Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (19 page)

[1393]
Since then the
case stands thus, old men of Argos,
rejoice, if you would rejoice; as for me, I glory in the deed. And had it been
a fitting act to pour libations on the corpse, over him this would have been
done justly, more than justly. With so many accursed lies has he filled the
mixing-bowl in his own house, and now he has come home and himself drained it
to the dregs.

CHORUS
[1399]
We are
shocked at your tongue, how bold-mouthed you are, that over your husband you
can utter such a boastful speech.

CLYTAEMESTRA
[1401]
You are
testing me as if I were a witless woman. But my heart does not quail, and I say
to you who know it well — and whether you wish to praise or to blame me, it is
all one — here is Agamemnon, my husband, now a corpse, the work of this right
hand, a just workman. So stands the case.

CHORUS
[1407]
Woman,
what poisonous herb nourished by the earth have you tasted, what potion drawn
from the flowing sea, that you have taken upon yourself this maddened rage and
the loud curses voiced by the public? You have cast him off; you have cut him
off; and out from the land shall you be cast, a burden of hatred to your
people.

CLYTAEMESTRA
[1412]
It’s now
that you would doom me to exile from the land, to the hatred of my people and
the execration of the public voice; though then you had nothing to urge against
him that lies here. And yet he, valuing no more than if it had been a beast
that perished — though sheep were plenty in his fleecy folds — he sacrificed
his own child, she whom I bore with dearest travail, to charm the blasts of
Thrace. Is it not he whom you should have banished from this land in requital
for his polluting deed? No! When you arraign what I have done, you are a stern
judge. Well, I warn you: threaten me thus on the understanding that I am
prepared, conditions equal, to let you lord it over me if you shall vanquish me
by force. But if a god shall bring the contrary to pass, you shall learn
discretion though taught the lesson late.

CHORUS
[1426]
You are
proud of spirit, and your speech is overbearing. Even as your mind is maddened
by your deed of blood, upon your face a stain of blood shows full plain to
behold. Bereft of all honor, forsaken of your friends, you shall hereafter
atone for stroke with stroke,

CLYTAEMESTRA
[1431]
Listen
then to this too, this the righteous sanction on my oath: by Justice, exacted
for my child, by Ate, by the Avenging Spirit, to whom I sacrificed that man,
hope does not tread for me the halls of fear, so long as the fire upon my
hearth is kindled by Aegisthus, loyal in heart to me as in days gone by. For he
is no slight shield of confidence to me. Here lies the man who did me wrong,
plaything of each Chryseis at Ilium; and here she lies, his captive, and
auguress, and concubine, his oracular faithful whore, yet equally familiar with
the seamen’s benches. The pair has met no undeserved fate. For he lies thus;
while she, who, like a swan, has sung her last lament in death, lies here, his
beloved; but to me she has brought for my bed an added relish of delight.

CHORUS
[1448]
Alas! Ah
that some fate, free from excess of suffering, nor yet with lingering bed of pain,
might come full soon and bring to us everlasting and endless sleep, now that
our most gracious guardian has been laid low, who in a woman’s cause had much
endured and by a woman’s hand has lost his life.

[1455]
 O mad
Helen, who did yourself alone destroy these many lives, these lives exceeding
many, beneath the walls of Troy. Now you have bedecked yourself with your final
crown, that shall long last in memory, because of blood not to be washed away.
Truly in those days strife, an affliction that has subdued its lord, dwelt in
the house.

CLYTAEMESTRA
[1462]
Do not
burden yourself with thoughts such as these, nor invoke upon yourself the fate
of death. Nor yet turn your wrath upon Helen, and deem her a slayer of men, as
if she alone had destroyed many a Danaan life and had wrought anguish past all
cure.

CHORUS
[1468]
O Fiend
who falls upon this house and Tantalus’ two descendants, you who by the hands
of women exert a rule matching their temper, a rule bitter to my soul! Perched
over his body like a hateful raven, in hoarse notes she chants her song of
triumph.

CLYTAEMESTRA
[1475]
 Now
you have corrected the judgment of your lips in that you name the thrice-gorged
Fiend of this race. For by him the lust for lapping blood is fostered in the
mouth; so before the ancient wound is healed, fresh blood is spilled.

CHORUS
[1481]
Truly you
speak of a mighty Fiend, haunting the house, and heavy in his wrath (alas,
alas!) — an evil tale of catastrophic fate insatiate; woe, woe, done by will of
Zeus, author of all, worker of all! For what is brought to pass for mortal men
save by will of Zeus? What herein is not wrought of god?

[1489]
Alas, alas, my
King, my King, how shall I bewail you? How voice my heartfelt love for you? To
lie in this spider’s web, breathing forth your life in an impious death! Ah me,
to lie on this ignoble bed, struck down in treacherous death wrought by a
weapon of double edge wielded by the hand of your own wife!

CLYTAEMESTRA
[1497]
Do you
affirm this deed is mine? Do not imagine that I am Agamemnon’s spouse. A
phantom resembling that corpse’s wife, the ancient bitter evil spirit of
Atreus, that grim banqueter, has offered him in payment, sacrificing a
full-grown victim in vengeance for those slain babes.

CHORUS
[1505]
 That
you are innocent of this murder — who will bear you witness? How could anyone
do so? And yet the evil genius of his father might well be your accomplice. By
force amid streams of kindred blood black Havoc presses on to where he shall
grant vengeance for the gore of children served for meat.

[1513]
Alas, alas, my
King, my King, how shall I bewail you? How voice my heartfelt love for you? To
lie in this spider’s web, breathing forth your life in impious death! Alas, to
lie on this ignoble bed, struck down in treacherous death wrought by a weapon
of double edge wielded by your own wife’s hand!

CLYTAEMESTRA
[1521]
[Neither
do I think he met an ignoble death.] And did he not himself by treachery bring
ruin on his house? Yet, as he has suffered — worthy prize of worthy deed — for
what he did to my sweet flower, shoot sprung from him, the sore-wept Iphigenia,
let him make no great boasts in the halls of Hades, since with death dealt him
by the sword he has paid for what he first began.

CHORUS
[1530]
 Bereft
of any ready expedient of thought, I am bewildered where to turn now that the
house is tottering. I fear the beating storm of bloody rain that shakes the
house; no longer does it descend in drops. Yet on other whetstones Destiny is
sharpening justice for another evil deed.

[1536]
O Earth, Earth,
if only you had taken me to yourself before ever I had lived to see my lord
occupying a lowly bed of a silver-sided bath! Who shall bury him? Who shall
lament him? Will you harden your heart to do this — you who have slain your own
husband — to lament for him and crown your unholy work with an uncharitable
gift to his spirit, atoning for your monstrous deeds? And who, as with tears he
utters praise over the hero’s grave, shall sorrow in sincerity of heart?

CLYTAEMESTRA
[1551]
To care
for that duty is no concern of yours. By your hands down he fell, down to
death, and down below shall we bury him — but not with wailings from his
household. No! Iphigenia, his daughter, as is due, shall meet her father
lovingly at the swift-flowing ford of sorrows, and shall fling her arms around
him and kiss him.

CHORUS
[1560]
 Reproach
thus meets reproach in turn — hard is the struggle to decide. The spoiler is
despoiled, the slayer pays penalty. Yet, while Zeus remains on his throne, it
remains true that to him who does it shall be done; for it is law. Who can cast
from out the house the seed of the curse? The race is bound fast in calamity.

CLYTAEMESTRA
[1567]
Upon this
divine deliverance have you rightly touched. As for me, however, I am willing
to make a sworn compact with the Fiend of the house of Pleisthenes that I
will be content with what is done, hard to endure though it is. Henceforth he
shall leave this house and bring tribulation upon some other race by murder of
kin. A small part of the wealth is fully enough for me, if I may but rid these
halls of the frenzy of mutual murder.

[
Enter Aegisthus
with armed retainers.
]

AEGISTHUS
[1577]
Hail
gracious light of the day of retribution! At last the hour has come when I can
say that the gods who avenge mortal men look down from on high upon the crimes
of earth. Now that, to my joy, I behold this man lying here in a robe spun by
the Avenging Spirits and making full payment for the deeds contrived in craft
by his father’s hand.

[1583]
For Atreus,
lord of this land, this man’s father, challenged in his sovereignty, drove
forth, from city and from home, Thyestes, who (to speak it clearly) was my
father and his own brother. And when he had come back as a suppliant to his
hearth, unhappy Thyestes secured such safety for his lot as not himself to
suffer death and stain with his blood his native soil. But Atreus, the godless
father of this slain man, with welcome more hearty than kind, on the pretence
that he was cheerfully celebrating a happy day by serving meat, served up to my
father as entertainment a banquet of his own children’s flesh. The toes and
fingers he broke off . . . sitting apart. And when all unwittingly my father
had quickly taken servings that he did not recognize, he ate a meal which, as
you see, has proved fatal to his race. Now, discovering his unhallowed deed, he
uttered a great cry, reeled back, vomiting forth the slaughtered flesh, and
invoked an unbearable curse upon the line of Pelops, kicking the banquet table
to aid his curse, “thus perish all the race of Pleisthenes!” This is the reason
that you see this man fallen here. I am he who planned this murder and with
justice. For together with my hapless father he drove me out, me his third
child, as yet a baby in swaddling-clothes. But grown to manhood, justice has
brought me back again. Exile though I was, I laid my hand upon my enemy,
compassing every device of cunning to his ruin. So even death would be sweet to
me now that I behold him in justice’s net.

CHORUS
[1612]
Aegisthus, excessive triumph amid distress I do not honor. You say that of your
own intent you slew this man and did alone plot this pitiful murder. I tell you
in the hour of justice that you yourself, be sure of that, will not escape the
people’s curses and death by stoning at their hand.

AEGISTHUS
[1617]
You speak
like that, you who sit at the lower oar when those upon the higher bench
control the ship? Old as you are, you shall learn how bitter it is at your age
to be schooled when prudence is the lesson set before you. Bonds and the pangs
of hunger are far the best doctors of the spirit when it comes to instructing
the old. Do you have eyes and lack understanding? Do not kick against the goads
lest you strike to your own hurt.

CHORUS
[1625]
 Woman
that you are! Skulking at home and awaiting the return of the men from war, all
the while defiling a hero’s bed, did you contrive this death against a warrior
chief?

AEGISTHUS
[1628]
These
words of yours likewise shall prove a source of tears. The tongue of Orpheus is
quite the opposite of yours. He led all things by the rapture of his voice; but
you, who have stirred our wrath by your silly yelping, shall be led off
yourself. You will appear tamer when put down by force.

CHORUS
[1633]
As if you
would ever truly be my master here in Argos, you who did contrive our king’s
death, and then had not the courage to do this deed of murder with your own
hand!

AEGISTHUS
[1636]
Because
to ensnare him was clearly the woman’s part; I was suspect as his enemy of old.
However, with his gold I shall endeavor to control the people; and whoever is
unruly, him I’ll yoke with a heavy collar, and in truth he shall be no well-fed
trace-horse! No! Loathsome hunger that houses with darkness shall see him
gentle.

CHORUS
[1643]
Why then,
in the baseness of your soul, did you not kill him yourself, but leave his
slaying to a woman, a plague to her country and her country’s gods? Oh, does
Orestes perhaps still behold the light, that, with favoring fortune, he may
come home and be the slayer of this pair with victory complete?

AEGISTHUS
[1649]
Oh well,
since you plan to act and speak like that, you shall be taught a lesson soon.
On guard, my trusty guardsmen, your work lies close to hand.

CHORUS
[1651]
On guard
then! Let every one make ready his sword with hand on hilt.

AEGISTHUS
[1652]
My hand
too is laid on my sword hilt, and I do not shrink from death.

CHORUS
[1653]
“Death
for yourself,” you say. We hail the omen. We welcome fortune’s test.

CLYTAEMESTRA
[1654]
No, my
dearest, let us work no further ills. Even these are many to reap, a wretched
harvest. Of woe we have enough; let us have no bloodshed. Venerable elders, go
back to your homes, and yield in time to destiny before you come to harm. What
we did had to be done. But should this trouble prove enough, we will accept it,
sorely battered as we are by the heavy hand of fate. Such is a woman’s counsel,
if any care to learn from it.