Libation Bearers

Aeschylus

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

  1. that occurred in this house of Atreus have always made my heart ache within my breast! But never yet have I endured a blow like this. For all the other troubles I bore patiently, but my beloved Orestes, on whom I spent my soul,
  2. whom I took from his mother at birth and nursed, and the many and troublesome tasks, fruitless for all my enduring them, when his loud and urgent cries broke my rest.... For one must nurse the senseless thing like a dumb beast, of course one must, by following its humor.
  3. For while it is still a baby in swaddling clothes, it has no speech at all, whether hunger moves it, or thirst perhaps, or the call of need: children’s young insides work their own relief. I would anticipate these needs. Yet many a time, I think, having to wash the child’s linen because of my own errors,
  4. laundress and nurse had the same function. It was I who, with these two handicrafts, received Orestes for his father. And now, wretch that I am, I hear that he is dead. But I am on my way to fetch the man who wrought destruction on
  5. our house, and he will be glad enough to hear this news.
Chorus
  1. Then arrayed how does she tell him to come?
Nurse
  1. Arrayed how? Say it again so that I may catch your meaning better.
Chorus
  1. With his guards or perhaps unattended?
Nurse
  1. She tells him to come with his retinue of spearmen.
Chorus
  1. Well, do not give this message to our loathed master, but with all haste and with a cheerful heart tell him to come himself, alone, so that he may be told without alarm. For in the mouth of a messenger a crooked message is made straight.[*](A proverbial saying, meant for the Nurse, and not for Aegisthus: In passing through the mouth of its bearer a message may be changed as he pleases.)
Nurse
  1. What! Are you gladdened at heart by the present news?
Chorus
  1. Why not, if Zeus at last may cause our ill wind to change?
Nurse
  1. But how can that be? Orestes, the hope of our house, is gone.
Chorus
  1. Not yet; he would be a poor prophet who would so interpret.
Nurse
  1. What are you saying? Do you know something beyond what has been told?
Chorus
  1. Go, deliver your message! Do what you are asked to do!
  2. The gods take care of what they take care of.
Nurse
  1. Well, I will go and do your bidding. With the gods’ blessing may everything turn out for the best! Exit
Chorus
  1. Now at my supplication, O Zeus, father of the Olympian gods, grant that the fortunes of our house be firmly established,
  2. so that those who rightly desire the rule of order may behold it. Every word of mine has been uttered in justice. O Zeus, may you safeguard it!