Four Tragedies and Octavia

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by Seneca

And yellow girdle at your waist

  In girlish fashion. And you wear it still,

  The loose-draped robe and flowing skirt,

  The garb of gentleness.

  Thus you were known

  To all the countries of the farthest East,

  To those that drink the waters of the Ganges

  And those that break the ice-floes of Araxes,

  Upon a golden chariot riding,

  Over the lion’s back

  Your long robes trailing.

  And old Silenus on his humble ass

  Is there to follow you, with ivy garlands

  Crowning his bulging forehead; while a rout

  Of ribald merrymakers dance their secret mysteries.

  In Thrace your revellers follow you,

  Edonian dancers on Pangaeus

  And on the heights of Pindus.

  In Thebes you are Iacchus of Ogygia,1

  Your worshippers the Cadmian women,

  Wanton maenads, clad in skins,

  Thyrsus in hand, hair flying free,

  Possessed with madness at your will.

  Pentheus is torn to pieces; then the grip

  Of passion is released, the bacchant throng

  Regard their horrid handiwork

  As if they knew not whose it was.

  A sister of the mother of bright Bacchus

  Is Theban Ino,1 mistress of the sea.

  The Nereids dance with her; and young Palaemon,2

  Kinsman of Bacchus and a great god too,

  Has joined the company of the divinities

  Who rule the waves.

  At sea Tyrrhenian pirates made a prize

  Of our young Bacchus. Nereus calmed

  The angry waves and made the deep blue sea

  Become a meadow. Plane trees rose

  As green as springtime, and the laurel

  Dear to Phoebus; birds sang in the branches.

  Round the oars green ivy sprouted,

  Vines depended from the yard-arms.

  A lion of Ida roared upon the prow,

  An Indian tiger at the stern.

  The pirates panicked; jumped into the sea;

  And as they swam they were transformed;

  They lost their arms, their breasts were doubled down

  Into their bellies; fins like little hands

  Hung from their sides; and through the waves they dived,

  Round-backed, with crescent tails that flipped the water –

  A school of graceful dolphins following

  The flying ship!

  In Lydia you would sail

  Upon the rich Pactolus, flowing golden

  Between its sun-scorched banks;

  Where Massagetan warriors, quaffing cups

  Of blood and milk, at your command

  Unstrung their bows

  And laid their barbarous arrows down.

  Your power was known

  By King Lycurgus,1 smiter with the axe.

  Your power was known by savage Zalaces,

  And by the nomad tribes

  Who feel the north wind near,

  The dwellers on Maeotis’ frozen shores,

  And those upon whose heads

  The Bear and the two Wains look down.

  Bacchus subdued the sparse Gelonians.

  Bacchus disarmed the women warriors;

  The wild hordes of the Amazons

  Bowed down their faces to the ground,

  Abandoned archery

  And joined the Bacchic dance.

  Upon Cithaeron’s holy mount

  The blood of Pentheus flowed.

  The daughters of King Proetus ran away

  To worship Bacchus in the woods of Argos,

  In his stepmother’s sight.2

  In Naxos, the Aegean isle, he found

  A bride, deserted by her former lover;

  Hers was the gain, far greater than her loss.

  And there the juices of the vine,

  Beloved of the night-haunting god,

  Sprang from the barren rock; new rivulets

  Trickled across the fields; the earth drank deeply

  Of whitest milk and the thyme-scented wine of Lesbos.

  And when the bride was led into high heaven,

  Phoebus was there, with radiant hair aflame,

  To sing the nuptial song; two Cupids bore aloft

  The torches; Jupiter laid down

  His fiery darts; he would not touch his thunderbolts

  With Bacchus at his side.

  As long as the lights of the everlasting heavens run their course –

  As long as the waves of Ocean wrap the world –

  As long as the Moon can wane and wax again to the full –

  As long as the Star of Day brings promise of the dawn –

  As long as the Great Bear never meets the Lord of the deep blue sea –

  So long shall we adore the fair face of our lovely Bacchus.

  ACT THREE

  Oedipus, Creon

  OEDIPUS: Though there is news of sorrow in your face,

  Yet tell it. By whose life must we appease

  The jealous gods?

  CREON: You order me to tell

  That which my fears would urge me to conceal.

  OEDIPUS: Does not the ruin of Thebes urge you to speak?

  What of the downfall of the royal house

  Of which you are a brother?

  CREON: What you seek

  So hastily to know, you will soon wish

  Not to have known.

  OEDIPUS: Evil cannot be cured

  By ignorance. To smother every clue

  To the solution of our country’s plight –

  Is that your wish?

  CREON: When medicine is foul,

  The cure may be unpleasant.1

  OEDIPUS: What have you heard?

  Tell me, or you shall learn at heavy cost

  What force an angered monarch can command.

  CREON: What he has ordered to be said, a king

  May hate to hear.

  OEDIPUS: Your miserable life

  Will be the one dispatched to Erebus

  For all our sakes, if you refuse to tell

  The hidden meaning of our sacrifice.

  CREON: Is there no right of silence? Is not that

  The smallest privilege a king could grant?

  OEDIPUS: The right of silence often holds more danger

  To king and kingdom than the right of speech.

  CREON: If silence is not free, what freedom is there?

  OEDIPUS: He that is silent when required to speak

  Shakes the stability of government.

  CREON: What I am forced to say, please hear with patience.

  OEDIPUS: There is no penalty for forced disclosure.

  CREON: Outside the city, a dark ilex-grove

  Stands near the waters of the Vale of Dirce.

  Above the rest a cypress, evergreen,

  Lifts its tall head and seems to hold the grove

  Sheltered in its embrace; two ancient oaks

  Spread out a tangle of half-rotted boughs,

  One partly crumbled by consuming age,

  The other falling from its withered roots

  And leaning on its neighbour for support.

  The bitter-berried laurel grows there too,

  And Paphian myrtle, and smooth lime, and alder

  (Wood that may soon be speeding under oars

  Across the boundless sea); a lofty pine

  Stands in the eye of the sun, its straight-grained limbs

  Braced firm against the winds. One massive tree

  Stands in the centre, overshadowing

  The lesser trunks, and seems to guard the grove

  With its vast span of spreading foliage.

  Beneath it drips a dark and sombre spring;

  Ice-cold – because it never sees the sun –

  Its sluggish waters creep into a swamp.

  To this place came the aged priest, and
soon

  (There was no need to wait for night to fall,

  The darkness of the grove was dark as night)

  A pit was dug and brands from funeral pyres

  Thrown into it. Tiresias put on

  A sable robe, and waved a spray of leaves.

  His step was solemn and his aspect grim,

  Robed head to foot in the funereal garb,

  His white hair wreathed with yew, symbol of death.

  Into the pit black oxen and black sheep

  Were led; the flames devoured the offering,

  A feast of living flesh that leapt in pain

  Upon the fire of death. The priest invoked

  The souls of the departed, and their king,

  And him who guards the gate to Lethe’s lake.

  In awful tones he spoke the magic words

  And incantations, those which can placate

  And those which can command the shadowy ghosts.

  He poured blood on the hearth, saw that the flames

  Consumed the beasts entire, and drenched the pit

  With their spilt gore. Libations then, of milk

  Snow-white, and wine with his left hand, he poured

  Upon the fire, and uttered prayers again.

  Then in a louder and more awful voice,

  His eyes fixed on the ground, he summoned forth

  The spirits of the dead. Loud bayed the hounds

  Of Hecate, the valley boomed three times,

  A tremor shook the ground beneath our feet.

  ‘They hear me,’ said the priest; ‘my words had power;

  The black void opens and the citizens

  Of hell are given a passage to our world.’

  The trees bowed down, their foliage bristling;

  Trunks split apart and the whole forest quaked.

  The earth reeled backwards and groaned inwardly.

  Was Acheron enraged at this assault

  Upon its secrets – or was this the noise

  Of earth bursting its prison gates to give

  A passage to the dead? Or Cerberus

  The triple-headed hound in anger shaking

  His heavy chains? Soon after this, earth gaped

  And a vast chasm was revealed. I saw

  Down in the darkness the unmoving lake;

  I saw the colourless divinities;

  I saw the quintessential night. My blood

  Froze in my body and my heart stopped beating.

  Out of the pit came forth an angry brood;

  They stood before us armed, the viper’s brood,

  The children of the dragon’s teeth, and with them

  Plague, the devouring spoiler of our people.

  Then came the sound of the grim fiend Erinys,

  Of Horror and blind Fury and all things

  Created and concealed in the dark womb

  Of everlasting night. There Sorrow stood

  Clutching her hair, there drooped the heavy head

  Of Sickness, Age bowed down with her own burden,

  And menacing Fear. No life was left in us;

  Manto herself, no stranger to the arts

  And rites her father practised, stood amazed.

  He showed no fear; his blindness lent him courage;

  He called into our sight the lifeless hosts

  Of the inexorable king of death,

  And there the insubstantial shapes appeared,

  Floating like clouds and feeding on the air

  Of open sky. Numberless multitudes

  Answered the prophet’s summons – more than all

  The leaves that grow and fall upon Mount Eryx,

  The flowers that bloom in the high spring of Hybla

  When bees hang in dense swarms, or all the waves

  That break across the Ionian sea, the birds

  That fleeing winter and the frozen bite

  Of Strymon cross the sky from Arctic snows

  To the warm valley of the Nile; so, fearful

  And shivering, the ghosts came crowding in

  To shelter in the grove. First to appear

  Was Zethus, wrestling with an angry bull;

  Amphion followed, with the tortoise-shell

  In his left hand, whose music charmed the stones.

  Niobe, reunited with her children,

  Held up her head in happy pride, content

  With all her dead around her. Next to come

  Was a more heartless mother, mad Agave,

  Followed by all that company of women

  Who tore the body of their king to pieces;

  Pentheus was with them too, a mangled wreck,

  But arrogant as ever. Last of all,

  After the priest had called him many times,

  Came one, who seemed ashamed to raise his head,

  Tried to remain unseen, and shrank away

  From all the other ghosts; the priest insisted,

  With oft repeated prayers to the dark powers,

  Until he had drawn forth into full view

  The hidden face – and there stood Laius!

  How can I tell you – how forlorn he looked

  As he stood there, blood streaming down his limbs,

  His hair disordered and begrimed. He spoke,

  As one deranged, and this is what he said:

  ‘O you wild women of the house of Cadmus,

  Lusting for kindred blood, go shake the thyrsus,

  But in your orgies let it be your sons

  You mutilate; away with mother-love,

  It is the cardinal sin of Thebes. O Thebes,

  By sin, not by the anger of the gods,

  You are destroyed. Your plague has not been brought

  By the dry breath of the rain-thirsty earth,

  Nor by the south wind’s scourge; but by a king

  With blood upon his hands, who claimed a throne

  As his reward for murder and defiled

  His father’s marriage-bed: unnatural son,

  And yet more infamous a father he,

  Who by incestuous rape did violate

  The womb which gave him birth, against all law –

  A thing scarce any animal will do –

  Begat from his own mother sons of shame,

  Children to be his brothers! Vile confusion,

  Monstrous complexity of sin, more subtle

  Than that shrewd Sphinx he boasts of. Murderer!

  Whose blood-stained hand now grasps the sceptre, thee

  I shall pursue, thy father unavenged;

  I and all Thebes shall hunt thee, and shall bring

  The Fury who attended on thy marriage

  With whips to scourge thy guilt; shall overthrow

  Thy house of shame, destroy with civil war

  Thy hearth and home. People, expel your king!

  Drive him immediately from your land;

  Soon as your soil is rid of his curs’d feet,

  Its springtime will return, its grass be green,

  The beauty of the woods will bloom again,

  And pure air fill you with the breath of life.

  With him, as his fit company, shall go

  Death and Corruption, Sickness, Suffering,

  Plague, and Despair. Nay, it shall even be

  That he himself would gladly quit our land

  As fast as feet can carry him; but I

  Shall halt those feet; I shall retard his flight;

  He shall go creeping, groping, stick in hand,

  Feeling his way like one infirm with age.

  While you deprive him of your earth, his father

  Will banish him for ever from the sky.’

  OEDIPUS: Fear chills my body, every bone and limb.

  Of every act that I have feared to do

  I am accused. And yet against the charge

  Of sinful marriage Merope defends me,

  For she is still the wife of Polybus.

  And Polybus still lives; my hands are clean

  Of that offence. One
parent witnesses

  My innocence of murder, by the other

  I am acquitted of inchastity.

  How else can I be guilty? Laius?

  His death was mourned at Thebes before I came,

  Ay, long before I touched Boeotian soil.

  Is the old prophet wrong – or is some god

  An enemy of Thebes?… Yes, here I have it!

  The treacherous conspirators are here!

  The priest devised this lie, using the gods

  As screen for his deception, and to you

  He means to give my sceptre.

  CREON: Would I want

  To see my sister ousted from her throne?

  No, if my solemn duty to my house

  And to my family were not enough

  To keep me in my proper place, the fear

  Of greater, and more dangerous, eminence

  Would hold me back. Perhaps you would do well

  To shed your burden while you safely can,

  Rather than wait for it to fall and crush you

  When you attempt to shake it off. Step down,

  Now, while you can, into a humbler place.

  OEDIPUS: Are you advising me to abdicate

  My crown and all its cares?

  CREON: I would advise it

  To anyone who had the choice; for you

  No choice remains but to endure your fate.

  OEDIPUS: There is the power-seeker’s surest card!

  To cry up moderation, to extol

  Peace and contentment! The pretence of peace

  Is the sharp practice of the malcontent.

  CREON: Does my long loyalty not speak for me?

  OEDIPUS: Through loyalty lies the traitor’s way to mischief.

  CREON: Already I enjoy, without its cares,

  All the advantages of royal rank.

  My house is blessed with multitudes of friends;

  With every day that dawns, remunerations

  Of my connexion with the royal house

  Flow to my door; rich living, choicest fare,

  And the ability to save the lives

  Of many men by my good offices.

  What more could Fortune give me?

  OEDIPUS: That much more

  That still you lack. Good fortune knows no limits.

  CREON: Am I condemned, found guilty without trial?

  OEDIPUS: Have I been given a trial? Has my life

  Been put in the balance? Has Tiresias heard me?

  Yet I have been condemned already. You

  Set the example, I but follow it.

  CREON: Is it not possible that I am guiltless?

  OEDIPUS: A king must guard against the possible

  As against certain danger.

  CREON: He that fears

  Imaginary dangers should be made

 

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