Aeschylus
From: Agamemnon (lines 40-257)
Now the tenth year has come since the claimant at law
Against Priam, the great
Menelaus, with King Agamemnon
Twin-throned and twin-sceptred by grace of Zeus,
Sons of Atreus, paired in power,
With their fleet of a thousand Argive ships
Put out from these shores to strengthen the host.
And loud they cried War in their wrath,
Like vultures that fearfully
Grieve for their young,
Circling above the nest
With slow beating of wings,
When the toilsome watch they kept
Over the nestlings is all in vain.
Yet some high god, it may be Apollo
Or Pan or Zeus,
Hearing the birds' shrill screams of lament
And pitying them — for they share his heaven —
Sends on the poachers a Fury
Whose vengeance is late but sure.
Thus the sons of Atreus are sent
Out against Paris by the mighty
Lord, the guest's and stranger's guardian,
Zeus, who will bring
Alike upon Trojan and Greek, for the sake
Of that much-married woman
Many an aching struggle to drag down the limbs
When the knee shall be bent in the dust
And the spear-shaft snapped
At the first onset. The matter
Is where it now is, and will be fulfilled
To its destined end:
And no burnt offerings, no libations,
No fireless sacrifice shall assuage
The relentless wrath of God.
But we, unfit through our ageing flesh,
Were left behind from the mustering
And stay at home
Propping our childlike strength on a staff;
For the infant marrow leaping
Up in the breastbone resembles
That of the old; no battle-fury
Lies hid in it; but extreme old age
His foliage withering, walks abroad
On three feet, and weak as a child,
A wandering daytime phantom.
(Their eyes turn towards the door of the palace.)
But daughter of Tyndareus,
Clytemnestra our Queen,
What has happened? What news? What thing have you learnt,
What message has made you
Send orders about to offer up sacrifice?
For the altars of all the gods that dwell
In our city and rule it — gods on high
And gods below, of sky or market —
Are ablaze with gifts;
And from all quarters the torches stream
To the height of heaven,
Fed by the soft and guileless spell
Of sacred oil
From the innermost stores of the palace.
Tell us what you can of these matters
And what is lawful to tell;
Be the healer of our anxiety
Which at times is laden with ill foreboding,
Though now from the offerings you display
Springs hope to ward off this insatiate
Grief that cankers our hearts.
I have the power to tell of the strong and auspicious command,
The command of men in authority over this expedition —
For still in my old age
The gods inspire me to sing
Songs to bend the will; and in this resides my strength.
Listen. The twin-throned command of Achaea, the allied
Lords of the youth of Greece
Were sent with avenging spear and hand to the land of Troy
By an omen of war:
To the fleet's king came the king of birds, a pair, one black one
white
And appeared close by his tent, perched on the spearhand side
Plain for all to see,
Feeding upon a hare big-bellied with many young,
Cut off from her final flight.
Cry, cry upon death, but may well triumph yet!
Then the wise seer of the host, when he saw the two sons of
Atreus
Matched in temper, knew these fierce devourers of hare
For the commanders; and then he spoke in prophecy:
'In time the path you follow will yield you Priam's city,
And fate before those walls
Shall violently despoil
All the rich herds of her people.
Let only no envious wrath from heaven
Strike, and overshadow the battled
Curb for the mouth of mighty Troy:
For out of pity holy Artemis
Begrudges her father's winged pursuers
To sacrifice this trembling
Hare with her unborn young
And abhors the eagles' feast'.
Cry, cry upon death, but may well triumph yet!
'Fair Goddess, however kindly
You look on the tender cubs of ravening
Lions, and delight in the suckling young
Of all wild creatures that roam the fields,
Yet consent to fulfil
All this encounter portends of good,
And amend what it bodes of ill-fortune.
But I call on Apollo the Healer,
Lest Artemis hold the ships of the Greeks in port with delaying
winds
Devouring time, in her passion
For a second sacrifice, lawless and feastless,
Inborn worker of strife, divorced
From wifely reverence. Now in the house
Abides a terrible undeparting
Treacherous steward, Wrath, her memory
Fresh to avenge a slaughtered child.'
Such was the fated future, all mingled with great blessings,
That Calchas foretold from these wayside
Birds for the royal house:
And echoing his words
Cry, cry upon death, but may well triumph yet!
Zeus, whosoever he be — if to be called
By this name please him,
So I address him.
When all is balanced out
I have nothing to liken him to
Save 'Zeus', if there be truly need
To relieve the fretted mind
From its burden of vain desires.
And he who before was great
Aswagger for every fight
Is of the past, and shall not be reckoned;
And he who followed after
Met his master, was thrown, and is gone.
But he who gladly calls
On Zeus in victory
Shall hit on the fullness of wisdom.
It is Zeus sets mortals on
The road to wisdom, by his fixed
Decree, that understanding comes
Through suffering. Not sleep, but pain
Of suffering remembered drips
Into the heart; discretion comes
Even to unwilling men.
Harsh is the grace of the immortals
Enthroned on their judgement seats.
So the older captain
Of the Achaean fleet
Holding no prophet at fault,
Bent to the blasts of fortune.
For the Achaean host
(Encamped by the shores of Aulis
Where the tides surge back and forth
Against the Chalcidic coast)
Were hard hit by famine and harbour-bound;
And winds blew up from the Strymon
Bearing starvation and forced inaction,
Idle riding at anchor;
The men deserted, the hulls and cables
Rotted away;
The gales redoubled the fleet's long waiting,
Withered and wasted the flower of the Argives;
And now the prophet declared
To the chiefs another more grievous
Remedy for the bitter storm,
(Naming Artemis as the bitter cause):
And the sons of Atreus hearing struck
The ground with their staffs, and wept.
Then the elder chief spoke:
'Hard is my fate if I disobey,
Yet hard if I must slaughter
My child, the delight of my house,
At the altar's side defiling
A father's hands with the blood
From a virgin sacrificed.
Which way is without evil? How can I fail
My allies, desert my fleet?
The sacrifice to lull
These winds, a virgin's blood —
This they desire with passion
Surmounting passion; and they are within
Their right. May the deed be good!'
But when he put on necessity's bridle
And the wind of his purpose veered to an impious
Impure unholy change, from then
He resolved on a deed of most dreadful daring;
For men are emboldened by the shameful
And miserable counsels of madness, the seed of all sorrow: yet
He dared the sacrifice of his daughter
In aid of a war to revenge a woman
And a rite to release the fleet.
Her prayers, her cries to her father,
Her maiden years, all counted for nothing
With commanders eager for battle.
Agamemnon prayed. His daughter dropped fainting
Swathed in her robes. He ordered his acolytes
To raise her up and hold her over
The altar like a kid, a guarding
Hand across her lovely mouth,
To prevent with the violence, the speechless
Strength of the gag a cry
That might bring a curse on the house.
But as she let fall her saffron robe
She struck each one of her sacrificers
With a pitiful glance from her eye,
Silhouetted as if in a picture, longing
To call to them all by name;
For many a time in her father's halls
She had sung at the feast, and her pure
Maiden's voice would lovingly honour
Her father's prayer
For blessing to Zeus the Saviour.
What followed I neither saw nor tell;
But Calchas' arts were not unfulfilled.
Justice tips the scale of wisdom
For those who have suffered. As for the future,
You will know it when it befalls. Forget it till then,
Or else you lament an unborn sorrow
Which will come soon enough, with
The light of dawn.
(Clytemnestra appears from the palace.)
But for what shall follow
May the issue be happy. This is the wish
Of our regent the Queen, the only bulwark
And guard of the land of Argos.
Translated by Peter Green
Page(s) 228-234
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