The Complete Aeschylus - Volume I: The Oresteia
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in which to dye our garments. Yes, a wealth
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of such stuffs by the Gods’ grace, king,
is amply here for us: the palace knows
no lack. And anyway I would have trampled
down even more robes than these, as many, then,
as needed, all along, had an oracle
enjoined it, when all I thought of, dreamed of, was
some scheme to get you safely home to me,
body and soul. For while the root still lives,
the leaves bring cool shade to the house again,
uncurling, spreading, against the dogstar’s heat.
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So coming back to hearth and home, you bring
a summer’s warmth to us in wintertime.
And when Zeus presses wine from the green grape,
there is at once a coolness in the house
as the sovereign strolls again all through the palace.
AGAMEMNON exits into the palace.
Zeus, Zeus, sovereign accomplisher,
accomplish this my prayer; and may what you
are ready now to do be all your care.
The serving women remove the tapestries and
CLYTEMNESTRA exits into the palace after them.
CHORUS Why, even now, this fear, ever
Strophe 1
unriddable, hovering
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near my heart’s foreseeing? And why
this, too, this prophecy
that sings unrecompensed, unasked for,
like a perplexing dream
that no hope seated deep within
my heart can ever banish?
Time has grown old since the day they threw
the cables down onto the sand
when the army in its ships
first came to Ilium.
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And I have seen him, with my own eyes,
Antistrophe 1
seen him return, myself
the witness, and yet still within me,
self-inspired, chants
the dirge the lyre shuns, dirge of the Erinys,
dirge chanted by a mind
bereft of hope, hope’s cherished strength.
And it is not for nothing
that everywhere inside me speaks
the same disquiet, that
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my heart swirls and eddies with
a sense of justice soon
to be fulfilled, though I still pray
what I expect may fall
away, and fail to reach fulfillment.
Well-being, at its utmost, chafes against
Strophe 2
what bounds it. For disease, its neighbor,
leans hard on the wall they share,
and a man’s fate, however straight
the course he’s steering, even so
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can strike a hidden reef and founder.
But if trembling foresight jettisons
some part in proper measure of all
the wealth a man possesses, then
the whole house overwhelmed with excess
will not sink, nor the hull plunge under.
The great gift of Zeus springs
abundant from the ploughed earth
each year to stave off the plague of famine.
But the lifeblood of a man, once spilled
Antistrophe 2
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before him, blackens the ground, and who
can enchant it back into his body?
Even Asclepius, skilled in the art
of bringing dead men back to life,
Zeus struck down as a warning to us.
And if one fate didn’t block another
from going beyond its god-set bounds,
my heart would overbrim my tongue,
and pour out all of its worst forebodings.
But, as things stand, it only mutters
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in darkness, grief-struck, hopeless
of drawing any good at all
from these fires burning through my mind.
CLYTEMNESTRA enters from the palace.
CLYTEMNESTRA You go inside now. I’m talking to you, Cassandra.
Zeus, not unkindly, has determined you
should share the lustral water of our house,
standing where all the slaves crowd the altar
of the god who guards the house’s wealth—come down
now from the chariot and don’t be proud.
Why even Heracles, they say, was once
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sold into slavery and had to stomach
the gruel all slaves must eat. And yet if bad
luck such as this should fall to anyone,
there’s still good cause for gratitude at having
masters whose wealth is old as well as great;
for those who have reaped a harvest that exceeds
their hopes are cruel to slaves beyond all measure.
Here with us you’ll be treated as custom warrants.
CHORUS LEADER She’s talking plainly to you, and she expects an answer.
Caught in your tangled fate, you should obey
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her if you can, though maybe now you can’t.
CLYTEMNESTRA Well, if she’s capable of doing any better
than twittering like a swallow, barbarian-style,
then she must understand me, and what I say
will soon convince her that she’d best obey.
CHORUS LEADER Go with her. What she orders you to do
is best, as things stand. Get down from your seat
there in the chariot, and do what she says.
CLYTEMNESTRA I don’t have time to dawdle here by the door;
the cattle are standing ready for sacrifice
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by the central hearth stone, victims for the fire,
a joy we never hoped to have. And you,
if you would do what I say, make no delay;
but if the meaning of my words eludes
your understanding, then, instead of speech,
give me a sign with your barbarian hand.
CHORUS LEADER I think the stranger needs someone to help
her understand. She’s like a captured beast.
CLYTEMNESTRA Yes, she is crazed and given over to
the wayward bidding of a wild mind—
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too freshly torn off from her conquered city,
she hasn’t learned yet how to bear the bridle
until her rearing up and bucking has all
been broken in a bloody foam. I won’t
waste more words on her, to be insulted so.
CLYTEMNESTRA exits into the palace.
CHORUS LEADER I can’t be angry, though; I pity her.
Poor girl, come on, give up your seat there
on the carriage and, bowing to what cannot be
resisted, yield to this new yoke that’s yours.
CASSANDRA, who has become more and more restless
through the preceding dialogue, suddenly leaps from
Agamemnon’s chariot. She is wearing insignia that
identify her as priestess of Apollo.
CASSANDRA OTOTOTOI POPOI DA
Kommos
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Apollo! My Apollo!
CHORUS LEADER Why do you cry woe to Loxias?
He is no god to come to with a dirge.
CASSANDRA OTOTOTOI POPOI DA
Apollo! My Apollo!
CHORUS LEADER Once more she calls out darkly to the god
who will not stand for any lamentation.
CASSANDRA Apollo! My Apollo!
God of the roadside, my destroyer,
For you again, this second time,
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with what ease have destroyed me.
CHORUS LEADER She is about to prophesy her sorrows—
the god’s gift stays with her, though she’s enslaved.
CASSANDRA Apollo! My Apollo!
God of the roadside, my destroyer!
Ah, where have you brought me?
Where? What house is this?
CHORUS LEADER To the house of Atreus. If you don’t see this,
then I’ll tell it to you, and you’ll know.
CASSANDRA No, to a house that hates the gods,
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one that knows by heart stories of kin
murdering kin, a slaughterhouse
for men, a killing floor drenched in blood.
CHORUS LEADER The stranger has the keen scent of a hound,
fast on a trail of blood, and blood she’ll find.
CASSANDRA (pointing to the door of the palace) Yes, there they are—the witnesses
I trust—look, the children are wailing
for their own slaughter, for the flesh
their uncle roasted, and their father ate.
CHORUS LEADER Yes, your prophetic fame had reached our ears;
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But we are not in search of prophets here.
CASSANDRA O god! What is she plotting now?
What devastation? What huge evil
lurks in this house, unbearable
for friends, beyond all remedy,
and no help anywhere in sight?
CHORUS LEADER These prophesies I can’t quite follow; but
the others, yes, the city’s all abuzz with them.
CASSANDRA Ah, will you see this through, wretch?
Your own husband who shares your bed?
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You wash him, soothe him, in the bath.
How can I tell it through to the end?
It will be done soon. She stretches out
first one hand, then another, toward him.
CHORUS LEADER I’ve lost the trail. Her riddles set me down
bewildered in a dark of oracles.
CASSANDRA Ah! Ah! what apparition shimmers
into view? It’s a net of Hades, yes,
but a net that is his bedmate, that shares
the guilt of murder. Let the fierce
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gang ravenous for the house shout out
in joy over this butchery,
this sacrifice stoning will avenge.
CHORUS What Erinys is this you call
to raise her howl over the house?
Your words drain all joy from me, and
pale blood seeps back drop
by drop into my heart, dripping
as from a spear gash, when the rays
of life darken as it sets,
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and death is near, and hurrying.
CASSANDRA Ah! Look! There! Keep the bull away
from the cow! She has caught him in the robe,
and with the slick device of her black
horn strikes, and he slumps in the roiling water.
Bright blade flashing treachery,
I tell you, in the murderous bath.
CHORUS Though I can boast of no great skill
in judging oracles, this seems
even to me like something evil.
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And yet from oracles what good
is ever sent to men? Through veils
of evil, all that these wordy arts
bring to their listeners is fear.
CASSANDRA Oh, oh! The misery of
my miserable fate! For it is my own
affliction that I speak of now;
a new cup has been all spilled out.
Where have you brought me, unlucky one?
For what except to share your death.
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CHORUS Your mind is cracked, seized by a god,
and over your own fate you chant
as harshly as, with shattered heart,
each day, each moment of each day,
the tawny nightingale would grieve
throughout a life so dense with sorrow
she could not keep from crying out
alas, lamenting Itys, Itys.
CASSANDRA Oh but to end life as a tuneful,
full-throated nightingale! For the gods
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gave her a winged body and
a life immune from wailing, while
for me, what waits is only death
by cutting with the sharpened spear.
CHORUS From where, in the grip of what god
do you suffer seizure after useless
seizure, and with foreboding cries
and sharp notes fashion songs of fear?
From where, and how, have you marked out
the boundaries along this evil-
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omened path of prophecy?
CASSANDRA O, the love bed of Paris, deadly
to his loved ones! O Scamander,
river of home! Long time ago,
ah me! I flourished by your waters.
But soon, by other streams, beside
Cocytus and the endless shores
of Acheron in the world below
I’ll wander, wailing my prophesies.
CHORUS Why have you said this, and so plainly?
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Even a child could understand.
Again I’m pierced by the sharp stroke
of your cruel fate, by your shrill cries
of sorrow it shatters me to hear.
CASSANDRA O sorrow, sorrow of my city,
its utter devastation! O
the sacrifices that my father
made before the walls, reckless
slaughter of our grazing herds.
But what good came of it? There was
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no cure to save the city from what
it had to suffer. Now I, too, am
on fire; I, too, will crash to the ground.
CHORUS These phrases go with those before:
some destroying spirit swoops down,
a dead weight, on you and compels
this dirge, these tears shot through with death,
toward what end I do not know.
CASSANDRA Well, then, my prophecies won’t peek again
like some shy newlywed from behind a veil.
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No, they will blow clear as a fresh wind
toward sunrise, and surge like a wave against the new
light with a woe far greater than its shining.
No riddles anymore. You be my witness,
running beside me stride by stride as I
sniff out the track of crimes done long ago!
The choir that sings as one, yet sings its tunes
discordantly and only brings on discord,
can’t leave this house. Yes, soused on human blood
to utter recklessness, a home-brewed,
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rioting band of Eryinyes is dwelling there,
not easily driven out. And what they sing of,
as they carouse from room to room, is that
first mayhem, that ancestral sin, as one
by one each spits on a brother’s bed
that brought destruction to its defiler.
Have I shot wide of the mark or have I hit it
like a master archer? Or am I some cut-purse prophet,
a babbler careening from door to door?
On your oath, bear witness that I know
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the legacies of crime within this house.
CHORUS LEADER How could an oath, however truly taken,
cure anything? Still it astounds me that,
though bred beyond the seas, you can describe
what happened here, as if you had been present.
CASSANDRA The seer Apollo charged me with this power.
CHORUS LEADER Fired with longing for you, though a god?
CASSANDRA I was ashamed to speak of this before.
CHORUS LEADER While fortune lasts, we have that luxury.
CASSANDRA He grappled hard, breathing his gift upon me.
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CHORUS LEADER And did it get as far as making children?
CASSANDRA I gave my word to Loxias, then I broke it.
CHORUS LEADER Were you already in the grip of the god’s art?
CASSANDRA Yes, even then I told Troy all its sorrows.
CHORUS LEADER How then did you escape Apollo’s anger?
CASSANDRA For my offense, I can never be believed.
CHORUS LEADER And yet to us what you foretell seems true.
CASSANDRA Ah! Ah! O misery! The terrible labor of
true prophecy whirls me around, and I
am shaken to the core with darkening preludes!
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Look there, do you see them? Can’t you see them, there
by the house, so young, like hovering dream shapes, children
killed by the very ones they loved, their hands
full of the gore of their own flesh, the vitals,
all the dripping inner parts—I see
them holding out that pitiful weight
of meat their father ate. Because of this,
I tell you, there is one who plots revenge,
a skulking lion panting in the bed,
poised in the house, alas, against the lord’s
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return, my lord, since I now bear the yoke
of slavery. And the great leader of the fleet,
who leveled Ilium, is unaware
of how the bitch tongue fawns, licking his hand,
her ears drawn back in welcome—yet she
will strike and slaughter with a treacherous stroke.
Such shameless daring: the female kills the male.
She is—what is she? by what name should I call
that rabid beast?—two-headed serpent, or