The Greek Plays
Page 68
I’m shocked! Your words astound me.
They wander far from truth. They’re mad!
THESEUS: pheu, the human mind—how far will it go?
What end is there to its bold insolence?
If it grows and grows through a man’s life,
if one man exceeds his predecessor
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in evil acts, the gods will have to form
another world to make room for those
whose natures are evil and unjust.
Look at this man here: I gave him life,
and he defiled my wife. In her death
she convicts him of pure villainy.
(Theseus speaks directly to Hippolytus at last.)
Come here to me, look me in the eye,
since I’m already polluted by your presence.*66
You live with the gods because you are
a paragon, chaste and untouched by evil?
950
I’d never trust your boasts, be so deluded
that I’d attribute such ignorance to the gods.
Strut and swagger about your meatless diet! *67
Claim Orpheus your lord! Celebrate his rites!
Honor the empty vapors of his written word!
You’ve been exposed, and I’ll tell all to run
from men like you. They set their trap
with righteous words but plot disgrace.
(Theseus gestures to Phaedra’s body.)
She’s dead. Do you suppose that makes you safe?
This, more than anything, condemns you.
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What oaths, what words have more power
than her death, to make you innocent?
Will you claim she hated you, that the bastard
is naturally the enemy of the pure bred?
By that account she bartered poorly: she lost
her life, the dearest thing, for her hatred of you.
Or will you say that men aren’t love-struck
fools, while women are? But I know
a young man is no more stable than a woman
when Cypris disturbs his youthful heart.
970
But his manhood gives him license.
Therefore,—but why do I debate with you
when this corpse’s testimony is clear?
Leave this land, an exile! Go now!
Don’t go near Athens, city built by gods;
don’t enter any land ruled by my spear.
If I am weaker than you who wrong me,
then Sinis*68 won’t bear witness that I killed him;
he’ll call my boast an empty one. And the rocks
close by the sea, where Sciron lingered,
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will deny that I am hard on wrongdoers.
CHORUS: I don’t know how I could call
any mortal happy, now the best have fallen.
HIPPOLYTUS: Father, the force and tension of your thoughts
are fearsome. But the matter itself, stripped
of the fine words you give it, isn’t so fine.
I have no skill at talking to a crowd.
I’m better with just a few of my peers.
That’s natural, just as men who’re worthless
among the wise are eloquent before a crowd.
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That being said, I must loosen my tongue,
since misfortune is upon me. I’ll start
with your first assault, which you assumed
would destroy me irrefutably. You see
this light, this earth? In it you’ll find
no man more chaste than I, deny it as you may.
I know, above all, how to revere the gods.
I choose friends with no interest in doing wrong;
they’d be ashamed to ask for anything bad
or acquiesce in another’s evil request.
1000
I do not mock my companions, Father.
I’m the same if they’re beside me or far away.
I’ve never touched what you condemn me for.
To this day my body is pure and innocent.
I know nothing of the act of love except
what I’ve heard or seen in pictures, and these
I have no desire to see. Mine is a virgin soul.
Yet my chastity does not convince you.
All right. Show me how I was corrupted.
Was her body more beautiful
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than every other? Did I hope to acquire
your household by taking its heiress to bed?*69
Then I was not just foolish but out of my mind.
You’ll say for a sane man power is sweet.
Not so, since ruling corrupts the minds
of those who find pleasure in it.
I want to be first in the Hellenic games*70
but be second in the state and enjoy
prosperity with friends who are most noble.
That way I can be active without danger
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and have more pleasure than if I’m king.
I’ve one more thing to say; the rest you’ve heard.
If I had someone to testify to my character,
and Phaedra were alive as I pled my case,
the facts would’ve shown you the real culprit.
But as it is, I swear to you, by this earth
and Zeus who guards oaths, I never touched
your wife, would never think or want to.
May I die without name or fame,*71
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may neither earth nor sea receive my corpse,
if I am a man capable of evil.
(Hippolytus gestures to Phaedra’s body.)
I don’t know why she was afraid and
took her own life. I may not say more.
She showed self-control though she had none,
while I had it and did not use it well.
CHORUS: You’ve said enough to avert blame:
this oath you swore is no paltry proof.
THESEUS: What a conjurer! A wizard!
He believes he can dishonor me
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and then calm my fury with his serenity.
HIPPOLYTUS: I’m equally amazed at you, Father.
If you were my child and I your father,
I’d kill you—not banish you—
if you’d presumed to touch my wife.
THESEUS: Your words match your worth. But you won’t
die the way you’ve judged is right.
A quick death in misfortune would be easy.
You’ll drink the last painful drop of life
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in exile. You’ll beg your way through foreign lands.*72
HIPPOLYTUS: oimoi, what do you intend? Won’t you allow
time to reveal my guilt? You’ll exile me now?
THESEUS: Further than the Black Sea or the Pillars
of Atlas,*73 if I could. I hate you.
HIPPOLYTUS: You’ll exile me with no trial, with no test
of my testimony and oath, or the words of prophets?
(Theseus holds up the tablet taken from Phaedra’s wrist.)
THESEUS: This tablet needs no prophet; it condemns you
with utter certainty. I have no need
of bird-omens flying above my head.
1060
HIPPOLYTUS: Why not break my oath and speak, you gods,
if you allow my ruin though I revere you?
But no, I won’t: I wouldn’t convince the ones
I must convince; I’d break my oath*74 in vain.
THESEUS: oimoi! Your righteousness will kill me.
So go now from your ancestral land!
HIPPOLYTUS: Where can I go? What stranger’s house
can I enter, banished on such a charge?
THESEUS: One which welcomes with pleasure strangers
who defile women and commit adultery.
1070
HIPPOLYTUS: aiai, my heart! I’m brough
t close to tears
if I appear evil, especially to you.
THESEUS: It was then you should have moaned and thought ahead,
when you were boldly violating my wife.
(Hippolytus gestures toward the palace.)
HIPPOLYTUS: Oh, house! I wish you could speak for me
and testify if I’m a man capable of evil.
THESEUS: Your witnesses are mute: a clever defense.
But the deed needs no speech to condemn you.
HIPPOLYTUS: pheu, I wish I could look at myself standing
here. I’d weep then for the hardship I suffer.
1080
THESEUS: You’re much more practiced in self-worship
than in justice and reverence to your parents.
HIPPOLYTUS: My poor mother! Bitter my coming into the world!
May no friend of mine know a foreign birth!*75
THESEUS: Remove him, slaves! Didn’t you hear me
long ago declare this man an outcast?
HIPPOLYTUS: The slave who touches me will regret it.
You throw me out, if that’s what you want.
THESEUS: I will, if you don’t obey my command.
No pity for your exile steals over me.
(Theseus enters the house.)
1090
HIPPOLYTUS: It’s over, then. What misery to know
the truth and not know how to tell it.
Oh, daughter of Leto, dearest goddess,*76
partner and fellow hunter, I’m banned
from glorious Athens. And so farewell,
city and land of Erechtheus;*77 Troezen,
farewell. What happiness to be young here
on your soil. I see you and salute you
for the last time.
(to his companions) Now, friends of my youth,
bid me farewell and send me from this place.
1100
You’ll never see a man more self-controlled
than me, no matter what my father thinks.
(Hippolytus exits with his followers away from the town.)
strophe 1
CHORUS: When I think of gods’ care for man
it lightens my pain, but understanding,
concealed by hope, eludes me
when I see what happens to men and what they do.
From one place then another things come and go,
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men’s lives shift about, wander here and there.
antistrophe 1
I pray: may it be my lot to have from god
good luck and prosperity, a spirit no pain confounds.
May my thinking be neither fixed nor false,
may my easy ways alter one day to the next,
may I share in happiness.
strophe 2
1120
I don’t think clearly now, I don’t see what I expect,
not since I watched Athens’ brightest star,
watched him propelled by his father’s wrath
to another land.
O sands that lie on the city’s shore,
mountain woods where
with swift hounds he killed wild beasts
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in holy Dictynna’s*78 company!
antistrophe 2
No more will he yoke a Venetian pair*79
and race round the course by the Marsh;
music from the lyre that never sleeps will cease
in his father’s house.
No garlands in the resting places,
the deep meadows sacred to Leto’s daughter;*80
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the young girls’ race for your marriage bed
ended by your flight.
epode
I will bear my unhappy lot
with tears for your misfortune.
Wretched mother,
no joy from the son you bore.
I rage at the gods.
iō, iō
Band of Graces, why have you sent
this wretched man who deserves no ruin
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from his father’s land, from this house?
CHORUS: What now? I see Hippolytus’ attendant,
looking grim and rushing toward the house.
(An attendant comes running from the direction of Hippolytus’ departure.)
MESSENGER: Women, where can I find Theseus,
lord of this land? If you know,
tell me. Is he inside this house?
CHORUS: There he is. He’s coming out here now.
(Theseus enters from the house.)
MESSENGER: Theseus, my words deserve careful attention,
yours and the citizens in the city
of Athens and the land of Troezen.
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THESEUS: What is it? Not new misfortune
for the two neighboring cities?
MESSENGER: Hippolytus lives no more—or barely so.
He’s breathing still, but his life is in the balance.
THESEUS: The cause? Someone’s hatred caught up with him,
someone whose wife, like his father’s, he violated?
MESSENGER: His own chariot was his destruction,
and the curse you uttered against your son
in the name of your father, Lord of the Sea.
THESEUS: O gods! Poseidon! It’s true you are
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my father. You heard the curse I made.
How did he die? Tell me, what trap did
Justice set for him once he’d shamed me?
MESSENGER: At the place where the waves meet the shore
we groomed the horses’ manes with curry combs
and wept. A messenger had come to tell us
Hippolytus would walk the earth here
no more: he faced miserable exile
at your command. Then Hippolytus himself came
with the same sad story. With him came
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a large following of friends, a crowd of companions.
After a while, when he’d stopped weeping,
he said: “Why am I so upset? I must obey
my father. Prepare the horse and chariot,
slaves. This is my city no longer.”
Then every man there rushed to a task
and, quicker than you could say it, we brought
the mares in harness to our master’s feet.
He took the reins from the chariot’s rail
into his hands and fit his feet in the footholds.
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Before leaving he raised his arms to the gods
and prayed: “Zeus, may I live no longer
if I’m a man capable of evil. But whether
I live or die, may my father learn how
he dishonors me.” At that he took the whip
in his hand and urged on the horses together.
We followed alongside, at the horses’ heads,
along the road to Argos and Epidaurus.
We came to the lonely stretch beyond
this land’s border where a headland juts
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into the water there, the Saronic gulf. Just then
a sound echoed from the earth, a deep rumbling
like Zeus’ thunder. We shivered to hear it.
The horses lifted their heads, pricked up
their ears. Fear took hold of us: where
did the sound come from? We looked
to the surf-beaten shore and saw
a breath-taking wave towering to heaven,
so high it took from my sight the shore
of Sciron, the Isthmus, and Asclepius’ rock.
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The foam frothed, the sea spouted; swollen
and churning the wave moved to shore,
where the chariot stood. From its surge
and heave the wave spewed out
a bull, a savage monster. All the earth
was filled with its roar and roared a response
that terrified us. The sight we
saw eclipsed
our capacity to see. At once the mares
panicked and took flight. And our master,
skilled as he was from a lifetime with horses,
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seized the reins in his two hands.
Putting his whole body into it, like a boatman
at his oar, he pulled on the reins.
The mares took the bit firm between their teeth
and hauled him forward with all their force.
His commanding hand, their harness, the close-fitted
chariot, nothing diverted them. When he kept
control and steered to soft ground, the bull
appeared before them, drove the team insane
with fear and turned them back. But when the mares
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raced in panic toward the rocks, the bull,
in silence, drew close to the chariot’s rail
and kept pace with it until it capsized:
a wheel hit the rocks, and the bull flipped it over.
Then there was chaos: the axle pins
and wheel hubs hurtled into the air,
with wretched Hippolytus tangled in the reins.
He’s caught in knots he can’t unloose
and dragged along. His head smashes on rocks,
his skin is shredded, his shouts terrible to hear.
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“Stop! Mares I fed in my own stables!
Don’t demolish me! Father’s wretched curse!
Who is there to save me, the best of men?”
Many wanted to, but we were far behind,
our feet too slow. He works free
from the reins—I don’t know how—
and falls, alive still but breathing shallow breaths.
The horses vanished, the dreadful monster-bull
disappeared somewhere in the rocky land.
I am a slave in your household, lord,
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but I will never be able to do this:
believe that your son is evil.
Not even if the entire race of women
hang themselves and write all over Ida’s*81
pine forest. I know him to be noble.
CHORUS: aiai, this misfortune! This new disaster!
There’s no escaping the necessity of our lot.
THESEUS: My hatred for the man who’s suffered so
has given me pleasure in your words. But now,
out of respect for the gods and him—my son—
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I’m neither pleased nor burdened by his ruin.
MESSENGER: And so…? Should we bring him here? Or what
does it please you to do with the wretched man?
Take thought. If you follow my advice,
you will not be harsh to your unlucky son.
THESEUS: Bring him here. I’ll see him face to face,
refute his denial of defiling my bed