The Greek Plays
Page 78
the Cyclops who devours raw flesh, and Circe,
the witch, transforming men to pigs. Then shipwreck,
temptations of the Lotus, holy Cattle
of the Sun, whose bloody bodies moan
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with sounds that will prove bitter for Odysseus.*62
Briefly, he’ll go to Hades, still alive;
escaping from the sea at last, he’ll find
a thousand further troubles in his home.
Stop now. Why do I hurl these threats at Odysseus?*63
Hurry, Cassandra, marry your husband in Hades’ house.
Greek commander, you think you did something great?
Evil man, an evil death is coming, by night, not day.
Dead and naked, I’ll be flung to the wild ravines,
floating down swollen creeks near the grave of my husband,
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till animals eat my corpse. So ends Apollo’s servant.
How I loved him! How I loved his worship!
Now no more of that. Off with my garland;
rip it from my body now! While I’m still virgin!
Off to the breezes. Take it, my prophet-master.
Where’s the ship? I’m ready now to go:
first wind, first sail. Take me from my land,
a Fury, an avenger—one of three.*64
Goodbye, Mother. Do not cry for me.
Troy, dear country, brothers, father beneath the earth;
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soon I shall join the dead. I’ll come victorious,
ruining the house that ruined us.*65
CHORUS: Attendants! Aren’t you watching? Look! Old Hecuba,
your mistress, fell! She’s speechless, on the ground!
Give her a hand, you lazy girls! To leave
a poor old woman fallen! Lift her up!
HECUBA: Leave me. Kindness isn’t kind if it’s unwanted.
Let me lie here, girls. I have been felled
by suffering: past, present and to come.
You gods! I call on them, though they’re poor helpers:
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it sounds good, I suppose, to invoke the gods.
First, I want to sing of my good times;
so I’ll increase the pity for my troubles.
I was a queen and married to a king,
and I bore children who were truly noble:
people of quality, the best of Phrygia.
No Trojan, Greek nor foreign woman ever
felt so proud as I did of my children.
I saw them fall when Greek spears cut them down,
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I cut my hair and mourned beside their tombs.
I wept, too, for their father, my own Priam.
I saw him die with my own eyes, I saw
him slaughtered at the hearth of his own shrine;
I saw my city captured. And my girls
whom I raised up to make good marriages
—others took them, ripped them from my hands.
I’ll never see my girls again, nor they
see me; never; no, no hope of that.
The cornerstone of all my misery
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is that I’ll go to Greece enslaved, and old.
They’ll make me do things shameful for a woman
as old as I am; they’ll make me keep the keys
and guard the door: I, Hecuba, Hector’s mother!
Or bake the bread! I’ll lay my poor old limbs
on the bare ground, after my royal bed,
with tattered rags on my poor tattered body—
rags, not the clothes a highborn lady wears.
I’ve lost so much. One woman’s love affair
caused me such suffering, and it’s not the end.
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Cassandra, mad once with the gods’ true frenzy,
you’ve lost your chastity in this disaster.
And you, where are you, my poor Polyxena?
None of my children—though I had so many!—
can help me now in times of need. Why then
bother to lift me up? What can I hope for?
I used to step so daintily through Troy.
Now I’m enslaved. Give me some straw, a stone
to rest my head. I’ll fall and lie there weeping,
until my tears wear me away. Don’t count
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anyone happy till the day they die.
strophe
CHORUS: Troy! Sing for me, Muse,
a funeral song for Troy,
a song of tears,
a strange and different kind of hymn.
Now I’ll lift my voice to sing for Troy,
and for my sorrow: how I was destroyed,
enslaved by Greek spears, when the Achaeans left
the four-hoofed chariot at our gates,
the Horse,
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with its full armor clattering to the sky,
and shining cheeks of gold.*66
The people stood upon the rock of Troy,
and called aloud,
“Come, all of you! Our troubles now are over!
Take this holy wooden statue to Athena,
the Trojan goddess, child of Zeus, the maiden.”
What girl could miss that sight?
What old man could stay home?
But as they sang so happily,
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disaster tricked them, took them.
antistrophe
All the Trojan race was rushing to the gates
to give the virgin goddess,
whose horses are immortal,*67
the mountain pine-wood,
polished ambush of the Argives,
destruction for the Trojans.*68
They threw ropes of woven flax around it,
as one lifts the black hull of a ship,
and brought the killer of our country
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to the marble temple floor
of Pallas.
But when the dark of night
arrived and came upon
their labor and their joy,
the Libyan pipes resounded,
along with Trojan songs,
and young girls leaped in unison,
toes tapping, shouting happy songs,
and in their homes, bright lights
of torches gave their darkened gleam
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to the hours of sleep.*69
epode
I was one of those girls: in the palace,
I sang and danced with all the rest
for the mountain goddess,
the virgin child of Zeus. But then:
a bloody shout through the city
seized the citadel of Troy.*70
Little children, dearly loved,
wrapped their shaking arms
around their mothers’ dresses.
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Ares leapt from his ambush.
This was the work of the Virgin, of Athena.
There was slaughter of the Trojans at the altars,
there was decapitation in the bedrooms—
desolation,
to win for Greece the prize
of girls to bear them children,
and for our land of Troy,
nothing but pain.
(Andromache and Astyanax are led onstage, on a wagon or chariot.)
CHORUS: Hecuba, do you see Andromache?
Taken on that foreign chariot?
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Her heart is pounding like a set of oars
as she holds close her darling boy, Astyanax, Hector’s son.
Poor woman, where are they taking you on that carriage,
along with the bronze arms of Hector,
along with the spoils that they hunted from Troy with their spears,
to take away, for Achilles’ son
to decorate his Phthian temples?*71
strophe 1
ANDROMACHE:*72 Our Greek masters are taking me away.
&nbs
p; HECUBA: Ah, no!
ANDROMACHE: Why do you sing my lament?
HECUBA: Sorrow!
ANDROMACHE: Mourn for our suffering.
HECUBA: O, Zeus!
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ANDROMACHE: And our misfortune.
HECUBA: O, my children.
ANDROMACHE: So we were, once—.
antistrophe 1
HECUBA: Happiness is gone, and Troy is gone.
ANDROMACHE: Nothing.
HECUBA: My children were royalty once.
ANDROMACHE: It’s loss, pure loss.
HECUBA: And the loss of my people!
ANDROMACHE: Disaster.
HECUBA: Yes, and the pity of it.
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ANDROMACHE: Our dear city.
HECUBA: It’s gone up in smoke.
strophe 2
ANDROMACHE: Come back to me, husband!
HECUBA: Poor girl, you’re calling
a man who’s in Hades. My son is dead.*73
ANDROMACHE: Hector, you’re my defender,
and to the Greeks, you’re ruin.
antistrophe 2
HECUBA: To me, you’re my firstborn,
first of all the sons I bore for Priam.
ANDROMACHE: Take me to Hades.
How I long to die!
strophe 3
HECUBA: Poor girl, this is what we suffer.
ANDROMACHE: Gone is our city.
HEC.: Pain heaps onto pain.
ANDROMACHE: The gods must have hated us. Your other son
escaped from death to ruin Troy, just for that cursed love affair.*74
The bloody bodies of the dead are laid out before goddess Athena,
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for vultures to take away. Paris set the yoke of slavery on Troy.
antistrophe 3
HECUBA: O my beloved country. Such unhappiness.
ANDROMACHE: I’m crying for you, left all alone.
HECUBA: Now you see how it ends. Ah, the pity!
ANDROMACHE: I’m leaving the home where my children were born.
HECUBA: Children, your mother is left behind in a deserted city.
A time of weeping and of lamentation.
Tears pour from tears in our house.
The dead forget their pain.
CHORUS: When things are bad, it’s very sweet to weep,
to wail in mourning and to sing your pain.
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ANDROMACHE: Mother, do you see us? Think of Hector, your dear son,
whose spear destroyed so many Greeks. Do you see us now?
HECUBA: I see the gods at work. From nothing, they build up
high towers, but what seems something, they destroy.
ANDROMACHE: We’re spoils of war, my child and I. I was
a queen, I’m now a slave. All overturned.
HECUBA: Necessity is a dreadful thing. Just now
they dragged Cassandra from me, took her away.
ANDROMACHE: Oh, no!
A second rape—Cassandra’s second Ajax.*75
You are plagued by more disasters, too.
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HECUBA: So many I can’t count them: there’s no limit.
My sufferings are competing; worse on worst.
ANDROMACHE: Your daughter, Polyxena: she is dead,
slaughtered as a gift for dead Achilles.
HECUBA: Oh, no! This must be what Talthybius meant,*76
speaking in riddles; now it all comes clear.
ANDROMACHE: I saw her corpse. I got down from this cart,
covered her with a dress, and mourned for her.*77
HECUBA: Oh, Daughter! What a blasphemous sacrifice!
Oh! What a horror! What a way to die!
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ANDROMACHE: She’s dead and gone now. But, even in death,
she’s luckier than me, still left alive.
HECUBA: Child, death isn’t the same as seeing the light.
Death means nothing; where there’s life, there’s hope.
ANDROMACHE: Mother, here’s the best that I can say;
listen and I’ll try to cheer you up.*78
I think death is not like being born:
death is better, far, than painful life.
Their pains are gone, the dead feel no more pain.
But one who falls from fortune to disaster
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is lost without the happiness she once had.
Polyxena’s dead; her light’s gone out,
and she knows nothing of her own misfortunes.
But I was shooting for a life of honor,
and hit the mark, but still missed happiness.
In Hector’s house, I worked at all the things
considered right and proper for a woman.
First, I stayed in the house and put aside
all desire to leave and go elsewhere;
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most scandals happen when girls leave the home,
whether or not there’s any further wrong.
Inside my house, I wouldn’t let the women
talk in clever, fancy ways; enough
to have my homegrown common sense as guide.
My tongue was silent and my eyes were calm
with Hector; I knew when to conquer him,
and when I ought to yield and let him win.
My reputation came to the Greek camp,
and has destroyed me. For, when I was captured,
Achilles’ son desired me for his wife.
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I will be a slave to murderers.
If I push darling Hector from my heart,
and roll it open to my present husband,*79
I will betray the dead. But if I act
hostile, I’ll be hated by my masters.
They say a woman’s dislike for a man
will soften after just one night in bed.
But I spit on the wife who throws away
her former man and loves her new bed-partner.
If you divide a young horse from her partner,*80
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she’ll no longer want to bear the yoke.
But animals can’t speak or understand;
their nature is inferior to humans.
My darling Hector, you were my perfect man:
understanding, noble, rich and brave.
You took me from my father’s home, untouched:
you were the first who came to join my bed.
Now you are dead; the ships are taking me
to Greece, a captive, to a life of slavery.
(to Hecuba) You mourn the death of Polyxena; think!
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It’s better than these losses that I suffer.
I’ve even lost what everybody has:
hope. My heart is not deceived. I know
it’s sweet to dream, but nothing good will happen.
CHORUS: Your misfortune matches mine; in weeping
for yours, you teach me what my pain is like.
HECUBA: Although I’ve never yet been on a ship,
I’ve seen pictures and heard tales of them.
If sailors meet a storm they can endure,
they strive to get away from all their troubles;
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one takes the rudder, one goes to the sails,
another pumps the water from the ship.
But if the sea swells up and overwhelms them,
then they surrender to the waves and Fate.
In the same way, I have so much to mourn,
I just give up. I have no more to say,
defeated by the gods’ disastrous storm.
But, darling daughter, no more now of Hector.
You can’t save him with tears. He’s dead. Let be.
Be deferential to your present master;
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behave so charmingly the man will love you.
If you do this, you’ll make your people happy,
and raise my grandson here, this little child,
to be Troy’s greatest hope, so t
hat one day,
your children may again inhabit Troy:
the city may continue to exist.
(Enter Talthybius.)
But time has come to talk of other things:
who’s this I see? The herald of the Greeks,
coming back here with some more news to tell?
TALTHYBIUS: (to Andromache) Former wife of Hector, Trojan hero,
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please don’t hate me. It was not my wish
to bring this news of what the Greeks are planning.
ANDROMACHE: What’s this? Your words suggest you’ve brought bad news.
TALTHYBIUS: Your son here—well, they plan…how can I say it?
ANDROMACHE: Won’t he come with me, serve the same master?
TALTHYBIUS: No Greek will ever make your son his slave.
ANDROMACHE: Will they leave him here as Troy’s last remnant?
TALTHYBIUS: I don’t know how to tell you this. It’s bad.
ANDROMACHE: What do you mean? Bad news? Tell me the truth!
TALTHYBIUS: They’re going to kill your child. So now you know.
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ANDROMACHE: Oh, no! No, no! This is worse than that marriage!
TALTHYBIUS: The assembly was persuaded by Odysseus.
ANDROMACHE: No! No! This is beyond what I can bear!
TALTHYBIUS: He said we must not raise a hero’s son.
ANDROMACHE: I hope the same thing happens to his children!
TALTHYBIUS: He said we have to throw him from the walls.
Be sensible: you have to let it happen.
Don’t resist: be noble in disaster.
You have no power here, just realize that.
You can’t do anything. You have to think.
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Your city and your husband, both are gone.
You’re beaten, we can easily prevail
against a single woman. Do not fight.
Don’t do anything to provoke or shame
the Greeks: no, please don’t hurl your curse at them.
If you say anything to enrage the army,
your child will get no burial, no pity.
If you keep quiet and bear misfortune well,
you need not leave his body here unburied,
and you yourself will find the Greeks more gentle.
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ANDROMACHE: (to Astyanax) My sweet, sweet child! They fear you far too much.
You’ll die! They’ll kill you! I’ll be left without you!
Your father’s heroism means your death,
though it saved so many other Trojans.*81
For you, his nobleness became a curse.
My marriage brought me nothing but disaster.
When I came to Hector’s house, I thought