Agamemnon

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 518 sections

1311
It is like a breath from a charnel-house.
1312
You are not speaking of proud Syrian incense for the house.
1313
Nay, I will go to bewail also within the palace my own and Agamemnon’s fate. Enough of life!
1315
Alas, my friends, not with vain terror do I shrink, as a bird that fears a bush. After I am dead, bear witness for me of this—when for me, a woman, another woman shall be slain, and for an ill-wedded man another man shall fall.
1320
I claim this favor from you now that my hour is come.
1321
Poor woman, I pity you for your death foretold.
1322
Yet once more I would like to speak, but not a dirge. I pray to the sun, in presence of his latest light, that my enemiesmay at the same time pay to my avengers a bloody penalty for
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slaughtering a slave, an easy prey. Alas for human fortune! When prosperous, a mere shadow can overturn it; if misfortune strikes, the dash of a wet sponge blots out the drawing.
1330
And this last I deem far more pitiable than that. Enters the palace
1331
It is the nature of all human kind to be unsatisfied with prosperity. From stately halls none bars it with warning voice that utters the words Enter no more.
1335
So the Blessed Ones have granted to our prince to capture Priam’s town; and, divinely-honored, he returns to his home. Yet if he now must pay the penalty for the blood shed by others before him, and by dying for the dead
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he is to bring to pass retribution of other deaths, what mortal man, on hearing this, can boast that he was born with scatheless destiny? A shriek is heard from within
1343
Alas! I am struck deep with a mortal blow!
1344
Silence! Who is this that cries out, wounded by a mortal blow?
1345
And once again, alas! I am struck by a second blow.
1346
The deed is done, it seems—to judge by the groans of the king. But come, let us take counsel together if there is perhaps some safe plan of action.
1348
—I tell you my advice: summon the townsfolk to bring rescue here to the palace.
1350
—To my thinking we must burst in and charge them with the deed while the sword is still dripping in their hands. —I, too, am for taking part in some such plan, and vote for action of some sort. It is no time to keep on delaying. —It is plain. Their opening act
1355
marks a plan to set up a tyranny in the State. —Yes, because we are wasting time, while they, trampling underfoot that famous name, Delay, allow their hands no slumber. —I know not what plan I could hit on to propose. It is the doer’s part likewise to do the planning.
1360
—I too am of this mind, for I know no way to bring the dead back to life by mere words. —What! To prolong our lives shall we thus submit to the rule of those defilers of the house? —No, it is not to be endured. No, death would be better,
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for that would be a milder lot than tyranny. —And shall we, upon the evidence of mere groans, divine that our lord is dead? —We should be sure of the facts before we indulge our wrath. For surmise differs from assurance.
1370
—I am supported on all sides to approve this course—that we get clear assurance how it stands with Atreus’ son.
1372
Much have I said before to serve my need and I shall feel no shame to contradict it now. For how else could one, devising hate against a hated foe
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who bears the semblance of a friend, fence the snares of ruin too high to be overleaped? This is the contest of an ancient feud, pondered by me of old, and it has come, however long delayed. I stand where I dealt the blow; my purpose is achieved.
1380
Thus have I done the deed; deny it I will not. Round him, as if to catch a haul of fish, I cast an impassable net—fatal wealth of robe—so that he should neither escape nor ward off doom. Twice I struck him, and with two groans
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his limbs relaxed. Once he had fallen, I dealt him yet a third stroke to grace my prayer to the infernal Zeus, the savior of the dead. Fallen thus, he gasped away his life, and as he breathed forth quick spurts of blood,
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he struck me with dark drops of gory dew; while I rejoiced no less than the sown earth is gladdened in heaven’s refreshing rain at the birthtime of the flower buds. Since then the case stands thus, old men of Argos, rejoice, if you would rejoice; as for me, I glory in the deed.
1395
And had it been a fitting act to pour libations on the corpse, over him this would have been done justly, more than justly. With so many accursed lies has he filled the mixing-bowl in his own house, and now he has come home and himself drained it to the dregs.
1399
We are shocked at your tongue, how bold-mouthed you are,
1400
that over your husband you can utter such a boastful speech.
1401
You are testing me as if I were a witless woman. But my heart does not quail, and I say to you who know it well—and whether you wish to praise or to blame me, it is all one—here is Agamemnon,
1405
my husband, now a corpse, the work of this right hand, a just workman. So stands the case.
1407
Woman, what poisonous herb nourished by the earth have you tasted, what potion drawn from the flowing sea, that you have taken upon yourself this maddened rage and the loud curses voiced by the public?
1410
You have cast him off; you have cut him off; and out from the land shall you be cast, a burden of hatred to your people.
1412
It’s now that you would doom me to exile from the land, to the hatred of my people and the execration of the public voice; though then you had nothing to urge against him that lies here. And yet he,
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valuing no more than if it had been a beast that perished—though sheep were plenty in his fleecy folds—he sacrificed his own child, she whom I bore with dearest travail, to charm the blasts of Thrace. Is it not he whom you should have banished from this land
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in requital for his polluting deed? No! When you arraign what I have done, you are a stern judge. Well, I warn you: threaten me thus on the understanding that I am prepared, conditions equal, to let you lord it over me if you shall vanquish me by force. But if a god shall bring the contrary to pass,
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you shall learn discretion though taught the lesson late.
1426
You are proud of spirit, and your speech is overbearing. Even as your mind is maddened by your deed of blood, upon your face a stain of blood shows full plain to behold. Bereft of all honor, forsaken of your friends,
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you shall hereafter atone for stroke with stroke,
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Listen then to this too, this the righteous sanction on my oath: by Justice, exacted for my child, by Ate, by the Avenging Spirit, to whom I sacrificed that man, hope does not tread for me the halls of fear,
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so long as the fire upon my hearth is kindled by Aegisthus, loyal in heart to me as in days gone by. For he is no slight shield of confidence to me. Here lies the man who did me wrong, plaything of each Chryseis at Ilium;
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and here she lies, his captive, and auguress, and concubine, his oracular faithful whore, yet equally familiar with the seamen’s benches. The pair has met no undeserved fate. For he lies thus; while she, who, like a swan,
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has sung her last lament in death, lies here, his beloved; but to me she has brought for my bed an added relish of delight.
1448
Alas! Ah that some fate, free from excess of suffering, nor yet with lingering bed of pain,
1450
might come full soon and bring to us everlasting and endless sleep, now that our most gracious guardian has been laid low, who in a woman’s cause had much endured and by a woman’s hand has lost his life.
1455
O mad Helen, who did yourself alone destroy these many lives, these lives exceeding many, beneath the walls of Troy. Now you have bedecked yourself with your final crown, that shall long last in memory,
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because of blood not to be washed away. Truly in those days strife, an affliction that has subdued its lord, dwelt in the house.
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Do not burden yourself with thoughts such as these, nor invoke upon yourself the fate of death. Nor yet turn your wrath upon Helen,
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and deem her a slayer of men, as if she alone had destroyed many a Danaan life and had wrought anguish past all cure.
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O Fiend who falls upon this house and Tantalus’ two descendants,
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you who by the hands of women exert a rule matching their temper, a rule bitter to my soul! Perched over his body like a hateful raven, in hoarse notes she chants her song of triumph.
1475
Now you have corrected the judgment of your lips in that you name the thrice-gorged Fiend of this race. For by him the lust for lapping blood is fostered in the mouth; so before
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the ancient wound is healed, fresh blood is spilled.
1481
Truly you speak of a mighty Fiend, haunting the house, and heavy in his wrath (alas, alas!)—an evil tale of catastrophic fate insatiate;
1485
woe, woe, done by will of Zeus, author of all, worker of all! For what is brought to pass for mortal men save by will of Zeus? What herein is not wrought of god?
1489
Alas, alas, my King, my King,
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how shall I bewail you? How voice my heartfelt love for you? To lie in this spider’s web, breathing forth your life in an impious death! Ah me, to lie on this ignoble bed, struck down in treacherous death wrought
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by a weapon of double edge wielded by the hand of your own wife!
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Do you affirm this deed is mine? Do not imagine that I am Agamemnon’s spouse.
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A phantom resembling that corpse’s wife, the ancient bitter evil spirit of Atreus, that grim banqueter, has offered him in payment, sacrificing a full-grown victim in vengeance for those slain babes.
1505
That you are innocent of this murder—who will bear you witness? How could anyone do so? And yet the evil genius of his father might well be your accomplice. By force
1510
amid streams of kindred blood black Havoc presses on to where he shall grant vengeance for the gore of children served for meat.
1513
Alas, alas, my King, my King, how shall I bewail you?
1515
How voice my heartfelt love for you? To lie in this spider’s web, breathing forth your life in impious death! Alas, to lie on this ignoble bed, struck down in treacherous death
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wrought by a weapon of double edge wielded by your own wife’s hand!
1521
Neither do I think he met an ignoble death. And did he not himself by treachery bring ruin on his house?
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Yet, as he has suffered—worthy prize of worthy deed—for what he did to my sweet flower, shoot sprung from him, the sore-wept Iphigenia, let him make no great boasts in the halls of Hades, since with death dealt him by the sword he has paid for what he first began.
1530
Bereft of any ready expedient of thought, I am bewildered where to turn now that the house is tottering. I fear the beating storm of bloody rain that shakes the house; no longer does it descend in drops.
1535
Yet on other whetstones Destiny is sharpening justice for another evil deed.
1537
O Earth, Earth, if only you had taken me to yourself before ever I had lived to see my lord
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occupying a lowly bed of a silver-sided bath! Who shall bury him? Who shall lament him? Will you harden your heart to do this—you who have slain your own husband—to lament for him
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and crown your unholy work with an uncharitable gift to his spirit, atoning for your monstrous deeds? And who, as with tears he utters praise over the hero’s grave,
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shall sorrow in sincerity of heart?
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To care for that duty is no concern of yours. By our hands down he fell, down to death, and down below shall we bury him—but not with wailings from his household.
1555
No! Iphigenia, his daughter, as is due, shall meet her father lovingly at the swift-flowing ford of sorrows, and shall fling her arms around him and kiss him.
1560
Reproach thus meets reproach in turn—hard is the struggle to decide. The spoiler is despoiled, the slayer pays penalty. Yet, while Zeus remains on his throne, it remains true that to him who does it shall be done; for it is law.
1565
Who can cast from out the house the seed of the curse? The race is bound fast in calamity.
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Upon this divine deliverance have you rightly touched. As for me, however, I am willing to make a sworn compact with the Fiend of the house of Pleisthenes
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that I will be content with what is done, hard to endure though it is. Henceforth he shall leave this house and bring tribulation upon some other race by murder of kin. A small part of the wealth is fully enough for me, if I may but rid these halls
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of the frenzy of mutual murder.
1577
Hail gracious light of the day of retribution! At last the hour has come when I can say that the gods who avenge mortal men look down from on high upon the crimes of earth.
1580
Now that, to my joy, I behold this man lying here in a robe spun by the Avenging Spirits and making full payment for the deeds contrived in craft by his father’s hand. For Atreus, lord of this land, this man’s father, challenged in his sovereignty, drove forth, from city and from home, Thyestes, who (to speak it clearly) was my father
1585
and his own brother. And when he had come back as a suppliant to his hearth, unhappy Thyestes secured such safety for his lot as not himself to suffer death and stain with his blood his native soil.
1590
But Atreus, the godless father of this slain man, with welcome more hearty than kind, on the pretence that he was cheerfully celebrating a happy day by serving meat, served up to my father as entertainment a banquet of his own children’s flesh.
1595
The toes and fingers he broke off sitting apart.And when all unwittingly my father had quickly taken servings that he did not recognize, he ate a meal which, as you see, has proved fatal to his race. Now, discovering his unhallowed deed, he uttered a great cry, reeled back, vomiting forth the slaughtered flesh, and invoked
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an unbearable curse upon the line of Pelops, kicking the banquet table to aid his curse, thus perish all the race of Pleisthenes! This is the reason that you see this man fallen here. I am he who planned this murder and with justice. For together with my hapless father he drove me out,
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me his third child, as yet a baby in swaddling-clothes. But grown to manhood, justice has brought me back again. Exile though I was, I laid my hand upon my enemy, compassing every device of cunning to his ruin.
1610
So even death would be sweet to me now that I behold him in justice’s net.
1612
Aegisthus, excessive triumph amid distress I do not honor. You say that of your own intent you slew this man and did alone plot this pitiful murder.
1615
I tell you in the hour of justice that you yourself, be sure of that, will not escape the people’s curses and death by stoning at their hand.
1617
You speak like that, you who sit at the lower oar when those upon the higher bench control the ship?Old as you are, you shall learn how bitter it is
1620
at your age to be schooled when prudence is the lesson set before you. Bonds and the pangs of hunger are far the best doctors of the spirit when it comes to instructing the old. Do you have eyes and lack understanding? Do not kick against the goads lest you strike to your own hurt.
1625
Woman that you are! Skulking at home and awaiting the return of the men from war, all the while defiling a hero’s bed, did you contrive this death against a warrior chief?
1628
These words of yours likewise shall prove a source of tears. The tongue of Orpheus is quite the opposite of yours.
1630
He led all things by the rapture of his voice; but you, who have stirred our wrath by your silly yelping, shall be led off yourself. You will appear tamer when put down by force.
1633
As if you would ever truly be my master here in Argos, you who did contrive our king’s death, and
1635
then had not the courage to do this deed of murder with your own hand!
1636
Because to ensnare him was clearly the woman’s part; I was suspect as his enemy of old. However, with his gold I shall endeavor to control the people; and whoever is unruly,
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him I’ll yoke with a heavy collar, and in truth he shall be no well-fed trace-horse! No! Loathsome hunger that houses with darkness shall see him gentle.

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