Agamemnon
Aeschylus
Aeschylus, Volume 2. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1926.
- But I will not be angry, since I pity her.
- Come, unhappy one, leave the car; yield to necessity and take upon you this novel yoke.
- Woe, woe, woe! O Apollo, O Apollo!
- Wherefore your cry of woe in Loxias’ name?
- He is not the kind of god that has to do with mourners.
- Woe, woe, woe! O Apollo, O Apollo!
- Once more with ill-omened words she cries to the god who should not be present at times of lamentation.
- Apollo, Apollo! God of the Ways,[*](Cassandra sees an image of Apollo, the protector on journeys, close to the door leading to the street (ἀγυιά).)my destroyer! For you have destroyed me—and utterly—this second time.[*](Ἀπόλλων is here derived from Ἀπόλλυμι, destroy—nomen omen. The god had destroyed her the first time in making vain his gift of prophecy (1209 ff.); whereby she became the object of derision in Troy.)
- I think that she is about to prophesy about her own miseries. The divine gift still abides even in the soul of one enslaved.
- Apollo, Apollo! God of the Ways, my destroyer! Ah, what way is this that you have brought me! To what a house!
- To that of Atreus’ sons. If you do not perceive this, I’ll tell it to you. And you shall not say that it is untrue.
- No, no, rather to a god-hating house, a house that knows many a horrible butchery of kin, a slaughter-house of men and a floor swimming with blood.
- The stranger seems keen-scented as a hound; she is on the trail where she will discover blood.
- Here is the evidence in which I put my trust! Behold those babies bewailing their own butchery and their roasted flesh eaten by their father!
- Your fame to read the future had reached our ears; but we have no need of prophets here.
- These prophesyings pass my comprehension; but those I understood—the whole city rings with them.
- Ah, damned woman, will you do this thing? Your husband, the partner of your bed, when you have cheered him with the bath, will you—how shall I tell the end?
- Soon it will be done. Now this hand, now that, she stretches forth!
- Not yet do I comprehend; for now, after riddles, I am bewildered by dark oracles.