Andromache

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 394 sections

1.1019
Many a well-horsed car ye yoked on the banks of Simois,
1.1020
and many a bloody tournament did ye ordain with never a prize to win; and Ilium’s princes are dead and gone; no longer in Troy
1.1025
is seen the blaze of fire on altars of the gods with the smoke of incense.
2.1027
The son of Atreus is no more, slain by the hand of his wife, and she herself hath paid the debt of blood by death,
2.1030
and from her children’s hands received her doom. The god’s own bidding from his oracle was levelled against her, in the day that Agamemnon’s son set forth from Argos and visited his shrine;
2.1035
so he slew her, aye, spilt his own mother’s blood. O Phoebus, O thou power divine, how can I believe the story?
2.1037
Anon wherever Hellenes gather, was heard the voice of lamentation, mothers weeping o’er their children’s fate,
2.1040
as they left their homes to mate with strangers. Ah! thou art not the only one, nor thy dear ones either, on whom the cloud of grief hath fallen. Hellas had to bear the visitation, and thence the scourge crossed to Phrygia’s
2.1045
fruitful fields, raining the bloody drops the; death-god loves.
1047
Ye dames of Phthia, answer my questions. I heard a vague rumour that the daughter of Menelaus had left these halls
1050
and fled; so now am I come in hot haste to learn if this be true; for it is the duty of those who are at home to labour in the interests of their absent friends.
1053
Thou hast heard aright, O Peleus; ill would it become me to hide the evil case in which I now find myself;
1055
our queen has fled and left these halls.
1056
What was she afraid of? explain that to me.
1057
She was fearful her lord would cast her out
1058
In return for plotting his child’s death? surely not?
1059
Yea, and she was afraid of yon captive.
1060
With whom did she leave the house? with her father?
1061
The son of Agamemnon came and took her hence.
1062
What view hath he to further thereby? Will he marry her?
1063
Yes, and he is plotting thy grandson’s death.
1064
From an ambuscade, or meeting him fairly face to face?
1065
In the holy place of Loxias, leagued with Delphians.
1066
God help us! This is an immediate danger. Hasten one of you with all speed to the Pythian altar and tell our friends there what has happened here, ere Achilles’ son be slain by his enemies. Enter a Messenger.
1070
Woe worth the day! what evil tidings have I brought for thee, old sire, and for all who love my master! woe is me!
1072
Alas! my prophetic soul hath a presentiment.
1073
Aged Peleus, hearken! Thy grandson is no more; so grievously is he smitten
1075
by the men of Delphi and the stranger from Mycenae.
1076
Ah! what wilt thou do, old man? Fall not; uplift thyself.
1077b
I am a thing of naught; death is come upon me. My voice is choked, my limbs droop beneath me.
1079
Hearken; if thou art eager also to avenge thy friends,
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lift up thyself and hear what happened.
1081
Ah, destiny! how tightly hast thou caught me in thy toils, a poor old man at life’s extremest verge! But tell me how he was taken from me, my one son’s only child; unwelcome as such news is, I fain would hear it.
1085
As soon as we reached the famous soil of Phoebus, for three whole days were we feasting our eyes with the sight. And this, it seems, caused suspicion; for the folk, who dwell near the god’s shrine, began to collect in groups,
1090
while Agamemnon’s son, going to and fro through the town, would whisper in each man’s ear malignant hints: Do ye see yon fellow, going in and out of the god’s treasure-chambers, which are full of the gold stored there by all mankind? He is come hither a second time on the same mission as before,
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eager to sack the temple of Phoebus. Thereon there ran an angry murmur through the city, and the magistrates flocked to their council-chamber, while those, who have charge of the god’s treasures, had a guard privately placed amongst the colonnades.
1100
But we, knowing naught as yet of this, took sheep fed in the pastures of Parnassus, and went our way and stationed ourselves at the altars with vouchers and Pythian seers. And one said: What prayer, young warrior,
1105
wouldst thou have us offer to the god? Wherefore art thou come? And he answered: I wish to make atonement to Phoebus for my past transgression; for once I claimed from him satisfaction for my father’s blood. Thereupon the rumour, spread by Orestes, proved to have great weight,
1110
suggesting that my master was lying and had come on a shameful errand. But he crosses the threshold of the temple to pray to Phoebus before his oracle, and was busy with his burnt-offering; when a body of men armed with swords set themselves in ambush against him
1115
in the cover of the bay- trees, and Clytemnestra’s son, that had contrived the whole plot was one of them. There stood the young man praying to the god in sight of all, when lo! with their sharp swords they stabbed Achilles’ unprotected son from behind.
1120
But he stepped back, for it was not a mortal wound he had received, and drew his sword, and snatching armour from the pegs where it hung on a pillar, took his stand upon the altar-steps, the picture of a warrior grim; then cried he to the sons of Delphi, and asked them:
1125
Why seek to slay me when I am come on a holy mission? What cause is there why I should die? But of all that throng of bystanders, no man answered him a word, but they set to hurling stones. Then he, though bruised and battered by the showers of missiles from all sides,
1130
covered himself behind his mail and tried to ward off the attack, holding his shield first here, then there, at arm’s length, but all of no avail; for a storm of darts, arrows and javelins, hurtling spits with double points, and butchers’ knives for slaying steers, came flying at his feet;
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and terrible was the war-dance thou hadst then seen thy grandson dance to avoid their marksmanship. At last, when they were hemming him in on all sides, allowing him no breathing space, he left the shelter of the altar, the hearth where victims are placed, and with one bound was on them as on the Trojans of yore;
1140
and they turned and fled like doves when they see the hawk. Many fell in the confusion; some wounded, and others trodden down by one another along the narrow passages; and in that hushed holy house uprose unholy din
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and echoed back from the rocks. Calm and still my master stood there in his gleaming harness like a flash of light, till from the inmost shrine there came a voice of thrilling horror, stirring the crowd to make a stand. Then fell Achilles’ son,
1150
smitten through the flank by some Delphian’s biting blade, some fellow that slew him with a host to help; and as he fell, there was not one that did not stab him, or cast a rock and batter his corpse. So his whole body,
1155
once so fair, was marred with savage wounds. At last they cast the lifeless clay, lying near the altar, forth from the fragrant fane. And we gathered up his remains forthwith and are bringing them to thee,
1160
old prince, to mourn and weep and honour with a deep-dug tomb.
1161
This is how that prince who vouchsafeth oracles to others, that judge of what is right for all the world, hath revenged himself on Achilles’ son, remembering his ancient quarrel as a wicked man would.
1165
How then can he be wise? Exit Messenger. The body of Neoptolemus is carried in on a bier.
1166
Lo! E’en now our prince is being carried on a bier from Delphi’s land unto his home. Woe for him and his sad fate, and woe for thee, old sire! for this is not the welcome thou wouldst give Achilles’ son,
1170
the lion’s whelp; thyself too by this sad mischance dost share his evil lot.
1.1173
Ah! woe is me! here is a sad sight for me to see and take unto my halls!
1.1175
Ah me! ah me! I am undone, thou city of Thessaly! My line now ends; I have no children left me in my home. Oh! the sorrows I seem born to endure! What
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friend can I look to for relief? Ah, dear lips, and cheeks, and hands! Would thy destiny had slain thee ’neath Ilium’s walls beside the banks of Simois!
1.1184
Had he so died, my aged lord, he had won him honour thereby,
1.1185
and thine had been the happier lot.
1.1186
O marriage, marriage, woe to thee! thou bane of my home, thou destroyer of my city! Ah my child, my boy! would that the honour of wedding thee,
1.1190
fraught with evil as it was to my children and house, had not thrown oer thee, my son, Hermiones deadly net! O that the thunderbolt had slain her sooner! and that thou, rash mortal, hadst never charged
1.1195
the great god Phoebus with aiming that murderous shaft that spilt thy hero-fathers blood!
2.1197
Woe! woe! alas! With due observance of funeral rites will I begin the mourning for my dead master.
2.1200
Alack and well-a-day! I take up the tearful dirge, ah me! old and wretched as I am.
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’Tis Heaven’s decree; God willed this heavy stroke.
2.1204
O darling child,
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thou hast left me all alone in my halls, old and childless by thy loss.
2.1208
Thou shouldst have died, old sire, before thy children.
2.1209
Shall I not tear my hair,
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and smite upon my head with grievous blows? O city! of both my children hath Phoebus robbed me.
2.1214
What evils thou hast suffered, what sorrows thou hast seen, thou poor old man!
2.1215
what shall be thy life hereafter?
2.1216
Childless, desolate, with no limit to my grief, I must drain the cup of woe, until I die.
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’Twas all in vain the gods wished thee joy on thy wedding day.
2.1219
All my hopes have flown away,
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fallen short of my high boasts.
2.1221
A lonely dweller in a lonely home art thou.
2.1222
I have no city any longer; there! on the ground my sceptre do I cast; and thou, daughter of Nereus, neath thy dim grotto,
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shalt see me grovelling in the dust, a ruined king.
1226
Look, look! A dim form of divine appearance in seen hovering in mid air. What is that moving? what influence divine am I conscious of? Look, maidens, mark it well; see, yonder is some deity, wafted through the lustrous air and alighting on the plains
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of Phthia, home of steeds.
1231
O Peleus! because of my wedded days with thee now long agone, I Thetis am come from the halls of Nereus. And first I counsel thee not to grieve to excess in thy present distress,
1235
for I too who need ne’er have born children to my sorrow, have lost the child of our love, Achilles swift of foot, foremost of the sons of Hellas. Next will I declare why I am come, and do thou give ear. Carry yonder corpse, Achilles’ son,
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to the Pythian altar and there bury it, a reproach to Delphi, that his tomb may proclaim the violent death he met at the hand of Orestes. And for his captive wife Andromache,–she must dwell in the Molossian land,
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united in honourable wedlock with Helenus, and with her this babe, the sole survivor as he is of all the line of Aeacus, for from him a succession of prosperous kings of Molossia is to go on unbroken; for
1250
the race that springs from thee and me, my aged lord, must not thus be brought to naught; no! nor Troy’s line either; for her fate too is cared for by the gods, albeit her fall was due to the eager wish of Pallas. Thee too, that thou mayst know the saving grace of wedding me, will I, a goddess born and daughter of a god,
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release from all the ills that flesh is heir to and make a deity to know not death nor decay. From henceforth in the halls of Nereus shalt thou dwell with me, god and goddess together; thence shalt thou rise dry-shod from out the main
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and see Achilles, our dear son, settled in his island-home by the strand of Leuce, that is girdled by the Euxine sea. But get thee to Delphi’s god-built town, carrying this corpse with thee, and, after thou hast buried him,
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return and settle in the cave which time hath hollowed in the Sepian rock and there abide, till from the sea I come with choir of fifty Nereids to be thy escort thence; for fate’s decree thou must fulfil; such is the pleasure of Zeus.
1270
Cease then to mourn the dead; this is the lot which heaven assigns to all, and all must pay their debt to death.
1273
Great queen, my honoured wife, from Nereus sprung, all hail! thou art
1275
acting herein as befits thyself and thy children. So I will stay my grief at thy bidding, goddess, and, when I have buried the dead, will seek the glens of Pelion, even the place where I took thy beauteous form to my embrace. Surely after this every prudent man will seek to marry a wife of noble stock
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and give his daughter to a husband good and true, never setting his heart on a worthless woman, not even though she bring a sumptuous dowry to his house. So would men ne’er suffer ill at heaven’s hand.
1284
Many are the shapes of Heaven’s denizens,
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and many a thing they bring to pass contrary to our expectation; that which we thought would be is not accomplished, while for the unexpected God finds out a way. E’en such hath been the issue of this matter.

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0006.tlg006.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source.