Eumenides

Aeschylus

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

  1. you will spit out your venom—no great burden to your enemies. The balloting is now ended.
Chorus
  1. Since you, a youth, would ride me down, an old woman, I am waiting to hear the verdict in the case, since I have not decided whether to be angry at the city.
Athena
  1. It is my duty to give the final judgment
  2. and I shall cast my vote for Orestes. For there was no mother who gave me birth; and in all things, except for marriage, whole-heartedly I am for the male and entirely on the father’s side. Therefore, I will not award greater honor to the death of a woman
  3. who killed her husband, the master of the house. Orestes wins, even if the vote comes out equal. Cast the ballots out of the urns, as quickly as possible, you jurors who have been assigned this task. The ballots are turned out and separated.
Orestes
  1. O Phoebus Apollo! How will the trial be decided?
Chorus
  1. O Night, our dark Mother, do you see this?
Orestes
  1. Now I will meet my end by hanging, or I will live.
Chorus
  1. Yes, and we will be ruined, or maintain our honors further.
Apollo
  1. Correctly count the ballots cast forth, friends, and be in awe of doing wrong in the division of the votes.
  2. Error of judgment is the source of much distress, and the cast of a single ballot has set upright a house. The ballots are shown to Athena.
Athena
  1. This man is acquitted on the charge of murder, for the numbers of the casts are equal. Apollo disappears.
Orestes
  1. Pallas, savior of my house!
  2. I was deprived of a fatherland, and it is you who have given me a home there again. The Hellenes will say, The man is an Argive once again, and lives in his father’s heritage, by the grace of Pallas and of Loxias and of that third god, the one who accomplishes everything,
  3. the savior—the one who, having respect for my father’s death, saves me, seeing those advocates of my mother. I will return to my home now, after I swear an oath to this land and to your people[*](The passage points to the league between Athens and Argos, formed after Cimon was ostracized (461 B.C.) and the treaty with Sparta denounced.) for the future and for all time to come,
  4. that no captain of my land will ever come here and bring a well-equipped spear against them. For I myself, then in my grave, will accomplish it by failure without remedy,
  5. making their marches spiritless and their journeys ill-omened, so that those who violate my present oath will repent their enterprise. But while the straight course is preserved, and they hold in everlasting honor this city of Pallas with their allied spears, I will be the more well-disposed to them.
  6. And so farewell—you and the people who guard your city. May your struggle with your enemies let none escape, bringing you safety and victory with the spear! Exit.
Chorus
  1. Younger gods, you have ridden down the ancient laws and have taken them from my hands![*](To avoid the collision of metaphors, Abresch assumed the loss of a line in which some qualification of Orestes would have been named as object of the second verb. Verrall thought the object was designedly omitted to indicate the passion of the Erinyes.)
  2. And I—dishonored, unhappy, deeply angry—on this land, alas, I will release venom from my heart, venom in return for my grief, drops that the land cannot endure. From it,