Æschylos Tragedies and Fragments

EUMENIDES

Verses 297-374Come then, and let us dance in solemn strain;It is our will to chant our harsh refrain,And tell how this our bandWorks among men the tasks we take in hand.In righteous vengeance find we full delight;On him who putteth forth clean hands and pureNo wrath from us doth light;Unhurt shall he through all his life endure;But whoso, as this man, hath evil wrought,And hides hands stained with blood,On him we come, with power prevailing fraught,True witnesses and good,For those whom he has slain, and bent to winFull forfeit-price for that his deed of sin.Strophe IO Mother, Mother Night!Who did'st bear me a penalty and curseTo those who see and those who see not light,Hear thou; for Leto's son, in mood perverse,Puts me to foulest shame,In that he robs me of my trembling prey,The victim whom we claim,That we his mother's blood may wash away;And over him as slainSing we this dolorous, frenzied, maddening strain,The song that we, the Erinnyes, love so well,That binds the soul as with enchanter's spell,Without one note from out the sweet-voiced lyre,Withering the strength of men as with a blast of fire.Antistrophe IFor this our task hath FateSpun without fail to last for ever sure,That we on man weighed down with deeds of hateShould follow till the earth his life immure.Nor when he dies can heBoast of being truly free;And over him as slainSing we this dolorous, frenzied, maddening strain,The song that we, the Erinnyes, love so well,That binds the soul as with enchanter's spell,Without one note from out the sweet-voiced lyre,Withering the strength of men as with a blast of fire.Strophe IIYea, at our birth this lot to us was given,And from the immortal Ones who dwell in HeavenWe still must hold aloof;None sits with us at banquets of delight,Or shares a common roof,Nor part nor lot have I in garments white;My choice was made a race to overthrow,When murder, home-reared, lays a loved one low;Strong though he be, upon his track we tread,And drain his blood till all his strength is fled.Antistrophe IIYea, 'tis our work to set another freeFrom tasks like this, and by my service dueTo give the Gods their perfect liberty,Relieved from task of meting judgment true;For this our tribe from out his fellowshipZeus hath cast out as worthy of all hate,And from our limbs the purple blood-drops drip;So with a mighty leap and grievous weightMy foot I bring upon my quivering prey,With power to make the swift and strong give way,An evil and intolerable fate.Strophe IIIAnd all the glory and the pride of men,Though high exalted in the light of day,Wither and fade away,Of little honour then,When in the darkness of the grave they stay,By our attack brought low,The loathèd dance through which in raiment black we go:Antistrophe IIIAnd through the ill that leaves him dazed and blind,He still is all unconscious that he falls,So thick a cloud enthralsThe vision of his mind:And Rumour with a voice of wailing calls,And tells of gathering gloomThat doth the ancient halls in darkness thick entomb.Strophe IVSo it abideth still;Ready and prompt are we to work our will,The dreaded Ones who bringThe dire remembrance of each deed of ill,Whom mortals may not soothe with offering,Working a task with little honour fraught,Yea, all dishonoured, task the Gods detest,In sunless midnight wrought,By which alike are pressedThose who yet live, and those who lie in gloom unblest.Antistrophe IVWhat mortal man then will not crouch in fear,As he my work shall hear,The task to me by destiny from HeavenAs from the high Gods given?Yea, a time-honoured lot is mine I trow,No shame in it I see,Though deep beneath the earth my station be,In gloom that never feels the sunlight's quickening glow.Verses 468-537Strophe INow is there utter fall and overthrow,Which new-made laws begin;If he who struck the matricidal blow,His right – not so, his utter wrong shall win,This baseness will the minds of all men leadTo wanton, reckless thought,And now for parents waits there woe, and deedOf parricidal guilt by children wrought.Antistrophe IFor then no more shall wrath from this our band,The Mænad troop that watch the deeds of men,Come for these crimes; but lo! on either handI will let slip all evil fate, and then,Telling his neighbours' grief,Shall this man seek from that, and seek in vain,Remission and relief,Nor is there any certain cure for pain.And lo! the wretched man all fruitlesslyFor grace and help shall cry.Strophe IIHenceforth let no man in his anguish call,When he sore-smitten by ill-chance shall fall,Uttering with groan and moan,“O mighty Justice, O Erinnyes' throne!”So may a father or a mother wail,Struck by new woe, and tell their sorrow's tale;For low on earth doth lieThe home where Justice once her dwelling had on high.Antistrophe IIYea, there are times when reverent Awe should stayAs guardian of the soul;It profits much to learn through sufferingThe bliss of self-control.Who that within the heart's full daylight bearsNo touch of holy awe,Be it or man or State that casts out fear,Will still own reverence for the might of law?Strophe IIINor life that will no sovran rule obey,Nor one down-crushed beneath a despot's sway,Shalt thou approve;God still gives power and strength for victoryTo all that in the golden mean doth lie.All else, as they in diverse order move,He scans with watchful eye.With this I speak a word in harmony,That of irreverence stillOutrage is offspring ill,While from the soul's true healthComes the much-loved, much-prayed-for joy and wealth.Antistrophe IIIYes, this I bid thee know;Bow thou before the altar of the Right,And let no wandering glanceThat looks at gain askanceLead thee with godless foot to scorn or slight.Know well the appointed penalty shall come;The doom remaineth sure and will at last strike home.Wherefore let each man pay the reverence dueTo those who call him son;By each to thronging guests let honour trueIn loyal faith be done.Strophe IVBut one who with no pressure of constraintOf his free will draws back from evil taint,He shall not be unblest,Nor ever sink by utter woe oppressed.But this I still aver,That he whose daring leads him to transgress,The chaos wild of evil deeds to stir,In sharp and sore distress,Against his will will slacken sail ere long,When, as his timbers crash before the blast,He feels the tempest strong.Antistrophe IVThen in the midst of peril he at lastShall call on those who then will hear him not.Yea, God still laughs to scornThe man by evil tide of passions borne,Swayed by thoughts wild and hot,When he beholdeth one whose boast was highHe ne'er should know it, sunk in misery,And all unable round the point to steer;And so his former pride of prosperous daysHe wrecks upon the reefs of Vengeance drear,And dies with none to weep him or to praise.THE END

1

Cf., the legend of Caedmon, “the Father of English Song.”

2

Note.– Within two years after the battle of Salamis, the feeling of natural exultation was met by Phrynichos in a tragedy bearing the title of The Phœnikians, and having for its subject the defeat of Xerxes. As he had come under the displeasure of the Athenian demos for having brought on the stage the sufferings of their Ionian kinsmen in his Capture of Miletos, he was apparently anxious to regain his popularity by a “sensation” drama of another kind; and his success seems to have prompted Æschylos to a like attempt five years later, B.C. 473. The Tetralogy to which the play belonged, and which gained the first prize on its representation, included the two tragedies (unconnected in subject) of Phineus and Glaucos, and the satyric drama of Prometheus the Fire-stealer.

The play has, therefore, the interest of being strictly a contemporary narrative of the battle of Salamis and its immediate consequences, by one who may himself have been present at it, and whose brother Ameinias (Herod, viii. 93) distinguished himself in it by a special act of heroism. As such, making all allowance for the influence of dramatic exigencies, and the tendency to colour history so as to meet the tastes of patriotic Athenians, it may claim, where it differs from the story told by Herodotos, to be a more trustworthy record. And it has, we must remember, the interest of being the only extant drama of its class, the only tragedy the subject of which is not taken from the cycle of heroic myths, but from the national history of the time. Far below the Oresteian Trilogy as it may seem to us as a work of art, having more the character of a spectacle than a poem, it was, we may well believe, unusually successful at the time, and it is said to have been chosen by Hiero for reproduction in Syracuse after Æschylos had settled there under his patronage.

3

“The Faithful,” or “trusty,” seems to have been a special title of honour given to the veteran councillors of the king (Xenoph. Anab. i. 15), just as that of the “Immortals” was chosen for his body-guard (Herod, vii. 83).

4

Susa was pre-eminently the treasury of the Persian kings (Herod, v. 49; Strabo, xv. p. 731), their favourite residence in spring, as Ecbatana in Media was in summer and Babylon in winter.

5

Kissia was properly the name of the district in which Susa stood; but here, and in v. 123, it is treated as if it belonged to a separate city. Throughout the play there is, indeed, a lavish use of Persian barbaric names of persons and places, without a very minute regard to historical accuracy.

6

Here, as in Herodotos and Greek writers generally, the title, “the King,” or “the great King,” was enough. It could be understood only of the Persian. The latter name had been borne by the kings of Assyria (2 Kings xviii. 28). A little later it passed into the fuller, more boastful form of “The King of kings.”

7

The inhabitants of the Delta of the Nile, especially those of the marshy districts near the Heracleotic mouth, were famed as supplying the best and bravest soldiers of any part of Egypt. – Comp. Thucyd. i. 110.

8

The epithet was applied probably by Æschylos to the Lydians properly so called, the barbaric race with whom the Hellenes had little or nothing in common. They, in dress, diet, mode of life, their distaste for the contests of the arena, seemed to the Greeks the very type of effeminacy. The Ionian Greeks, however, were brought under the same influence, and gradually acquired the same character. The suppression of the name of the Ionians in the list of the Persian forces may be noticed as characteristic. The Athenian poet would not bring before an Athenian audience the shame of their Asiatic kinsmen.

9

Tmôlos, sacred as being the mythical birth-place of Dionysos.

10

“Spear-anvils,” sc., meeting the spear of their foes as the anvils would meet it, turning its point, themselves steadfast and immovable.

11

So Herodotos (vii. 74) in his account of the army of Xerxes describes the Mysians as using for their weapons those darts or “javelins” made by hardening the ends in the fire.

12

Helle the daughter of Athamas, from whom the Hellespont took its name. For the description of the pontoons formed by boats, which were moored together with cables and finally covered with faggots, comp. Herod, vii. 36.

13

“Gold-born,” sc., descended from Perseus, the child of Danaë.

14

Syrian, either in the vague sense in which it became almost synonymous with Assyrian, or else showing that Syria, properly so called, retained the fame for chariots which it had had at a period as early as the time of the Hebrew Judges (Judg. v. 3). Herodotos (vii. 140) gives an Oracle of Delphi in which the same epithet appears.

15

The description, though put into the mouth of Persians, is meant to flatter Hellenic pride. The Persians and their army were for the most part light-armed troops only, barbarians equipped with javelins or bows. In the sculptures of Persepolis, as in those of Nineveh and Khorsabad, this mode of warfare is throughout the most conspicuous. They, the Hellenes, were the hoplites, warriors of the spear and the shield, the cuirass and the greaves.

16

A touch of Athenian exultation in their life as seamen. To them the sea was almost a home. They were familiar with it from childhood. To the Persians it was new and untried. They had a new lesson to learn, late in the history of the nation, late in the lives of individual soldiers.

17

The bridge of boats, with the embankment raised upon it, is thought of as a new headland putting out from the one shore and reaching to the other.

18

Stress is laid by the Hellenic poet, as in the Agamemnon (v. 895), and in v. 707 of this play, on the tendency of the East to give to its kings the names and the signs of homage which were due only to the Gods. The Hellenes might deify a dead hero, but not a living sovereign. On different grounds the Jews shrank, as in the stories of Nebuchadnezzar and Dareios (Dan. iii. 6), from all such acts.

19

In the Greek, as in the translation, there is a change of metre, intended apparently to represent the transition from the tone of eager excitement to the ordinary level of discourse.

20

With reference either to the mythos that Asia and Europa were both daughters of Okeanos, or to the historical fact that the Asiatic Ionians and the Dorians of Europe were both of the same Hellenic stock. The contrast between the long flowing robes of the Asiatic women, and the short, scanty kilt-like dress of those of Sparta must be borne in mind if we would see the picture in its completeness.

21

Athenian pride is flattered with the thought that they had resisted while the Ionian Greeks had submitted all too willingly to the yoke of the Barbarian.

22

Lustrations of this kind, besides their general significance in cleansing from defilement, had a special force as charms to turn aside dangers threatened by foreboding dreams. Comp. Aristoph. Frogs, v. 1264; Persius, Sat. ii. 16.

23

The political bearing of the passage as contrasting this characteristic of the despotism of Persia with the strict account to which all Athenian generals were subject, is, of course, unmistakable.

24

The question, which seems to have rankled in the minds of the Athenians, is recorded as an historical fact, and put into the mouth of Dareios by Herodotos (v. 101). He had asked it on hearing that Sardis had been attacked and burnt by them.

25

The words point to the silver mines of Laureion, which had been worked under Peisistratos, and of which this is the first mention in Greek literature.

26

Once more the contrast between the Greek hoplite and the light-armed archers of the invaders is dwelt upon. The next answer of the Chorus dwells upon the deeper contrast, then prominent in the minds of all Athenians, between their democratic freedom and the despotism of Persia. Comp. Herod. v. 78.

27

The system of postal communications by means of couriers which Dareios had organised had made their speed in running proverbial (Herod. vii. 97).

28

With the characteristic contempt of a Greek for other races, Æschylos makes the Persians speak of themselves throughout as 'barbarians,' 'barbaric.'

29

Perhaps – “On planks that floated onward,”

or – “On land and sea far spreading.”

30

Possibly Salamis itself, as famed for the doves which were reared there as sacred to Aphrodite, but possibly also one of the smaller islands in the Saronic gulf, which the epithet would be enough to designate for an Athenian audience. The “coasts of the Sileni” in v. 305 are identified by scholiasts with Salamis.

31

Perhaps – “And ten of these selected as reserve.”

32

As regards the number of the Persian ships, 1000 of average, and 207 of special swiftness. Æschylos agrees with Herodotos, who gives the total of 1207. The latter, however, reckons the Greek ships not at 310, but 378 (vii. 89, viii. 48).

33

The fact that Athens had actually been taken, and its chief buildings plundered and laid waste, was, of course, not a pleasant one for the poet to dwell on. It could hardly, however, be entirely passed over, and this is the one allusion to it. In the truest sense it was still “unsacked:” it had not lost its most effective defence, its most precious treasure.

34

As the story is told by Herodotos (vii. 75), this was Sikinnos, the slave of Themistocles, and the stratagem was the device of that commander to save the Greeks from the disgrace and ruin of a sauve qui peut flight in all directions.

35

The Greeks never beheaded their criminals, and the punishment is mentioned as being specially characteristic of the barbaric Persians.

36

The Æginetans and Megarians, according to the account preserved by Diodoros (xi. 18), or the Lacedæmonians, according to Herodotos (viii. 65).

37

This may be meant to refer to the achievements of Ameinias of Pallene, who appears in the traditional life of Œschylos as his youngest brother.

38

Sc., in Herod. viii. 60, the strait between Salamis and the mainland.

39

Tunny-fishing has always been prominent in the occupations on the Mediterranean coasts, and the sailors who formed so large a part of every Athenian audience would be familiar with the process here described, of striking or harpooning them. Aristophanes (Wasps, 1087) coins (or uses) the word “to tunny” (θυννάζω) to express the act. Comp. Herod. i. 62.

40

Sc., Psyttaleia, lying between Salamis and the mainland. Pausanias (i. 36-82) describes it in his time as having no artistic shrine or statue, but full everywhere of roughly carved images of Pan, to whom the island was sacred. It lay just opposite the entrance to the Peiræos. The connexion of Pan with Salamis and its adjacent islands seems implied in Sophocles, Aias, 695.

41

The manœuvre was, we learn from Herodotos (viii. 95), the work of Aristeides, the personal friend of Æschylos, and the statesman with whose policy he had most sympathy.

42

The lines are noted as probably a spurious addition, by a weaker hand, to the text, as introducing surplusage, as inconsistent with Herodotos, and as faulty in their metrical structure.

43

So Herodotos (viii. 115) describes them as driven by hunger to eat even grass and leaves.

44

No trace of this passage over the frozen Strymon appears in Herodotos, who leaves the reader to imagine that it was crossed, as before, by a bridge. It is hardly, indeed, consistent with dramatic probability that the courier should have remained to watch the whole retreat of the defeated army; and on this and other grounds, the latter part of the speech has been rejected by some critics as a later addition.

45

The Ionians, not of the Asiatic Ionia, but of Attica.

46

Kychreia, the archaic name of Salamis.

47

The ritual described is Hellenic rather than Persian, and takes its place (Soph. Electr. 836; Eurip. Iphig. Taur. 583; Homer, Il. xxiii. 219) as showing what offerings were employed to soothe or call up the spirits of the dead. Comp. Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxx.

48

The description obviously gives the state dress of the Persian kings. They alone wore the tiara erect. Xen. Kyrop. viii. 3, 13.

49

Either that he has felt the measured tread of the mourners round his tomb, as they went wailing round and round, or that he has heard the rush of armies, and seen the plain tracked by chariot-wheels, and comes, not knowing all these things, to learn what it means.

50

The words point to the widespread belief that when the souls of the dead were permitted to return to the earth, it was with strict limitations as to the time of their leave of absence.

51

Perhaps – “I dread to speak the truth.”

52

According to Herodotos (vii. 225) two brothers of Xerxes fell at Thermopylæ.

53

As Herodotos (viii. 117) tells the story, the bridge had been broken by the tempest before Xerxes reached it.

54

Probably Mardonios and Onomacritos the Athenian soothsayer are referred to, who, according to Herodotos (vii. 6, viii. 99) were the chief instigators of the expedition.

55

Astyages, the father-in-law of Kyaxares and grandfather of Kyros. In this case Æschylos must be supposed to accept Xenophon's statement that Kyaxares succeeded to Astyages. Possibly, however, the Median may be Kyaxares I., the father of Astyages, and so the succession here would harmonise with that of Herodotos. The whole succession must be looked on as embodying the loose, floating notions of the Athenians as to the history of their great enemy, rather than as the result of inquiry.

56

Stress is laid on the violence to which the Asiatic Ionians had succumbed, and their resistance to which distinguished them from the Lydians or Phrygians, whose submission had been voluntary.

57

Mardos. Under this name we recognise the Pseudo-Smerdis of Herodotos (iii. 67), who, by restoring the dominion of the Median Magi, the caste to which he himself belonged, brought shame upon the Persians.

58

Possibly another form of Intaphernes, who appears in Herodotos (iii. 70) as one of the seven conspirators against the Magian Pseudo-Smerdis.

59

The force of 300,000 men left in Greece under Mardonios (Herod. viii. 113), afterwards defeated at Platæa.

60

Comp. the speech of Mardonios urging his plan on Xerxes (Herod. viii. 100).

61

This was of course a popular topic with the Athenians, whose own temples had been outraged. But other sanctuaries also, the temples at Delphi and Abæ, had shared the same fate, and these sins against the Gods of Hellas were naturally connected in the thoughts of the Greeks with the subsequent disasters of the Persians. In Egypt these outrages had an iconoclastic character. In Athens they were a retaliation for the destruction of the temple at Sardis (Herod. v. 102).

62

The reference to the prominent part taken by the Peloponnesian forces in the battle of Platæa is probably due to the political sympathies of the dramatist.

63

The speech of Atossa is rejected by Paley, on internal grounds, as spurious.

64

Apparently an allusion to the oracle given to Crœsos, that he, if he crossed the Halys, should destroy a great kingdom.

65

The name originally given to the Echinades, a group of islands at the mouth of the Acheloös, was applied generically to all islands lying near the mouth of all great rivers, and here, probably, includes Imbros, Thasos, and Samothrakè.

66

The geography is somewhat obscure, but the words seem to refer to the portion of the islands that are named as opposite (in a southerly direction) to the promontory of the Troad.

67

Salamis in Kypros had been colonised by Teukros, the son of Aias, and had received its name in remembrance of the island in the Saronic Gulf.

68

The Mariandynoi, a Paphlagonian tribe, conspicuous for their orgiastic worship of Adonis, had become proverbial for the wildness of their plaintive dirges.

69

The name seems to have been an official title for some Inspector-General of the Army. Comp. Aristoph. Acharn. v. 92.