Sagamemnon
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng3
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But Priam’s city has learned, in her old age, an altered strain, and now, I trust, wails a loud song, full of lamentation, calling Paris evil-wed; for she has born the burden of a life in which everything was destroyed, a life full of lamentation because of
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the wretched slaughter of her sons
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Chorus
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Even so a man reared in his house a lion’s whelp, robbed of its mother’s milk yet still desiring the breast. Gentle it was
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in the prelude of its life, kindly to children, and a delight to the old. Much did it get, held in arms like a nursling child, with its
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bright eye turned toward his hand, and fawning under compulsion of its belly’s need.
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Chorus
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But brought to full growth by time it showed the nature it had from its parents. Unbidden, as payment for its fostering,
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it prepared a feast with ruinous slaughter of the flocks; so that the house was defiled with blood, and whose who lived there could not control their anguish, and great was the carnage far and wide.
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A priest of ruin, by order of a god, it was reared in the house.
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Chorus
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At first, I would say, there came to Ilium the spirit of unruffled calm,
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a delicate ornament of wealth, a darter of soft glances from the eye, love’s flower that stings the heart. Then, swerving from her course, she brought
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her marriage to a bitter end, sped on to the children of Priam under escort of Zeus, the warder of host and guest, ruining her sojourn and her companions, a vengeful Fury who brought tears to brides.
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Chorus
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A venerable utterance proclaimed of old has been fashioned among mankind: the prosperity of man, when it has come to full growth, engenders offspring and does not die childless,
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and from his good fortune there springs up insatiable misery. But I hold my own mind and think apart from other men. It is the evil deed that afterwards begets more iniquity
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like its own breed; but when a house is righteous, the lot of its children is blessed always.
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Chorus
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But an old Hubris tends to bring forth
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in evil men, sooner or later, at the fated hour of birth, a young Hubris and that irresistible, unconquerable, unholy spirit, Recklessness,
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and for the household black Curses, which resemble their parents.
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Chorus
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But Righteousness shines in smoke-begrimed dwellings
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and esteems the virtuous man. From gilded mansions, where men’s hands are foul, she departs with averted eyes and makes her way to pure homes; she does not worship the power
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of wealth stamped counterfeit by the praise of men, and she guides all things to their proper end.
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Chorus
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Enter Agamemnon and Cassandra, in a chariot, with a numerous retinue All hail, my King, sacker of Troy, off-spring of Atreus!
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How shall I greet you? How shall I do you homage, not overshooting or running short of the due measure of courtesy? Many of mortal men put appearance before truth and thereby transgress the right.
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Every one is ready to heave a sigh over the unfortunate, but no sting of true sorrow reaches the heart; and in seeming sympathy they join in others’ joy, forcing their faces into smiles.
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But whoever is a discerning shepherd of his flock cannot be deceived by men’s eyes which, while they feign loyalty of heart, only fawn upon him with watery affection.The figure is of wine much diluted. Now in the past, when you marshaled the army in Helen’s cause,
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you were depicted in my eyes (for I will not hide it from you) most ungracefully and as not rightly guiding the helm of your mind in seeking through your sacrifices to bring courage to dying men.
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But now, from the depth of my heart and with no lack of love their toil is joy to those who have won success. In course of time you shall learn by enquiry who of your people has been an honest, and who an unfitting guardian of the State.
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Agamemnon
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Argos first, as is right and proper, I greet, and her local gods who have helped me to my safe return and to the justice I exacted from Priam’s town. For listening to no pleadings by word of mouth, Not hearing pleadings from the tongue—as if the Greeks and Trojans were waging war in words before a human court—but with divine insight of the true merits of the case.without dissenting voice, they cast into the
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bloody urn their ballots for the murderous destroying of Ilium; but to the urn of acquittal that no hand filled, Hope alone drew near. The smoke even now still declares the city’s fall. Destruction’s blasts still live, and
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the embers, as they die, breathe forth rich fumes of wealth. For this success we should render to the gods a return in ever-mindful gratitude, seeing that we have thrown round the city the toils of vengeance, and in a woman’s cause it has been laid low by the fierce Argive beast,
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brood of the horse,The wooden horse.a shield-armed folk, that launched its leap when the Pleiades waned. Vaulting over its towered walls, the ravening lion lapped up his fill of princely blood. For the gods then I have stretched out this prelude.
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But, touching your sentiments—which I heard and still bear in memory—I both agree and you have in me an advocate. For few there are among men in whom it is inborn to admire without envy a friend’s good fortune. For the venom of malevolence settles upon the heart and
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doubles the burden of him who suffers from that plague: he is himself weighed down by his own calamity, and groans to see another’s prosperity. From knowledge—for well I know the mirror of companionship—I may call a shadow of a shade
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those who feigned exceeding loyalty to me.This version takes ὁμιλίας κάτοπτρον to mean that companionship shows the true character of a man’s associates. An alternative rendering takes κάτοπτρον in a disparaging sense—the semblance as opposed to reality—and makes κάτοπτρον, εἴδωλον and δοκοῦντας in apposition.Only Odysseus, the very man who sailed against his will, once harnessed, proved my zealous yoke-fellow. This I affirm of him whether he is alive or dead. But, for the rest, in what concerns the State and public worship,
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we shall appoint open debates and consider. Where all goes well, we must take counsel so that it may long endure; but whenever there is need of healing remedy, we will by kind appliance of cautery or the knife
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endeavor to avert the mischief of the disease. And now I will pass to my palace halls and to my household hearth, and first of all pay greeting to the gods. They who sent me forth have brought me home again. May victory, now that it has attended me, remain ever with me constant to the end! He descends from his chariot; enter Clytaemestra, attended by maidservants carrying purple tapestries
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Clytaemestra
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Citizens of Argos, you Elders present here, I shall not be ashamed to confess in your presence my fondness for my husband—with time diffidence dies away in humans. Untaught by others, I can tell of my own weary life
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all the long while my husband was beneath Ilium’s walls. First and foremost, it is a terrible evil for a wife to sit forlorn at home, severed from her husband, always hearing many malignant rumors, and for one messenger after another
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to come bearing tidings of disaster, each worse than the last, and cry them to the household. And as for wounds, had my husband received so many as rumor kept pouring into the house, no net would have been pierced so full of holes as he. Or if he had died as often as reports claimed,
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then truly he might have had three bodies, a second Geryon,Geryon, a monster (here called three-bodied, but ordinarily three-headed) whose oxen were driven away from Spain by Heracles.and have boasted of having taken on him a triple cloak of earth ample that above, of that below I speak not, one death for each different shape. Because of such malignant tales as these,
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many times others have had to loose the high-hung halter from my neck, held in its strong grip. It is for this reason, in fact, that our boy, Orestes, does not stand here beside me, as he should—he in whom rest the pledges of my love and yours. Nor should you think this strange.
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For he is in the protecting care of our well-intentioned ally, Strophius of Phocis, who warned me of trouble on two scores—your own peril beneath Ilium’s walls, and then the chance that the people in clamorous revolt might overturn the Council, as it is natural
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for men to trample all the more upon the fallen. Truly such an excuse supports no guile.
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As for myself, the welling fountains of my tears are utterly dried up—not a drop remains. In night-long vigils my eyes are sore
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with weeping for the beacon-lights set for you but always neglected. The faint whir of the buzzing gnat often waked me from dreams in which I beheld more disasters to you than the time of sleep could have compassed.
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But now, having born all this, my heart freed from its anxiety, I would hail my husband here as the watchdog of the fold, the savior forestay of the ship, firm-based pillar of the lofty roof, only-begotten son of a father, or land glimpsed by men at sea beyond their hope,
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dawn most fair to look upon after storm, the gushing stream to thirsty wayfarer—sweet is it to escape all stress of need. Such truly are the greetings of which I deem him worthy. But let envyBy her fulsome address Clytaemestra invites, while seeming to deprecate, the envy of the gods.be far removed, since many were the ills
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we endured before. And now, I pray you, my dear lord, dismount from your car, but do not set on common earth the foot, my King, that has trampled upon Ilium. To her attendants Why this loitering, women, to whom I have assigned the task to strew with tapestries the place where he shall go?
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Quick! With purple let his path be strewn, that Justice may usher him into a home he never hoped to see. The rest my unslumbering vigilance shall order duly, if it please god, even as is ordained.
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Agamemnon
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Offspring of Leda, guardian of my house,
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your speech fits well with my absence; for you have drawn it out to ample length. But becoming praise—this prize should rightly proceed from other lips. For the rest, pamper me not as if I were a woman, nor, like some barbarian,Some take this to mean: Nor, as if I were a barbaric chieftain, grovel to me.
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grovel before me with widemouthed acclaim; and do not draw down envy upon my path by strewing it with tapestries. It is the gods we must honor thus; but it is not possible for a mortal to tread upon embroidered fineries without fear.
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I tell you to revere me not as a god, but as a man. Footmats and embroideries sound diverse in the voice of Rumor; to think no folly is the best gift of the gods. Only when man’s life comes to its end in prosperity dare we pronounce him happy;
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and if I may act in all things as I do now, I have good confidence.
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Clytaemestra
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Come now, tell me this, in accordance with your mind.
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Agamemnon
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Purpose! Be assured that I shall not corrupt my mind.
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Clytaemestra
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You would in fear have vowed to the gods to act thus.
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Agamemnon
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If someone with full knowledge had pronounced this word.
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Clytaemestra
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What do you suppose that Priam would have done, if he had achieved your triumph?
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Agamemnon
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He would have set foot upon the embroideries, I certainly believe.
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Clytaemestra
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Then do not be be ashamed of mortal reproach.
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Agamemnon
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And yet a people’s voice is a mighty power.
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Clytaemestra
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True, yet he who is unenvied is unenviable.
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Agamemnon
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Surely it is not woman’s part to long for fighting.
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Clytaemestra
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True, but it is right for the happy victor to yield the victory.
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Agamemnon
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What? is this the kind of victory in strife that you prize?
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Clytaemestra
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Oh yield! Yet of your own free will entrust the victory to me.
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Agamemnon
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Well, if you will have your way,
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quick, let some one loose my sandals, which, slavelike, serve the treading of my foot! As I walk upon these purple vestments may I not be struck from afar by any glance of the gods’ jealous eye. A terrible shame it is for one’s foot to mar the resources of the house by wasting wealth and costly woven work.
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So much for this. This foreign girl receive into the house with kindness. A god from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master; for no one freely takes the yoke of slavery. But she,
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the choicest flower of rich treasure, has followed in my train, my army’s gift. Since I have been forced to obey you and must listen to you in this, I will tread upon a purple pathway as I pass to my palace halls.
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Clytaemestra
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There is the sea (and who shall drain it dry?) producing stain of abundant purple, costly as silver
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and ever fresh, with which to dye our clothes; and of these our house, through the gods, has ample store; it knows no poverty. Vestments enough I would have devoted to be trampled underfoot had it been so ordered in the seat of oracles
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when I was devising a ransom for your life. For if the root still lives, leaves come again to the house and spread their over-reaching shade against the scorching dog star; so, now that you have come to hearth and home, you show that warmth has come in wintertime;
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and again, when Zeus makes wine from the bitter grape,That is, when the summer heat is ripening the grapes.then immediately there is coolness in the house when its rightful lord occupies his halls. As Agamemnon enters the palace O Zeus, Zeus, you who bring things to fulfilment, fulfill my prayers! May you see to that which you mean to fulfill! Exit
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Chorus
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Why does this terror so persistently hover standing before my prophetic soul? Why does my song, unbidden and unfed, chant strains of augury? Why does assuring confidence not sit on my heart’s throne
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and spurn the terror like an uninterpretable dream? But Time has collected the sands of the shore upon the cables cast thereon
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when the shipborn army sped forth for Ilium.The sense of the Greek passage (of which no entirely satisfactory emendation has been offered) is that so much time has passed since the fleet, under Agamemnon’s command, was detained at Aulis by the wrath of Artemis, that Calchas’ prophecy of evil, if true, would have been fulfilled long ago.
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Chorus
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Of their coming home I learn with my own eyes and need no other witness.
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Yet still my soul within me, self-inspired, intones the lyreless dirge of the avenging spirit, and cannot wholly win its customary confidence of hope.
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Not for nothing is my bosom disquieted as my heart throbs against my justly fearful breast in eddying tides that warn of some event. But I pray that my expectation may fall out false
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and not come to fulfilment.
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Chorus
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Truly blooming health does not rest content within its due bounds; for disease ever presses close against it, its neighbor with a common wall.Abounding health, ignoring its limitations, is separated from disease only by a slight dividing line. The suppressed thought is that remedies, if applied at the right time, may save the body.
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So human fortune, when holding onward in straight course strikes upon a hidden reef. And yet, if with a well-measured throw, caution heaves overboard
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a portion of the gathered wealth, the whole house, with woe overladen, does not founder nor engulf the hull.The house of Agamemnon, full of calamity, is likened to an overloaded ship, which will founder if some part of its freight is not jettisoned. By confusion of the symbol and the thing signified, δόμος is boldly said to sink its hull. Truly the generous gift from Zeus,
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rich and derived from yearly furrows, makes an end of the plague of famine.
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Chorus
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But a man’s blood, once it has first fallen by murder to earth
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in a dark tide—who by magic spell shall call it back? Even heAesculapius, who was blasted by the thunderbolt of Zeus for this offence.who possessed the skill to raise from the dead—did not Zeus make an end of him as warning?
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And unless one fate ordained of the gods restrains another fate from winning the advantage, my heart would outstrip my tongue and pour forth its fearsThe further expression of their forebodings is checked by the desperate hope that since divine forces sometimes clash, the evil destiny of Agamemnon may yet be averted by a superior fate, which they dimly apprehend will ordain his deliverance from the consequences of his shedding the blood of Iphigenia.;
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but, as it is, it mutters only in the dark, distressed and hopeless ever to unravel anything in time when my soul’s aflame.
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Clytaemestra
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Get inside, you too, CassandraI have retained the ordinary form of the name in Greek and English.; since not unkindly has Zeus appointed you to share the holy water of a house where you may take your stand, with many another slave, at the altar of the god who guards its wealth. Get down from the car and do not be too proud;
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for even Alcmene’s sonHeracles, because of his murder of Iphitus, was sold as a slave to Omphale, queen of Lydia., men say, once endured to be sold and eat the bread of slavery. But if such fortune should of necessity fall to the lot of any, there is good cause for thankfulness in having masters of ancient wealth; for they who, beyond their hope, have reaped a rich harvest of possessions,
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are cruel to their slaves in every way, even exceeding due measure. You have from us such usage as custom warrants.
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Chorus
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It is to you she has been speaking and clearly. Since you are in the toils of destiny, perhaps you will obey, if you are so inclined; but perhaps you will not.
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Clytaemestra
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Well, if her language is not strange and foreign, even as a swallow’s, I must speak within her comprehension and move her to comply.
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Chorus
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Go with her. With things as they now stand, she gives you the best. Do as she bids and leave your seat in the car.
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Clytaemestra
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I have no time to waste with this woman here outside; for already the victims stand by the central hearth awaiting the sacrifice—a joy we never expected to be ours. As for you, if you will take any part, make no delay.
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But if, failing to understand, you do not catch my meaning, then, instead of speech, make a sign with your barbarian hand.
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Chorus
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It is an interpreter and a plain one that the stranger seems to need. She bears herself like a wild creature newly captured.
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Clytaemestra
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No, she is mad and listens to her wild mood,
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since she has come here from a newly captured city, and does not know how to tolerate the bit until she has foamed away her fretfulness in blood. No! I will waste no more words upon her to be insulted thus. Exit