Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (8 page)

ETEOCLES
[550]
 If
only they would get from the gods what they wish for, because of those unholy
boasts of theirs, then surely they would perish in utter ruin and misery. There
is a man for this one, too, whom you name an Arcadian, a man who does not
boast, but who knows the thing to do — Actor, brother of him I named before. He
will not allow words that lack deeds to overrun his gate and increase fear, nor
will he let in a man who carries on his hostile shield the image of the
ravenous, detested beast. That beast outside his shield will blame the man who
carries her into the gate, when she has taken a heavy beating beneath the city’s
walls. If the gods are willing, what I speak may prove true!
[
Exit Actor.
]

CHORUS
[563]
His words
penetrate to my heart, my hair stands on end  as I hear the loud threats
of these loud-boasting, impious men. May the gods destroy them here in our
land!

SCOUT
[568]
The sixth
man I will name is of the highest moderation and a seer brave in combat, mighty
Amphiaraus. Stationed at the Homoloid gate, he repeatedly rebukes mighty Tydeus
with evil names “Murderer, maker of unrest in the city, principal teacher of
evils to the Argives, summoner of vengeance’s Curse, servant of Slaughter,
counselor to Adrastus in these evil plans.” And next, with eyes looking upward,
he addressed your own brother, mighty Polynices who shares your blood, and
called him by name, dwelling twice upon its latter part. These were his words: “Will
such a deed as this be pleasing to the gods, fine to hear of and to relate to
those in the future — that you sacked the city of your ancestors and your
native gods and launched a foreign army against them? What justice is it to
drain dry the font of your existence? And how shall your fatherland, captured
by the spear for the sake of your ambition, be won over to your cause? As for
me, I will enrich this earth, a seer interred beneath enemy soil. Let us fight!
I anticipate no dishonorable death.” So the seer spoke as untroubled he held
his all-bronze shield. No symbol was fixed to his shield’s circle. For he does
not wish to appear the bravest, but to be the bravest, as he harvests the fruit
of his mind’s deep furrow, where his careful resolutions grow. I advise
you to send wise and brave opponents against him. He who reveres the gods is to
be feared.

ETEOCLES
[597]
Ah, the
pity of fate’s omen when it makes a just man associate with the irreverent! In
all things, nothing is more evil  than evil partnership. Its fruit should
not be gathered in: the field of recklessness yields a harvest of death. For it
may be that a pious man, embarked shipboard with sailors hot for some crime,
perishes along with the sort of men hated by the gods; or, a man, though
upright himself, when among fellow-citizens who hate all strangers and neglect
the gods, may fall undeserving into the same trap as they, and be subdued,
struck by the scourge of God that strikes all alike.

[609]
Just so the
seer, Oecles’ son, although a moderate, just, noble, reverent man and a great
prophet, mixes with impious, rash-talking men against his own judgment, men
stretching out in a procession that is long to retrace, and, if it is Zeus’s
will, he will be be dragged down in ruin along with them.

[615]
 So then, I expect that he will not
even charge the gates: not because he lacks courage or is weak-willed, but
because he knows that he must meet his end in battle, if the prophecies of
Loxias are to come to fruition — the god usually either holds silent or speaks
to the point. Just the same, I will station a man against him, mighty
Lasthenes, a gate-keeper who hates foreigners. He has the wisdom of an old man,
but his body is at its prime: his eyes are quick, and he does not let his hand
delay for his spear to seize what is left exposed by the shield. Still it is
God’s gift when mortals succeed.
[
Exit Lasthenes.
]

CHORUS
[626]
Gods, hear
our just prayers and fulfil them, that the city may have good fortune! Turn
aside the evils suffered in war onto those who invade our land! May Zeus strike
them  with his thunderbolt outside the walls and slay them!

SCOUT
[631]
Last I
will tell of the seventh champion, him at the seventh gate, your own brother,
and of what fate he prays for and calls down on the city. His prayer is that
after he mounts the battlements and is proclaimed king in the land, and shouts
the paian in triumph over its capture, he may then meet you in combat, and once
he kills you, that he may perish at your side, or, if you survive, make you pay
with banishment in the same way as you dishonored him with exile. Mighty
Polynices shouts such threats and invokes his native gods, the gods of his
fatherland, to watch over his prayers in every way. He holds a shield, a perfect
circle, newly-made, with a double symbol cleverly fastened on it: a woman
modestly walking in the fore leads a man in arms made, it appears, of hammered
gold. She claims to be Justice, as the lettering indicates, “I will bring this
man back and he will have his city and move freely in his father’s halls.”

[649]
Such are the
inventions fixed to their shields. [Quickly determine yourself whom you think
it best to send.] Know that you will find no fault with me in the substance of
my report, but you yourself determine on what course to pilot the city.

[
Exit Scout.
]

ETEOCLES
[654]
O my
family sired by Oedipus, steeped in tears, driven to madness by the gods and by
the gods detested! Ah, now indeed our father’s curses are brought to
fulfillment. But neither weeping nor wailing is proper for me now, lest a grief
even harder to bear is brought to life. As for him whose name is so very
fitting, Polynices, we shall know soon enough what the symbol on his shield
will accomplish, whether the babbling letters shaped in gold on his shield,
together with his mind’s wanderings, will bring him back. If Justice, Zeus’s
maiden daughter, were attending his actions and his thoughts, this might be so.
But as it is, neither when he escaped the darkness of his mother’s womb, nor in
childhood, nor at any point in his early manhood, nor when the beard first
thickened on his cheek, did Justice acknowledge him and consider him worthy.
And even now I do not think that she is standing by his side to aid the
destruction of his fatherland. Indeed, Justice would truly be false to her
name, if she should ally herself with a man so utterly audacious in his plans.
Trusting in this fact I will go and stand against him — I myself in person. Who
else has a more just claim? Commander against commander, brother against
brother, enemy against enemy, I will take my stand. Quick, bring my greaves to
protect against spears and stones!

CHORUS
[677]
No, son of
Oedipus, most dear of our men, do not be like in temperament to him who is
called by such an evil name. It is enough that Cadmeans are advancing to close
combat with Argives. That bloodshed can be expiated. But when men of the same
blood kill each other as you desire, the pollution from this act never grows
old.

ETEOCLES
[683]
If indeed
a man should suffer evil, let it be without dishonor, since that is the only
benefit for the dead. But you cannot speak of any glory for happenings that are
at once evil and held in dishonor.

CHORUS
[686]
For what
are you so eager, child? Do not let mad lust for battle fill your soul and
carry you away. Reject this evil passion while it is still young.

ETEOCLES
[689]
Since God
hastens the deed so urgently, let the whole race of Laius, hated by Phoebus, be
swept on the wind to Cocytus’ destined flood!

CHORUS
[692]
A savage
desire eats away at you, drives you to murder, blood-sacrifice proscribed by
divine law, whose only fruit is bitterness.

ETEOCLES
[695]
 True,
my own beloved father’s hateful, ruinous curse hovers before my dry, unweeping
eyes, and informs me of benefit preceding subsequent death.

CHORUS
[698]
No, do not
let yourself be driven to it. You will not be called a coward if you retain
life nobly. Will not the avenging Erinys in her dark aegis leave your house,
when the gods receive sacrifice from your hands?

ETEOCLES
[702]
The gods,
it seems, have already banished us from their care, yet they admire the grace
we offer them when we perish. So then, why should we cringe and shy away from
deadly fate?

CHORUS
[705]
 It is
only at this moment that death stands close by you, for the divine spirit may
change its purpose even after a long time and come on a gentler wind. But now
it still seethes.

ETEOCLES
[709]
Yes, the
curses of Oedipus have made it seethe in fury. Too true were the phantoms in my
sleeping visions, predicting the division of our father’s wealth!

CHORUS
[712]
Obey us
women, although you do not like to.

ETEOCLES
[713]
Recommend
something that can be accomplished; your request need not be lengthy.

CHORUS
[714]
Do not
yourself take the road to the seventh gate!

ETEOCLES
[715]
 Let
me assure you, you will not blunt my sharpened purpose with words.

CHORUS
[716]
And yet
any victory, even a cowardly one, is nonetheless held in honor by God.

ETEOCLES
[717]
A soldier
must not embrace that maxim.

CHORUS
[718]
But are
you willing to harvest the blood of your own brother?

ETEOCLES
[719]
When it is
the gods who give you evils, you cannot flee them.
[
Exit.
]

CHORUS
[720]
 I
shudder in terror at the goddess who lays ruin to homes, a goddess unlike other
divinities, who is an unerring omen of evil to come. I shudder that the Erinys
invoked by the father’s prayer will fulfil the over-wrathful curses that
Oedipus spoke in madness. This strife that will destroy his sons drives the
Erinys to fulfillment.

[727]
A stranger distributes
their inheritance, a Chalybian immigrant from Scythia, a bitter divider of
wealth, savage-hearted iron that apportions land for them to dwell in, as much
as they can occupy in death when they have lost their share in these wide
plains.

[734]
But when both
have died, each killing  the other in mutual slaughter, and the earth’s
dust has swallowed the black streams of their blood, who could offer sacrifice
that might make purification? Who could cleanse them of their pollution? O, the
new troubles of this house mixed with its evils of before!

[742]
Indeed I speak
of the ancient transgression, now swift in its retribution. It remains even
into the third generation, ever since Laius — in defiance of Apollo who, at his
Pythian oracle at the earth’s center, said three times that the king would save
his city if he died without offspring — ever since he, overcome by the
thoughtlessness of his longing, fathered his own death, the parricide Oedipus,
who sowed his mother’s sacred field, where he was nurtured, and endured a
bloody crop. Madness united the frenzied bridal pair.

[758]
Now it is as if
a sea of evils pushes its swell onward. As one wave sinks, the sea raises up
another, triple-crested, which crashes around the city’s stern. In between
a narrow defense stretches — no wider than a wall. I fear that the city will be
overthrown along with its kings.

[766]
For the
compensation is heavy when curses uttered long ago are fulfilled, and once the
deadly curse has come into existence, it does not pass away. When the fortune
of seafaring merchants has grown too great, it must be thrown overboard.

[772]
For whom have
the gods and divinities that share their altar and the thronging assembly of
men ever admired so much as they honored Oedipus then, when he removed that deadly,
man-seizing plague from our land?

[777]
But when, his
sanity regained, he grew miserable in his wretched marriage, then carried away
by his grief and with maddened heart he accomplished a double evil. With the
hand that killed his father he struck out his eyes, which were dearer to him
than his children.

[785]
Next he launched
brutal, wrathful words against the sons he had bred — ah! curses from a bitter
tongue — that wielding iron in their hands they would one day divide his
property. So now I tremble in fear that the swift-running Erinys will bring
this to fulfillment.

[
Enter
Messenger.
]

MESSENGER
[792]
Take
heart, you daughters who were nurtured by your mother. Our city has escaped the
yoke of slavery; the boasts of the powerful men have fallen to the ground.The
city enjoys fair weather and has taken on no water even though it has been
buffeted by many waves. The walls hold, and we have fortified the gates with
champions fully capable in single-handed combat. For the most part all is well,
at six of the gates.  But lord Apollo, the reverend leader of the seventh,
took for himself the seventh gate, accomplishing upon the children of Oedipus
the ancient follies of Laius.

CHORUS
[803]
What novel
happening will further affect the city?

MESSENGER
[804]
The city
is saved, but the kings born of the same seed —

CHORUS
[805]
 Who?
What did you say? I am out of my mind with fear of your report.

MESSENGER
[806]
Control
yourself now and listen. The sons of Oedipus —