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    The Complete Aeschylus, Volume I: The Oresteia

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      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.

      370

      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:

      380

      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

      390

      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

      400

      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

      410

      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

      420

      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

      430

      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!

      440

      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

      450

      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

      460

      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

      470

      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

      480

      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

      490

      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,

      500

      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.

      520

      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!

      530

      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,

      540

      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,

      550

      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,

      560

      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?

      570

      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,

      580

      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

      590

      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

      600

      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.

      610

      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,

      620

      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

      630

      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,

      640

      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?”

      650

      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

      660

      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

     
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