Agamemnon

Aeschylus

Aeschylus, Volume 2. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1926.

  1. Enter Agamemnon and Cassandra, in a chariot, with a numerous retinue All hail, my King, sacker of Troy, off-spring of Atreus!
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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,
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
Agamemnon
  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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,
  4. 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.
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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,
  8. 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
  9. 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
Clytaemestra
  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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,
  4. 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,
  5. 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.