Aeschylus

A LYRICO-DRAMATIC SPECTACLE

???ea

????? ??? ?ssa te ?t??? ??????e? ??te????s??.

Odyssey xi. 289.

My solitude is solitude no more,

But peopled with the Furies.

Byron.

PERSONS

The Pythoness of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi.

Apollo.

Hermes (Mute).

The Shade of Clytemnestra.

Chorus of Furies.

Pallas Athena.

Judges of the Court of Areopagus (Mute).

Convoy of the Furies.

Scene—First at Delphi in the Temple of Apollo; then on the Hill of Mars, Athens.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Though the ancient Greek religion, there can be no question, was too much the creation of mere imagination, and tended rather to cultivate a delicate sense of beauty than to strike the soul with a severe reverence before the awful majesty of the moral law, yet it is no less certain that to look upon it as altogether addressed to our sensuous emotions, however convenient for a certain shallow school of theology, would lead the calm inquirer after moral truth far away from the right track. As among the gods that rule over the elements of the physical world, Jove, according to the Homeric creed, asserts a high supremacy, which restrains the liberty of the celestial aristocracy from running into lawless licence and confusion; so the wild and wanton ebullitions of human passion, over which a Bacchus, a Venus, and a Mars preside, are not free from the constant control of a righteous Jove, and the sacred terror of a retributive Erinnys. The great lesson of a moral government, and a secret order of justice pervading the apparent confusion of the system of things of which we are a part, is sufficiently obvious in the whole structure of the two great Homeric poems; but if it exists in the midst of that sunny luxuriance of popular fancy as a felt atmosphere, it is planted by Æschylus, the thoughtful lyrist of a later age, on a visible elevation, whence, as from a natural pulpit, enveloped with dark clouds, or from a Heathen Sinai, involved in fearful thunders and lightnings, it trumpets forth its warnings, and hurls its bolts of flaming denunciation against Sin. The reader, who has gone through the two preceding pieces of this remarkable trilogy, without discovering this their deep moral significance, has read to little purpose; but it is here, in the concluding piece, that the grand doctrine of the moral government of the world is most formally enunciated; it is in the person of the Furies that the wrathful indignation of Jove against the violators of the moral law manifests itself, in the full panoply of terror, and stands out as the stern Avatar of an inexorable Justice. Here, therefore, if we will understand the moral seriousness, of which the gay Hellenic Polytheism was not without its background, let us fix our gaze. If the principles of “immutable morality,” of which our great English Platonist talks so comprehensively, are to be found anywhere, they are to be found here.

The Furies (or the ??e??de?, i.e. the Gracious-minded, as they are called by a delicate euphemism) are generally looked upon as the impersonations of an evil conscience, the incarnated scourges of self-reproach. In this view there is no essential error; but it may be beneficial, in entering on the perusal of the present piece, to place before the modern reader more literally the true Homeric idea of these awful Powers. In the Iliad and Odyssey, frequent mention is made of the Erinnyes; and from the circumstances, in which their names occur, in various passages of these poems, there can be no doubt that we are to view them primarily as the impersonation of an imprecation or curse, which a person, whose natural rights have been grossly violated, pronounces on the person, by whom this violation comes.^f1 Thus the father of Phoenix (Il. ix. 453), being offended by the conduct of his son in relation to one of his concubines, “loads him with frequent curses, and invokes the hated Furies”—

????? ?at??at?, st??e??? d? ?p??e??et ???????,

and “the gods,” it is added, “gave accomplishment to his curse, the subterranean Jove, and the awful Persephone.” In the same book we find, in the narration of the war, between the Curetes and the Ætolians, about Calydon, how Althaea, the mother of Meleager, being offended with her son on account of his having slain her brother, cursed him, and invoked Pluto and Proserpine that he might die, and

Her the Fury that walketh in darkness,

Heard from Erebus’ depths, with a heart that knoweth no mercy.

Both these instances relate to offences committed against the revered character of a parent; but the elder brother also has his Erinnys.—(Il. xv. 204), and even the houseless beggar—(Od. xvii. 575), and, more than all, he to whose prejudice the sacred obligation of truth and honour have been set at nought by the perjured swearer—

Mighty Jove, be thou my witness, Jove of gods supremest, best,

Earth, and Sun, and Furies dread, that underneath the ground avenge

Whoso speaks and sweareth falsely—

says Agamemnon—(Il. xix. 257)—in restoring the intact Briseis to Achilles.

Thus, according to Homer’s idea, wherever there is a cry of righteous indignation, rising up to Heaven from the breast of an injured person, there may be a Fury or Furies; for they are not limited or defined in any way as to number. It is not, however, on every petty occasion of common offence that these dread ministers of divine vengeance appear. Only, when deeds of a deeper darkness are done, do these daughters of primeval Night (for so Æschylus symbolises their pedigree) issue forth from their subterranean caverns. There is something volcanic in their indignation, whose eruption is too terrible to be common. They chiefly frequent the paths, that are dabbled with blood. A murdered father, or a murdered mother especially, were never known to appeal to them in vain, even though Jove’s own prophet, Apollo, add his sanction to the deed. An Orestes may not hope to escape the bloody chase, which the “winged hounds,” invoked by a murdered Clytemnestra, are eager to prepare—the sacred precincts of an oracular Delphi may not repel their intrusion—the scent of blood “laughs in their nostrils,” and they will not be cheated of their game. Only one greatest goddess, in whose hands are the keys of her father’s armoury of thunder, may withstand the full rush of these vindictive powers. Only Pallas Athena, with her panoply of Olympian strength, and her divine wisdom of reconciliation can bid them be pacified.

In order to understand thoroughly the situation of the matricide Orestes, in the present play, we must consider further the ancient doctrine of pollution attaching to an act of murder, and the consequent necessity of purification to the offender. The nature of this is distinctly set forth by Orestes himself in a reply to his sister Iphigenia, put into his mouth by Euripides. “Loxias,” he says, “first sent me to Athens, and

There first arrived, no host would entertain me,

As being hated of the immortal gods,

And some, who pitied me, before me placed

Cold entertainment on a separate board;

Beneath the same roof though I lodged with them,

No interchange of living voice I knew,

But sat apart and ate my food alone.”

Iphig. Taur. 954.

Like an unclean leper among the Jews, the man polluted with human blood wandered from land to land, as with a Cain’s mark upon his brow, and every fellow-being shrank from his touch as from a living plague.

“For wisely thus our ancestors ordained,

That the blood-tainted man should know no joy

From sight of fellow-mortal or from touch,

But with an horrid sanctitude protected

Range the wide earth an exile.”

Eurip. Orest. 512.

Under the ban of such a social excommunication as this, the first act of readmission into the fraternity of human society was performed by the sprinkling of swine’s blood on the exile, a ceremony described particularly in the following passage of Apollonius Rhodius, where Jason and Medea are purified by Circe from the taint of the murder of Absyrtus:—

“First to free them from the taint of murder not to be recalled,

She above them stretched the suckling of a sow whose teats distilled

The juice that flows when birth is recent; this she cut across the throat,

And with the crimson blood outflowing dashed the tainted suppliants’ hands.

Then with other pure libations she allayed the harm, invoking

Jove that hears the supplication of the fugitive stained with blood.”

Argon. IV. 704-9.

The other “pure libations” here mentioned include specially water, of which particular mention is made in the legend of AlcmÆon, which bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Orestes, and in which it is in the sacred stream of the Achelous alone that purification is at length found, from the deeply-engrained guilt of matricide.—(Apollodor, Lib. III., c. 7.) All this, however, availed only to remove the unhallowed taint, with which human blood had defiled the murderer. It was necessary, further, that he should be tried before a competent court, and formally acquitted, as having performed every atonement and given every satisfaction that the nature of the case required. According to the consuetudinary law of Athens, there were various courts in which different cases of murder and manslaughter were tried; but of all the courts that held solemn judgment on shed blood, none was more venerable in its origin, or more weighty in its authority, than the famous court of the Areopagus; and here it is, accordingly, that, after being wearied out by the sleepless chase of his relentless pursuers, Orestes, with the advice and under the protection of Apollo, arrives to gain peace to his soul by a final verdict of acquittal from the sage elders of Athens, acting by the authority and with the direction of their wise patron-goddess, Athena.

The connection of Athena and the Areopagus with the Orestean legend gives to the present play a local interest and a patriotic hue of which the want is too often felt in the existing remains of the Attic tragedy. But Athena and the grave seniors of the hill of Ares are not the only celestial personages here, in whom an Athenian audience would find a living interest. The Furies themselves enjoyed a special reverence in the capital of Athens, under the title of Se??? ?ea?, or the dread goddesses; and the principal seat of this worship, whether by a happy conjunction or a wise choice, was situated on the north-east side (looking towards the Acropolis) of that very hill of the war god, where the venerable court that bore his name held its solemn sessions on those crimes, which it was the principal function of the Furies to avenge. Up to the present hour, the curious traveller through the wreck of Athenian grandeur sees pointed out the black rift of the rock into which the awful virgins, after accepting the pacification of Athena, are reported to have descended into their subterranean homes;^f2 and it is with this very descent, amid flaming torch-light and solemn hymns, that the great tragedian, mingling peace with fear, closes worthily the train of startling superhuman terrors which this drama exhibits.

But Æschylus is not a patriot only, and a pious worshipper of his country’s gods in this play, he is also, to some small extent at least, manifestly a politician. The main feature of the constitutional history of Athens in the period immediately following the great Persian war, to which period our trilogy belongs, was the enlargement and the systematic completion of those democratic forms, of which the timocratic legislation of Solon, about a century and a-half before, had planted the first germs. Of these changes, Pericles, the man above all others who knew both to understand and to control his age, was the chief promoter; and in a policy whose main tendency was the substitution of a numerous popular for a narrow professional control of public business, it could not fail to be a main feature, that the authority of the judges of the old aristocratic courts was curtailed in favour of those bodies of paid jurymen, the institution of which is specially attributed to Pericles and his coadjutor Ephialtes.^f3 Whether these changes were politic or not, in the large sense of that word, need not be inquired here; Mr. Grote has done much to lengthen the focus of those short-sighted national spectacles, through which the English eye has been accustomed to view the classic democracies; but let it be that Pericles kept within the bounds of a wise liberty in giving a fair and a large trial to the action of democratic principles at that time and place; or let it be, on the other hand, that he overstepped the line

“Which whoso passes, or who reaches not,

Misses the mark of right”—

in either case, where decision was so difficult, and discretion so delicate, no one can accuse the thoughtful tragic poet of a stolid conservatism, when he comes forward, in this play, as the advocate of the only court of high jurisdiction in Athens, now left unshaken by the great surge of those popular billows, that were yet swelling everywhere with the eager inspiration of Marathon and Salamis.^f4 The court of Areopagus was not now, since the legislation of Solon, and the further democratic movement of Cleisthenes, in any invidious or exclusive sense an aristocratic assembly, such as the close corporations of the old Roman aristocracy before the series of popular changes introduced by Licinius Stolo; it was a council, in fact, altogether without that family and hereditary element, in which the principal offence of aristocracy has always lain; its members were composed entirely (not recruited merely like our House of Lords) of those superior magistrates—archons annually elected by the people—who had retired from office. To magnify the authority of such a body, and maintain intact the few privileges that had now been left it, was, when an obvious opportunity offered, not only excusable in a great national tragedian, but imperative. One thing his political attitude in this matter certainly proves, that he was not a vulgar hunter after popularity, delighting to swell to the point of insane exaggeration the cry of the hour, but one of those men of high purpose, who prove a greater strength of patriotism by stemming the popular stream, than by swimming with it.

Besides the championship of the Court of the Areopagus, there is another political element in this rich drama, which, though of less consequence, must not be omitted. No sooner had the Persian invaders been fairly driven back from the Hellenic shore, than that old spirit of narrow local jealousy, which was the worm at the heart of Grecian political existence, broke out with renewed vigour, and gave ominous indications in the untoward affair of Tanagra, of that terrible collision which shook the two great rival powers a few years afterwards in the famous Peloponnesian war. Sparta and Athens, opposed as they were by race, by geographical position, and by political character, after some public attempts at co-operation, in which Cimon was the principal actor, shrunk back, as in quiet preparation for the great trial of strength, into a state of isolated antagonism. But, though open hostility was deferred, wise precaution could not sleep; and, accordingly, we find the Athenians, about this time, anxious to secure a base of operations, so to speak, against Sparta in the Peloponnesus, by entering into an alliance with Argos. As a genuine Athenian, Æschylus, whatever his political feelings might be towards Cimon and the Spartan party, could not but look with pleasure on the additional strength which this Argive connection gave to Athens in the general council of Greece; and, accordingly, he dexterously takes advantage of the circumstance of Orestes being an Argive, to trace back the now historical union of the two countries to a period where Fancy is free to add what links she pleases to the brittle bonds of international association.

Such is a rapid sketch of the principal religious and political relations, some notion of which is necessary to enable the general English reader to enter with sympathy on the perusal of the very powerful and singular drama of the Eumenides. The professional student, of course, will not content himself with what he finds here, but will seek for complete satisfaction in the luminous pages of Thirlwall and Grote—in the learned articles of Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities, in the notes of Schoemann, and, above all, in the rare Dissertations of Ottfried MÜller, accompanying his edition of the Eumenides—a work which I have read once and again with mingled admiration and delight—from which I have necessarily drawn with no stinted hand in my endeavours to comprehend the Orestean trilogy for myself, and to make it comprehensible to others; and which I most earnestly recommend to all classical students as a pattern-specimen of erudite architecture raised by the hand of a master, from whom, even in his points of most baseless speculation (as what German is without such?), more is to be learned than from the triple-fanged certainties of vulgar commentators.

THE EUMENIDES

Scene.—In front of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

The Pythoness.

Old Earth, primeval prophetess, I first

With these my prayers invoke; and Themisⁿ¹ next,

Who doth her mother’s throne and temple both

Inherit, as the legend runs; and third

In lot’s due course, another Earth-born maid

The unforced homage of the land received,

Titanian Phoebe;^f5 she in natal gift

With her own name her hoary right bequeathed

To Phoebus: he from rocky Delos’ lakeⁿ²

To Attica’s ship-cruised bays was wafted, whence

He in Parnassus fixed his sure abode.

Hither with pious escort they attend him:

The Sons of Vulcan pioneer his path,ⁿ³

Smoothing the rugged desert where he comes:

The thronging people own him, and king Delphos,

The land’s high helmsman, flings his portals wide.

Jove with divinest skill his heart inspires,

And now the fourth on this dread seat enthroned

Sits Loxias,^f6 prophet of his father Jove.ⁿ⁴

These be the gods, whom chiefly I invoke:

But thee, likewise, who ’fore this temple dwellest,ⁿ⁵

Pallas, I pray, and you, ye Nymphs that love

The hollow Corycian rock,ⁿ⁶ the frequent haunt

Of pleasant birds, the home of awful gods.

Thee, Bromius, too, I worship,ⁿ⁷ not unweeting

How, led by thee, the furious Thyads rushed

To seize the godless Pentheus,ⁿ⁸ ev’n as a hare

Is dogged to death. And you, the fountains pure

Of Pleistus,^f7 and Poseidon’s^f8 mighty powerⁿ⁹

I pray, and Jove most high, that crowns all things

With consummation. These the gods that lead me

To the prophetic seat, and may they grant me

Best-omened entrance; may consulting Greeks,

If any be, by custom’d lot approach;

For as the gods my bosom stir, I pour

The fateful answer.

[She goes into the Temple, but suddenly returns.

O horrid tale to tell! O sight to see

Most horrible! that drives me from the halls

Of Loxias, so that I nor stand nor run,

But, like a beast fourfooted stumble on,

Losing the gait and station of my kind,

A gray-haired woman, weaker than a child!ⁿ¹⁰

Up to the garlanded recess I walked,

And on the navel-stone^f9 behold! a man

With crime polluted to the altar clinging,

And in his bloody hand he held a sword

Dripping with recent murder, and a branch

Of breezy olive, with flocks of fleecy wool

All nicely tipt. Even thus I saw the man;

And stretched before him an unearthly host

Of strangest women, on the sacred seats

Sleeping—not women, but a Gorgon brood,

And worse than Gorgons, or the ravenous crew

That filched the feast of Phineusⁿ¹¹ (such I’ve seen

In painted terror); but these are wingless, black,

Incarnate horrors, and with breathings dire

Snort unapproachable, and from their eyes

Pestiferous beads of poison they distil.

Such uncouth sisterhood, apparel’d so,ⁿ¹²

From all affinity of gods or men

Divorced, from me and from the gods be far,

And from all human homes! Nor can the land,

That lends these unblest hags a home, remain

Uncursed by fearful scourges. But the god,

Thrice-potent Loxias himself will ward

His holiest shrine from lawless outrage. Him

Physician, prophet, soothsayer, we call,

Cleansing from guilt the blood-polluted hall. [Exit.

[The interior of the Delphic Temple is now presented to view. Orestes is seen clinging to the navel-stone; the Eumenides lie sleeping on the seats around. In the background Hermes beside Orestes. Enter Apollo.

Apollo.
(to Orestes)

Trust me, I’ll not betray thee. Far or near,

Thy guardian I, and to thine every foe

No gentle god. Thy madded persecutors

Sleep-captured lie: the hideous host is bound.

Primeval virgins, hoary maids, with whom

Nor god, nor man, nor beast hath known communion.

For evil’s sake they are: in evil depth

Of rayless Tartarus, underneath the ground,

They dwell, of men and of Olympian gods

Abhorred. But hence! nor faint thy heart, though they

Are mighty to pursue from land to land

O’er measureless tracks, from rolling sea to sea,

And sea-swept cities. A bitter pasture truly

Was thine from Fate;ⁿ¹³ but bear all stoutly. Hie thee

Away to Pallas’ city, and embrace

Her ancient imageⁿ¹⁴ with close-clinging arms.

Just Judges there we will appoint to judge

Thy cause, and with soft-soothing pleas will pluck

The sting from thy offence, and free thee quite

From all thy troubles. Thou know’st that I, the god,

When thou didst strike, myself the blow directed.

Orestes.

Liege lord Apollo, justice to the gods

Belongs; in justice, O remember me.

Thy power divine assurance gives that thou

Can’st make thy will a deed.

Apollo.

Fear nought. Trust me.

[To Hermes] And thou, true brother’s blood, true father’s son,

Hermes, attend, and to this mission gird thee.

Fulfil the happy omen of thy name,

The Guide,^f10 and guide this suppliant on his way.

For Jove respects thy function and thy pride,

The prosperous convoy, and the faithful guide.

[Exit Hermes, leading Orestes. Apollo retires.

Enter the Shade of Clytemnestra.

Clytemnestra.

Sleeping? All sleeping! Ho! What need of sleepers?

While I roam restless, of my fellow-dead

Dishonoured and reproached, by fault of you,

That when I slew swift vengeance overtook me.

But being slain myself, my avengers sleep

And leave my cause to drift! Hear me, sleepers!

Such taunts I bear, such contumelious gibes,

Yet not one god is touched with wrath to avenge

My death, who died by matricidal hands.

Behold these wounds!ⁿ¹⁵ look through thy sleep, and see!

Read with thy heart; some things the soul may scan

More clearly, when the sensuous lid hath dropt,

Nor garish day confounds.ⁿ¹⁶ Full oft have ye

Of my libations sipped the wineless streams,

The soothing? of my sober sacrifice,

The silent supper from the solemn altar,

At midnight hour when only ye are worshipped.

But now all this beneath your feet lies trampled.

The man is gone; fled like a hind! he snaps

The meshes of your toils, and makes—O shame!

Your Deity a mark for scoffers’ eyes

To wink at! Hear me, ye infernal hags,

Unhoused from hell! For my soul’s peace I plead,

Once Clytemnestra famous, now a dream.ⁿ¹⁷

[The Chorus moans.

Ye moan! the while the man hath fled, and seeks

For help from those that are no friends to me.ⁿ¹⁸

[The Chorus moans again.

Sleep-bound art thou. Hast thou no bowels for me?

My Furies sleep, and let my murderer flee.

[The Chorus groans.

Groaning and sleeping! Up! What work hast thou

To do, but thine own work of sorrow? Rouse thee!

[The Chorus groans again.

Sleep and fatigue have sworn a league to bind

The fearful dragon with strong mastery.

Chorus.
(with redoubled groans and shrill cries)

Hold! seize him! seize him! seize there! there! there! hold!

Clytemnestra.

Thy dream scents blood; and, like a dog that doth

In dreams pursue the chase, even so dost thou

At phantasms bark and howl. To work! to work!

Let not fatigue o’ermaster thus thy strength,

Nor slumber soothe the sense of sharpest wrong.

Torture thy liver with reproachful thoughts;

Reproaches are the pricks that goad the wise.

Up! blow a blast of bloody breath behind him!

Dry up his marrow with the fiery vengeance!

Follow! give chase! pursue him to the death!

Chorus,ⁿ¹⁹ starting up in hurry and confusion.

Voice 1.

Awake! awake! rouse her as I rouse thee!

Voice 2.

Dost sleep? arise! dash drowsy sleep away!

Brave dreams be prelude to brave deed! Ho, sisters!

STROPHE I.
Voice 1.

Shame, sisters, shame!

Insult and injury!

Shame, O shame!

Voice 2.

Shame on me, too: a bootless, fruitless shame!

Voice 1.

Insult and injury,

Sorrow and shame!

Burden unbearable,

Shame! O shame!

Voice 2.

The snare hath sprung: flown is the goodly game.

Voice 3.

I slept, and when sleeping

He sprang from my keeping;

Shame, O shame!

ANTISTROPHE I.
Voice 1.

O son of Jove, in sooth,

If thou wilt hear the truth,

Robber’s thy name!

Voice 2.

Thou being young dost overleap the old.ⁿ²⁰

Voice 1.

A suppliant, godless,

And bloodstained, I see,

And bitter to parents,

Harboured by thee.

Voice 2.

Apollo’s shrine a mother-murderer’s hold!

Voice 3.

Apollo rewardeth

Whom Justice discardeth,

And robber’s his name!

STROPHE II.
Voice 1.

A voice of reproach

Came through my sleeping,

Like a charioteer

With his swift lash sweeping.

Voice 2.

Thorough my heart,

Thorough my liver,

Keen as the cold ice

Shot through the river.

Voice 3.

Harsh as the headsman,

Ruthless exacter,

When tearless he scourges

The doomed malefactor.

ANTISTROPHE II.
Voice 1.

All blushless and bold

The gods that are younger

Would rule o’er the old,

With the right of the stronger.

Voice 2.

The Earth’s navel-stone

So holy reputed,

All gouted with blood,

With fresh murder polluted,

Behold, O behold!

Voice 3.

By the fault of the younger,

The holiest holy

Is holy no longer.

STROPHE III.
Voice 1.

Thyself thy hearth with this pollution stained,

Thyself, a prophet, free and unconstrained.

Voice 2.

O’er the laws of the gods

Thou hast recklessly ridden,

Dispensing to men

Gifts to mortals forbidden;

Voice 3.

Us thou hast reft

Of our name and our glory,

Us and the Fates,

The primeval, the hoary.

ANTISTROPHE III.
Voice 1.

I hate the god. Though underneath the ground

He hide my prey, there, too, he shall be found.

Voice 2.

I at each shrine

Where the mortal shall bend him,

Will jealously watch,

That no god may defend him.

Voice 3.

Go where he will,

A blood-guilty ranger,

Hotly will hound him still

I, the Avenger!

Apollo.

Begone! I charge thee, leave these sacred halls!

From this prophetic cell avaunt! lest thou

A feathered serpent in thy breast receive,

Shot from my golden bow; and, inly pained,

Thou vomit forth black froth of murdered men,

Belching the clotted slaughter by thy maw

Insatiate sucked. These halls suit not for thee;

But where beheading, eye-out-digging dooms,ⁿ²¹

Abortions, butcheries, barrenness abound,

Where mutilations, flayings, torturings,

Make wretches groan, on pointed stakes impaled,

There fix your seats; there hold the horrid feasts,

In which your savage hearts exultant revel,

Of gods abominate—maids whose features foul

Speak your foul tempers plainly. Find a home

In some grim lion’s den sanguinolent, not

In holy temples which your breath pollutes.

Depart, ye sheep unshepherded, whom none

Of all the gods may own!

Chorus.

Liege lord, Apollo,

Ours now to speak, and thine to hear: thyself

Not aided only, but the single cause

Wert thou of all thou blamest.

Apollo.

How so? Speak!

Chorus.

Thine was the voice that bade him kill his mother.

Apollo.

Mine was the voice bade him avenge his father.

Chorus.

All reeking red with gore thou didst receive him.

Apollo.

Not uninvited to these halls he came.

Chorus.

And we come with him. Wheresoe’er he goes,

His convoy we. Our function is to follow.

Apollo.

Follow! but from this holy threshold keep

Unholy feet.

Chorus.

We, where we must go, go

By virtue of our office.

Apollo.

A goodly vaunt!

Your office what?

Chorus.

From hearth and home we chase

All mother-murderers.

Apollo.

She was murdered here,

That murdered first her husband.ⁿ²²

Chorus.

Yet should she

By her own body’s fruitage have been slain?

Apollo.

Thus speaking, ye mispraise the sacred rites

Of matrimonial Heraⁿ²³ and of Jove,

Unvalued make fair Aphrodite’s grace,

Whence dearest joys to mortal man descend.

The nuptial bed, to man and woman fated,ⁿ²⁴

Hath obligation stronger than an oath,

And Justice guards it. Ye who watch our crimes,

If that loose reins to nuptial sins ye yield,

Offend, and grossly. If the murtherous wife

Escape your sharp-set vengeance, how can ye

Pursue Orestes justly? I can read

No even judgment in your partial scales,

In this more wrathful, and in that more mild.

She who is wise shall judge between us, Pallas.

Chorus.

The man is mine already. I will keep him.

Apollo.

He’s gone; and thou’lt but waste thy toil to follow.

Chorus.

Thy words shall not be swords, to cut my honors.

Apollo.

Crowned with such honors, I would tear them from me!

Chorus.

A mighty god beside thy father’s throne

Art thou, Apollo. Me this mother’s blood

Goads on to hound this culprit to his doom.

Apollo.

And I will help this man, champion and save him,

My suppliant, my client; should I not,

Both gods and men would brand the treachery.

[The scene changes to the Temple of Pallas in Athens. A considerable interval of time is supposed to have elapsed between the two parts of the Play.

Enter Orestes.

Orestes.

Athena queen, at Loxias’ hest I come.

Receive the suppliant with propitious grace.

Not now polluted, nor unwashed from guilt

I cling to the first altar; time hath mellowed

My hue of crime, and friendly men receive

The curse-beladen wanderer to their homes.

True to the god’s oracular command,

O’er land and sea with weary foot I fare,

To find thy shrine, O goddess, and clasp thine image;

And now redemption from thy doom I wait.

Enter Chorus.

Chorus.

’Tis well. The man is here. His track I know.

The sure advisal of our voiceless guide

Follow; as hound a wounded stag pursues,

We track the blood, and snuff the coming death.

Soothly we pant, with life-outwearying toils

Sore overburdened! O’er the wide sea far

I came, and with my wingless flight outstripped

The couriers of the deep. Here he must lie,

In some pent corner skulking. In my nostrils

The scent of mortal blood doth laugh me welcome.

Chorus.ⁿ²⁵
Voice 1.

Look, sisters, look!

Voice 2.

On the right, on the left, and round about,

Search every nook!

Voice 3.

Warily watch him,

The blood-guilty ranger,

That Fraud may not snatch him,

From me the Avenger!

Voice 1.

At the shrine of the goddess,

He bendeth him lowly,

Embracing her image,

The ancient the holy.

Voice 2.

With hands crimson-reeking,

He clingeth profanely,

A free pardon seeking

From Pallas—how vainly!

Voice 3.

For blood, when it floweth,

For once and for ever

It sinks, and it knoweth

To mount again never.

Voice 1.

Thou shalt pay me with pain;

From thy heart, from thy liver

I will suck, I will drain

Thy life’s crimson river.

Voice 2.

The cup from thy veins

I will quaff it, how rarely!

I will wither thy brains,

Thou shalt pine late and early.

Voice 3.

I will drag thee alive,

For thy guilt matricidal,

To the dens of the damned,

For thy lasting abidal.

EPODE.
Tutti.

There imprisoned thou shalt see

All who living sinned with thee,

’Gainst the gods whom men revere,

’Gainst honoured guest, or parents dear;

All the guilty who inherited

Woe, even as their guilt had merited.

For Hades,^f11 in his halls of gloom,

With a justly portioned doom,

Binds them down securely:

All the crimes of human kind,

In the tablet of his mind,

He hath graven surely.

Orestes.

By manifold ills I have been taught to know

All expiations; and the time to speak

I know, and to be silent. In this matter

As a wise master taught me, so my tongue

Shapes utterance. The curse that bound me sleeps,

My harsh-grained guilt is finer worn, the deep

Ensanguined stain washed to a softer hue;

Still reeking fresh with gore, on Phoebus’ hearth,

The blood of swine hath now wrought my lustration,^f12

And I have held communings with my kind

Once and again unharming. Time, that smooths

All things, hath smoothed the front of my offence.

With unpolluted lips I now implore

Thy aid, Athena, of this land the queen.

Myself, a firm ally, I pledge to thee,

Myself, the Argive people, and their land,

Thy bloodless prize. And whether distant far

On Libyan plains beside Tritonian pools,ⁿ²⁶

Thy natal flood, with forward foot firm planted,

Erect, or with decorous stole high-seated,ⁿ²⁷

Thy friends thou aidest, or with practised eye

The ordered battle on Phlegrean fields

Thou musterestⁿ²⁸—come!—for gods can hear from far—

And from these woes complete deliverance send!

Chorus.

Not all Apollo’s, all Athena’s power

Shall aid thee. Thou, of gods and men forsook,

Shalt pine and dwindle, stranger to the name

Of joy, a wasted shadow, bloodless sucked

To fatten wrathful gods. Thou dost not speak,

But, as a thing devoted, standest dumb,

My prey, even mine! my living banquet thou,

My fireless victim. List, and thou shalt hear

My song, that binds thee with its viewless chain.

Chorus.

Deftly, deftly weave the dance!

Sisters lift the dismal strain!

Sing the Furies, justly dealing

Dooms deserved to guilty mortals;

Deftly, deftly lift the strain!

Whoso lifted hands untainted

Him no Furies’ wrath shall follow,

He shall live unharmed by me;

But who sinned, as this offender,

Hiding foul ensanguined hands,

We with him are present, bearing

Unhired witness for the dead;

We will tread his heels, exacting

Blood for blood, even to the end.

CHORAL HYMN.ⁿ²⁹
STROPHE I.

Mother Night that bore me,

A scourge, to go before thee,

To scourge, with stripes delightless,

The seeing and the sightless,ⁿ³⁰

Hear me, I implore thee,

O Mother Night!

Mother Night that bore me,

The son of Leto o’er me

Rough rides, in thy despite.

From me, the just pursuer,

He shields the evil-doer,

The son to me devoted,

For mother-murder noted,

He claims against the right.

Where the victim lies,

Let the death-hymn rise!

Lift ye the hymn of the Furies amain!

The gleeless song, and the lyreless strain,ⁿ³¹

That bindeth the heart with a viewless chain,

With notes of distraction and maddening sorrow,

Blighting the brain, and burning the marrow!

Where the victim lies,

Let the death-hymn rise,

The hymn that binds with a viewless chain!

ANTISTROPHE I.

Mother Night that bore me,

The Fate that was before me,

This portion gave me surely,

This lot for mine securely,

To bear the scourge before thee,

O Mother Night!

And, in embrace untender

To hold the red offender,

That sinned in gods’ despite,

And wheresoe’er he wend him,

His keepers close we tend him.

In living or in dying,

From us there is no flying,

The daughters of the Night.

Where the victim lies,

Let the death-hymn rise!

Lift ye the hymn of the Furies amain!

The gleeless song, and the lyreless strain,

That bindeth the heart with a viewless chain,

With notes of distraction and maddening sorrow,

Blighting the brain, and burning the marrow!

Where the victim lies,

Let the death-hymn rise,

The hymn that binds with a viewless chain!

STROPHE II.

From primal ages hoary,

This lot, our pride and glory,

Appointed was to us;

To Hades’ gloomy portal,

To chase the guilty mortal,

But from Olympians, reigning

In lucid seats,^f13 abstaining;

Their nectared feasts we taste not,

Their sun-white robes invest not

The maids of Erebus.

But, with scourge and with ban,

We prostrate the man,

Who with smooth-woven wile,

And a fair-faced smile,

Hath planted a snare for his friend;

Though fleet, we shall find him,

Though strong, we shall bind him,

Who planted a snare for his friend.

ANTISTROPHE II.

This work of labour earnest,ⁿ³²

This task severest, sternest,

Let none remove from us.

To all their due we render,

Each deeply-marked offender

Our searching eye reproveth,

Though blissful Jove removeth,

From his Olympian glory,

Abhorr’d of all and gory,

The maids of Erebus.

But, swift as the wind,

We follow and find,

Till he stumbles apace,

Who had hoped in the race,

To escape from the grasp of the Furies!

And we trample him low,

Till he writhe in his woe,

Who had fled from the chase of the Furies.

STROPHE III.

The thoughts heaven-scaling

Of men haughty-hearted,

At our breath, unavailing

Like smoke they departed.

Our jealous foot hearing,

They stumble before us,

And bite the ground, fearing

Our dark-vested chorus.

ANTISTROPHE III.

They fall, and perceive not

The foe that hath found them;

They are blind and believe not,

Thick darkness hath bound them.

From the halls of the fated,

A many-voiced wailing

Of sorrow unsated

Ascends unavailing.

STROPHE IV.

For the Furies work readily

Vengeance unsparing,

Surely and steadily

Ruin preparing.

Dark crimes strictly noted,

Sure-memoried they store them;

And, judgment once voted,

Prayers vainly implore them.

For they know no communion

With the bright-throned union

Of the gods of the day;

Where the living appear not,

Where the pale Shades near not,

In regions delightless,

All sunless and sightless,

They dwell far away.

ANTISTROPHE IV.

What mortal reveres not

Our deity awful?

When he names us, who fears not

To work deeds unlawful?

From times hoary-dated,

This statute for ever

Divinely was fated;

Time takes from it never.

For dishonour we bear not,

Though the bright thrones we share not

With the gods of the day.

Our right hoary-dated

We claim unabated,

Though we dwell, where delightless

No sun cheers the sightless,

’Neath the ground far away.

Enter Athena.

Athena.

The cry that called me from Scamander’s banksⁿ³³

I heard afar, even as I hied to claim

The land for mine which the AchÆan chiefs

Assigned me, root and branch, my portion fair

Of the conquered roods, a goodly heritage

To Theseus’ sons. Thence, with unwearied foot,

I journeyed here by these high-mettled steeds

Car-borne, my wingless Ægis in the gale

Full-bosomed whirring. And now, who are ye,

A strange assembly, though I fear you not,

Here gathered at my gates? I speak to both,

To thee the stranger, that with suppliant arms

Enclasps my statue—Whence art thou? And you,

Like to no generation seed-begotten,

Like to no goddess ever known of gods,

Like to no breathing forms of mortal kind;

But to reproach with contumelious phrase

Who wrong not us, nor courtesy allows,

Nor Themis wills. Whence are ye?

Chorus.

Daughter of Jove,

’Tis shortly said: of the most ancient Night

The tristful daughters we, and our dread name,

Even from the fearful Curse we bear, we borrow.^f14

Athena.

I know you, and the dreaded name ye bear.

Chorus.

Our sacred office, too—

Athena.

That I would hear.

Chorus.

The guilty murderer from his home we hunt.

Athena.

And the hot chase, where ends it?

Chorus.

There, where joy

Is never named.

Athena.

And is this man the quarry,

That, with hoarse-throated whoop, thou now pursuest?

Chorus.

He slew his mother—dared the worst of crimes.

Athena.

What mightier fear, what strong necessity

Spurred him to this?

Chorus.

What fear so strong that it

Should prompt a mother’s murder?

Athena.

There are two parties. Only one hath spoken.

Chorus.

He’ll neither swear himself, nor take my oath.ⁿ³⁴

Athena.

The show of justice, not fair Justice self,

Thou lovest.

Chorus.

How? Speak—thou so rich in wisdom.

Athena.

Oaths are no proof, to make the wrong the right.

Chorus.

Prove thou. A true and righteous judgment judge.

Athena.

I shall be judge, betwixt this man and thee

To speak the doom.

Chorus.

Even thou. Thy worthy deeds

Give thee the worth in this high strife to judge.

Athena.

Now, stranger, ’tis thy part to speak. Whence come,

Thy lineage what, and what thy fortunes, say,

And then refute this charge against thee brought.

For well I note the sacredness about thee,

That marks the suppliant who atonement seeks,

In old IxÍon’s guise;ⁿ³⁵ and thou hast fled

For refuge, to my holy altar clinging.

Answer me this, and plainly tell thy tale.

Orestes.

Sovran Athena, first from these last words

A cause of much concernment be removed.

I seek for no atonement; no pollution

Cleaves to thy sacred image from my touch.

Of this receive a proof. Thou know’st a murderer

Being unatoned a voiceless penance bears,

Till, from the hand of friendly man, the blood

Of a young beast from lusty veins hath sprent him,

Cleansing from guiltiness. These sacred rites

Have been performed: the blood of beasts hath sprent me,

The lucent lymph hath purged the filthy stain.

For this enough. As for my race, I am

An Argive born: and for my father, he

Was Agamemnon, king of men, by whom

The chosen admiral of the masted fleet,

The ancient city of famous Priam thou

Didst sheer uncity.ⁿ³⁶ Sad was his return;

For, with dark-bosomed guile, my mother killed him,

Snared in the meshes of a tangled net,

And of the bloody deed the bath was witness.

I then, returning to my father’s house

After long exile—I confess the deed—

Slew her who bore me, a dear father’s murder

With murder quitting. The blame—what blame may be—

I share with Loxias, who fore-augured griefs

To goad my heart if, by my fault, such guilt

Should go unpunished. I have spoken. Thou

What I have done, if justly or unjustly,

Decide. Thy doom, howe’er it fall, contents me.

Athena.

In this high cause to judge, no mortal man

May venture; nor may I divide the law

Of right and wrong, in such keen strife of blood.

For thee, in that thou comest to my halls,ⁿ³⁷

In holy preparation perfected,

A pure and harmless suppliant, I, as pledged

Already thy protector, may not judge thee.

For these, ’tis no light thing to slight their office.

For, should I send them hence uncrowned with triumph,

Dripping fell poison from their wrathful breasts,

They’d leave a noisome pestilence in the land

Behind them. Thus both ways I’m sore perplexed;

Absent or present, they do bring a curse.

But since this business needs a swift decision,

Sworn judges I’ll appoint, and they shall judge

Of blood in every age. Your testimonies

And proofs meanwhile, and all that clears the truth,

Provide. Myself, to try this weighty cause,

My choicest citizens will choose, and bind them

By solemn oath to judge a righteous judgment.

CHORAL HYMN.ⁿ³⁸
STROPHE I.

Ancient rights and hoary uses

Now shall yield to young abuses,

Right and wrong together chime,

If the vote

Fail to note

Mother-murder for a crime.

Murder now, made nimble-handed,

Wide shall rage without control;

Sons against their parents banded

Deeds abhorred

With the sword

Now shall work, while ages roll.

ANTISTROPHE I.

Now no more, o’er deeds unlawful,

Shall the sleeping MÆnads^f15 awful

Watch, with jealous eyes to scan;

Free and chainless,

Wild and reinless,

Stalks o’er Earth each murtherous plan.

Friend to friend his loss deploreth,

Lawless rapine, treacherous wound,

But in vain his plaint he poureth;

To his bruises

Earth refuses

Balm; no balm on Earth is found.

STROPHE II.

Now no more, from grief’s prostration,

Cries and groans

Heaven shall scale with invocation—

“Justice hear my supplication,

Hear me, Furies, from your thrones!”

From the recent sorrow bleeding,

Father thus or mother calls,

Vainly with a piteous pleading,

For the House of Justice falls.

ANTISTROPHE II.

Blest the man in whose heart reigneth

Holy Fear;

Fear his heart severely traineth;

Blest, from troublous woe who gaineth

Ripest fruits of wisdom clear;^f16

But who sports, a careless liver,ⁿ³⁹

In the sunshine’s flaunting show,

Holy Justice, he shall never

Thy severest virtue know.

STROPHE III.

Lordless life, or despot-ridden,

Be they both from me forbidden.

To the wise mean strength is given,ⁿ⁴⁰

Thus the gods have ruled in heaven;

Gods, that gently or severely

Judge, discerning all things clearly.

Mark my word, I tell thee truly,

Pride, that lifts itself unduly,ⁿ⁴¹

Had a godless heart for sire.

Healthy-minded moderation

Wins the wealthy consummation,

Every heart’s desire.

ANTISTROPHE III.

Yet, again, I tell thee truly,

At Justice’ altar bend thee duly.

Wean thine eye from lawless yearning

After gain; with godless spurning

Smite not thou that shrine most holy.

Punishment, that travels slowly,

Comes at last, when least thou fearest.

Yet, once more; with truth sincerest,

Love thy parents and revere,

And the guest, that to protect him,

Claims thy guardian roof, respect him,

With an holy fear.^f17

STROPHE IV.

Whoso, with no forced endeavour,

Sin-eschewing liveth,

Him to hopeless ruin never

Jove the Saviour giveth.

But whose hand, with greed rapacious,

Draggeth all things for his prey,

He shall strike his flag audacious,

When the god-sent storm shall bray,

Winged with fate at last;

When the stayless sail is flapping,

When the sail-yard swings, and, snapping,

Crashes to the blast.

ANTISTROPHE IV.

He shall call, but none shall hear him,

When dark ocean surges;

None with saving hand shall near him,

When his prayer he urges.

Laughs the god, to see him vainly

Grasping at the crested rock;

Fool, who boasted once profanely

Firm to stand in Fortune’s shock;

Who so great had been

His freighted wealth with fearful crashing,

On the rock of Justice dashing,

Dies, unwept, unseen.

Enter Athena, behind a Herald.

Athena.

Herald, proclaim the diet, and command

The people to attention; with strong breath

Give the air-shattering Tyrrhene trump free voice,ⁿ⁴²

To speak shrill-throated to the assembled throngs;

And, while the judges take their solemn seats,

In hushed submission, let the city hear

My laws that shall endure for aye; and these,

In hushed submission, wait the righteous doom.

Enter Apollo.ⁿ⁴³

Chorus.

Sovran Apollo, rule where thou art lord;

But here what business brings the prophet? Speak.

Apollo.

I come a witness of the truth; this man

Is suppliant to me, he on my hearth

Found refuge, him I purified from blood.

I, too, am patron of his cause, I share

The blame, if blame there be, in that he slew

His mother. Pallas, order thou the trial.

Athena.
(to the Furies)

Speak ye the first, ’tis wiseliest ordered thus,

That, who complains, his plaint set forth in order,

Point after point, articulately clear.

Chorus.

Though we be many, yet our words are few.

Answer thou singly, as we singly ask;

This first—art thou the murderer of thy mother?

Orestes.

I did the deed. This fact hath no denial.

Chorus.

Once worsted! With three fits I gain the trial.

Orestes.

Boast, when thou seest me fall. As yet I stand.

Chorus.

This answer now—how didst thou do the deed.

Orestes.

Thus; with my pointed dagger, in the neck

I smote her.

Chorus.

Who the bloody deed advised?

Orestes.

The god of oracles. Here he stands to witness.

Chorus.

Commanding murder with prophetic nod?

Orestes.

Ay! and even now I do not blame the god.

Chorus.

Soon, soon, thou’lt blame him, when the pebble drops

Into the urn of justice with thy doom.

Orestes.

My murdered sire will aid me from the tomb.

Chorus.

Trust in the dead; in thy dead mother trust.

Orestes.

She died, with two foul blots well marked for vengeance.

Chorus.

How so? This let the judges understand.

Orestes.

The hand that killed her husband killed my father.

Chorus.

If she for her crimes died, why livest thou?

Orestes.

If her thou didst not vex, why vex me now?

Chorus.

She slew a man, but not of kindred blood.

Orestes.

Is the son’s blood all to the mother kin,

None to the father?

Chorus.

Peace, thou sin-stained monster!

Dost thou abjure the dearest blood, the mother’s

That bore thee ’neath her zone?

Orestes.
(to Apollo)

Be witness thou.

Apollo, speak for me, if by the rule

Of Justice she was murdered. That the deed

Was done, and by these hands, I not deny;

If justly or unjustly blood was spilt,

Thou knowest. Teach me how to make reply.

Apollo.

I speak to you, Athena’s mighty council;

And what I speak is truth: the prophet lies not.

From my oracular seat was published never

To man, to woman, or to city aught

By my Olympian sire unfathered.^f18 Ye

How Justice sways the scale will wisely weigh;

But this remember—what my father wills

Is law. Jove’s will is stronger than an oath.

Chorus.

Jove, say’st thou, touched thy tongue with inspiration,

To teach Orestes that he might avenge

A father’s death by murdering a mother?

Apollo.

His was no common father—Agamemnon,

Honoured the kingly sceptre god-bestowed

To bear—he slain by a weak woman, not

By furious Amazon with far-darting bow,

But in such wise as I shall now set forth

To thee, Athena, and to these that sit

On this grave bench of judgment. Him returning

All prosperous from the wars, with fairest welcome

She hailed her lord, and in the freshening bath

Bestowed him; there, ev’n while he laved, she came

Spreading death’s mantle out, and, in a web

Of curious craft entangled, stabbed him. Such

Was the sad fate of this most kingly man,

Of all revered, the fleet’s high admiral.

A tale it is to prick your heart with pity,

Even yours that seal the judgment.

Chorus.

Jove, thou sayest,

Prefers the father: yet himself did bind

With bonds his hoary-dated father Kronos.ⁿ⁴⁴

Make this with that to square, and thou art wise.

Ye judges, mark me, if I reason well.

Apollo.

O odious monsters, of all gods abhorred!

A chain made fast may be untied again.

This ill hath many cures; but, when the dust

Hath once drunk blood, no power can raise it. Jove

Himself doth know no charm to disenchant

Death; other things he turns both up and down,

At his good pleasure, fainting not in strength.

Chorus.

Consider well whereto thy words will lead thee.

How shall this man, who spilt his mother’s blood,

Dwell in his father’s halls at Argos? How

Devoutly kneel at the public altar? How

With any clanship share lustration?ⁿ⁴⁵

Apollo.

This

Likewise I’ll answer. Mark me! whom we call

The mother begets not;ⁿ⁴⁶ she is but the nurse,

Whose fostering breast the new-sown seed receives.

The father truly gets; the dam but cherishes

A stranger-bud, that, if the gods be kind,

May blossom soon, and bear. Behold a proof!

Without a mother may a child be born,

Not so without a father. Which to witness

Here is this daughter of Olympian Jove,

Not nursed in darkness, in the womb, and yet

She stands a goddess, heavenly mother ne’er

Bore greater. Pallas, here I plight my faith

To magnify thy city and thy people;

And I this suppliant to thy hearth hath sent,

Thy faithful ally ever. May the league

Here sworn to-day their children’s children bind!

Athena.

Now judges, as your judgment is, I charge you,

So vote the doom. Words we have had enough.

Chorus.

Our quiver’s emptied. We await the doom.

Athena.

How should the sentence fall to keep me free

Of your displeasure?

Chorus.

What we said we said.

Even as your heart informs you, nothing fearing,

So judges justly vote, the oath revering.

Athena.

Now, hear my ordinance, Athenians!ⁿ⁴⁷ Ye,

In this first strife of blood, umpires elect,

While age on age shall roll, the sons of Aegeus

This Council shall revere. Here, on this hill,

The embattled Amazons pitched their tents of yore,ⁿ⁴⁸

What time with Theseus striving, they their tents

Against these high-towered infant walls uptowered.

To Mars they sacrificed, and, to this day,

This Mars’ Hill speaks their story. Here, Athenians,

Shall reverence of the gods, and holy fear,

That shrinks from wrong, both night and day possess,

A place apart, so long as fickle change

Your ancient laws disturbs not; but, if this

Pure fount with muddy streams ye trouble, ye

Shall draw the draught in vain. From anarchy

And slavish masterdom alike my ordinance

Preserve my people! Cast not from your walls

All high authority; for where no fear

Awful remains, what mortal will be just?

This holy reverence use, and ye possess

A bulwark, and a safeguard of the land,

Such as no race of mortals vaunteth, far

In Borean Scythia, or the land of Pelops.^f19

This council I appoint intact to stand

From gain, a venerated conclave, quick

In pointed indignation, when all sleep

A sleepless watch. These words of warning hear,

My citizens for ever. Now ye judges

Rise, take your pebbles, and by vote decide,