Seven Against Thebes - Opening

SCENE: Thebes, The Prince of Eteocles confronts a crowd of Thebans.

Eteocles
You citizens of Cadmus, he must speak home
that in the ship's prow watches the event
and guides the rudder, his eye not drooped in sleep.
For if we win success, the God is the cause
but if -- may it not chance so -- there is disaster.
throughout the town, voices by its citizens,
a multitudinous swelling prelude
cries on one names, "Eteocles" with groans"
which Zeus defender keep from the city of Cadmus
even as his name implies.

tr: David Grene

The Persians - Opening

SCENE: In the background the palace of Xerxes at Sousa, in the center
foreground the tomb of Darius

Chorus
Of the Persians gone
To the land of Greece
Here are the trusted:
As protectors of treasure
And of golden thrones
We were chosen by Xerxes--
Emperor and king,
Son of Darius --
In accord with age
Guards of the country.



tr: S. G. Benardete

Agamemnon - Closing

Chorus
Crow and strut, brave cockerel by your hen; you have no threats to fear.

Clytaemestra
These are howls of impotent rage; forget them, dearest; you and I
have the power; we two shall bring good order to our house
at least.

(They enter the house. The doors close. All persons leave the stage.)

Agamemnon - V:1670

Aegisthus
Exiles feed on empty dreams of hope. I know it. I was one.

Agamemnon - V: 1305

Chorus
Woman, be sure your heart is brave; you can take much.

Cassandra
None but the unhappy people ever heard such praise.

Agamemnon - V:1280

Lost are my father's altars, but the block is there

to reek with sacrificial blood, my own. We two

must die, yet die not vengeless by the gods. For there

shall come one to avenge us also, born to slay

his mother, and to wreak death for his father's blood.

Outlaw and wanderer, driven far from his own land,

he will come back to cope these stones of inward hate.

Agamemnon - V:1190

Cassandra

No longer shall my prophecies like some young girl

new-married glance from under veils, but bright and strong

as winds blow into morning and the sun's uprise

shall wax along the swell like some great wave, to burst

at last upon the shining of this agony.

Now I will tell you plainly and from no cryptic speech;

bear me then witness, running at my heels upon

the scent of these old brutal things done long ago.

There is a choir that sings as one, that shall not again

leave this house ever; the song thereof breaks harsh with menace.

And drugged to double fury on the wine of men's

blood shed, there lurks forever here a drunken rout

of ingrown vengeful spirits never to be cast forth.

Hanging above the hall they chant their song of hate

and the old sin; and taking up the strain in turn

spit curses on that man who spoiled his brother's bed.

Did I go wide, or hit, like a real archer? Am I

some swindling seer who hawks his lies from door to door?

Upon your oath, bear witness that I know by heart

the legend of ancient wickedness within this house.

Agamemnon - V:1025

But when the black and mortal blood of man
has fallen to the ground before his feet, who then
can sing spells to call it back again?
Did Zeus not warn us once
when he struck to impotence
that one who could in truth charm back the dead men?
Had the gods not so ordained
that fate should stand against fate
to check any man's excess.
my heart now would have outrun speech
to break forth the water of its grief.
But this is so; I murmur deep in darkness
sore at heart; my hope is gone now
ever again to unwind some crucial good
from the flames about my heart.

Agamemnon - V:870

here in his house. Had Agamemnon taken all

the wounds the tale whereof was carried home to me,

he had been cut full of gashes like a fishing net.

If he had died each time that rumor told his death,

he must have been some triple-bodied Geryon

back from the dead with threefold cloak of earth upon

his body, and killed once for every shape assumed.

Because such tales broke out forever on my rest,

many a time they cut me down and freed my throat
from the noose overslung where I had caught it fast.

Agamemnon - V:775

And Righteousness is a shining in

the smoke of mean houses.

Her blessing is on the just man.

From high halls starred with gold by reeking hands

she turns back

with eyes that glance away to the simple in heart,

spurning the strength of gold

stamped false with flattery.

And all things she steers to fulfilment.

Agamemnon - V:690

Chorus

Who is he that named you so

fatally in every way?

Could it be some mind unseen

in divination of your destiny

shaping to the lips that name

for the bride of spears and blood,

Helen, which is death? Appropriately

death of ships, death of men and cities

from the bower's soft curtained

and secluded luxury she sailed then,

driven on the giant west wind,

and armored men in their thousands came,

huntsmen down the oar blade's fading footprint

to struggle in blood with those

who by the banks of Simoeis

beached their hulls where the leaves break.

Agamemnon - V:655

For they, of old the deepest enemies, sea and fire,

made a conspiracy and gave the oath of hand

to blast in ruin our unhappy Argive army.

At night the sea began to rise in waves of death.

Ship against ship the Thracian stormwind shattered us,

and gored and split, our vessels, swept in violence

of storm and whirlwind, beaten by the breaking rain,

drove on in darkness, spun by the wicked shepherd's hand.

But when the sun came up again to light the dawn,

we saw the Aegean Sea blossoming with dead men,

the men of Achaea, and the wreckage of their ships.

Agamemnon - V:405

She left among her people the stir and clamor

of shields and of spearheads,

the ships to sail and the armor.

She took to Ilium her dowry, death.

She stepped forth lightly between the gates

daring beyond all daring. And the prophets

about the great house wept aloud and spoke:

"Alas, alas for the house and for the champions,

alas for the bed signed with their love together.

Here now is silence, scorned, unreproachful.

The agony of his loss is clear before us.

Longing for her who lies beyond the sea

he shall see a phantom queen in his household.

Her images in their beauty

are bitterness to her lord now

where in the emptiness of eyes

all passion has faded."

Agamemnon - V:370

They have the stroke of Zeus to tell of.

This thing is clear and you may trace it.

He acted as he had decreed. A man thought

the gods deigned not to punish mortals

who trampled down the delicacy of things

inviolable. That man was wicked.

The curse on great daring

shines clear; it wrings atonement

from those high hearts that drive to evil,

from houses blossoming to pride

and peril. Let there be

wealth without tears; enough for

the wise man who will ask no further.

There is not any armor

is gold against perdition

for him who spurns the high altar

of Justice down to the darkness.

Agamemnon - V:220

But when necessity's yoke was put upon him

he changed, and from the heart the breath came bitter

and sacrilegious, utterly infidel,

to warp a will now to be stopped at nothing.

The sickening in men's minds, tough,

reckless in fresh cruelty brings daring. He endured then

to sacrifice his daughter

to stay the strength of war waged for a woman,

first offering for the ships' sake.

Agamemnon - V:35

May it only happen. May my king come home, and I

take up within his hand I love. The rest

I leave to silence; for an ox stands huge upon

my tongue. The house itself, could it take voice, might speak

aloud and plain. I speak to those who understand,

but if they fail, I have forgotten everything.

Agamemnon - Opening

SCENE: Argos, before the palace of King Agamemnon. The Watchman, who speaks the opening lines, is posted on the roof of the palace. Clytamestra's entrances are made from a door in the center of the stage; all others, from the wings.

(The Watchman, alone.)

I ask the gods some respite from the weariness

of this watchtime measured by years I lie awake

elbowed upon the Atreidae's roof dogwise to mark

the grand processionals of all the stars of night

burdened with winter and again with heat for men,

dynasties in their shining blazoned on the air,

these stars, upon their wane and when the rest arise.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

1953 by The University of Chicago

Agamemnon: Copyright 1947 by Richmond Lattimore

All rights reserved. Published 1953

Printed in the United States of America

All rights of performance, professional and amateur, are strictly reserved. Requests for permission should be addressed to the publisher.

Oresteia

Behind the personal motivations in the two first dramas of the trilogy, we can, if we choose, discern a conflict of related forces: of the younger against the elder generation; of male against female; of the Greek against barbarian. As the gods step out of the darkness, where, before, they could be reached only in fitful visions of the prophetic mind, and take their place on the stage, they personify there general forces, and, because they are divine and somewhat abstract, they can carry still further dimensions of meaning. The Furies are older than Apollo and Athene, and, being older, they are childish and barbarous; attached to Clytamestra as mother, they are themselves female and represent the woman's claim to act which Clytamestra has sustained from the beginning; in a Greek world they stand for the phase of pre-Hellenism, the dark of the race and of the world; they have archaic uprightness and strictness in action, with its attendant cruelty; they insist on the fact against the idea; they ignore the justifications of Orestes, for the blood on his hands means far more then the reasons why the blood is there. Apollo stands for everything which the Furies are not: Hellenism, civilization, intellect, and enlightenment. He is male and young. He despises cruelty for the fun of cruelty, and the thirst for blood, but he is as ruthless as the Furies. The commonwealth of the gods -- therefore the universe -- is in a convulsion of growth; the young Olympians are fighting down their own barbaric past.