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Complete Works of Euripides

Page 53

by Euripides


  LEADER

  Piteous thy pleading, and a piteous object thou! But I fain would hear what Menelaus will say to save his life.

  MENELAUS I will not deign to throw myself at thy knees, or wet mine eyes with tears; for were I to play the coward, I should most foully blur my Trojan fame. And yet men say it shows a noble soul to let the tear-drop fall in misfortune. But that will not be the honourable course that I will choose in preference to bravery, if what I shall say is honourable. Art thou disposed to save a stranger seeking in mere justice to regain his wife, why then restore her and save us likewise; if not, this will not be the first by many a time that I have suffered, though thou wilt get an evil name. All that I deem worthy of me and honest, all that will touch thy heart most nearly, will I utter at the tomb of thy sire with regret for his loss. Old king beneath this tomb of stone reposing, pay back thy trust! I ask of thee my wife whom Zeus sent hither unto thee to keep for me. I know thou canst never restore her to me thyself, for thou art dead; but this thy daughter will never allow her father once so glorious, whom I invoke in his grave, to bear a tarnished name; for the decision rests with her now. Thee, too, great god of death, I call to my assistance, who hast received full many a corpse, slain by me for Helen, and art keeping thy wage; either restore those dead now to life again, or compel the daughter to show herself a worthy equal of her virtuous sire, and give me back my wife. But if ye will rob me of her, I will tell you that which she omitted in her speech. Know then, maiden, I by an oath am bound, first, to meet thy brother sword to sword, when he or I must die-there is no alternative. But if he refuse to meet me fairly front to front, and seek by famine to chase away us suppliants twain at this tomb, I am resolved to slay Helen, and then to plunge this two-edged sword through my own heart, upon the top of the sepulchre, that our streaming blood may trickle down the tomb; and our two corpses will be lying side by side upon this polished slab, a source of deathless grief to thee, and to thy sire reproach. Never shall thy brother wed Helen, nor shall any other; I will bear her hence myself, if not to my house, at any rate to death. And why this stern resolve? Were I to resort to women’s ways and weep, I should be a pitiful creature, not a man of action. Slay me, if it seems thee good; I will not die ingloriously; but better yield to what I say, that thou mayst act with justice, and I regain my wife.

  LEADER

  On thee, maiden, it rests to judge between these arguments. Decide in such a way as to please one and all.

  THEONOE

  My nature and my inclination lean towards piety; myself, too, I respect, and I will never sully my father’s fair name, or gratify my brother at the cost of bringing myself into open dishonour. For justice hath her temple firmly founded in my nature, and since I have this heritage from Nereus I will strive to save Menelaus; wherefore, seeing it is Hera’s will to stand thy friend, I will give my vote with her. May Cypris be favourable to me! though in me she hath no part, and I will try to remain a maid alway. As for thy reproaches against my father at this tomb; lo! I have the same words to utter; I should be wronging thee, did I not restore thy wife; for my sire, were he living, would have given her back into thy keeping, and thee to her. Yea, for there is recompense for these things as well amongst the dead as amongst all those who breathe the breath of life. The soul indeed of the dead lives no more, yet hath it a consciousness that lasts for ever, eternal as the ether into which it takes the final plunge. Briefly then to end the matter, I will observe strict silence on all that ye prayed I should, and never with my counsel will I aid my brother’s wanton will. For I am doing him good service, though he little thinks it, if turn him from his godless life to holiness. Wherefore devise yourselves some way of escape; my lips are scaled; I will not cross your path. First with the goddesses begin, and of the one,-and that one Cypris,-Crave permission to return unto thy country; and of Hera, that her goodwill may abide in the same quarter, even her scheme to save thee and thy husband. And thou, my own dead sire, shalt never, in so far as rests with me, lose thy holy name to rank with evil-doers.

  (THEONOE and her attendants enter the palace.)

  LEADER

  No man ever prospered by unjust practices, but in a righteous cause there is hope of safety.

  HELEN

  Menelaus, on the maiden’s side are we quite safe. Thou must from that point start, and by contributing thy advice, devise with me a scheme to save ourselves.

  MENELAUS

  Hearken then; thou hast been a long while in the palace, and art intimate with the king’s attendants.

  HELEN

  What dost thou mean thereby? for thou art suggesting hopes, as if resolved on some plan for our mutual help.

  MENELAUS

  Couldst thou persuade one of those who have charge of cars and steeds to furnish us with a chariot?

  HELEN I might; but what escape is there for us who know nothing of the country and the barbarian’s kingdom?

  MENELAUS

  True; ’tis impossible. Well, supposing I conceal myself in the palace and slay the king with this two-edged sword?

  HELEN

  His sister would never refrain from telling her brother that thou wert meditating his death.

  MENELAUS

  We have not so much as a ship to make our escape in; for the sea. hath swallowed the one we had.

  HELEN

  Hear me, if haply even a woriian can utter words of wisdom. Dost thou consent to be dead in word, though not really so?

  MENELAUS ’Tis a bad omen; still, if by saying so I shall gain aught, I am ready to be dead in word, though not in deed.

  HELEN I, too, will mourn thee with hair cut short and dirges, as is women’s way, before this impious wretch.

  MENELAUS

  What saving remedy doth this afford us twain? There is deception in thy scheme.

  HELEN I will beg the king of this country leave to bury thee in a cenotaph, as if thou hadst really died at sea.

  MENELAUS

  Suppose he grant it; how, e’en then, are we to escape without a ship, after having committed me to my empty tomb?

  HELEN I will bid him give me a vessel, from which to let drop into the sea’s embrace thy funeral offerings.

  MENELAUS A clever plan in truth, save in one particular; suppose he bid thee rear the tomb upon the strand, thy pretext comes to naught.

  HELEN

  But I shall say it is not the custom in Hellas to bury those who die at sea upon the shore.

  MENELAUS

  Thou removest this obstacle too; I then will sail with thee and help stow the funeral garniture in the same ship.

  HELEN

  Above all, it is necessary that thou and all thy sailors who escaped from the wreck should be at hand.

  MENELAUS

  Be sure if once I find a ship at her moorings, they shall be there man for man, each with his sword.

  HELEN

  Thou must direct everything; only let there be winds to waft our rails and a good ship to speed before them!

  MENELAUS

  So shall it be; for the deities will cause my troubles to cease. But from whom wilt thou say thou hadst tidings of my death?

  HELEN

  From thee; declare thyself the one and only survivor, telling how thou wert sailing with the son of Atreus, and didst see him perish.

  MENELAUS

  Of a truth the garments I have thrown about me, will bear out my tale that they were rags collected from the wreckage.

  HELEN

  They come in most opportunely, but they were near being lost just at the wrong time. Maybe that misfortune will turn to fortune.

  MENELAUS

  Am I to enter the palace with thee, or are we to sit here at the tomb quietly?

  HELEN

  Abide here; for if the king attempts to do thee any mischief, this tomb and thy good sword will protect thee. But I will go within and cut off my hair, and exchange my white robe for sable weeds, and rend my cheek with this hand’s blood-thirsty nail. For ’tis a mighty struggle
, and I see two possible issues; either I must die if detected in my plot, or else to my country shall I come and save thy soul alive. O Hera! awful queen, who sharest the couch of Zeus, grant some respite from their toil to two unhappy wretches; to thee I pray, tossing my arms upward to heaven, where thou hast thy home in the star-spangled firmament. Thou, too, that didst win the prize of beauty at the price of my marriage; O Cypris! daughter of Dione, destroy me not utterly. Thou hast injured me enough aforetime, delivering up my name, though not my person, to live amongst barbarians. Oh! suffer me to die, if death is thy desire, in my native land. Why art thou so insatiate in mischief, employing every art of love, of fraud, and guileful schemes, and spells that bring bloodshed on families? Wert thou but moderate, only that!-in all else thou art by nature man’s most well, come deity; and I have reason so to say.

  (HELEN enters the palace and MENELAUS withdraws into the background.)

  CHORUS (singing) Thee let me invoke, tearful Philomel, lurking ‘neath the leafy covert in thy place of song, most tuneful of all feathered songsters, oh! come to aid me in my dirge, trilling through thy tawny throat, as I sing the piteous woes of Helen, and the tearful fate of Trojan dames made subject to Achaea’s spear, on the day that there came to their plains one who sped with foreign oar across the dashing billows, bringing to Priam’s race from Lacedaemon thee his hapless bride, Helen,-even Paris, luckless bridegroom, by the guidance of Aphrodite.

  And many an Achaean hath breathed his last amid the spearmen’s thrusts and hurtling hail of stones, and gone to his sad end; for these their wives cut off their hair in sorrow, and their houses are left without a bride; and one of the Achaeans, that had but a single ship, did light a blazing beacon on sea-girt Euboea, and destroy full many of them, wrecking them on the rocks of Caphareus and the shores that front the Aegean main, by the treacherous gleam he kindled; when thou, O Menelaus, from the very day of thy start, didst drift to harbourless hills, far from thy country before the breath of the storm, bearing on thy ship a prize that was no prize, but a phantom made by Hera out of cloud for the Danai to struggle over.

  What mortal claims, by searching to the utmost limit, to have found out the nature of God, or of his opposite, or of that which comes between, seeing as he doth this world of man tossed to and fro by waves of contradiction and strange vicissitudes? Thou, Helen, art the daughter of Zeus; for thy sire was the bird that nestled in Leda’s bosom; and yet for all that art thou become a by-word for wickedness, through the length and breadth of Hellas, as faithless, treacherous wife and godless woman; nor can I tell what certainty is, whatever may pass for it amongst men. That which gods pronounce have I found true.

  O fools! all ye who try to win the meed of valour through war and serried ranks of chivalry, seeking thus to still this mortal coil, in senselessness; for if bloody contests are to decide, there will never be any lack of strife in the towns of men; the maidens of the land of Priam left their bridal bowers, though arbitration might have put thy quarrel right, O Helen. And now Troy’s sons are in Hades’ keeping in the world below, and fire hath darted on her walls, as darts the flame of Zeus, and thou art bringing woe on woe to hapless sufferers in their misery.

  (THEOCLYMENUS and his hunting attendants enter.)

  THEOCLYMENUS

  All hail, my father’s tomb! I buried thee, Proteus, at the place where men go out, that I might often greet thee; and so, ever as I go out and in, I, thy son Theoclymenus call on thee, father. Ho! servants, to the palace take my hounds and hunting nets! How often have I blamed myself for never punishing those miscreants with death! I have just heard that son of Hellas has come openly to my land, escaping the notice of the guard, a spy maybe or a would-be thief of Helen; death shall be his lot if only I can catch him. Ha! I find all my plans apparently frustrated, the daughter of Tyndareus has deserted her seat at the tomb and sailed away from my shores. Ho! there, undo the bars, loose the horses from their stalls, bring forth my chariot, servants, that the wife, on whom my heart is set, may not get away from these shores unseen, for want of any trouble I can take. Yet stay; for I see the object of my pursuit is still in the palace, and has not fled. (HELEN enters from the palace, clad in the garb of mourning.) How now, lady, why hast thou arrayed thee in sable weeds instead of white raiment, and from thy fair head hast shorn thy tresses with the steel, bedewing thy cheeks the while with tears but lately shed? Is it in response to visions of the night that thou art mourning, or, because thou hast heard some warning voice within, art thus distraught with grief?

  HELEN

  My lord,-for already I have learnt to say that name, — I am undone; my luck is gone; I cease to be.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  In what misfortune art thou plunged? What hath happened?

  HELEN

  Menelaus, ah me! how can I say it? is dead, my husband.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  How knowest thou? Did Theonoe tell thee this?

  HELEN

  Both she, and one who was there when he perished.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  What! hath one arrived who actually announces this for certaint?

  HELEN

  One hath; oh may he come e’en as I wish him to!

  THEOCLYMENUS

  Who and where is he? that I may learn this more surely.

  HELEN

  There he is, sitting crouched beneath the shelter of this tomb,

  THEOCLYMENUS

  Great Apollo! how clad in unseemly rags!

  HELEN

  Ah me! methinks my own husband too is in like plight.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  From what country is this fellow? whence landed he here?

  HELEN

  From Hellas, one of the Achaeans who sailed with my husband.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  What kind of death doth he declare that Menelaus died?

  HELEN

  The most piteous of all; amid the watery waves at sea.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  On what part of the savage ocean was he sailing?

  HELEN

  Cast up on the harbourless rocks of Libya.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  How was it this man did not perish if he was with him aboard?

  HELEN

  There are times when churls have more luck than their betters.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  Where left he the wreck, on coming hither?

  HELEN

  There, where perdition catch it, but not Menelaus!

  THEOCLYMENUS

  He is lost; but on what vessel came this man?

  HELEN

  According to his story sailors fell in with him and picked him up.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  Where then is that ill thing that was sent to Troy in thy stead?

  HELEN

  Dost mean the phantom-form of cloud? It hath passed into the air.

  THEOCLYMENUS O Priam, and thou land of Troy, how fruitless thy ruin!

  HELEN I too have shared with Priam’s race their misfortunes.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  Did this fellow leave thy husband unburied, or consign him to the grave?

  HELEN

  Unburied; woe is me for my sad lot!

  THEOCLYMENUS

  Wherefore hast thou shorn the tresses of thy golden hair?

  HELEN

  His memory lingers fondly in this heart, whate’er his fate.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  Are thy tears in genuine sorrow for this calamity?

  HELEN

  An easy task no doubt to escape thy sister’s detection!

  THEOCLYMENUS

  No, surely; impossible. Wilt thou still make this tomb thy abode?

  HELEN

  Why jeer at me? canst thou not let the dead man be?

  THEOCLYMENUS

  No, thy loyalty to thy husband’s memory makes thee fly from me.

  HELEN I will do so no more; prepare at once for my marriage.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  Thou hast been long in bringing thyself to it; still
I do commend the now.

  HELEN

  Dost know thy part? Let us forget the past.

  THEOCLYMENUS

  On what terms? One good turn deserves another.

  HELEN

  Let us make peace; be reconciled to me.

  THEOCLYMENUS I relinquish my quarrel with thee; let it take wings and fly away.

  HELEN

  Then by thy knees, since thou art my friend indeed,-

  THEOCLYMENUS

  What art so bent on winning, that to me thou stretchest out a suppliant hand?

 

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