The Greek Plays

by The Greek Plays- Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles

  and do what Destiny and Zeus command.

  Give Pylades Electra as a bride,

  1250

  and you, leave Argos—you cannot set foot

  inside this city, having killed your mother.

  The dreadful dog-faced Furies will pursue you,

  wandering and whirling on the wheels of madness.

  But go to Athens, kiss the holy image

  of Pallas: she will stop them touching you,

  writhing with terrible serpents, she’ll cover your head,

  using the round expanse of her Gorgon shield.

  There is a Hill of Ares, first location

  where gods sat casting votes on a murder charge,

  1260

  when savage Ares killed Halirrothius,

  son of the ocean lord, in rage about

  his daughter’s evil rape.*87 Forever after

  voting done here is sacred and secure.

  That is the place you must be tried for murder.

  The jury will be split, and this just process

  will save your life: Apollo will acknowledge

  himself to blame, since he told you to do it.

  This law will be set down for times to come,

  that when the votes are tied, defendants win.

  1270

  The Furies will be struck with pain and sink

  into a chasm underneath the earth,

  a holy oracle for pious people.

  But you must found a city in Arcadia,

  by River Alpheus, near a sanctuary,

  of Zeus Lycaeus.*88—Now, the Argive people

  must lay Aegisthus’ body in the earth.

  And Menelaus has at last arrived,

  so long since he took Troy, at Nauplia.

  1280

  Helen and he will bury her—your mother.

  Helen has come from Egypt, since in fact

  she never went to Troy.*89 Zeus sent her image

  to stir up strife and death for mortal men.

  Then Pylades shall take his virgin bride

  out of Achaea and back home with him,

  to Phocis—with your sister’s so-called husband;

  let him reward him with a pile of wealth.

  You, travel now on foot, across the neck

  of Isthmia, to the glad Athenian hill.*90

  1290

  Fulfill your destiny, pay for this murder,

  and you’ll find rest and peace and happiness.

  CHORUS:*91

  O Twins, double sons of Zeus,

  can you grant us permission

  to approach you and talk to you?

  CASTOR: Granted; you’ve suffered no taint from this killing.*92

  CHORUS: Here is my question. Since you two are gods,

  the brothers of her who was killed,

  1300

  why didn’t you keep the Furies away from the house?

  CASTOR: Fate and Necessity brought us to this, what must be;

  and the words of Apollo, so foolish, are also to blame.

  ELECTRA: Tyndareus’ sons, may I also join in the discussion?

  CASTOR: You may also. The blame for the murder

  I put upon Phoebus alone.

  ELECTRA: But what about me? What Apollo, what oracle,

  made me a murderer to my own mother?

  CASTOR: You shared in the action, you shared this destiny.

  One was the curse on the whole of your family,

  that was the thing that has torn you apart.

  ORESTES: Sister! I’ve only just seen you again, after long years,

  and now I’m deprived yet again of your love,

  1310

  so soon, I have lost you, you’ve lost me, so soon.

  CASTOR: She has a husband. She has a home.

  You don’t need to pity her,

  but for the loss of her home, here in Argos.

  ELECTRA: But what could be worse

  than leaving the home of one’s fathers?

  ORESTES: And me! I am leaving the house of my father,

  and going to stand on a trial for the killing

  of my mother, and judged by a jury of strangers.

  CASTOR: Don’t worry, you’ll see: the city of Athens

  1320

  is holy. Be brave.

  ELECTRA: Now hug me, dear brother!

  Embrace me and hug me!

  My dearest, my brother.

  It’s the curse of the murder of Mother

  that parts us from Father’s home.

  ORESTES: Embrace me and hold me and kiss me.

  Sing me a funeral song, as if I’m dead.

  CASTOR: No, no, it is horrible! Terrible cry,

  even for gods to hear.

  It’s possible even for me and the heavenly gods

  1330

  to pity you humans for so much pain.

  ORESTES: I never will see you again.

  ELECTRA: I’ll never be near you or look at your face.

  ORESTES: This is the last time I’m talking to you.

  ELECTRA: Goodbye to you, city!

  Goodbye and good wishes to you, dear women of Argos.

  ORESTES: Sister, most loyal one, is it the end? Are you going already?

  ELECTRA: I’m going. My face is soaked wet with my tears.

  1340

  ORESTES: Goodbye to you, Pylades, good luck to you.

  Best wishes to you, as the groom of Electra.

  CASTOR: Yes, they should marry. But look out, Orestes:

  the dogs, they are coming.*93 Run, run off to Athens!

  Terrible creatures, they’re tracking you down,

  they’re right on your trail,

  snake-arms, their skin is black,

  sprouting with horrible stench.

  And we must hurry to the Sicilian Sea,

  to save the ships from the tempest.*94

  And as we weave along through the clear upper air

  1350

  we cannot help the polluted:

  we help only those who love holiness

  and justice. We hear them in trouble

  and help them and save them from harm.

  Let no one willingly do wrong,

  nor sail with a man who breaks oaths.

  I am god, and I say this to humans.

  (Castor and Pollux depart, drawn through the air on a pulley. The human characters leave the stage in separate directions.)

  CHORUS: Goodbye! Good luck! If you can be,

  be lucky, steer clear of disaster.

  That’s happiness for mortals.

  * * *

  *1 The text of this line is problematic, but the general sense is not really in doubt.

  *2 In the original, “War” is “Ares,” the god of war. There is wordplay in the original, since “Ares” sounds like the word used for “raised” (aras).

  *3 Tantalus was the father of Atreus, father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, and of Thyestes, father of Aegisthus. Aegisthus is thus Agamemnon’s first cousin; hence his claim to the throne of Argos.

  *4 Clytemnestra and Helen were both supposed to have been the product of Zeus’ rape of Leda, wife of Tyndareus, in the form of a swan. Here Clytemnestra’s divine origin is downplayed, by the suggestion that she is the daughter of her mother’s mortal husband.

  *5 Strophius is the father of Orestes’ friend Pylades, and was the guardian of Orestes during the boy’s youth.

  *6 I.e. his family is not immigrant, but has been native to the land for several generations. In Athens, immigrants could not have full citizen rights.

  *7 “So-called” because the marriage is unconsummated and therefore does not entirely count.

  *8 Slave women commonly fetched the well water, carrying it on their heads.

  *9 The text is problematic here; the line ordering here reflects a rearrangement by the editor, Diggle.

  *10 Pylades is Orestes’ cousin, son of Agamemnon’s sister Anaxibia. Pylades’ father, Strophius, protected Orestes when he fled Argos after his fathe
r’s death.

  *11 Orestes says literally that he has been to the “rites” of the god—presumably a reference to his visit to Delphi, to consult the oracle of Apollo regarding what he should do about the murder of his father. Compared to other dramatic treatments of the myth, by Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides makes very little of this motif; nothing specific is mentioned about what the oracle said.

  *12 A traditional gesture of mourning.

  *13 This section is a “monody,” i.e. a single character, Electra, is singing in lyric meter, and presumably dancing at the same time.

  *14 This is a section of verse in between the main strophes.

  *15 The text of these two lines may be corrupt.

  *16 Wives were expected to wash the dusty feet of a husband returning from a journey (rather than kill them in the bath).

  *17 The meter here reverts to the regular dialogue rhythm.

  *18 Helen is blamed for the whole Trojan War, because her elopement with Paris prompted the conflict.

  *19 A traditional gesture of grief.

  *20 The text is problematic in this line.

  *21 The text of this line is corrupt.

  *22 Castor, brother of Electra’s mother, Clytemnestra, apparently sought to marry her before becoming a god. This may be Euripides’ invention. Athenian law allowed uncles and nieces to marry.

  *23 This line is believed by many editors to be spurious, partly on the grounds that it seems like a social faux pas: the Peasant ought not to be giving instructions to Orestes’ servants. But as Mastronarde has pointed out, there is no good reason why we ought to expect the Peasant to behave with perfect manners.

  *24 This passage, bracketed, may not belong in the speech, though some editors defend it.

  *25 Again, many editors suspect this passage is not genuine.

  *26 It was common folk belief that dolphins love flute music.

  *27 Achilles was son of the sea goddess Thetis.

  *28 The armor of Achilles was made for him by Hephaestus, god of metalworking. The version of the story in the Iliad (book 18) tells that Achilles received the divine armor as a replacement, after Hector stripped his first set of armor from his friend Patroclus. Euripides seems to be working with a different version of the myth, in which sea nymphs bring Achilles the divinely crafted armor before the Trojan expedition begins.

  *29 Pelion and Ossa are mountains in central Greece—here the home of the Centaur Chiron, who tutored the young Achilles.

  *30 The text seems to be corrupt in these lines.

  *31 Presumably the Centaur Chiron, who was Achilles’ tutor, although the lines are at least temporarily ambiguous, since his father, Peleus, is also known as a horse rider and charioteer.

  *32 Nauplia (modern Nafplio) is the port of Argos.

  *33 The text here is also problematic.

  *34 The hero Perseus had magical sandals with wings; he used a mirror to kill and decapitate the monstrous snake-headed Gorgon, Medusa—a popular theme in art.

  *35 Hermes, the messenger god, helped Perseus in his monster-slaying quests. His mother, the goddess Maia, gave birth to him secretly, in a countryside cave.

  *36 The text may be corrupt here. The idea seems to be that the shield will be so bright that it will dazzle Hector—perhaps like the mirror used by Perseus to dazzle the Gorgon.

  *37 Sphinxes, like Sirens, were imagined to allure their victims by singing.

  *38 The fire-breathing lioness is the monstrous Chimera, who was finally defeated by the hero Bellerophon riding on the winged horse Pegasus (with Perseus’ help); hence, here, she is frightened of Pegasus. Pegasus supposedly emerged from the decapitated Gorgon. Bellerophon found and tamed Pegasus by the magical spring of Peirene.

  *39 The primary reference is to Agamemnon, killed by Clytemnestra (daughter of Tyndareus) and her lover, Aegisthus. But the phrasing is ambiguous, allowing a secondary reminder that the other daughter of Tyndareus, Helen, was also responsible for an affair that caused the deaths of Agamemnon and many other men.

  *40 The Greeks usually drank their wine diluted with water.

  *41 In this scene, Euripides is alluding to (and mocking) Aeschylus’ earlier treatment of the Orestes-Electra recognition scene, in the Libation Bearers. In Aeschylus, the brother and sister do indeed recognize each other by comparing their hair color and their footprints.

  *42 I have tried to retain something of the odd language of the original, which implies that hair becomes male or female by means of its upbringing.

  *43 Again, I have translated in such a way as to bring out the strikingly gendered language, which suggests not only that men’s feet tend to be larger than women’s feet, but more broadly or more abstractly, that “the male” is the winner in a putative competition over “the female.”

  *44 A line seems to be missing after this one.

  *45 There is a textual problem in this line. I have skipped the words “taking observers of this land,” which seem to be corrupt.

  *46 Many editors believe there is a line missing here, perhaps specifying more precisely what would count as success.

  *47 The Chorus are singing here, in lyric meter.

  *48 I.e. Aegisthus.

  *49 The mountain nymphs, female deities associated with the mountains, are companions of Artemis and thus associated, like her, with childbirth and fertility.

  *50 There may be a line missing after this one.

  *51 Greek women traditionally stayed home for ten “holy days” after giving birth; after that time, the family celebrated the new baby.

  *52 The order of the lines in the first section of this speech is debated; I am following the reconstructed numbering in Diggle/Cropp.

  *53 The text is problematic in the last part of this speech; editors suspect that some lines may have been interpolated.

  *54 Literally, “lotus”: the wood of lotus trees was used for woodwind instruments.

  *55 This golden fleece is different from the more famous mythical Golden Fleece that Jason and the Argonauts took from Colchis. It was associated with royal power in Mycenae: whoever had the fleece got to be king.

  *56 The sun supposedly changed its course in horror at the crime of Thyestes in stealing the golden fleece.

  *57 Ammon (Amon) was the deity of Thebes, who became fused with the Egyptian sun god; his home is the oracle of Ammon in the Siwa oasis. Zeus is associated with rain.

  *58 “You” is Clytemnestra, sister of the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux.

  *59 There was a sanctuary to Zeus at Olympia. The lines evoke a journey there from Thessaly through passes in the mountains (quicker in those days than the modern coastal route).

  *60 One could not participate in a sacrifice without first being purified, by ritual washing in clean water.

  *61 I.e. about 1,600 yards: the time is therefore about four minutes (assuming a good sprinter).

  *62 There is a distinction between two different instruments for cutting: the slim knife, associated with the Doric region of Greece, and the bigger cleaver, from Phthia (in southern Thessaly).

  *63 I.e. not a sight to inspire terror, unlike the head of a Gorgon. Gorgons were a type of female monster of whom the most famous was Medusa, whose gaze could turn onlookers to stone. She was decapitated by Perseus. Some scholars have argued that the line suggests that Orestes is bringing Aegisthus’ severed head, but it is more likely that he is bringing the whole mangled corpse (and has not necessarily chopped off the head).

  *64 The original greeting (she calls him kallinikos, “glorious in victory”) suggests the language used for a victorious athlete.

  *65 The text of this line is problematic.

  *66 A line may be missing between 965 and 966, since it is unlikely that Electra would have two lines in a row.

  *67 Orestes is worried about incurring pollution through the murder. The word for “pure” (agnos) connotes freedom from religious taint or pollution, as well as sexual chastity.

  *68 The prophetess of Apollo used a special holy
tripod to deliver prophecies that supposedly came right from the mouth of the god.

  *69 The text of this line is problematic.

  *70 I.e. Castor and Pollux.

  *71 Iphigenia, killed by Agamemnon.

  *72 As in Iphigenia among the Taurians.

  *73 Cassandra, prophetess of Apollo and daughter of Priam and Hecuba, whom Agamemnon brought back from Troy as a concubine.

  *74 There seems to be a line missing here.

  *75 Aegisthus and Agamemnon were ancestral enemies, since Aegisthus was the youngest son of Thyestes, who battled with Agamemnon’s father, Atreus, over the throne. Thyestes had an affair with Atreus’ wife, and Atreus took terrible revenge by tricking him into eating his own sons. Aegisthus was born later, the child of Thyestes by his own daughter.

  *76 The text is problematic here.

  *77 After this, five lines appear that are clearly an insertion by a later commentator, not part of the play. They read: “Whoever marries a bad woman based on wealth or birth is a fool. A lowly but thoughtful wife is better than great ones at home. Chorus: Luck is the presiding principle in marrying women. We see some do well, some badly.”

  *78 He is, of course, actually lying dead in the house.

  *79 This passage, including the utterances of Electra and Orestes as well as the Chorus, is in lyric meter.

  *80 As described in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon in his bath on his return home from Troy—a perversion of the wife’s traditional welcome to the husband after a journey, which involved giving him a bath.

  *81 A line is missing here.

  *82 A line is missing here.

  *83 Tantalus was the ancestor of the house of Orestes and Electra: he was the father of Pelops, who was father in turn of Atreus (father of Agamemnon and Menelaus) and of Thyestes (father of Aegisthus). Tantalus was cursed by Zeus, having tried to feed his son Pelops to the gods as food; he was condemned to constant hunger and thirst in the Underworld, with food and water always just beyond his grasp (hence the word “tantalizing”).

  *84 Another line is missing here.

  *85 The gesture recalls the moment in Iliad 22 when Hecuba, queen of Troy, pleads with her son Hector not to go and fight Achilles, and reminds him of their connection by showing her breast. Even closer is the moment in Aeschylus’ Choephoroe when Clytemnestra begs Orestes not to kill her, showing him her breast from which he once suckled; in that play, Pylades is the one who maintains Orestes in his resolve.