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Title: Æschylos Tragedies and Fragments
Author: Æschylos
Translator: E. H. Plumptre
Release Date: September 30, 2016 [EBook #53174]
Language: English
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ÆSCHYLOS TRAGEDIES AND FRAGMENTS
Translated by the late
E. H. PLUMPTRE D.D.
Dean of Wells
WITH NOTES AND
RHYMED CHORAL ODES
IN TWO PARTS
BOSTON U.S.A.
D. C. HEATH & CO. PUBLISHERS
1901
7
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
The reception accorded to the pocket edition of Dean
Plumptre's “Dante” has encouraged the publishers to
issue in the same format the Dean's masterly translation
of the Tragedies of Æschylos.
In preparing the present issue they have followed the
carefully revised text of the second edition, and have
included the scholarly and suggestive annotations with
which the Dean invariably delighted to enrich his work
as a translator.
The seven Plays, which are all that remain of the
seventy or eighty with which Æschylos is credited, are
presented in their chronological order. Passages in which
the reading or the rendering is more or less conjectural,
and in which, accordingly, the aid of the commentator is
advisable, are marked by an asterisk; and passages
which are regarded as spurious by editors of authority
have been placed in brackets.
In translating the Choral Odes the Dean used such
unrhymed metres—observing the strophic and antistrophic
8arrangement—as seemed to him most analogous in their
general rhythmical effect to those of the original. He
added in an appendix, however, for the sake of those who
preferred the rhymed form with which they were familiar,
a rhymed version of the chief Odes of the Oresteian
trilogy. Those in the other dramas did not appear to him
to be of equal interest, or to lend themselves with equal
facility to a like attempt. The Greek text on which the
translation is based is, for the most part, that of Mr.
Paley's edition of 1861.
A translation was also given of the Fragments which
have survived the wreck of the lost plays, so that the
work contains all that has been left to us associated
with the name of Æschylos.
In the present edition a chronological outline has been
substituted for the biographical sketch of the poet, who
from his daring enlargement of the scope of the drama,
the magnificence of his spectacular effects and the
splendour of his genius, was rightly honoured as “the
Father of Tragedy.”
Birth at Eleusis, in Attica, of Æschylos, son of Euphorion.
510
Expulsion of the Peisistratidæ. Democratic constitution of Cleisthenes.
Approximate date of incident in the legend that Æschylos was set to watch grapes as they were ripening for the vintage, and fell asleep; and lo! as he slept Dionysos appeared to him and bade him give himself to write tragedies for the great festival of the god. And when he awoke, he found himself invested with new powers of thought and utterance, and the work was as easy to him as if he had been trained to it for many years (Pausan, Att. i. 21, § 3).[1]
500
Birth of Anaxagoras.
499
Æschylos exhibited his first tragedy, in unsuccessful competition with Pratinas and Chœrilos.
12
The wooden scaffolding broke beneath the crowd of spectators, and the accident led the Athenians to build their first stone theatre for the Dionysiac festivals.
Partly out of annoyance at his defeat, it is said, and partly in a spirit of adventure, Æschylos sailed for Sicily.
497
Death of Pythagoras (?).
495
Birth of Sophocles at Colonos.
491
Æschylos at Athens.
490
The Battle of Marathon. Æschylos and his brothers, Kynægeiros and Ameinias, so distinguished themselves, that the Athenians ordered their heroic deeds to be commemorated in a picture.
Death of Theognis (?).
488
Prize awarded to Simonides for an elegy on Marathon. Æschylos, piqued, it is said, at his failure in the competition, again departed to Sicily.
485
Xerxes succeeded Dareios.
484
Æschylos won, in a dramatic contest with Pratinas, Chœrilos, and Phrynichos, the first of a series of thirteen successes.
Birth of Herodotos.
480
Athens burnt by Xerxes.
Æschylos fought at Artemisium and Salamis. At Salamis his brother Ameinias lost his hand, and was awarded the prize of valour.
Sophocles led the Chorus of Victory.
Birth of Euripides.
13479
Æschylos at the Battle of Platæa.
477
Commencement of Athenian supremacy.
473
Æschylos carried off the first prize with The Persians (the first of the extant plays), which belonged to a tetralogy that included two tragedies, Phineus and Glaucos, and a satyric drama, Prometheus the Fire-stealer.
The Persians has the interest of being a contemporary record of the great sea-fight at Salamis by an eye-witness.
471
Æschylos appears to have produced this year his next tetralogy, of which The Seven against Thebes survives.
The play was directed against the policy of aiming at the supremacy of Athens by attacking other Greek States, and, in brief, maintained the policy of Aristeides as against that of Themistocles.
Birth of Thucydides.
468
Sophocles gained his first victory in tragedy with his Triptolemos; Æschylos defeated.
Æschylos charged with impiety, on the ground that he had profaned the Mysteries by introducing on the stage rites known only to the initiated; tried and acquitted; departure for Syracuse.
467
Æschylos at the court of Hieron at Syracuse, where he is said to have composed dramas on local legends, such as The Women of Ætna.
Death of Simonides.
461
Ostracism of Kimon; ascendency of Pericles.
14460-59
Probable date of The Suppliants, if the play be connected with the alliance between Argos and Athens (B.C. 461), and the war with the Persian forces in Egypt, upon which the Athenians had entered as allies of the Libyan Prince Inaros. (B.C. 460.)
The date of Prometheus Bound has been referred to B.C. 470 on the strength of a description of Ætna (vv. 370-380), which is supposed to be a reference to the eruption of B.C. 477. Internal evidence, however, seems to warrant the view that The Suppliants and the Prometheus Bound were separated by only a brief interval of time.
458
Æschylos in Athens. He found new men and new methods; institutions, held most sacred as the safeguard of Athenian religion, were being criticised and attacked; the Court of Areiopagos was threatened with abolition under pretence of reform.
Production of the Oresteian Trilogy (or, rather, tetralogy, as in addition to the Agamemnon, the Libation-pourers, and the Eumenides, there was a satyric drama, Proteus).
This trilogy was a conservative protest, religious, social, and political, which culminated in the assertion of the divine authority of the Areiopagos.
Popular feeling was once more excited against the poet, who left Athens never to return, and settled at Gela, in Sicily, under the patronage of Hieron.
456
Death of Æschylos, aged 69.
15
An oracle foretold that he was to die by a blow from heaven, and according to the legend, an eagle, mistaking the poet's head for a stone as he sat writing, dropped a tortoise on it to break the shell.
He was buried at Gela, and his epitaph, ascribed to himself, ran: “Beneath this stone lies Æschylos, son of Euphorion. At fertile Gela he died. Marathon can tell of his tested manhood, and the Persians who there felt his mettle.”
He is said to have produced between seventy and eighty plays, of which only seven survive.
1. 16Cf., the legend of Caedmon, “the Father of English
Song.”
ARGUMENT.—When Xerxes came to the throne of
Persia, remembering how his father Dareios had sought
to subdue the land of the Hellenes, and seeking to avenge
the defeat of Datis and Artaphernes on the field of
Marathon, he gathered together a mighty host of all
nations under his dominion, and led them against Hellas.
And at first he prospered and prevailed, crossed the
Hellespont, and defeated the Spartans at Thermopylæ,
and took the city of Athens, from which the greater part
of its citizens had fled. But at last he and his armament
met with utter overthrow at Salamis. Meanwhile Atossa,
the mother of Xerxes, with her handmaids and the elders
of the Persians, waited anxiously at Susa, where was the
palace of the great king, for tidings of her son.
2. 18Note.—Within two years after the battle of Salamis, the
feeling of natural exultation was met by Phrynichos in a
tragedy bearing the title of The Phœnikians, and having for its
subject the defeat of Xerxes. As he had come under the displeasure
of the Athenian demos for having brought on the stage
the sufferings of their Ionian kinsmen in his Capture of Miletos,
he was apparently anxious to regain his popularity by a
“sensation” drama of another kind; and his success seems to
have prompted Æschylos to a like attempt five years later, B.C.
473. The Tetralogy to which the play belonged, and which
gained the first prize on its representation, included the two
tragedies (unconnected in subject) of Phineus and Glaucos, and
the satyric drama of Prometheus the Fire-stealer.
The play has, therefore, the interest of being strictly a contemporary
narrative of the battle of Salamis and its immediate
consequences, by one who may himself have been present at it,
and whose brother Ameinias (Herod, viii. 93) distinguished himself
in it by a special act of heroism. As such, making all
allowance for the influence of dramatic exigencies, and the
tendency to colour history so as to meet the tastes of patriotic
Athenians, it may claim, where it differs from the story told by
Herodotos, to be a more trustworthy record. And it has, we
must remember, the interest of being the only extant drama of
its class, the only tragedy the subject of which is not taken from
the cycle of heroic myths, but from the national history of the
time. Far below the Oresteian Trilogy as it may seem to us as
a work of art, having more the character of a spectacle than a
poem, it was, we may well believe, unusually successful at the
time, and it is said to have been chosen by Hiero for reproduction
in Syracuse after Æschylos had settled there under his patronage.
19
THE PERSIANS
Scene.—Susa, in front of the palace ofXerxes, the tomb
Chor. Wilt tell of squadron of our sea-borne ships
Defeated utterly?
Xer. I tore my robes at this calamity.
Chor. Ah me, ah me, ah me.
1010
Xer. Ay, more than all 'ah me's'!
Chor. Twofold and threefold ills!
Xer. Grievous to us—but joy,
Great joy, to all our foes!
62Chor. Lopped off is all our strength.
Xer. Stripped bare of escort I!
Chor. Yea, by sore loss at sea
Disastrous to thy friends.
Strophe VI
Xer. Weep for our sorrow, weep,
Yea, go ye to the house.
Chor. Woe for our griefs, woe, woe!
Xer. Cry out an echoing cry.
Chor. Ill gift of ills on ills.
1020
Xer. Weep on in wailing chant.
Chor. Oh! ah! Oh! ah!
Xer. Grievous our bitter woes.
Chor. Ah me, I mourn them sore.
Antistrophe VI
Xer. Ply, ply your hands and groan;
Yea, for my sake bewail.
Chor. I weep in bitter grief.
Xer. Cry out an echoing cry.
Chor. Yea, we may raise our voice,
O Lord and King, in wail.
Xer. Raise now shrill cry of woe.
Chor. Ah me! Ah! Woe is me!
1030
Xer. Yea, with it mingle dark....
Chor. And bitter, grievous blows.
Strophe VII
Xer. Yea, beat thy breast, and cry
After the Mysian type.
Chor. Oh, misery! oh, misery!
Xer. Yea, tear the white hair off thy flowing beard.
63Chor. Yea; with clenched hands, with clenchèd hands, I say,
In very piteous guise.
Xer. Cry out, cry out aloud.
Chor. That also will I do.
Antistrophe VII
Xer. And with thy fingers tear
Thy bosom's folded robe.
Chor. Oh, misery! oh, misery!
1040
Xer. Yea, tear thy hair in wailing for our host.
Chor. Yea, with clenched hands, I say, with clenchèd hands,
In very piteous guise.
Xer. Be thine eyes wet with tears.
Chor. Behold the tears stream down.
Epode
Xer. Raise a re-echoing cry.
Chor. Ah woe! ah woe!
Xer. Go to thy home with wailing loud and long.
Chor. O land of Persia, full of lamentations!
Xer. Through the town raise your cries.
Chor. We raise them, yea, we raise.
1050
Xer. Wail, wail, ye men that walked so daintily.
Chor. O land of Persia, full of lamentations!
Woe; woe!
Xer. Alas for those who in the triremes perished!
Chor. With broken cries of woe will I escort thee.
[Exeunt in procession, wailing, and
rending their robes.
3. 64“The Faithful,” or “trusty,” seems to have been a special
title of honour given to the veteran councillors of the king
(Xenoph. Anab. i. 15), just as that of the “Immortals” was
chosen for his body-guard (Herod, vii. 83).
4. Susa was pre-eminently the treasury of the Persian kings
(Herod, v. 49; Strabo, xv. p. 731), their favourite residence in
spring, as Ecbatana in Media was in summer and Babylon in
winter.
5. Kissia was properly the name of the district in which Susa
stood; but here, and in v. 123, it is treated as if it belonged to
a separate city. Throughout the play there is, indeed, a lavish
use of Persian barbaric names of persons and places, without a
very minute regard to historical accuracy.
6. Here, as in Herodotos and Greek writers generally, the
title, “the King,” or “the great King,” was enough. It could
be understood only of the Persian. The latter name had been
borne by the kings of Assyria (2 Kings xviii. 28). A little later
it passed into the fuller, more boastful form of “The King of
kings.”
7. The inhabitants of the Delta of the Nile, especially those of
the marshy districts near the Heracleotic mouth, were famed as
supplying the best and bravest soldiers of any part of Egypt.—Comp.
Thucyd. i. 110.
8. The epithet was applied probably by Æschylos to the
Lydians properly so called, the barbaric race with whom the
Hellenes had little or nothing in common. They, in dress, diet,
mode of life, their distaste for the contests of the arena, seemed
to the Greeks the very type of effeminacy. The Ionian Greeks,
however, were brought under the same influence, and gradually
acquired the same character. The suppression of the name of
the Ionians in the list of the Persian forces may be noticed as
characteristic. The Athenian poet would not bring before an
Athenian audience the shame of their Asiatic kinsmen.
9. Tmôlos, sacred as being the mythical birth-place of
Dionysos.
10. “Spear-anvils,” sc., meeting the spear of their foes as the
anvils would meet it, turning its point, themselves steadfast and
immovable.
11. So Herodotos (vii. 74) in his account of the army of Xerxes
describes the Mysians as using for their weapons those darts or
“javelins” made by hardening the ends in the fire.
12. Helle the daughter of Athamas, from whom the Hellespont
took its name. For the description of the pontoons formed by
boats, which were moored together with cables and finally
covered with faggots, comp. Herod, vii. 36.
13. “Gold-born,” sc., descended from Perseus, the child of
Danaë.
14. Syrian, either in the vague sense in which it became almost
synonymous with Assyrian, or else showing that Syria, properly
so called, retained the fame for chariots which it had had at a
period as early as the time of the Hebrew Judges (Judg. v. 3).
Herodotos (vii. 140) gives an Oracle of Delphi in which the same
epithet appears.
15. The description, though put into the mouth of Persians, is
meant to flatter Hellenic pride. The Persians and their army
were for the most part light-armed troops only, barbarians
equipped with javelins or bows. In the sculptures of Persepolis,
as in those of Nineveh and Khorsabad, this mode of warfare is
throughout the most conspicuous. They, the Hellenes, were
the hoplites, warriors of the spear and the shield, the cuirass and
the greaves.
16. A touch of Athenian exultation in their life as seamen. To
them the sea was almost a home. They were familiar with it
from childhood. To the Persians it was new and untried. They
had a new lesson to learn, late in the history of the nation, late
in the lives of individual soldiers.
17. The bridge of boats, with the embankment raised upon it, is
thought of as a new headland putting out from the one shore
and reaching to the other.
18. Stress is laid by the Hellenic poet, as in the Agamemnon
(v. 895), and in v. 707 of this play, on the tendency of the East
to give to its kings the names and the signs of homage which
were due only to the Gods. The Hellenes might deify a dead
hero, but not a living sovereign. On different grounds the
Jews shrank, as in the stories of Nebuchadnezzar and Dareios
(Dan. iii. 6), from all such acts.
19. In the Greek, as in the translation, there is a change of
metre, intended apparently to represent the transition from the
tone of eager excitement to the ordinary level of discourse.
20. With reference either to the mythos that Asia and Europa
were both daughters of Okeanos, or to the historical fact that
the Asiatic Ionians and the Dorians of Europe were both of the
same Hellenic stock. The contrast between the long flowing
robes of the Asiatic women, and the short, scanty kilt-like dress
of those of Sparta must be borne in mind if we would see the
picture in its completeness.
21. Athenian pride is flattered with the thought that they had
resisted while the Ionian Greeks had submitted all too willingly
to the yoke of the Barbarian.
22. Lustrations of this kind, besides their general significance in
cleansing from defilement, had a special force as charms to turn
aside dangers threatened by foreboding dreams. Comp.
Aristoph. Frogs, v. 1264; Persius, Sat. ii. 16.
23. The political bearing of the passage as contrasting this
characteristic of the despotism of Persia with the strict account
to which all Athenian generals were subject, is, of course,
unmistakable.
24. The question, which seems to have rankled in the minds of
the Athenians, is recorded as an historical fact, and put into the
mouth of Dareios by Herodotos (v. 101). He had asked it on
hearing that Sardis had been attacked and burnt by them.
25. The words point to the silver mines of Laureion, which had
been worked under Peisistratos, and of which this is the first
mention in Greek literature.
26. Once more the contrast between the Greek hoplite and the
light-armed archers of the invaders is dwelt upon. The next
answer of the Chorus dwells upon the deeper contrast, then
prominent in the minds of all Athenians, between their democratic
freedom and the despotism of Persia. Comp. Herod.
v. 78.
27. The system of postal communications by means of couriers
which Dareios had organised had made their speed in running
proverbial (Herod. vii. 97).
28. With the characteristic contempt of a Greek for other
races, Æschylos makes the Persians speak of themselves
throughout as 'barbarians,' 'barbaric.'
30. Possibly Salamis itself, as famed for the doves which were
reared there as sacred to Aphrodite, but possibly also one of the
smaller islands in the Saronic gulf, which the epithet would be
enough to designate for an Athenian audience. The “coasts of
the Sileni” in v. 305 are identified by scholiasts with Salamis.
31. Perhaps—“And ten of these selected as reserve.”
32. As regards the number of the Persian ships, 1000 of average,
and 207 of special swiftness. Æschylos agrees with Herodotos,
who gives the total of 1207. The latter, however, reckons the
Greek ships not at 310, but 378 (vii. 89, viii. 48).
33. The fact that Athens had actually been taken, and its chief
buildings plundered and laid waste, was, of course, not a pleasant
one for the poet to dwell on. It could hardly, however, be
entirely passed over, and this is the one allusion to it. In the
truest sense it was still “unsacked:” it had not lost its most
effective defence, its most precious treasure.
34. As the story is told by Herodotos (vii. 75), this was Sikinnos,
the slave of Themistocles, and the stratagem was the device of
that commander to save the Greeks from the disgrace and ruin
of a sauve qui peut flight in all directions.
35. The Greeks never beheaded their criminals, and the punishment
is mentioned as being specially characteristic of the barbaric
Persians.
36. The Æginetans and Megarians, according to the account
preserved by Diodoros (xi. 18), or the Lacedæmonians, according
to Herodotos (viii. 65).
37. This may be meant to refer to the achievements of Ameinias
of Pallene, who appears in the traditional life of Œschylos as
his youngest brother.
38. Sc., in Herod. viii. 60, the strait between Salamis and the
mainland.
39. Tunny-fishing has always been prominent in the occupations
on the Mediterranean coasts, and the sailors who formed so
large a part of every Athenian audience would be familiar with
the process here described, of striking or harpooning them.
Aristophanes (Wasps, 1087) coins (or uses) the word “to tunny”
(θυννάζω) to express the act. Comp. Herod. i. 62.
40. Sc., Psyttaleia, lying between Salamis and the mainland.
Pausanias (i. 36-82) describes it in his time as having no artistic
shrine or statue, but full everywhere of roughly carved images of
Pan, to whom the island was sacred. It lay just opposite the
entrance to the Peiræos. The connexion of Pan with Salamis
and its adjacent islands seems implied in Sophocles, Aias, 695.
41. The manœuvre was, we learn from Herodotos (viii. 95), the
work of Aristeides, the personal friend of Æschylos, and the
statesman with whose policy he had most sympathy.
42. The lines are noted as probably a spurious addition, by a
weaker hand, to the text, as introducing surplusage, as inconsistent
with Herodotos, and as faulty in their metrical structure.
43. So Herodotos (viii. 115) describes them as driven by hunger
to eat even grass and leaves.
44. No trace of this passage over the frozen Strymon appears
in Herodotos, who leaves the reader to imagine that it was
crossed, as before, by a bridge. It is hardly, indeed, consistent
with dramatic probability that the courier should have remained
to watch the whole retreat of the defeated army; and on this and
other grounds, the latter part of the speech has been rejected by
some critics as a later addition.
45. The Ionians, not of the Asiatic Ionia, but of Attica.
47. The ritual described is Hellenic rather than Persian, and
takes its place (Soph. Electr. 836; Eurip. Iphig. Taur. 583;
Homer, Il. xxiii. 219) as showing what offerings were employed
to soothe or call up the spirits of the dead. Comp. Pliny, Hist.
Nat. xxx.
48. The description obviously gives the state dress of the Persian
kings. They alone wore the tiara erect. Xen. Kyrop. viii. 3, 13.
49. Either that he has felt the measured tread of the mourners
round his tomb, as they went wailing round and round, or that
he has heard the rush of armies, and seen the plain tracked by
chariot-wheels, and comes, not knowing all these things, to learn
what it means.
50. The words point to the widespread belief that when the
souls of the dead were permitted to return to the earth, it was
with strict limitations as to the time of their leave of absence.
52. According to Herodotos (vii. 225) two brothers of Xerxes
fell at Thermopylæ.
53. As Herodotos (viii. 117) tells the story, the bridge had been
broken by the tempest before Xerxes reached it.
54. Probably Mardonios and Onomacritos the Athenian soothsayer
are referred to, who, according to Herodotos (vii. 6, viii.
99) were the chief instigators of the expedition.
55. Astyages, the father-in-law of Kyaxares and grandfather of
Kyros. In this case Æschylos must be supposed to accept
Xenophon's statement that Kyaxares succeeded to Astyages.
Possibly, however, the Median may be Kyaxares I., the father
of Astyages, and so the succession here would harmonise with
that of Herodotos. The whole succession must be looked on as
embodying the loose, floating notions of the Athenians as to the
history of their great enemy, rather than as the result of inquiry.
56. Stress is laid on the violence to which the Asiatic Ionians
had succumbed, and their resistance to which distinguished
them from the Lydians or Phrygians, whose submission had
been voluntary.
57. Mardos. Under this name we recognise the Pseudo-Smerdis
of Herodotos (iii. 67), who, by restoring the dominion of the
Median Magi, the caste to which he himself belonged, brought
shame upon the Persians.
58. Possibly another form of Intaphernes, who appears in
Herodotos (iii. 70) as one of the seven conspirators against the
Magian Pseudo-Smerdis.
59. The force of 300,000 men left in Greece under Mardonios
(Herod. viii. 113), afterwards defeated at Platæa.
60. Comp. the speech of Mardonios urging his plan on Xerxes
(Herod. viii. 100).
61. This was of course a popular topic with the Athenians,
whose own temples had been outraged. But other sanctuaries
also, the temples at Delphi and Abæ, had shared the same fate,
and these sins against the Gods of Hellas were naturally connected
in the thoughts of the Greeks with the subsequent
disasters of the Persians. In Egypt these outrages had an
iconoclastic character. In Athens they were a retaliation for
the destruction of the temple at Sardis (Herod. v. 102).
62. The reference to the prominent part taken by the Peloponnesian
forces in the battle of Platæa is probably due to the
political sympathies of the dramatist.
63. The speech of Atossa is rejected by Paley, on internal
grounds, as spurious.
64. Apparently an allusion to the oracle given to Crœsos, that he,
if he crossed the Halys, should destroy a great kingdom.
65. The name originally given to the Echinades, a group of
islands at the mouth of the Acheloös, was applied generically
to all islands lying near the mouth of all great rivers, and here,
probably, includes Imbros, Thasos, and Samothrakè.
66. The geography is somewhat obscure, but the words seem
to refer to the portion of the islands that are named as opposite
(in a southerly direction) to the promontory of the Troad.
67. Salamis in Kypros had been colonised by Teukros, the son
of Aias, and had received its name in remembrance of the island
in the Saronic Gulf.
68. The Mariandynoi, a Paphlagonian tribe, conspicuous for their
orgiastic worship of Adonis, had become proverbial for the
wildness of their plaintive dirges.
69. The name seems to have been an official title for some
Inspector-General of the Army. Comp. Aristoph. Acharn. v. 92.
70. As in the account which Herodotos gives (vii. 60) of the way
in which the army of Xerxes was numbered, sc., by enclosing
10,000 men in a given space, and then filling it again and again
till the whole army had passed through.
72. Perhaps referring to the waggon-chariots in which the rider
reclines at ease, either protected by a canopy, or, as in the
Assyrian sculptures and perhaps in the East generally, overshadowed
by a large umbrella which an eunuch holds over
him.
65
THE SEVEN WHO FOUGHT AGAINST THEBES
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Eteocles
Scout
Herald
Ismene
Antigone
Chorus of Theban Maidens
ARGUMENT.—When Œdipus king of Thebes discovered
that he had unknowingly been the murderer of
his father, and had lived in incest with his mother, he
blinded himself. And his two sons, Eteocles and
Polyneikes, wishing to banish the remembrance of these
horrors from the eyes of men, at first kept him in confinement.
And he, being wroth with them, prayed that they
might divide their inheritance with the sword. And they,
in fear lest the prayer should be accomplished, agreed to
reign in turn, each for a year, and Eteocles, as the elder
of the two, took the first turn. But when at the end of
the year Polyneikes came to ask for the kingdom, Eteocles
refused to give way, and sent him away empty. So
Polyneikes went to Argos and married the daughter of
Adrastos the king of that country, and gathered together
a great army under six great captains, himself going as
the seventh, and led it against Thebes. And so they
compassed it about, and at each of the seven gates of the
city was stationed one of the divisions of the army.
Note.—The Seven against Thebes appears to have been produced
B.C. 472, the year after The Persians.
67
THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES
Scene.—Thebesin front of the Acropolis
EnterEteocles, and crowd of Theban Citizens.
Eteoc. Ye citizens of Cadmos, it behoves
That one who standeth at the stern of State
Guiding the helm, with eyes unclosed in sleep,
Should speak the things that meet occasion's need.
73. Probably directed against the tendency of the Athenians, as
shown in their treatment of Miltiades, and later in that of
Thukydides, to punish their unsuccessful generals, “pour encourager
les autres.”
74. Teiresias, as in Sophocles (Antig. v. 1005), sitting, though
blind, and listening, as the birds flit by him, and the flames burn
steadily or fitfully; a various reading gives “apart from sight.”
75. Enyo, the goddess of war, and companion of Ares.
76. Amphiaraos the seer had prophesied that Adrastos alone
should return home in safety. On his car, therefore, the other
chieftains hung the clasps, or locks of hair, or other memorials
which in the event of their death were to be taken to
their parents.
77. The Hellenic feeling, such as the Platæans appealed to in
the Peloponnesian war (Thuc. iii. 58, 59), that it was noble and
right for Hellenes to destroy a city of the barbarians, but that
they should spare one belonging to a people of their own stock.
78. The characteristic feature of the Argive soldiers was, that
they bore a shield painted white (comp. Sophocles, Antig. v.
114). The leaders alone appear to have embellished this with
devices and mottoes.
79. In solemn supplications, the litanies of the ancient world,
especially in those to Pallas, the suppliants carried with them in
procession the shawl or peplos of the Goddess, and with it
enwrapt her statue. To carry boughs of trees in the hands was
one of the uniform, probably indispensable, accompaniments of
such processions.
80. The words recall our thoughts to the original use of the trident,
which became afterwards a symbol of Poseidon, as
employed by the sailors of Hellas to spear or harpoon the
larger fish of the Archipelago. Comp. Pers. v. 426, where the
slaughter of a defeated army is compared to tunny-fishing.
81. Cadmos, probably “the man from the East,” the Phœnikian
who had founded Thebes, and sown the dragon's seed, and
taught men a Semitic alphabet for the non-Semitic speech of
Hellas.
82. Worthy of his name as the Wolf-destroyer, mighty to destroy
his foes.
83. Possibly “from battlements attacked.” In the primitive
sieges of Greek warfare stones were used as missiles alike by
besieged and besiegers.
84. The name of Onca belonged especially to the Theban worship
of Pallas, and was said to have been of Phœnikian origin,
introduced by Cadmos. There seems, however, to have been a
town Onkæ in Bœotia, with which the name was doubtless
connected.
85. “Alien,” on account of the difference of dialect between the
speech of Argos and that of Bœotia, though both were Hellenic.
86. The vehemence with which Eteocles reproves the wild
frenzied wailing of the Chorus may be taken as an element of
the higher culture showing itself in Athenian life, which led
Solon to restrain such lamentations by special laws (Plutarch,
Solon, c. 20). Here, too, we note in Æschylos an echo of the
teaching of Epimenides.
87. As now the sailor of the Mediterranean turns to the image
of his patron saint, so of old he ran in his distress to the figure
of his God upon the prow of his ship (often, as in Acts xxviii.
II, that of the Dioscuri), and called to it for deliverance (comp.
Jonah i. 8).
88. Eteocles seems to wish for a short, plain prayer for deliverance,
instead of the cries and supplications and vain repetitions
of the Chorus.
89. The thought thus expressed was, that the Gods, yielding to
the mightier law of destiny, or in their wrath at the guilt of men,
left the city before its capture. The feeling was all but universal.
Its two representative instances are found in Virgil, Æn. 351—
“Excessere omnes adytis arisque relictis
Di quibus imperium hoc steterat;”
and the narrative given alike by Tacitus (Hist. v. 13), and
Josephus (Bell. Jud. vi. 5, 3), that the cry “Let us depart hence,”
was heard at midnight through the courts of the Temple, before
the destruction of Jerusalem.
90. Sc. Blood must be shed in war. Ares would not be Ares
without it. It is better to take it as it comes.
91. Sc., the company of Gods, Pallas, Hera and the others whom
the Chorus had invoked.
92. Reference to this custom, which has passed from Pagan
temples into Christian churches, is found in the Agamemnon, v.
562. It was connected, of course, with the general practice of
offering as ex votos any personal ornaments or clothing as a token
of thanksgiving for special mercies.
93. Rivers and streams as the children of Tethys and Okeanos.
94. Here, as in v. 571, Tydeus appears as the real leader of the
expedition, who had persuaded Adrastos and the other chiefs to
join in it, and Amphiaraos, the prophet, the son of Œcleus, as
having all along foreseen its disastrous issue. The account of the
expedition in the Œdipus at Colonos (1300-1330) may be compared
with this.
95. The legend of the Medusa's head on the shield of Athena
shows the practice of thus decorating shields to have been of remote
date. In Homer it does not appear as common, and the account
given of the shield of Achilles lays stress upon the work of the
artist (Hephæstos) who wrought the shield in relief, not, as here,
upon painted insignia. They were obviously common in the
time of Æschylos.
96. The older families of Thebes boasted that they sprang from
the survivors of the Sparti, who, sprung from the Dragon's teeth,
waged deadly war against each other, till all but five were slain.
The later settlers, who were said to have come with Cadmos,
stood to these as the “greater” to the “lesser gentes” at Rome.
97. So in the Antigone of Sophocles (v. 134), Capaneus appears
as the special representative of boastful, reckless impiety.
98. Artemis, as one of the special Deities to whom Thebes was
consecrated.
99. Apparently an Asiatic invention, to increase the terror of an
attack of war-chariots.
100. The phrase and thought were almost proverbial in Athens.
Men, as citizens, were thought of as fed at a common table,
bound to contribute their gifts to the common stock. When
they offered up their lives in battle, they were giving, as Pericles
says (Thucyd. ii. 43), their noblest “contribution,” paying in
full their subscription to the society of which they were members.
101. Thyiad, another name for the Mænads, the frenzied attendants
on Dionysos.
102. Sc., in the legends of Typhon, not he, but Zeus, had proved
the conqueror. The warrior, therefore, who chose Typhon for
his badge was identifying himself with the losing, not the winning
side.
103. The name, as we are told in v. 542, is Parthenopæos, the
maiden-faced.
104. The Sphinx, besides its general character as an emblem of
terror, had, of course, a special meaning as directed to the
Thebans. The warrior who bore it threatened to renew the old
days when the monster whom Œdipus had overcome had laid
waste their city.
105. Sc., the Sphinx on his shield will not be allowed to enter the
city. It will only serve as a mark, attracting men to attack both
it and the warrior who bears it.
106. The quarrel between Tydeus and the seer Amphiaraos had
been already touched upon.
107. I have used the old English word to express a term of like
technical use in Athenian law processes. As the “sumpnour”
called witnesses or parties to a suit into court, so Tydeus had
summoned the Erinnys to do her work of destruction.
108. Sc., so pronounced his name as to emphasise the significance
of its two component parts, as indicating that he who bore
it was a man of much contention.
109. The words are obscure, but seem to refer to the badge of
Polyneikes, the figure of Justice described in v. 643 as on his
shield. How shall that Justice, the seer asks, console Jocasta for
her son's death? Another rendering gives,
“And how shall Justice quench a mother's life?”
the “mother” being the country against which Polyneikes
wars.
110. The words had a twofold fulfilment (1) in the burial of
Amphiaraos, in the Theban soil; and (2) in the honour which
accrued to Thebes after his death, through the fame of the
oracle at his shrine.
111. The passage cannot be passed over without noticing the old
tradition (Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 3), that when the actor uttered
these words, he and the whole audience looked to Aristeides,
surnamed the Just, as recognising that the words were true of
him as they were of no one else. “Best,” instead of “just,” is,
however, a very old various reading.
112. If the former reference to Aristeides be admitted, we can
scarcely avoid seeing in this passage an allusion to Themistocles,
as one with whose reckless and democratic policy it was dangerous
for the more conservative leader to associate himself.
113. The far-off city, not of Thebes, but of Hades. In the legend
of Thebes, the earth opened and swallowed up Amphiaraos, as
in 583.
114. The short spear was usually carried under the shelter of the
shield; when brought into action it was, of course, laid bare.
116. The Chorus means that if Eteocles would allow himself to
be overcome in this contest of his wishes with their prayers the
Gods would honour that defeat as if it were indeed a victory.
He makes answer that the very thought of being overcome implied
in the word “defeat” in anything is one which the true
warrior cannot bear.
117. The “Chalyb stranger” is the sword, thought of as taking
its name from the Skythian tribe of the Chalybes, between
Colchis and Armenia, and passing through the Thrakians into
Greece.
118. The two brothers, i.e., are set at one again, but it is not in
the bonds of friendship, but in those of death.
119. The image meets us again in Agam. 980. Here the thought
is, that a man too prosperous is like a ship too heavily freighted.
He must part with a portion of his possession in order to save
the rest. Not to part with them leads, when the storm rages,
to an enforced abandonment and utter loss.
121. This seems to have been one form of the legends as to the
cause of the curse which Œdipus had launched upon his sons,
An alternative rendering is—
And with a mind enraged
At thought of what they were whom he had reared,
He at his sons did hurl
His curses dire and dark.
122. Sc., when Eteocles fell, Apollo took his place at the seventh
gate, and turned the tide of war in favour of the Thebans.
123. I follow in this dialogue the arrangement which Paley
adopts from Hermann.
124. There seems an intentional ambiguity. They are “borne
on,” but it is as the corpses of the dead are borne to the
sepulchre.
125. Not here the curse uttered by Œdipus, but that which
rested on him and all his kin. There is possibly an allusion to
the curse which Pelops is said to have uttered against Laios
when he stole his son Chrysippos. Comp. v. 837.
126. As in v. 763 we read of the brothers as made one in death,
so now of the concord which is wrought out by conflict, the
concord, i.e., of the grave.
127. The Chorus are called on to change their character, and to
pass from the attitude of suppliants, with outstretched arms, to
that of mourners at a funeral, beating on their breasts. But,
perhaps, the call is addressed to the mourners who are seen approaching
with Ismene and Antigone.
128. The thought is drawn from the theoris or pilgrim-ship,
which went with snow-white sails, and accompanied by joyful
pæans, on a solemn mission from Athens to Delos. In contrast
with this type of joy, Æschylos draws the picture of the boat of
Charon, which passes over the gloomy pool accompanied by the
sighs and gestures of bitter lamentation. So, in the old Attic
legend, the ship that annually carried seven youths and maidens
to the Minotaur of Crete was conspicuous for its black sails.
129. The “Chalyb,” or iron sword, which the Hellenes had
imported from the Skythians. Comp. vv. 70. 86.
130. The lyrical, operative character of Greek tragedies has to be
borne in mind as we read passages like that which follows. They
were not meant to be read. Uttered in a passionate recitative,
accompanied by expressive action, they probably formed a very
effective element in the actual representation of the tragedy. We
may look on it as the only extant specimen of the kind of wailing
which was characteristic of Eastern burials, and which was
slowly passing away in Greece under the influence of a higher
culture. The early fondness of Æschylos for a finale of this
nature is seen also in The Persians, and in a more solemn and
subdued form, in the Eumenides. The feeling that there was
something barbaric in these untoward displays of grief, showed
itself alike in the legislation of Solon, and the eloquence of
Pericles.
131. Here, and perhaps throughout, we must think of Antigone
as addressing and looking on the corpse of Polyneikes, Ismene
on that of Eteocles.
133. The speech of the Antigone becomes the starting-point, in
the hands of Sophocles, of the noblest of his tragedies. The
denial of burial, it will be remembered, was looked on as not
merely an indignity and outrage against the feelings of the
living, but as depriving the souls of the dead of all rest and
peace. As such it was the punishment of parricides and traitors.
134. The words are obscure enough, the point lying, it may be,
in their ambiguity. Antigone here, as in the tragedy of
Sophocles, pleads that the Gods have pardoned; they still command
and love the reverence for the dead, which she is about to
show. The herald catches up her words and takes them in
another sense, as though all the honour he had met with from
the Gods had been defeat, and death, and shame, as the reward
of his sacrilege. Another rendering, however, gives—
“Yes, so the Gods have done with honouring him.”
135. The words are probably a protest against the changeableness
of the Athenian demos, as seen especially in their treatment
of Aristeides.
113
PROMETHEUS BOUND
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Prometheus
Hermes
Okeanos
Strength
Hephæstos
Force
Chorus of Ocean Nymphs
ARGUMENT.—In the old time, when Cronos was
sovereign of the Gods, Zeus, whom he had begotten, rose
up against him, and the Gods were divided in their counsels,
some, the Titans chiefly, siding with the father, and
some with the son. And Prometheus, the son of Earth or
Themis, though one of the Titans, supported Zeus, as did
also Okeanos, and by his counsels Zeus obtained the
victory, and Cronos was chained in Tartaros, and the
Titans buried under mountains, or kept in bonds in
Hades. And then Prometheus, seeing the miseries of the
race of men, of whom Zeus took little heed, stole the fire
which till then had belonged to none but Hephæstos and
was used only for the Gods, and gave it to mankind, and
taught them many arts whereby their wretchedness was
lessened. But Zeus being wroth with Prometheus for
this deed, sent Hephæstos, with his two helpers, Strength
and Force, to fetter him to a rock on Caucasos.
And in yet another story was the cruelty of the Gods
made known. For Zeus loved Io, the daughter of Inachos,
114king of Argos, and she was haunted by visions of the
night, telling her of his passion, and she told her father
thereof. And Inachos, sending to the God at Delphi,
was told to drive Io forth from her home. And Zeus
gave her the horns of a cow, and Hera, who hated her
because she was dear to Zeus, sent with her a gadfly that
stung her, and gave her no rest, and drove her over many
lands.
Note.—The play is believed to have been the second of a
Trilogy, of which the first was Prometheus the Fire-giver, and
the third Prometheus Unbound.
115
PROMETHEUS BOUND
Scene.—Skythia, on the heights of Caucasos. The Euxine
136. The scene seems at first an exception to the early conventional
rule, which forbade the introduction of a third actor on the
Greek stage. But it has been noticed that (1) Force does not
speak, and (2) Prometheus does not speak till Strength and
Force have retired, and that it is therefore probable that the
whole work of nailing is done on a lay figure or effigy of some
kind, and that one of the two who had before taken part in the
dialogue then speaks behind it in the character of Prometheus.
So the same actor must have appeared in succession as Okeanos,
Io, and Hermes.
137. Prometheus (Forethought) is the son of Themis (Right) the
second occupant of the Pythian Oracle (Eumen. v. 2). His
sympathy with man leads him to impart the gift which raised
them out of savage animal life, and for this Zeus, who
appears throughout the play as a hard taskmaster, sentences
him to fetters. Hephæstos, from whom this fire had been stolen,
has a touch of pity for him. Strength, who comes as the servant,
not of Hephæstos, but of Zeus himself, acts, as such, with
merciless cruelty.
138. The generalised statement refers to Zeus, as having but
recently expelled Cronos from his throne in Heaven.
139. Hephæstos, as the great fire-worker, had taught Prometheus
to use the fire which he afterwards bestowed on men.
140. Perhaps, “All might is ours except o'er Gods to rule.”
141. The words indicate that the effigy of Prometheus, now
nailed to the rock, was, as being that of a Titan, of colossal size.
142. The touch is characteristic as showing that here, as in the
Eumenides, Æschylos relied on the horribleness of the masks,
as part of the machinery of his plays.
143. The silence of Prometheus up to this point was partly, as
has been said, consequent on the conventional laws of the Greek
drama, but it is also a touch of supreme insight into the heroic
temper. In the presence of his torturers, the Titan will not
utter even a groan. When they are gone, he appeals to the
sympathy of Nature.
144. The legend is from Hesiod (Theogon., v. 567). The fennel,
or narthex, seems to have been a large umbelliferous plant,
with a large stem filled with a sort of pith, which was used
when dry as tinder. Stalks were carried as wands (the thyrsi)
by the men and women who joined in Bacchanalian processions.
In modern botany, the name is given to the plant which produces
Asafœtida, and the stem of which, from its resinous
character, would burn freely, and so connect itself with the
Promethean myth. On the other hand, the Narthex Asafœtida
is found at present only in Persia, Afghanistan, and the
Punjaub.
145. The ocean nymphs, like other divine ones, would be
anointed with ambrosial unguents, and the odour would be
wafted before them by the rustling of their wings. This too we
may think of as part of the “stage effects” of the play.
146. The words are not those of a vague terror only. The
sufferer knows that his tormentor is to come to him before long
on wings, and therefore the sound as of the flight of birds is full
of terrors.
147. By the same stage mechanism the Chorus remains in the
air till verse 280, when, at the request of Prometheus, they
alight.
148. Here, as throughout the play, the poet puts into the mouth
of his dramatis personæ words which must have seemed to the
devouter Athenians sacrilegious enough to call for an indictment
before the Areiopagos. But the final play of the Trilogy came,
we may believe, as the Eumenides did in its turn, as a reconciliation
of the conflicting thoughts that rise in men's minds out of
the seeming anomalies of the world.
149. The words leave it uncertain whether Themis is identified
with Earth, or, as in the Eumenides (v. 2) distinguished from
her. The Titans as a class, then, children of Okeanos and
Chthôn (another name for Land or Earth), are the kindred
rather than the brothers of Prometheus.
150. The generalising words here, as in v. 35, appeal to the
Athenian hatred of all that was represented by the words tyrant
and tyranny.
151. The state described is that of men who “through fear of
death are all their lifetime subject to bondage.” That state, the
parent of all superstition, fostered the slavish awe in which Zeus
delighted. Prometheus, representing the active intellect of man,
bestows new powers, new interests, new hopes, which at last
divert them from that fear.
152. The home of Okeanos was in the far west, at the boundary
of the great stream surrounding the whole world, from which he
took his name.
153. One of the sayings of the Seven Sages, already recognised
and quoted as a familiar proverb.
155. In the mythos, Okeanos had given his daughter Hesione in
marriage to Prometheus after the theft of fire, and thus had
identified himself with his transgression.
156. In the Theogony of Hesiod (v. 509), Prometheus and Atlas
appear as the sons of two sisters. As other Titans were thought
of as buried under volcanoes, so this one was identified with the
mountain which had been seen by travellers to Western Africa,
or in the seas beyond it, rising like a column to support the
vault of heaven. In Herodotos (iv. 174) and all later writers,
the name is given to the chain of mountains in Lybia, as being
the “pillar of the firmament;” but Humboldt and others identify
it with the lonely peak of Teneriffe, as seen by Phœnikian or
Hellenic voyagers. Teneriffe, too, like most of the other Titan
mountains, was at one time volcanic. Homer (Odyss. i. 53)
represents him as holding the pillars which separate heaven
from earth; Hesiod (Theogon. v. 517) as himself standing near
the Hesperides (this too points to Teneriffe), sustaining the
heavens with his head and shoulders.
157. The volcanic character of the whole of Asia Minor, and the
liability to earthquakes which has marked nearly every period of
its history, led men to connect it also with the traditions of the
Titans, some accordingly placing the home of Typhon in
Phrygia, some near Sardis, some, as here, in Kilikia. Hesiod
(Theogon. v. 820) describes Typhon (or Typhoeus) as a serpent-monster
hissing out fire; Pindar (Pyth. i. 30, viii. 21) as lying
with his head and breast crushed beneath the weight of Ætna,
and his feet extending to Cumæ.
158. The words point probably to an eruption, then fresh in men's
memories, which had happened B.C. 476.
159. By some editors this speech from “No, not so,” to “thou
know'st how,” is assigned to Okeanos.
160. These are, of course, the Amazons, who were believed to
have come through Thrakè from the Tauric Chersonesos, and
had left traces of their name and habits in the Attic traditions of
Theseus.
161. Beyond the plains of Skythia, and the lake Mæotis (the sea
of Azov) there would be the great river Okeanos, which was
believed to flow round the earth.
162. Sarmatia has been conjectured instead of Arabia. No Greek
author sanctions the extension of the latter name to so remote a
region as that north of the Caspian.
163. The Greek leaves the object of the sympathy undefined, but
it seems better to refer it to that which Atlas receives from the
waste of waters around, and the dark world beneath, than to the
pity shown to Prometheus. This has already been dwelt on in
line 421.
164. The passage that follows has for modern palæontologists the
interest of coinciding with their views as to the progress of human
society, and the condition of mankind during what has been
called the “Stone” period. Comp. Lucretius, v. 955-984.
165. Comp. Mr. Blakesley's note on Herod. ii. 4, as showing that
here there was the greater risk of faulty observation.
166. Another reading gives perhaps a better sense—
“Memory, handmaid true
And mother of the Muses.”
167. In Greece, as throughout the East, the ox was used for all
agricultural labours, the horse by the noble and the rich, either
in war chariots, or stately processions, or in chariot races in the
great games.
168. Compare with this the account of the inventions of Palamedes
in Sophocles, Fragm. 379.
169. Here we can recognise the knowledge of one who had studied
in the schools of Pythagoras, or had at any rate picked up their
terminology. A more immediate connexion may perhaps be
traced with the influence of Epimenides, who was said to have
spent many years in searching out the healing virtues of plants,
and to have written books about them.
170. The lines that follow form almost a manual of the art of
divination as then practised. The “ominous sounds” include
chance words, strange cries, any unexpected utterance that connected
itself with men's fears for the future. The flights of birds
were watched by the diviner as he faced the north, and so the
region on the right hand was that of the sunrise, light, blessedness;
on the left there were darkness and gloom and death.
171. So Io was represented, we are told, by Greek sculptors
(Herod. ii. 41), as Isis was by those of Egypt. The points of
contact between the myth of Io and that of Prometheus, as
adopted, or perhaps developed, by Æschylos are—(1) that from
her the destined deliverer of the chained Titan is to come; (2)
that both were suffering from the cruelty of Zeus; (3) that the
wanderings of Io gave scope for the wild tales of far countries
on which the imagination of the Athenians fed greedily. But,
as the Suppliants may serve to show, the story itself had a strange
fascination for him. In the birth of Epaphos, and Io's release
from her frenzy, he saw, it may be, a reconciliation of what had
seemed hard to reconcile, a solution of the problems of the
world, like in kind to that which was shadowed forth in the lost
Prometheus Unbound.
172. Argos had been slain by Hermes, and his eyes transferred by
Hera to the tail of the peacock, and that bird was henceforth
sacred to her.
173. Inachos the father of Io (identified with the Argive river of
the same name), was, like all rivers, a son of Okeanos, and
therefore brother to the nymphs who had come to see Prometheus.
174. The words used have an almost technical meaning as applied
to animals that were consecrated to the service of a God, and set
free to wander where they liked. The fate of Io, as at once
devoted to Zeus and animalised in form, was thus shadowed forth
in the very language of the Oracle.
175. Lerna was the lake near the mouth of the Inachos, close to
the sea. Kerchneia may perhaps be identified with the Kenchreæ,
the haven of Korinth in later geographies.
176. The wicker huts used by Skythian or Thrakian nomads (the
Calmucks of modern geographers) are described by Herodotos
(iv. 46) and are still in use.
177. Sc., the N.E. boundary of the Euxine, where spurs of the
Caucasos ridge approach the sea.
178. The Chalybes are placed by geographers to the south of
Colchis. The description of the text indicates a locality farther
to the north.
179. Probably the Araxes, which the Greeks would connect with
a word conveying the idea of a torrent dashing on the rocks.
The description seems to imply a river flowing into the Euxine
from the Caucasos, and the condition is fulfilled by the Hypanis
or Kouban.
180. When the Amazons appear in contact with Greek history,
they are found in Thrace. But they had come from the coast of
Pontos, and near the mouth of the Thermodon (Thermeh). The
words of Prometheus point to yet earlier migrations from the
East.
181. Here, as in Soph. Antig. (970) the name Salmydessos represents
the rockbound, havenless coast from the promontory of
Thynias to the entrance of the Bosporos, which had given to the
Black Sea its earlier name of Axenos, the “inhospitable.”
182. The track is here in some confusion. From the Amazons
south of the Caucasos, Io is to find her way to the Tauric Chersonese
(the Crimea) and the Kimmerian Bosporos, which flows
into the Sea of Azov, and so to return to Asia.
183. Here, as in a hundred other instances, a false etymology has
become the parent of a myth. The name Bosporos is probably
Asiatic not Greek, and has an entirely different signification.
184. The lines refer to the story that Zeus loved Thetis the
daughter of Nereus, and followed her to Caucasos, but abstained
from marriage with her because Prometheus warned him that
the child born of that union should overthrow his father. Here
the future is used of what was still contingent only. In the lost
play of the Trilogy the myth was possibly brought to its conclusion
and connected with the release of Prometheus.
185. Heracles, whose genealogy was traced through Alcmena,
Perseus, Danae, Danaos and seven other names, to Epaphos and Io.
186. Probably the Kimmerian Bosporos. The Tanais or Phasis
has, however, been conjectured.
187. The history of the passage in brackets is curious enough to
call for a note. They are not in any extant MS., but they are
found in a passage quoted by Galen (v. p. 454), as from the Prometheus
Bound, and are inserted here by Mr. Paley.
188. Kisthene belongs to the geography of legend, lying somewhere
on the shore of the great ocean-river in Lybia or Æthiopia,
at the end of the world, a great mountain in the far West,
beyond the Hesperides, the dwelling-place, as here, of the
Gorgons, the daughters of Phorkys. Those first-named are the
Graiæ.
189. Here, like the “wingèd hound” of v. 1043, for the eagles
that are the messengers of Zeus.
190. We are carried back again from the fabled West to the
fabled East. The Arimaspians, with one eye, and the Grypes
or Gryphons (the griffins of mediæval heraldry), quadrupeds
with the wings and beaks of eagles, were placed by most writers
(Herod. iv. 13, 27) in the north of Europe, in or beyond the
terra incognita of Skythia. The mention of the “ford of
Pluto” and Æthiopia, however, may possibly imply (if we
identify it, as Mr. Paley does, with the Tartessos of Spain, or
Bœtis—Guadalquivir) that Æschylos followed another legend
which placed them in the West. There is possibly a paronomasia
between Pluto, the God of Hades, and Plutos, the ideal
God of riches.
191. The name was applied by later writers (Quintus Curtius,
iv. 7, 22; Lucretius, vi. 848) to the fountain in the temple of
Jupiter Ammon in the great Oasis. The “river Æthiops” may
be purely imaginary, but it may also suggest the possibility of
some vague knowledge of the Niger, or more probably of the
Nile itself in the upper regions of its course. The “Bybline
hills” carry the name Byblos, which we only read of as belonging
to a town in the Delta, to the Second Cataract.
194. In the Suppliants, Zeus is said to have soothed her, and
restored her to her human consciousness by his “divine breathings.”
The thought underlying the legend may be taken either
as a distortion of some primitive tradition, or as one of the
“unconscious prophecies” of heathenism. The deliverer is not
to be born after the common manner of men, and is to have a
divine as well as a human parentage.
195. See the argument of the Suppliants, who, as the daughters
of Danaos, descended from Epaphos, are here referred to. The
passage is noticeable as showing that the theme of that tragedy
was already present to the poet's thoughts.
196. Argos. So in the Suppliants, Pelasgos is the mythical king
of the Apian land who receives them.
197. Hypermnæstra, who spared Lynceus, and by him became
the mother of Abas and a line of Argive kings.
198. Heracles, who came to Caucasos, and with his arrows slew
the eagle that devoured Prometheus.
199. The word is simply an interjection of pain, but one so characteristic
that I have thought it better to reproduce it than to give
any English equivalent.
200. The maxim, “Marry with a woman thine equal,” was ascribed
to Pittacos.
201. The Euhemerism of later scholiasts derived the name from
a king Adrastos, who was said to have been the first to build a
temple to Nemesis, and so the power thus worshipped was
called after his name. A better etymology leads us to see in it
the idea of the “inevitable” law of retribution working unseen
by men, and independently even of the arbitrary will of the
Gods, and bringing destruction upon the proud and haughty.
203. Either a mere epithet of intensity, as in our “thrice blest,”
or rising from the supposed fact that every third wave was larger
and more impetuous than the others, like fluctus decumanus
of the Latins, or from the sequence of three great waves which
some have noted as a common phenomenon in storms.
204. Here again we have a strange shadowing forth of the mystery
of Atonement, and what we have learnt to call “vicarious”
satisfaction. In the later legend, Cheiron, suffering from the
agony of his wounds, resigns his immortality, and submits to
die in place of the ever-living death to which Prometheus was
doomed.
205. It is noticeable that both Æschylos and Sophocles have left
us tragedies which end in a thunderstorm as an element of effect.
But the contrast between the Prometheus and the Œdipus at
Colonos as to the impression left in the one case of serene reconciliation,
and in the other of violent antagonism, is hardly less
striking than the resemblance in the outward phenomena which
are common to the two.
161
THE SUPPLIANTS
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Danaos
Herald
Pelasgos, king of Argos
Chorus of the daughters ofDanaos
ARGUMENT.—When Io, after many wanderings, had
found refuge in Egypt, and having been touched by Zeus,
had given birth to Epaphos, it came to pass that he and
his descendants ruled over the region of Canôpos, near one
of the seven mouths of Neilos. And in the fifth generation
there were two brothers, Danaos and Ægyptos, the
sons of Belos, and the former had fifty daughters and the
latter fifty sons, and Ægyptos sought the daughters of
Danaos in marriage for his sons. And they, looking on
the marriage as unholy, and hating those who wooed
them, took flight and came to Argos, where Pelasgos then
ruled as king, as to the land whence Io, from whom they
sprang, had come. And thither the sons of Ægyptos
followed them in hot pursuit.
163Scene.—Argos, the entrance of the gates. Statues ofZeus,
Artemis, and other Gods, placed against the walls
Enter Chorus of the Daughters of Danaos,[206]in the dress
of Egyptian women, with the boughs of suppliants in
their hands, and fillets of white wool twisted round
them, chanting as they move in procession to take up
their position round the thymele
206. The daughters of Danaos are always represented as fifty in
number. It seems probable, however, that the vocal chorus was
limited to twelve, the others appearing as mutes.
208. Syria is used obviously with a certain geographical vagueness,
as including all that we know as Palestine, and the wilderness
to the south of it, and so as conterminous with Egypt.
209. Elsewhere in Æschylos (Agam. 33, Fr. 132) we trace
allusion to games played with dice. Here we have a reference
to one, the details of which are not accurately known to us, but
which seems to have been analogous to draughts or chess.
210. See the whole story, given as in prophecy, in the Prometheus,
v. 865-880.
211. The invocation is addressed—(1) to the Olympian Gods in
the brightness of heaven; (2) to the Chthonian deities in the
darkness below the earth; (3) to Zeus, the preserver, as the
supreme Lord of both.
212. An Athenian audience would probably recognise in this a
description of the swampy meadows near the coast of Lerna.
The descendants of Io had come to the very spot where the
tragic history of their ancestors had had its origin.
213. The invocation passes on to Epaphos, as a guardian deity
able and willing to succour his afflicted children.
214. Philomela. See the tale as given in the notes to Agam. 1113.
215. “Streams,” as flowing through the shady solitude of the
groves which the nightingale frequented.
216. “Ionian,” as soft and elegiac, in contrast with the more
military character of Dorian music.
217. In the Greek the paronomasia turns upon the supposed
etymological connection between θεὸς and τιθήμι. I have here,
as elsewhere, attempted an analogous rather than identical
jeu de mot.
218. The Greek word which I have translated “bluff” was one
not familiar to Attic ears, and was believed to be of Kyrenean
origin. Æschylos accordingly puts it into the lips of the
daughters of Danaos, as characteristic more or less of the
“alien speech” of the land from which they came.
219. So in v. 235 Danaos speaks of the “second Zeus” who sits
as Judge in Hades. The feeling to which the Chorus gives
utterance is that of—
“Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.”
220. Some mound dedicated to the Gods, with one or more altars
and statues of the Gods on it, is on the stage, and the suppliants
are told to take up their places there. The Gods of conflict who
are named below, Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, presided generally
over the three great games of Greece. Hermes is added to the
list.
222. The Argives are supposed to share the love of brevity which
we commonly connect with their neighbours the Laconians.
223. The “mighty bird of Zeus” seems here, from the answer of
the Chorus, to mean not the “eagle” but the “sun,” which
roused men from their sleep as the cock did, so that “cockcrow”
and “sunrise” were synonymous. It is, in any case,
striking that Zeus, rather than Apollo, appears as the Sun-God.
224. The words refer to the myth of Apollo's banishment from
heaven and servitude under Admetos.
225. In the Acropolis at Athens the impress of a trident was seen
on the rock, and was believed to commemorate the time when
Poseidon had claimed it as his own by setting up his weapon
there. Something of the same kind seems here to be supposed
to exist at Argos, where a like legend prevailed.
226. The Hellenic Hermes is distinguished from his Egyptian
counterpart, Thoth, as being different in form and accessories.
227. A possible reference to the Egyptian Osiris, as lord or judge
of Hades. Comp. v. 145.
228. “Shall I,” the Chorus asks, “speak to you as a private
citizen, or as a herald, or as a king?”
229. It would appear from this that the king himself bore the
name Pelasgos. In some versions of the story he is so designated.
230. The lines contain a tradition of the wide extent of the old
Pelasgic rule, including Thessalia, or the Pelasgic Argos, between
the mouths of Peneus and Pindos, Perrhæbia, Dodona, and
finally the Apian land or Peloponnesos.
231. The true meaning of the word “Apian,” as applied to the
Peloponnesos, seems to have been “distant.” Here the myth
is followed which represented it as connected with Apis the son
of Telchin (son of Apollo, in the sense of being a physician-prophet),
who had freed the land from monsters.
232. The description would seem to indicate—(1) that the daughter
of Danaos appeared on the stage as of swarthy complexion; and
(2) that Indians, Æthiopians, Kyprians, and Amazons, were all
thought of as in this respect alike.
233. The line is conjectural, but some question of this kind is
implied in the answer of the Chorus.
234. By sacrificing personal likings to schemes of ambition, men
and women contract marriages which increase their power.
235. The Gods of conflict are the pilots of the ship of the State.
The altar dedicated to them is as its stern: the garlands and
wands of suppliants which adorn it are as the decorations of the
vessels.
236. Some editors have seen in this an attempt to enlist the constitutional
sympathies of an Athenian audience in favour of the
Argive king, who will not act without consulting his assembly.
There seems more reason to think that the aim of the dramatist
was in precisely the opposite direction, and that the words
which follow set forth his admiration for the king who can act,
as compared with one who is tied and hampered by restrictions.
237. By an Attic law, analogous in principle to that of the Jews,
(Num. xxxvi. 8; 1 Chron. xxiii. 22), heiresses were absolutely
bound to marry their next of kin, if he claimed his right. The
king at once asserts this as the law which was primâ facie
applicable to the case, and declares himself ready to surrender
it if the petitioners can show that their own municipal law is on
the other side. He will not thrust his country's customs upon
foreigners, who can prove that they live under a different rule,
but in the absence of evidence must act on the law which he
is bound officially to recognise.
238. Sc., the pollution which the statues of the Gods would
contract if they carried into execution their threat of suicide.
239. Inachos, the river-God of Argos, and as such contrasted
with Neilos.
240. i.e., “Unconsecrate,” marked out by no barriers, accessible
to all, and therefore seeming to offer but little prospect of a safe
asylum. The place described seems to have been an open piece
of turf rather than a grove of trees.
241. Comp. the narrative as given in Prometheus Bound, vv. 660,
et seq.
242. Teuthras' fort, or Teuthrania, is described by Strabo (xii.
p. 571) as lying between the Hellespont and Mount Sipylos, in
Magnesia.
243. Kypros, as dedicated to the worship of Aphrodite, and
famous for its wine, and oil, and corn.
244. The question, what caused the mysterious exceptional
inundations of the Nile, occupied, as we see from Herodotos
(ii. c. 19-27), the minds of the Greeks. Of the four theories
which the historian discusses, Æschylos adopts that which
referred it to the melting of the snows on the mountains of
central Africa.
245. Typhon, the mythical embodiment of the power of evil, was
fabled to have wandered over Egypt, seeking the body of Osiris.
Isis, to baffle him, placed coffins in all parts of Egypt, all empty
but the one which contained the body.
246. The fame of the Nile for the purity of its water, after the
earthy matter held in solution had been deposited, seems to
have been as great in the earliest periods of its history as it is
now.
247. Io was represented as a woman with a heifer's head, and
was probably a symbolic representation of the moon, with her
crescent horns. Sometimes the transformation is described
(as in v. 294) in words which imply a more thorough change.
249. The passage takes its place among the noblest utterances
of a faith passing above the popular polytheism to the thought
of one sovereign Will ruling and guiding all things, as Will—without
effort, in the calmness of a power irresistible.
250. Double, as involving a sin against the laws of hospitality,
so far as the suppliants were strangers—a sin against the laws of
kindred, so far as they might claim by descent the rights of
citizenship.
251. If, as has been conjectured, the tragedy was written with a
view to the alliance between Argos and Athens, made in B.C. 461,
this choral ode must have been the centre, if not of the dramatic,
at all events of the political interest of the play.
252. The image is that of a bird of evil omen, perched upon the
roof, and defiling the house, while it uttered its boding cries.
253. The suppliants' boughs, so held as to shade the face from
view.
254. The name of Hecate connected Artemis as, on the one side,
with the unseen world of Hades, so, on the other, with childbirth,
and the purifications that followed on it.
255. The name of Lykeian, originally, perhaps, simply representing
Apollo as the God of Light, came afterwards to be associated
with the might of destruction (the Wolf-destroyer) and the darts
of pestilence and sudden death. The prayer is therefore that he,
the Destroyer, may hearken to the suppliants, and spare the
people for whom they pray.
256. The “three great laws” were those ascribed to Triptolemos,
“to honour parents, to worship the Gods with the fruits of the
earth, to hurt neither man nor beast.”
257. The Egyptian ships, like those of many other Eastern
countries, had eyes (the eyes of Osiris, as they were called) painted
on their bows.
258. A side-thrust, directed by the poet, who had fought at Marathon,
against the growing effeminacy of the Athenian youth,
many of whom were learning to shrink from all activity and
exposure that might spoil their complexions. Comp. Plato,
Phædros, p. 239.
259. The saying is somewhat dark, but the meaning seems to be
that if the “dogs” of Egypt are strong, the “wolves” of Argos
are stronger; that the wheat on which the Hellenes lived gave
greater strength to limbs and sinew than the “byblos fruit” on
which the Egyptian soldiers and sailors habitually lived. Some
writers, however, have seen in the last line, rendered—
“The byblos fruit not always bears full ear,”
a proverb like the English,
“There's many a slip
'Twixt the cup and the lip.”
260. The words recall the vision of the “seven well-favoured
kine and fat-fleshed,” which “came out of the river,” as Pharaoh
dreamed (Gen. xli. 1, 2), and which were associated so closely
with the fertility which it ordinarily produced through the whole
extent of the valley of the Nile.
261. Two dangerous low headlands seem to have been known by
this name, one on the coast of Kilikia, the other on that of the
Thrakian Chersonese.
262. No traces of ships of this structure are found in Egyptian
art; but, if the reading be right, it implies the existence of
boats of some kind, so built that they could be steered from
either end.
263. Hermes, the guardian deity of heralds, is here described by
the epithet which marked him out as being also the patron of
detectives. Every stranger arriving in a Greek port had to
place himself under a proxenos or patron of some kind. The
herald, having no proxenos among the citizens, appeals to his
patron deity.
264. The words refer to the custom of nailing decrees, proclamations,
treaties, and the like, engraved on metal or marble, upon
the walls of temples or public buildings. Traces of the same
idea may possibly be found in the promise to Eliakim that he
shall be “as a nail in a sure place” (Isa. xxii. 23), in the thanksgiving
of Ezra that God had given His people “a nail in his
holy place” (Ezra ix. 8).
265. As before, the bread of the Hellenes was praised to the disparagement
of the “byblos fruit” of Egypt, so here their wine
to that of the Egyptian beer, which was the ordinary drink of
the lower classes.
266. The words present a striking parallelism to the erotic
imagery of the Song of Solomon: “Take us the foxes, the little
foxes that spoil our vines, for our vines have tender grapes.”
(ii. 15).
267. The Erasinos was supposed to rise in Arcadia, in Mount
Stymphalos, to disappear below the earth, and to come to sight
again in Argolis.
268. In this final choral ode of the Suppliants, as in that of the
Seven against Thebes, we have the phenomenon of the division of
the Chorus, hitherto united, into two sections of divergent
thought and purpose. Semi-Chorus A. remains steadfast in its
purpose of perpetual virginity; Semi-Chorus B. relents, and is
ready to accept wedlock.
269. The two names were closely connected in the local worship
of Athens, the temples of Aphrodite and Peitho (Suasion) standing
at the south-west angle of the Acropolis. If any special purpose
is to be traced in the invocation, we may see it in the poet's
desire to bring out the nobler, more ethical side of Aphrodite's
attributes, in contrast with the growing tendency to look on her
as simply the patroness of brutal lust.
270. The play, as acted, formed part of a trilogy, and the next
play, the Danaids, probably contained the sequel of the story,
the acceptance by the Suppliants of the sons of Ægyptos in
marriage, the plot of Danaos for the destruction of the bridegrooms
on the wedding-night, and the execution of the deed of
blood by all but Hypermnestra.
1009
AGAMEMNON
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Watchman
Clytæmnestra
Agamemnon
Chorus of Argive Elders
Herald (Talthybios)
Cassandra
Ægisthos
ARGUMENT.—Ten years had passed since Agamemnon,
son of Atreus, king of Mykenæ, had led the
Hellenes to Troïa to take vengeance on Alexandros (also
known as Paris), son of Priam. For Paris had basely
wronged Menelaos, king of Sparta, Agamemnon's brother,
in that, being received by him as a guest, he enticed his
wife Helena to leave her lord and go with him to Troïa.
And now the tenth year had come, and Paris was slain,
and the city of the Troïans was taken and destroyed, and
Agamemnon and the Hellenes were on their way homeward
with the spoil and prisoners they had taken. But
meanwhile Clytæmnestra too, Agamemnon's queen, had
been unfaithful, and had taken as her paramour Ægisthos,
son of that Thyestes whom Atreus, his brother, had
made to eat, unknowing, of the flesh of his own children.
And now, partly led by her adulterer, and partly seeking
to avenge the death of her daughter Iphigeneia, whom
Agamemnon had sacrificed to appease the wrath of
Artemis, and partly also jealous because he was bringing
back Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, as his concubine,
she plotted with Ægisthos against her husband's life.
1010But this was done secretly, and she stationed a guard on
the roof of the royal palace to give notice when he saw
the beacon-fires, by which Agamemnon had promised that
he would send tidings that Troïa was taken.
Note.—The unfaithfulness of Clytæmnestra and the murder of
Agamemnon had entered into the Homeric cycle of the legends
of the house of Atreus. In the Odyssey, however, Ægisthos is
the chief agent in this crime (Odyss. iii. 264, iv. 91, 532, xi. 409);
and the manner of it differs from that which Æschylos has
adopted. Clytæmnestra first appears as slaying both her
husband and Cassandra in Pindar (Pyth. xi. 26).
1011Scene.—Argos. The Palace ofAgamemnon; statues of the Gods
in front. Watchman on the roof. Time, night.
Watchman. I ask the Gods a respite from these toils,
To those who know, forget with those who know not.
[Exit
1013Enter Chorus of twelve Argive elders, chanting as they
march to take up their position in the centre
of the stage. A procession of women bearing
torches is seen in the distance
Chor. d. Who will see, may.—They but the prelude work
Of tyranny usurped o'er all the State.
1072Chor. e. Yes, we are slow, but they who trample down
The thought of hesitation slumber not.
Chor. f. I know not what advice to find or speak:
He who can act knows how to counsel too.
1330
Chor. g. I too think with thee; for I have no hope
With words to raise the dead again to life.
Chor. h. What! Shall we drag our life on and submit
To these usurpers that defile the house?
Chor. i. Nay, that we cannot bear: To die were better;
For death is gentler far than tyranny.
Chor. k. Shall we upon this evidence of groans
Guess, as divining that our lord is dead?
Chor. l. When we know clearly, then should we discuss:
To guess is one thing, and to know another.
1340
Chor.[381] So vote I too, and on the winning side,
Taking the votes all round that we should learn
How he, the son of Atreus, fareth now.
EnterClytæmnestrafrom the palace, in robes with
stains of blood, followed by soldiers and attendants.
The open doors show the corpses ofAgamemnonandCassandra, the former lying in a silvered
bath
Clytæm. Though many words before to suit the time
Were spoken, now I shall not be ashamed
The contrary to utter: How could one
By open show of enmity to foes
Who seemed as friends, fence in the snares of death
Too high to be o'erleapt? But as for me,
Not without forethought for this long time past,
1073This conflict comes to me from triumph old[382]
And fail of counsel wise, and flout their master...!
Chor. It suits not Argives on the vile to fawn.
Ægisth. Be sure, hereafter I will hunt thee down.
Chor. Not so, if God should guide Orestes back.
Ægisth. Right well I know how exiles feed on hopes.
Chor. Prosper, wax fat, do foul wrong—'tis thy day.
Ægisth. Know thou shalt pay full price for this thy folly.
Chor. Be bold, and boast, like cock beside his mate.
Clytæm. Nay, care not thou for these vain howlings; I
And thou together, ruling o'er the house,
Will settle all things rightly. [Exeunt
271. 1086The form of gambling from which the phrase is taken, had
clearly become common in Attica among the class to which the
watchman was supposed to belong, and had given rise to proverbial
phrases like that in the text. The Greeks themselves
supposed it to have been invented by the Lydians (Herod. i. 94),
or Palamedes, one of the heroes of the tale of Troïa, but it
enters also into Egyptian legends (Herod. ii. 122), and its prevalence
from remote antiquity in the farther East, as in the Indian
story of Nala and Damayanti, makes it probable that it originated
there. The game was commonly played, as the phrase
shows, with three dice, the highest throw being that which gave
three sixes. Æschylos, it may be noted, appears in a lost drama,
which bore the title of Palamedes, to have brought the game
itself into his plot. It is referred to, as invented by that hero,
in a fragment of Sophocles (Fr. 380), and again in the
proverb,—
“The dice of Zeus have ever lucky throws.”—(Fr. 763.)
272. Here, also, the watchman takes up another common proverbial
phrase, belonging to the same group as that of “kicking
against the pricks” in v. 1624. He has his reasons for silence,
weighty as would be the tread of an ox to close his lips.
273. The vultures stand, i.e., to the rulers of Heaven, in the
same relation as the foreign sojourners in Athens, the Metoics,
did to the citizens under whose protection they placed themselves.
274. Alexandros, the other name of Paris, the seducer of Helen.
275. The words, perhaps, refer to the grief of Menelaos, as leading
him to neglect the wonted sacrifices to Zeus, but it seems
better to see in them a reference to the sin of Paris. He, at
least, who had carried off his host's wife, had not offered acceptable
sacrifices, had neglected all sacrifices to Zeus Xenios, the
God of host and guest. The allusion to the sacrifice of Iphigeneia,
which some (Donaldson and Paley) have found here,
and the wrath of Clytæmnestra, which Agamemnon will fail to
soothe, seems more far-fetched.
276. An allusion, such as the audience would catch and delight
in, to the well-known enigma of the Sphinx. See Sophocles
(Trans.), p. 1.
277. The Chorus, though too old to take part in the expedition,
are yet able to tell both of what passed as the expedition started,
and of the terrible fulfilment of the omens which they had seen.
The two eagles are, of course, in the symbolism of prophecy, the
two chieftains, Menelaos and Agamemnon. The “white
feathers” of the one may point to the less heroic character of
Menelaos: so in v. 123, they are of “diverse mood.” The hare
whom they devour is, in the first instance, Troïa, and so far the
omen is good, portending the success of the expedition; but, as
Artemis hates the fierceness of the eagles, so there is, in the eyes
of the seer, a dark token of danger from her wrath against the
Atreidæ. Either their victory will be sullied by cruelty which
will bring down vengeance, or else there is some secret sin in the
past which must be atoned for by a terrible sacrifice. In the
legend followed by Sophocles (Electr. 566), Agamemnon had
offended Artemis by slaying a doe sacred to her, as he was
hunting. In the manifold meanings of such omens there is,
probably, a latent suggestion of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia by
the two chieftains, though this was at the time hidden from the
seer. The fact that they are seen on the right, not on the left
hand, was itself ominous of good.
278. The song of Linos, originally the dirge with which men
mourned for the death of Linos, the minstrel-son of Apollo and
Urania, brother of Orpheus, who was slain by Heracles—a type,
like Thammuz and Adonis, of life prematurely closed and bright
hopes never to be fulfilled,—had come to be the representative of
all songs of mourning. So Hesiod (in Eustath. on Hom. Il.,
vii. 569) speaks of the name, as applied to all funeral dirges over
poets and minstrels. So Herodotos (ii. 79) compares it, as the
type of this kind of music among the Greeks, with what he
found in Egypt connected with the name of Maneros, the only
son of the first king of Egypt, who died in the bloom of youth.
The name had, therefore, as definite a connotation for a Greek
audience as the words Miserere or Jubilate would have for us,
and ought not, I believe, to disappear from the translation.
279. The comparison of a lion's whelps to dew-drops, bold as the
figure is, has something in it analogous to that with which we
are more familiar, describing the children, or the army of a king,
as the “dew” from “the womb of the morning” (Ps. cx. 3).
280. The sacrifice, i.e., was to be such as could not, according
to the customary ritual, form a feast for the worshippers.
281. The dark words look at once before and after, back to the
murder of the sons of Thyestes, forward, though of this the seer
knew not, to the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. Clytæmnestra is the
embodiment of the Vengeance of which the Chorus speaks.
282. As a part of the drama the whole passage that follows is an
assertion by the Chorus that in this their trouble they will turn
to no other God, invoke no other name, but that of the Supreme
Zeus. But it can hardly be doubted that they have a meaning
beyond this, and are the utterance by the poet of his own
theology. In the second part of the Promethean trilogy (all
that we now know of it) he had represented Zeus as ruling in
the might of despotic sovereignty, the representative of a Power
which men could not resist, but also could not love, inflicting
needless sufferings on the sons of men. Now he has grown
wiser. The sovereignty of Zeus is accepted as part of the present
order of the world; trust in Him brings peace; the pain which
He permits is the one only way to wisdom. The stress laid upon
the name of Zeus implies a wish to cleave to the religion inherited
from the older Hellenes, as contrasted with those with which
their intercourse with the East had made the Athenians familiar.
Like the voice which came to Epimenides, as he was building a
sanctuary to the Muses, bidding him dedicate it not to them but
to Zeus (Diog. Laert. i. 10), it represents a faint approximation
to a truer, more monotheistic creed than that of the popular
mythology.
283. The two mighty ones who have passed away are Uranos
and Cronos, the representatives in Greek mythology of the
earlier stages of the world's history, (1) mere material creation,
(2) an ideal period of harmony, a golden, Saturnian age, preceding
the present order of divine government with its mingled
good and evil. Comp. Hesiod. Theogon., 459.
284. The Chorus returns, after its deeper speculative thoughts, to
its interrupted narrative.
285. The seer saw his augury fulfilled. When he uttered the
name of Artemis it was pregnant with all the woe which he had
foreboded at the outset.
286. So that the blood may fall upon the altar, as the knife was
drawn across the throat.
287. The whole passage should be compared with the magnificent
description in Lucretius i. 84-101.
288. Beautiful as a picture, and as motionless and silent also.
The art, young as it was, had already reached the stage when
it supplied to the poet an ideal standard of perfection. Other
allusions to it are found in vv. 774, 1300.
289. The words point to the ritual of Greek feasts, which assigned
the first libation to Zeus and the Olympian Gods, the second to
the Heroes, the third to Zeus in his special character as Saviour
and Preserver; the last was commonly accompanied by a pæan,
hymn of praise. The life of Agamemnon is described as one
which had good cause to offer many such libations. Iphigeneia
had sung many such pæans.
290. The mythical explanation of this title for the Argive territory
is found in the Suppl. v. 256, and its real meaning is discussed
in a note to that passage.
291. To speak of Morning as the child of Night was, we may well
believe, among the earliest parables of nature. In its mythical
form it appears in Hesiod (Theogon. 123), but its traces are
found wherever, as among Hebrews, Athenians, Germans, men
reckoned by nights rather than by days, and spoke of “the
evening and the morning” rather than of “day and night.”
292. The God thought of is, as in v. 272, Hephæstos, as being
Lord of the Fire, that had brought the tidings.
293. It is not without significance that Clytæmnestra scorns the
channel of divine instruction of which the Chorus had spoken
with such reverence. The dramatist puts into her mouth the
language of those who scoffed at the notion that truth might
come to the soul in “visions of the night,” when “deep sleep
falleth upon men.” So Sophocles puts like thoughts into the
mouth of Jocasta (Œd. King, vv. 709, 858).
294. Omens came from the flight of birds. An omen which was
not trustworthy, or belonged to some lower form of divination,
might therefore be spoken of as “wingless.” But the word may
possibly be intensive, not negative, “swift-winged,” and then
refer generically to that form of divination.
295. The description that follows, over and above its general
interest, had, probably, for an Athenian audience, that of representing
the actual succession of beacon-stations, by which they,
in the course of the wars, under Pericles, had actually received
intelligence from the coasts of Asia. A glance at the map will
show the fitness of the places named—Ida, Lemnos, Athos,
Makistos (a mountain in Eubœa), Messapion (on the coast of
Bœotia), over the plains of the Asôpos to Kithæron, in the south of
the same province, then over Gorgopis, a bay of the Corinthian
Gulf, to Ægiplanctos in Megaris, then across to a headland
overlooking the Saronic Gulf, to the Arachnæan hill in Argolis.
The word “courier-fire” connects itself also with the system of
posts or messengers, which the Persian kings seem to have been
the first to organise, and which impressed the minds both of
Hebrews (Esth. viii. 14) and Greeks (Herod. viii. 98) by their
regular transmission of the king's edicts, or of special news.
296. Our ignorance of the details of the Lampadephoria, or
“torch-race games,” in honour of the fire-God, Prometheus,
makes the allusion to them somewhat obscure. As described
by Pausanias (I. xxx. 2), the runners started with lighted torches
from the altar of Prometheus in the Academeia and ran towards
the city. The first who reached the goal with his torch still
burning became the winner. If all the torches were extinguished,
then all were losers. As so described, however, there is no succession,
no taking the torch from one and passing it on to
another, like that described here and in the well-known line of
Lucretius (ii. 78),
“Et quasi cursores vitaï lampada tradunt.”
(And they, as runners, pass the torch of life.)
On the other hand, there are descriptions which show that such
a transfer was the chief element of the game. This is, indeed,
implied both in this passage and in the comparison between the
game and the Persian courier-system in Herod. viii. 98. The
two views may be reconciled by supposing (1) that there were
sets of runners, vying with each other as such, rather than individually,
or (2) that a runner whose speed failed him though
his torch kept burning, was allowed to hand it on to another who
was more likely to win the race, but whose torch was out. The
next line seems meant to indicate where the comparison failed. In
the torch-race which Clytæmnestra describes there had been no
contest. One and the self-same fire (the idea of succession passing
into that of continuity) had started and had reached the goal, and
so had won the prize. An alternative rendering would be,—
“He wins who is first in, though starting last.”
297. The complete foot-race was always to the column which
marked the end of the course, round it, and back again. In
getting to Troïa, therefore, but half the race was done.
298. Dramatically the words refer to the practical impiety of
evildoers like Paris, with, perhaps, a half-latent allusion to that of
Clytæmnestra. But it can hardly be doubted that for the Athenian
audience it would have a more special significance, as a protest
against the growing scepticism, what in a later age would have
been called the Epicureanism, of the age of Pericles. It is the
assertion of the belief of Æschylos in the moral government of
the world. The very vagueness of the singular, “One there
was,” would lead the hearers to think of some teacher like
Anaxagoras, whom they suspected of Atheism.
299. The Chorus sees in the overthrow of Troïa, an instance of
this righteous retribution. The audience were, perhaps, intended
to think also of the punishment which had fallen on the
Persians for the sacrilegious acts of their fathers. The “things
inviolable” are the sanctities of the ties of marriage and hospitality,
both of which Paris had set at nought.
300. Here, and again in v. 612, we have a similitude drawn from
the metallurgy of Greek artists. Good bronze, made of copper
and tin, takes the green rust which collectors prize, but when
rubbed, the brightness reappears. If zinc be substituted for tin,
as in our brass, or mixed largely with it, the surface loses its
polish, oxidizes and becomes black. It is, however, doubtful
whether this combination of metals was at the time in use, and
the words may simply refer to different degrees of excellence in
bronze properly so called.
301. In a corrupt passage like this, the text of which has been
so variously restored and rendered, it may be well to give at
least one alternative version:
“There stands she silent, with no honour met,
Nor yet with words of scorn,
Sweetest to see of all that he has lost.”
The words, as so taken, refer to the vision of Helen, described
in the lines that follow. Another, for the line “In deepest
woe,” &c., ... would give,
“Believing not he sees the lost one there.”
302. The art of Pheidias had already made it natural at Athens
to speak of kings as decorating their palaces with the life-size
busts or statues of those they loved.
303. Here again one may note a protest against the aggressive
policy of Pericles, an assertion of the principle that a nation
should be content with independence, without aiming at
supremacy.
305. As the play opens on the morning of the day on which
Troïa was taken, and now we have the arrivals, first, of the
herald, and then of Agamemnon, after the capture has been
completed, and the spoil divided, and the fleet escaped a storm,
an interval of some days must be supposed between the two
parts of the play, the imaginary law of the unities notwithstanding.
306. The customary adornment of heralds who brought good
news. Comp. Sophocles, Œd. K. v. 83. The custom prevailed
for many centuries, and is recognised by Dante, Purg. ii. 70, as
usual in his time in Italy.
307. So in the Seven against Thebes (v. 494), smoke is called
“the sister of fire.”
308. A probable reference, not only to the story, but to the actual
words of Homer, Il. i. 45-52.
309. Specially the Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeukes.
310. Such a position (especially in the case of Zeus or Apollo) was
common in the temples both of Greece and Rome, and had a
very obvious signification. As the play was performed, the
actual hour of the day probably coincided with that required by
the dramatic sequence of events, and the statues of the Gods
were so placed on the stage as to catch the rays of the morning
sun when the herald entered. Hence the allusion to the bright
“cheerful glances” would have a visible as well as ethical
fitness.
311. It formed part of the guilt of Paris, that, besides his seduction
of Helena, he had carried off part of the treasures of
Menelaos.
312. The idea of a payment twofold the amount of the wrong
done, as a complete satisfaction to the sufferer, was common in
the early jurisprudence both of Greeks and Hebrews (Exod. xxii.
4-7). In some cases it was even more, as in the four or fivefold
restitution of Exod. xxii. 1. In the grand opening of Isaiah's
message of glad tidings the fact that Jerusalem has received
“double for all her sins” is made the ground on the strength of
which she may now hope for pardon. Comp. also Isa. lxi. 7;
Zech. ix. 12.
314. So stress is laid upon this form of hardship, as rising from
the climate of Troïa, by Sophocles, Aias, 1206.
315. One may conjecture that here also, as with the passage
describing the succession of beacon fires (vv. 281-314), the
description would have for an Athenian audience the interest of
recalling personal reminiscences of some recent campaign in
Thrakè, or on the coasts of Asia.
316. We may, perhaps, think of the herald, as he speaks, placing
some representative trophy upon the pegs on the pedestals of
the statues of the great Gods of Hellas, whom he had invoked
on his entrance.
318. The husband, on his departure, sealed up his special
treasures. It was the glory of the faithful wife or the trusty
steward to keep these seals unbroken.
319. There is an ambiguity, possibly an intentional one, in the
comparison which Clytæmnestra uses. If there was no such art
as that of “staining bronze” (or copper) known at the time, the
words would be a natural phrase enough to describe what was
represented as an impossibility. Later on in the history of art,
however, as in the time of Plutarch, a process so described
(perhaps analogous to enamelling) is mentioned (De Pyth.
Orac. § 2) as common. If we suppose the art to have been a
mystery known to the few, but not to the many, in the time of
Æschylos, then the words would have for the hearers the point
of a double entendre. She seems to the mass to disclaim what
yet, to those in the secret she acknowledges.
Another rendering refers “bronze” to the “sword,” and
makes the stains those of blood; as though she said, “I am as
guiltless of adultery as of murder,” while yet she knew that she
had committed the one, and meant to commit the other. The
possibility of such a meaning is certainly in the words, and with
a sharp-witted audience catching at ænigmas and dark sayings
may have added to their suggestiveness. The ambiguous comment
of the Chorus shows that they read, as between the lines,
the shameful secret which they knew, but of which the Herald
was ignorant.
320. The last two lines are by some editors assigned to the
Herald.
321. It need hardly be said that it is as difficult to render a paronomasia
of this kind as it is to reproduce those, more or less
analogous, which we find in the prophets of the Old Testament
(comp. especially Micah i.); but it seems better to substitute
something which approaches, however imperfectly, to an
equivalent than to obscure the reference to the nomen et omen
by abandoning the attempt to translate it. “Hell of men, and
hell of ships, and hell of towers,” has been the rendering adopted
by many previous translators. The Greek fondness for this
play on names is seen in Sophocles, Aias, v. 401.
322. Zephyros, Boreas, and the other great winds were represented
in the Theogony of Hesiod (v. 134) as the offspring of
Astræos and Eôs, and Astræos was a Titan. The west wind
was, of course, favourable to Paris as he went with Helen from
Greece to Troïa.
323. Here again the translator has to meet the difficulty of a pun.
As an alternative we might take—
“To Ilion brought, well-named,
A marriage marring all.”
324. The sons of Priam are thought of as taking part in the
celebration of Helen's marriage with Paris, and as, therefore,
involving themselves in the guilt and the penalty of his crime.
325. Here, too, it may be well to give an alternative rendering—
“A mischief in his house,
A man reared, not on milk.”
Home-reared lions seem to have been common as pets, both
among Greeks and Latins (Arist., Hist. Anim. ix. 31; Plutarch,
de Cohib. irâ, § 14, p. 822), sometimes, as in Martial's Epigram,
ii. 25, with fatal consequences. The text shows the
practice to have been common enough in the time of Pericles to
supply a similitude.
326. There may, possibly, be a half allusion here to the passage
in the Iliad (vv. 154-160), which describes the fascination which
the beauty of Helen exercised on the Troïan elders.
327. The poet becomes a prophet, and asserts what it has been
given him to know of the righteous government of God. The
dominant creed of Greece at the time was, that the Gods were
envious of man's prosperity, that this alone, apart from moral
evil, was enough to draw down their wrath, and bring a curse
upon the prosperous house. So, e.g., Amasis tells Polycrates
(Herod. iii. 40) that the unseen Divinity that rules the world is
envious, that power and glory are inevitably the precursors of
destruction. Comp. also the speech of Artabanos (Herod. vii.
10, 46). Against this, in the tone of one who speaks singlehanded
for the truth, Æschylos, through the Chorus, enters his
protest.
328. Sc., Agamemnon, by the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, had induced
his troops to persevere in an expedition from which, in their
inmost hearts, they shrank back with strong dislike. A conjectural
reading gives,
“By the sacrifice he offered
Giving death-doomed men false boldness.”
329. The tone of ambiguous irony mingles, it will be seen, even
here, with the praises of the Chorus.
330. Possibly an allusion to Pandora's box. Here, too, Hope
alone was left, but it only came up to where the curve of the
rim began, not to its top. The imagery is drawn from the
older method of voting, in which (as in Eumenides, v. 678) the
votes for condemnation and acquittal were cast into separate
urns.
331. The lion, as the symbol of the house of Atreus, still seen in
the sculptures of Mykenæ; the horse, in allusion to the stratagem
by which Troïa had been taken.
332. At the end of autumn, and therefore at a season when a
storm like that described by the herald would be a probable
incident enough.
333. So in Sophocles, Philoctetes (v. 1025) taunts Odysseus:—
“And yet thou sailedst with them by constraint,
By tricks fast bound.”
334. Geryon appears in the myth of Hercules as a monster with
three heads and three bodies, ruling over the island Erytheia,
in the far West, beyond Hesperia. To destroy him and seize
his cattle was one of the “twelve labours,” with which Hesiod
(Theogon. vv. 287-294) had already made men familiar.
335. When a man is buried, there is earth above and earth below
him. Clytæmnestra having used the words “coverlet,” pauses to
make her language accurate to the very letter. She is speaking
only of the earth which would have been laid over her husband's
corpse, had he died as often as he was reported to have done.
She will not utter anything so ominous as an allusion to the
depths below him stretching down to Hades.
337. The words touch upon the psychological fact that in dreams,
as in other abnormal states of the mind, the usual measures of
time disappear, and we seem to pass through the experiences of
many years in the slumber of a few minutes.
338. The rhetoric of the passage, with all its multiplied similitudes,
fine as it is in itself, receives its dramatic significance by
being put into the lips of Clytæmnestra. She “doth protest
too much.” A true wife would have been content with fewer
words.
339. The last three lines of the speech are of course intentionally
ambiguous, carrying one meaning to the ear of Agamemnon,
and another to that of the audience.
340. There is obviously a side-thrust, such as an Athenian
audience would catch at, at the token of homage which the
Persian kings required of their subjects, the prostration at their
feet, the earth spread over with costly robes. Of the latter
custom we have examples in the history of Jehu (2 Kings ix. 13),
in our Lord's entry into Jerusalem (Mark xi. 8), in the usages
of modern Persian kings (Malcolm's Persia, i. 580); perhaps
also in the true rendering of Ps. xlv. 14. “She shall be brought
unto the king on raiment of needle-work.” In the march of
Xerxes across the Hellespont myrtle-boughs strown on the
bridge of boats took the place of robes (Herod. vii. 54). To
the Greek character, with its strong love of independence, such
customs were hateful. The case of Pausanias, who offended
the national feeling by assuming the outward state of the
Persian kings, must have been recalled to the minds of the
Athenians, intentionally or otherwise, by such a passage as
this.e
bridge of boats took the place of robes (Herod. vii. 54). To
341. The “old saying, famed of many men,” which we find in
the Trachiniæ of Sophocles (v. 1), and in the counsel of Solon
to Crœsos (Herod. i. 32).
342. He who had suffered so much from the wrath of Artemis at
Aulis knew what it was to rouse the wrath and jealousy of the
Gods.
343. An echo of a line in Hesiod (Works and Days, 763)—
“No whispered rumours which the many spread
Can ever wholly perish.”
344. Here, too, we may trace a reference to the Oriental custom
of recognising the sanctity of a consecrated place by taking the
shoes from off the feet, as in Exod. iii. 5, in the services of the
Tabernacle and Temple, through all their history (Juven.,
Sat. vi. 159), in all mosques to the present day. Agamemnon,
yielding to the temptress, seeks to make a compromise with his
conscience. He will walk upon the tapestry, but will treat it as
if it, of right, belonged to the Gods, and were a consecrated
thing. It is probably in connection with this incident that
Æschylos was said to have been the first to bring actors on the
stage in these boots or buskins (Suidas. s. v. άρβύλη).
345. The words of Isaiah (xviii. 5), “when the sour grape is
ripening in the flower,” present an almost verbal parallel.
346. The ever-recurring ambiguity of Clytæmnestra's language
is again traceable, as is also her fondness for rhetorical similitudes.
347. The Chorus speaks in perplexity. In cannot get rid of its
forebodings, and yet it would seem as if the time for the fulfilment
of the dark words of Calchas must have passed long since.
It actually sees the safe return of the leader of the host, yet still
its fears haunt it.
348. Asclepios, whom Zeus smote with his thunderbolt for having
restored Hippolytos to life.
349. The Chorus, in spite of their suspicions and forebodings,
have given the king no warning. They excuse themselves by
the plea of necessity, the sovereign decree of Zeus overruling all
man's attempts to withstand it.
350. Cassandra is summoned to an act of worship. The household
is gathered, the altar to Zeus Ktesios (the God of the family
property, slaves included), standing in the servants' hall, is
ready. The new slave must come in and take her place with
the others.
351. As in the story which forms the groundwork of the Trachiniæ
of Sophocles, vv. 250-280, that Heracles had been sold
to Omphale as a slave, in penalty for the murder of Iphitos.
352. Political as well as dramatic. The Eupatrid poet appeals
to public opinion against the nouveaux riches, the tanners and
lamp-makers, who were already beginning to push themselves
forward towards prominence and power. The way was thus
prepared in the first play of the Trilogy for what is known to
have been the main object of the last. Comp. Arist., Rhet. ii. 32.
353. Here again the translator has the task of finding an English
paronomasia which approximates to that of the Greek, between
Apollo and ἀπόλλωνthe destroyer. To Apollo, as the God of
paths (Aguieus), an altar stood, column-fashion, before the
street-door of every house, and to such an altar, placed by the
door of Agamemnon's palace, Cassandra turns, with the twofold
play upon the name.
354. This refers, probably, to the death of Hippodameia, the wife
of Pelops, who killed herself, in remorse for the death of Chrysippos,
or fear of her husband's anger. The horrors of the
royal house of Argos pass, one by one, before the vision of the
prophetess, and this leads the procession, followed by the spectres
of the murdered children of Thyestes.
355. The Chorus, as in their last ode, had made up their minds,
though foreboding ill, to let destiny take its course. They do
not wish that policy of non-interference to be changed by any too
clear vision of the future.
356. The Chorus understands the vision of the clairvoyante as
regards the past tragedy of the house of Atreus, but not that
which seems to portend another actually imminent.
357. Fresh visions come before the eyes of the seeress. She
beholds the company of Erinnyes hovering over the accursed
house, and calls on them to continue their work till the new
crime has met with its due punishment. The murder which she
sees as if already wrought, demands death by stoning.
358. The “yellow” look of fear is thought of as being caused by
an actual change in the colour of the blood as it flows through
the veins to the heart.
359. Here there is prevision as well as clairvoyance. The deed
is not yet done. The sacrifice and the feast are still going on,
yet she sees the crime in all its circumstances.
360. As before (v. 115) the black eagle had been the symbol of
the warrior-chief, so here the black-horned bull, that being one
of the notes of the best breed of cattle. A various reading gives
“with her swarthy horn.”
361. What the Chorus had just said as to the fruitlessness of
prophetic insight tallied all too well with her own bitter experience.
362. The ecstasy of horror interrupts the tenor of her speech,
and the second “thou” is addressed not to the Chorus, but to
Agamemnon, whose death Cassandra has just witnessed in her
vision.
363. The song of the nightingale, represented by these sounds,
was connected with a long legend, specially Attic in its origin.
Philomela, daughter of Pandion, king of Attica, suffered outrage
at the hands of Tereus, who was married to her sister Procne,
and was then changed into a nightingale, destined ever to lament
over the fate of Itys her sister's son. The earliest form of the
story appears in the Odyssey (xix. 518). Comp. Sophocles,
Electr. v. 148.
364. In the marriage-rites of the Greeks of the time of Æschylos,
the bride for three days after the wedding wore her veil; then,
as now no longer shrinking from her matron life, she laid it aside
and looked on her husband with unveiled face.
365. The picture might be drawn by any artist of power, but we
may, perhaps, trace a reproduction of one of the grandest
passages in the Iliad (iv. 422-426).
366. So in the Eumenides (v. 293), the Erinnyes appear as vampires,
drinking the blood of their victims.
367. The death of Myrtilos as the first crime in the long history of
the house of Pelops. Comp. Soth. Electr. v. 470. The
“defiler” is Thyestes, who seduced Aerope, the wife of Atreus.
368. The horror of the Thyestes banquet again haunts her as the
source of all the evils that followed, of the deaths both of
Iphigenia and Agamemnon. The “stay-at-home” is Ægisthos.
369. Both words point to the Sindbad-like stories of distant
marvels brought back by Greek sailors. The Amphisbæna
(double-goer), wriggling itself backward and forward, believed
to have a head at each extremity, was looked upon as at once
the most subtle and the most venomous of serpents. Skylla,
already famous in its mythical form from the story in the
Odyssey (xii. 85-100), was probably a “development” of the
monstrous cuttle-fish of the straits of Messina.
370. As in Homer (Il. i. 14) so here, the servant of Apollo bears
the wand of augury, and fillets or wreaths round head and
arms. The divining garments, in like manner, were of white
linen.
371. If we adopt this reading, we must think of Cassandra as
identifying herself with the woe (Atè) which makes up her life,
just as afterwards Clytæmnestra speaks of herself as one with
the avenging Demon (Alastor) of the house of Atreus (1473).
The alternative reading gives—
373. When the victim, instead of shrinking and struggling, went,
as with good courage, to the altar, it was noted as a sign of
divine impulse. Such a strange, new courage the Chorus notices
in Cassandra.
379. Her own doom, hard as it was, touches her less than the
common lot of human suffering and mutability.
380. So far the dialogue has been sustained by the Coryphæos,
or leader of the Chorus. Now each member of it speaks and
gives his counsel.
381. The Coryphæos again takes up his part, sums up, and pronounces
his decision.
382. i.e., He had had his triumph over her when, forgetful of her
mother's feelings, he had sacrificed Iphigeneia. She has now
repaid him to the full.
383. The third libation at all feasts was to Zeus, as the Preserver
or Guardian Deity. Clytæmnestra boasts that her third blow
was as an offering to a God of other kind, to Him who had in
his keeping not the living, but the dead.
384. So in the Choëphori (vv. 351, 476), the custom of pouring
libations on the burial-place of the dead is recognised as an
element of their blessedness or shame in Hades, and Agamemnon
is represented as lacking the honour which comes from them
till he receives it at the hand of Orestes.
385. Incense was placed on the head of the victim. The Chorus
tell Clytæmnestra that she has brought upon her own head the
incense, not of praise and admiration, but of hatred and wrath,
as though some poison had driven her mad.
386. The species of swan referred to is said to be the Cygnus
Musicus. Aristotle (Hist. Anim. ix. 12) describes swans of
some kind as having been heard by sailors near the coast of
Libya, “singing with a lamentable cry.” Mrs. Somerville
(Phys. Geog., c. xxxiii. 3) describes their note as “like that of a
violin.” The same fact is reported of the swans of Iceland and
other regions of the far North. The strange, tender beauty of
the passage in the Phædo of Plato (p. 85, a), which speaks of
them as singing when at the point of death, has done more than
anything else to make the illustration one of the commonplaces
of rhetoric and poetry.
387. The structure of the lyrical dialogue that follows is rather
complicated, and different editors have adopted different arrangements.
I have followed Paley's.
388. Several lines seem to have dropped out by some accident of
transcription.
389. Agamemnon and Menelaos, as descended from Tantalos,
the father of Pelops.
390. In each case women, Helen and Clytæmnestra, had been
the unconscious instruments of the divine Nemesis, to which
the Chorus traces the ruin of the house of Atreus.
“He (sc. the avenging Demon) boasteth in his pride of heart.”
392. It is characteristic of the teaching of Æschylos that the
Chorus passes from the thought of the agency of any lower
Power to the supreme will of Zeus.
394. Clytæmnestra still harps (though in ambiguous words,
which may refer also to the murder of the children of Thyestes)
upon the death of Iphigeneia as the crime which it had been her
work to avenge.
396. Here the genealogy is carried one step further to Pleisthenes,
the father of Tantalos.
397. Ægisthos, in his version of the story, suppresses the adultery
of Thyestes with the wife of Atreus, which led the latter to his
horrible revenge.
398. The image is taken from the trireme with its three benches
full of rowers. The Chorus is compared to the men on the lowest,
Ægisthos and Clytæmnestra to those on the uppermost bench.
399. The earliest occurrence of the proverb with which we are
familiar through the history of St. Paul's conversion, Acts ix. 5,
xxvi. 14.
400. The trace-horse, as not under the pressure of the collar, was
taken as the type of free, those that wore the yoke, of enforced
submission.
1087
THE LIBATION-POURERS
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Orestes
Clytæmnestra
Pylades
Electra
Ægisthos
Nurse
Servant
Chorus of Captive Women
ARGUMENT.—It came to pass, after Agamemnon had
been slain, that Clytæmnestra and Ægisthos ruled in
Argos, and all things seemed to go well with them.
Orestes, who was heir to Agamemnon, they had sent
away to the care of Strophios of Phokis, and there he
abode. Electra, his sister, mourned in secret over her
father's death, and prayed for vengeance, but no avenger
came. And when Orestes grew up to man's estate, he
went to ask counsel of the God at Delphi, and the Gods
straitly charged him to take vengeance on his father's
murderers; and so he started on his journey with his
trusty friend Pylades, and arrived at Argos. And it
chanced that a little while before he came, the Gods sent
Clytæmnestra a fearful dream, that troubled her soul
greatly; and in her terror she bade Electra go with her
handmaids to pour libations on the tomb of Agamemnon,
that so she might appease his soul, and propitiate the
Powers that rule over the dark world of the dead.
1089
THE LIBATION-POURERS
Scene.—Argos, in front of the palace of the Atreidæ. The tomb of
Agamemnon(a raised mound of earth) is seen in the background.
EnterOrestesandPyladesfrom the left;Orestesadvances to the mound, and, as he speaks, lays on it
a lock of his hair.
Orest. O Hermes of the darkness 'neath the earth,
Who hast the charge of all thy Father's[401] sway,
Orest. (wildly, as one distraught.) Nay, know ye—for I know not how 'twill end;
1010
Like chariot-driver with his steeds I'm dragged
Out of my course; for passion's moods uncurbed
Bear me their victim headlong. At my heart
Stands terror ready or to sing or dance
In burst of frenzy. While my reason stays,
I tell my friends here that I slew my mother,
Not without right, my father's murderess,
Accursed, and hated of the Gods. And I
1135As chiefest spell that made me dare this deed
Count Loxias, Pythian prophet, warning me
That doing this I should be free from blame,
1020
But slighting.... I pass o'er the penalty[463]....
For none, aim as he will, such woes will hit.
And now ye see me, in what guise equipped,
[Putting on the suppliant's wreaths of wool, and
taking an olive branch in his hand
With this my bough and chaplet I will gain
Earth's central shrine, the home where Loxias dwells,
And the bright fire that is as deathless known,[464]
Seeking to 'scape this guilt of kindred blood;
And on no other hearth, so Loxias bade,
May I seek shelter. And I charge you all,
Ye Argives, bear ye witness in due time
1030
How these dark deeds of wretched ill were wrought:
But I, a wanderer, exiled from my land,
Shall live, and leaving these my prayers in death,...
Chor. Nay, thou hast prospered: burden not thy lips
With evil speech, nor speak ill-boding words,
When thou hast freed the Argive commonwealth,
By good chance lopping those two serpents' heads.
[The Erinnyes are seen in the background, visible
toOrestesonly, in black robes, and with
snakes in their hair
Orest. Ah! ah! ye handmaids: see, like Gorgons these,
Dark-robed, and all their tresses hang entwined
With many serpents. I can bear no more.
1136Chor. What phantoms vex thee, best beloved of sons
1040
By thy dear sire? Hold, fear not, victory's thine.
Orest. These are no phantom terrors that I see:
Full clear they are my mother's vengeful hounds.
Chor. The blood fresh-shed is yet upon thy hands,
And thence it is these troubles haunt thy soul.
Orest. O King Apollo! See, they swarm, they swarm,
And from their eyes is dropping loathsome blood.
Chor. One way of cleansing is there; Loxias' form
Clasp thou, and he will free thee from these ills.
Orest. These forms ye see not, but I see them there:
They drive me on, and I can bear no more. [Exit
Chor. Well, may'st thou prosper; may the gracious God
1050
Watch o'er and guard thee with a chance well timed!
Here, then, upon this palace of our kings
A third storm blows again;
The blast that haunts the race has run its course.
First came the wretched meal of children's flesh;
Next what befell our king:
Slain in the bath was he who ruled our host,
Of all the Achæans lord;
And now a third has come, we know not whence,[465]
To save ... or shall I say,
To work a doom of death?
Where will it end? Where will it cease at last,
The mighty Atè dread,
Lulled into slumber deep?
401. Hermes is invoked, (1) as the watcher over the souls of the
dead in Hades, and therefore the natural patron of the murdered
Agamemnon; (2) as exercising an authority delegated by Zeus,
and therefore capable of being, like Zeus himself, the deliverer
and helper of suppliants. So Electra, further on, invokes
Hermes in the same character. The line may, however, be
rendered,
“Who stand'st as guardian of my father's house.”
The three opening lines are noticeable, as having been chosen
by Aristophanes as the special object for his satirical criticism
(Frogs, 1126-1176), abounding in a good score of ambiguities
and tautologies.
402. The words point to the two symbolic aspects of one and the
same practice. In both there are some points of analogy with
the earlier and later forms of the Nazarite vow among the Jews.
(1) As being part of the body, and yet separable from it without
mutilation, it became the representative of the whole man, and
as such was the sign of a votive dedication. As early as Homer,
it was the custom of youths to keep one long, flowing lock as
consecrated, and when they reached manhood, they cut it off,
and offered it to the river-god of their country, throwing it into
the stream, as that to which, directly and indirectly, they owed
their nurture. Here the offering is made to Inachos, as the
hero-founder of Argos, identified with the river that bore his
name. (2) They shaved their head, wholly or in part, as a token
as a token of grief, and then, because true grief for the dead was an
acceptable and propitiatory offering, this became the natural
offering for suppliants who offered their prayers at the tombs of
the departed. So in the Aias of Sophocles (v. 1174) Teucros
calls on Eurysakes to approach the corpse of his father, holding
in his hand locks of his own hair, his mother's, and that of
Teucros. In the offering which Achilles makes over the grave
of Patroclos of the hair which he had cherished for the river-god
of his fatherland, Spercheios, we have the union of the two
customs. Homer. Il. xxiii. 141-151.
403. After the widespread fashion of the East, the handmaids of
Clytæmnestra (originally Troïan captives) had to rend their
clothes, beat their breasts, and lacerate their faces till the blood
came. The higher civilisation of Solon's laws had forbidden
these wild, barbarous forms of grief at Athens. Plutarch,
Solon, p. 164.
404. Purposely, perhaps, obscure. They seem to say that the
old reverence for Agamemnon has passed away, and instead of
it there is only a slavish fear for Ægisthos. For the more acute,
however, they imply that those who have cause to fear are
Ægisthos and Clytæmnestra themselves.
405. The words, in their generalising sententiousness, refer
specially to the twofold crime of Ægisthos as an adulterer and
murderer. Then, in the Epode, the Chorus justify themselves
for their seeming inconsistency in thus abhorring the guilt, and
yet acting as instruments of the guilty in their attempts to escape
punishment.
406. The mourners speak, of course, of Agamemnon and Orestes,
not of Ægisthos and Clytæmnestra.
407. A mixture of meal, honey, and oil formed the half-liquid
substance commonly used for these funereal libations. The
“garlands” may be wreaths of flowers or fillets, or the word
may be used figuratively for the libation itself, as crowning the
mound in which Agamemnon lay.
408. The words point to a strange Athenian custom. When a
house was cleansed of that which defiled it, morally or physically,
the filth was carried in an earthen vessel to a place where three
ways met, and the worshipper flung the vessel behind him, and
walked away without turning to look at it. To Electra's mind,
the libation which her mother sends is equally unclean, and
should be treated in the same way. So in Hom. Il. i. 314, the
Argives purify themselves, and then cast the lustral water they
have used into the sea. Lev. vi. 11, gives us an analogous usage.
Comp. also Theocritos, Idyll xxiv., vv. 22-97.
409. Partly it is the youth of Electra that seeks counsel from
those who had more experience; partly she shrinks from the
responsibility of being the first to utter the formula of execration.
410. The word “escort” has a special reference to the function
of Hermes in the unseen world. As he was wont to act as guide
to the souls of the dead in their downward journey, so now
Electra prays that he may lead the blessings she asks for upward
from the dark depths of Earth.
411. The Skythian bow, long and elastic, bending either way,
like those of the Arabians (Herod. vii. 69). The connection of
Ares with the wild, fierce tribes of Thrakia and Skythia meets
us again and again in the literature of Greece. He was the
only God to whom they built temples (ibid. iv. 59). They
sacrificed human victims to an iron sword as his more appropriate
symbol (iv. 62). The use of iron for weapons of war
came to the Greeks from them (Seven ag. Th. 729; Prom. 714).
412. It may be worth while to compare the method adopted by
the three dramatists of Greece in bringing about the recognition
of the brother by the sister. (1) Here the lock of hair, in its peculiar
colour and texture resembling her own, followed by the likeness
of his footsteps to hers, prepares the way first for vague anticipations,
and then the robe she had made for him, leads to her
acceptance of Orestes on his own discovery of himself. To this it
has been objected, by Euripides in the first instance (Electra, vv.
462-500), that the evidence of the colour of the hair is weak,
that a young man's foot must have been larger than a maiden's,
and that he could not have worn as a man the garment she had
made for him as a child. It might be replied, perhaps, that
there are such things as hereditary resemblances extending to
the colour of the hair and the arch of the instep, and that the
robe may either have been shown instead of worn, or, being
worn, have been adapted for the larger growth. (2) In the
Electra of Sophocles the lock of hair alone convinces Chrysothemis
that her brother is near at hand (v. 900), while Electra
herself requires the further evidence of Agamemnon's seal
(v. 1223). In Euripides (v. 527), all proof fails till Orestes
shows a scar on his brow, which his sister remembers.
413. The saying is probably one of the widespread proverbs
which imply parables. The idea is obviously that with which
we are familiar in the Gospel “grain of mustard seed.” Here,
as in the “kicking against the pricks” of Acts ix. 5, xxvi. 14,
and Agam. v. 1604, we are carried back to a period which lies
beyond the range of history as that in which men took note of
the analogies and embodied them in forms like this.
414. So in the Odyssey (xix. 228), Odysseus appears as wearing
a woollen cloak, on which are embroidered the figures of a fawn
and a dog.
415. An obvious reproduction of the words of Andromache
(Il. vi. 429).
416. The words seem to imply that burning alive was known
among the Greeks as a punishment for the most atrocious
crimes. The “oozing pitch,” if we adopt that rendering,
apparently describes something like the “tunica molesta” of
Juvenal. (Sat. viii. 235.) Hesychios (s. v. Κωνῆσαι) mentions
the practice as alluded to in a lost play of Æschylos.
417. The words are both doubtful and obscure. Taking the
reading which I have adopted, they seem to mean that while
men in general had means of propitiating the Erinnyes and
other Powers for the guilt of unavenged bloodshed, Orestes and
Electra had no such way of escape open to them. If they, the
next of kin, failed to do their work, they would be exposed to
the full storm of wrath. But a conjectural emendation of one
word gives us,
“For making known to men the earth-born ills
That come from wrathful Powers.”
418. Either that old age would come prematurely, or that the
hair itself would share the leprous whiteness of the flesh.
419. The words, as taken in the text, refer to Orestes seeing
even in sleep the spectral forms of the Erinnyes. By some
editors the verse is placed after v. 276, and the lines then read
thus:—
“And that he calls fresh onsets of the Erinnyes
As brought to issue from a father's blood,
Seeing clearly, though he move his brow in darkness.”
So taken, the last line refers to Agamemnon, who, though in
the darkness of Hades, sees the penalties which will fail upon
his son should he neglect to take vengeance on his father's
murderers.
420. Stress is laid here, as in Agam. 1224, on the effeminacy of
the adulterer.
421. The great law of retribution is repeated from Agam. 1564.
As one of the earliest utterances of man's moral sense, it was
referred popularly among the Greeks to Rhadamanthos, who
with Minos judged the souls of the dead in Hades. Comp.
Aristot. Ethic. Nicom., v. 8.
422. The funeral pyre, which consumes the body, leaves the life
and power of the man untouched. The spirit survives, and
calls on the Gods that dwell in darkness to avenge him. The
very cry of wailing tends, as a prayer to them, to the exposure
of the murderer.
423. The Lykians, of whom Glaucos and Sarpedon are the
representative heroes in the Iliad, are named as the chief allies
of the Troïans.
424. The words embody the widespread feeling that the absence
of funereal honours affected the spirit of the dead, and that the
souls with whom he dwelt held him in high or low esteem
according as they had been given or withheld.
425. Pindar (Pyth. x. 47), the contemporary of Æschylos, had
made the name of these Hyperborei well known to all Greeks.
The vague dreams of men, before the earth had been searched
out, pictured a happy land as lying beyond their reach. There
were Islands of the Blest in the far West; Æthiopians, peaceful
and long-lived, in the South; and far away, beyond the cold
North, a people exempt from the common evils of humanity.
The latter have been connected with the old Aryan belief in the
paradise of Mount Meru. Comp. also Herod. iv. 421; Prom.
812.
426. Sc., the beating of both hands upon the breast, as the
Chorus uttered their lamentations.
427. Perhaps, simply “the sharp and bitter cry.” But the
rendering in the text seems justified as repeating the wish already
expressed (v. 260), that the murderers may die by this form of
death.
428. The Chorus at this point renew their words and cries of
lamentation, smiting on their breasts. By some critics this
speech and Antistrophe VII. are assigned to Electra, Antistrophe
VIII. to the Chorus, with a corresponding change in the
pronouns “my” and “thy.” The Chorus, as consisting of
Troïan captives, is represented as adopting the more vehement
Asiatic forms of wailing. Among these the Arians, Kissians,
and Mariandynians (Pers. 920) seem to have been most conspicuous
for their skill in lamentation, and, as such, were in
request where hired mourners were wanted. Compare the
opening chorus, v. 22.
429. The practice of mutilating the corpse of a murdered man by
cutting off his hands and feet and fastening them round his
waist, seems to have been looked on as rendering him powerless
to seek for vengeance. Comp. Soph. Elect. v. 437. This kind
of mutilation, and not mere wanton outrage, is what the Chorus
refer to.
430. As in v. 351 the loss of honour among the dead was represented
as one consequence of the absence of funereal rites from
those who loved the dead, so here the restoration of the children
to their rights appears as the condition without which that dishonour
must continue. If they succeed, then, and then only,
can they offer funereal banquets, year by year, as was the
custom. There may be a special reference to an Argive custom
mentioned by Plutarch (Quæst. Græc., c. 24) of sacrificing immediately
after the death of a relative to Apollo, and thirty days
later to Hermes.
431. Another reference to the third cup of undiluted wine which
men drank to the honour of Zeus the Preserver. Comp. Agam.
v. 245.
433. The story of Althæa has perhaps been made most familiar
to English readers by Mr. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.
More briefly told, the legend ran that she, being the wife of
Œneus, bare a son, who was believed to be the child of Ares—that
the Fates came to her when the boy, who was named
Meleagros, was seven days old, and told her that his life should
last until the firebrand then burning on the earth should be consumed.
She took the firebrand and quenched it, and laid it by
in a chest; but when Meleagros grew up, he joined in the chase
of the great boar of Calydon, and when he had slain it, gave the
skin as a trophy to Atalanta, and when his mother's brothers,
the sons of Thestios, claimed it as their right, he waxed wroth
with them and slew them. And then Althæa, in her grief, caring
more for her brothers than her son, took the brand from the
chest, and threw it into the fire, and so Meleagros died. Phrynichos
is said to have made the myth the subject of a drama. In
Homer (Il. x. 566), Althæa brings about her son's death by her
curses.
434. Skylla (not to be confounded with the sea-monster of
Messina) was the daughter of Nisos, king of Megaris, who had
on his head a lock of purple hair, which was a charm that preserved
his life from all danger. And the Cretans under Minos
attacked Nisos, and besieged him in his city; and Minos won
the love of Skylla, and tempted her with gifts, and she cut off
her father's lock of hair, and so he perished. But Minos, scorning
her for her deed, bound her by the feet to the stern of his
ship and drowned her.
435. Hermes, i.e., in his office as the escort of the souls of the
dead to Hades.
436. The Chorus apparently is represented as on the point of
completing its catalogue of crimes committed by women with
the story of Clytæmnestra's guilt. Something leads them to
check themselves, and they are contented with a dark and vague
allusion.
437. The story of the Lemnian women is told by Herodotos (vi.
138). They rose up against their husbands and put them all to
death; and the deed passed into a proverb, so that all great
crimes were spoken of as Lemnian. This guilt is that alluded
to in Strophe III.
438. In every case of which the Chorus had spoken guilt had
been followed by retribution. So, it is implied, it will be in
that which is present to their thoughts.
439. Sc., is not forgotten or overlooked, but will assuredly meet
with its due punishment.
440. So in Homer (Il. xxii. 444), the warm bath is prepared by
Andromache for Hector on his return from the battle in which
he fell.
441. As in her speeches in the Agamemnon (vv. 595, 884),
Clytæmestra's words here also are full of significant ambiguity.
The “things that befit the house,” the proposed conference with
Ægisthos, her separation of Orestes from his companions, are
all indications of suspicion already half aroused. The last three
lines were probably spoken as an “aside.”
442. Suasion is personified, and invoked to come and win
Clytæmnestra to trust herself in the power of the two avengers.
447. The “treasured score” is explained by the words that follow
to mean the cry of exultation which the Chorus will raise when
the deed of vengeance is accomplished; or, possibly (as Mr.
Paley suggests), the funereal wail over the bodies of Ægisthos
and Clytæmnestra, which the Chorus would raise to avert the
guilt of the murder from Orestes.
448. As Perseus could only overcome the Gorgon, Medusa, by
turning away his eyes, lest looking on her he should turn to
stone, so Orestes was to avoid meeting his mother's glance, lest
that should unman him and blunt his purpose.
449. Ægisthos had suffered enough, he says, for his share in
Agamemnon's death. He has no wish that fresh odium should
fall on him, as being implicated also in the death of Orestes, of
which he has just heard.
450. The word (ephedros) was applied technically to one who sat
by during a conflict between two athletes, prepared to challenge
the victor to a fresh encounter. Orestes is such a combatant,
taking the place of Agamemnon.
451. So, in Homer (Il. xxii. 79), Hecuba, when the entreaties of
Priam had been in vain, makes this last appeal—
“Then to the front his mother rushed, in tears,
Her bosom bare, with either hand her breast
Sustaining, and with tears addressed him thus,
'Hector, my son, thy mother's breast revere.'”
452. The reader will note this as the only speech put into the lips
of Pylades, though he is present as accompanying Orestes
throughout great part of the drama.
453. The different ethical standard applied to the guilt of the
husband and the wife was, we may well believe, that which prevailed
among the Athenians generally. It has only too close a
parallel in the ballads and romances of our own early literature.
454. The line is memorable as prophetic of the whole plot of the
Eumenides.
455. The phrase “wail as to a tomb” seems to have been a by-word
for fruitless entreaty and lamentation.
456. Clytæmnestra sees now the important of the dream referred to
in vv. 518-522.
457. The words must be left in their obscurity. Commentators
have conjectured Orestes and Pylades, or the deaths of Agamemnon
and Iphigeneia, or those of Ægisthos and Clytæmnestra,
as the “two lions,” spoken of. The first seems most in harmony
with the context.
458. The Eternal Justice which orders all things is mightier than
any arbitrary will, such as men attribute to the Gods. That
will, even if we dare to think of it as changeable or evil, is
held in restraint. It cannot, even if it would, protect the evildoers.
459. The Chorus feel that they have been too long silent; now,
at last, they can speak. As slaves dreading punishment they
had been gagged before; now the gag is removed.
461. It is not clear with what form of animal life the myræna is
to be identified. The ideal implied is that of some sea-monster
whose touch was poisonous, but this does not hold good of the
“lamprey.”
462. As the text stands, Orestes says that at last he can speak of
the murder over which he had long brooded in silence. Another
reading makes him speak of the oscillations in his own mind—
464. Delphi was to the Greek (as Jerusalem was to mediæval
Christendom) the centre at once of his religious life and of the
material earth. Its rock was the omphalos of the world. Consecrated
widows watched over the sacred and perpetual fire. Once
only up to the time of Æschylos, when the Temple itself was
desecrated by the Persians, had it ceased to burn.
465. Once again we have the thought of the third cup offered as
a libation to Zeus as saviour and deliverer. The Chorus asks
whether this third deed of blood will be true to that idea and
work out deliverance.
1137
EUMENIDES
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Pythian Priestess
Apollo
Athena
Ghost of Clytæmnestra
Orestes
Hermes
Chorus of the Erinnyes
Athenian Citizens, Women, and Girls
ARGUMENT.—The Erinnyes who appeared to Orestes
after the murder of Clytæmnestra made his life miserable,
and drove him without rest from land to land. And he,
seeking to escape them, had recourse to the Oracle of
Apollo at Delphi, believing that he who had sent him to
do the work of vengeance would also help to free him from
this wretchedness. But the Erinnyes followed him there
also, and took their places even within the holy shrine of
the Oracle, and while Orestes knelt on the central hearth
as a suppliant, they sat upon the seats there, and for very
weariness fell asleep.
1139
EUMENIDES
Scene.—The Outer Court of the Oracle at Delphi. Inner shrine in
the background, with doors leading into it
Enter thePythian Priestess
Pyth. First, with this prayer, of all the Gods I honour
[The procession winds its way, Athenaat its head, then
the Eumenides, then the women, round the Areopagos
towards the ravine in which the dread Goddesses were
to find their sanctuary.
466. The succession is, in part, accordant with that in the
Theogonia of Hesiod (vv. 116-136), but the special characteristic
of the Æschylean form of the legend is that each change is a
step in a due, rightful succession, as by free gift, not accomplished
(as in other narratives of the same transition) by violence and
wrong.
467. Phœbe, in the Theogonia, marries Coios, and becomes the
mother of Leto, or Latona, and so the grandmother of Apollo.
The “birthday gift” was commonly presented on the eighth
day after birth, when the child was named. The oracle is
spoken of as such a gift to Apollo, as bearing the name of
Phœbos.
468. The sacred circular pool of Delos is the crater of an extinct
volcano. There Apollo was born, and thence he passed through
Attica to Parnassos, to take possession of the oracle, according
to one form of the myth, depriving Themis of it and slaying the
dragon Python that kept guard over it.
469. The people of Attica are thus named either as being
mythically descended from Erichthonios the son of Hephæstos,
or as artificers, who own him as their father. The words refer to
the supposed origin of the Sacred Road from Athens to Delphi,
passing through Bœotia and Phokis. When the Athenians
sent envoys to consult the oracle they were preceded by men
bearing axes, in remembrance of the original pioneering work
which had been done for Apollo. The first work of active
civilisation was thus connected with the worship of the giver of
Light and Wisdom.
470. Delphos, the hero Eponymos (name-giving) of Delphi, was
honoured as the son of Poseidon. Hence the Priestess invokes
the latter as one of the guardian deities of the shrine.
471. Pronaia, as having her shrine or statue in front of the temple
of Apollo.
472. The Korykian rock in Parnassos, as in Soph., Antig.,
v. 1128; known also as the “Nymphs' cavern.”
473. Bromios, a name of Dionysos, embodying the special
attributes of loud, half-frenzied revelry.
474. In the legend which Euripides follows, Kithæron, not Parnassos,
is the scene of the death of Pentheus. He, it was said,
opposed the wild or frantic worship of the Pelasgic Bacchos,
concealed himself that he might behold the mysteries of the
Mœnads, and was torn to pieces by his mother and two others,
on whose eyes the God had cast such glamour that they took
him for a wild beast. English readers may be referred to Dean
Milman's translation of the Bacchanals of Euripides.
475. Pleistos, topographically, a river flowing through the vale of
Delphi, mythically the father of the nymphs of Korykos.
476. At one time the Oracle had been open to questioners once
in the year only, afterwards once a month. The pilgrims, after
they had made their offerings, cast lots, and the doors were opened
to him to whom the lot had fallen. Plutarch, Qu. Græc., p. 292.
477. The altar of the adytum, on the very centre, as men deemed,
of the whole earth. Zeus, it was said, had sent forth two eagles
at the same moment; one from the East and the other from the
West, and here it was that they had met. The stone was of
white marble, and the two eagles were sculptured on it. Strabo,
ix. 3.
478. The priestess dwells upon the outward tokens, which showed
that the suppliant came as one whose need was specially urgent.
On the ritual of supplication generally comp. Suppl., vv. 22,
348, 641, Soph., Œd. King, v. 3; Œd. Col., vv. 469-489.
479. Æschylos apparently follows the Theogonia of Hesiod,
(l. 278), who describes the Gorgons as three in number,
daughters of Phorkys and Keto, and bearing the names of
Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa. The last enters into the Perseus
cycle of myths, as one of the monsters whom he conquered,
with a face once beautiful, but with her hair turned to serpents
by the wrath of Athena, and so dreadful to look upon that those
who gazed on her were turned to stone. When Perseus had
slain her, Athena placed her head in her ægis, and thus became
the terror of all who were foes to herself or her people. A wild
legendary account of them meets us in the Prom. Bound, v. 812.
As works of art, the Gorgon images are traceable to the earliest
or Kyclopian period.
480. Here also we have a reference to a familiar subject of early
Greek art, probably to some painting familiar to an Athenian
audience. The name of Phineus indicates that the monstrous
forms spoken of are those of the Harpies, birds with women's
faces, or women with birds' wings, who were sent to vex the
blind seer for his cruelty to the children of his first marriage.
Comp. Soph. Antig., v. 973. In the Æneid they appear
(iii. 225) as dwelling in the Strophades, and harassing Æneas
and his companions.
481. The old image of Pallas, carved in olive-wood, as distinguished
from later sculpture.
482. The early code of hospitality bound the host, who as such
had once received a guest under the shelter of his roof, not to
desert him, even though he might discover afterwards that he
had been guilty of great crimes, but to escort him safely to the
boundary of his territory. Thus Apollo, as the host with whom
Orestes had taken refuge, sends Hermes, the escort God, to
guide and defend him on his way to Athens.
483. The thought that the highest wisdom came to men rather in
“visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,” than
through the waking senses, which we have already met with in
Agam., v. 173, is traceable to the mysticism of Pythagoras,
more distinctly perhaps to that of Epimenides.
484. Wine, as in Soph. Œd. Col., vv. 100, 481, was rigidly excluded
from the cultus of the Eumenides, and to them only as
daughters of Night were midnight sacrifices offered. We must
not lose sight of the thought thus implied, that Clytæmnestra
had herself lived, after her deed of guilt, in perpetual terror of
the Erinnyes, seeking to soothe them by her sacrifices.
485. The common rendering “in a dream” gives a sufficient
meaning, and is, of course, tenable enough. But there is a
force in the repetition of the same word, as in v. 116, which is
thus lost, and which I have endeavoured to preserve. The
Erinnyes, thus impotent in their rage, are as much mere dreamlike
spectres as is the ghost of Clytæmnestra.
486. Here, as throughout Æschylos, the Olympian divinities are
thought of as new comers, thrusting from their thrones the
whole Chthonian and Titanic dynasty, Gods of the conquering
Hellenes superseding those of the Pelasgi.
487. The accumulation of horrid forms of cruelty had, probably,
a special significance for the Athenians. These punishments
belonged to their enemies, the Persians, not to the Hellenic race,
and the poet's purpose was to rekindle patriotic feeling by
dwelling on their barbarity, as in Agam., v. 894, he points in
like manner to their haughtiness and luxury.
488. The argument of the Erinnyes is, to some extent, like that
of the Antigone of Sophocles (Antig., 909-913), and the wife of
Intaphernes (Herod. iii. 119). The tie which binds the husband
to the wife is less sacred than that between the mother and
the son. This, therefore, brings on the slayer the guilt of blood
of kin, while murder in the other case is reduced to simple
homicide. Orestes therefore was not justified in perpetrating
the greater crime as a retribution for the less. Apollo, in meeting
this plea, asserts the sacredness of the marriage bond as
standing on the same level as that of consanguinity.
489. The ideal interval of time between the two parts of the
drama is left undefined, but it would seem from vv. 230, 274-6,
and 429, to have been long enough to have allowed of many
wanderings to sacred places, Orestes does not go straight from
Delphi to Athens. He appears now, not as before dripping and
besmeared with blood, but with hands and garments purified.
490. The story of Adrastos and Crœsos in Herod. i. 35, illustrates
the gradual purification of which Orestes speaks. The
penitent who has the stain of blood-guiltiness upon him comes
to the king, and the king, as his host, performs the lustral rites
for him. Here Orestes urges that he has been received at many
homes, and gone through many such lustrations. He has been
cleansed from the pollution of sin: what he now seeks, to use
the terminology of a later system, is a forensic justification.
491. Sc., the scent of blood, which, though no longer visible to
the eyes of men, still lingers round him and is perceptible to his
pursuers.
492. Here, too, we trace the political bearing of the play. In the
year when it was produced (B.C. 458) an alliance with Argos was
the favourite measure of the more conservative party at Athens.
493. The names Triton and Tritonis, wherever found in classical
geography (Libya, Crete, Thessaly, Bœotia), are always connected
with the legend that Athena was born there. Probably
both name and legend were carried from Greece to Libya, and
then amalgamated with the indigenous local worship of a warlike
goddess. Hesiod (iv. 180, 188) connects the Libyan lake
with the legend of Jason and Argonauts.
494. In the war with the giants fought in the Phlegræan plains
(the volcanic district of Campania) Athena had helped her father
Zeus by her wise counsel, and was honoured there as keeping in
check the destructive Titanic forces which had been so subdued,
burying Enkelados, e.g., in Sicily. The “friends” are her
Libyan worshippers. The passage is interesting, as showing
the extent of Æschylos's acquaintance with the African and
Italian coasts of the Mediterranean.
495. The Choral ode here is brought in as an incantation. This
weapon is to succeed where others have failed, and this too, the
frenzy which seizes the soul in the remembrance of its past
transgression, is soothed and banished by Athena.
496. White, as the special colour of festal joy, was not used in
the worship of the Erinnyes.
498. The thought which underlies the obscurity of a corrupt
passage seems to be that, as they relieve the Gods from the task
of being avengers of blood, all that the Gods on their side can
legitimately do against them is to render powerless the prayers
for vengeance offered by the kindred of the slain. Their very
isolation, as Chthonian deities, from the Gods of Olympos should
protect them from open conflict. But an alternative rendering
of the second line gives, perhaps, a better meaning—
“And by the prayers men offer unto me
Work freedom for the Gods;”
i.e., by being the appointed receivers of such prayers for vengeance,
they leave the Gods free for a higher and serener life.
500. The words contain an allusion to the dispute between Athens
and Mitylene in the time of Peisistratos, as to the possession of
Sigeion. Athena asserts that it had been given to her by the
whole body of Achæans at the time when they had taken Troïa.
Comp. Herod. vv. 94, 95. It probably entered into the political
purposes of the play to excite the Athenians to a war in this
direction, so as to draw them off from the constitutional changes
proposed by Pericles and Ephialtes.
501. Here, and throughout the trial, we have to bear in mind the
technicalities of Athenian judicial procedure. The prosecutor,
in the first instance, tendered to the accused an oath that he was
not guilty. This he might accept or refuse. In the latter case,
the course of the trial was at least stopped, and judgment might
be recorded against him. If he could bring himself to accept
it, he was acquitted of the special charge of which he was
accused, but he was liable to a prosecution afterwards for that
perjury. If, on the other hand, he tendered an oath affirming
his guilt to the prosecutor, he placed himself in his hands.
Orestes, not being able to deny the fact, will not declare on
oath that he is “not guilty,” but neither will he place himself in
the power of his accusers. The peculiarities of this use of
oaths were: (1) That they were taken by the parties to the suit,
not by the witnesses. (2) That if both parties agreed to that
mode of decision, the oath was either way decisive. An allusion
to the latter practice is found in Heb. vi. 16, and traces of it are
found in the law-proceedings of Scotland. If either party refused,
the cause had to be tried in the usual way, and witnesses were
called.
502. Æschylos seems here to attach himself to the principles of
those who were seeking to reform the practice described in the
previous note as being at once cumbrous and unjust, throwing
its weight into the scale of the least scrupulous conscience, and
to urge a simpler, more straightforward trial. The same objection
is noticed by Aristotle in his discussion of the subject.
(Rhet. i. 15.)
503. Athena offers herself, not as arbitrator or sovereign judge,
but as presiding over the court of jurors whom she proceeds to
appoint.
504. Ixion appeared in the mythical history of Greece as the prototype
of all suppliants for purification. When he had murdered
Deioneus, Zeus had had compassion to him, received him as a
guest, cleansed him from his guilt. His ingratitude for this
service was the special guilt of his attempted outrage upon Hera.
The case is mentioned again in v. 687.
505. In heathen, as in Jewish sacrifices, the blood was the very
instrument of purification. It was sprinkled or poured upon
men, and they became clean. But this could not be done by
the criminal himself, nor by any chance person. The service
had to be rendered by a friend, who of very love gave himself
to this mediatorial work.
506. In the legend related by Pausanias (Corinth., c. 3), Trœzen
was the first place where Orestes was thus received, and in his
time the descendants of those who had thus helped held periodical
feasts in commemoration of it.
507. The course which Athena takes is: (1) to receive Orestes as
a settler with the rights which attached to such persons on
Athenian soil, not a criminal fugitive to be simply surrendered;
(2) to offer to the Erinnyes, as being too important to be put
out of court, a fair and open trial; (3) to acknowledge that he
and they are equally “blameless,” as far as she is concerned.
She has no complaint to make of them.
508. The red blight of vines and wheat was looked on as caused
by drops of blood which the Erinnyes had let fall.
509. Stress is laid on the fact that the judges of the Areopagos,
in contrast with those of the inferior tribunes of Athens, discharged
their duty under the sanction of an oath.
511. At a more advanced period of human thought, Cicero (Orat.
pro Roscio, c. 24) could point to the “thoughts that accuse each
other,” the horror and remorse of the criminal, as the true
Erinnyes, the “assiduæ domesticæque Furiæ.” Æschylos
clings to the mythical symbolism as indispensable for the preservation
of the truth which it shadowed forth.
512. Once again we have the poet of constitutional conservatism
keeping the via media between Peisistratos and Pericles.
513. The Tyrrhenian trumpet, with its bent and twisted tube,
retained its proverbial pre-eminence from the days of Æschylos
and Sophocles (Aias, 17) to those of Virgil (Æn., viii. 526).
514. The fondness of the Athenians for litigation, and the large
share which every citizen took in the administration of justice,
would probably make the scene which follows, with all its
technicalities, the part of the play into which they would most
enter.
515. It was necessary that some one, sitting as President of
the Court, should formally open the pleadings, by calling on
this side or that to begin. Here Athena takes that office on
herself, and calls on the Erinnyes.
516. The technicalities of the Areopagos are still kept up. The
three points on which the Erinnyes, as prosecutors, lay stress
are: (1) the fact of the murder; (2) the mode; (3) the motive.
“Three bouts,” as referring to the rule of the arena, that three
struggles for the mastery should be decisive.
517. The pleas put in by the Erinnyes as prosecutors are: (1) That
Clytæmnestra had been adequately punished by her death,
while Orestes was still alive; and (2) when asked why they had
not intervened to bring about that punishment, that the relationship
between husband and wife was less close than that between
mother and son. They drew, in other words, a distinction
between consanguinity and affinity, and upon this the rest of the
discussion turns. Orestes, and Apollo as his counsel, on the
other hand, meet this with the rejoinder, that there is no blood-relationship
between the mother and her offspring.
518. Sc. Their oath to give a verdict according to the evidence
must yield to the higher obligation of following the Divine will
rather than the letter of the law.
519. To have died in health by the arrows of a woman-warrior
might have been borne. To be slain by a wife treacherously in
his bath was to endure a far worse outrage.
520. In this new argument, and the answer to it, we may trace,
as in the Prometheus and the Agamemnon, the struggles of the
questioning intellect against the more startling elements of the
popular religious belief. Zeus is worshipped as the supreme
Lord, yet His dominion seems founded on might as opposed to
goodness, on the unrighteous expulsion of another. Here, in
Apollo's answer, there is a glimmer of a possible reconciliation.
The old and the new, the sovereignty of Cronos and that of
Zeus may be reconciled, and one supreme God be “all in all.”
521. Comp. the thought and language of the Suppliants, v. 93.
522. The last argument is, that the acquittal can be, at the best,
partial only, not complete; formal, not real. There would
remain for ever the pollution which would exclude Orestes from
the Phratria, the clan-brotherhood, by which, as by a sacramental
bond, all the members were held together.
523. The question seems to have been one of those which occupied
men's minds in their first gropings towards the mysteries of
man's physical life, and both popular metaphors and primary
impressions were in favour of the hypothesis here maintained.
Euripides (Orest., v. 534) puts the same argument into the mouth
of Orestes.
524. The story of Athena's birth, full-grown, from the head of
Zeus, is next referred to as the leading case bearing on the point
at issue.
525. Here, of course, the political interest of the whole drama
reached its highest point. What seems comparatively flat to us
must, to the thousands who sat as spectators, have been fraught
with the most intense excitement, showing itself in shouts of
applause, or audible tokens of clamorous dissent. The rivalry
of Whigs and Tories over Addison's Cato, the sensation produced
in times of Papal aggression by the king's answer to
Pandulph in King John, presents analogies which are worth
remembering.
526. The story ran that the tribe of women warriors from the
Caucasos, or the Thermodon, known by this name, had invaded
Attica under Oreithyia, when Theseus was king, to revenge the
wrongs he had done them, and to recover her sister Hippolyta.
Ares, the God of Thrakians, Skythians, and nearly all the
wilder barbaric tribes, was their special deity; and when they
occupied the hill which rose over against the Acropolis, they
sacrificed to him, and so it gained the name of the Areopagos, or
“hill of Ares.”
527. As in the Agamemnon (v. 1010), so here we find the aristocratic
conservative poet showing his colours, protesting against
the admission to the Archonship, and therefore to the Areopagos,
of men of low birth or in undignified employments.
528. The words, like all political clap-trap, are somewhat vague;
but, as understood at the time, the “lawless” policy alluded to
was that of Pericles and Ephialtes, who sought to deface and to
diminish the jurisdiction of the Areopagos, and the “tyrannical,”
that which had crushed the independence of Athens under
Peisistratos. Between the two was the conservative party, of
which Kimon had been the leader.
529. The Skythians may be named simply as representing all
barbarous, non-Hellenic races; but they appear, about this
time, wild and nomadic as their life was, to have impressed the
minds of the Greeks somewhat in the same way as the Germans
did the minds of the Romans in the time of Tacitus. Tales
floated from travellers' lips of their wisdom and their happiness—of
sages like Zamolxis and Aristarchos, who rivalled those of
Hellas—of the Hyperborei, in the far north, who enjoyed a
perpetual and unequalled blessedness.—Comp. Libation-Pourers,
v. 366.
530. Two topics of praise are briefly touched on: (1) the lower,
popular courts of justice at Athens might be open to the suspicion
of corruption, but no breath of slander had ever tainted the
fame of the Areopagos; (2) it met by night, keeping its watch,
that the citizens might sleep in peace.
531. The first of the twelve jurymen rises and drops his voting-ballot
into one of the urns, and is followed by another at the
end of each of the short two-line speeches in the dialogue that
follows. The two urns of acquittal and condemnation stand in
front of them. The plan of voting with different coloured balls
(black and white) in the same urn, was a later usage.
533. In the legend of Admetos son of Pheres, and king of Pheræ
in Thessalia, Apollo is represented as having first given wine to
the Destinies, and then persuaded them to allow Admetos,
whenever the hour of death should come, to be redeemed from
Hades, if father, or mother, or wife were willing to die for him.
The self-surrender of his wife, Alkestis, for this purpose, forms
the subject of the noblest of the tragedies of Euripides.
534. Partly as setting at nought the power of Erinnyes and the
Destinies, partly as giving wine to those whose libations were
wineless.—Comp. Sophocles, Œd. Col. v. 100.
535. The practice of the Areopagos is accurately reproduced.
When the votes of the judges were equal a casting vote was
given in favour of the accused, and was known as that of
Athena.
“By spurting from your throats those venom drops.”
537. The conservative poet enters his protest through the Erinnyes
against the innovating spirit that looked with contempt upon the
principles of a past age.
538. Cock-fighting took its place among the recognised sports of
the Athenians. Once a year there was a public performance in
the theatre.
539. The Temple of the Eumenides or Semnæ (“venerable
ones”) stood near the Areopagos.
540. Some two or three lines have probably been lost here.
541. Probably an allusion to the silver-mine at Laureion, which
about the time formed a large element of the revenues of Athens,
and of which a tithe was consecrated to Athena.
542. Reference is made to another local sanctuary, the temple on
the Areopagos dedicated to the Olympian Zeus.
543. The figure of Athena, as identical with Victory, and so the
tutelary Goddess of Athens, was sculptured with out-spread
wings.
544. Cranaos, the son of Kecrops, the mythical founder of
Athens.
545. The sanctuaries of the Eumenides were crypt-like chapels,
where they were worshipped by the light of lamps or torches.
546. Perhaps, “Children of Night, yourselves all childless left.”
1185
FRAGMENTS
38
Aphroditeloquitur
The pure, bright heaven still yearns to blend with earth,
And earth is filled with love for marriage-rites,
And from the kindly sky the rain-shower falls
And fertilises earth, and earth for men
Yields grass for sheep, and corn, Demêter's gift;
And from its wedlock with the South the fruit
Is ripened in its season; and of this,
All this, I am the cause accessory.
123
So, in the Libyan fables, it is told
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
“With our own feathers, not by others' hands,
Are we now smitten.”
147
Of all the Gods, Death only craves not gifts:
Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured
Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed
By hymns of praise. From him alone of all
The powers of Heaven Persuasion holds aloof.
151
When 'tis God's will to bring an utter doom
Upon a house, He first in mortal men
Implants what works it out.
1186162
The words of Truth are ever simplest found.
163
What good is found in life that still brings pain?
174
To many mortals silence great gain brings.
229
O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray,
To come to me: of cureless ills thou art
The one physician. Pain lays not its touch
Upon a corpse.
230
When the wind
Nor suffers us to leave the port, nor stay.
243
And if thou wish to benefit the dead,
'Tis all as one as if thou injured'st them,
And they nor sorrow nor delight can feel:
Yet higher than we are is Nemesis,
And Justice taketh vengeance for the dead.
266
Thetison the death of Achilles
Life free from sickness, and of many years,
And in a word a fortune like to theirs
Whom the Gods love, all this He spake to me
As pæan-hymn, and made my heart full glad:
And I full fondly trusted Phœbos' lips
As holy and from falsehood free, of art
Oracular an ever-flowing spring,
1187And He who sang this, He who at the feast
Being present, spake these things,—yea, He it is
That slew my son.
267
The man who does ill, ill must suffer too.
268
Evil on mortals comes full swift of foot,
And guilt on him who doth the right transgress.
269
Thou see'st a vengeance voiceless and unseen
For one who sleeps or walks or sits at ease:
It takes its course obliquely, here to-day,
And there to-morrow. Nor does night conceal
Men's deeds of ill, but whatsoe'er thou dost,
Think that some God beholds it.
270
“All have their chance:” good proverb for the rich.
271
Wise is the man who knows what profiteth,
Not he who knoweth much.
272
Full grievous burden is a prosperous fool.
272A
From a just fraud God turneth not away.
273
There is a time when God doth falsehood prize.
1188274
The polished brass is mirror of the form,
Wine of the soul.
275
Words are the parents of a causeless wrath.
276
Men credit gain for oaths, not oaths for them.
277
God ever works with those that work with will.
278
Wisdom to learn is e'en for old men good.
281
The base who prosper are intolerable.
282
The seed of mortals broods o'er passing things,
And hath nought surer than the smoke-cloud's shadow.
283
Old age hath stronger sense of right than youth.
286
Yet though a man gets many wounds in breast,
He dieth not, unless the appointed time,
The limit of his life's span, coincide;
Nor does the man who by the hearth at home
Sits still, escape the doom that Fate decrees.
287
How far from just the hate men bear to death,
Which comes as safeguard against many ills.
1189288
ToFortune
Thou did'st beget me; thou too, as it seems,
Wilt now destroy me.
289
The fire-moth's silly death is that I fear.
290
I by experience know the race full well
That dwells in Æthiop land, where seven-mouthed Nile
Rolls o'er the land with winds that bring the rain,
What time the fiery sun upon the earth
Pours its hot rays, and melts the snow till then
Hard as the rocks; and all the fertile soil
Of Egypt, filled with that pure-flowing stream,
Brings forth Demêter's ears that feed our life.
291
This hoopoo, witness of its own dire ills,
He hath in varied garb set forth, and shows
In full array that bold bird of the rocks
Which, when the spring first comes, unfurls a wing
Like that of white-plumed kite; for on one breast
It shows two forms, its own and eke its child's,
And when the corn grows gold, in autumn's prime,
A dappled plumage all its form will clothe;
And ever in its hate of these 'twill go
Far off to lonely thickets or bare rocks.
292
Still to the sufferer comes, as due from God,
A glory that to suffering owes its birth.
1190293
The air is Zeus, Zeus earth, and Zeus the heaven,
Zeus all that is, and what transcends them all.
294
Take courage; pain's extremity soon ends.
298
When Strength and Justice are true yoke-fellows,
Where can be found a mightier pair than they?
RHYMED CHORUSES
1191
AGAMEMNON
Verses 40-248
Nine weary years are gone and spent
Since Menelaos' armament
Sped forth, on work of vengeance bent,
For Priam's guilty land;
And with him Agamemnon there
Throne, sceptre, army all did share;
And so from Zeus the Atreidæ bear,
Their twofold high command.
They a fleet of thousand sail,
Strong in battle to prevail,
Led from out our Argive coast,
Shouting war-cries to the host;
E'en as vultures do that utter
Shrillest screams as round they flutter,
Grieving for their nestlings lost,
Plying still their oary wings
In many lonely wanderings,
Robbed of all the sweet unrest
That bound them to their young ones' nest.
And One on high of solemn state,
Apollo, Pan, or Zeus the great,
When he hears that shrill wild cry
Of his clients in the sky,
On them, the godless who offend,
Erinnys slow and sure doth send.
1192So 'gainst Alexandros then
The sons of Atreus, chiefs of men,
Zeus sent to work his high behest,
True guardian of the host and guest.
He, for bride of many a groom,
On Danai, Troïans sendeth doom,
Many wrestlings, sinew-trying
Of the knee in dust down-lying,
Many a spear-shaft snapt asunder
In the prelude of war's thunder.
What shall be, shall, and still we see
Fulfilled is destiny's decree.
Nor by tears in secret shed,
Nor by offerings o'er the dead,
Will he soothe God's vengeful ire
For altar hearths despoiled of fire.
And we with age outworn and spent
Are left behind that armament,
With head upon our staff low bent.
Weak our strength like that of boy;
Youth's life-blood, in its bounding joy,
For deeds of might is like to age,
And knows not yet war's heritage:
And the man whom many a year
Hath bowed in withered age and sere,
As with three feet creepeth on,
Like phantom form of day-dream gone
Not stronger than his infant son.
And now, O Queen, who tak'st thy name
From Tyndareus of ancient fame,
Our Clytæmnestra whom we own
As rightly sharing Argos' throne!
What tidings joyous hast thou heard,
Token true or flattering word,
1193That thou send'st to every shrine
Solemn pomp in stately line,—
Shrines of Gods who reign in light,
Or those who dwell in central night,
Who in Heaven for aye abide,
Or o'er the Agora preside.
Lo, thy gifts on altars blaze,
And here and there through heaven's wide ways
The torches fling their fiery rays,
Fed by soft and suasive spell
Of the clear oil, flowing well
From the royal treasure-cell.
Telling what of this thou may,
All that's meet to us to say,
Do thou our haunting cares allay,
Cares which now bring sore distress,
While now bright hope, with power to bless,
From out the sacrifice appears,
And wardeth off our restless fears,
The boding sense of coming fate,
That makes the spirit desolate.
Strophe I
Yes, it is mine to tell
What omens to our leaders then befell,
Giving new strength for war,
(For still though travelled far
In life, by God's great gift to us belong
The suasive powers of song,)
To tell how those who bear
O'er all Achæans sway in equal share,
Ruling in one accord
The youth of Hellas that own each as lord,
Were sent with mighty host
By mighty birds against the Troïan coast,
1194Kings of the air to kings of men appearing
Near to the palace, on the right hand veering;
On spot seen far and near,
They with their talons tear
A pregnant hare with all her unborn young,
All her life's course in death's deep darkness flung.
Oh raise the bitter cry, the bitter wail;
Yet pray that good prevail!
Antistrophe I
And then the host's wise seer
Stood gazing on the Atreidæ standing near,
Of diverse mood, and knew
Those who the poor hare slew,
And those who led the host with shield and spear,
And spake his omens clear:
“One day this host shall go,
And Priam's city in the dust lay low,
And all the kine and sheep
Countless, which they before their high towers keep,
Fate shall with might destroy:
Only take heed that no curse mar your joy,
Nor blunt the edge of curb that Troïa waiteth,
Smitten too soon, for Artemis still hateth
The wingèd hounds that own
Her father on his throne,
Who slay the mother with the young unborn,
And looks upon the eagle's feast with scorn.
Ah! raise the bitter cry, the bitter wail;
Yet pray that good prevail.
Epode
For she, the Fair One, though her mercy shields
The lion's whelps, like dew-drops newly shed,
And yeanling young of beasts that roam the fields,
Yet prays her sire fulfil these omens dread,
1195The good, the evil too.
And now I call on him, our Healer true,
Lest she upon the Danai send delays
That keep our ships through many weary days,
Urging a new strange rite,
Unblest alike by man and God's high law,
Evil close clinging, working sore despite,
Marring a wife's true awe.
For still there lies in wait,
Fearful and ever new,
Watching the hour its eager thirst to sate,
Vengeance on those who helpless infants slew.”
Such things, ill mixed with good, great Calchas spake,
As destined by the birds' strange auguries;
And we too now our echoing answer make
In loud and woeful cries:
Oh raise the bitter cry, the bitter wail;
Yet pray that good prevail.
Strophe II
O Zeus, whoe'er Thou be,
If that name please thee well,
By that I call on Thee;
For weighing all things else I fail to tell
Of any name but Zeus;
If once for all I seek
Of all my haunting, troubled thoughts a truce,
That name I still must speak.
Antistrophe II
For He who once was great,
Full of the might to war,
Hath lost his high estate;
And He who followed now is driven afar,
Meeting his Master too:
But if one humbly pay
1196With 'bated breath to Zeus his honour due,
He walks in wisdom's way,—
Strophe III
To Zeus, who men in wisdom's path doth train,
Who to our mortal race
Hath given the fixèd law that pain is gain;
For still through his high grace
True counsel falleth on the heart like dew,
In deep sleep of the night,
The boding thoughts that out of ill deeds grew;
This too They work who sit enthronèd in their might.
Antistrophe III
And then the elder leader of great fame
Who ruled the Achæans' ships,
Not bold enough a holy seer to blame
With words from reckless lips,
But tempered to the fate that on him fell;—
And when the host was vexed
With tarryings long, scant stores, and surging swell,
Chalkis still far off seen, and baffled hopes perplexed;
Strophe IV
And stormy blasts that down from Strymon sweep,
And breed sore famine with the long delay,
Hurl forth our men upon the homeless deep
On many a wandering way,
Sparing nor ships, nor ropes, nor sailing gear,
Doubling the weary months, and vexing still
The Argive host with fear.
Then when as mightier charm for that dread ill,
Hard for our ships to bear,
From the seer's lips did “Artemis” resound,
The Atreidæ smote their staves upon the ground,
And with no power to check, shed many a bitter tear.
1197Antistrophe IV
And then the elder of the chiefs thus cried:
“Great woe it is the Gods to disobey;
Great woe if I my child, my home's fond pride,
With my own hands must slay,
Polluting with the streams of maiden's blood
A father's hands, the holy altar near.
Which course hath least of good?
How can I loss of ships and comrades bear?
Right well may men desire,
With craving strong, the blood of maiden pure
As charm to lull the winds and calm ensure;
Ah, may there come the good to which our hopes aspire!”
Strophe V
Then, when he his spirit proud
To the yoke of doom had bowed,
While the blasts of altered mood
O'er his soul swept like a flood,
Reckless, godless and unblest;
Thence new thoughts upon him pressed,
Thoughts of evil, frenzied daring,
(Still doth passion, base guile sharing,
Mother of all evil, hold
The power to make men bad and bold,)
And he brought himself to slay
His daughter, as on solemn day,
Victim slain the ship to save,
When for false wife fought the brave.
Antistrophe V
All her cries and loud acclaim,
Calling on her father's name,—
All her beauty fresh and fair,
They heeded not in their despair,
Their eager lust for conflict there.
1198And her sire the attendants bade
To lift her, when the prayer was said,
Above the altar like a kid,
Her face and form in thick veil hid;
Yea, with ruthless heart and bold,
O'er her gracious lips to hold
Their watch, and with the gag's dumb pain
From evil-boding words restrain.
Strophe VI
And then upon the ground
Pouring the golden streams of saffron veil,
She cast a glance around
That told its piteous tale,
At each of those who stood prepared to slay,
Fair as the form by skilful artist drawn,
And wishing, all in vain, her thoughts to say;
For oft of old in maiden youth's first dawn,
Within her father's hall,
Her voice to song did call,
To chant the praises of her sire's high state,
His fame, thrice blest of Heaven, to celebrate.
What then ensued mine eyes
Saw not, nor may I tell, but not in vain
The arts of Calchas wise;
For justice sends again,
The lesson “pain is gain” for them to learn:
But for our piteous fate since help is none,
With voice that bids “Good-bye,” we from it turn
Ere yet it come, and this is all as one
With weeping ere the hour,
For soon will come in power
To-morrow's dawn, and good luck with it come!
So speaks the guardian of this Apian home.
1199Verses 346-471
O great and sovran Zeus, O Night,
Great in glory, great in might,
Who round Troïa's towers hast set,
Enclosing all, thy close-meshed net,
So that neither small nor great
Can o'erleap the bondslave's fate,
Or woe that maketh desolate;
Zeus, the God of host and guest,
Worker of all this confessed,
He by me shall still be blest.
Long since, 'gainst Alexandros He
Took aim with bow that none may flee,
That so his arrows onward driven,
Nor miss their mark, nor pierce the heaven.
Strophe I
Yes, they lie smitten low,
If so one dare to speak, by stroke of Zeus;
Well one may trace the blow;
The doom that He decreed their soul subdues.
And though there be that say
The Gods for mortal men care not at all,
Though they with reckless feet tread holiest way,
These none will godly call.
Now is it to the children's children clear
Of those who, overbold,
More than was meet, breathed Discord's spirit drear;
While yet their houses all rich store did hold
Beyond the perfect mean.
Ah! may my lot be free from all that harms,
My soul may nothing wean
From calm contentment with her tranquil charms;
For nought is there in wealth
That serves as bulwark 'gainst the subtle stealth
1200Of Destiny and Doom,
For one who, in the pride of wanton mood,
Spurns the great altar of the Right and Good.
Antistrophe I
Yea, a strange impulse wild
Urges him on, resistless in its might,
Atè's far-scheming child.
It knows no healing, is not hid in night,
That mischief lurid, dark;
Like bronze that will not stand the test of wear,
A tarnished blackness in its hue we mark;
And like a boy who doth a bird pursue
Swift-floating on the wing,
He to his country hopeless woe doth bring;
And no God hears their prayer,
But sendeth down the unrighteous to despair,
Whose hands are stained with sin.
So was it Paris came
His entrance to the Atreidæ's home to win,
And brought its queen to shame,
To shame that brand indelible hath set
Upon the board where host and guest were met.
Strophe II
And leaving to her countrymen to bear
Wild whirl of ships of war and shield and spear,
And bringing as her dower,
Death's doom to Ilion's tower,
She hath passed quickly through the palace gate,
Daring what none should dare;
And lo! the minstrel seers bewail the fate
That home must henceforth share;
“Woe for the kingly house and for its lord;
Woe for the marriage-bed and paths which still
A vanished love doth fill!
1201There stands he, wronged, yet speaking not a word
Of scorn from wrathful will,
Seeing with utter woe that he is left,
Of her fair form bereft;
And in his yearning love
For her who now is far beyond the sea,
A phantom queen through all the house shall rove;
And all the joy doth flee
The sculptured forms of beauty once did give;
And in the penury of eyes that live,
All Aphroditè's grace
Is lost in empty space.
Antistrophe II
And spectral forms in visions of the night
Come, bringing sorrow with their vain delight:
For vain it is when one
Thinks that great joy is near,
And, passing through his hands, the dream is gone
On gliding wings, that bear
The vision far away on paths of sleep.”
Such woes were felt at home
Upon the sacred altar of the hearth,
And worse than these remain for those who roam
From Hellas' parent earth:
In every house, in number measureless,
Is seen a sore distress:
Yea, sorrows pierce the heart:
For those who from his home he saw depart
Each knoweth all too well;
And now, instead of warrior's living frame,
There cometh to the home where each did dwell
The scanty ashes, relics of the flame,
The urns of bronze that keep
The dust of those that sleep.
1202Strophe III
For Ares, who from bodies of the slain
Reapeth a golden gain,
And holdeth, like a trafficker, his scales,
E'en where the torrent rush of war prevails,
From Ilion homeward sends
But little dust, yet burden sore for friends,
O'er which, smooth-lying in the brazen urn,
They sadly weep and mourn,
Now for this man as foremost in the strife,
And now for that who in the battle fell,
Slain for another's wife.
And muttered curses some in secret tell,
And jealous discontent
Against the Atreidæ who as champions led
The mighty armament;
And some around the wall, the goodly dead,
Have there in alien land their monument,
And in the soil of foes
Take in the sleep of death their last repose.
Antistrophe III
And lo! the murmurs which our country fill
Are as a solemn curse,
And boding anxious fear expecteth still
To hear of evil worse.
Not blind the Gods, but giving fullest heed
To those who cause a nation's wounds to bleed;
And the dark-robed Erinnyes in due time
By adverse chance and change
Plunge him who prospers though defiled by crime
In deepest gloom, and through its formless range
No gleams of help appear.
O'er-vaunted glory is a perilous thing;
For on it Zeus, whose glance fills all with fear,
1203His thunderbolts doth fling.
That fortune fair I praise
That rouseth not the Gods to jealousy.
May I ne'er tread the devastator's ways,
Nor as a prisoner see
My life wear out in drear captivity!
Epode
And now at bidding of the courier-flame,
Herald of great good news,
A murmur swift through all the city came;
But whether it with truth its course pursues,
Who knows? or whether God who dwells on high,
With it hath sent a lie?
Who is so childish, or of sense bereft,
As first to feel the glow
That message of the herald fire has left,
And then to sink down low,
Because the rumour changes in its sound?
It is a woman's mood
To accept a boon before the truth is found:
Too quickly she believes in tidings good,
And so the line exact
That marks the truth of fact
Is over-passed, and with quick doom of death
A rumour spread by woman perisheth.
Verses 665-782
Strophe I
Who was it named her with such foresight clear?
Could it be One of might,
In strange prevision of her work of fear,
Guiding the tongue aright?
Who gave that war-wed, strife-upstirring one
The name of Helen, ominous of ill?
1204For 'twas through her that Hellas was undone,
That woes from Hell men, ships, and cities fill.
Out from the curtains, gorgeous in their fold,
Wafted by breeze of Zephyr, earth's strong child,
She her swift way doth hold;
And hosts of mighty men, as hunters bold
That bear the spear and shield,
Wait on the track of those who steered their way
Unseen where Simois flows by leafy field,
Urged by a strife that came with power to slay.
Antistrophe I
And so the wrath which doth its work fulfil
To Ilion brought, well-named,
A marriage marring all, avenging still
For friendship wronged and shamed,
And outrage foul on Zeus, of host and guest
The guardian God, from those who then did raise
The bridal hymn of marriage-feast unblest
Which called the bridegroom's kin to shouts of praise.
But now by woe oppressed
Priam's ancient city waileth very sore,
And calls on Paris unto dark doom wed,
Suffering yet more and more
For all the blood of heroes vainly shed,
And bearing through the long protracted years
A life of wailing grief and bitter tears.
Strophe II
One was there who did rear
A lion's whelp within his home to dwell,
A monster waking fear,
Weaned from the mother's milk it loved so well:
Then in life's dawning light,
Loved by the children, petted by the old,
Oft in his arms clasped tight,
1205As one an infant newly-born would hold,
With eye that gleamed beneath the fondling hand,
And fawning as at hunger's strong command.
Antistrophe II
But soon of age full grown,
It showed the inbred nature of its sire,
And wrought unasked, alone,
A feast to be that fostering nurture's hire;
Gorged full with slaughtered sheep,
The house was stained with blood as with a curse
No slaves away could keep,
A murderous mischief waxing worse and worse,
Sent as from God a priest from Atè fell,
And reared within the man's own house to dwell.
Strophe III
So I would say to Ilion then there came
Mood as of calm when every wind is still,
The gentle pride and joy of noble fame,
The eye's soft glance that all the soul doth thrill;
Love's full-blown flower that brings
The thorn that wounds and stings;
And yet she turned aside,
And of the marriage feast wrought bitter end,
Coming to dwell where Priam's sons abide,
Ill sojourner, ill friend,
Sent by great Zeus, the God of host and guest,
A true Erinnys, by all wives unblest.
Antistrophe III
There lives a saying framed of ancient days,
And in men's minds imprinted firm and fast,
That great good fortune never childless stays,
But brings forth issue,—that on fame at last
1206There rushes on apace
Great woe for all the race;
But I, apart, alone,
Hold a far other and a worthier creed:
The impious act is by ill issue known,
Most like the parent deed;
While still for all who love the Truth and Right,
Good fortune prospers, fairer and more bright.
Strophe IV
But wanton Outrage done in days of old
Another wanton Outrage still doth bear,
And mocks at human woes with scorn o'erbold,
Or soon or late as they their fortune share.
That other in its turn
Begets Satiety,
And lawless Might that doth all hindrance spurn,
And sacred right defy,
Two Atès fell within their dwelling-place,
Like to their parent race.
Antistrophe IV
Yet Justice still shines bright in dwellings murk
And dim with smoke, and honours calm content;
But gold-bespangled homes, where guilt doth lurk,
She leaves with glance in horror backward bent,
And draws with reverent fear
To places holier far,
And little recks the praise the prosperous hear,
Whose glories tarnished are;
But still towards its destined goal she brings
The whole wide course of things.
Say then, son of Atreus, thou
Who com'st as Troïa's conqueror now,
1207What form of welcome right and meet,
What homage thy approach to greet,
Shall I now use in measure true,
Nor more nor less than that is due?
Many men there are, I wis,
Who in seeming place their bliss,
Caring less for that which is.
If one suffers, then their wail
Loudly doth the ear assail;
Yet have they nor lot nor part
In the grief that stirs the heart;
So too the joyous men will greet
With smileless faces counterfeit:
But shepherd who his own sheep knows
Will scan the lips that fawn and gloze,
Ready still to praise and bless
With weak and watery kindliness.
Thou when thou the host did'st guide
For Helen—truth I will not hide—
In mine eyes had'st features grim,
Such as unskilled art doth limn,
Not guiding well the helm of thought,
And giving souls with grief o'erwrought
False courage from fresh victims brought,
But with nought of surface zeal,
Now full glad of heart I feel,
And hail thy acts as deeds well done:
Thou too in time shall know each one,
And learn who wrongly, who aright
In house or city dwells in might.
Verses 947-1001
Strophe I
Why thus continually
Do ever-haunting phantoms hover nigh
1208My hearth that bodeth ill?
Why doth the prophet's strain unbidden still,
Unbought, flow on and on?
Why on my mind's dear throne
Hath faith lost all her former power to fling
That terror from me as an idle thing?
Yet since the ropes were fastened in the sand
That moored the ships to land,
When the great naval host to Ilion went,
Time hath passed on to feeble age and spent.
Antistrophe I
And now as face to face,
Myself reporting to myself I trace
Their safe return; and yet
My mind, taught by itself, cannot forget
Erinnys' dolorous cry,
That lyreless melody,
And hath no strength of wonted confidence.
Not vain these pulses of the inward sense,
As my heart beateth in its wild unrest,
Within true-boding breast;
And hoping against hope, I yet will pray
My fears may all prove false and pass away.
Strophe II
Of high, o'erflowing health
There is no limit found that satisfies;
For soon by force or stealth,
As foe 'gainst whom but one poor wall doth rise,
Disease upon it presses, and the lot
Of fair good fortune onward moves until
It strikes on unseen reef where help is not.
But should fear move their will
For safety of their freight,
1209With measured sling a part they sacrifice,
And so avert their fate,
Lest the whole house should sink no more to rise,
O'erwhelmed with misery;
Nor does the good ship perish utterly:
So too abundant gift,
From Zeus in double plenty, from the earth,
Doth the worn soul from anxious care uplift,
And turns the famished wail to bounding joy and mirth.
Antistrophe II
But blood that once is shed
In purple stream of death upon the ground,
Who then, when life is fled,
A charm to call it back again hath found?
Else against him who raised the dead to life
Zeus had not sternly warred, as warning given
To all men; but if Fate were not at strife
With Fate that brings from Heaven
Help from the Gods, my heart,
Out-stripping speech, had given thought free vent.
But now in gloom apart
It sits and moans in sullen discontent,
And hath no hope that e'er
It shall an issue seasonably fair
From out the tangled skein
Of life's strange course unravel straight and clear,
While in the fever of continuing pain
My soul doth burden sore of troublous anguish bear.
1210
THE LIBATION-POURERS
Verses 20-75
Strophe I
Lo, from the palace door
We wend our way to pour
Gifts on the dead;
And in our bitter woe,
Our hands with many a blow
Smite breast and head.
On each fair cheek the nail
Has ploughed full many a trail,
And all to tatters torn
The garments we have worn;
The foldings of the vest
O'er maiden's swelling breast
Are roughly rent;
For now on us the chance
That shuts out joy and dance
Our fate hath sent.
Antistrophe I
A spectral vision clear
Thrills every hair with fear,
In haunted sleep,
Breathing of dire distress,
From innermost recess
Its watch doth keep,
Breaking with cry of fright
The still deep hush of night:
1211All through the queenly bower
Sharp cry was heard that hour,
And they to whom 'twas given
To read decrees of Heaven,
In dream o'er-true,
By solemn pledges bound,
Declared that underground
The dead were wrathful found
'Gainst those that slew.
Strophe II
And so the godless queen
In eager haste is seen,—
Sends me with gifts like this,
Full graceless grace, I wis,
As if (O mother Earth,
To whom we owe our birth!)
To banish dread.
And I would fain delay
This prayer of mine to pray:
What ransom can men pay
For blood once shed?
Oh, hearth and home of woe!
Oh, utter overthrow!
Foul mists brood o'er our halls:
No ray of sunlight falls;
Thick darkness from the tomb
Of heroes makes the gloom
Yet more intense.
Antistrophe II
And awe that once we knew,
Strong, mighty to subdue,
Falling on every ear,
Thrilling each soul with fear,
1212Is gone far hence.
There be that well may bow
In craven terror now,
For lo! Success enthroned
As more than God is owned.
But Vengeance will not fail
Ere long to turn the scale.
On some her strokes alight,
While yet their day is bright;
Some, as in twilight's gloom,
O'erflow with gathering doom;
Some endless night doth hold
In realm of darkness old.
Strophe III
And for the blood which Earth,
To whom it owed its birth,
Hath drunk, there still doth wait
A stern avenging Fate;
The stain of blood doth stay,
And will not pass away,
And nerves are thrilled with pain
In soul that sets in train
The plague that works amain
Its evil great.
Antistrophe III
All help from him hath fled
Who with adulterous tread
Denies another's bed.
Though many streams should pour
Their waters o'er and o'er,
Those waters evermore
1213Are poured in vain;
They cannot cleanse the guilt
Of blood that once is spilt,
Man's hand to stain.
Epode
But since to me by Heaven
The exile's life is given,
(Yea, far from home I know
The bondslave's cup of woe,)
I needs must yield assent
To good or ill intent,
Accepting their commands
Who rule with sceptred hands,—
Yea, I must hide my hate
In this my evil fate,
And under strong control
Keep my rebellious soul;
And now beneath my veil
I weep my woes' full tale;
For cares that vex and fret
My cheeks with tears are wet.
Verses 576-639
Strophe I
Many dread forms of woe and fear the Earth
Doth breed; and Ocean's deep
Is full of foes men hate, of monstrous birth;
And Air's high pathways keep
Their flashing meteors; birds that wing their flight,
And things on earth that creep;
And one might tell the wrath of whirlwind's might,
When tempests wildly sweep.
1214Antistrophe I
But who can tell man's purpose overbold?
Or woman's, prompt to dare?
Or the strong loves that men in bondage hold,
And bring woe everywhere?
Or strange conjunctions of the hearth and home?
But still the palm they bear,
The loves unloved that women overcome,
And hold dominion there.
Strophe II
And one whose thoughts are not o'erswift of wing,
May learn and ponder well
What purpose Thestios' child to act did bring,
Purpose most dire and fell,
Her burning thought who did her own child slay,
Kindling the torch of death
That with her child's life kept its equal way,
Since coming from his mother's womb he cried,
To that predestined day on which at last he died.
Antistrophe II
And yet another must I in my song
Devote to hate and scorn,
The murderess Skylla, who to deeds of wrong
By Minos' gifts was borne,
And for her foes' sake slew a man she loved
For Cretan chains gold-wrought;
She with dog's heart the deathless lock removed
From him, in deep sleep sunk; yet Hermes' power
She too was taught at last at her appointed hour.
Strophe III
But since I tell my tale of loathly crime,
And of ill-omened marriage out of time,
Wedlock our house abhors,
1215The schemes and plots of women steeped in guile
Against a warrior chief, a chief erewhile
The dread of foes in wars,
The foremost place I give to altar-hearth
Where no wrath burns and woman knows the worth
Of mood from daring free.
Antistrophe III
Yet of all ills the Lemnian first may stand,
The cry of loathing rings through all the land,
And still each crime of dread
A man will liken to the Lemnian ill;
And now by woe that comes from God's stern will
The race is gone and fled,
Of all men scorned, for no man looks with love
On deeds that to the high Gods hateful prove;
Is not this clear to see?
Strophe IV
And lo! the sword sharp-pointed pierces deep,
E'en to the heart, the sword which Vengeance wields;
The lawless deed will not neglected sleep,
When men tread down what fear of high heaven shields;
Antistrophe IV
But still the block of Vengeance firm doth stand,
And Fate, as swordsmith, hammers blow on blow;
And then with thoughts that none can understand,
Erinnys comes far known, though working slow,
And to the old house brings the youthful heir,
That deeds of blood wrought out of olden time
May the due judgment bear
For each polluting crime.
1216Verses 769-820
Strophe I
Oh, hear me, hear my prayer, thou mighty Lord!
Sire of all Gods that on Olympos dwell,
Hear Thou, and grant my longing heart's desire,
That those who wise of heart would fain do well
May see each prayer for right
Fulfilled in holiest might;
That prayer, O Zeus, I pray.
Strophe II
Do Thou protect him, yea, O Zeus, and bring
Before his foes on yonder secret way;
For if thou raise him high, then Thou, O king,
Shalt to thy heart's content
Receive a twofold, threefold recompence,
For that thine anger bent
Against each old offence.
Antistrophe I
Look on the son of one whom Thou did'st love,
Like orphan colt fast bound to car of woes;
Set Thou a mark that may as limit prove;
Ah, might one watch his footsteps as he goes,
In measured course and true,
This his own country through!
Strophe III
And ye who in our home
Stand in the shrine with plenteous wealth full stored,
Hear, O ye Gods, and come,
Yea, come with one accord,
Lead him on, wash away
With vengeance new the blood of crime of old;
Let not the old guilt stay
To breed fresh offspring where our home we hold.
1217Mesode
But grant him good success,
O Thou who dost within the great cave dwell!
With upward glance of joy our chief's house bless,
And that he too, full well,
Freely and brightly with the dear, loved eyes,
May look from out the veil of cloudy skies.
Antistrophe III
And then may Maia's son
Assist him, as is meet, in this his task!
Through Him success is won,
The boon that now we ask:
And many secret things will He make clear,
If that should be His will;
But should He choose the truth should not appear,
Before men's eyes He still
Brings darkness and the blackness of the night,
Nor is He clearer in the day's full light.
Strophe IV
And then will we pour forth
All that our house contains of costliest worth,
Past evil to redeem,
And through the city we will raise the strain
Shrill-voiced of women's chant yet once again.
All this as good I deem;
This, this my gain increaseth more and more,
And far from those I love is sorrow's bitter stour.
Antistrophe II
But thou, take courage when the time is come,
The time to act indeed,
And when she calls thee “child,” do thou strike home,
And let thy father's name for vengeance plead;
Do thy dread taskwork to the uttermost.
1218Antistrophe IV
Let Perseus' heart within thy bosom dwell,
For thou dost work for each dear kindred ghost,
And those on high, a bitter boon and fell,
Completing there within
The deed of blood and sin,
And utterly destroying him whose hand
That crime of murder planned.
1219
EUMENIDES
Verses 297-374
Come then, and let us dance in solemn strain;
It is our will to chant our harsh refrain,
And tell how this our band
Works among men the tasks we take in hand.
In righteous vengeance find we full delight;
On him who putteth forth clean hands and pure
No wrath from us doth light;
Unhurt shall he through all his life endure;
But whoso, as this man, hath evil wrought,
And hides hands stained with blood,
On him we come, with power prevailing fraught,
True witnesses and good,
For those whom he has slain, and bent to win
Full forfeit-price for that his deed of sin.
Strophe I
O Mother, Mother Night!
Who did'st bear me a penalty and curse
To those who see and those who see not light,
Hear thou; for Leto's son, in mood perverse,
Puts me to foulest shame,
In that he robs me of my trembling prey,
The victim whom we claim,
That we his mother's blood may wash away;
And over him as slain
Sing we this dolorous, frenzied, maddening strain,
The song that we, the Erinnyes, love so well,
That binds the soul as with enchanter's spell,
1220Without one note from out the sweet-voiced lyre,
Withering the strength of men as with a blast of fire.
Antistrophe I
For this our task hath Fate
Spun without fail to last for ever sure,
That we on man weighed down with deeds of hate
Should follow till the earth his life immure.
Nor when he dies can he
Boast of being truly free;
And over him as slain
Sing we this dolorous, frenzied, maddening strain,
The song that we, the Erinnyes, love so well,
That binds the soul as with enchanter's spell,
Without one note from out the sweet-voiced lyre,
Withering the strength of men as with a blast of fire.
Strophe II
Yea, at our birth this lot to us was given,
And from the immortal Ones who dwell in Heaven
We still must hold aloof;
None sits with us at banquets of delight,
Or shares a common roof,
Nor part nor lot have I in garments white;
My choice was made a race to overthrow,
When murder, home-reared, lays a loved one low;
Strong though he be, upon his track we tread,
And drain his blood till all his strength is fled.
Antistrophe II
Yea, 'tis our work to set another free
From tasks like this, and by my service due
To give the Gods their perfect liberty,
Relieved from task of meting judgment true;
For this our tribe from out his fellowship
Zeus hath cast out as worthy of all hate,
1221And from our limbs the purple blood-drops drip;
So with a mighty leap and grievous weight
My foot I bring upon my quivering prey,
With power to make the swift and strong give way,
An evil and intolerable fate.
Strophe III
And all the glory and the pride of men,
Though high exalted in the light of day,
Wither and fade away,
Of little honour then,
When in the darkness of the grave they stay,
By our attack brought low,
The loathèd dance through which in raiment black we go:
Antistrophe III
And through the ill that leaves him dazed and blind,
He still is all unconscious that he falls,
So thick a cloud enthrals
The vision of his mind:
And Rumour with a voice of wailing calls,
And tells of gathering gloom
That doth the ancient halls in darkness thick entomb.
Strophe IV
So it abideth still;
Ready and prompt are we to work our will,
The dreaded Ones who bring
The dire remembrance of each deed of ill,
Whom mortals may not soothe with offering,
Working a task with little honour fraught,
Yea, all dishonoured, task the Gods detest,
In sunless midnight wrought,
By which alike are pressed
Those who yet live, and those who lie in gloom unblest.
1222Antistrophe IV
What mortal man then will not crouch in fear,
As he my work shall hear,
The task to me by destiny from Heaven
As from the high Gods given?
Yea, a time-honoured lot is mine I trow,
No shame in it I see,
Though deep beneath the earth my station be,
In gloom that never feels the sunlight's quickening glow.
Verses 468-537
Strophe I
Now is there utter fall and overthrow,
Which new-made laws begin;
If he who struck the matricidal blow,
His right—not so, his utter wrong shall win,
This baseness will the minds of all men lead
To wanton, reckless thought,
And now for parents waits there woe, and deed
Of parricidal guilt by children wrought.
Antistrophe I
For then no more shall wrath from this our band,
The Mænad troop that watch the deeds of men,
Come for these crimes; but lo! on either hand
I will let slip all evil fate, and then,
Telling his neighbours' grief,
Shall this man seek from that, and seek in vain,
Remission and relief,
Nor is there any certain cure for pain.
And lo! the wretched man all fruitlessly
For grace and help shall cry.
Strophe II
Henceforth let no man in his anguish call,
When he sore-smitten by ill-chance shall fall,
1223Uttering with groan and moan,
“O mighty Justice, O Erinnyes' throne!”
So may a father or a mother wail,
Struck by new woe, and tell their sorrow's tale;
For low on earth doth lie
The home where Justice once her dwelling had on high.
Antistrophe II
Yea, there are times when reverent Awe should stay
As guardian of the soul;
It profits much to learn through suffering
The bliss of self-control.
Who that within the heart's full daylight bears
No touch of holy awe,
Be it or man or State that casts out fear,
Will still own reverence for the might of law?
Strophe III
Nor life that will no sovran rule obey,
Nor one down-crushed beneath a despot's sway,
Shalt thou approve;
God still gives power and strength for victory
To all that in the golden mean doth lie.
All else, as they in diverse order move,
He scans with watchful eye.
With this I speak a word in harmony,
That of irreverence still
Outrage is offspring ill,
While from the soul's true health
Comes the much-loved, much-prayed-for joy and wealth.
Antistrophe III
Yes, this I bid thee know;
Bow thou before the altar of the Right,
And let no wandering glance
That looks at gain askance
1224Lead thee with godless foot to scorn or slight.
Know well the appointed penalty shall come;
The doom remaineth sure and will at last strike home.
Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
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