to grapple with that, he will carry no homecoming away. Such was the fleet under sail that I looked at here, and the rest I heard at home, about the gathered army, and I hold it in my memory.
(The Old Man comes back along the shore, struggling with Menelaus, who has the tablet in his hand.)
Old Man. Menelaus, you have the nerve for terrible things, and no right to them.
Menelaus. Get away. You are far too loyal to your masters.
Old Man. That is a fine insult you have insulted me with.
Menelaus. You will be sorry, if you do what is not yours to do.
Old Man. You had no business breaking open a letter I was carrying.
Menelaus. And you had no business carrying misery to every Greek alive.
Old Man. Argue that out with somebody else. Let go of this and give it to me.
Menelaus. I will not let go.
Old Man. And I will not let go either.
Menelaus. Then this staff will have your head bloody in a moment.
Old Man. It is a fine thing to die for one's masters.
Menelaus. Let go. For a slave you make long speeches.
Old Man. Master, I am being wronged. He tore your letter out of my hands by force, Agamemnon, and he will have nothing to do with what is right.
(Agamemnon comes out of the tent.)
Agamemnon. Ah. What is this uproar at my door, this disorderly shouting?
Menelaus. It is my story that has the right to speak first, not his.
Agamemnon. And you, Menelaus, why have you come to a quarrel with this man, and why are you dragging him about?
Menelaus. Look at me. Let that be where my story starts.
Agamemnon. Do you think I am afraid to lift my eyes? I am a son of Atreus.
Menelaus. Do you see this tablet? The servant of the worst kind of writing?
Agamemnon. I see it. And before anything else, get it out of your hands.
Menelaus. No. Not until I have shown what is written in it to every Greek here.
Agamemnon. So you broke the seals, and you know what it was no business of yours to know?
Menelaus. I opened it, yes. And I know what you have been doing behind our backs, and it will hurt you.
Agamemnon. And where did you get hold of it? Gods, what a shameless mind you have.
Menelaus. I was waiting for your daughter to come from Argos to the camp.
Agamemnon. And what business have you keeping watch on what is mine? Is that not shamelessness?
Menelaus. The itch to do it. That is why. I was not born your slave.
Agamemnon. Is that not outrageous? Am I not to be allowed to run my own house?
Menelaus. No, because your mind runs crooked. One thing now, another thing a while ago, another in a moment.
Agamemnon. Very pretty polish on a nasty argument. A clever tongue is a hateful thing.
Menelaus. And a mind that will not stay put is a dishonest possession, and no use to the people you owe. I want to put you to the test, and you must not turn away from the truth out of anger, and I will not strain the case too hard either.
You remember when you were straining every muscle to lead the Greeks against Troy — pretending you did not want it, wanting it badly all the same — how humble you were then? Taking every man by the right hand, keeping your doors unbolted for any citizen who felt like walking in, giving every man in turn a chance to speak with you, even the ones who did not want it, trying with your manners to buy popularity off the open market? And then, when you had the command in your hands, you changed your ways. You were no longer the friend to your old friends that you used to be. You were hard to get at, and hardly ever inside your own doors. A good man who comes into a great position ought not to change his manners. That is exactly the moment when he ought to be steadiest with the people he owes: when his own luck is good and he has the most power to help them.
That is the first thing I went through, because that is where I first found you out to be bad.
And then, when you came here to Aulis with the whole army of Greece, you were nothing. The luck the gods dealt you knocked you off your feet, and there was no wind to carry us. And the Greeks began saying you should let the ships go and stop labouring at Aulis for nothing. And what a wretched, confused look you had on your face, at the thought that you commanded a thousand ships and were not going to fill Priam's plain with spears. And you kept calling me in. "What am I to do? What way out can I find, and where?" So that you would not be stripped of the command and lose your fine name.
And then, when Calchas said in the middle of the rites that you should sacrifice your daughter to Artemis, and that the Greeks would sail, you were delighted in your heart. You gladly promised to sacrifice the child. And you send word to your wife — willingly, nobody forced you, do not tell me that — to send your daughter here, on the excuse of a marriage to Achilles. And then you turn round, and you get caught changing the writing to something else: that you will not be your daughter's murderer after all. Exactly. And this is the same air that heard you say the first thing.
Thousands of men have had this happen to them. They work hard at power while they hold it, and then they get out of it badly, sometimes because the citizens have no sense, and sometimes justly, because they were not able themselves to keep a city safe.
It is Greece I groan for most, poor Greece. She wanted to do something worth doing, and now she is going to let these barbarian nobodies get away laughing at her, because of you and because of your daughter. I would never put a man in charge of a country for his courage, or make him commander of an army. A general has to have a mind on him. Any man at all can rule a city, so long as he happens to have some understanding.
Chorus. It is a terrible thing when brothers come to words and to blows, once they have fallen into a quarrel.
Agamemnon. I want to say hard things to you, and say them well: briefly, and without lifting my eyelids too high into a shameless stare, but keeping myself in hand, as one brother should. A decent man knows how to feel shame.
Tell me. Why are you breathing so hard, with blood in your eyes? Who is wronging you? What is it you want? A good wife? I cannot supply you with one. The one you did get, you ruled badly. Am I to pay the penalty for your troubles, when I never made the mistake? Is it my ambition that bites you? No. What you want is a good-looking woman in your arms, and you have thrown reason and decency away to get her. A bad man's pleasures are bad.
And if I judged wrongly before and have now changed to a better plan, am I mad? You are the madder one. You lost a worthless wife and you want her back, when a god handed you good luck by taking her away. It was the suitors who swore Tyndareus's oath, out of bad judgement, because they were all in love with the wedding. Hope is a god, I think, and it was Hope that brought the thing about, rather than you and your strength. Take them and go to war. They are ready enough, in the folly of their minds. But the divine is not without understanding. It can tell an oath that was badly fixed and forced out of a man.
I will not kill my own children. It is not going to happen that your affairs come out well, against all justice, in a revenge for the worst of wives, while the nights and the days grind me down in tears for doing a lawless and unjust thing to children I fathered myself.
There. That is said to you briefly, and it is clear, and it is easy to follow. If you will not think straight, I will set my own affairs in order.
Chorus. This is different from what was said before. But it is good, this: sparing the children.
Menelaus. Aiai. So I have no friends after all, wretched man that I am.
Agamemnon. You have friends, if you are not trying to destroy them.
Menelaus. And where will you show me that you were born from the same father as I was?
Agamemnon. I want to keep myself in hand along with you. I do not want to be sick along with you.
Menelaus. The people you owe should hurt along with the people they owe.
Agamemnon. Call me in by doing me good, not by giving me pain.
Menelaus. So you do not mean to take on this labour along with Greece?
Agamemnon. Greece is sick, and so are you, by some god's doing.
Menelaus. Go on, boast about your sceptre, now that you have betrayed your own brother. I will go and look for other devices, and other friends—
(A Messenger comes running along the shore.)
Messenger. Lord of all the Greeks, Agamemnon. I am here, and I have brought your daughter, the one you called Iphigenia at home. Her mother is with her, Clytemnestra your wife herself, and the child Orestes, so that you might have some pleasure in seeing him, after being away from home so long. But the road was long, and they are cooling their soft feet now at a spring with a good flow of water, they and the horses; we turned those loose in the green of the meadow to get a taste of grass. I have come running ahead so that you could get ready for them.
The army knows already that your daughter has arrived. Rumour went through it fast. The whole crowd is coming down to the beach at a run to get a look at your child. People who are fortunate are famous everywhere, and everyone stares at them. And they are saying: "Is it a wedding? What is going on? Or has King Agamemnon been missing his daughter and brought the girl here?" And from others you would have heard this: "They are giving the girl her wedding-eve rites for Artemis, the queen of Aulis. Who is going to marry her?"
Come on, then. Start the baskets for what comes next, and put wreaths on your heads. And you, lord Menelaus, get the wedding song ready. Let the pipe sound through the tents and let there be a stamping of feet. This is a blessed day that has come for the girl.
Agamemnon. Thank you. Now go inside. The rest will be well enough, as fortune takes its course.
(The Messenger goes into the tent.)
Oh. What am I to say? Where do I begin? What a yoke of necessity I have fallen under. A god has come at me from underneath and turned out to be a great deal cleverer than all my cleverness.
Low birth has something useful about it. Those men can cry easily and say everything they feel. The well-born man has the same troubles and none of that comfort. We have our dignity standing over our lives like a master, and we are slaves to the crowd. I am ashamed to let a tear fall, and then, wretched man, I am ashamed not to cry, when I have come into the greatest disasters there are.
Well. What am I going to say to my wife? How will I receive her? What sort of face will I meet her with? She has ruined me, coming when I did not call for her, on top of everything else. And of course she came, with her daughter, to give the bride away, to hand over what she loves most — and she is going to find out what kind of men we are.
And the poor girl. Girl? What girl? It looks as though Hades is going to marry her soon. How I pity her. I think she will beg me like this. "Father, are you going to kill me? Then I hope you make a marriage like this yourself, and everyone who is a friend to you." And Orestes will be standing there beside her, shouting things that make no sense and make all the sense in the world, because he is still a baby.
Aiai. Priam's son Paris destroyed me when he married Helen. He is the one who has done all this.
Chorus. I pity her myself, as far as a woman from another country can grieve over the troubles of kings.
Menelaus. Brother. Give me your right hand to hold.
Agamemnon. Take it. You have won, and I am the wretched one.
Menelaus. I swear by Pelops, who was called my father's father and yours, and by Atreus who fathered us both, that I will tell you what is in my heart, plainly, nothing said for effect, only what I think.
When I saw you letting a tear fall out of your eyes, I pitied you, and I let one fall for you in return. I take back what I said before. I am not going to be a terror to you. I stand where you are standing now. And this is my advice: do not kill your child, and do not choose my business ahead of your own. It is not just that you should be groaning while my affairs go pleasantly, that your children should die while mine look at the light.
What is it I want, after all? If it is a marriage I am longing for, could I not get another bride, and a fine one? Was I to destroy my brother — the last man on earth I ought to destroy — and take Helen, getting the bad thing in place of the good one? I was out of my mind. I was young about it. Then I looked at the business from close up and saw what killing children means.
And besides that, pity for the poor girl came over me, when I thought about the blood between us. She is going to have her throat cut for the sake of my marriage. What has your girl to do with Helen?
Let the army break up and go from Aulis. And you, brother, stop soaking your eyes with tears, and stop calling me into tears with you. Whatever share you have in the oracles about your daughter, let me have none of it. I hand over my part to you.
A sudden turn, you will say, after all those terrible words of mine? What has happened to me is natural. I loved the man born from the same blood as me, and I changed. These are the turns a man makes who is not a bad one: to take whatever is best, every time.
Chorus. That was nobly said, and worthy of Tantalus, the son of Zeus. You do not shame your ancestors.
Agamemnon. I praise you, Menelaus, for putting the argument down in the right place, against everything I expected of you, and worthily of yourself. Brothers fall into confusion over love, and over greed for the family property. I spit on a family tie like that, bitter for both of them. But we have come to a hard necessity: to carry out the bloody murder of my daughter.
Menelaus. How? Who is going to force you to kill your own child?
Agamemnon. The whole gathered assembly of the Achaean army.
Menelaus. Not if you send her back to Argos.
Agamemnon. I could do that without being noticed. There is another thing I will not get away with.
Menelaus. What thing? You must not be too frightened of a crowd.
Agamemnon. Calchas will tell his prophecies to the Argive army.
Menelaus. Not if he dies first. That is easily done.
Agamemnon. The whole breed of prophets is a bad thing, chasing honour.
Menelaus. And no use at all, and no good to anybody when they are among us.
Agamemnon. And the other thing that is coming over me: does that not frighten you?
Menelaus. How can I take up an argument you do not tell me?
Agamemnon. The seed of Sisyphus knows all of it.
Menelaus. Odysseus is not the man to do you or me any harm.
Agamemnon. He was born shifty, always was, and he goes with the crowd.
Menelaus. He is held fast by the love of honour. That is a terrible evil.
Agamemnon. Then do you not think he will stand up in the middle of the Argives and tell them the prophecies Calchas gave out, and how I promised the goddess a victim and then broke my word? That I would sacrifice to Artemis? And that he will carry the whole army away with him, and tell the Argives to kill you and me and cut the girl's throat? And if I run for Argos, they will come and take the place and tear it down to the ground, walls and all, and the Cyclopes built those walls. That is what my troubles are.
I am wretched. What a helpless place the gods have put me in now.
Do one thing for me, Menelaus, when you go through the army. See that Clytemnestra does not learn about this, until I have taken my child and handed her to Hades. Let me do this badly with the fewest tears possible.
And you, women from abroad, keep silence.
(Menelaus goes off along the shore. Agamemnon goes into the tent.)
Chorus. Blessed are the ones who share the bed of Aphrodite with the goddess in her measure, and with themselves in hand, who get a calm sea instead of the maddening sting, there where Love with the golden hair draws two arrows of delight: one of them for a life of good days, one to throw a life into confusion. Aphrodite, most beautiful, I forbid that arrow my bedroom. Let my pleasure be measured, and my longings holy, and let me have my share of her, and put the great share away.
Chorus. People's natures are different, and their ways of living are different, but what is truly good is always plain. And a rearing that has been taught carries a person a long way toward being good. Knowing how to feel shame is wisdom, and it has this rare grace with it, that judgement lets you see what has to be done, and reputation sheds a glory over a life that never grows old. It is a great thing to hunt goodness down: for women, in a love kept out of sight, and among men, an order inside them, present in a thousand ways, which makes a city greater.
Chorus. You came, Paris, to the place where you were reared as a herdsman among the white heifers of Ida, piping in a foreign scale, breathing into your reeds an imitation of the Phrygian pipes of Olympus. The cows were grazing with their udders full when the judging of the goddesses drove you mad, the judging that sends you to Greece. And you stood in front of the ivory-inlaid house and put love into Helen's eyes as they looked back into yours, and you were shaken with love yourself. And out of that, quarrel brings quarrel and brings Greece with her spears and her ships against the towers of Troy.
(A carriage comes along the shore, with Clytemnestra and Iphigenia in it, and an escort of soldiers.)
Argive Soldiers. Io, io. Great is the good fortune of great people. Look at Iphigenia, the king's child, my queen, and Clytemnestra, the daughter of Tyndareus. See what great stock they grew from, and how high a fortune they have come to. The powerful, the ones who carry riches, are gods to those mortals who have no luck.
Chorus. Let us stand here, we children of Chalcis, and take the queen down out of her carriage to the ground without a stumble, gently, with our hands, with a soft strength, so that Agamemnon's famous daughter, just come to me now, will not be frightened, and so that we, strangers to the women of Argos, give strangers no confusion and no shock.
(The carriage has drawn up in front of the tent. Clytemnestra is in it with Iphigenia, the baby Orestes and their attendants. Agamemnon stands at the door.)
Clytemnestra. I take that as a good omen: your kindness, and the good words you have for us. I have some hope that the wedding I am here to lead a bride to is a fine one. Now, take the dowry I have brought for the girl out of the carriages and carry it into the tent, and be careful with it. And you, my child, get down from the carriage. Put your foot down gently; it is a delicate foot, and not strong. You girls, take her in your arms and help her down. And somebody give me a hand to lean on, so I can get out of the carriage seat without making a spectacle of myself. Some of you stand in front of the horses, by the yoke. A horse's eye is a nervous thing, and there is no reasoning with it. And take this boy, Agamemnon's son, Orestes. He is still only a baby. Child, are you asleep? Did the carriage rock you off? Wake up. It is your sister's wedding day, and a lucky one. You are a good man's son and you are going to have a good man for a brother-in-law: the child of the Nereid's daughter, a family that is very nearly gods. Sit here by my feet, child. Iphigenia, come and stand close to your mother, and let these foreign women see what a happy woman I am. And here he is. Go and greet your father. You love him.
Iphigenia. Mother, I am going to run on ahead of you. Do not be angry. I want to throw my arms round my father's chest, and hold him.
Clytemnestra. Agamemnon, my lord, the man I honour above everyone. We have come. You gave your orders and we did not doubt them.
Iphigenia. I want to run to you, father, and throw myself against your chest. It has been so long. I have missed your face. Do not be angry.
Clytemnestra. Go on, child, you should. Of all the children I have given him you were always the one who loved her father most.
Iphigenia. Father. It is so good to see you. It has been so long.
Agamemnon. And your father is glad to see you. What you said goes for both of us.
Iphigenia. Hello, father. You did a good thing, bringing me here to you.
Agamemnon. I do not know how to say yes to that, child, and I do not know how to say no.
Iphigenia. Ah. You are glad to see me, and you do not look it. You look troubled.
Agamemnon. A king and a general has a great deal on his mind.
Iphigenia. Be with me now. Do not go off into your worries.
Agamemnon. But I am with you now. All of me. I am nowhere else.
Iphigenia. Then let go of that frown, and look at me the way you love me.
Agamemnon. There. I am glad to see you. Exactly as glad as I am, child.
Iphigenia. And then you have tears running down your face?
Agamemnon. Yes. Because we are going to be apart a long time.
Iphigenia. I do not know what you mean. I do not know, father, my dearest father.
Agamemnon. The more sense you talk, the more you make me pity you.
Iphigenia. Then I will talk nonsense, if that will cheer you up.
Agamemnon. Papai. I have not got the strength to keep this in. Good girl.
Iphigenia. Stay at home, father, with your children.
Agamemnon. I want to. And I cannot have what I want, and it hurts.
Iphigenia. Curse the spears, and Menelaus and his troubles.
Agamemnon. They will destroy other people first. They have already destroyed me.
Iphigenia. You have been away so long, tucked into this bay at Aulis.
Agamemnon. And even now there is something holding me back from sending the army out.
Iphigenia. Where do they say the Phrygians live, father?
Agamemnon. Somewhere Priam's son Paris should never have lived at all.
Iphigenia. You are going a long way, father, and leaving me behind.
Agamemnon. You have come to the same place as your father, daughter.
Iphigenia. Pheu. If only it were proper for you to take me on the voyage with you.
Agamemnon. There is a voyage ahead of you too. And on it you will remember your father.
Iphigenia. Do I sail with my mother, or do I make the journey alone?
Agamemnon. Alone. On your own, without your father and without your mother.
Iphigenia. You are not settling me in some other house, are you, father?
Agamemnon. Enough. Girls should not know about such things.
Iphigenia. Hurry back from the Phrygians for me, father, once you have settled everything there.
Agamemnon. First I have a certain sacrifice to make here.
Iphigenia. Yes. You have to see to what is holy, with the proper rites.
Agamemnon. You will know all about it. You will be standing right beside the holy water.
Iphigenia. Then are we going to have dances round the altar, father?
Agamemnon. I envy you. I envy you more than I do myself, for knowing nothing. Go inside the tent now; it is not good for girls to be looked at. Give me a kiss first, and your right hand, because you are going to live a long time away from your father. Oh, this chest, and these cheeks, and this golden hair. What a weight the Phrygians' city has turned out to be for you, and Helen. I will stop talking. The moment I touch you the tears come too fast for me. Go into the tent.
(Iphigenia goes into the tent.)
And you, daughter of Leda, forgive me if I was too full of pity just now, when I am about to give my daughter to Achilles. Sending a daughter off is a happy thing, and all the same it bites the parents, when a father who has laboured so long over his children hands them over to another house.
Clytemnestra. I am not so stupid. Count on it, I will feel exactly the same, so I am not going to lecture you, when I lead the girl out to the wedding songs. But it is what people do, and time wears it down. Now, the man you have promised our child to: I know his name. I want to hear about his family and where he comes from.
Agamemnon. There was a girl called Aegina, and her father was the river Asopus.
Clytemnestra. And who married her? A mortal, or a god?
Agamemnon. Zeus. Their son was Aeacus, the lord of the island of Oenone.
Clytemnestra. And which of Aeacus's sons took over his house?
Agamemnon. Peleus. And Peleus got the daughter of Nereus for a wife.
Clytemnestra. With a god's blessing? Or did he take her by force, against the gods?
Agamemnon. Zeus made the match, and her father, who had the right to, gave her away.
Clytemnestra. And where did he marry her? Under the swell of the sea?
Agamemnon. Where Chiron lives, at the holy foot of Mount Pelion.
Clytemnestra. Where they say the race of Centaurs has its home?
Agamemnon. That is where the gods held the wedding feast for Peleus.
Clytemnestra. And who brought Achilles up? Thetis, or his father?
Agamemnon. Chiron. So he would not pick up the habits of bad men.
Clytemnestra. Pheu. A wise man, the one who raised him. And wiser still the one who gave him to be raised.
Agamemnon. That is the kind of man your daughter is going to have for a husband.
Clytemnestra. No fault to find there. And what city in Greece does he live in?
Agamemnon. By the river Apidanus, inside the borders of Phthia.
Clytemnestra. And that is where he will take your girl and mine?
Agamemnon. That will be his business. She will belong to him.
Clytemnestra. Well, good luck to them both. What day does he marry her?
Agamemnon. When the circle of the moon comes round full, and lucky.
Clytemnestra. And have you already killed the first offerings to the goddess, for the girl's wedding?
Agamemnon. I am about to. That is exactly the business we are standing in the middle of.
Clytemnestra. And then you will hold the wedding feast afterwards?
Agamemnon. Yes. Once I have made the sacrifice I have to make to the gods.
Clytemnestra. And where am I to lay out the feast for the women?
Agamemnon. Here. Beside the fine sterns of the Argive ships.
Clytemnestra. Fine. Since it has to be. Well, may it turn out for the best all the same.
Agamemnon. Do you know what you should do, wife? Do as I say.
Clytemnestra. What is it? I am used to doing as you say.
Agamemnon. I will stay here, where the bridegroom is, and I will—
Clytemnestra. You will do what, without her mother? What is mine to do?
Agamemnon. Give your child away, with the Greeks looking on.
Clytemnestra. And where am I supposed to be while that happens?
Agamemnon. Go to Argos and look after your other girls.
Clytemnestra. And leave my child? Then who is going to hold up the torch?
Agamemnon. I will provide whatever light a wedding needs.
Clytemnestra. That is not the custom. And these are not small things, to be brushed aside.
Agamemnon. It is not right for you to be mixing with a mob of soldiers.
Clytemnestra. It is right for me to give my own children away. I bore them.
Agamemnon. And right for the girls at home not to be left on their own.
Clytemnestra. They are well guarded, behind strong walls, in the women's rooms.
Agamemnon. Do as I say.
Clytemnestra. No. By the queen of heaven, the goddess of Argos, no. Go and manage what is outside. What is inside the house is mine, and a girl on her wedding day needs her mother there.
(Clytemnestra goes into the tent.)
Agamemnon. Oh. I rushed at that and got nowhere. My hope has slipped through my fingers. I wanted my wife out of my sight. I make clever plans, I devise tricks, against the people I love most in the world, and I am beaten at every turn. All the same, I will go and find Calchas the priest, and together we will work out what the goddess wants, which is no good luck for me, and is the labour of all Greece. A clever man should keep a good and useful wife in his house, or no wife at all.
(Agamemnon goes out.)
Chorus. So they will come to the Simois and its silver-flashing eddies, the gathered army of the Greeks, in ships and in armour, to Ilium, to the plain of Troy that belongs to Apollo, where I hear Cassandra tosses her golden hair, crowned with a wreath of green laurel, whenever the god's prophecy comes on her, and she cannot fight it.
Chorus. And the Trojans will stand on the citadel, on the towers of Troy and all round the walls, when Ares in his bronze shield comes up from the sea, rowed in on the oars of fine-prowed ships, to the channels of the Simois, wanting to take Helen back from Priam, Helen, whose brothers are the twin Dioscuri, the stars in the sky, and carry her home to the land of Greece by the toil of Achaean shields and Achaean spears.
Chorus. And Pergamum, the Phrygians' city, he will ring round with murdering war, its walls and its stone towers, the son of Atreus, and drag back Paris's head and cut his throat, and sack the city from the top down, and leave the girls weeping, and Priam's wife weeping. And Helen, the daughter of Zeus, will sit and weep and weep for leaving her husband. Never on me, never on my children's children may that expectation fall, the one the Lydian women, heavy with gold, and the wives of the Phrygians will stand at their looms and talk over with each other: Who is the man who will wind my lovely hair round his fist and drag me off in tears, and pluck me like a flower from my country as it dies? Because of you, child of the long-necked swan, if the story is true that Leda lay with a bird on the wing when Zeus had changed his body, or whether it is all in the poets' tablets, tales carried to men for nothing, out of season.
(Achilles comes in.)
Achilles. Where is the general of the Achaeans? Which of his servants will tell him that Achilles, the son of Peleus, is at his gates looking for him? Because this waiting beside the Euripus is not the same for all of us. Some of us are not married, and have left empty houses behind to sit here on the beach. Others have wives, and no children yet. That is how fierce the passion for this expedition is that has fallen on Greece, and the gods had a hand in it. I have a just claim of my own, and I am the one who has to state it; anyone else who wants to can speak for himself. I left my country, Pharsalus, and I left Peleus, and I am waiting here for these thin breezes on the Euripus, holding my Myrmidons back. And they are at me the whole time. "Achilles, what are we waiting for? How much longer do we have to count off the days before the fleet sails for Ilium? Do something, if you are going to do anything, or take the army home, and stop waiting on the sons of Atreus and their dithering."
(Clytemnestra comes out of the tent.)
Clytemnestra. Son of the Nereid goddess. I heard you talking from inside, and I have come out in front of the tent.
Achilles. Holy Modesty. Who is this woman I am looking at? And such a beautiful woman.
Clytemnestra. No wonder you do not know me. You never had anything to do with me before. And I like that in you, that you honour a proper reserve.
Achilles. Who are you? And why have you come to the muster of the Greeks? A woman, among men fenced in with shields.
Clytemnestra. I am Leda's daughter. My name is Clytemnestra. And my husband is Agamemnon, the king.
Achilles. Well said. Short, and everything that matters. But it is shameful for me to stand here talking with women.
Clytemnestra. Stay. Why are you running away? Put your right hand in mine. It is the happy beginning of a marriage.
Achilles. What are you saying? I, give you my hand? I would be ashamed to face Agamemnon, if I touched what I have no right to touch.
Clytemnestra. Every right. You are marrying my child, son of the sea-goddess, the daughter of Nereus.
Achilles. What marriage are you talking about? I am speechless, lady. Unless you have lost your mind, and are making up a story?
Clytemnestra. Everyone is like this. They go shy when they meet their new relations and someone mentions the wedding.
Achilles. I have never once courted your daughter, lady. And no word about any marriage has ever come to me from the sons of Atreus.
Clytemnestra. Then what can this be? You wonder at what I say. Well, it is my turn. What you say is a wonder to me.
Achilles. Guess. We can both guess at this. It may be neither of us is lying.
Clytemnestra. Then something dreadful has been done to me. I am courting a marriage that does not exist, by the look of it. I am ashamed.
Achilles. Perhaps somebody has made fools of both of us, you and me. Pay no attention to it. Take it lightly.
Clytemnestra. Goodbye. I cannot look you in the eye any longer. I have been made a liar, and I have been treated as I do not deserve.
Achilles. And goodbye to you, from me. I am going into the tent to look for your husband.
(The Old Man opens the door of the tent a little and calls out.)
Old Man. Stranger, descendant of Aeacus, wait. You, yes, you, I am talking to you, the goddess's son. And you, Leda's daughter.
Achilles. Who is that calling, with the door half open? How frightened he sounds.
Old Man. A slave. I am not proud of it, but my luck does not allow me to be anything else.
Achilles. Whose slave? Not mine. What is mine and what is Agamemnon's are two separate things.
Old Man. This lady's, standing in front of the tent. Her father Tyndareus gave me to her.
Achilles. We are standing still. Say what you want, if you want something. Tell me what you stopped me for.
Old Man. Is it really just the two of you here at the doors?
Achilles. You can talk as if it were just the two of us. Come out of the king's tent.
(The Old Man comes out of the tent, looking around him.)
Old Man. Fortune, and my own foresight. Save the people I want saved.
Achilles. That is a speech that is putting something off. It sounds important, though.
Clytemnestra. Never mind kissing my hand. Do not waste time, if you have something to tell me.
Old Man. You do know me, do you not? Who I am, and that I have always been loyal to you and your children?
Clytemnestra. I know you. You are an old servant of my house.
Old Man. And that King Agamemnon got me as part of your dowry?
Clytemnestra. You came to Argos with us, and you have always been mine.
Old Man. That is right. And I am loyal to you. Less so to your husband.
Clytemnestra. Then out with it, at last. Whatever it is you have to tell us.
Old Man. Your child. Her father, the man who gave her life, is going to kill her with his own hand.
Clytemnestra. What? I spit that story out, old man. You are out of your mind.
Old Man. With a sword. Cutting the poor girl's white throat.
Clytemnestra. Oh, no. Oh, no. Has my husband gone mad, then?
Old Man. He is in his right mind, except where you and your daughter are concerned. There he has lost it.
Clytemnestra. On what grounds? What avenging spirit is driving him to it?
Old Man. Oracles. So Calchas says, anyway. So the army can sail.
Clytemnestra. Sail where? Oh, this is misery, for me, and for the girl her father is going to kill.
Old Man. To the house of Dardanus. So that Menelaus can get Helen back.
Clytemnestra. So Helen's homecoming was fated to cost Iphigenia?
Old Man. You have the whole of it. Her father is going to sacrifice your child to Artemis.
Clytemnestra. And the marriage? What was that for? The excuse that brought me from home?
Old Man. So that you would come gladly, bringing your daughter to marry Achilles.
Clytemnestra. Daughter, you have come here to be destroyed. You, and your mother with you.
Old Man. It is pitiful, what the two of you are suffering. And Agamemnon has dared a terrible thing.
Clytemnestra. I am finished. My eyes cannot hold the tears back any more.
Old Man. If losing a child hurts, then cry.
Clytemnestra. And you, old man. Where did you hear this? How do you come to know it?
Old Man. I was on my way to you, carrying a letter about what he had written before.
Clytemnestra. Telling me not to bring the child to her death, or telling me again to bring her?
Old Man. Telling you not to bring her. Your husband was in his right mind then.
Clytemnestra. Then if you were carrying a letter, how is it you are not giving it to me?
Old Man. Menelaus took it off me. He is the cause of all this.
Clytemnestra. Child of the Nereid, son of Peleus. Do you hear this?
Achilles. I hear that you are a wretched woman. And I do not take my own part in it lightly.
Clytemnestra. They are going to kill my child. They tricked her here with a marriage to you.
Achilles. I blame your husband too. And I do not simply let it go at that.
Clytemnestra. I will not be ashamed to fall at your knees, a mortal at the knees of a goddess's son. Why should I stand on my dignity? Whose business should I work harder for than my own child's?
(She kneels and clasps his knees.)
Defend me, son of the goddess, in my misfortune. And defend her, the girl who was called your wife. Falsely, yes, but called it all the same. For you I put the wreath on her head and brought her here to be married, and now I am bringing her to have her throat cut. And the disgrace will fall on you, if you do not defend her. You were never yoked to her in marriage, but you were called the poor girl's loving husband all the same. By your beard I beg you, by your right hand, by your mother. Your name destroyed me, and your name is what has to save me. I have no altar to run to but your knee. I have no friend to smile on me. You have heard what Agamemnon has done: savage, and stopping at nothing. And I have come, as you can see, a woman, into a camp of sailors with no one in charge of them, bold for any mischief, though useful enough when they want to be. If you have the nerve to stretch out your hand over me, we are saved. If you do not, we are not saved.
Chorus. Motherhood is a strange thing. It carries a great love-charm with it, and every woman shares it: they will go through anything for their children.
Achilles. My spirit is a proud one, and it is rising in me now. But I have learned to grieve at bad fortune in moderation, and to take joy in good fortune in moderation too. Men like that are the ones who have thought their lives through, and live them rightly, with judgement. There are times when it is pleasant not to think too much, and there are times when it is useful to have some judgement. I was brought up in the house of the most god-fearing man alive, Chiron, and I learned to keep my ways simple. As for the sons of Atreus: when they lead well, I will follow them, and when they lead badly, I will not. Here, and in Troy, I will show what a free nature is, and honour Ares with my spear as far as it is in me to do it.
And you, who have suffered so monstrously at the hands of the people closest to you: as far as a young man can, I will wrap you round in my pity and set you right. Your daughter was called mine, and she will never have her throat cut by her father. I am not going to lend your husband my body to weave his plots with. Because it is my name that will kill your child, even if it never lifts the iron. The cause is your husband. But my body is no longer clean, if because of me, because of my marriage, this girl dies, who has suffered terribly, unbearably, who has been dishonoured so astonishingly and so undeservedly. Then I would be the worst man in the Argive army. I would be nothing, and Menelaus would count as a man. I would be no son of Peleus but the son of some avenging fiend, if my name does your husband's murdering for him.
By Nereus, who was bred in the wet waves, the father of Thetis, who bore me: King Agamemnon will not lay a hand on your daughter. Not a fingertip. Not so much as to brush her dress. Or else Sipylus will be a real city, that barbarian outpost these generals' family comes from, and the name of Phthia will never be spoken anywhere again. Calchas the prophet will find his barley and his holy water bitter when he lifts them. And what is a prophet? A man who says a few true things and a great many false ones when his luck is in, and when his luck is out, he is finished.
It is not for the sake of the marriage that I say this. There are ten thousand girls hunting for a place in my bed. No. King Agamemnon has committed an outrage against me. He should have asked me for the use of my name, if he wanted bait for his child. It was mostly on my account that Clytemnestra was persuaded to give her daughter away to a husband. I would have given it to the Greeks, if that was where the voyage to Ilium was breaking down. I would not have refused to build up the common cause of the men I marched with. But as it is, I am nothing. To the generals it is all one whether they treat me well or badly. My sword will soon know the answer. Before it ever gets to the Phrygians I will stain it with the marks of slaughter, with blood, if anyone tries to take your daughter away from me. Now calm yourself. I have appeared to you as a very great god. I am not one. But I will become one, all the same.
Chorus. Son of Peleus, you have spoken as you should, worthy of yourself and of the goddess of the sea, your holy mother.
Clytemnestra. Pheu. How can I praise you without overdoing it in words, and yet not fall short and lose your goodwill? When good men are praised, they somehow come to hate the people praising them, if the praise goes too far. And I am ashamed to be bringing in my pitiful story, when the sickness is mine alone and you are untouched by my troubles. But still, it looks well when a good man, even from a distance, helps people in trouble. Pity us. What we are suffering is pitiable. First I thought I had you for a son-in-law, and the hope I held was empty. And then, perhaps, if my child dies it might turn into a bad omen for your own marriage, when it comes; you should guard against that. But you have spoken well from the beginning, and well at the end. If you are willing, my child will be saved.
Do you want her to come and clasp your knee as a suppliant? It is not what a girl should do. But if you think she should, she will come, with the modest look of a free-born girl. And if I can get the same from you without her here, then let her stay inside. She has a proud sense of her own dignity. Still, modesty only goes as far as it can.
Achilles. Do not bring your daughter out where I can see her, lady. Let us not come in for the reproach of ignorant men. An army massed together, idle and away from home, loves nasty, foul-mouthed gossip. In any case, you will get the same from me whether the two of you beg me or nobody begs me at all. I have one great contest in front of me: to get you out of your troubles. Hear one thing and know it. I will not lie to you. If I am lying to you, or mocking you for nothing, let me die. And let me not die, if I save the girl.
Clytemnestra. Bless you, for always helping people in trouble.
Achilles. Then listen to me now, so that the thing goes well.
Clytemnestra. What do you mean? I certainly have to listen to you.
Achilles. Let us try again to persuade her father to think better of it.
Clytemnestra. He is a coward, and he is far too afraid of the army.
Achilles. But arguments wrestle arguments down.
Clytemnestra. Cold hope. But tell me what I have to do.
Achilles. Beg him first not to kill his children. If he resists, then you come to me. Because if he does what you ask, there is no need for my part in this to move at all: his consent is the rescue by itself. And I will be on better terms with a friend, and the army will have nothing to blame me for, if I settle things by reasoning rather than by force. And if it turns out well, it would come out to the liking of your family and you, even without me.
Clytemnestra. How sensibly you talk. We must do what you think best. But if we do not get what I want, then where do I see you again? Where? Where do I have to go, poor woman that I am, to find your hand to help me?
Achilles. I will keep watch to guard you, where you need guarding, so that nobody sees you rushing in a panic through the crowd of Greeks. Do not shame your father's house. Tyndareus does not deserve to be spoken of badly. He is a great man among the Greeks.
Clytemnestra. So be it. Give the orders. I have to be your slave now. If there are gods, then you are a just man, and you will find the gods good to you. And if there are none, why should anyone take the trouble?
(Achilles goes out. Clytemnestra goes into the tent.)
Chorus. What was the wedding cry Hymen raised to the Libyan flute, and the lyre that loves the dance, and the pipes of reed, when over Pelion the Muses, the lovely-haired daughters of Pieria, came to the feast of the gods, striking the ground with their golden sandals, came to the wedding of Peleus, and sang Thetis and the son of Aeacus in their music across the Centaurs' mountains, down through the woods of Pelion? And the Dardanian boy, the darling of the bed of Zeus, drew off the wine in the golden hollows of the mixing bowls, Ganymede the Phrygian. And along the white-shining sand the fifty daughters of Nereus wheeled in their circles and danced the wedding.
Chorus. And up through the firs and the green of their wreaths came the troop of Centaurs on their horse-feet, to the feast of the gods and the mixing bowl of Dionysus. And they shouted out loud: Daughter of Nereus, the prophet who knows Apollo's music, Chiron, has named the son you will bear, a great light for Thessaly, who will come to the famous land of Priam with Myrmidon spearmen and Myrmidon shields to burn it to the ground, his body cased in golden armour, the work of Hephaestus, a gift from his goddess mother, from Thetis, who bore him. That was the day the gods made blessed the marriage of the high-born bride, the first of the daughters of Nereus, and the wedding of Peleus.
Chorus. But you. The Argives will crown your head, crown your lovely hair, like a dappled heifer brought down unblemished from the mountains, from the rocky caves, and they will bloody your throat, a human throat, you who were never raised to the pipe or the whistling of herdsmen, but at your mother's side, dressed for a bride's wedding to a son of Inachus. Where does the face of Modesty or the face of Virtue have any strength now, when what is unholy has the power and Virtue is left behind and mortals take no notice of her, and Lawlessness rules over the laws, and mortals no longer stand together to keep the anger of the gods away?
(Clytemnestra comes out of the tent.)
Clytemnestra. I have come out of the tent to look for my husband. He went off a long while ago and left the place empty. And my poor child is in there in tears, pouring out one lament after another, since she heard about the death her father is planning for her. It seems I was talking about a man who was not far away. Here is Agamemnon now, and in a moment he is going to be caught in the act, doing something unholy to his own children.
(Agamemnon comes in.)
Agamemnon. Daughter of Leda. Good, I have found you outside the tent, so I can say some things away from the girl, things a bride should not hear.
Clytemnestra. And what is it? What is so pressing that the moment has caught you?
Agamemnon. Send the child out of the tent, to be with her father. The holy water is standing ready, and the barley to throw with our own hands onto the cleansing fire, and the heifers that have to fall to the goddess before a wedding. To Artemis. With the black blood spurting out of them.
Clytemnestra. In words, you speak well. It is your deeds I do not know how to find a good name for. Come outside, daughter. You know everything your father means to do. And bring Orestes with you, your brother, carried under your dress, child. There. Here she is, doing as you told her. The rest I will say myself, for her and for me.
Agamemnon. Child, why are you crying? Why do you not look at me gladly any more? Why are you staring at the ground, with your dress held up in front of your eyes?
Clytemnestra. Pheu. Where do I take hold of my troubles and begin? Any one of them could come first, or last, or in the middle. They fit anywhere.
Agamemnon. What is it? All of you have come at me together, with the same confusion in your faces and the same trouble in your eyes.
Clytemnestra. Answer what I ask you honestly, husband.
Agamemnon. You do not need to order me. I am willing to be asked.
Clytemnestra. Your child, and mine. Are you going to kill her?
Agamemnon. Ah. That is a cruel thing to say. You are suspecting what you have no business suspecting.
Clytemnestra. Keep calm. Just answer the first question again.
Agamemnon. Ask me a fair question and you will get a fair answer.
Clytemnestra. I have no other question, and do not give me any other answer.
Agamemnon. Fate, my lady. Luck. The spirit that has charge of my life.
Clytemnestra. And of mine, and of hers. One spirit for three people, and unlucky for all three.
Agamemnon. What wrong have I done you?
Clytemnestra. You ask me that? That mind of yours has lost its mind.
Agamemnon. I am finished. My secret is out.
Clytemnestra. I know all of it. I have found out what you mean to do to me. The silence itself is your confession, and so is the groaning. Do not wear yourself out with a long speech.
Agamemnon. There. I am silent. Why should I add shamelessness to disaster by telling lies on top of it?
Clytemnestra. Then listen. I am going to uncover what I mean, and there will be no more talking in riddles and hints. First, and I put this first so that it is the first thing I throw in your face: you married me against my will. You took me by force, after you had killed Tantalus, the husband I had before you. And my baby, you tore him from my breast and dashed him on the ground. Then the two sons of Zeus, my brothers, came riding against you with the sun flashing off their horses, and my old father Tyndareus saved you, because you went down on your knees to him and begged. And so you had my bed after all.
I made my peace with you on those terms, and you will be my witness that from then on I was a wife nobody could fault, to you and to your house. I kept myself in hand where Aphrodite was concerned, and I made your household grow, so that coming in at your door was a joy to you and going out of it was good fortune. That is a rare catch for a man, a wife like that. There is no shortage of the worthless kind. And I bore you three girls, and then this boy, and now, of the girls, you are taking one away from me. Heartlessly. If anyone asks you why you are killing her, tell me, what will you say? Or shall I say it for you? So that Menelaus can have Helen back. A fine bargain. Pay for a bad woman with your children. We are buying what we hate most with what we love best.
Come on, then. Suppose you go off to the war and leave me in the house, and you are away at Troy for years. What do you think my heart will be like at home? When I look at her chair, and every chair of hers is empty, and her room is empty, and I sit by myself in tears, singing the same lament for her over and over: "The father who made you has destroyed you, child. He killed you himself. Not another man, not another man's hand. And this is the homecoming he has left waiting for himself." Because after that it will only take a small excuse for me and the daughters you have left me to give you the welcome you deserve to get. By the gods, do not force me to become an evil woman for your sake. And do not become an evil man yourself.
Well, then. You will sacrifice the child. And what prayers will you say over her, while you do it? What good thing will you ask for yourself, with your daughter's throat under the knife? A wretched homecoming, to match the shameful way you went out? Or is it my job to pray for something good for you? We would have to think the gods were fools if we wished murderers well. And when you come home to Argos, will you throw your arms round your children? You have no right to. Which of them will so much as look you in the face, once you have called one of them to you and killed her? Have you even got as far as thinking about this? Or is your only concern to carry a sceptre about and command an army?
Here is the fair proposal you should have put to the Argives. "Achaeans, do you want to sail for the land of the Phrygians? Then draw lots for whose child has to die." That would have been even-handed. Instead you pick out your own daughter as the one special victim and hand her to the Greeks. Or Menelaus could have killed Hermione for her mother's sake, since it was his business in the first place. As it is, I, who kept your bed faithfully, am to lose my child, and the woman who did the wrong will bring her girl home to Sparta safe and grown, and be happy. Answer me, if anything I have said is wrong. But if I have put it well, then do not kill her, your child and mine. Then you will be a man who keeps himself in hand.
Chorus. Do what she says. Joining together to save your children is a fine thing, Agamemnon. No one alive will argue with that.
Iphigenia. If I had the voice of Orpheus, father, so that I could sing a spell and make the rocks get up and follow me, and charm anyone I liked with words, I would have gone that way. But the only cleverness I have is tears, and I will give you those. Tears I can manage. I press my body against your knees like a suppliant's branch, this body your wife here bore you. Do not destroy me before my time. It is sweet to look at the light. Do not force me to see what is under the ground.
I was the first to call you father, and you were the first to call me your child. I was the first to climb into your lap and give you a child's kisses and take yours back. And this is what you used to say: "Shall I see you one day, my girl, happy in a husband's house, living and flowering, the way a daughter of mine should?" And I would answer, hanging from your beard, the way I am holding it now with my hand: "And what will I do for you, father? When you are old, shall I have you in my house and look after you, and pay you back for all the work it took to raise me?" I remember every word of it. You have forgotten, and you want to kill me.
No. By Pelops, and by your father Atreus, and by my mother here, who went through labour for me once already and is going through this second labour now. What have I got to do with Paris and Helen and their marriage? Where did he come from, father, to be my ruin? Look at me. Give me one look, and a kiss, so that at least I have that to take with me when I die, something of yours to remember, if you will not do what I ask.
(She holds the baby up toward him.)
Brother, you are a small helper for the people you love. But cry with me all the same, and beg our father not to let your sister die. Even babies have some feeling for evil when it comes. Look, father. He is begging you without a word. Have some respect for me. Pity my life. Yes, by your beard, we two who love you are pleading with you, one a nestling and the other grown. I will cut it all down to one thing and win the whole argument with it. This light is the sweetest thing human beings can look at, and what is under the ground is nothing. Anyone who prays to die is mad. A bad life is better than a fine death.
Chorus. Miserable Helen. Because of you and your marriages a great struggle has come on the sons of Atreus and their children.
Agamemnon. I understand what deserves pity and what does not. And I love my children. I would be mad if I did not. It is a terrible thing for me to bring myself to do this, wife, and a terrible thing not to. Because I have to do it. Look at the size of this army, and the fleet drawn up round it like a wall. Look at all these lords of Greece in their bronze armour. There is no sailing to the towers of Troy for them, and no tearing out the famous foundations of Troy, unless I sacrifice you, as the prophet Calchas says. Some Aphrodite has driven the Greek army mad to sail for the barbarians' country as fast as it can and put an end to the stealing of Greek wives. And they will kill my girls in Argos, and you, and me, if I break the goddess's oracle. It is not Menelaus who has made a slave of me, child. I have not come here to do what he wants. It is Greece. Whether I want it or not, I have to sacrifice you for her, and against that we are the weaker side. She has to be free, child, as far as it lies in you and in me to make her free, and Greeks must not have their wives dragged out of their beds by barbarians.
(Agamemnon goes out toward the camp.)
Clytemnestra. Child. Foreign women. Oh, I am wretched. Your death. Your father is running from you. He has handed you to Hades.
Iphigenia. Oh, mother. The same song of the same bad luck has fallen on us both, and there is no more light for me, no more of this blaze of the sun. Io. Io. Snow-beaten valley of the Phrygians, mountains of Ida, where Priam once threw out a soft baby he had taken from its mother, to die, and the baby was Paris, who was called Idaean, Idaean, in the city of the Phrygians. If only Priam had never brought that cowherd, raised among his cattle, Paris, Alexander, to live by the white water, where the springs of the Nymphs lie, and the meadow, green with young shoots, and roses and hyacinths for goddesses to pick. Because there one day came Pallas Athena, and Aphrodite with her scheming heart, and Hera, and Hermes, the messenger of Zeus: Aphrodite preening in the desire she causes, Athena in her spear, Hera in the royal bed of Zeus the king, to a hateful judgement, a contest over beauty. And for me it meant death, a death that brings the Greeks a name, girls, but it is my death Artemis took as the first offering on the road to Troy. And the man who fathered me, wretched me, mother, oh mother, is gone. He has betrayed me and left me alone. Oh, I am the unluckiest of all. I have seen bitter, bitter Helen, Helen my ruin, and I am murdered, I am destroyed, cut down in an unholy killing by an unholy father. I wish this Aulis had never taken the bronze-beaked ships into these harbours, sterns first, the pine fleet bound for Troy, and that Zeus had never breathed a wind against them on the Euripus. He tempers one breeze for one man's sails and another for another's, so that some rejoice, and some grieve, and some are forced, some put out to sea, some make ready, some wait. Full of trouble, then, full of trouble is the race of us who live a day at a time, and what has to be is a hard thing for people to find out. Io. Io. Great suffering, great grief, the daughter of Tyndareus has laid on the Greeks.
Chorus. I pity you. This is bad luck you have met, the kind you should never have met.
Iphigenia. Mother, mother who bore me, I can see a crowd of men close by.
Clytemnestra. It is the goddess's son, child. The one you came here for.
Iphigenia. Open the tent for me, slaves. Let me hide myself.
Clytemnestra. Why run away, child?
Iphigenia. I am ashamed to look at Achilles.
Clytemnestra. Why?
Iphigenia. My marriage went so badly. It makes me ashamed.
Clytemnestra. This is no time to be delicate, with things the way they have fallen. Stay. There is no room for pride, if it can help us.
Achilles. Unhappy woman, daughter of Leda—
Clytemnestra. That is no lie.
Achilles. There is terrible shouting among the Argives—
Clytemnestra. What shouting? Tell me.
Achilles. About your daughter—
Clytemnestra. That is a bad omen, that word.
Achilles. That she has to be sacrificed.
Clytemnestra. And no one speaks against them?
Achilles. I got into some trouble myself—
Clytemnestra. What trouble, stranger?
Achilles. Of being stoned to death.
Clytemnestra. For trying to save my girl?
Achilles. Exactly that.
Clytemnestra. Who would have the nerve to lay a hand on you?
Achilles. Every Greek there.
Clytemnestra. Were your Myrmidons not there with you?
Achilles. They were the first to turn on me.
Clytemnestra. Then we are finished, child.
Achilles. They called me the man a marriage had beaten.
Clytemnestra. And what did you answer?
Achilles. Not to kill the woman who was going to be my wife—
Clytemnestra. Quite right.
Achilles. The wife her father promised me.
Clytemnestra. And sent for from Argos.
Achilles. But I was beaten by the shouting.
Clytemnestra. A mob is a terrible thing.
Achilles. But I will help you all the same.
Clytemnestra. And fight so many, one man alone?
Achilles. Do you see these men, carrying my armour?
Clytemnestra. Bless you for your good heart.
Achilles. Then I will be blessed.
Clytemnestra. So the child is not going to be slaughtered after all?
Achilles. Not with my consent.
Clytemnestra. But will someone come to lay hands on the girl?
Achilles. Thousands of them. And Odysseus will lead them.
Clytemnestra. The son of Sisyphus?
Achilles. The very man.
Clytemnestra. Acting on his own, or under the army's orders?
Achilles. Chosen, and willing.
Clytemnestra. A wicked thing to choose. Blood on his hands.
Achilles. But I will hold him off.
Clytemnestra. Will he drag her away by force, if she will not go?
Achilles. Certainly. By her yellow hair.
Clytemnestra. And what should I do, when it comes to that?
Achilles. Hold on to your daughter.
Clytemnestra. If that is all it takes, she will not be slaughtered.
Achilles. It will come to that. Be sure of it.
Iphigenia. Mother, listen to me, both of you. I can see you are angry with your husband, and it is for nothing. It is not easy for us to hold out against what cannot be helped. The stranger deserves our thanks for his good will, but you have to see this too: he must not be put in the wrong with the army, so that we gain nothing and he comes to grief. Now listen, mother, to what has come into my mind as I thought about it.
I have decided to die. And I want to do it well, with a good name, putting anything low or mean out of my way. Come and look at it with me, mother, and see how right I am. The whole of Greece, all of great Greece, is looking at me now. On me depends the fleet's crossing and the destruction of the Phrygians, and whether barbarians are ever again allowed to steal women from happy Greece, if they try anything, once they have paid for the ruin of Helen, whom Paris carried off. All of that I will save by dying, and my fame, as the girl who set Greece free, will be a blessed one.
And after all, I have no right to cling too hard to my life. You bore me for all the Greeks together, not for yourself alone. Thousands of men have armed themselves with shields, and thousands have taken up oars, because their country has been wronged, and they will have the nerve to go at the enemy and die for Greece. And my one life is to stand in the way of all that? What kind of justice would that be? Could I find one word to answer it? And here is the other point. This man should not have to fight the whole of Argos for a woman's sake, or die for one. One man is worth more than ten thousand women, when it comes to seeing the light of day. And if Artemis has decided to take my body, am I, a mortal, going to stand in a goddess's way? It cannot be done. I give my body to Greece. Sacrifice it, and go and sack Troy. That will be my monument for a long time to come. That will be my children, and my marriage, and my good name. It is right, mother, for Greeks to rule barbarians, and not for barbarians to rule Greeks. They are slaves, and we are free.
Chorus. Your part in this, young woman, is a noble one. It is the part played by luck and by the goddess that is sick.
Achilles. Daughter of Agamemnon, some god was going to make me a happy man, if I had won you for my wife. I envy Greece for having you, and I envy you for having Greece. What you have said is good, and worthy of your country. You have given up fighting the gods, who are stronger than you, and you have worked out what is best and what has to be. And now that I have looked at your nature and seen what it is, I want you for my wife more than ever. You are a noble woman. Think about it. I want to do you good, and take you home to my house, and it hurts me, Thetis be my witness, if I cannot save you by fighting my way through the Greeks. Look at it squarely. Death is a terrible thing.
Iphigenia. I say this with no fear of anyone. The daughter of Tyndareus is already causing enough fighting and killing among men with her beauty. You, stranger, do not die for me, and do not kill anyone. Let me save Greece, if I can.
Achilles. What a spirit. There is nothing more I can say against that, since this is what you have decided. It is a noble way to think, and why should anyone not say so, when it is true? All the same, you may change your mind about this. So that you know exactly where I stand, I will go and set this armour down beside the altar, ready to stop you dying, not to let it happen. You may want to take up my offer soon enough, when you see the knife close to your throat. I will not let you die through rashness of your own. I am going to the goddess's temple with these weapons, and I will be watching for you to arrive.
(Achilles goes out with his men.)
Iphigenia. Mother, why are you crying without a word, wetting your eyes?
Clytemnestra. I have reason enough for a heart that hurts. I am wretched.
Iphigenia. Stop. Do not make a coward of me. Do this one thing I ask.
Clytemnestra. Say it. You will get no wrong from me, child.
Iphigenia. Then do not cut off a lock of your hair for me, and do not wrap your body in black clothes.
Clytemnestra. What are you saying, child? When I have lost you?
Iphigenia. You have not. I am saved, and through me you will have a good name.
Clytemnestra. What do you mean? Am I not to mourn your life?
Iphigenia. No. Because no grave will be heaped up over me.
Clytemnestra. What of that? It is the dying we mourn, not the grave.
Iphigenia. The altar of the goddess, the daughter of Zeus, will be my memorial.
Clytemnestra. Well, child. I will do as you say. You put it well.
Iphigenia. Yes. As a woman who is fortunate, and who has done Greece a service.
Clytemnestra. What message shall I take to your sisters from you?
Iphigenia. Do not put black clothes on them either.
Clytemnestra. But is there some loving word I can give the girls from you?
Iphigenia. Goodbye. And raise Orestes here to be a man, for me.
Clytemnestra. Hold him close. You are looking at him for the last time.
Iphigenia. My darling. You helped the people you love as much as you could.
Clytemnestra. Is there anything I can do in Argos that would please you?
Iphigenia. Do not hate my father. He is your husband.
Clytemnestra. He has terrible races to run because of you.
Iphigenia. He destroyed me against his will, for the land of Greece.
Clytemnestra. By a trick. Basely. Not the way a son of Atreus should.
Iphigenia. Who will come and lead me there, before I am dragged by the hair?
Clytemnestra. I will. I will go with you—
Iphigenia. Not you. That is not right.
Clytemnestra. Holding on to your dress.
Iphigenia. Mother, do as I ask. Stay here. It is better this way, for me and for you. Let one of these attendants of my father's take me to the meadow of Artemis, where I am going to be slaughtered.
Clytemnestra. Child, are you going?
Iphigenia. Yes. And I will never come back.
Clytemnestra. Leaving your mother?
Iphigenia. As you see. And not deserving it.
Clytemnestra. Wait. Do not leave me.
Iphigenia. I will not let you shed a tear. And you, young women, sing a hymn of good omen over what is happening to me, a healing song to the daughter of Zeus, to Artemis. Let the word go out to the Greeks to keep a holy silence. Let someone begin the rite with the baskets. Let the fire blaze up for the barley we scatter to make it clean, and let my father go round the altar from left to right. Because I am coming to give the Greeks their safety, and their victory with it.
Iphigenia. Lead me away, the girl who takes the cities of Troy and the Phrygians. Give me wreaths to wind round me, bring them here, here is my hair to crown, and bring the streams of holy water. Dance round the temple, round the altar, for Artemis, Artemis the queen, Artemis the blessed. Because with my blood and my sacrifice, if it has to be, I am going to wipe the oracle clean. Mother, my lady, my lady mother, I will not give you my tears. They are out of place at the holy rites. Io, io, young women, sing with me to Artemis, whose temple looks across the water at Chalcis, where the spears are mad for war because of my name, here in the narrow harbours of Aulis. Io, Pelasgian earth, my mother, and Mycenae, where I was brought up—
Chorus. Are you calling on the city of Perseus, the walls the Cyclopes built with their hands?
Iphigenia. You raised me to be a light for Greece. I am dying, and I do not say no.
Chorus. No. Your fame will never leave you.
Iphigenia. Io. Io. Day that carries the torch, and light of Zeus, another, another life and another fate will be my home now. Goodbye, dear light.
(Iphigenia goes out toward the altar, and the crowd of men with her.)
Chorus. Io. Io. Look at her, the girl who takes the cities of Troy and the Phrygians, walking away, with the wreaths to be set on her head, and the streams of holy water, to stain the altar of the goddess, that spirit, with drops of running blood when the lovely neck of her body is cut. The dewy streams her father pours are waiting for you, and the holy water, and the army of the Achaeans, wanting to reach the city of Troy. But let us call on the daughter of Zeus, on Artemis, the queen of the gods, as if for a fortunate end. Lady, lady, who takes pleasure in human sacrifice, send the army of the Greeks into the land of the Phrygians, to the treacherous seats of Troy, and grant that Agamemnon, with his spears, sets round his own head the most glorious crown Greece ever gave, a fame that will never be forgotten.
(The Chorus waits. A Messenger comes running from the direction of the altar.)
Messenger. Daughter of Tyndareus, Clytemnestra, come out of the tent and hear what I have to say.
Clytemnestra. I heard your voice and I have come. I am wretched, and I am shaking, struck stupid with fear. Have you come bringing me some new disaster, on top of the one I have?
Messenger. No. About your child I want to tell you something wonderful, and terrible.
Clytemnestra. Then do not wait. Say it, as fast as you can.
Messenger. Dear mistress, you will hear all of it plainly. I will tell it from the beginning, unless my mind stumbles somewhere and trips up my tongue as I go. When we reached the grove of Artemis, the daughter of Zeus, and the meadows full of flowers where the Achaean army was assembled, bringing your daughter with us, the crowd of Argives gathered at once. And when King Agamemnon saw the girl walking into the grove to be slaughtered, he groaned aloud and turned his head away and wept, with his cloak held up in front of his eyes.
But she stood close to the man who fathered her and said this: "Father, here I am. I give my body, of my own free will, for my country and for the whole land of Greece, for them to lead to the goddess's altar and sacrifice, if that is what the oracle demands. And for my part, I wish you good fortune. May you win the gift of victory and come home to your fathers' land. And so let none of the Argives lay a hand on me. I will offer my neck in silence, with a good heart."
That is what she said, and every man who heard it was amazed at the courage and the goodness of the girl. Then Talthybius, whose business it was, stood up in the middle of them and called for a holy silence, with not a word from the army. And Calchas the prophet drew a sharp knife from its sheath and laid it in a basket of beaten gold, and put the wreath on the girl's head. Then the son of Peleus took the basket and the holy water together, and ran in a circle round the goddess's altar sprinkling it, and said: "Daughter of Zeus, killer of wild animals, who wheel your bright light through the darkness, accept this offering, which the army of the Achaeans and King Agamemnon give you together: the pure blood from a beautiful girl's neck. And grant our ships a voyage without harm, and grant that our spears tear the towers of Troy to the ground."
The sons of Atreus and the whole army stood looking at the ground. The priest took the knife and said his prayer, and studied her throat for the place to strike. And no small pain went into my heart, and I stood there with my head down. And then, all at once, there was a wonder to see. Everyone heard the sound of the blow, clearly. But nobody saw where in the earth the girl had gone. The priest shouted, and the whole army shouted back, at the sight of a thing no one had hoped for, sent by some god, a thing you could not believe even with your eyes on it. Because there on the ground lay a deer, gasping, huge to look at and magnificent, and the goddess's altar was soaked from end to end with its blood.
At that, you can imagine how happily Calchas spoke. "Captains of this united army of the Achaeans, do you see this sacrifice, the one the goddess has set before her altar, a deer that runs the mountains? She welcomes this far more than the girl, so that her altar is not stained with noble blood. She has accepted it gladly, and she is giving us a following wind and a landing at Troy. So take heart, every sailor here, and go to your ships. Because today we must leave the hollow bays of Aulis and cross the swell of the Aegean."
And when the whole offering had been burned to ash in the fire of Hephaestus, he prayed the fitting prayers, that the army might have its homecoming. Agamemnon sends me to tell you this, and to say what share the gods have given him, and that he has won a fame that will never die throughout Greece. And I was there, I saw the thing happen, and I am telling you: your child has plainly flown away to the gods. So let go of your grief, and let go of your anger at your husband. What the gods do is not what mortals expect, and the people they love, they keep safe. This day has seen your daughter dead and alive.
Chorus. I am so glad to hear this from the messenger. He says your child is alive and living among the gods.
Clytemnestra. Child, which of the gods has stolen you? What am I to call you now? How can I help saying that this is a story made up to comfort me, and all for nothing, so that I would stop my bitter grieving for you?
Chorus. And look, here comes King Agamemnon, with the same story to tell you himself.
Agamemnon. Wife, as far as our daughter goes we can count ourselves blessed. She really is in the company of the gods. Now you must take this young calf of ours and go home, because the army has its eyes on the sea. And goodbye. It will be a long time before I greet you again, from Troy. May it go well with you.
Chorus. Go gladly, son of Atreus, to the land of Phrygia, and gladly come back, with the finest spoils of Troy in your hands, for me.
(Sicily, at the foot of Mount Etna, in front of a great cave. It is the home of the Cyclops Polyphemus. Old Silenus comes out of it, bald and pot-bellied, dragging an iron rake behind him.)
Silenus. Dionysus. The troubles I have had because of you. Thousands of them, now, and back when I was young and my body was still good for something. First there was the time Hera drove you mad and you ran off from the mountain nymphs who were bringing you up. Then there was the war with the Giants, the sons of Earth: I stood at your right hand with my shield, and I killed Enceladus, put my spear straight through the middle of his shield and killed him. Hold on. Let me think. Am I telling you something I saw in a dream? No, by Zeus, because I showed you the trophies afterwards, so it must have happened.
And now I am bailing out a worse trouble than any of those. When Hera set that gang of Tyrrhenian pirates on you, to have you carried off and sold somewhere a long way away, I heard about it, and I put to sea with my boys to look for you. I stood right up at the stern and took the two steering oars myself and held her straight, and my sons sat at the benches and whipped the grey sea white with their rowing, hunting for you, my lord. We had got as far as Cape Malea when an east wind blew into the ship and threw us up here, on this rock of Etna, where the one-eyed sons of the sea god live, the Cyclopes, in their lonely caves, killing men.
One of them caught us, and now we are slaves in his house. The one we work for is called Polyphemus. Instead of dancing and shouting for Dionysus, we herd the sheep of a Cyclops who has no use for the gods. My boys, being young, graze the young sheep out on the far edges of the hills. My orders are to stay here, fill the water troughs and sweep out the house: the waiter to this godless Cyclops at his godless dinners. And right now orders are orders, and I have to sweep the place out with this iron rake, so that when my master the Cyclops gets back we can welcome him and his sheep into a clean cave.
And here come my boys already, driving the flocks in. What is this now? Is that the stamp of the satyr dance I hear? The same as it was when you were the god's escort at his parties, swaggering up to Althaea's front door to the sound of lyres?
(The Chorus of satyrs come in, driving sheep and goats in front of them, and dancing as they come.)
Chorus. Son of a fine father and a fine mother too, where are you off to, up the crags? Isn't the breeze soft here, out of the wind, and isn't the grass thick? Isn't there river water, fresh from the eddies, lying in the troughs beside the cave? Can't you hear your lambs crying for you?
Chorus. Psst. Not here? No? Won't you graze here on the wet slope? Hey. I'll throw a stone at you in a minute. Get along, get along, horn-head, back to the pens, where the herdsman of the wild Cyclops keeps his watch.
Chorus. Let down those swollen udders. Take to your teats the babies you left behind in the lambing pens. They miss you, the little ones, asleep all day and bleating. When are you going to come inside the yard, leave the grassy pastures, and get in among the rocks of Etna?
Chorus. Psst. Not here? No? Won't you graze here on the wet slope? Hey. I'll throw a stone at you in a minute. Get along, get along, horn-head, back to the pens, where the herdsman of the wild Cyclops keeps his watch.
Chorus. There is no Dionysus here. No dancing here, no women of the god with their ivy wands, no rattle of drums beside the springs pouring out their water, no fresh bright drops of wine. I am not on Nysa with the nymphs singing Iacchus, Iacchus, the song for Aphrodite, the goddess I used to fly after with the white-footed women of the god. Oh, my friend. Dear Dionysus, where are you wandering, all alone? Where are you tossing that yellow hair? And here am I, your own attendant, working for the Cyclops, the one-eyed thing, a slave, a stray, in this miserable goat-skin coat, without your love.
Silenus. Quiet, boys. Tell the men to round up the flocks and get them into the cave under the rock.
Chorus. Go on, get them in. But what's the hurry, father?
Silenus. I can see the hull of a Greek ship down at the shore, and the lords of the oar coming up to this cave with some captain or other. They have empty pots slung round their necks, and water jars. They want food. Poor strangers. Who can they be? They don't know what sort of a man our master Polyphemus is. They have walked into a house where no guest is welcome, and they have come, worse luck for them, straight to the Cyclops's jaw, the jaw that eats men. Hush, though. Let's find out where they have come from, to the Sicilian rock of Etna.
(Odysseus comes up from the shore with his men.)
Odysseus. Strangers, could you tell us where there's a running stream we could drink from and take the edge off our thirst? And is there anyone who would sell food to sailors who need it? What's this? We seem to have landed in a town that belongs to Dionysus. That's a crowd of satyrs I can see by the caves. I'll greet the oldest first. Good day to you.
Silenus. Good day to you, stranger. Who are you, and where are you from?
Odysseus. Odysseus of Ithaca, king of the land of the Cephallenians.
Silenus. I know the man. Sharp as a rattle and twice as noisy. Sisyphus's boy.
Odysseus. That's who I am. And you can stop insulting me.
Silenus. Where have you sailed from, to get here to Sicily?
Odysseus. From Ilium. From the war at Troy.
Silenus. How? Didn't you know the way home to your own country?
Odysseus. Storm winds snatched me and carried me here by force.
Silenus. Papai. You're bailing out the same bad luck I am.
Odysseus. You were driven here by force too?
Silenus. Chasing the pirates who carried off Dionysus.
Odysseus. What country is this, and who lives here?
Silenus. This is Etna, the highest hill in Sicily.
Odysseus. And where are the walls? Where are the city towers?
Silenus. There aren't any. These headlands are empty of men, stranger.
Odysseus. Then who holds the land? Wild animals?
Silenus. The Cyclopes. They live in caves, not houses with roofs.
Odysseus. Who do they obey? Or does the power belong to the people?
Silenus. They're nomads. Nobody listens to anybody about anything.
Odysseus. Do they sow grain, Demeter's crop? Or what do they live on?
Silenus. Milk and cheese, and the meat of sheep.
Odysseus. Do they have the drink of Dionysus, what flows from the vine?
Silenus. Not a drop. Which is why there's no dancing in the country they live in.
Odysseus. Are they kind to strangers? Do they respect the rights of a guest?
Silenus. They say strangers make the sweetest meat.
Odysseus. What did you say? They enjoy eating human beings?
Silenus. Nobody has ever come here without getting his throat cut.
Odysseus. And the Cyclops himself, where is he? Inside?
Silenus. Gone off on Etna, hunting animals with his dogs.
Odysseus. Then do you know what to do, so we can get away from this land?
Silenus. I don't, Odysseus. But we'd do anything for you.
Odysseus. Sell us bread. We've run out.
Silenus. There isn't any, as I said. There's nothing but meat.
Odysseus. That's sweet enough. It stops the hunger.
Silenus. And there's cheese set with fig juice, and cow's milk.
Odysseus. Bring them out. A man should see what he's buying, in daylight.
Silenus. And what will you give me for them? How much gold, tell me?
Odysseus. No gold. What I have is the drink of Dionysus.
Silenus. Oh, the sweetest words. That's what we've been short of for so long.
Odysseus. And it was Maron who gave it to me. The god's own son.
Silenus. Maron? The one I brought up in these arms?
Odysseus. The son of Dionysus, to make it perfectly clear.
Silenus. Is it on board the ship, or have you brought it with you?
Odysseus. This skin here is what holds it. As you can see, old man.
Silenus. That? That wouldn't so much as fill my cheek.
Odysseus. Oh yes it would. For every drop that runs out of the skin, it gives twice as much again.
Silenus. That's a lovely spring you're describing. Music to my ears.
Odysseus. Would you like a taste first? Neat, no water?
Silenus. Only fair. A taste is what brings on the sale.
Odysseus. And look, I carry a cup along with the skin.
Silenus. Go on, then. Knock it out into the cup, so I can drink and remember what it was like.
Odysseus. There.
Silenus. Papaiax. What a beautiful smell it has.
Odysseus. You can see the smell, can you?
Silenus. No, by Zeus. But I can sniff it.
Odysseus. Taste it, then, so you're not praising it in words alone.
Silenus. Babai. Dionysus is asking me to dance. Ah, ah, ah.
Odysseus. Did it gurgle down your throat nicely?
Silenus. Right down to the ends of my toenails.
Odysseus. And we'll give you money as well, on top.
Silenus. Just loosen the skin. Never mind the gold.
Odysseus. Bring out the cheeses, then, or a lamb from the flock.
Silenus. I will. And I'll spare very little thought for my masters while I do it. For one cup of that I'd go out of my mind. I'd hand over the flocks of every Cyclops there is for it, and throw myself into the sea off the white cliff of Leucas, once I'd got well drunk and smoothed the frown off my face. The man who doesn't enjoy his drinking is mad. Drinking is what makes this thing here stand up straight, and gets you a handful of breast, and puts a meadow all ready for you under both your hands, and there's dancing, and forgetting your troubles. And I'm not going to kiss a drink like that? Not tell the Cyclops and his stupidity to go and cry about it, and his eye, the one in the middle, along with him?
(Silenus goes into the cave.)
Chorus. Listen, Odysseus. We'd like a little chat with you.
Odysseus. Go ahead. Friends talking to a friend.
Chorus. Did you take Troy? Did you get Helen into your hands?
Odysseus. Yes. And we sacked the whole house of Priam, every one of them.
Chorus. Well then, once you'd caught the young lady, did you all take turns with her, one after another? Since she does like being married to a lot of men. The traitor. She took one look at a man in fancy embroidered trousers, with a gold collar round the middle of his neck, and her heart went flutter, and off she went and left Menelaus, the best little man there is. I wish the whole race of women had never been born anywhere at all. Except for me. I'd keep them for me.
(Silenus comes back out of the cave, carrying cheeses and leading lambs.)
Silenus. Here you are. The shepherds' stock, King Odysseus: the young of the bleating sheep, and cheeses of pressed milk, and plenty of them. Take them, and get away from the cave as fast as you can, and give me the drink of the joyful grape in exchange. Oh. Oh no. Here comes the Cyclops. What do we do?
Odysseus. Then we're finished, old man. Where can we run?
Silenus. Inside this rock. You could hide in there, at least.
Odysseus. That is a dreadful thing to suggest. Walk into the net?
Silenus. Nothing dreadful about it. There are plenty of hiding places in the rock.
Odysseus. No. I will not. Troy would groan aloud if I ran from one man, when I stood up to ten thousand Phrygians at a time, with my shield, over and over again. If we have to die, we'll die like men of good birth. Or we live, and keep the good name we had before.
(The Cyclops comes in from the hills, carrying a club.)
Cyclops. Out of the way. Stand back. What's all this? What's this idling? Why are you carrying on like Bacchants? There's no Dionysus here. No bronze rattles, no banging on drums. How are my new-born lambs doing in the cave? Are they at the teat, running along beside their mothers? Are the rush baskets full of milk, squeezed out ready for the cheese? What do you say? What are you saying? One of you is going to be weeping soon, from this club. Look up, not down.
Chorus. There. We've tipped our heads back till we can see Zeus himself. I can see the stars. I can see Orion.
Cyclops. Is my breakfast ready? Properly done?
Chorus. It's ready. Just make sure your throat is.
Cyclops. And are the bowls full of milk as well?
Chorus. Enough to drink off a whole cask, if you want to.
Cyclops. Sheep's milk, or cow's, or mixed?
Chorus. Whichever you like. Just don't swallow me.
Cyclops. Not likely. You'd start jumping about in the middle of my stomach and kill me with your dance steps. Ah. What's this crowd I see by the pens? Have pirates put in here, or thieves? I can see lambs from my caves with their bodies tied up in twisted willow, and cheese baskets jumbled about, and an old man with his bald face all swollen up from a beating.
Silenus. Oh. Oh. I'm running a fever, poor me. Beaten to a pulp.
Cyclops. By who? Who's been punching your head, old man?
Silenus. These men, Cyclops. Because I wouldn't let them carry off what's yours.
Cyclops. Didn't they know that I'm a god, and come from gods?
Silenus. I told them. But they carried off your things anyway, and they ate the cheese, when I told them not to, and they were carrying out the lambs. And they said they'd tie you up in a collar three cubits long, and rip your guts out through your eye, the one in the middle, by force, and flog your back raw with a whip, and then tie you up hand and foot and throw you down among the rowing benches of their ship, and sell you to somebody for levering rocks, or throw you into a mill to grind.
Cyclops. Is that so? Then off you go and sharpen the cleavers and the knives, quick as you can, and pile a great bundle of wood on the fire and get it lit. They'll be slaughtered straight away, and fill this belly of mine: a hot dinner straight off the coals for the carver to eat, and the rest boiled soft and tender from the cauldron. I've had my fill of mountain food. I've feasted on lions and deer enough. It's a long time since I ate a man.
Silenus. A change from the usual is all the sweeter, master. It's not as if you've had any other strangers turning up at your cave lately.
Odysseus. Cyclops, hear the strangers' side too, in turn. We needed food, and we came up from our ship to your cave to buy some. This man sold us the lambs for a cup of wine. He handed them over, and he took a drink for them: a willing seller and willing buyers, and there was no force in any of it. There isn't a sound word in anything he says. He's been caught selling your property behind your back, that's all.
Silenus. Me? I hope you die a horrible death.
Odysseus. If I'm lying, yes.
Silenus. By Poseidon who fathered you, Cyclops, by great Triton and by Nereus, by Calypso and the daughters of Nereus, by the holy waves and every kind of fish in the sea, I swear, my beautiful one, my dear little Cyclops, my own dear little master, that I did not sell your property to the strangers. Or may these bad boys of mine come to a bad end. The boys I love best in the world.
Chorus. Keep that for yourself. I saw you selling the goods to the strangers. I saw you with my own eyes. And if I'm lying, may my father drop dead. Don't do the strangers any wrong.
Cyclops. You're lying. I'd trust this man before I trusted Rhadamanthus, the judge of the dead himself, and I say he's the more honest. But I have some questions. Where did you sail from, strangers? Where are you from? What city brought you up?
Odysseus. Ithacans by birth. We're from Ilium, where we sacked the city, and the sea winds drove us off course onto your land, Cyclops.
Cyclops. You're the ones who went to Ilium, the city by the Scamander, to get back that worst of women, Helen, after she was carried off?
Odysseus. That's us. We drained that dreadful labour to the bottom.
Cyclops. A shameful expedition. Sailing to the land of the Phrygians for the sake of one woman.
Odysseus. A god did that. Don't blame any mortal for it. But we are begging you, noble son of the sea god, and we are speaking to you as free men. Do not have the heart to kill friends who have come to your cave and make a godless meal of them for your jaws. It was we who kept your father's temple seats safe for him in the corners of Greece, my lord. The holy harbour at Taenarus stands unbroken, and the high coves of Malea, and Sunium's rock with the silver in it, sacred to Athena, daughter of Zeus, is safe, and so are the harbours of refuge at Geraestus. We did not let the Phrygians put their heavy shame on Greece. And you have a share in that, because you live in a corner of the Greek world, under Etna, the rock that drips fire.
And if you turn your back on arguments, there is still a law among mortals: to take in shipwrecked men who come begging, and give them the gifts a guest is owed, and help them to clothes. Not to spit their limbs on the skewers you use for oxen and fill your belly and your jaw with them. The land of Priam has widowed Greece enough. It has drunk the blood of many dead men, fallen to the spear, and it has destroyed wives with no husbands, old women with no children, grey-haired fathers. If you roast the ones who are left and use them up in one bitter meal, where is anyone to turn? Listen to me, Cyclops. Let go of the greed in your jaw. Choose reverence over its opposite. For a great many men, a wicked profit has turned into a punishment.
Silenus. I'd like to offer some advice. Don't leave a scrap of this one's meat. And if you bite into his tongue, Cyclops, you'll turn out smart, and a great talker.
Cyclops. Wealth, little man, is the clever man's god. The rest is boasting and pretty words. As for the headlands by the sea where my father has his seat, I bid them goodbye. Why did you drag them into your speech? I don't shiver at Zeus's thunderbolt, stranger, and I don't know of any way in which Zeus is a stronger god than me. I don't care about him, either way. And since I don't care, listen to why.
When he pours rain down from above, I've a snug dry lodging in this rock. I dine on roast calf, or some wild beast, and I give my belly a good soaking, lying on my back, and drink off a jar of milk on top of it, and then I let off a thunderclap under my cloak to compete with the thunder of Zeus. And when the north wind blows out of Thrace and pours down snow, I wrap my body in animal hides and build the fire up, and the snow is nothing to me. And the earth, whether she likes it or not, has to grow grass and fatten my flocks, and I sacrifice them to nobody but myself, never to the gods, and to the greatest divinity of them all, this belly here. Because to drink and eat your fill, day after day, and never give yourself a moment's grief: that is Zeus, for people with any sense. The men who made the laws and tangled up human life with them can go and cry. I'm not going to stop doing my soul good. By eating you. And you'll get your guest-gifts too, so nobody can find fault with me: fire, and this cauldron here that was my father's, which will boil up nicely and hold your flesh in pieces. So crawl inside, and stand round the altar of the god of this yard, and make him a feast. That god is me.
(He drives Odysseus's men into the cave ahead of him.)
Odysseus. Aiai. I got out of the troubles at Troy, and the troubles of the sea, and now I have run aground on the judgement of a godless man, a heart with no harbour in it. Pallas, my lady, goddess born of Zeus, help me now. Now. I have come to a worse labour than Ilium, and to the very edge of the drop. And you who live where the bright stars have their seats, Zeus who protects strangers, look at this. Because if you don't see it, then you're called Zeus for nothing. A god who is nothing at all.
(He goes into the cave after his men.)
Chorus. Open up that wide throat of yours, Cyclops, stretch your lips. It is all ready for you, boiled and roasted and hot off the coals, to gnaw, to crunch, to carve the limbs of strangers, lying back on your shaggy goatskin.
Chorus. No. None for me, thank you. Fill the hold of that boat of yours alone, by yourself. Goodbye to this cave. Goodbye to the sacrifice with no altar, the slaughter the Cyclops of Etna keeps, gloating over a dinner of strangers' meat.
Chorus. Pitiless. Wretched man, to kill the strangers who came begging at his hearth, and butcher them in his own house, and feast on them boiled, and with his filthy teeth chop and crunch men's flesh, hot from the coals.
Chorus. No. None for me, thank you. Fill the hold of that boat of yours alone, by yourself. Goodbye to this cave. Goodbye to the sacrifice with no altar, the slaughter the Cyclops of Etna keeps, gloating over a dinner of strangers' meat.
(Odysseus comes out of the cave, white-faced.)
Odysseus. Zeus, what am I going to say? I have seen things inside that cave that are terrible, and past believing, things out of the stories people tell, not out of anything human beings do.
Chorus. What is it, Odysseus? Has that godless Cyclops been feasting on your dear companions?
Odysseus. Two of them. He looked them over and weighed them in his hands, and picked the two with the fattest, best-fed flesh on them.
Chorus. Poor man. How did you stand it, while it was happening?
Odysseus. When we had gone into this rocky place, first he lit a fire. He threw the trunks of a tall oak onto his broad hearth, a load heavy enough for three wagons. Then he spread a bed of fir branches on the ground, close to the flame. He milked his heifers and filled a mixing bowl with white milk, a bowl that would hold ten jars. He set a cup of ivy-wood beside it, three cubits across and, as far as I could see, four deep. He set a bronze cauldron boiling on the fire, and laid out spits, buckthorn branches with their points hardened in the fire and the rest trimmed smooth with a sickle, and the Etna butchers' bowls that catch the blood under the axe.
And when everything was ready for that god-hated cook from hell, he snatched up two of my companions and killed them, with one steady movement each. One he cut over the beaten-bronze belly of the cauldron. The other he took by the tendon at the heel and swung against the sharp edge of a rock, and spattered his brains out. Then he hacked the flesh off with a greedy knife and roasted it over the fire, and the limbs he threw into the cauldron to boil. And I, God help me, with the tears running out of my eyes, stayed close to the Cyclops and waited on him. The others were crouched in the crannies of the rock like birds, and there was no blood left in their skin.
When he had eaten his fill of my companions and fell back, letting out a heavy breath from his throat, something came to me from a god. I filled a cup with this wine of Maron's and held it out to him and said, "Cyclops, son of the sea god, look at this. This is the divine drink that Greece makes from the vine, the bright joy of Dionysus." And he, stuffed with his shameless dinner, took it and pulled the whole cup down in one draught, and raised his hand and thanked me. "Dearest of all my guests," he said, "a fine drink you have given me, on top of a fine dinner." When I saw how much he liked it, I gave him another cup, knowing the wine would wound him and he would soon be paying for what he did. And sure enough he slid into singing. I kept pouring, one cup after another, and warming his insides with the drink. So there he is now, singing tunelessly beside my weeping shipmates, and the cave rings with it. And I have crept out without a sound.
I want to save you, and myself, if you are willing. So tell me: do you want to get away from this man nobody can live with, or not, and go and live in the house of Dionysus with the water-nymphs? Your father inside has already said yes. But he is weak, and he is making the most of the drink. He is stuck to that cup like a bird on a limed twig, flapping his wings. But you are young. Save yourself, with me, and get back your old friend Dionysus. He is nothing like the Cyclops.
Chorus. Dearest of friends, if only we could see that day, and be out from under the godless head of the Cyclops. It has been a long, long time since we had our dear old spout to suckle at. And there is nowhere we can run to get away from him.
Odysseus. Then listen to the revenge I have in mind for this beast of a villain, and the way out of your slavery.
Chorus. Tell us. We would not rather hear the sweetest lyre in Asia than hear that the Cyclops is dead.
Odysseus. He is so pleased with this drink of Dionysus that he wants to go off partying with his brother Cyclopes.
Chorus. I understand. You are going to catch him alone in the woods and cut his throat, or push him off a cliff.
Odysseus. Nothing of the kind. What I have in mind is a trick.
Chorus. What, then? We have been hearing for years how clever you are.
Odysseus. First, to keep him away from this party. I will tell him he should not give this drink to the other Cyclopes, but keep it for himself and enjoy life. Then, when he falls asleep, beaten by Dionysus, there is an olive branch inside the cave. I will sharpen the end of it with this sword and put it in the fire. And then, when I see it burning, I will lift it, red-hot, and drive it into the middle of the Cyclops' face, and melt his eye out with fire. And the way a shipwright fitting timbers works his drill back and forth with a strap wound twice round it, that is how I will spin the brand in the eye that gives the Cyclops his light, and shrivel up the pupil.
Chorus. Iou, iou. I am delighted. We are mad with joy at what you have thought of.
Odysseus. And then I will put you and your friends and the old man into the hollow hull of my black ship, and with two banks of oars I will carry you away out of this land.
Chorus. Is there any way I could take hold of the brand that blinds him too, as if I were pouring a libation to a god? I want a share in this killing.
Odysseus. You will have to. The brand is big, and it will take more than one pair of hands.
Chorus. I would lift the weight of a hundred wagons, if it means we smoke out the eye of that Cyclops, damn him, like a wasps' nest.
Odysseus. Quiet now. You know the whole trick. When I give the order, do what the architects tell you. I am not going to abandon the friends I have inside and save my own skin. And yet I could run. I am out of the depths of the cave already. But it is not right to leave the friends I came here with and be saved alone.
(He goes back into the cave.)
Chorus. Come on, who is first, and who is second behind him, to grip the handle of the brand, drive it in under the Cyclops' eyelids and grind out that bright eye? Quiet. Quiet. Here he comes, drunk, making a noise he thinks is music, a clumsy off-key singer who will be crying soon, out of his house of stone. Come on, let us teach this lout how a party is done. He is going to be blind either way.
Half-Chorus. Happy the man who shouts for the god with the sweet streams of the grape, stretched out for a party, his arm round a friend he loves, and on the couch, the yellow hair of some soft, expensive girl, his own glossy curls shining with perfume, and he calls out, "Who is going to open the door for me?"
(The Cyclops comes out of the cave, garlanded and reeling, with Silenus behind him.)
Cyclops. Papapa. I am full of wine, and I am loving the freshness of that feast, loaded like a cargo ship right up to the top deck of my belly. This nice soft grass is tempting me out to a spring party with my brother Cyclopes. Come on, stranger, come on, hand me the wineskin.
Chorus. Here comes the handsome one, out of his house, casting his handsome eye around. Papapa. Somebody loves us. There is a torch waiting for you, to light your skin, like a torch for a tender bride deep in a dewy cave. And a garland of more than one colour will soon be wound close round your head.
Odysseus. Cyclops, listen. I know this Dionysus I gave you to drink very well.
Cyclops. And this Dionysus, what sort of god is he supposed to be?
Odysseus. The greatest there is, for the pleasure human beings take in life.
Cyclops. Well, he tastes good coming back up, I will say that.
Odysseus. That is the kind of god he is. He never hurts anybody.
Cyclops. But how does a god enjoy living in a wineskin?
Odysseus. Wherever you put him, he is comfortable.
Cyclops. Gods should not keep their bodies in leather.
Odysseus. What does it matter, if he gives you pleasure? Or does the leather taste bitter?
Cyclops. I hate the skin. The drink, I love.
Odysseus. Then stay right here and drink, Cyclops, and enjoy yourself.
Cyclops. Should I not give my brothers a share of this drink?
Odysseus. Keep it yourself and you will look more important.
Cyclops. Give it to my friends and I will look more useful.
Odysseus. Parties love fists, and insults, and fights.
Cyclops. I may be drunk, but nobody is going to lay a hand on me.
Odysseus. My good man, a man who has been drinking should stay at home.
Cyclops. Anyone who drinks and does not go partying is an idiot.
Odysseus. And anyone who gets drunk and stays at home is wise.
Cyclops. What do we do, Silenus? Do you think we should stay?
Silenus. I do. Who needs other people at the drinking, Cyclops?
Cyclops. And the ground here is soft, come to think of it, all thick with flowering grass...
Silenus. And it is lovely to drink in the warm sun. Lie down for me, now. Put your side on the ground.
(The Cyclops lies down on the grass. Silenus sets the mixing bowl behind his back.)
Cyclops. There. Now why are you putting the mixing bowl behind me?
Silenus. So nobody passing by knocks it over.
Cyclops. No. You want to steal drinks out of it. Put it down in the middle. And you, stranger, tell me your name. What am I to call you?
Odysseus. Nobody. And what favour am I going to get from you, to thank you for?
Cyclops. I will eat you last, after all your companions.
Silenus. That is a fine prize you are giving the stranger, Cyclops.
Cyclops. You. What are you doing? Drinking the wine behind my back?
Silenus. No. It kissed me. Because of my good looks.
Cyclops. You will be sorry, kissing the wine when the wine does not kiss you.
Silenus. Yes it does, by Zeus. It says it is in love with me. I am so handsome.
Cyclops. Pour, and fill the cup. Just give it to me.
Silenus. How is it mixed, though? Come on, let us have a look.
(He drinks.)
Cyclops. You are killing me. Give it here as it is.
Silenus. No, by Zeus. Not until I have seen you put a garland on, and had one more little taste...
Cyclops. This wine-waiter is a cheat.
Silenus. No, by Zeus. This wine is sweet. And you need to wipe your nose before you get a drink.
Cyclops. There. My lip is clean, and so is my beard.
Silenus. Now set your elbow nicely, like this, and drink it down, the way you see me drinking. And the way you do not see me.
(He buries his face in the cup and drains it.)
Cyclops. Ah. Ah. What are you doing?
Silenus. Down in one. That was delicious.
Cyclops. Stranger, take it. You be my wine-waiter yourself.
Odysseus. Well, the vine and my hand are old acquaintances.
Cyclops. Come on, pour.
Odysseus. I am pouring. Just be quiet.
Cyclops. That is a hard thing to ask of a man who drinks a lot.
Odysseus. There. Take it and drink it off, and do not leave a drop. A man drinking should die at the same moment as the drink.
Cyclops. Papai. What a clever piece of wood the vine is.
Odysseus. And if you drink a lot on top of a big dinner, and soak your belly until it has no thirst left, it will throw you into sleep. But leave any behind, and Dionysus will dry you out.
Cyclops. Iou, iou. I only just swam out of that one. Pure pleasure, and neat. The sky looks to me as if it is all mixed up with the earth and carried round with it. I can see the throne of Zeus, and the whole holy majesty of the gods. No, I will not kiss you. The Graces are trying to tempt me. Enough. I have my Ganymede here, and I will go and lie down with him, and that is the finest thing of all, by the Graces. Somehow I have always liked boys better than women.
Silenus. What? Am I Zeus's Ganymede, Cyclops?
Cyclops. Yes, by Zeus. And I am carrying you off from the house of Dardanus.
Silenus. I am done for, boys. Something dreadful is going to happen to me.
Cyclops. Finding fault with your lover? Playing hard to get, because he has been drinking?
Silenus. Oh. This is a very bitter wine I am going to be tasting in a minute.
(The Cyclops hauls Silenus into the cave.)
Odysseus. Now then, children of Dionysus, sons of a noble father. The man is inside. Any moment now, gone slack with sleep, he will be pushing meat back out of that shameless throat. The brand inside the cave is sending up smoke. It is ready. There is nothing left to do but burn out the Cyclops' eye. So see that you act like a man.
Chorus. We will have hearts of rock and iron. Get inside, before something unspeakable happens to my father. Out here, everything is ready for you.
Odysseus. Hephaestus, lord of Etna, burn the bright eye out of your evil neighbour and be rid of him once and for all. And you, Sleep, child of black Night, come down at full strength on this beast the gods hate. After the glorious work at Troy, do not let Odysseus and his sailors be destroyed by a man who cares nothing for gods or men. If you do, then we will have to count Chance as a god, and the gods as weaker than Chance.
(He goes into the cave.)
Chorus. The pincers are going to grip the neck of the man who eats his guests, and grip it hard. Soon, by fire, he loses the eyes that give him light. Already the brand is charred through and hidden in the ash, a huge limb of oak. Let Maron's wine come on. Let it do its work. Let it take out the eye of the raving Cyclops, so that his drinking ends badly. And I want to see Dionysus, the roaring god who loves his ivy, the god I long for, and leave the Cyclops' lonely country behind. Will I ever get that far?
(Odysseus comes back out of the cave.)
Odysseus. Quiet, by the gods, you animals. Be still. Shut the hinges of your mouths. I will not have anyone so much as breathe, or blink, or clear his throat, in case the thing wakes up, until the sight in the Cyclops' eye has had its fight with the fire.
Chorus. We are quiet. We have swallowed the air with our jaws.
Odysseus. Come on, then. Get your hands on the brand and come inside. It is beautifully red-hot.
Chorus. Should you not tell us which of us has to go first, and take the burning bar and burn out the Cyclops' light, so we all share the luck?
First Satyr. We are standing too far away from the doors to push the fire into his eye.
Second Satyr. And we have just gone lame.
Third Satyr. Then the same thing has happened to you as to me. We were standing here and we sprained our feet, I do not know how.
Odysseus. You sprained your feet standing still?
Fourth Satyr. And our eyes are full of dust, or ash, from somewhere.
Odysseus. Cowards. These men are no allies at all.
Chorus. Because I feel sorry for my back and my spine, and would rather not have my teeth knocked out with a beating, that makes me a coward? But I know a spell of Orpheus, a very good one, that will make the brand walk into his skull all by itself and set fire to the one-eyed son of Earth.
Odysseus. I knew long ago what you were made of. Now I know it better. I will have to use my own friends. But if there is no strength in your hands, at least cheer us on, so that my friends can get some courage from your shouting.
Chorus. I will do that. Let the hired man run the risks. As far as cheering goes, let the Cyclops go up in smoke.
(He goes in. The satyrs shout toward the cave.)
Chorus. Io, io. Push, like heroes, hurry, burn out the brow of the beast who eats his guests. Let him smoke, let him burn, the shepherd of Etna. Twist it, pull it, and mind he does not do something wild to you in his pain.
Cyclops. Oh. The light of my eye is burnt to charcoal.
Chorus. A lovely victory song. Sing it again for me, Cyclops.
Cyclops. Oh, and oh again. What an outrage. I am finished. But you will not get out of this rock and laugh about it, you nothings. I am going to stand in the mouth of this cave and fit my hands across it.
(The Cyclops gropes his way out of the cave, blind, his face blackened.)
Chorus. What are you shouting about, Cyclops?
Cyclops. I am destroyed.
Chorus. You do look a sight.
Cyclops. And a miserable one, on top of it.
Chorus. Did you fall into the middle of the coals, drunk?
Cyclops. Nobody has destroyed me.
Chorus. Then no one has done you any harm.
Cyclops. Nobody is blinding my eye.
Chorus. Then you are not blind.
Cyclops. I wish you were as blind as—
Chorus. But how could nobody make you blind?
Cyclops. You are making fun of me. Where is this Nobody?
Chorus. Nowhere, Cyclops.
Cyclops. It was the stranger, if you want to get it right. The stranger destroyed me, the filthy thing. He gave me the drink and drowned me in it.
Chorus. Wine is a terrible thing. A heavy wrestler.
Cyclops. By the gods, have they run, or are they still inside the cave?
Chorus. They are standing right here, in silence, with the overhang of the rock for cover.
Cyclops. Which hand?
Chorus. On your right.
Cyclops. Where?
Chorus. Right up against the rock. Have you got them?
Cyclops. Trouble on top of trouble. I have hit my head on the rock and cracked it.
Chorus. And they are getting away from you.
Cyclops. Not this way? You said this way.
Chorus. No. This way, I am telling you.
Cyclops. Which way, then?
Chorus. Turn round. Over there. To your left.
Cyclops. Oh, they are laughing at me. You are mocking me in my misery.
Chorus. Not any more. He is right in front of you.
Cyclops. You total villain, where are you?
Odysseus. A long way from you, standing guard over this body, which belongs to Odysseus.
Cyclops. What did you say? You have changed your name. That is a new one.
Odysseus. It is the one my father gave me. Odysseus. And you were always going to pay for that unholy dinner. I would have burned Troy for nothing if I had not made you pay for murdering my companions.
Cyclops. Aiai. An old prophecy is coming true. It said I would lose my sight at your hands, on your way home from Troy. But it also said that you would pay for it, that you would be tossed about on the sea for a long, long time.
Odysseus. Go and cry about it. I have done exactly what you say. And now I am going down to the shore, and I will launch my ship on the Sicilian sea and sail her home.
Cyclops. Oh no you will not. I am going to break a piece off this rock and throw it, and crush you, and your shipmates with you. Blind or not, I am going up onto the hill. I know the way through this tunnel.
(He feels his way back into the cave. Odysseus goes down toward the shore.)
Chorus. And we are shipmates of this Odysseus now. From here on, we are the slaves of Dionysus.
(The Trojan camp on the plain in front of Troy, in the middle of the night. Hector is asleep on a bed of leaves. The sentries of the night watch come in quietly and stand over him.)
Chorus. Go to Hector's bed. Which of the king's shield-bearers is awake, or of the men in armour? Let him take the news we bring, we who keep the fourth watch of the night on guard in front of the whole army. Lift your head. Prop it on your elbow. Open that fierce eye of yours. Get up off the leaves you are lying on, Hector. It is time to listen.
Hector. Who is that? A friend's voice? Who is the man? What is the password? Speak. Who is coming near our beds out of the night? You have to tell me.
Chorus. Sentries of the army.
Hector. What is this noise you bring?
Chorus. Steady.
Hector. I am steady. Is there an ambush out there in the dark?
Chorus. There is not.
Hector. Then why leave your post and stir the army up, unless you have some news out of the night? Do you not know that we lie down close to the Argive spears, in full armour, to sleep?
Chorus. Arm your hand. Hector, go to the beds of the allies, tell them to lift the spear. Wake them up. Send friends to your own company. Get the bits into the horses' mouths. Who will go to the son of Panthus, or to Europa's son, the captain of the Lycians? Where are the men who watch the sacrifices? Where are the leaders of the light-armed troops, and the Phrygian bowmen? String the horn-tipped bows.
Hector. Some of your news is frightening to hear and some of it is meant to steady me, and none of it is clear. Has Pan, the son of Cronus, cracked his whip and set you shaking? You leave the watch and stir the army up. What are you shouting? What am I to say your news is? You have said a great deal and shown me nothing plainly.
Chorus. The Argive army is burning fires, Hector, all through the dark, and the ships' moorings are lit up with torches. The whole army has gone to Agamemnon's tent in the night, in an uproar, wanting some new word. That sea-going army has never been frightened like this before. And I, suspecting what is coming, came to you as a messenger, so you can never lay any blame on me.
Hector. You have come at the right moment, even if the news is frightening. The men mean to slip away from this land by night, under oars, without my seeing them. Those fires burning out there in the dark please me. You god, whoever you are, you robbed me in the middle of my luck. You took the meat out of a lion's mouth, before this spear had swept the whole Argive army away in one stroke. If the sun's bright lamps had not gone out on me, I would never have held my winning spear back until I had burned their ships and gone from tent to tent killing Achaeans with this hand that has killed so many. I was ready to throw the spear that night and use the good luck a god had sent me. But my clever prophets, the men who know the will of heaven, talked me into waiting for daylight, and then leaving not one Achaean alive on dry land. Well, the enemy is not waiting for my sacrificers' advice. A runaway is strong in the dark. So the word has to go through the army at once: pick up your weapons, stop sleeping. Then when one of them jumps aboard a ship he will get a gash across the back and splash the boarding ladders with blood, and others will be caught in the ropes and tied up and learn to farm the fields of Phrygia.
Chorus. Hector, you are moving fast, before you know what is happening. We do not know for certain that the men are running.
Hector. What other reason would the Argive army have to burn fires?
Chorus. I do not know. But my mind is very suspicious of it.
Hector. If this frightens you, then you may as well be frightened of anything.
Chorus. The enemy never lit that much light before.
Hector. And they were never beaten and routed as shamefully before.
Chorus. You did that. Now look at what is left to do.
Hector. There is one simple thing to say about an enemy: arm.
Chorus. Look, here comes Aeneas, and in a great hurry, with something new to tell his friends.
Aeneas. Hector, why have the sentries come through the camp at night in a panic, to your bed? Why the conference in the dark, and why is the army on the move?
Hector. Aeneas, get your body into your armour.
Aeneas. What is it? Is there word of some hidden trick from the enemy, set up in the night?
Hector. The men are running. They are going aboard their ships.
Aeneas. What solid proof of that can you give me?
Hector. They are burning torches all night long. I do not think they will wait for tomorrow. They have lit fires on their well-benched ships and they mean to run for home and leave this country.
Aeneas. And you are arming for this. To do what?
Hector. I will catch them with my spear as they run and jump aboard, and I will come down on them hard. It would be shameful for us, and worse than shameful, it would be cowardice, to let our enemies get away without a fight when a god is handing them over, after all the harm they have done us.
Aeneas. I wish you were as good at planning as you are with your hands. But no one man is born knowing everything. Each of us is given his own gift: yours is fighting, and another man's is thinking well. You heard that the Achaeans are burning torches, you were lifted right off the ground by it, and now you mean to take the army over the ditches in the dead of the night. Suppose you get across that deep hollow trench and find the enemy is not running from this land at all but standing and looking straight at your spear. If you lose, you will never get back. How does an army get through the stakes in a rout? How do the chariot drivers cross the causeways without smashing the axle-boxes of their wheels? And if you win, you still have Peleus' son sitting fresh behind them, and he will not let you throw fire on the ships or snatch the Achaeans away, whatever you imagine. The man burns, and his arm is a tower. No. Let the army sleep quietly beside their shields and rest from the killing work. My advice is to send a spy in against the enemy, whoever is willing to go. If they really are taking to flight, we march out and fall on the Argive army. If those fires are drawing us into a trap, the spy will tell us what the enemy has built, and we can decide then. That is my opinion, my lord.
Chorus. That is what we think. Change your mind and think it too. I have no love for a general's power when it slips. What could be better than a fast runner going down close to the ships to see what it is that keeps the enemy burning fires in front of their moorings?
Hector. You win, since it pleases everyone. Go and settle the allies down. The army may start moving when it hears there are meetings in the night. I will send a man to spy on the enemy. If we find out they have some scheme, you will hear the whole of it and be there to know what was said. But if they are pulling out and starting to run, keep your ear open for the trumpet, because I will not be waiting. I will be at the hauling-ground where the ships lie, tonight, on top of the Argive army.
Aeneas. Send him quickly. Your thinking is safe now. And when the moment comes, you will see me standing beside you and holding.
Hector. Which of the Trojans here in council is willing to go and spy on the Argive ships? Who will do this country that service? Who says he will? I cannot do everything myself for my father's city and for our allies.
Dolon. I will throw myself into this danger for the country. I will go and spy on the Argive ships, learn every plan the Achaeans have, and come back. Those are my terms for taking the work on.
Hector. Your name is a word for a trick, Dolon, and it fits you, and so does your love for this city. Your father's house had a name before this. Now you have made it twice the name it was.
Dolon. Then a man has to work. But when he works he ought to carry off a wage worth having. Put a profit on top of any job and it doubles the good will in it.
Hector. Yes. That is fair, and I do not say otherwise. Name your wage. Anything but my kingship.
Dolon. I do not want your kingship, with a city on its back.
Hector. Then marry one of Priam's daughters and become one of the family.
Dolon. I do not want to marry above myself either.
Hector. There is gold, if that is the prize you will ask for.
Dolon. I have gold at home. I am not short of a living.
Hector. Then what do you want out of everything Troy has stored up?
Dolon. Promise me a gift for when you have taken the Achaeans.
Hector. I will give it. Ask for anyone except the commanders of the fleet.
Dolon. Kill them. I am not asking you to keep your hand off Menelaus.
Hector. It is not the son of Oileus you are asking me for?
Dolon. Hands that have been brought up well are no good at farming.
Hector. Then which of the Achaeans do you want alive, to hold for ransom?
Dolon. I told you before. There is gold in my house.
Hector. Well then, you will be there yourself and take your pick of the plunder.
Dolon. Nail the plunder up for the gods on their temples.
Hector. Then what greater prize than any of these are you going to ask me for?
Dolon. The horses of Achilles. A man throwing his life onto the dice a god shakes should be working for something worth having.
Hector. Then we are rivals, because I am in love with those horses too. They are immortal, born from immortals, and they carry the raging son of Peleus. Poseidon, the lord of the sea, broke them in and gave them to Peleus, so the story goes. All the same, I urged you into this and I will not cheat you. I will give them to you: Achilles' team, the finest thing your house will ever hold.
Dolon. Thank you. And taking it, I say I am taking the finest gift any Phrygian ever had for his courage. You have no reason to be jealous. There are ten thousand other things to please you, being the best man in this land.
Chorus. The contest is great, and what you plan to win is great. You will be a blessed man if you get it. This work will bring you glory. It is a great thing, too, to marry into a king's house. Let Justice keep her eye on what comes from the gods. What men can give looks to be yours already.
Dolon. I will go. First to my house and my own hearth, and I will put the right gear on my body, and from there I will run for the Argive ships.
Chorus. And what will you put on instead of the clothes you have?
Dolon. Something that suits the job and a thief's footsteps.
Chorus. A clever man is the one to learn something clever from. Tell us: what is the harness going to be?
Dolon. I will fasten a wolf's skin over my back and put the animal's open jaws over my head. I will fit its front feet to my hands and its legs to my legs, and I will copy a wolf's four-footed walk, so that the enemy cannot make me out, as I come up to the ditches and the barricades in front of the ships. And when I reach empty ground I will go on two feet. That is how the trick is put together.
Chorus. Then may Hermes, the son of Maia, send you there and back safely, since he is the lord of thieves. You know the job. All you need now is luck.
Dolon. I will come through safely. And I will kill Odysseus and bring you his head. You will have a clear token, and you will say that Dolon went to the Argive ships. Or the son of Tydeus. My hand will not be clean of blood when I come home, and I will be home before the light reaches the ground.
(Dolon goes out into the dark, toward the Greek camp.)
Chorus. Lord of Thymbra, lord of Delos, you who walk in your temple in Lycia, Apollo, holy head, come with your bow, come tonight, be the man's rescue and the guide who leads him, and take the side of the sons of Dardanus, you who can do anything, you who built the old walls of Troy.
Chorus. Let him reach the moorings, let him come and see the Greek army with his own eyes, and let him turn back again to the altars of his father's house in Troy. And one day let him ride behind the horses of Phthia, when our master has broken the Achaean war, the horses the sea god gave to Peleus, the son of Aeacus.
Chorus. He alone had the heart, for his house and his land, to go down and look at the moorings. I admire his nerve. Good men are rare when the sun goes out over the water and the city is rolling. There is a brave man among the Phrygians. There is. There is daring in the spear here. Where are the Mysians who think our alliance is worth nothing?
Chorus. Which of the Achaeans will the killer on the ground stab in his hut, going on four feet in the shape of an animal of the earth? Let him take Menelaus, and kill Agamemnon and carry the head to Helen's hands, a grief for the marriage she made, the man who came against my city, against the land of Troy, with an army of a thousand ships.
(A herdsman comes down from the slopes of Mount Ida.)
Shepherd. My lord, I hope that for the rest of my life I bring my masters news like the news I am bringing you now.
Hector. There is a great deal of thickheadedness in country people. Here you are, coming to men in armour with news about sheep, and this is not the place for it. Do you not know where my house is, or my father's throne? That is where you should have gone shouting about how well your flocks are doing.
Messenger. We herdsmen are thick. I will not argue about that. But I have good news for you all the same.
Hector. Stop telling me how things are around the sheepfold. We have fighting in front of us and spears in our hands.
Messenger. Those are exactly the things I came to tell you about. A man is on his way here at the head of an army beyond counting, a friend to you and an ally to this land.
Hector. And what country did he leave empty behind him?
Messenger. Thrace. His father is called Strymon.
Hector. Are you telling me Rhesus is setting foot in Troy?
Messenger. You have it. And you have taken half my speech off me.
Hector. And how does he come to be up in the pastures of Ida, off the broad wagon road across the plain?
Messenger. I do not know exactly, though I can guess. It is no light thing to bring an army in at night, when you have heard the plains are packed with enemy troops. He gave us country people a fright, we who live on the rock of Ida, where the first hearth in this land was rooted, coming through the wood in the dark with the wild animals in it. The Thracian army came pouring on with a huge noise, and we were knocked out of our senses and drove the flocks up to the high ground, in case some of the Argives were coming to lift the cattle and strip your steadings. Then the sound that reached our ears was not Greek, and our fear went away. I went and stopped the men who were scouting the road ahead of their king, and asked them in Thracian: who is the general, and whose son is he called, this man coming to the city as an ally to the sons of Priam? And when I had heard everything I wanted to know, I stood still. And I could see Rhesus, standing in his chariot behind Thracian horses, like a god. There was a plate of gold holding the yoke on the necks of the colts, and the colts were whiter than snow. On his shoulders the light shield flashed with figures welded into it in gold. A bronze Gorgon, like the one on the goddess's shield, was strapped to the horses' foreheads, and it rang out fear with all its bells. As for the size of that army, I could not put a number on it however I counted; it was too much to take in with the eye. Many horsemen, many companies of shield-men, many archers with their shafts, and a great crowd of light-armed men running along with them, all of them in Thracian gear. That is the man who has come to Troy as an ally. Peleus' son will not be able to get away from him, either by running or by standing up to him with the spear.
Chorus. When the gods are standing steady on the citizens' side, the whole thing runs downhill toward the good.
Hector. Now that my spear is winning and Zeus is on our side, I will find plenty of friends. But we have no need of any of them, the ones who did not work beside us long ago, when Ares was blowing hard and tearing this country's sails to pieces. Rhesus has shown what kind of friend he was to Troy. He is coming to the feast, and he was not out with the hunters who took the game, and he never wore out a spear beside us.
Chorus. You are right to think little of them, and right to blame friends like that. But take the ones who are willing to help the city.
Hector. We who have kept Troy safe all this time are enough.
Chorus. Are you so sure you have already caught the enemy?
Hector. I am sure. The god's light tomorrow will show it.
Chorus. Watch what is coming. A god turns a great many things over.
Hector. I hate a man who comes running to help his friends late. Well then: since he has come, let him come to our table not as an ally but as a guest, one stranger among strangers. As far as he is concerned, the gratitude of Priam's sons is gone.
Chorus. My lord, pushing allies away earns ill will.
Messenger. The sight of him alone would frighten the enemy.
Hector. Your advice is good, and you see the moment. So let Rhesus in his golden armour come and join the allies of this land, on the strength of the messenger's report.
(The herdsman goes back up toward the hills. Trumpets sound out on the plain as the Thracian army comes in.)
Chorus. Let Adrasteia, the daughter of Zeus, who punishes a boast, keep the ill will off my mouth. I am going to say all of it, everything my heart loves to say. You have come, son of the river, you have come, you are at the courtyard of the god of friendship, and you are welcome, because at last your mother, the Muse of Pieria, and the river with the beautiful bridges are bringing you here.
Chorus. Strymon, who whirled once as running water through the clean folds of the singing Muse and planted your young life in her. You are Zeus to me, Zeus of the daylight, coming here driving your dappled colts. Now, my country, my Phrygia, now with a god's help you can say the name of Zeus who sets us free.
Chorus. Will old Troy ever again spend a whole day in the drinking, in the companies of love, with the harps and the cups going round in wandering contests, while the sons of Atreus go over the sea to Sparta, away from the shore of Troy? Friend, I wish you would do this for me with your hand and your spear, and then go home.
Chorus. Come, show yourself, hold that shield heavy with gold up in the face of Peleus' son, tilt it sideways along the chariot's split rail, work the colts up, shake the double-pointed javelin. Nobody who stands against you will ever dance again on the floor of Argive Hera's ground. No. This land will carry him as the dearest weight it ever took, killed by a Thracian death.
Chorus. Io, io, great king. Thrace, what a fine cub you raised, a ruler to look at. Look at the strength of that body bound in gold, listen to the boasting of the bells clattering at the shield-straps. A god, Troy, a god. Ares himself, the colt of Strymon and of the singing Muse, has come and is breathing on you.
Rhesus. Greetings, brave son of a brave father, king of this land, Hector. It is a long-delayed day, and I greet you on it. I am glad to see you winning, and camped up against the enemy's towers. I am here to help you dig their walls down and burn their ships.
Hector. Son of the singing mother, one of the Muses, and of Strymon, the Thracian river: I like to say what is true, always, and I am not a double man. You should have come long ago, long ago, and taken your share of this country's work, and not left Troy, as far as you were concerned, to fall to the enemy spear under the Argives. You cannot say that nobody called you, and that is why you never came to your friends, never defended them, never even turned your head. What herald, what council of Phrygian elders did not go to you and beg you to defend the city? What set of gifts did we not send you? And you, a man of our own blood, a barbarian yourself, drank us away to the Greeks: your own barbarians, toasted off for your share of the wine. And it was this arm that took you out of a small kingship and made you the great lord of Thrace, when I went at the best men of Thrace face to face around Pangaeum and the country of the Paeonians and broke their shields, and enslaved their people and handed them to you. You kicked that great favour aside, and now you come running to help your friends late, when they are sick. And men with no blood tie to us at all have been here a long time. Some of them lie fallen in heaped-up graves, which is no small proof of loyalty to a city. Others stand it out in their armour beside their horses and chariots, holding on through the cold blast and the god's thirsty fire, and not lying on couches draining cup after cup the way you do. That is my charge against you, and I am saying it to your face, so you know Hector is a free man.
Rhesus. I am the same kind of man myself. I cut a straight road through what I say, and I am not a double man either. Being away from this country hurt me more than it hurt you. It wore at my liver and I could hardly carry it. But the land on my border, the Scythian people, made war on me just as I was setting out to cross over to Troy. I had already reached the shores of the Friendly Sea, to ferry the Thracian army across. That was where Scythian blood was poured out on the ground by my spear, with Thracian blood mixed into it. That was the accident that kept me from reaching the plain of Troy and coming to you as an ally. And when I had destroyed them, and taken their children as hostages, and set the yearly tribute they must bring to my house, then I came. I crossed the mouth of the sea in ships and did the rest of it on foot, across the boundaries of countries. Not the way you jeer at me, tipping back my cupfuls, not sleeping in houses stuffed with gold, but out in the frozen squalls that batter the Thracian sea and press down on the Paeonians, and I know what it is to lie awake in nothing but this cloak. I came late, but I came at the right moment. You have been fighting for ten years now and finishing nothing, throwing the dice against the Argives day after day and losing. One day's light will be enough for me. I will break their towers, fall on their moorings, and kill the Achaeans. The next day I will go home from Troy, having cut your labour short. Let none of you lift a shield. I will take the Achaeans who boast so loudly and break them with my spear, late as I have come.
Chorus. Io, io. What you say is dear to us, and you are dear, and you come from Zeus. Only let Zeus on high be willing to keep the unbeatable ill will away from your words. The seafaring spear out of Argos never brought, not before and not now, a man greater than you. How could Achilles stand up to your spear, how could Ajax? If only I could see the day, my lord, when you make them pay with that hand of yours that kills so many, and its lance.
Rhesus. That is the sort of thing I am ready to do for you, to make up for the long time I was away. I say it with Adrasteia's leave. Once we have set this city free of its enemies, and you have picked out the first fruits for the gods, I want to march with you against the country of the Argives and go through the whole of Greece and lay it waste with the spear, so they can learn in their turn what it is to be treated badly.
Hector. If I could be rid of the trouble in front of me and run this city the way it was, safe as it used to be, I would owe the gods a great deal of thanks. But Argos, and the pasture lands of Greece: those are not so easy to sack with the spear as you say.
Rhesus. Do they not say the best of the Greeks came here?
Hector. And we do not think little of them. We have as much as we can drive.
Rhesus. Then when we have killed these men, is the whole job not done?
Hector. Do not let go of what is close and stare at what is far away.
Rhesus. It seems to be enough for you to be hurt and never hurt back.
Hector. I rule a great kingdom, even standing here. Now: the left wing, or the right, or in the middle among the allies. You can plant your shield wherever you like and set your army up.
Rhesus. I want to fight the enemy alone, Hector. But if you think it is shameful, after all your long work before this, to have no hand in burning the ships' sterns, then post me facing Achilles and his troops.
Hector. You cannot set that raging spear of yours against that man.
Rhesus. But the word was that he sailed to Troy.
Hector. He sailed, and he is here. But he is in a rage with the commanders and does not lift a spear with them.
Rhesus. Then who has the next name after him in their army?
Hector. Ajax seems to me to fall short of him in nothing, and neither does the son of Tydeus. And there is Odysseus, the smoothest piece of work alive, bold enough in spirit, and the man who has done more outrage to this country than anyone. He came into Athena's precinct by night, stole her image and carried it off to the Argive ships. Another time he got inside our walls dressed as a beggar collecting for a god, cursing the Argives out loud, and he had been sent to Troy as a spy. Then he killed the guards and the men beside the gates and got out again. He is always turning up in an ambush around the altar of Apollo of Thymbra, close to the town. He is a cunning piece of trouble to wrestle with.
Rhesus. No brave man thinks it is right to kill an enemy in secret. He goes straight at him. This man you say sits in a thief's hiding place building schemes: I will take him alive, drive a spike up his backbone at the way out of the gates, and stand him there as a feast for the vultures on the wing. He is a pirate and a robber of the gods' shrines, and that is the death he ought to die.
Hector. Now make your camp, since it is night. I will show you myself where your army has to sleep, apart from the line we have drawn up. Our password is Apollo, if we should need one. Hear it and remember it, and pass it on to the Thracian army. And you sentries must go out ahead of the ranks and keep an alert watch and receive Dolon, our spy on the ships. If he is safe, he must be getting close to the Trojan camp by now.
Chorus. Whose watch is it? Who takes over from mine? The first stars are going down, and the seven Pleiades are climbing the sky. The Eagle is flying in the middle of heaven. Wake up. What are you waiting for? Up out of your blankets and on watch. Do you not see the moonlight? Dawn is close. Dawn is coming, and that star there is one of the ones that run out in front of it. Who was called for the first watch? Coroebus, they say. Mygdon's son. And who after him? The Paeonians woke the Cilicians, and the Mysians woke us. Then is it not time to go and wake the Lycians for the fifth watch, the way the lot fell?
Chorus. Listen. I hear it. Down by the Simois, sitting on her bloody nest, the nightingale who killed her own child sings her grief out with a voice of many strings. Already they are grazing the flocks on Ida. I can hear the pipe going in the dark. Sleep is charming my eyes shut. It comes sweetest on the lids toward morning. Why has the scout not come back, the one Hector sent out to spy on the ships? I am afraid. He has been gone a long time. Has he blundered into a hidden ambush and been killed? He may have. It frightens me. I say we go and wake the Lycians for the fifth watch, the way the lot fell.
(The sentries move off into the dark. Odysseus and Diomedes come in from the other side, with their swords drawn.)
Odysseus. Diomedes. Did you not hear something? Or is it an empty noise dripping through my ears? Some clash of armour?
Diomedes. No. It is the harness on the chariot rails, the iron rattling. Fear went through me too, until I made out that it was the horses' chains knocking.
Odysseus. Watch you do not walk into the sentries in the dark.
Diomedes. I will watch. I am setting my feet down carefully, even in the black.
Odysseus. And if you do wake them, do you know the army's password?
Diomedes. The word is Apollo. I know it; I heard Dolon give it.
Odysseus. Ah. These beds here are empty. I am looking at the enemy's beds and there is nobody in them.
Diomedes. And yet Dolon told us this was where Hector sleeps. He is the man this sword is drawn for.
Odysseus. What can it mean? Has his company gone off somewhere?
Diomedes. To set up some trick against us, perhaps.
Odysseus. Hector is bold now that he is winning. Bold.
Diomedes. Then what do we do, Odysseus? We have not found the man in his bed. We have missed what we came for.
Odysseus. We get back to the ships as fast as we can. Whichever of the gods it is that keeps him lucky, that god is keeping him alive. We must not force our luck.
Diomedes. Then should we not go for Aeneas, or for Paris, the most hateful of all the Phrygians, and take his head off with the sword?
Odysseus. And how, in the dark, in the middle of an enemy army, will you hunt those two down and kill them without any risk?
Diomedes. Still, it is a shameful thing to go back to the Argive ships without having done the enemy any fresh harm.
Odysseus. What do you mean, none? Did we not kill Dolon, who was spying on the moorings? Have we not got his gear here, safe? Or were you expecting to sack the whole camp?
Diomedes. You win. We go back. And may the luck hold.
(Athena appears in the dark above them.)
Athena. Where are you going, leaving the Trojan lines, with grief biting at your hearts because a god will not give you Hector or Paris to kill? Have you not heard that a man has come to help Troy, and in no small way? Rhesus. If he lives through this night into tomorrow, neither Achilles nor the spear of Ajax could stop him from destroying the whole Argive fleet — tearing down the palisade and driving a wide charge with his spear right through the gates. Kill him and you have everything. Leave Hector's bed alone, and the cutting of his throat. His death will come from another hand.
Odysseus. Lady Athena. I knew that voice; I know the sound of it well. You are always there in my troubles, at my side, fighting for me. Tell us where the man is asleep. Where in the barbarian army has he been posted?
Athena. He is lying close by here, and he is not drawn up with the rest of the army. Hector has bedded him down outside the ranks until night gives way to daylight. Near him his white horses are tethered to the Thracian chariot, easy to pick out in the dark. They shine like the wing of a river swan. Kill their master and take them home; they are the finest spoils there are. There is no place on earth that hides a team like that.
Odysseus. Diomedes. Either you kill the Thracians, or hand that to me and take the horses yourself.
Diomedes. I will do the killing and you will handle the horses. You are practised at the clever business and you have the quick mind for it. A man should be put where he will do the most good.
Athena. Look. I see Paris coming this way, toward us. He must have heard from one of the guards some vague story that enemies have got in.
Diomedes. Is he with others, or coming alone?
Athena. Alone. He seems to be making for Hector's quarters, to report that there are spies in the camp.
Diomedes. Then should he not be the first one dead?
Athena. You cannot get more than what is fated. It is not allowed that he should die by your hand. Go, and be quick about the killing you did come here to do. And I will pass myself off as Aphrodite, his ally, standing beside him to help him in his trouble, and I will answer my enemy with rotten words. That is what I mean to do. But the man it is going to happen to knows nothing of it and has heard nothing, though he is standing close enough to the words to touch them.
(Odysseus and Diomedes go off into the dark. Paris comes in from the other side.)
Paris. You there. I am talking to you, my general and my brother. Hector, are you asleep? Should you not be up? Somebody hostile is edging in on our army. Thieves, or spies of some kind.
Athena. Courage. It is Aphrodite here, keeping watch over you, and kindly. I take your war as my own business. I have not forgotten the honour you did me, and I am grateful to you for the good turn. And now, with the Trojan army winning, I have come bringing you a great friend: the Thracian son of the goddess who makes the songs, the Muse. His father is the river; they call him Strymon.
Paris. You have always been good to this city, and to me. When I judged that quarrel and gave you the prize, I laid up the greatest treasure of my life for this city, and I say so. I came because I heard something — not clearly, but a rumour has got in among the guards — that Achaean spies are here. One man tells it who never saw them; another who did see them come cannot say what they were. That is why I came to Hector's quarters.
Athena. Do not be afraid of anything. There is nothing new in the army. Hector has gone off to bed the Thracian troops down.
Paris. You convince me. I trust what you say, and I will go back to my post and stand guard with no fear in me.
Athena. Go. Take it that everything of yours is my concern; I like to see my allies come off well. And you will find out for yourself how much I want it. Now I am calling to you two over there, the pair of you with far too much fight in you. Son of Laertes, put your sharpened swords to sleep. The Thracian commander is down, the horses are taken, and the enemy have noticed and are coming after you. Run for the ships' moorings as fast as you can. Why are you waiting, with the storm breaking over you, to save your lives?
(Athena goes. The sentries come running in out of the dark, and Odysseus and Diomedes are among them.)
Chorus. Ah. Ah. Hit him, hit him, hit him, hit him. Strike. Strike. Who is that man? Look. That is the one I mean. Thieves. Those are the men stirring up this army in the dark. Here. Over here, all of you. I have them. I have them in my hands. What company is this? Where have you come from? Where are you from?
Odysseus. That is not for you to know. You die today for the harm you have done.
Chorus. Give the password, before the spear goes through your chest.
Odysseus. Halt. Steady.
Chorus. Get in close. Everyone, strike.
Odysseus. Was it you who killed Rhesus?
Chorus. No. It was you, who came to kill us—
Odysseus. Everyone, hold.
Chorus. We will not.
Odysseus. Ah. Do not strike a friend.
Chorus. Then what is the sign?
Odysseus. The word is Apollo.
Chorus. Right. Everyone, hold your spear. Do you know where the men went?
Odysseus. Somewhere over this way. We caught sight of them.
Chorus. After them, all of you, on their tracks. Or should we raise the alarm? No. It is an ugly thing to throw our own allies into a panic in the night.
Chorus. Which of the men was it who got through? Who is it, so very bold, who will boast he slipped out of my hands? Where am I to find him? Who shall I put him next to, a man who came through the dark on a foot that never flinched, through the ranks and past the guard posts? A Thessalian? Someone who lives in one of the seaside towns of Locris? Or does he pick up a living out among the scattered islands? Who was he? Where from? What country? Which god does he call the highest of them all? Is this Odysseus's work, or somebody else's? If we are to judge by what he has done before, what else? You think so? Why would I not? He is bold enough against us. What strength? Who is it you are praising? Odysseus. Do not praise a thief's smooth-talking spear.
Chorus. He came into the city once before, with a running, bleary eye, wrapped in a rag of a coat, a sword on him, hidden in the folds. He crawled about begging his food like some hired vagrant, his head dusty and filthy. And he said a great deal of foul stuff about the royal house of the sons of Atreus, pretending he hated the generals. I wish he had died, died as he deserved, before he ever set a footprint on Phrygian ground. Odysseus or not, I am afraid. Hector will blame us, the sentries. Saying what? Suspecting us. Of doing what? What are you afraid of? That they got past us— Which men? The ones who came into the Phrygian army tonight.
(A man comes in out of the dark, holding his side.)
Charioteer. Io, io. The luck a god deals is heavy. Pheu, pheu.
Chorus. Ah. Ah. Quiet, all of you, get down low. Somebody may be walking into the net.
Charioteer. Io, io. A heavy disaster for the Thracians.
Chorus. That is one of the allies, groaning.
Charioteer. Io, io. I am destroyed. And you, lord of the Thracians, you who ever laid eyes on Troy, the hatefullest sight of your life, what an ending has taken hold of you.
Chorus. Who are you? One of the allies? In the night my eyes are dull and I cannot make you out clearly.
Charioteer. Where can I find one of the Trojan lords? Where is Hector sleeping, bedded down under his shield? Which of the officers of this army do I tell what has been done to us, what somebody did to us and then went off unseen, after winding up a grief for the Thracians that anybody can see?
Chorus. Something bad seems to have come on the Thracian army, from what I can make out of this man.
Charioteer. The army is gone. The king is down, killed by a treacherous blow. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. What pain grinds at me, deep inside the bloody hole of the wound. How can I die? Was this what Rhesus and I had to die for, with no glory, after putting in at Troy to help?
Chorus. There are no riddles in the trouble he is telling. He says plainly that our allies are dead.
Charioteer. It has gone badly, and on top of badly it has gone shamefully, and that makes the evil twice the size. To die well, if a man has to die, is still bitter for the one dying — how could it not be? — but for the living it is weight and a good name for the house. We died stupidly and with no glory at all.
When Hector's own hand had bedded us down and given us the password, we slept, beaten flat by the march. No guard was set over the army, no watches through the night. Our weapons were not laid out in their places, and no goads were fitted on the horses' yokes, because our king had been told that you were on top and lying in wait by the sterns of their ships. So we simply dropped where we were and slept.
I woke out of sleep with my mind on my work, and I was measuring out the horses' feed with a generous hand, expecting to yoke them at dawn for the fighting. And through the thick dark I see two men going round and round our camp. When I stirred, they ducked down and drew off again. I shouted at them not to come near the army. I thought they were thieves out of our own allies. They said nothing. And I said nothing more either. I went back to my bed and slept again.
And a sort of vision came to me in my sleep. The horses I had reared and used to drive, standing beside Rhesus, I saw them — thinking I was dreaming — with wolves up on their backs, sitting there as if they belonged. The wolves were lashing the horses' hide with their tails and driving them on, and the mares were snorting through their nostrils, breathing rage, tossing their manes in terror. I sprang up to beat the beasts off my horses, because the fear of the night had me on my feet.
And as I lifted my head I heard the choking of dying men. A hot spring of new blood hit me, from my master, from his cut throat, out of his hard dying. I come up straight, with nothing in my hands, no spear. And while I am peering about, hunting for a weapon, a man in his prime steps up beside me and drives a sword into my lower ribs. I felt the blade go in and take a deep furrow of a wound out of me. I went down on my face. And they took the horses and the chariot and ran with them.
Ah. Ah.
The pain grinds at me. I cannot stand up straight any more.
I know what has happened, because I saw it. But how the dead men died I cannot tell you, or by whose hand. Though I can guess this much: what we suffered came from friends.
Chorus. Charioteer of the Thracian who has come off so badly, do not suspect us. The enemy did this. And here is Hector himself, coming. He has heard what happened to you, and he shares the pain of it, as he should.
Hector. You. You who have done us this enormous damage. How did the enemy's spies come in on you without your knowing, to your shame? How was the army butchered, and you never pushed them out, going in or coming out? Who is going to pay the penalty for this if not you? You, I say. You were the guard set over the army. And they are gone, without a scratch, laughing themselves sick at Phrygian cowardice and at me, their general. Now understand this, and I swear it by Zeus my father: either the whip is waiting for you, or the block and the axe, for doing a thing like this. Or else you can count Hector as nothing, and a coward.
Chorus. Io, io. It was to you, yes, to you, the strength that holds this city up, that I came running, when I brought you the news that there were fires burning by the ships. Through the whole night I never put my sleepless eye to bed, I never dozed. By the springs of the Simois I swear it. Do not set your anger on me, my lord. I am guilty of none of this. And if in time you find out that I said or did one thing out of place, send me under the ground alive. I will not ask you for anything.
Charioteer. Why are you threatening these men? Why are you working on my barbarian judgement with your woven words — you, a barbarian yourself? You did this. Nobody else would be accepted for it, not by the dead and not by us who are wounded. You will need a long, clever speech before you talk me out of believing you killed your friends. You fell in love with the horses, and for their sake you murder your own allies, after all the pressing you did to make them come. They came. They are dead. Paris shamed a host's table more decently than you have, killing your allies.
And do not tell me some Argive came and destroyed us. Who could have got over the Trojan lines and reached us, and not been seen? You were camped in front of us, you and the Phrygian army. Who was wounded, who was killed among your allies, when these enemies you talk of came through? We were the ones wounded, out on the edge, and the ones who got worse than that are not looking at the sunlight any more. To put it simply: we blame no Achaean. What enemy could have come through the dark and found where Rhesus lay on the bare ground, unless some god pointed the way for the killers? They did not even know he had arrived. No. You engineered this.
Hector. I have had allies for as long as the Achaean army has been in this land, and I have never heard a wrong word said about me by any of them. You would be the first. Never let a longing for horses take hold of me like that, so that I would kill my friends. And this is Odysseus. Who else of the Argives would ever have done such a thing, or planned it? I am afraid of the man, and something in my mind is troubled: that he may have run into Dolon as well and killed him. He has been gone a long time now and there is no sign of him.
Charioteer. I do not know these Odysseuses of yours. It was no enemy's hand that struck us.
Hector. Then believe that, if that is how it looks to you.
Charioteer. Land of my fathers, if only I could die in you.
Hector. Do not die. There is a big enough crowd of dead already.
Charioteer. Where am I to turn, with my master gone?
Hector. My house will take you in and heal you.
Charioteer. And how will the hands of the murderers nurse me?
Hector. This man will never stop telling the same story.
Charioteer. Curse the man who did it. My tongue is not pointing at you, whatever you boast. But Justice knows how it stands.
Hector. Take hold of him. Get him into my house, and see to it he has nothing to complain of. And you men, go to the people on the walls, to Priam and the elders, and tell them to bury the dead at the turnings off the highway.
Chorus. Why is some other god bringing Troy back out of her great good luck into grief again? What is he planting? Ah. Ah. Oh. Oh. What goddess is that above our heads, my king, carrying the newly killed body in her two arms? I am afraid, looking at this pain.
(The Muse appears above, holding her son's body.)
Muse. You may look, Trojans. I am the Muse, one of the sisters, the one who is honoured among clever men, and I am here because I have seen my son, my darling, killed pitifully by his enemies. And the man who killed him, Odysseus the trickster, will in time pay the penalty he owes.
Muse. With a dirge out of my own country, child, I am mourning you, you, your mother's pain. What a road you put in on, coming to Troy, an unlucky road, a miserable one. You went against me, and I told you not to go; you forced your way past your father, who begged you. Oh, my grief for you. Dear head, dear head, my child. Oh.
Chorus. As far as anyone can who has no share of your blood, I pity your son and I grieve for him.
Muse. Curse Diomedes, who came out of Oeneus's house, curse Odysseus, the son of Laertes. They have left me childless of the finest child a mother ever bore. And curse the woman who left a Greek house and sailed to a Phrygian bed under Ilion. She killed you, dearest, for Troy's sake, and she emptied a thousand cities of good men.
Muse. Thamyris, son of Philammon, there was much you did to my heart while you lived, and much when you had gone down to Hades. It was your outrage that tripped you, and your quarrel with the Muses, and it is what made me the mother of this unlucky child. For I was crossing the running water and I came too near to Strymon's fertile bed, that time we Muses came to the crag of Pangaeus with the gold in its soil, all our instruments with us, for the greatest contest of song there ever was, against that clever Thracian. And we blinded him. Thamyris, who had said so much contempt about our craft.
And when I gave birth to you, I was ashamed in front of my sisters, and ashamed of the virginity I had lost, and I put you out into the eddies of your father, the beautiful water. And Strymon did not hand you over to mortal hands to be raised, but to the girls of the springs. There you were brought up as beautifully as anyone could be, by the nymphs, and you ruled Thrace, the first of men, my child. While you were arming yourself for the bloody fighting round your own country I never feared you would die. But I told you never to put in at the city of Troy, because I knew what was fated for you. And Hector's embassies and those endless councils of elders talked you into coming and helping your friends.
And you, Athena, are the cause of every part of this death. Odysseus did nothing, and the son of Tydeus did nothing, for all that they did it. Do not imagine it has escaped me. And yet we the sister Muses honour your city above all others and haunt your land. It was Orpheus who showed men the torches of the mysteries that must not be spoken of, and Orpheus is this dead man's own cousin, the man you are killing. And Musaeus, your own holy citizen, who went further in learning than any one man ever went, was trained by Apollo and by us, his sisters. And here is my wages for it. I am holding my child in my arms and singing over him. I will not be bringing you another teacher.
Chorus. So the Thracian driver was wrong to abuse us, Hector, for planning this man's murder.
Hector. I knew that. It needed no prophets to tell me the man had died by Odysseus's arts. And when I saw the Greek army camped in my land, of course I was going to send heralds to my friends and ask them to come and help this country. I sent. He came, as he owed it to me, to share the work. But I take no pleasure at all in his being dead. And now I am ready to build him a tomb and burn a great luxury of robes on his fire. He came here as a friend, and he goes away out of bad luck.
Muse. He will not go down into the black floor of the earth. This much I will ask of the bride below, the daughter of Demeter who makes the crops grow: to let his soul go free. She owes me, and she should show that she honours the friends of Orpheus. For me, from now on, he will be as one dead, one who does not look at the light. He will never come to me again, and he will never see his mother's body. He will lie hidden in the caves of that silver-veined ground, a man who is also a god, and looking at daylight, the way the prophet of Dionysus came to live under the rock of Pangaeus, a holy god to the people who know about him.
The sea goddess's grief I will carry more easily now, because her son has to die as well. First we sisters will sing you in our dirges, and after you Achilles, on the day Thetis mourns. Pallas Athena, who killed you, will not save him. That is the kind of arrow Apollo keeps in his quiver for him.
Oh, the disasters that come of having children. The trouble human beings carry. Whoever adds it up honestly will go through life without children, and will not bury the children he had.
Chorus. This man is his mother's business now, hers to bury. But you, Hector, if you mean to do anything about what is in front of you, now is the time. This is daylight.
Hector. Move. Tell the allies to arm at once and to fill the yokes with the horses' necks. They are to hold their torches and wait for the Etruscan trumpet's call. I am confident that I will get over their army and over their wall and throw fire into the Achaean ships, and carry this coming ray of the sun to the Trojans as the day they are made free.
Chorus. Do as the king says. Let us go and put our armour on and pass the orders to the allies. Perhaps the god who is on our side will give us the victory.
(They go out. The sun is up.)