The Complete Aeschylus, Volume I: The Oresteia

by Aeschylus

  into the underworld

  where you will pay in currencies of torment

  for the murder of your mother.

  And there you’ll see all other mortal sinners,

  the ones who flout

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  the honor owed to gods or guests,

  or loving parents—

  you’ll see them get the justice they deserve.

  For Hades holds men mightily to a strict

  accounting down below the earth;

  he sees all things, inscribes them

  within the book

  of his remembering.

  ORESTES I have been schooled by my own suffering:

  I’ve learned the many ways of being purged.

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  I know where words are proper, and when silence is,

  and that on this occasion a wise teacher

  has ordered me to speak. For the blood drowses,

  sloughs from my hand, the stain of having killed

  my mother has been entirely washed away:

  when it was still fresh at Apollo’s hearth,

  he cast it out by sacrificing swine.

  My story would be a long one if I told it

  right from the start, the many men I met

  and mingled with, not one of whom was harmed.

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  Time cleanses what it touches over time.

  So now with clean lips and well-omened words

  I call Athena, this land’s queen, to be

  my savior. Not by force of spear or sword,

  she’ll claim me, my land, and all the people of Argos,

  as her true allies till the end of time.

  Wherever she is—whether in distant Libya,

  there by the stream of Triton where she was born,

  enthroned or on the march to help her friends,

  or whether like a dauntless leader she over-

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  sees the Phlegrean plain—O let her come

  (a god can hear even from far away),

  and save me from the troubles that hound me still.

  CHORUS LEADER No, not Apollo’s, not Athena’s strength

  can save you, keep you from going down in disgrace,

  forgotten, no place in your heart for joy, all blood

  sucked from your body till it’s nothing but

  death’s vaporous feedbag, shadowy husk of air.

  So you have nothing to say? You just spit at my

  words—

  calf fattened all for me, my living feast,

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  my calf not butchered first over any altar?

  Hear the spell we sing to bind you fast:

  CHORUS Let’s dance as well as sing around him,

  hand in hand,

  and let’s reveal the terrifying

  power of our dark melody

  and tell the way our company

  fulfills the offices assigned

  to us, our given

  right to guide the lives of men.

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  We keep straight on the path of justice,

  that’s our belief:

  our wrath is never aimed at the one

  who holds up hands no blood has stained—

  for that one lives out his life unharmed.

  But the man, like this one here before us,

  who tries to keep

  his red hands hid, yet reeks of guilt,

  will find us ever at his side,

  bearing witness

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  truthfully for those who died,

  the court of last appeal, the final

  blood avengers.

  Mother, O mother Night,

  Strophe 1

  who bore me as a scourge

  to those under the sun,

  and those in sunlessness,

  hear me. Leto’s child,

  Apollo, steals my honor,

  he’s trying now to steal

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  out of my rightful grasp

  this trembling hare whose blood

  alone is the atonement

  for the motherblood he spilled.

  Over our victim’s head,

  Refrain 1

  this is the song we sing,

  this is the maddening song,

  the raging song of fear

  that twists the brain, that binds it,

  the lyre-shunning song

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  of the Erinyes, draining,

  withering life away.

  When Fate, the all-directing,

  Antistrophe 1

  spun the unchangeable, ever-

  piercing thread of life,

  this was the task she gave

  us to be ours forever:

  those whom rage seizes, who

  willfully kill their own

  kin with their own hands, we

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  will hound them, drive them down

  beneath the earth, and even

  in death they’ll find scant freedom.

  Over our victim’s head,

  Refrain 1

  this is the song we sing,

  this is the maddening song,

  the raging song of fear

  that twists the brain, that binds it,

  the lyre-shunning song

  of the Erinyes, draining,

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  withering life away.

  Yes, at our birth, we were given this holy

  task.

  Strophe 2

  So the high gods steer clear of us, and we of them.

  None of them would feast with us at the same table;

  we have no part in festivals where white robes are

  worn.

  The calling I’ve made my own

  Refrain 2

  is the destruction of houses

  when the spirit of Ares, reared,

  tamed, pampered in the home,

  cuts down a loved one. Then

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  we hunt the doer down,

  strong though he is, we suck

  his blood away to nothing

  for all the blood he shed.

  We are all keen to spare others these troubling

  cares,

  Antistrophe 2

  keen, too, to keep the gods from meddling with our

  prayers.

  But Zeus despises our band as being soaked in blood

  and calls us unworthy to be part of his high company.

  The calling I’ve made my own

  Refrain 2

  is the destruction of houses

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  when the spirit of Ares, reared,

  tamed, pampered in the home,

  cuts down a loved one. Then

  we hunt the doer down,

  strong though he is, we suck

  his blood away to nothing

  for all the blood he shed.

  But the self-preening conceits of men, swelling

  so big

  Strophe 3

  under the sun, rot away into earth, all dishonored,

  driven

  down by the gale of our black robes rushing upon

  them,

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  by the quick kicks of our raging dance.

  For leaping from a great

  Refrain 3

  height I bring the full

  force of my foot down

  more heavily upon him;

  unseen, I thrust out my leg

  and even the swiftest runner

  stumbles and falls down

  to ruin beyond enduring.

  But as he falls, his mind so crazed he doesn’t know

  it—

  Antistrophe 3

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  this the miasmal dark that hovers about the man,

  and rumor passes its groan from voice to voice to say

  that a dense fog has shrouded his house.

  For leaping from a great

  Refrain 3

  height I bring the full

  f
orce of my foot down

  more heavily upon him;

  unseen, I thrust out my leg

  and even the swiftest runner

  stumbles and falls down

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  to ruin beyond enduring.

  This stands fixed. Adept at devising,

  Strophe 4

  unmatched alike in remembering wrong done

  as in repaying it;

  awful to men, deaf to their pleas,

  detested and dishonored we fulfill

  our given office; cut off

  from the gods, we in the dark slime make

  the path rough both for those who live in sunlight

  and for those in sunlessness.

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  Who among mortals is immune

  Antistrophe 4

  to feeling awe and fear when I describe

  the covenant that fate

  assigned me, that the gods made final?

  My privileges, ancient as they are,

  remain still no less mine.

  And I am no less honored for

  the station that I hold beneath the ground

  deep in the sunless slime.

  ATHENA enters from the left, in full

  armor and wearing her aegis.

  ATHENA From the Scamander far away I heard

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  your call for help, as I took possession there

  of land that the Achaean chieftains gave me,

  all completely and forever mine,

  a rich allotment from the spoils of war,

  and a precious gift for Theseus’ sons.

  From there I sped, my stride unwearied, wingless

  but for the flap and billow of the folds

  my aegis made.

  But now I see a strange

  and motley crew of visitors to this land.

  Though I feel no fear, my eyes grow wide with

  wonder.

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  Who are you? I mean all of you together—

  you stranger with your arms around my image,

  and you who look like nothing ever born—

  not seen by gods among the goddesses,

  or shaped in any human form. But, no,

  it isn’t just to speak ill of another

  when he’s done nothing wrong; Right won’t abide it.

  CHORUS LEADER Daughter of Zeus, you’ll learn all, in a few words:

  we are the children of the never-dying Night.

  In our homes beneath the earth we’re known as

  “Curses.”

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  ATHENA I now know your descent, and your true names.

  CHORUS LEADER And soon you’ll learn our privileges as well.

  ATHENA I will, yes, if you tell them to me plainly.

  CHORUS LEADER We hound from home the ones who kill their own.

  ATHENA Do you chase the killer to some final place?

  CHORUS LEADER A place where all joy is unknown to him.

  ATHENA And this man here, you howl him on that far?

  CHORUS LEADER Yes, since he thought it right to kill his mother.

  ATHENA Was he made to do it, fearing some other anger?

  CHORUS LEADER What spur’s so sharp to make one kill his mother?

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  ATHENA The case has two sides; so far we’ve heard just one.

  CHORUS LEADER He won’t swear he’s innocent, or yield if I swear to his

  guilt.

  ATHENA So you would rather seem just than act with justice?

  CHORUS LEADER How so? Tell me. For you are rich in wisdom.

  ATHENA Injustice shouldn’t triumph on an oath.

  CHORUS LEADER Then question him yourself. And judge him fairly.

  ATHENA You’d take my verdict as the final one?

  CHORUS LEADER Yes. We pay you the respect you pay to us.

  ATHENA It’s your turn, stranger. How will you answer them?

  Say first where you come from, who your family is.

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  Explain your circumstances, and then refute

  these accusations. If you’re sure you sit

  in justice near my hearth, clutching my image—

  as a holy suppliant, like Ixion before you,

  then answer clearly, so I understand.

  ORESTES Queen Athena, let me speak first

  to the keen anxiety your last words hold.

  I’m not a suppliant in need of cleansing.

  When I took my seat here at your image,

  my hands weren’t stained with blood. And I can prove

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  my claim with powerful evidence: by law,

  a killer is forbidden to speak a word

  till someone with the power to purify

  has washed away his blood-guilt with the blood

  of a young beast. I have been long since purged

  at other houses, both in the blood of sucklings

  slain to cleanse me, and in clear-running streams.

  My hands are clean. Put your mind at ease.

  Now I can tell you straight out where I come from,

  who my family is: I am from Argos,

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  and my father, Agamemnon, you know well

  as warlord of the fleet who helped you turn

  the city of Troy into no city at all.

  When he came home, he died an ugly death:

  my black-hearted mother cut him down,

  wrapped him in her subtle net, a net that

  bore witness to the blood bath of his murder.

  So I returned, after my years of exile,

  and killed the very woman who gave me life—

  I don’t deny it—killed her for killing him,

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  the father I loved—although Apollo, too, had

  an equal hand in this, for he had goaded

  me on with warnings of heart-piercing pain

  if I failed to get revenge on the murderers.

  But it’s all up to you now to decide

  whether I’ve acted justly or not. However

  the case turns out, I will accept your ruling.

  ATHENA This case is too hard for one man to judge.

  No, even I don’t have the right to rule

  on a murder trial like this one, one

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  that calls down such fierce anger either way,

  especially as you’ve come here to my house

  a proper suppliant who’s clean, who bears

  no danger to us, and I welcome you.

  And yet these, too, have their appointed task

  that can’t be shrugged off lightly. If they fail

  to get their way, the poison of their outrage,

  dripping on the land, will soon become

  a deadly everlasting sickness. But since

  the problem’s up to me to solve, I’ll choose

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  a panel of judges to preside at murder

  trials like this, and put them under oath,

  and so set up a court to last forever.

  Now call your witnesses, prepare your proofs,

  bring forth whatever evidence you have

  that best supports your case. Meanwhile, I’ll pick

  my ablest citizens, and then return

  to deal with this matter fairly, once and for all.

  ATHENA exits to the right. ORESTES stands aside during

  the following song.

  CHORUS Catastrophes will come,

  Strophe 1

  disasters of new laws, if

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  the mother-killer’s mayhem-

  making plea prevails.

  This deed, from this time on,

  will make men poised for any

  and all outrageousness.

  Truly, parents will await

  in time to come the keen

  edge of a blade thrust

  home by their own child’s hand.

  And we, wild revelers, who keep

  Antistro
phe 1

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  a close watch over all

  men do, will never again

  attack them in anger. We’ll

  let any murder pass:

  and one man, seeing his neighbor

  suffer, will ask another,

  “When will the sickness ease,

  or end?” Poor wretch, the balm

  he hopes heals evil won’t,

  and he’ll hope in vain.

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  From now on let no one

  Strophe 2

  struck by disaster cry

  for help, call out in terror:

  “O Justice! O Erinyes,

  enthroned in majesty!”

  Caught unaware by pain,

  some father or mother now

  will cry like this, because

  the house of Justice falls.

  There is a place where dread

  Antistrophe 2

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  is good, and must abide

  to keep watch over all

  men think. It’s for the best

  that wisdom comes from wailing.

  What man, or city even,

  whose heart’s not fed on fear,

  would ever again pay Justice

  the reverence she’s owed?

  Praise no life that no law reins,

  Strophe 3

  no life a tyrant rules.

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  God gives

  victory always to the middle way,

  even while seeing to it

  differently in different spheres.

  Be moderate, I say:

  truly, sacrilege

  gives birth to recklessness,

  but a well mind breeds

  what we all love and pray for—

  a lasting, a rich well-being.

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  I tell you, then, revere,