Agamemnon's
sacrifice of IphigeneiaAgamemnon's
actions in TroyAgamemnon's
first speech
Cassandra
forsees Agamemnon's murderCassandra
speaks of the River Scamander
Clytaemnestra
claims love for Agamemnon Cly
welcomes Agamemnon
Cly
as a woman-lionessCly's
self-defense
Helen
as death Uncertaintly of Menelaus'
fate Description of Paris
Agamemnon's sacrifice
of Iphigeneia
Chorus:
The elder [Agamemnon] spoke
aloud before them:
"My fate is angry if I
disobey these,
but angry if I slaughter
this child, the beauty
of my house,
with maiden blood shed
staining
these father's hands beside
the altar.
What of these things goes
now without disaster?
How shall I fail my ships
and lose my faith of battle?
For them to urge such sacrifice
of innocent blood
angrily, for their wrath
is great--it is right. May all be well yet."
But when necessity's yoke
was put upon him
he changed, and from the
heart the breath came bitter
and sacrilegious, utterly
infidel,
to warp a will now to be
stopped at nothing.
The sickening in men's
minds, tough,
reckless in fresh cruelty
brings daring. He endured then
to sacrifice his daughter
to stay the strength of
war waged for a woman,
first offering for the
ships' sake.
(205-226)
Description of Agamemnon
and his actions in Troy
Herald:
O great hall of the kings
and house beloved; seats
of sanctity; divinities
that face the sun;
if ever before, look now
with kinds and glowing eyes
to greet our king in state
after so long a time.
He comes, lord Agamemnon,
bearing light in gloom
to you, and to all that
are assembled here.
Salute him with good favor,
as he well deserves,
the man who has wrecked
Ilium with the spade of Zeus
vindictive, whereby all
their plain has been laid waste.
Gone are their altars,
the sacred places of the gods
are gone, and scattered
all the seed within the ground.
With such a yoke as this
gripped to the neck of Troy
he comes, the king, Atreus'
elder son, a man
fortunate to be honored
far above all men
alive; not Paris nor the
city tied to him
can boast he did more than
was done him in return.
Guilty of rape and theft,
condemned, he lost the prize
captured, and broke to
sheer destruction all the house
of his fathers, with the
very ground whereon it stood.
Twice over the sons of
Priam have atoned their sins.
(518-537).
Agamemnon's first
speech
Agamemnon:
To Argos first, and to
the gods within the land,
I must give due greeting;
they have worked with me to bring
me home; they helped me
in the vengeance I have wrought
on Priam's city. Not from
the lips of men the gods
heard justice, but in one
firm cast they laid their votes
within the urn of blood
that Ilium must die
and all her people; while
above the opposite vase
the hand hovered and there
was hope, but no vote fell.
The stormclouds of their
ruin live; the ash that dies
upon them gushes still
in smoke their pride of wealth.
For all this we must thank
the gods with grace of much
high praise and memory,
we who fenced within our toils
of wrath the city; and,
because one woman strayed,
the beast of Argos broke
them, the fierce young within
the horse, the armored
people who marked out their leap
against the setting of
the Pleiades. A wild
and blood lion swarmed
above the towers of Troy
to glut its hunger lapping
at the blood of kings.
(811-828).
Cassandra forsees
Agamemnon's murder
Chorus:
We had been told before
of this prophetic fame
of yours; we want no prophets
in this place at all.
Cassandra:
Ah, for shame, what can
she [Clytaemnestra] purpose now?
What is this new and huge
stroke of atrocity she
plans within the house
to beat down the beloved
beyond hope of healing?
Rescue is far away.
Chorus:
I can make nothing of these
prophecies. The rest
I understood; the city
is full of the sound of them.
Cassandra:
So cruel then, that you
can do this thing?
The husband of your own
bed
to bathe bright with water--how
shall I speak the end?
This thing shall be done
with speed.The hand gropes now, and the other
hand follows in turn.
(1098-1111).
Cassandra
speaks of the river Scamander
Cassandra:
Oh marriage of Paris, death
to the men beloved!
Alas, Scamandrus, water
my fathers drank.
There was a time I too
at your springs
drank and grew strong.
Ah me,
for now beside the deadly
rivers, Cocytus
and Acheron, I must cry
out my prophecies.
(1156-1161)
Clytaemnestra
claims love for Agamemnon
Clytaemnestra:
Grave gentlemen of Argolis
assembled here,
I take no shame to speak
aloud before you all
the love I bear my husband.
In the lapse of time
modesty fades; it is human.
(855-858).
Clytaemnestra's
deceptive welcome to Agamemnon
Clytaemnestra:
Now all my suffering is
past, with griefless heart
I hail this man, the watchdog
of the fold and hall...
Such is my greeting to him,
that he well deserves.
Let none bear malice; for
the harm that went before
I took, and it was great.
Now, my beloved one,
step from your chariot;
yet let not your foot, my lord,
sacker of Ilium, touch
the earth. My maidens there!
Why this delay? Your task
has been appointed you,
to strew the ground before
his feet with tapestries.
Let there spring up into
the house he never hoped
to see, where Justice leads
him in, a crimson path.
In all things else, my heart's
unsleeping care shall act
with the gods' aid to set
aright what fate ordained.
(895-896, 903-913).
Clytaemnestra
as a woman-lioness
Cassandra:
Oh, flame and pain that
sweeps me once again! My lord,
Apollo, King of Light,
the pain, aye me, the pain!
This is the woman-lioness,
who goes to bed
with the wolf, when her
proud lion ranges far away,
and she will cut me down;
as a wife mixing drugs
she wills to shred the
virtue of my punishment
into her bowl of wrath
as she makes sharp the blade
against her man, death
that he brought a mistress home.
(1256-1264).
Clytaemnestra
defends killing Agamemnon
Clytaemnestra:
You try me out as if I
were a woman and vain;
but my heart is not fluttered
as I speak before you.
You know it. You can praise
or blame me as you wish;
it is all one to me. That
man is Agamemnon,
my husband; he is dead;
the work of this right hand
that sturck in strength
of righteousness. And that is that.
(1401-1406)
Helen as
death
Chorus:
Who is he that named you
so
fatally in every way?
Could it be some mind unseen
in divination of your destiny
shaping to the lips that
name
for the bride of spears
and blood,
Helen, which is death?
Appropriately
death of ships, death of
men and cities
from the bower's soft curtained
and secluded luxury she
sailed then,
driven on the giant west
wind,
and armored men in their
thousands came,
huntsmen down the oar blade's
fading footprint
to struggle in blood with
those
who by the banks fo Simoeis
beached their hulls where
the leaves break.
(681-798).
Uncertaintly of
Menelaus' fate
Herald:
Now of these others, if
there are any left alive
they speak of us as men
who perished, must they not?
Even as we, who fear that
they are gone. But may
it all come well in the
end. For Menelaus; be sure
if any of them come back
that he will be the first.
If he is still where some
sun's gleam can track him down,
alive and open-eyed, by
blessed hand of God
who willed that not yet
should his seed be utterly gone,
there is some hope that
he will still come home again.
You have heard all; and
be sure, you have heard the truth.
(671-680)
Paris
Chorus:
This was Paris;
he came to the house of
the sons of Atreus,
stole the woman away, and
shamed
the guest's right of the
board shared.
(399-402)
Text from Richmond Lattimore's translation of The Oresteia, 1953.
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