The Greek Plays
Page 20
how much the gods abhor the celebrations
you’re so attached to?—as your bodies show
in every feature. You should share a cave
with a blood-guzzling lion, and not wipe
your dirt on others at this oracle.
You strays, you feral goats, move off! No god
has any fondness for a herd like yours.
CHORUS: Give us our turn and listen, Lord Apollo!
It isn’t only that you share his guilt:
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you took on all of it, from the beginning.
APOLLO: What? Draw your speech out, make me understand.
CHORUS: The stranger killed his mother, at your word.
APOLLO: Certainly, since I said, “Avenge your father.”
CHORUS: You promised refuge, though he dripped with blood?
APOLLO: Commanding his atonement in my house.
CHORUS: But we’re his escorts here! How can you taunt us?
APOLLO: You’re not the visitors this house deserves.
CHORUS: You’re wrong; this is the charge that we were given.
APOLLO: What’s this high office? What’s this great distinction?
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CHORUS: We drive from home whoever kills his mother.
APOLLO: And if a wife disposes of her husband?
CHORUS: She doesn’t raise her hand to draw shared blood.
APOLLO: Then you degrade—annihilate—the bonds
of Hera the Fulfiller,*28 and of Zeus.
What you urge throws the Cyprian,*29 who brings
the dearest mortal gifts, into the dirt.
A husband and wife’s bed, their destiny
that Justice guards, is stronger than an oath,
now that one’s killed the other*30 and you looked
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away from anger and revenge, I tell you
you’ve wronged Orestes, whom you made an outcast.
You seem to me to take his crime to heart,
yet clearly in her case you’re not so troubled.
At the trial, the goddess Pallas will preside.
CHORUS: I’m never going to leave this man in peace.
APOLLO: Then after him! Keep up your useless struggle.
CHORUS: Don’t speak with such contempt about my birthright.
APOLLO: Birthright? I wouldn’t take it as a gift.
CHORUS: You stand on high by Zeus’s throne, we hear.
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But then there’s me. A mother’s blood trail guides me
on this man’s heels to punishment, to justice.
APOLLO: I’ll help the suppliant and rescue him.
For mortals and gods, too, a suppliant’s anger
is ghastly, if he’s willingly betrayed.
(Apollo, Orestes, and the Chorus exit, leaving the stage and orchestra empty. The scene shifts to the city of Athens, many months later.*31 Onstage is a wooden statue of Athena. Orestes enters and addresses this image as he puts his arms around it.)
ORESTES: Athena in your majesty, I come here
at Loxias’*32 command. Look gently on me,
outcast but clean now, as I prayed to be.
My guilt is blunt, its edge has worn away
on houses where I stayed, on peopled roads.
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I crossed dry land, the sea as well, to follow
what Loxias’ oracle ordained for me.
Now as your guest I hold your image, goddess,
safe in this place, and wait for my trial’s end.
(The Chorus of Furies enter, as though tracking Orestes.)
CHORUS: Good! Here is it. The man has left clear traces!
Follow the mute informer’s evidence.
Like dogs that run behind a wounded hare,
we sniff his dribbled blood, we’re going to find him.
I pant clear from my belly; men would flag
from the effort. We have flocked to every place
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on earth, and winglessly soared over water
pursuing him, no slower than a ship.
And now he’s here—here somewhere—cowering.
The scent of mortal blood is smiling at me!
(They break into a short song.)
Look, and keep looking!
Search everywhere, keep the matricide
from making off, from slipping away scot free.
There he is! He’s found sanctuary, wrapping
himself around the immortal goddess’s image.
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He wants his day in court for his murderous doings—
not for him! A mother’s pitiful blood
is hard to draw up from the earth again.
It runs down into the ground at your feet, it is gone.
You must atone: from your living body
let me slobber up the red gruel offering. From you
I will plunder my fodder, drink what makes mortals gag.
Why would I kill you? I’ll make you a husk and drag you
below for your retribution, the woeful price of your mother’s death.
And there you’ll see them, other impious mortals
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who have outraged a god, or a stranger,
or their own parents—
and each kind of torment will settle in full with Justice.
Hades, who chastises humankind, is mighty
below the earth.
His mind surveys the world; what he sees he writes in his mind.
ORESTES: Through hardship’s tutelage, I sense what’s right
at various times—especially when to open
my mouth or not. But here in this proceeding
a shrewd instructor ordered me to speak.
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The blood is weak, unconscious on my hand,
the matricidal stain washed off, expelled
while still fresh, at the hearth of holy Phoebus
by pigs who died in purifying rites.*33
How long I’d take, reciting the full tally
of those my company has left unharmed!*34
[Time cleanses all things, growing old beside them.]*35
It is a guiltless mouth that reverently
calls on Athena, ruler of this country:
“Come to my aid and win, without a spear-thrust,
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myself, the people, and the land of Argos
as true, unfailing allies for all time.”
On Libyan terrain, perhaps, her birthplace
near Triton’s banks beside the pouring channel,*36
she’s fighting forward or repels an onslaught
to help her friends; or eyes the plain of Phlegra*37
like a bold man, commander of the ranks.
No matter—from far off, a god can hear.
Let her arrive to be my rescuer!
CHORUS: There’s no release, not even with Apollo’s
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or strong Athena’s help. They’ll shrug, and you
will fall beyond a trace or hint of joy,
where spirits feed on you, a bloodless shadow.
You have no answer? You spit back my words—
you, fattened, consecrated as my victim?
A living feast, no slaughter at the altar!
So listen to this song, and it will bind you.
(They begin to dance, in an attempt to enchant Orestes and make him powerless.)
Come and join hands in the dance.
We have decided to flaunt
our talent—though you loathe it.
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We’ll tell you how our troupe deals
mankind its destinies.
We’re sure of our integrity;
no rage of ours will stalk
anyone holding out clean hands.
Unharmed, he will pass through his life.
But if anyone sins, like this man,
and tugs a cloak close to hide his bloody fingers, then we
are the upright wit
nesses for the dead,
we second them, we exact what is owed their blood.
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There is no appeal from us, as we confront him.
strophe 1
Mother who brought me to the world,
Mother Night, as vengeance
for those in the daylight,
and those it was taken from! Listen to me!
Leto’s son*38 has outraged me,
wrenching away my cowering
prey, the sanctioned
sacrifice to pay for his mother’s murder.
ephymnium 1
Here, over our sacrifice,
our music sounds. There is madness,
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frenzy, the mind is broken
by the Furies’ hymn. This tune
that will never ring from the joyful lyre
chains up the senses,
turns mortals into dry stalks.
antistrophe 1
I was allotted this, it is mine forever,
spun out for me by Fate with her piercing spindle:
when someone in the race of mortals happens,
Stupidly, to kill one of his own,
with his own hand, I become
his—companion—until he goes
beneath the earth. And even in death
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my grip is on him, tight enough.
ephymnium 1
Here, over our sacrifice,
our music sounds. There is madness,
frenzy, the mind is broken
by the Furies’ hymn. This tune
that will never ring from the joyful lyre
chains up the senses,
turns mortals into dry stalks.
strophe 2
This was our allotment, decreed when we were born.
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But we must hold our hand back from immortals, and no one
sits at a feast in company with us both;
and pure white robes are not my fated portion.*39
[…]*40
ephymnium 2
I have, you see, elected
to uproot households. When Ares*41
is brought up in the house and strikes his own down,
his agent, yes, we make after.
Strong he may be, but we put him
in darkness, while the blood he shed is fresh.
antistrophe 2
360
I am at eager pains not to share this trouble!
I am careful to exempt the gods—they do not even have
an inquiry to attend.*42
Hatred alone stoops to our blood-dripping race, and Zeus
never saw fit to speak to us.
strophe 3
All of men’s greatness, all that is grandiose beneath the sky’s heights,
shrivels beneath the earth, shrinks away unregarded
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under our black-robed inroads and the dancing
of our malignant feet.
ephymnium 3
With a great force I leap,
I soar down with a great weight.
I strike with the point of my foot.
They run at full stretch but I trip them:
Ruin unbearable brings them down.
antistrophe 3
The man falls, but he does not know it—his wits are maimed,
and a huge, a filthy darkness hovers above him.
And a voice tells, with loud groans, of the murky mist
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above his house.
strophe 4
What must be is set in the ground. We are contrivers.
We bring our work to its end,
unforgetting, fearsome,
inexorable to mortals.
What is appointed for us has no honor
but a place apart from the gods, in sunless mire.
We lay a rocky path for those who see the daylight
and the blinded dead alike.
antistrophe 1
Who among mortals lacks
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awe, lacks terror at all this,
hearing me speak of the law laid down
by destiny—and its fulfillment that the gods concede?
The ancient prerogative is mine,
and I meet no insults in it,
though I stand at my post underground
in sunless murk.
(The goddess Athena enters, dressed in armor and carrying her aegis, a magically powerful goatskin shield.)
ATHENA: Far off, at the Scamander’s banks, I caught
your summoning clamor, while I took possession
of land that the Achaeans’ marshaling chieftains
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granted to me, an ample share of plunder
in victory, as my freehold for all time—
the choicest gift for Theseus’ descendants.*43
From there, I raced my own untiring feet;
the aegis flapped against my wingless body.*44
Seeing this troop the land has never seen,
I’m not afraid, but wonder fills my eyes.
Who are you? That’s one question for you all
to share: the stranger crouching by my image,
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and you—since nothing like you springs from nature.
You are no goddesses the gods have seen,
yet don’t resemble mortals in your forms.
But hateful words addressed to harmlessness
are far from just, and Righteousness disdains them.
CHORUS: No lengthy speech is needed, Zeus’ daughter.
We are Night’s children, and we live forever.
At home beneath the earth, they call us Curses.
ATHENA: I know your clan, its titles, and their meanings.
CHORUS: Now you must learn about my post of honor.
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ATHENA: I’ll try; a clear account of it would help me.
CHORUS: We’re charged with driving murderers from home.
ATHENA: Where is the endpoint of the killer’s exile?
CHORUS: A place beyond experience of joy.
ATHENA: That’s where he’s being routed by your shrieking?
CHORUS: He took it on himself to kill his mother.
ATHENA: Through sheer necessity—or fear of someone?
CHORUS: What goad is sharp enough to drive this crime?
ATHENA: There are two parties here—but half a case.
CHORUS: (pointing to Apollo) He won’t accept our oath or give his own.
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ATHENA: You want the justice that’s a mere display.
CHORUS: What’s that? Explain! Your mind has power enough.
ATHENA: I mean that oaths can’t make the wrong cause win.
CHORUS: Then question him and give an honest verdict.
ATHENA: You trust the outcome of this trial to me?
CHORUS: Naturally, with the full respect I owe you.
ATHENA: (to Orestes) Stranger, how will you answer in your turn,
naming your clan and country, telling us
your story, and then making your defense?
If you rely on justice as you sit
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clutching this wooden image by my hearth,
a sacred suppliant, like Ixion,*45
respond and let me understand all this.
ORESTES: Sovereign Athena, first I will remove
the last—and critical—concern you speak of:
I’m not a suppliant, I haven’t sat here
beside your image with my hands defiled.
The evidence I give must carry weight:
ritual law will keep a felon speechless
until a purifier spatters him
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with a suckling’s blood to drive away the blood guilt.*46
Long ago, strangers cleansed me in their houses
with slaughtered animals and running water:
so take my word for this and ease your mind.
Now I’ll inform you briefly w
here I come from:
it’s Argos; naturally, you know my father,
the marshal of the war fleet, Agamemnon.
Alongside you, he rendered Ilium
a town no longer, but died shamefully
when he came home: my mother, with her black heart,
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struck him down cunningly. Embroidered snares*47
affirmed that he was murdered in his bath.
And I returned, after a time of exile,
and killed—I did—the woman I was born from,
striking back for the sake of my dear father.
Loxias also is accountable:
he warned of piercing, killing agony
should I not act against the guilty parties.
You must decide the case. Did I do right?
I won’t dispute the fate your words assign me.
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ATHENA: This is a weightier matter than a mortal
could hope to judge, but even I’m not sanctioned
to give a verdict on enraging murder.
Besides this, you are tamed now, as a pure
and harmless suppliant come to my house.
(indicates the Furies)
But their prerogative should not be slighted.
If they don’t find themselves victorious,
their rancor’s venom will infect the ground
it falls on with a never-ending ruin.
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So, a dilemma! Would it bring less anger
and trouble if I let you stay or not?*48
But since the controversy falls to me,
I’ll select men beyond reproach, to honor
their oaths as they preside at trials for murder,
and what I institute will last forever.*49
(to Orestes and the Chorus)
Now both, bring in the evidence to prove
your cases, props to hold them safely upright.
I’ll go and choose the best men in my city,
and bring them to decide this matter justly,
keeping within their oaths, in strictest conscience.
(Athena exits.)
strophe 1
490
CHORUS: Now the ordained ways
are overthrown
if this matricide’s menacing
plea wins out—
an event that will bind all mortals
together, give them all dexterous free hands:
no mere nightmare, the wounds after wounds awaiting
parents, the children’s weapons sinking in