Agamemnon

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 518 sections

1069
But I will not be angry, since I pity her.
1070
Come, unhappy one, leave the car; yield to necessity and take upon you this novel yoke.
1072
Woe, woe, woe! O Apollo, O Apollo!
1074
Wherefore your cry of woe in Loxias’ name?
1075
He is not the kind of god that has to do with mourners.
1076
Woe, woe, woe! O Apollo, O Apollo!
1077
Once more with ill-omened words she cries to the god who should not be present at times of lamentation.
1080
Apollo, Apollo! God of the Ways,my destroyer! For you have destroyed me—and utterly—this second time.
1084
I think that she is about to prophesy about her own miseries. The divine gift still abides even in the soul of one enslaved.
1085
Apollo, Apollo! God of the Ways, my destroyer! Ah, what way is this that you have brought me! To what a house!
1088
To that of Atreus’ sons. If you do not perceive this, I’ll tell it to you. And you shall not say that it is untrue.
1090
No, no, rather to a god-hating house, a house that knows many a horrible butchery of kin, a slaughter-house of men and a floor swimming with blood.
1093
The stranger seems keen-scented as a hound; she is on the trail where she will discover blood.
1095
Here is the evidence in which I put my trust! Behold those babies bewailing their own butchery and their roasted flesh eaten by their father!
1098
Your fame to read the future had reached our ears; but we have no need of prophets here.
1100
Alas, what can she be planning? What is this fresh woe she contrives here within, what monstrous, monstrous horror, beyond love’s enduring, beyond all remedy? And helpstands far away!
1105
These prophesyings pass my comprehension; but those I understood—the whole city rings with them.
1107
Ah, damned woman, will you do this thing? Your husband, the partner of your bed, when you have cheered him with the bath, will you—how shall I tell the end?
1110
Soon it will be done. Now this hand, now that, she stretches forth!
1112
Not yet do I comprehend; for now, after riddles, I am bewildered by dark oracles.
1114
Ah! Ah! What apparition is this?
1115
Is it a net of death? No, it is a snare that shares his bed, that shares the guilt of murder. Let the fatal pack, insatiable against the race, raise a shout of jubilance over a victim accursed!
1119
What Spirit of Vengeance is this that you bid
1120
raise its voice over this house? Your words do not cheer me. Back to my heart surge the drops of my pallid blood, even as when they drip from a mortal wound, ebbing away as life’s beams sink low; and death comes speedily.
1125
Ah, ah, see there, see there! Keep the bull from his mate! She has caught him in the robe and gores him with the crafty device of her black horn! He falls in a vessel of water! It is of doom wrought by guile in a murderous bath that I am telling you.
1130
I cannot boast that I am a keen judge of prophecies; but these, I think, spell some evil. But from prophecies what word of good ever comes to mortals? Through terms of evil their wordy arts
1135
bring men to know fear chanted in prophetic strains.
1136
Alas, alas, the sorrow of my ill-starred doom! For it is my own affliction, crowning the cup, that I bewail. Ah, to what end did you bring me here, unhappy as I am? For nothing except to die—and not alone. What else?
1140
Frenzied in soul you are, by some god possessed, and you wail in wild strains your own fate, like that brown bird that never ceases making lament (ah me!), and in the misery of her heart moans Itys, Itys,
1145
throughout all her days abounding in sorrow, the nightingale.
1146
Ah, fate of the clear-voiced nightingale! The gods clothed her in a winged form and gave to her a sweet life without tears. But for me waits destruction by the two-edged sword.
1150
From where come these vain pangs of prophecy that assail you? And why do you mold to melody these terrors with dismal cries blended with piercing strains? How do you know the bounds of the path of your
1155
ill-boding prophecy?
1156
Ah, the marriage, the marriage of Paris, that destroyed his friends! Ah me, Scamander, my native stream! Upon your banks in bygone days, unhappy maid, was I nurtured with fostering care;
1160
but now by Cocytus and the banks of Acheron, I think, I soon must chant my prophecies.
1162
What words are these you utter, words all too plain? A new-born child hearing them could understand. I am smitten with a deadly pain, while,
1165
by reason of your cruel fortune, you cry aloud your pitiful moans that break my heart to hear.
1167
O the sufferings, the sufferings of my city utterly destroyed! Alas, the sacrifices my father offered, the many pasturing cattle slain to save its towers!
1170
Yet they provided no remedy to save the city from suffering even as it has; and I, my soul on fire, must soon fall to the ground.
1173
Your present speech chimes with your former strain.
1175
Surely some malignant spirit, falling upon you with heavy swoop, moves you to chant your piteous woes fraught with death. But the end I am helpless to discover.
1178
And now, no more shall my prophecy peer forth from behind a veil like a new-wedded bride; but
1180
it will rush upon me clear as a fresh wind blowing against the sun’s uprising so as to dash against its rays, like a wave, a woe far mightier than mine. No more by riddles will I instruct you. And bear me witness, as, running close behind,
1185
I scent the track of crimes done long ago. For from this roof never departs a choir chanting in unison, but singing no harmonious tune; for it tells not of good. And so, gorged on human blood, so as to be the more emboldened, a revel-rout of kindred Furies haunts the house,
1190
hard to be drive away. Lodged within its halls they chant their chant, the primal sin; and, each in turn, they spurn with loathing a brother’s bed, for they bitterly spurn the one who defiled it.Have I missed the mark, or, like a true archer, do I strike my quarry?
1195
Or am I prophet of lies, a door-to-door babbler? Bear witness upon your oath that I know the deeds of sin, ancient in story, of this house.
1198
How could an oath, a pledge although given in honor, effect any cure? Yet I marvel at you that,
1200
though bred beyond the sea, you speak truth of a foreign city, even as if you had been present there.
1202
The seer Apollo appointed me to this office.
1204
Can it be that he, a god, was smitten with desire?
1203
Before now I was ashamed to speak of this.
1205
In prosperity all take on airs.
1206
Oh, but he struggled to win me, breathing ardent love for me.
1207
Did you in due course come to the rite of marriage?
1208
I consented to Loxias but broke my word.
1209
Were you already possessed by the art inspired of the god?
1210
Already I prophesied to my countrymen all their disasters.
1211
How came it then that you were unharmed by Loxias’ wrath?
1212
Ever since that fault I could persuade no one of anything.
1213
And yet to us at least the prophecies you utter seem true enough.
1214
Ah, ah! Oh, oh, the agony!
1215
Once more the dreadful throes of true prophecy whirl and distract me with their ill-boding onset. Do you see them there—sitting before the house—young creatures like phantoms of dreams? Children, they seem, slaughtered by their own kindred,
1220
their hands full of the meat of their own flesh; they are clear to my sight, holding their vitals and their inward parts (piteous burden!), which their father tasted. For this cause I tell you that a strengthless lion, wallowing in his bed, plots vengeance,
1225
a watchman waiting (ah me!) for my master’s coming home—yes, my master, for I must bear the yoke of slavery. The commander of the fleet and the overthrower of Ilium little knows what deeds shall be brought to evil accomplishment by the hateful hound, whose tongue licked his hand, who stretched forth her ears in gladness,
1230
like treacherous Ate. Such boldness has she, a woman to slay a man. What odious monster shall I fitly call her? An Amphisbaena? Or a Scylla, tenanting the rocks, a pest to mariners,
1235
a raging, devil’s mother, breathing relentless war against her husband? And how the all-daring woman raised a shout of triumph, as when the battle turns, the while she feigned to joy at his safe return! And yet, it is all one, whether or not I am believed. What does it matter?
1240
What is to come, will come. And soon you, yourself present here, shall with great pity pronounce me all too true a prophetess.
1242
Thyestes’ banquet on his children’s flesh I understood, and I tremble. Terror possesses me as I hear the truth, nothing fashioned out of falsehood to resemble truth.
1245
But as for the rest I heard I am thrown off the track.
1246
I say you shall look upon Agamemnon dead.
1247
To words propitious, miserable girl, lull your speech.
1248
Over what I tell no healing god presides.
1249
No, if it is to be; but may it not be so!
1250
You do but pray; their business is to slay.
1251
What man is he that contrived this wickedness?
1252
Surely you must have missed the meaning of my prophecies.
1253
I do not understand the scheme of him who is to do the deed.
1254
And yet all too well I understand the Greek language.
1255
So too do the Pythian oracles; yet they are hard to understand.
1256
Oh, oh! What fire! It comes upon me! Woe, woe! Lycean Apollo! Ah me, ah me! This two-footed lioness, who mates with a wolf in the absence of the noble lion,
1260
will slay me, miserable as I am. Brewing as it were a drug, she vows that with her wrath she will mix requital for me too, while she whets her sword against her husband, to take murderous vengeance for bringing me here. Why then do I bear these mockeries of myself,
1265
this wand, these prophetic chaplets on my neck? Breaking her wand, she throws it and the other insignia of her prophetic office upon the ground, and tramples them underfoot You at least I will destroy before I die myself. To destruction with you! And fallen there, thus do I repay you. Enrich with doom some other in my place. Look, Apollo himself is stripping me
1270
of my prophetic garb—he that saw me mocked to bitter scorn, even in this bravery, by friends turned foes, with one accord, in vain—but, like some vagrant mountebank, called beggar, wretch, starveling, I bore it all.
1275
And now the prophet, having undone me, his prophetess, has brought me to this lethal pass. Instead of my father’s altar a block awaits me, where I am to be butchered in a hot and bloody sacrifice. Yet, we shall not die unavenged by the gods;
1280
for there shall come in turn another, our avenger, a scion of the race, to slay his mother and exact requital for his sire; an exile, a wanderer, a stranger from this land, he shall return to put the coping-stone upon these unspeakable iniquities of his house. For the gods have sworn a mighty oath
1285
that his slain father’s outstretched corpse shall bring him home. Why then thus raise my voice in pitiful lament? Since first I saw the city of Ilium fare what it has fared, while her captors, by the gods’ sentence, are coming to such an end,
1290
I will go in and meet my fate. I will dare to die. This door I greet as the gates of Death. And I pray that, dealt a mortal stroke, without a struggle, my life-blood ebbing away in easy death, I may close these eyes.
1295
O woman, pitiful exceedingly and exceeding wise, long has been your speech. But if, in truth, you have knowledge of your own death, how can you step with calm courage to the altar like an ox, driven by the god?
1299
There is no escape; no, my friends, there is none any more.
1300
Yet he that is last has the advantage in respect of time.
1301
The day has come; flight would profit me but little.
1302
Well, be assured, you brave suffering with a courageous spirit.
1303
None who is happy is commended thus.
1304
Yet surely to die nobly is a blessing for mortals.
1305
Alas for you, my father and for your noble children! She starts back in horror
1306
What ails you? What terror turns you back?
1307
Alas, alas!
1308
Why do you cry alas? Unless perhaps there is some horror in your soul.
1309
This house stinks of blood-dripping slaughter.
1310
And what of that? It is just the savor of victims at the hearth.

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0085.tlg005.perseus-eng3. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.