The Complete Aeschylus, Volume I: The Oresteia

  AEGISTHUS exits into the palace.

  CHORUS Zeus, Zeus, what can I say, where

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  can I begin

  my prayer to the gods for help?

  How, with all goodwill, can I speak

  words adequate to all I need?

  For now the blood-smeared blades of slaughter

  will either cut

  down the whole of Agamemnon’s house,

  or else the son will kindle up

  the torch, the light

  of freedom, and regain the throne

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  and all the great wealth of his fathers.

  All by himself the brave Orestes

  will have to wrestle hard with two

  opponents. May

  he win out at last and throw them.

  AEGISTHUS (off) EH! EH! OTOTOTOI!

  CHORUS Ah! Ah!

  What does that mean? How has it all turned out?

  Let’s lie low while the work is being done,

  so we’re not blamed for any of these troubles.

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  For, look, the outcome’s clear, the battle’s over.

  SLAVE rushes from the palace.

  SLAVE Ah grief, sheer grief, my master’s murdered, killed!

  Grief yet again I cry for the third time:

  Aegisthus is no more! Open up,

  come open quick, slide back the bars

  on the women’s doors! We need a strong arm—but

  not

  to help the one who’s dead, too late for that.

  I’m shouting to the deaf, I’m squandering

  my voice on those who waste their time asleep!

  Where’s Clytemnestra? What’s she doing? Now

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  it seems her neck is on the block, and soon

  will fall to the blade of just revenge.

  CLYTEMNESTRA enters from the palace.

  CLYTEMNESTRA What’s wrong? Why the hue and cry all through the

  house?

  SLAVE I tell you the dead are killing off the living.

  CLYTEMNESTRA Ah, me. A riddle. I can guess its meaning:

  We killed by treachery, by treachery we’re killed.

  Get me an axe to kill a man. Quick!

  SLAVE reenters the palace.

  Let’s see who I am—winner or loser, for that’s

  what it’s come down to now, how far I’ve slipped!

  ORESTES enters from the palace, brandishing a bloody

  sword and followed by PYLADES.

  ORESTES You’re the one I want. This one’s had his fill.

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  CLYTEMNESTRA Ah, you are dead, beloved, great Aegisthus!

  ORESTES You love the man? Then lie with him together

  in the same grave and don’t ever again desert him.

  CLYTEMNESTRA Easy, my son, take pity on this breast, child,

  that you so often, half-asleep, would suck

  with soft gums for the milk that let you grow!

  ORESTES What do I do, Pylades? How can I kill my mother?

  PYLADES What then would become of Apollo’s oracles

  declared at Pytho, and the oath you swore?

  Better that all men hate you than the gods!

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  ORESTES I judge you winner. Your advice is sound.

  (to CLYTEMNESTRA)

  Come here. I want to kill you by his side,

  and, since you thought he was, in life, a better

  man than my father, you must sleep with him

  in death. Since this man is the one you love,

  and the one you should have loved you only hate.

  CLYTEMNESTRA I bore you, reared you. Let me grow old with you!

  ORESTES What! Kill my father, then make your home with me?

  CLYTEMNESTRA Fate had a role to play in this, my son.

  ORESTES If so, then your death, too, is no less fated.

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  CLYTEMNESTRA Aren’t you afraid, child, of a mother’s curse?

  ORESTES No, you gave me birth, then threw me out to suffer.

  CLYTEMNESTRA How so when I had sent you to a friend’s house?

  ORESTES Son of a free man, I was sold, disgraced.

  CLYTEMNESTRA If so, then where’s the price I got for you?

  ORESTES I’m ashamed to taunt you openly with that.

  CLYEMNSTRA Go on, but name your father’s lusts, as well.

  ORESTES Don’t you dare judge him: he suffered, you sat at home.

  CLYTEMNESTRA A woman suffers, kept from her man, my son.

  ORESTES But it’s his hard work that keeps her safe at home.

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  CLYTEMNESTRA You seem, child, bent on murdering your mother.

  ORESTES No, you’ll be murdering yourself, not I.

  CLYTEMNESTRA Watch out for the mad dogs of a mother’s curse!

  ORESTES What about my father’s, if I don’t do this?

  CLYTEMNESTRA I’m singing my own dirge to a deaf tomb.

  ORESTES Yes, my father’s fate is bringing you your death.

  CLYTEMNESTRA Ah, you are the snake I bore and suckled! Yes,

  it was prophetic, the terror from my dreams!

  ORESTES You did wrong, killing; now suffer wrong and die!

  ORESTES pushes CLYTEMNESTRA into the palace,

  followed by PYLADES.

  CHORUS LEADER I pity even these two their double fall.

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  But since Orestes has battled hard and long

  to reach at last this pinnacle of bloodshed,

  we prefer to have it go this way,

  so the eye of the house doesn’t altogether die.

  CHORUS Justice in the end came to the sons of Priam,

  Strophe 1

  came and it crushed them,

  and to the house of Agamemnon

  a double lion came, a double god of slaughter.

  The Pythian-guided exile drove the whole

  course by himself, spurred on by the god’s just

  counsel.

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  Shout out in triumph for the master’s house,

  Mesode 1

  how it fought free

  at last of evil, of the wearing away

  of its wealth by those two

  stained with blood, free of its wretched luck!

  And crafty Punishment has come, conducting

  war

  Antistrophe 1

  in secret. In the fray

  his hand was guided by the trueborn

  daughter of Zeus—we speak truth when we name her

  Justice—

  she breathes a withering wrath against her foes.

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  Apollo, he who haunts the great cave of

  Parnassus,

  Strophe 2

  declared it loudly:

  this trickery that is no trick.

  He roots out ingrown evil; and the will of god

  somehow prevails, so we don’t help the wicked.

  The power that rules in heaven should be feared on

  earth.

  See how the light has come, and the hard

  curb

  Mesode 2

  that held the house is broken!

  Arise, O house, arise, too long you’ve lain

  in shambles on the ground.

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  But soon will Time, the all-accomplishing,

  pass in

  Antistrophe 2

  through the front gate of the house

  when all pollution is expelled

  from the hearth by cleansing rites which drive out acts

  of bloodshed.

  Everything’s ready, fortune’s fair face is shining,

  and we can cry, the alien tenants will be evicted.

  The palace doors open, and ORESTES is seen

  standing over the dead bodies of CLYTEMNESTRA and

  AEGISTHUS. With him are servants who hold the bloody

  death robe of Agamemnon

  O
RESTES Look on these two, these tyrants of the land,

  who killed my father and despoiled my house.

  How stately for a time they were, and true

  to one another, and they are faithful still,

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  as you may judge, imagining their fate.

  And their oath too has been faithful to its pledges.

  They vowed as one to murder my poor father;

  as one they vowed to die: they’ve kept their vows.

  Now as you hear me tell new sorrows, look

  at the device they used to snare him with,

  my poor father, to manacle his hands

  and fetter both his feet.

  (to the servants)

  Here spread it out,

  gather around me and unfurl the mesh

  that caught the man. This way my father (not

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  my father but the one that looks on all

  things everywhere on earth, the Sun) may see

  my mother’s godforsaken work, and so

  bear witness for me on my day of judgment

  that it was with justice I pursued this death,

  my mother’s death. As for Aegisthus’ death

  it’s not worth mentioning—an adulterer,

  he got what he deserved. The law’s the law.

  But she who helped to craft this foul act

  against her husband, whose children she carried

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  in her womb, in pain bore, loved for a while,

  but then, as you can see, had come to hate—

  what is she? If she had been an eel, or viper,

  wouldn’t her touch alone have had the power

  to rot someone she hadn’t even bit;

  isn’t that how far her spirit went

  in shameless daring?

  (gesturing toward the bloody robes)

  And this, what should I call this,

  speaking as “nicely” as I can? A lure

  for beasts? bath curtain? coffin shroud to wrap

  a dead man with from head to toe? No, no,

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  a net, a hunting-net would be more apt,

  a robe-made foot-trap, what any thief would have

  to draw a traveler in and steal his money,

  plying an outlaw’s trade. Yes, with a snare

  as slick as this, he easily could kill

  any number of men, and so warm his heart.

  May I never share my house with such a woman!

  I’d rather die first childless, so help me god!

  CHORUS O god, god, the awful work!

  Miserable

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  the death that ended you. For the

  survivor pain is poised to bloom!

  ORESTES Did she commit this crime or didn’t she?

  This robe’s my witness, dyed by Aegisthus’ sword.

  See how the blood-gush worked with time to spoil

  the blended colors of the embroidery.

  Now I can praise him; now I am here to mourn,

  holding this web that killed my father. Still,

  I grieve for what was done, for what was suffered,

  and for all our race, shouldering, as I do,

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  a filthy and unenviable triumph.

  CHORUS No one can live his whole life long

  immune from harm.

  O god, god, trouble has come

  here, and trouble is still to come.

  ORESTES But I, I’d have you know this, I can’t see

  how it will end. I’m like a charioteer

  driving his team far off the course, my mind’s

  unreinable, it bucks and pitches me away,

  and I’m defeated, and fear near my heart is ready

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  to sing and leap up to a raging tune.

  Before I lose hold of my senses, though,

  I openly declare to all my friends,

  not without justice did I kill my mother,

  stained as she was with murdering my father,

  and with the hatred of the gods.

  Besides,

  among the charms that brought me to this daring,

  I put Apollo first, the seer of Delphi,

  who told me I could do this guiltlessly,

  and if I failed to—I can’t name the punishment.

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  No arrow could ever scale that height of pain.

  Look how I go now, armed with this branch and

  wreath,

  a suppliant, making for earth’s naval-stone,

  Apollo’s shrine, and to the fire called

  Forever Burning, an exile from this bloodshed

  that’s my own. Apollo ordered me

  to turn to his hearth, to his alone. I tell

  all men of Argos, as time goes on:

  remember how this evil work was done;

  bear witness for me when Menelaus comes.

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  So now I go, an outcast from the land,

  leaving behind, in life, in death, this story.

  CHORUS LEADER No, you did well. Don’t yoke your mouth to evil.

  Don’t let ill-omened words now cross your lips.

  You set all Argos free when you lopped off

  the heads of these two snakes with one swift stroke.

  ORESTES sees the Erinyes, invisible to everyone else.

  ORESTES Ah! Ah! these hideous women, they’re like, like

  Gorgons, black-robed, snakes swarming over them,

  braiding and unbraiding. I can’t stay here any longer!

  CHORUS LEADER What figments whirl you about, truest of all

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  to your father? Stay calm, don’t fear. You’ve won so

  much!

  ORESTES These troubles aren’t figments, no, they’re flesh and

  blood,

  I see them, the bloodhounds of my mother’s anger.

  CHORUS LEADER Well, yes, the blood’s still dripping from your hands—

  see, that’s what put this madness in your mind.

  ORESTES Ah, Lord Apollo, how they come, they grow

  and swarm and their bloodshot eyes drip hatefully!

  CHORUS LEADER There’s only one way you can cleanse yourself:

  Apollo’s touch will free you from these troubles.

  ORESTES You can’t see them, can you? but I can,

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  they dog me, I can’t stay here any longer!

  CHORUS LEADER May good luck go with you, and may the god

  guard you with kindness, so that your fortune thrives.

  Orestes rushes off left, as the CHORUS exits right to the

  marching measure of its final lines.

  CHORUS Again, for the third time, on the royal house

  the storm has crashed,

  its curses blowing through the blood,

  and run its course. First came the feast

  of children’s flesh, Thyestes’ anguish;

  next came the grim fate of the man,

  the king, the warlord

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  of the Achaeans—killed in the bath;

  Now once again for the third time

  from somewhere comes

  a savior, or should I say a death?

  Where will it end? When will it all

  be lulled back into sleep, and cease,

  the bloody hatred, the destruction?

  EUMENIDES

  CHARACTERS

  THE PYTHIA priestess of Apollo at Delphi

  APOLLO son of Zeus, god of prophecy and purification

  ORESTES son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

  CLYTEMNESTRA killed by Orestes, now a ghost

  CHORUS of the Erinyes of Clytemnestra

  ATHENA daughter of Zeus, patron goddess of Athens

  ATHENIAN

  CITIZEN-JURORS

  ATHENIAN WOMEN

  Line numbers in the right-hand margin of the text refer to the English translation only, and the Not
es on the text beginning at page 233 are keyed to these lines. The bracketed line numbers in the running heads refer to the Greek text.

  The scene is at Delphi, before the oracular temple of Apollo. His priestess, the PYTHIA, enters from the right.

  PYTHIA Among the gods I honor in my prayer,

  I give first place to the first prophet, Earth,

  and second place to Themis, the second one

  to hold her mother’s seat of prophecy,

  or so the story goes. Then third in line,

  by Themis’ own choice and not by force,

  another Titaness took her place: Phoebe,

  child of earth, and she in turn gave it

  to Phoebus for his birthday, which is why

  he added her name to his own.

  Leaving

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  the pool and spiny ridge of Delos, he sailed

  into the ship-hive coast of Pallas and came here

  to this land to make his home on Mount Parnassus.

  The children of Hephaestus, road-makers

  who tamed the land that was untamed before,

  escorted him with deepest reverence.

  The people honored him greatly at his coming,

  as Delphus did, the country’s king and helmsman.

  And Zeus infused him with the prophet’s art,

  and put him as the fourth seer on this throne.