The Complete Aeschylus, Volume I: The Oresteia

  The sphere of darkness stands opposed

  to the sphere of light. And yet the lament

  that glorifies brings joy, they say,

  to the sons of Atreus who lie

  here before the palace door.

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  CHORUS My son, the dead man’s spirit is not

  devoured

  Strophe 2

  by the fierce jaws of the fire;

  no, later on he lets his anger spring—

  the dead man is lamented,

  the avenger brought to light, and the just dirge

  owed to forebears and

  to fathers, stirred to action on every side,

  hunts the guilty down.

  ELECTRA So hear us, father, as each one

  Antistrophe 1

  cries out for grief with many tears:

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  now we, your children, sing this dirge

  for you over your tomb, this tomb

  that’s welcomed us as suppliants

  as well as exiles. What here is well?

  What here is free of evil? Who here

  can wrestle Ruin to a third fall?

  CHORUS But, bad as things are now, a god,

  if he wills it,

  still could alter all our crying

  to a happier key, and then

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  instead of keening by a grave

  a paean in the royal halls

  will usher in the much-

  loved mixing bowl full of new wine.

  ORESTES If only, father, you had fallen

  Strophe 3

  at Troy, run through by a Lycian spear,

  you would have left behind such glory

  in your halls! You would have left your children

  such a life that men would turn

  to look at them with admiration

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  when they walked; you would have had

  a great tomb heaped with earth, a burden

  easier for your house to bear.

  CHORUS A friend to the friends who died at Troy

  so nobly,

  Antistrophe 2

  greatest and most revered

  among the heroes there below the earth,

  and minister to those

  who rule the dark! For while he lived he was

  a king of kings, a king

  over those who wield in their hands the awesome

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  power that destiny

  allots, the sceptre citizens obey.

  ELECTRA Not even there at Troy, father,

  Antistrophe 3

  would I have wanted you to die

  and be buried by Scamander’s stream

  with all the other spear-fallen host!

  If only your killers could have been killed

  first, killed in the same way; if only—

  far off in Argos—we could have heard

  the news of their death, and never had

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  to know the troubles we know now!

  CHORUS These things you speak of, child, are better

  than gold, yes, better even

  than the great good fortune of

  the blessed race that lives

  beyond the North Wind’s lair. For there’s

  no end to wishing, you

  can do it all you want. But come now—

  since the sharp snap of this

  double lash strikes home—our side

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  already has its allies

  underground, and the hateful ones

  in power have unclean hands.

  Time now for you to act, his children.

  ORESTES This pierces straight through my ear like an

  arrow:

  Strophe 4

  Zeus, Zeus, you deliver late-

  avenging devastation from below

  to the over bold and reckless, and

  it will be paid at last, one way

  or other, the debt that’s owed to parents!

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  CHORUS May it be mine—the shrill triumphant cry

  Strophe 5

  when the man at last

  is cut down, and the woman slaughtered! Why?

  Why do I try to hide

  what nevertheless flies around and sets

  my mind to shaking; so my heart’s prow

  pushes hard against the wrath

  that blows back in against it

  just as hard, heavy with all my hatred.

  ELECTRA And when will Zeus, all flourishing,

  Antistrophe 4

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  bring his hand against them and at last

  cut off their heads? Now let a pledge

  be given to this land: I demand

  justice from the unjust! Hear me,

  Earth, and the dark lords underground!

  CHORUS But it is law: that each and every

  drop of blood spilled

  on the ground calls out for more blood spilled.

  Yes, murder cries for the Erinys

  who rise from those who died before

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  to bring ruin on the heels of ruin.

  ORESTES POPOI! Look at us now, you powers

  Strophe 6

  who rule the underworld, great curses

  of the dead, behold the last remnants

  of the Atreidae, dishonored, helpless,

  cast out from their very home!

  Where, Zeus, which way can we now turn?

  CHORUS My heart in its turn is shaken as I listen

  Antistrophe 5

  to this keening

  so that I’m stripped of hope, my mind all darkened

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  by these words I hear;

  but when its strength renews, hope brightens till,

  all pain eclipsed,

  it suddenly shines before me in its sheer

  loveliness.

  ELECTRA What do we say to prevail? Must we

  Antistrophe 6

  tell over again the miseries

  we’ve suffered, yes, at our mother’s hands?

  Fawn all she wants, it won’t soothe us,

  not ever. For from all she’s done

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  my heart’s become a savage wolf,

  enraged, and unappeasable.

  CHORUS I mourned him the way a Mede would do,

  I beat

  Strophe 7

  my breast in the strains

  of a wailing woman from Susa. You would have seen

  wave after wave

  of blows that my outstretched arms, my two hands,

  striking

  now, now clutching,

  brought down from above, from high above, blood

  splattering

  all over me

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  as my battered head resounded with the sound

  of pummeling.

  ELECTRA IO! IO! Cruel, shameless mother!

  Strophe 8

  Cruel burial, burying a king

  without his people, without the dirges

  he deserved, a husband you had

  the heart to bury and not mourn!

  ORESTES Everything in your story tells dishonor.

  Strophe 9

  But I swear

  with god’s help, with the help of my own hand,

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  she’ll pay for having

  done this to my father. Just let me kill her,

  then I can die myself!

  CHORUS And he was mutilated, did you know

  that?

  Antistrophe 9

  Cut apart,

  disfigured? And she who buried him like that

  did it to make

  his death impossible for you to bear.

  Your father died

  horribly dishonored. Now you know.

  ELECTRA You speak about my father’s death; that

  day,

  Antistrophe 7

  though, I was far

  away, humiliate
d and ignored,

  locked up inside

  a dark room like a vicious dog, crying

  great streams of grief

  as readily as someone else might laugh. Hear this

  and write it in your hearts!

  CHORUS Write it, and let the words pierce

  Antistrophe 8

  through your ears to where your mind is quiet.

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  All we have told you up to now

  is true; now burn to know the rest!

  Keep your heart clenched tight

  with anger for the fight ahead!

  ORESTES Father, listen to me! Come to your loved

  ones!

  Strophe 10

  ELECTRA Drenched in tears, I join my voice to his!

  CHORUS Our band cries out, too, in one voice:

  come back into the light!

  Hear us now my king, side with us

  against our enemies!

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  ORESTES Now force will battle force, and justice

  justice!

  Antistrophe 10

  ELECTRA O gods, answer my just prayer with your justice!

  CHORUS I shiver as I listen to them pray!

  Though it’s waited long,

  let what is destined find its way at last

  to those who pray for it.

  O trouble bred in the bloodlines,

  Strophe 11

  and blood-drenched stroke

  striking discordant notes of ruin!

  Ah, the festering wound,

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  the hideous cry, unbearable,

  the pain no one can soothe!

  Only the house and no one else

  Antistrophe 11

  outside it, none, can stop

  the festering; only the children can

  do this bloody healing!

  We sing this harsh hymn to the gods

  alive below the earth!

  So hear us now, you blessed ones

  beneath the ground,

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  answer our prayer, and send the strength

  we need to bring triumph to these children.

  ORESTES Father, who didn’t die a king’s death, grant me

  the power to be the ruler of your house!

  ELECTRA I, too, father, ask your help in this:

  to cut Aegisthus down, and get away.

  ORESTES This way you’ll have the customary feasts;

  If not, among the richly feted dead,

  as offerings steam and burn, you’ll get no honor.

  ELECTRA And I will bring wine from my cherished store,

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  my bridal wine from your house, father, and

  of all tombs I will honor your tomb most.

  ORESTES O earth send up my father to guide the battle!

  ELECTRA Persephone, grant us his transfigured power!

  ORESTES Remember the bath in which they killed you, Father!

  ELECTRA Remember the strange net they cast to catch you in!

  ORESTES You were tangled in chains forged by no blacksmith,

  father!

  ELECTRA Shrouds made to shame you as they held you fast!

  ORESTES Don’t these taunts rouse you to awaken, father?

  ELECTRA Now won’t you lift up your beloved head?

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  ORESTES Send Justice to fight beside us, those you love,

  or help us catch them in the same grip—

  if you’d like to see the ones who threw you thrown.

  ELECTRA Father, hear this too, my final cry:

  Look at your nestlings at your tomb, and pity

  our sorrows, the woman’s and the man’s alike.

  ORESTES Don’t wipe away the seed of Pelops. So long

  as we live, you yourself can’t die, though dead.

  For children keep a man’s fame living on

  after he dies; like corks that buoy a net up,

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  saving the flaxen meshes from the deep.

  ELECTRA Hear us! This keening has been all for you.

  You save yourself by honoring our words.

  CHORUS LEADER Surely, no one would reproach you for a drawnout

  prayer that compensates the tomb for tears

  unwept before. But now it’s time to act,

  since you’re poised to act. It’s time to test your luck.

  ORESTES And we will, too. But I don’t think it’s straying

  from our path to ask why she would send libations.

  What made her try, too late, to cure a sickness

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  long past curing? Such puny solace now

  to send to the dead who hates her. What was she

  thinking?

  The gift is so much less than the offense.

  Besides, a man who pours out everything

  he owns to make atonement for a life

  he’s taken only throws his wealth away,

  or so the saying goes. So tell me why

  she’s acted as she has. I want to know.

  CHORUS LEADER I know, child, I was there. I saw her shaken

  by dreams and terrors that would wake her, keep her

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  wandering through the house all night. That’s why

  the godless woman sent libations here.

  ORESTES Do you know the dream? Can you tell me what it

  was?

  CHORUS LEADER She gave birth to a serpent. That’s what she said.

  ORESTES What happened next? How did her story end?

  CHORUS LEADER She swaddled it like a baby, and laid it down.

  ORESTES What did it want to eat, the little monster?

  CHORUS LEADER She gave it, in the dream, her breast to suck.

  ORESTES How could the creature’s fangs not tear her nipple?

  CHORUS LEADER They did. And the beast sucked blood in with the

  milk.

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  ORESTES No idle dream, this vision means a man.

  CHORUS LEADER And scared to death she screamed herself awake,

  and torches the dark had blinded now were kindled

  everywhere through the palace for the queen’s sake.

  It was after that she sent libations here,

  hoping some sharp cure could cut away her panic.

  ORESTES Then, I pray to the dark earth, and to my father’s

  tomb,

  that this dream will be realized for me.

  Look how I read it, and make it all cohere:

  for if the snake slipped out of her, as I did,

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  and lay there swaddled in the very bands

  that swaddled me, and opened its big jaws

  wide for the nipple I was nurtured from,

  and sucked in blood clots with the loving milk,

  and she cried out in terror, then it follows:

  just as she gave suck to this violent sign,

  by violence she’ll die. I am the serpent.

  I am her killer. That’s what this dream predicts.

  CHORUS LEADER I make your reading of this dream my own.

  Let it come true! Now tell your friends just what

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  their roles are, what they should and shouldn’t do.

  ORESTES The plan is simple: Electra, you go inside,

  and keep what we’ve arranged to do a secret,

  so that the ones who killed an honored lord

  by treachery, will by treachery be killed,

  caught in the tangling net they caught him in,

  just as lord Apollo promised, seer

  who’s never said a false word in the past.

  Disguised as a stranger, with a traveler’s gear,

  I’ll go to the gate of the courtyard with Pylades,

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  this man here—a friend and ally to the house.

  And we’ll both speak a Parnassian accent,

  copying the way they talk in Phocis.

  Then if no one at the door shoul
d welcome us

  (given the curse that’s blackening the house)

  we’ll wait till people passing back and forth

  before the gate have noticed us, and start

  to wonder why we’re kept outside and say,

  “Why does Aegisthus shut the suppliant out,

  if he’s at home, and knows the man’s been waiting?”

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  Now listen: if I step through the courtyard gates

  and find him on my father’s throne, or if

  when he returns he meets me face-to-face,

  before he can so much as look away,

  before he can say, “Where do you come from,

  stranger?”

  know that I’ll strike him dead, ensnare him here

  along the quick edge of my sword. And then

  the Erinys, full as she is with blood, will still

  guzzle his unmixed gore, poured out in a third,

  a last libation.

  You, Electra, keep

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  a careful eye on everything inside,

  so everything turns out the way we want;

  and all you women, watch what you say: say nothing

  when nothing need be said, and only speak

  what words will suit our plans. As for the rest,

  I pray to the god who stands there at the door,

  watch over me, and guide this sword of mine

  straight home in the struggle I’m about to face.

  ELECTRA enters the palace. ORESTES and PYLADES move to one side.

  CHORUS No one can count the terrors that the