by Seneca
Of Phlegethon stir up the scorching sands!…
Dost thou lie idle, Earth, unmoved, inert?
The gods are fled.
ATREUS: But here are your dear sons,
Whom you have asked to see. Receive them gladly.
Kiss them, make much of them, embrace them all.
Your brother will not stop you.
THYESTES: Treachery!
Was this our pact? Is this your brotherly love
And reconciliation? Is this peace?
What can I ask for now? Not as a father
To have my children given back to me
Alive; but as a brother I will beg
This from my brother, which can be no loss
To his most infamous revenge: to give
A funeral to my sons. Can you not give me
Something which you will see immediately
Thrown on the fire? A gift, not to be kept,
But to be lost, is all this father asks.
ATREUS: You have them – all that now remains of them;
And all that is not here – is with you too.
THYESTES: What, are they lying out for birds of prey
To make a meal of? Are they set aside
For savage beasts or creatures of the field?
ATREUS: You, you yourself have dined on your sons’ flesh!
You have consumed this monstrous banquet!
THYESTES: Gods!
This was the sight you could not bear to see!
This was the sin that drove the daylight back
To where it came from. O what words can tell,
What grieving can assuage my agony?
There are not words enough to speak of it.
Here are their severed heads, I see, their hands
Chopped off, the feet left from their broken legs,
The leavings of their father’s gluttony.
My stomach moves; the sin within me strives
To find escape – cannot escape its prison.
Lend me your sword, brother, lend me that sword
Already glutted with my blood; its blade
Shall set my children free. You will not? Hands,
Beat on this breast until it break in pieces!…
No! Strike not, wretch! We must respect the dead.
When was such horror seen – when, in the days
Of Heniochus upon the awful crags
Of barren Caucasus, or in Procrustes’ den,
The terror of the land of Attica?
I press my sons to death – they press their father.
Is sin illimitable?
ATREUS: There are bounds
To limit wilful sin; but sin’s requital
Acknowledges no limits. I have done
Too little yet. I should have drained their blood
Warm from their wounds into your open mouth;
You should have drunk it from their living bodies.
I was too hasty, I rebuffed my rage;
I did it all myself – drove in the sword
To slay them at the altar, washed my hearth
With sacrificial blood, cut off the limbs
From the dead bodies, chopped them into pieces,
And threw the pieces into boiling cauldrons
Or had them slowly roasted on the fire;
Sinews and limbs I severed, warm with life;
I saw the meat impaled on slender spits
And heard it squealing; I heaped up the fires.
I should have made the father do all this!
His torture came too late; he never knew
What he was doing when his cursed teeth
Gnawed at those bones! His children never knew it!
THYESTES: Hear him, all seas that wash the winding shores!
Gods, wheresoe’er ye be, now fled from us,
Hear all this wickedness! Hear, powers below,
Hear, Earth! And thou, deep night of Tartarus,
Give ear to these my prayers; to thee alone
I come; thy starless dark, like this black day,
Alone can look upon my misery.
I will not pray for any evil thing;
I will ask nothing for myself – what good
Could ever now be mine? For you I pray:
Almighty ruler of the sky, great king
Of heaven’s realm – wrap all the universe
In awful darkness, let the winds make war,
From every quarter of the sky let thunder
Loudly resound; not with thy gentler hand
That tempers its assault upon the homes
Of innocent men, but with that hand of wrath
Which overthrew the triple-mountained pile,
Ay, and the mountain-topping Giants too,
Prepare thy weapons and discharge thy fires.
Avenge the darkness of this stolen day,
Send thunderbolts and lightnings to supply
The place of this lost sun. Thou hast no need
To weigh the issue; count us guilty, both;
Or else on me alone pronounce thy sentence.
Strike at this head, let triple forks of fire
Impale this breast – how else should I expect
To give my sons a burial, or commit
Their bodies to the final flames, if not
To be burnt up myself?… Ah, will the gods not hear?
Have they no weapon to destroy the sinner?
Then may eternal night endure, may darkness
Cover these vast immeasurable sins
For evermore. Sun, never move again,
And I shall be content.
ATREUS: Well done, my hands!
This is my true reward. My wicked work
Would have been wasted, if I had not heard
Those cries of agony. Now I am sure
My sons are mine again, reborn to me;
The slur upon my fatherhood is lifted.
THYESTES: What cause could you have had to hate the children?1
ATRBUS: That they2 were yours.
THYESTES: Their father’s sons…?
ATREUS: I know
They were their father’s,1 and I am content.
THYESTES: Now, by the gods that make us love our own –
ATREUS: Why not the gods of marriage?
THYESTES: Is a fault
To be requited with more wickedness?
ATREUS: I know why you are angry; ’tis your grief
That you were cheated of the crime you purposed.
You weep, not that you ate this loathsome meal,
But that you had not cooked it! Your intent,
I know, was to prepare a like repast
And serve it to your unsuspecting brother;
To seize my children, with their mother’s aid,
And make an end of them, as I of yours –
And would have done it, but for one thing only:
You thought you were their father.
THYESTES: My revenge
The gods will give. I have no other wish
But to entrust to them your punishment.
ATREUS: As I do yours, into your children’s hands.
Exeunt
PHAEDRA
(or Hippolytus)
BY his marriage with Antiope (Hippolyta), the queen of the Amazons, Theseus had one son Hippolytus. Preferring the goddess Diana to Venus, this young man devoted himself to athletic and rural exercises, and despised the love of women. Having murdered his wife Antiope and married Phaedra, daughter of the Cretan king Minos, Theseus absented himself on an expedition to the underworld to help his friend Peirithous abduct Persephone. Phaedra became enamoured of her handsome stepson and resolved to tempt him, though much tormented by her consciousness of sin and by the taint of evil tradition in her family. Her mother, Pasiphae, was also the mother, by a bestial union, of the bull-man Minotaur; this monster had been confined in the labyrinth of Knossos until sought out and killed by Theseus – whom Phaedra’s sister Ariadne aided with her clue o
f thread.
The mass of legend associated with Theseus has many variations; its main course is charted by Plutarch in his Life of Theseus. Ovid’s Heroides IV (Phaedra to Hippolytus), is a source from which Seneca’s picture of Phaedra’s passion may have derived some of its typically Roman colour. The Hippolytus of Euripides is the prototype (and only surviving version) in Greek tragedy.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
THESEUS, King of Athens
PHAEDRA, second wife of Theseus
HIPPOLYTUS, son of Theseus and Antiope
NURSE
MESSENGER
CHORUS of Athenian citizens
Companions of Hippolytus
*
Scene: Athens, at the palace of Theseus
PRELUDE
Hippolytus and Companions
HIPPOLYTUS: Men of the land of Cecrops, come
Range round the leafy woods! Away
To the mountain tops! Swiftly afoot
Spread wide your ways, to the glades that lie
In the shadow of Parnes’ height, to the river
That thrashes its rapid course along
The vale of Thria; climb to the hills
White-topped with never-melting snow
From northern skies.
For some, another way, where groves
Of alder weave a shade, where meadows
Kissed by the dewy breath of Zephyr
Lie, where the spring grass hears his call;
Or where Ilissos’ stripling stream
Idles beside starved fields, bare sands
Scored into niggard channels.
Others, away by the western road
To the open pass of Marathon,
Where the suckling dams at evening graze
With their young behind them. Some, go down
Where the warm south breezes thaw the frost
Of the hard Acharnian plain.
Who will climb to sweet Hymettus,
Who to Aphidnae’s little hill?
The arc of Sunium that swings
Into the sea; there is a place
Long undespoiled, that asks for hunting.
Lovers of woods in all their glory,
Phlya awaits you, where the wild boar
Lurks, to the farmers’ terror, a fighter
With many a victim to his credit.
Come, loose the hounds, the quiet ones;
But keep those wild Molossians leashed,
And the Cretan fighters, their tough necks
Can tug the collar. Those Spartans too
Are a lively breed, thirsting for blood;
Be sure to keep them well reined in.
Their time will come; we shall hear their voices
Raising the echoes in the mountains.
First you must let them get their heads down
Sniffing the air with their shrewd noses,
To pick up the scent around the coverts
Before the sun comes up, while footprints
Pattern the dewy grass.
Up with the heavy nets, the coarse ones
Will need a hefty shoulder; and here
Are the finer snares. And take a line
Of coloured feathers, to intercept
And trap the silly creatures.
You can be our javelin-thrower –
You, take the heavy broad-head spear,
It needs both hands at once – you, beater,
Stalk the game and cry him out
Full speed from his lair – and when we’ve caught him,
You shall knife the innards from him.
And come Thou to thy servant’s side,
Huntress Divine, whose sovereign will
The secret heart of earth obeys;
Whose arrows fly swift to their mark
In any beast that stoops to drink
At cold Araxes’ side, or paws
The ice of Ister. Thine the arm
That slays Gaetulian lions, thine
That hunts the Cretan stag; thine too
The lighter hand that pricks the deer.
Thou meet’st the tiger’s mottled breast,
The shaggy bison’s back, the span
Of the wild auroch’s spreading horns.
No creature feeds in fields so far –
Under the rich Arabian trees,
On arid Garamantian plains,
Where the Sarmatian nomad roams,
Upon the high rough Pyrenees,
Or in Hyrcanian ravines –
But it must fear Diana’s bow.
Fortune attends the worshipper
Who has found favour at thy shrine;
Thy power goes with him to the fields,
His nets hold fast their captured prey,
No creature’s feet break down his snares,
A laden wain brings back his spoils,
His hounds return with blooded mouths,
And all the country fellows join
Rejoicing in the long march home.
Hark, the dogs are baying; that is the sign
That thou art with me, Goddess. Now to the woods;
This way will take me quickly to the long road
That lies ahead.
ACT ONE
Phaedra, Nurse
PHAEDRA: O Crete, great land, great mistress of wide seas,
Whose ships in countless numbers reach all shores,
Faring across the ocean – to Assyria,
To every coast, wherever the Sea God
Permits a prow to cleave its way to land:
Why have you banished me, a hostage bound
To a hostile house, wife to an alien lord,
To spend my days in tears and wretchedness?
Where is my lord? Away – that is how Theseus
Observes his marriage vows – on a bold venture
Through the deep darkness of the underworld
From which no man returns, comrade in arms
To an audacious suitor who will steal
And carry off a bride straight from the throne
Of the King of Death. So Theseus follows him,
Partner in his mad escapade; no fear,
No shame, deters him. Lust and lawless marriage
In hell Hippolytus’s father seeks.
But I have other, greater pain to bear;
No rest at night, no balm of sleep relieves
My troubled soul. It thrives and grows – my pain
Burns in me like the burning heart of Etna.
My loom stands still, the wool drops from my hands;
I have no heart to make my offerings
At the gods’ temples, or to take my place
Among the dances of the Attic women
Torch-bearing in dark rites around their altars.
I cannot make pure prayers or honest vows
To their presiding goddess, to whose care
This land was given. I take pleasure now
In following the hunt, starting wild game,
A strong spear in this tender hand. Why, why,
My soul? What does it mean? What is this passion
For woods and fields? Is this the evil spell
That bound my mother, my unhappy mother?…
Our love has gone astray in the woods…. O mother,
I feel for you. I know how you were forced
By monstrous doom into audacious love
For that brute beast, bull of a roaming herd;
An angry beast, untamed and lecherous,
His wild mates all obeyed him – yet he loved.
What god will pity me? Where is a Daedalus
To find a cure for my complaint? That craftsman,
Master of Attic arts, who built a prison
To hold our Cretan monster in seclusion,
Could not, if he were here, do anything
To lighten my distress. This comes from Venus;
She hates all children of her enemy
The Sun,1 and now through us she takes revenge
In the arms of Mars; on all the tribe of Phoebus
She lays a load of shame. Love lies not lightly
On any daughter of the house of Minos;
We know no love that is not bound to sin.
NURSE: Nay, noble wife of Theseus, child of Jove,
Cleanse your pure heart at once of such vile thoughts;
Smother the flame and give no countenance
To evil hopes. Stand up to Love and rout him
At the first assault, that is the surest way
To win without a fall; once humour him,
Cherish the pleasant bane – ’twill be too late
Then to refuse the yoke you have accepted.
I am not blind, I know how royal pride,
Stubborn, and deaf to truth, abhors correction.
I am ready for my end, whate’er it be;
The old have courage, freedom is near for them.
To choose the good is the first rule of life,
And not to falter on the way; next best
Is to have shame and know where sin must stop.
Why, my poor mistress, why are you resolved
To heap fresh infamy upon your house,
With sin worse than your mother’s? Wilful sin
Is a worse evil than unnatural passion;
That comes by fate, but sin comes from our nature.
You think, because your husband’s eyes are closed
To all this upper world, that you are free
To sin without fear? No, you are mistaken;
Though Theseus may be safely out of sight
In Lethe’s depths, walking the shores of Styx,
Perhaps for ever – what of him who rules
The hundred cities and the wide sea roads,
Your father? Will he let such sin be hidden?
Parents are watchful, and their care is wise.
And even if we do conceal your crime,
By our devices, from all human eyes,
There is your mother’s father, He above
Who sheds his light upon the earth; and He,
Father of all the gods, who shakes the world
With hail of fiery bolts from his bright hand.
Will you believe that you can do this thing
Out of the sight of your all-seeing grandsires?
Again, let us suppose the good gods choose
To hide forbidden love; let us suppose
They lend to lawless intercourse protection
