by Aeschylus
Good fortune does not last for men.
Some god flips up the sail and blasts the boat against a ruin reef.
Still we celebrate the house of godborn
Tantalos—what else could possibly make sense to us?
[Enter MENELAOS from a side entrance.]
MENELAOS : O house! How glad I am to look on you—now I’m back from Troy—at the same time I grieve. No hearth more wrapped in wretchedness than this.
I learned of Agamemnon’s death when I was coasting Malea.
Out of the waves the prophet Glaukos spoke to me (he is a god who does not lie).
“Menelaos,” he said, “your brother lies dead.
He’s had his last bath at the hands of his wife.”
We wept, my sailors and I.
Then I put in at Nauplia and sent my wife ahead, thinking to come and embrace Orestes and his mother.
I assumed they were well. Then a sailor told me of Klytaimestra’s unholy end.
Now tell me, where is he—Agamemnon’s child who had it in him to do this dread thing?
He was a babe in her arms when I left for Troy.
I might not recognize him now.
ORESTES : Here is Orestes. I’m the one you want.
I’ll tell you all about my sufferings. Gladly.
But first, your knees I clasp as suppliant. I pray to you.
Save me! You’ve arrived in the nick of time.
MENELAOS : Gods! What do I see? Which of the dead is this?
ORESTES : Well said. I might as well be dead.
MENELAOS : You look like a wild animal. You poor man.
ORESTES : It’s my deeds not my looks that shame me.
MENELAOS : Your eyes are terrible.
ORESTES : Forget the body. I still have my name.
MENELAOS : I really hadn’t expected to find you in this condition.
ORESTES : Mother murderer. Yes that’s me.
MENELAOS : So I hear. Don’t dwell on it.
ORESTES : Some evil spirit is dwelling on me.
MENELAOS : What’s wrong with you? What sickness wastes you away?
ORESTES : Conscience. I know what I’ve done.
MENELAOS : How do you mean?
ORESTES : Grief is killing me.
MENELAOS : She is a dread goddess. But curable.
ORESTES : And fits of madness. Mother madness. Mother blood.
MENELAOS : When did that start?
ORESTES : The day I built her tomb.
MENELAOS : Was it at home or near the pyre?
ORESTES : At night as I waited to take up the bones.
MENELAOS : Who else was there?
ORESTES : Pylades, my accomplice in murder.
MENELAOS : What sort of visions plague you?
ORESTES : Three females who look like Night.
MENELAOS : I know who you mean. I don’t want to name them.
ORESTES : You’re right, they have power.
MENELAOS : And they are the ones dancing you on to madness?
ORESTES : Oh dance me they do.
MENELAOS : Yet it’s not surprising, given your crime.
ORESTES : But I have one escape.
MENELAOS : Don’t say death, that would be stupid.
ORESTES : No, I mean Apollo, who assigned me to kill my mother.
MENELAOS : A somewhat inept divinity.
ORESTES : We are slaves to the gods. Whatever gods are.
MENELAOS : Yet Apollo does not help you?
ORESTES : He bides his time. That is gods’ way.
MENELAOS : How long dead is your mother?
ORESTES : This is the sixth day. Her pyre still warm.
MENELAOS : So some gods are quick—the mother avengers.
ORESTES : Inept or not, Apollo will come through for me.
MENELAOS : And how do you stand with the town?
ORESTES : So despised no one will talk to me.
MENELAOS : Have you not purified your hands of blood in the conventional way?
ORESTES : No, I am shut out of houses wherever I go.
MENELAOS : Are there certain men trying to drive you out of the town?
ORESTES : Oiax—he hates my father because of some incident at Troy.
MENELAOS : Ah yes, the death of Palamedes.
ORESTES : In which I had no part.
MENELAOS : Who else is against you? Aigisthos? His people?
ORESTES : Yes they abuse me. And they run the town.
MENELAOS : You’re not allowed to hold Agamemnon’s scepter?
ORESTES : I’m not allowed to live!
MENELAOS : Give me details.
ORESTES : Today they will vote.
MENELAOS : Vote on what? Your exile?
ORESTES : Death by stoning.
MENELAOS : Why haven’t you fled?
ORESTES : I am surrounded.
MENELAOS : By whom?
ORESTES : Long story short, the whole citizen body.
MENELAOS : Oh you poor man. Complete catastrophe.
ORESTES : To you my hopes run. You are my escape. You’ve come at a time when your fortunes are high and ours are not. Help us. We are your kin.
You owe our father, you know that.
Don’t be one of those friends in name only.
CHORUS : Here comes Tyndareus, old and struggling. He’s dressed in black, in mourning for his daughter.
[Enter TYNDAREUS.]
ORESTES : I’m lost, Menelaos. Here comes Tyndareus. Before him I am utterly ashamed.
Why, he used to carry me in his arms when I was a baby—he and his wife, they treasured me. I’ve repaid them badly.
What darkness can I find to hide me from his eyes?
TYNDAREUS : Where is he, where is Menelaos? My daughter’s husband.
I was pouring libation on Klytaimestra’s grave when I heard he’d arrived with his wife.
Safe after so many years! Take me to him. I want to shake his right hand.
MENELAOS : Joy to you, old man.
TYNDAREUS : And to you, my son-in-law—EA!—here is the mother killer snaking about in front of the house!
Look at him, look how he drips unhealth—shudder object!
MENELAOS : He is the son of my beloved brother.
TYNDAREUS : You mean to say he is anything like his father?
MENELAOS : He is. But very, very unfortunate. And I have obligations toward him.
TYNDAREUS : Your time in the East has barbarized you.
MENELAOS : It was always Greek to respect one’s kin.
TYNDAREUS : And also to respect the laws.
MENELAOS : But not to make oneself a slave of necessity.
TYNDAREUS : Well, that’s your doctrine. I reject it.
MENELAOS : You’ve got testy in old age. You used to be smarter.
TYNDAREUS : What does smart have to do with this? You call him smart?
A man who doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong?
Who ignores justice and flouts Greek law?
When Agamemnon breathed his last, struck down by my daughter—oh I agree, a despicable deed—what Orestes ought to have done, what was right and proper, was throw her out of the house.
Proper, righteous, within the law.
But as things are now, he’s taken on board the same devils as she.
He was right to think her evil but this murder makes him more to blame.
Listen, I have one question for you, Menelaos.
Suppose one day Orestes’ wife should kill Orestes and then Orestes’ son murder his mother in revenge.
And then his son pay off that murder with another one—where will it end?
Our forefathers thought all this through.
When a man got blood on his hands they had him banished. Not murdered.
Otherwise blood pollution goes on hand to hand forever.
Now me I despise impure women—in the first place my daughter who slew her husband (and this Helen of yours I won’t even mention!
You launched a thous
and ships for that?) but the law I’ll defend as far as I can.
All this killing, it’s like animals.
How can civilization survive?
I mean [to ORESTES] what did you feel, you shameless creature, when your mother bared her breast and begged you for pity?
I weep to think of it.
At any rate it’s obvious the gods hate you—you’re paying off your mother’s blood in bouts of lunacy.
Who needs more evidence?
So my point is, Menelaos, don’t go against the gods, don’t choose to help this one.
Let the townspeople stone him to death.
My daughter paid her price by dying.
Yet it was not right she die by this hand.
I’m a fortunate man in other ways but not in daughters.
There I struck out.
CHORUS : Lucky the man who gets good children. What a lottery.
ORESTES : I’m afraid to say anything to you, old man. Whatever I say will offend you and your great age makes me hesitate.
Well, here goes.
I am unholy. A mother killer.
At the same time pious and lawful. A father avenger.
It’s a contradiction. What should I have done?
My father begot me, your daughter bore me, as the farmland takes the seed: no father, no child.
He is my origin. That was my reasoning.
And as for your daughter—the word mother shames me—you know she had something going on the side. Repulsive to say this.
Aigisthos was her secret househusband.
I killed him and made sacrifice of her.
Unholy yes. But I gave justice to my father.
As for your wish to see me stoned, listen, I am a benefactor of Greece!
Picture this: wanton women throughout the land murdering husbands, running to sons for refuge, hunting pity with bared breasts—they’d be killing their men at the slightest pretext.
I put a stop to this. You call me unjust?
My hatred of her was in every way just.
She betrayed the commander in chief of the Greek army—defiled his bed when he was off fighting for the homeland.
She knew she’d done wrong and slew my father lest he punish her.
Should I have kept silent? How would the dead man like that?
Wouldn’t his Furies be dancing their dance around me now?
Or does my mother have a monopoly on ghastly goddesses?
As a matter of fact, isn’t it all your fault for engendering her?
You ruined me!
Through her I lost my father and became a matricide.
Look, Telemachos didn’t have to kill his mother—why?
Because she wasn’t piling husband on top of husband.
Odysseus’ marriage bed is still pure.
Anyway, the orders I followed were Apollo’s.
Call him unholy! Put him to death!
Again I ask you, what should I have done!
Can’t I call upon the god to clear this charge?
If not, where else can I run?
No don’t say my deed was evil.
Unlucky, sad, disastrous, yes. Not evil.
CHORUS : Women always complicate things don’t they.
TYNDAREUS : You’re out of control.
You pain my mind, you make me burn!
I only came to tend my daughter’s tomb, now here’s an extra task—I’ll go to the Argive assembly and shake them out against you and your sister.
By stoning you will pay.
That girl deserves it more than you—’twas she who savaged you against your mother, sending endless hostile tales and adverse dreams of Aigisthos and adultery may the gods of hell curse that bitter bed—it was Elektra set the house ablaze, not using fire.
Menelaos, I have this to say to you:
mark my hatred.
Do not help this man.
He is an enemy of gods, let him be stoned.
Here is my warning: stay out of Sparta and don’t take on criminals as friends.
Now [to servant] get me out of here.
[Exit TYNDAREUS.]
ORESTES : Good, go! I prefer talking to this man without you interrupting.
Menelaos, why are you pacing in circles, what are your thoughts?
MENELAOS : Give me a minute, I’m pondering.
Which way to turn. Not sure, not sure.
ORESTES : Well, don’t make a snap judgment.
Hear me out.
MENELAOS : Okay, I will.
There are times when silence is better than speech, times when speech is better than silence.
ORESTES : And a long speech best of all.
Here goes.
I’m not asking you for a free gift, Menelaos, but to pay what you owe. What you got from my father.
I don’t mean money (although life is my most precious asset)—no, I am a criminal.
To balance that, I need a crime from you.
Just as my father undertook to do wrong—to make war on Troy—not for his own sake but to put right the offense of your wife, so you must give back a wrong for a wrong.
And he gave his body too, as friends do, stood by your side in battle, so you could recover your wife.
Pay this back in kind.
Stand by me for one day—I’m not asking ten years!
Now, he had to slaughter his daughter at Aulis as well, but I let that go, you don’t have to murder Hermione.
The fact is, you’ve got the upper hand here, not me.
So grant me my life, for my father’s sake.
If I die I leave his house bereft.
You’ll say “Impossible!” but that’s just it.
Impossible situations are where we need friends.
If I had god on my side I’d be self-sufficient!
All Greeks think of you as a man who loves his wife (I don’t say this to be flattering)—in her name beseech you—I’m desperate!
On behalf of my house and the blood you share with my father,
imagine him listening to this—imagine his soul hovering near, imagine him saying all that I say!
Okay, there you have it. I’ve made my claim.
I want survival. Who doesn’t!
CHORUS : I’m only a woman but I beg you too, help those in need. You have the power.
MENELAOS : Let me be perfectly clear, Orestes, I do respect you
and want to share your pain, that’s what family is for—fighting enemies to the death.
So long as god gives the means.
I repeat, so long as god gives the means.
My own force is slight—I’ve been on the road for years—army disbanded, friends gone.
In open war we would not prevail against Argos.
What about negotiations? There’s an area of hope.
Stupid to think it will be easy—
once the mob catches fire you can’t just stamp it out—
but with caution, diplomacy, just the right timing, we might see this storm blow itself away.
Then you walk in and ask for whatever you want.
A mob lives on passion but also compassion. Wait for the moment. Timing is key.
So. I’ll go try to persuade Tyndareus and his Argives to use their zeal wisely.
You know, when the sail is too tight the ship goes under:
slack off a bit and it justifies itself.
God hates a fanatic. So do good citizens.
Anyway, whatever you think, I can’t save you by main strength, it will have to be cunning.
I’m just one lone spear.
Now granted, Argos is an unlikely place to try diplomacy.
But tactically speaking, what is our option?
[Exit MENELAOS.]
ORESTES : You worm! What good are you? You’ll make war for a woman
but not your own kin? You’ll turn your back on me
