by Aeschylus
a Scylla coiled in the rocks, the sailors’ scourge,
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implacable raging hell-hag breathing war
against her own! And how she trumpeted
her triumph, she who stops at nothing, as if
she herself turned the tide of battle, even while
she seemed to revel in his safe return.
And whether you believe all this or not,
it doesn’t matter. What is coming, comes.
And soon you will yourself stand here and say,
in pity, that my words were all too true.
CHORUS LEADER Thyestes feeding on his children’s flesh
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I understand, and tremble at, and am seized
by terror as I hear it told in truth,
not in deceiving images. But when
I hear the rest I lose the path and stray.
CASSANDRA I say you’ll look on Agamemnon butchered.
CHORUS LEADER Hush these bad omens, lull your mouth to sleep.
CASSANDRA And yet there is no healing for these words.
CHORUS LEADER No, if it’s meant to be—but may it not.
CASSANDRA And while you pray, they’re busy with the killing.
CHORUS LEADER Who is the man who crafts this hateful crime?
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CASSANDRA How it eludes you, the track of my prophecies.
CHORUS LEADER I don’t see the device of the designer.
CASSANDRA Yet I am all too fluent in the Greek tongue.
CHORUS LEADER So are the Pythian oracles, but hard to follow.
CASSANDRA POPOI! It’s like fire, and it burns down over me!
Wolf-god Apollo, ah, OTOTOTOI POPOI!
This lioness on two feet, she who beds
down with the wolf when the noble lion’s gone,
will tear me open, wretched as I am;
and as if brewing a black enchantment, she
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will mix my quittance in the cup as well,
and as she sharpens the blade edge for the man,
brag that he will pay for bringing me here.
So why do I go on mocking myself, keeping
this staff, these fillets at my neck, these trappings
of prophecy?
(breaking her ceremonial staff)
At least I can destroy you
before my own destruction!
(throwing down her garlands)
Off now, go,
fall to your utter ruin! And as you fall
feel how I pay you back! Make someone else,
other than me, more richly destitute!
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(tearing off her priestly robe)
But see, Apollo, yes, his very self,
is stripping me of my prophetic garb,
he who looked on while I was jeered at,
despite my vestments, ridiculed by friends
turned enemies, mocked surely, though in vain,
but like some homeless drifter people taunt
with “beggar,” “vagrant,” “starveling,” I bore it all.
And the prophet has destroyed his prophetess,
escorting me off to meet my fate right here,
right now. No, not my father’s altar now
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awaits me, but a chopping block my blood
will redden soon, a steaming libation for the dead.
Yet my death, too, will not go unavenged
by heaven, for there will come, in turn, another
to avenge us, a son who will slay his mother, requite
his father; an exile and a wanderer, hounded
far from this land, he will return to put
the capstone on this killing of his kin.
For the gods have sworn a great oath that the stroke
that brings his father down will bring him home.
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Why am I keening so, since I have seen
Ilium’s city go the way it has gone,
and seen, too, those that made the city suffer
suffer in turn such judgment from the gods.
My turn to die now—I will dare to go.
I call this door I’ll enter, the door of Hades.
I pray the readied stroke is swift, and that,
without a struggle as my blood spurts forth
in easy death, I simply close my eyes.
CHORUS LEADER O woman, greatly pitied and greatly wise,
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you have spoken much. But if you truly know
your fate, how can you go up to the altar
more calmly than a cow the god escorts.
CASSANDRA Friends, there’s no escaping what’s here already.
CHORUS LEADER The less time one has, the more one clings to it.
CASSANDRA The day is here; what use is there in fleeing?
CHORUS LEADER Know yours is a brave heart, to endure like this.
CASSANDRA No happy person’s ever praised this way.
CHORUS LEADER But a death that brings glory is a blessing.
CASSANDRA Alas for you, father, and for your high-born children!
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CASSANDRA steps toward the palace,
then starts back in horror.
CHORUS LEADER What is it? What fear stops you, pulls you back?
CASSANDRA PHEU! PHEU!
CHORUS LEADER Why this cry? Some terror in your mind?
CASSANDRA The stench of slaughter. The whole house reeks of blood.
CHORUS LEADER How so? That’s just the smell of sacrifice at the hearth.
CASSANDRA It’s like the exhalation from a tomb.
CHORUS LEADER You smell no Syrian incense in this house.
CASSANDRA And yet I go into the house to mourn
my fate and Agamemnon’s. Enough for living!
(Again she turns suddenly from the
doors of the palace.)
Ah, my friends, I won’t cry any cry
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of terror like a panicky small bird
caught in a bush. But after I am dead,
you be my witnesses when a woman is killed
for me, a woman, and a man dies,
in turn, for a man unlucky in his wife.
I ask this as your guest bound now for death.
CHORUS LEADER Poor girl, I pity you for this end you see.
CASSANDRA I want to say one more thing, and not just sing
my own lament: I pray to the sun’s last shining
that my avengers will exact a bloody
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payment from my foes, for my murder too,
for murdering a slave, a harmless prey.
Alas for men and their vicissitudes!
In good times one may say they’re like a shadow;
in bad times like a picture that a wet sponge
brushing against it lightly wipes away.
And these I pity so much more than those.
CASSANDRA exits resolutely through the palace door.
CHORUS Whoever says, that is enough
good fortune? No one
would ever bar it from the high
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halls, leaning hard against the door
and saying, “Never come here again.”
So to this man the blessed ones
allowed that he
should capture Priam’s city and
come home weighed down with honor
from all the gods.
But if he must atone for blood
his forebears shed and by dying for
the dead ordain that others die,
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in turn, for him, who, among mortals,
can boast of being
born to a fate immune from harm?
Cries are heard from within the palace.
AGAMEMNON Oh! I’ve been struck, and the stroke is deep and deadly!
CHORUS LEADER Shh! Who cries he’s been stabbed and gravely wounded?
AGAMEMNON Oh! yet ag
ain I’m dealt a second blow!
CHORUS LEADER Hear how the king cries. I think the deed’s been done.
Let’s ask ourselves what we can safely do.
CHORUS MEMBER 1 Here’s my idea—we summon everyone
throughout the city, and we storm the palace.
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CHORUS MEMBER 2 I say we break in now, at once, and seize them
with the blood still dripping from their swords.
CHORUS MEMBER 3 Yes, I agree with that, and vote for acting
right away, this is no time for dithering.
CHORUS MEMBER 4 It’s all too clear from what they’ve done already
they’re planning to be tyrants of the city.
CHORUS MEMBER 5 Yes, while we waste time, they’re alert and busy,
trampling down the fair name of delay.
CHORUS MEMBER 6 I can’t tell which plan would be best. Someone
readier to act could think this through more clearly.
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CHORUS MEMBER 7 I feel the same way, for I don’t see how
by mere words we can raise the dead again.
CHORUS MEMBER 8 Yet just to save our skins shall we bow down
and kneel to those who have defiled the house?
CHORUS MEMBER 9 No, anything but that; better to die,
for death’s an easier fate than tyranny.
CHORUS MEMBER 10 Yet can we say for sure, just on the strength
of hearing the king cry out, that he’s been killed?
CHORUS MEMBER 11 We need to know the facts before deciding
what we should do; guessing isn’t knowing.
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CHORUS LEADER All my votes go for this course: that we learn
for certain how it is with Atreus’ son.
The palace doors open, and CLYTEMNESTRA
is seen standing over the dead bodies of AGAMEMNON,
wrapped in a crimson-colored robe, and of
CASSANDRA at his side.
CLYTEMNESTRA I tailored much of what I said before
to suit the time. But now I feel no shame
to say I lied. For how else could I give
my enemies (even when they’re disguised
as friends) what they deserve, how else set up
the nets of harm so high no one can over-
leap them? I have been brooding for a long time
over this strife bred from an ancient feud,
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and now at long last it’s come; and here I stand,
here where I cut him down, my aim achieved.
My aim was so exact—I won’t deny it—
that he could not outrun death, or fend it off
once I ensnared him in a deadly wealth
of robes, escapeless as a fishing net;
I struck him twice, and while he cried two cries,
his legs gave way. Then soon as he was down,
I struck him yet again, and the third stroke fell
as a votive offering for the Zeus
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below the ground, the savior of the dead.
And so he fell, and panted his life away,
and breathing out a last sharp gale of blood
he drenched me in the dark red showering gore,
and I rejoiced in it, rejoiced no less
than all the plants rejoice in Zeus-given
rainfalls at the birthtime of the buds.
Now things stand where they stand, my honored lords
of Argos; if you will rejoice, rejoice;
but know I revel in it. If it were ever
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right to pour libations joyfully
over a corpse, it would be more than just
to pour them over him! Such is the curse-
brimmed mixing bowl he filled up in the house
and, now he’s home, has swilled down to the dregs.
CHORUS LEADER Your tongue astounds us, how you can swagger so
over the butchered body of your husband.
CLYTEMNESTRA You test me as if I were a witless woman;
but I speak with undaunted heart to you
who know, and it’s all one, whether you praise
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or blame me. This is Agamemnon, my husband,
now a corpse, the work of this right hand,
a righteous workman. There’s nothing more to say.
CHORUS Woman, what foul food nursed
deep in the earth, or what drink drawn
from the flowing sea could you have tasted
to take on yourself so horrible
a sacrifice and the people’s curse?
You have cast away, you have cut away,
and away will you go from the city, under
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the full weight of the city’s hate.
CLYTEMNESTRA Now I’m the one you would condemn, would cast
out from the city, with the people’s hate
and loud curses all about me, though before,
back then, not one of you said anything
against this man, when easily, with no compunction,
as if it were a beast he slaughtered,
plucked from a wide field swarming with fattened sheep,
he slit his own child’s throat—the child I carried,
in pain bore, loved—and all for what, to charm
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the winds of Thrace? Why wasn’t he the one
you banished from the land in punishment
for that foul act? Yet now you hear my case
and all at once you are a ruthless judge.
Well, I warn you: threaten me all you want,
and know that if you bring me down in a
fair fight I am prepared to let you rule;
But if by god’s will it goes otherwise,
you’ll learn discretion, though you learn it late.
CHORUS Your daring’s outrageous, your words
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too cocksure; your mind is maddened
by your blood-dripping deed; your eyes
shine, speckled with blood. Your honor gone,
deserted by your friends, you’ll pay
at last for this, pay stroke for stroke.
CLYTEMNESTRA Listen: there’s more—hear my solemn oath!
I swear by Justice, completed for my child,
by Ruin, by the blood-crazed Erinys,
to whom I sacrificed this man that my hopes
will never pace the corridors of fear
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so long as the fire on my hearth is kindled
and kept bright by Aegisthus, just as loyal
to me as ever; for in him I have
a shield of trust nothing can ever shatter.
So here he lies, the one who wronged me, playboy
of each Chryseis beneath the walls of Troy!
And here beside him is his spear bride
and fortune-teller, the trusty sibyl of his bed,
whore of the sailors’ benches! Now they receive
the honor they deserve. For here he lies,
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and here, too, after singing her last lament
like a swan, she lies beside him as his lover.
For me, she only brought an added relish,
a saucy garnish to my bed’s delight.
CHORUS Ah! If only quickly,
Kommos / Strophe 1
painlessly, free of the drawn
out vigil of the sickbed,
some fate would bring to us now
the sleep no one will wake from
ever, now that he is slain,
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the best of guardians
who in a woman’s name
suffered so much, and by
a woman’s hand is dead.
Ah, ah, crazed Helen—
Mesode 1
you who alone brought down
so many, those numberless many
lives beneath Troy—now you’ve crowne
d yourself
with this last, this perfect garland through the
willing of the blood not washed away.
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So it was true, all along
unshakable strife dwelled in the house,
a husband’s misery.
CLYTEMNESTRA Don’t pray for death because of this!
Don’t train your wrath
on Helen, making her alone
the man-destroyer, the one who turned
so many Danaan lives to wreckage,
and made a grief no one can master.
CHORUS Furious Spirit, you swoop
Antistrophe 1
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down on the house, on the two
heirs of Tantalus, and
hold sway through women
of like mind, and through them
press such crushing
weight against my heart!
You stand over the body
like a famished crow
and caw in brash abandon
your harsh discordant cry.
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CLYTEMNESTRA You talk sense now by calling on
the triple-glutted
Spirit of this race! He feeds the lust
for blood deep in the belly, the thirst
to lap it up, and before the old
wound heals, the fresh pus swells and oozes.
CHORUS The Spirit whose praises you sing
Strophe 2
has the house gripped tight;
truly his wrath is heavy.
Ah, you praise sheer evil
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that fills its maw with misfortune,
