Agamemnon

Aeschylus

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

  1. And yet a people’s voice is a mighty power.
Clytaemestra
  1. True, yet he who is unenvied is unenviable.
Agamemnon
  1. Surely it is not woman’s part to long for fighting.
Clytaemestra
  1. True, but it is right for the happy victor to yield the victory.
Agamemnon
  1. What? is this the kind of victory in strife that you prize?
Clytaemestra
  1. Oh yield! Yet of your own free will entrust the victory to me.
Agamemnon
  1. Well, if you will have your way,
  2. 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.
  3. 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,
  4. 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.
Clytaemestra
  1. There is the sea (and who shall drain it dry?) producing stain of abundant purple, costly as silver
  2. 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
  3. 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;
  4. 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
Chorus
  1. 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
  2. and spurn the terror like an uninterpretable dream? But Time has collected the sands of the shore upon the cables cast thereon
  3. 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.)
Chorus
  1. Of their coming home I learn with my own eyes and need no other witness.
  2. 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.
  3. 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