= NI + = N ς9 it 9) ς9 Θ = co ™~ = 39)
--- --...ὄἕᾧ .««.ὕ....: ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΕΞΞΞΞ a ἀξασσςς, ——<$_- ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ 5ΞΞ-Ξ--------- ———— SD ———————— ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ----------- 3ΞΞΞ-ὀ-----ΞΞΞ-ὀἑ-5(ΙῸ. Ξ-------------.-. — =—_ ————— —— σπσαμημαεμοεμανη =————_ ——— --......-.- ——_—_ Ξ------------... ——a eT ——— ————— ΞΞΞ:Ξ:---.--:-:-:: ΞΞΞΞΞΙΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ 3ΞΞΞΞ-Ξ-5-Ξὀ-ἐὁἀἕὀὁῷὧὀὁ.:ΞΞ πο —$<— =——— —
i τ Ob Torowyy bani
a wa TO Ae54a Ee.
AGAMEMNON
AFTER THE GREEK OF JESCHYLVS
BY LOCKE ELLIS
(Ὁ 9...“ Dan yim LONDON 5} SELWYN ἃ BLOVNT, LTD.
21 York Buildings, Adelphi, W.C.2 1920
PERSONS OF THE DRAMA
AGAMEMNON.
CLYTEMNESTRA.
CassANDRA.
AEGISTHUS.
A WatcHMAN.
A Heratp, Tattuysius.
Cuorus or Otp Men or Arcos, Οουνοι 088. Fottowers ΟΕ AGAMEMNON, CLYTEMNESTRA, AEGISTHUS,
PERSONS ALLUDED TO Arreus, father of Agamemnon. His House is also referred to as that of Pelops ; Tantalus.—Brother to
Tuyestes, to whom Atreus gave to eat of his own children’s flesh. Aegisthus was his surviving son.
ΤΡΗΙΟΘΈΝΕΙΑ, daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, offered in sacrifice by her father on the eve of the expedition to Troy.
Priam, King of Troy, father of Cassandra and of
Paris (ALEXANDER), who provoked the war by carrying off
Heten, the wife of
Menetaus, brother of Agamemnon.
Catcuas, a soothsayer.
Arf, Erynnus, are avenging deities, or Furies.
£5 . é we, 4, ἢ 2 mY yi OS a " Ὗ Lk ys % MY f μ "ΟἹ ὁ, rw * ῷ } “" » ἢ ne i iy Atay ty
; | pe bate ial ai ake facscth ae Ἴὰ διάτασιν vertu > ἡ ΑΝ, is
+
ae ark reed yee .
at ΨΥ ἡ set be ay ‘ af
ee : re ἀρλ τ τὐῤῥῥομίενι, Wiley ithe χὰ εν βῆ Ὁ 3 ἦν ΓΝ, Δ}: ΔΙ Ἑ ἊΝ Ἢ ig
ν᾽
vbhaan et. ΓΙ ds
.
AGAMEMNON
Scene: Argos, before the palace of the Atreid@ ; night. WaTcHMAN
My watch on Atreus’ roof, crouched like a dog,
I keep. Beseech ye gods, is there no end ?
Labour of years, I know the heavens by heart,
The stars’ assembled state, revolving on
The event of summer heat or winter cold,
The human year through. By their signs I know,
Splendours of rising or of setting ; stars
Burning in ether. But the sign I seek
Is earthly kindled fire, the torch of Troy,
Her blaze of capture. With so eager heart,
Impatient of the event, set me this task _
A woman, masterful enough. And now,
Night-chill’d and drench’d with dew my cheerless couch,
Not in the happy company of dreams,
Instead of sleep which bringeth them, the dread
Of heavy-lidded sleep stands ever here.
And should I wisely think with wakeful song
7
To batter sleepy silence, then the theme
Is sorrow of the house I serve; tears then
For chance the good once was and is not now, May be again. And that evangel fire,
In darkling night imagined, it might be
The end at last. But is it—is it not
The end at last? But see—it is no dream,
It dawns as never day, and shoots the flame Argos shall dance to. Hail, O hail! Shout, call, *Tis Agamemnon’s wife 1 summon, swift
As chamber of sleep can yield her, to proclaim The essential feast of sound. Taken is Troy;
So saith the torch and fiery blazon. Mine
This prelude, dancing ; mine the lucky sice Whose triple cast hath turned to a master’s good The watchful stake. And mine the glory, when On these worthless those honoured hands and dear Are laid, of him who hath returned to us.
—But best let silence tread upon the tongue,
As an ox treadeth surely. If these walls
Could speak, ’twere with discretion, and so I
To them which know, and unto others, naught.
Cuorvus
Ten years of Troy. Hath Priam to this length Held Menelaus, Agamemnon’s strength At indecision of the Dardan field ? To foes like these not yield ! 8
Twin-sceptred, dual-throned Mycenian line
Of Pelops’ race divine,
Who from these shores charged the reluctant gale
With keels of battle of a thousand sail,
God Ares in his might.
Behold the birds of famine, flight on flight,
Winnowing with wings for scourge
The unstable element and mountain gorge.
Some towering fate to the dark winds hath flung
Their shattered aeries and their screaming young ;
Labour of nesting vain,
Hear now in heaven the parent host complain.
—Yea, one in heaven hath heard.
Is it Zeus, or Pan, or calm Apollo’s word
Upon that trespass bold
Flings judgment down and vengeance mused of old?
—Yea, it is Zeus, the lawgiver of souls,
Who this offence controls,
And hath against the state of Paris hurled
The two-throned Argive world.
For sacrifice of fame
Of many-suitored queen of Argive name,
Danaan and Trojan arm
Alike through the tempestuous alley swarm
Of battle’s close embrace.
The warrior stumbles in the bloody race,
The splintered spear-shaft flies,
And in the dust he gropes and in the dust he dies.
9
Let be as hath been. All is thus fulfilled As the Relentless willed.
No stagnant ritual
Of blood or ancient embers shall recall, Nor with dark tears importunate
The once-befallen fate.
And we—the unelect and old even then,
Even when these battle-worn set sail, old men ; Too old for service we, when younger brood
Set sail for Troas ; and the life they gave Remains with us, pasturing with crutch and stave The childlike remnant of our hardihood.
For childlike ’tis, and childlike seemeth too
This old age in the deeds it dreams to do, Wanting but Ares’ limbs. Like death, like birth, Ours are the infirm feet of infant earth,
But for the flower that is not. And so seem Dreams of our company, ourselves a dream.
—But thou Tyndareus’ daughter !—now Comes Clytemnestra near. O Queen, to us make clear What news of fame Into thy councils came, That a city, pouring through her streets, Snuffs rumour, mulled with burning sweets From the close temple-ways. Lo now, ablaze 10
With happy gift set there,
Kindles the altar fair
Of deity ; and manifold,
Other and other sacrifice behold, Whether Olympian or rustic name Or urban god his victim claim, Each holy hearth shines clear. Now torch-bearers appear,
With their cold brands they stir Rich temple provender,
The oil-vat of the priest.
Soon the drugged flame, surceased, Drops in the dark abyss, And like spilt sorceries
The clots of burning fall
Red on the pale processional. —But thou,
O Queen, if thou may’st speak, speak now, And what thou knowest share With us, and if our prayer Frustrate not heaven,
Be thou unto our darkness given Pzan ; and to our doubts again Pzan, for these are pain.
Uncertainty ! What if there dwell with thee Hope, and a vision fair? Redoubled is our care,
II
Once we have missed those beams, And darker the surrounding of our dreams.
Of human fate
This passage splendid to relate,
This tale of kings,
Me to the muses’ godlike summit brings. My spirit’s dawn, the worshipful, the pure Shall to that epic day endure,
And no less strong,
I too will lead earth captive with my song.
—Hear, then; in name of vengeance be it told, How those relentless guards of Hellas’ fold Gathered of helm and spear a vast command, And fell on Teucrian land. —Who bade them fall, Brought Hellas to this charge? What oracle? —A flight of furious wings Drops by the sea-encampment of the kings. Seen from the tents afar The kings of air and arbiters of war, Black eagle and white-tailed, a ruthless pair, Their living prey, the pregnant hare, Victim of a despairing race, oppress With talons merciless, | And beaks that re-entomb The smoking burthen of her womb.
12
Sing Linos, Linos sing. For Sorrow’s song is Hope’s unburthening.
The holy Seer,
High priest of armies, their interpreter, The baleful eagle-portent laid
On Atreus’ sons. Interpreting, he said:
“Far-off, perchance, and yet the day must come When towered Ilium
Unto this conquest yields
Her city and tribute fields.
Only let not the cloud of lightning fall,
Nor hazardous god his arsenal
Hurl on these armies bold,
Encincture of the Troyan hold,
These armies fair,
Which like a curb the Troyan masters bear. For Artemis,
Intolerant as she is |
Of the wing’d hunters of her father’s house, Furies of pity rouse,
And names of hatred call,
At that foul banquet ended, young and all,”
—Sing Linos, Linos sing. For Sorrow’s song is Hope’s unburthening.
*€ But she who loves The nurseries of the groves,
13
Where the mother of the wild
Bestows her urchin child,
Even the couched lioness,
She, Artemis, some theme of kindliness And good in midst of omen’d ill,
Will labour to fulfil.
“Only give heed, Pzan of Prayer,
Lest the dread Goddess new perils prepare, Which must a new propitiation find. Tempest and enemy wind:
For these the childlike victim bleeds. Frenzy of wrath succeeds,
The home-besetting
Mother-vengeance unforgetting,
Never husband-love recalling
Worked in secret and on nearest falling.”
—Thus Calchas, Orator of doom.
The Sons of Atreus in the listening gloom Attend that voice again,
Of hope and dread the mixed refrain :
—Sing Linos, Linos sing. For Sorrow’s song is Hope’s unburthening.
—Zeus! If on Zeus I call, What God heareth? Is it the Lord of all,
14
Like unto whom is none, and none the same? —None other would I name,
| But from the mind cast forth
The imponderable worth
Of lesser deity ; yea, whatsoe’er
The image idly there ;
Whether with aspect huge of dead renown Blind face of Chaos frown,
Or Chronos, heir to that unstable rule, Feel his immoderate godhead cool,
Last tyrant in the elemental war
To own a conqueror ;
Reason the victor God prefers,
For he is just, and just his worshippers.
Yea, it is Zeus brings back to wisdom’s way The foolish feet that stray ;
Outlaws of guilty pain
On whom long time hath lain
The curse of the lost theme
Of innocence, an evil dream
Of devious path and never-found content, That the unwilling spirit at last is bent To the fixed purpose of his fate.
Mild, but reiterate,
Indissoluble word,
The sentence of great gods is heard,
15
——_ =
As it were charity that falls
From the high table of their judgment halls ; Wisdom, the great gods’ gift to balance pain, Sad lustre of their patient reign.
— An end of soothsaying ;
And now, fearless of fate, arose the King.
The ships at mooring stood
By Aulis, whence the flood
Rolls back on Calchis, and from Strymon’s mouth Recoils, and empties into drouth
His waste and stagnant streams,
Now the hollow gulf beteems
With starving winds, that vex the adverse shore. Ships may not sail, their counted store Dwindles, they may not fill the vat,
And eke the mealy bin nor that
Which too long waiting makes in vain,
The cargo of their hopes again.
—So much had Calchas said ;
The inclement Goddess’ name with dread Preferred, and showed which way the fateful blast And wintry hazard fell. The monarchs cast
Their sceptres to the ground ; tears could not hide.
And now the Elder and the Father cried :
“Ὁ death of hope! If the alternative Were only not to live.
16
But to be this, the slayer of my child,
My household grace to see defiled
With her own blood ; a father’s hand to take
That stain! Yet what? Shall I forsake
My kingdom, and her allies’ hopes defeat ?
What, I, first captain of the fleet,
Its grand deserter prove? No. This way lies
By tempest-lulling sacrifice
Of maiden-death, a forward path.
Wrath leads that way, but all ways lead to wrath.”
—So he put on the harness of his fate,
Made trial of the weight
Of shameful counsel, and became
Himself a counsellor of shame.
For like a change of tempest-boding wind
To mortal mind,
Suggestion first breathed in
Grows to the fury and the act of sin.
—See now to slay his child
The father reconciled,
That ships may aid
The vengeful wars that women made,
And spread on speeding gales
Their festival of sails,
He to the heartless lords of strife
Makes over that dear life.
No reckoning theirs
Of startled childhood’s tears or daughter’s prayers. B 17
Nay, it is he, the father, gives command To them that be at hand,
Following the priestly service round
To pitch of temple-sound,
In order of blood-ritual, instead
Of kid, at the great-altar head,
The body of maiden-sacrifice to lift.
See from her upraised form the garments drift, Her scarf of crocus dye.
But they have caught the struggling cry, Which ere it left those lovely lips
Had called down doom and night’s eclipse Upon that house of blood. The last Despairing look is on her tyrants cast.
Pity she seemeth still to seek,
Her eyes say what her lips would speak,
As in a picture. Nevermore
Will she appear her father’s guests before,
The darling of his pride.
As when in high hall, fondly by his side,
The third libation past and song begun,
With right good will, most loved and innocent one, ᾿ She did her clear and childish voice upraise In his dear praise.
—As Calchas said, so it befell. If of the future we would tell, 18
~ ae
This prophet-listening brings the scale to rest
At silence. There’s a Wisdom doth attest
The ranging of our sight,
And still from daily light
Doth hide all but the issue of a day.
Still we can weigh
The good that is with what may be.
—The Queen approaches. She
May still some part of good prefer,
And Argos still for guidance look to her. [Enter CLyTEMNESTRA from the palace.
Cuorus
—Queen Clytemnestra, great as are thy cares In the long-lasting absence of the king,
So great the duty that we owe to thee. Therefore, that thou enlighten us, we crave, Not importunely, but with patience even ; Why hast thou thus ordained a festival ; What tidings, of what happy consequence, Dost thou possess ?
CLYTEMNESTRA
This is the hour of dawn. And if I tell you tidings, ’tis to say, This is the dawn of our long night of hope. What more? Shall I say then that Priam’s city Hath unto Argos fallen ?
19
CuHorvus
This if thou saidst, Mine ears could scarce receive.
CLYTEMNESTRA
Hear it again. Troy falls to us. Cuorus
O, then, mine eyes are dim. This, this is news.
CLYTEMNESTRA
O yes, you weep for joy.
Cuorus
A proof of this, O queen ; some witness, sign—
CLYTEMNESTRA
Why should the gods mock us ?
Cuyorus
Was it a dream ? A visitant of sleep too credulous ?
CLYTEMNESTRA
Am I a visionary, so to be Beguiled ? 20
Cuyorus
Some rumour thou hast ta’en for truth.
CLYTEMNESTRA
So childish, I ?
Cuorus
Nay, then; when fell the city?
CLYTEMNESTRA
This night—the mother of this dawn.
Cuorus None could Have brought the news so soon. CLYTEMNESTRA What of the fire
—Hephaistus’ signal, first on Ida sprung, And hither westward journeying, destined torch Of courient flame; instant in Lemnos, soon In Athos streaming from the peak of god, And lighting on the mounds of Thracian seas Like drifts of dawn to the Eubeean shore, Makistus’ watchers there. Sleepless they rise, And set in train those sentinels of light That wink across the dark and inland strait, Messapius opposite, his parched heaths
21
A crimson cloud. Asopus winds below Through all his valley, as in midnights when Citheron’s moon sinks westerly upon
His height divine. On, on those beacons spread, And now the lake Gorgopis overpast,
And Agiplanctus’ summit fired, therefrom
The torrent flame, blown like a giant’s beard, Brushes the walls of Saron’s ferry ; thence Arachnzus not far, whose kindly heights
Our neighbour and familiar vision fill.
The light that lingers yet is Ida’s own,
And Troy burns here. This is the sign I give. And by the statutes of the torch-racers,
One from another catching speed of light,
So that the last is first,—this is the word
My lord hath sent me, out of Troy.
CuHorus
For this We'll praise the gods in due time, save that now Not one word would we lose of this great theme. Beseech you, with your tidings to the end.
CLYTEMNESTRA
Methinks I hear the captured city voice
Confusion. Well, the elements make not
For peace. Victor and vanquished, vinegar
And oil—as soon would they assort within 22
The crucible. Hark—’tis the living seek
Their dead. Soon chains shall rack the sobbing throats. After the night of stubborn battle, men
Would break their fast ; a weary soldiery
Camp in the streets and eat the bread of chance. Happy, for they have roof for dwelling now ;
No more black watch and meagre rest beneath The tentless cold of heaven, and they will be
As housed men, their sleep unsentinel’d.
But let them not forget the native gods
To hold in awe, that victors in their turn Become not captives of a wrath revealed
To the inflamed eyes of sacrilege,
And spoilers of the sacred field. Enough.
Race so near home must be run to the end. Yet—if it otherwise befell, and if
The army had escaped—-still there are those
On whom the penalty, though long delayed Must fall. Well, these are woman’s words you hear, And may the issue be more plain to see ;
The good for choice, and my choice over all.
Cuorus O, manlike as thou speakest ; taking sign From thee, I will approach the gods, assured Of grace enough to foil disaster.
O Zeus! thy light we see, And Night, thou marshal of eternity, 23
Who didst within thy starry net enfold The towered Troyan hold.
—That now, of all
Who in those meshes captive lay,
None who was mighty then, and none so small But in the sack of doom is borne away. For this acclaim
Zeus, whose vengeful thunder’s flame, To the instant golden
Of starry time withholden,
A bolt infallible
On Alexander fell.
Its journey from the place
Of thunder ye may trace
To the lightning fall.
*Tis said, withal,
That heaven-begotten wrath
Disdains to follow in the path
Of man’s deluded choice.
List not, ’tis error’s voice.
Wiser their children are,
Whose fathers, plotting in the realms of war Carried beyond its place
The swollen scutcheon of their race ; Whose faithful service, lent
Only to enterprise of fair intent,
Had never failed. But earthly gain Little avails that tyrant whose brute reign
24
Spurns the mild sanctities of justice. Him Doth frenzy dim
Of an ancestral impulse bend
To the resistless end.
The irremediable blight Of nature maketh in the light A baleful showing, as beneath His hand, the burnisher discovereth An ill-mixed bronze, a metal base. The people of his race Take up the burden of their lord’s defeat, When from her cage the fleet Captive, wild hope, hath flown, And remedy is none, But echo far the cries Of passion’s children, in derisive skies. —None other, but the same Was Paris, when he came, Guest, to entreat in shameful sort the spouse Of host. She, from her husband’s house Fugitive, in her ear Clashing of shield and spear, Ships lading war, hath come With doom for dower, to Ilium ; Daring, O greatly daring, she, The tongues of prophecy
25
Not silent ; woe, they cry, Woe to the house and them that stand thereby, For errant love, the trespass that effaced Fair paths of memory traced By married feet. Who now remembers him, Alone in palace dim, When grief’s dumb scourge and whispered ban Speak more than words of desolation can ; And troubled as with seaward dreams The phantom-rule of silence seems, And mourns a queen’s departed grace. Image of her in sculptured face Intolerable appears, : And love himself a mask of famine wears, The heavy eyes are famine’s. Dreams of sleep Still lure those baffled wings to keep The paths of no return, and stay The traveller at the gates of day. So, heavier to sustain Than sorrow’s self, those shapes of pain Stand round the hearthstone drear, And worse than battle’s brunt to bear, Against the soldier’s citadel of home Legions of trouble come. Pierced to the heart are they Who cheered the warrior forth and bade not stay Him who should soon return. But not this funeral-ship, this urn,
26
These ashes. Never these. Yet what Hath Ares in his balance? Not Gold, no nor other merchandise Than the white dust that lies At Ilium’s furnace-gates. With this he freights For mourners the funestral vessel cold, And fills the vase of old Renown ; such tribute theirs Who fall, but chiefly his who bears The stroke of battle, sought in name Of honour and unsullied fame Of house and sacred home. Whether from thence there come Mute threnody and uncomplaint, Or if rebellious voices taint The air of praise, And envy ’gainst the avengers’ house inveighs. And fair, forbye, The dead that still in earth of Ilium lie, That conquered land, which hath Its conquerors taken prisoner in death’s path.
If it become a people’s curse, Deadly is that rancour of tongues, and worse To look for. As night loads
The listening mind with terror, gods,
27
The avengers of blood-guiltiness,
These are not blind, nor less
Watchful Erynnus is in her dark place,
Of fortune’s scale, quick to displace
The beam. When evil seems to prosper most, The abyss receives, and all is lost ;
And sunken in heaven’s thunderstroke
The ears that listened when the flatterer spoke. —Be mine no more nor less
Than the unenvied mean of happiness.
Never the stricken sun
Which captive eyes look on,
Light my life’s journey, nor
Myself a conqueror.
Fresh from the joyful flame
Runs rumour—whether in truth’s name,
Or falsehood’s, who shall tell ?
There are false gods, as well.
But ’tis a child, or fool, whose spirit fires
At kindled torch and with the flame expires.
A woman ’tis, who doth prefer
To what is true, that which seems best to her, And to fresh pasture flies
Outside all reason’s boundaries.
—Soon shall we know whether a heart of truth In this fable of fire, or torch of dream Delight our eyes. Herald himself I see ;
28
Under the olive shadows, hard from shore,
The road returns to dust. Dust tells his speed, ‘Swifter than flame of the green mountain wood, And words to come, clearer than smoke of fire.
Rejoice; prepare all for rejoicing now, Or—silent be the word—if any speak it, Of his faith’s treason let him pluck the fruit.
HERALD
My native land! The years have past, the light Of this tenth summer brings me to thy shore. One hope, among the many blighted, lives,
If it were hope, Argos, that kept in mind
But never dared to build on thy dear soil
The allotment of a tomb. Now praise the earth, The sun, and Zeus the country’s god, and him The Pythian—not on us his arrows fall,
Not now, as once by strange Scamander. Now *Tis O Apollo, Saviour, Healer, Lord.
And praise to other gods ; to those of old Arenas and the fields of peace. Him too,
The patron of my life, the adored, the first
Of Heralds, Hermes. So would I approach
The chiefs of our renown, whose spirits urged Ours to the test of war, that from the path
Of spear returned, they may with grace receive Our remnant. Hail, then, hearthstone of our race, And palace of our king; as oft of old, Sun-spirits of the holy place of home,
20
In order seasonal, your gracious eyes
Let rest on him returned, to light your dark, As well as ours, Let all be well that waits
For him, all welcome. Good it seems, for out Of Justice’ hand—from Zeus himself he took The spade that levelled Troy. Remaineth there No altar, no place for an altar, no
Life ;—underground the seed of it is dead.
Such was his word ; such was the yoke he put On Troy. Who else? Elder of Atreus’ House, Man happiest in his choice of gods—who else Of mortals worthier ? Not for Paris now
Is left to boast the advantage his in scale
Of deed and penalty. He held the stakes,
And with that forfeit went not he alone,
But home and country and his father’s house.
CuHorus Hail! Messenger. HERALD
Moment so charged with joy! Τα not gainsay the fate that slew me now,
Cuorus
So lovely seems thy native land ?
HERALD So fair,
Tears come.
30
Cuorus
From us that sweet distemper’s caught.
HERALD
Plain words can reach a child’s heart. Such is mine,
Cuorus
As you were stricken, so were we.
HERALD
You mean The land we longed for longed for our return ?
CHoRUS
With many a sigh, in gloom of heart.
HERALD
Was heart So strained ? And whence the burden of it ?
CHoRUS
Ills
There are, on which physician Silence waits.
HERALD
Alarms that fill an empty house. Whence then The assault you feared ?
31
Cuorus
Just now you said That death were happiness.
HERALD
When all’s well done, As must be true at last. To tell the worst Is but to say that of the enterprise A part went wrong. Better than this may be. There are gods, doubtless they know. My story’s one Of hardship; meagre fare aboard and ill Lodging ashore, if harbour made at all. No day of grateful memory to break The luckless process. Then, to come to land, To bed outside the foeman’s walls upon The aguish earth, beneath the watering skies. Soon marish-like, with matted clothes and hair, We grew foul creatures. Winter cold, the same That laid the small birds dead in Ida’s snow ; And heat, as when the breathless waters even Swooned to the noonday tropic and became © A waveless hush upon a muted shore. But why take up old burdens in the tale Of things ended? The dead themselves have made An end of all desire to live again, And shall they die again in our report ? There is enough on the fair side the scale, Balm for survivors, over land and sea
32
Flying with eager hearts towards some goal
And residue of good, as seemly is,
In the still shining sunlight of their day.
Remains to us on Hellas’ temple walls
To fix the seal and the eternal fame
Of Troy captured. And they who gaze thereon Will praise our land, our leaders and our god,
Who brought these things to pass. I have said all.
Cuorus
Who shall gainsay ? Not I, for unto age
Fair knowledge ever brings a spirit of youth. But first the King’s house—Clytemnestra first Let touch this gift of fame. Then may we taste.
CLYTEMNESTRA
When on the night’s horizon first appeared The writ of Troy in flames, did I delay Pean? Already is the city awake.
One said to me, a trick of flame, forsooth, Can on a woman’s mind project this folly,
_ And stand for Trojan fall. Enough was said To proveme mad. Yet unto sacrifice
Did I proceed, the while with fair address My women went the temple round and fed With sweets the hungry censers lapping flame. —Herald, I have no need of your report ; My lord’s own words shall satisfy me soon.
δ 33
Howbeit, do aught you know to speed him; say His city awaits his coming; say, his queen.
To her—to woman—never sight more fair
Than this of prosperous gods and opening gates Upon the homeward road of war. And then, For him, returned at last, who left his house
In faithful keeping, dog-like faith to find,
And battle done with trespass ; undisturbed The seal he fastened for inviolate time.
I know not ill, and the repute of ill
Touching another man leaves me unstained
As metal dipped in dye. Truth to the brim Pours out my boastful cup. Who'd flinch from it ? No woman of my race.
CHorus
Interpreter Of words—hear these; she speaks them well; there’s much To learn of her, But tell me, Herald,—’tis Of Menelaus that I ask—has he, The joint desire of all our people, part In your return ?
HERALD
I would not, if I could, Dress out ill news as fair; fruit that would rot Soon as you plucked it.
34
Cuyorus
And the good you told Lose virtue of truth. So to divorce from truth
Helps not to hide.
HERALD
He’s gone, then, whom you said. He and his crew out of our sight are gone.
Cuorus
What, from the field of war, from Troas shore Set earlier sail? Or from the common fleet Did tempest gulf him ?
HERALD
That, a goodly aim, Cuts off betimes the unwilling story.
Cuorus
Yet Some tale of life or death must be to tell. What say the shipmen ?
HERALD
What avails to say, When none knows anything? Unless the Sun Of earth, the cherisher of life, should know His foster-children.
35
CuHorus
By what malice, then, Inhuman, came the storm, and ended how ?
HERALD
I would not mar the day of auspices
With other tales than good. There are other gods ; As when the herald of defeated camps,
Visaged with those disasters, to his city bears Arms of calamity ; the wound of state Envenoming the private wounds of war.
A deathly curse it is the stifled dirge
Erynnus has to sing; not saviour deeds,
Not Victory when it comes, And with the tale Of peace, how should I blend a stormful strain ? —Yet be it said, the end found troubles still, And gods not all appeased. Since, foes before, Water and Fire made peace between them, us Wretched, to overthrow. By night it came, Tempest upon the sea, unloading winds
Of Thrace, like bellowing herds upon us, ship Foundering on ship in smoking surges pent
And blind. Mad shepherd drove our flock that night. And dawn that day, dawn on the Aégean field, That ready seemed for harvest, flowering
With many a drowned corpse and floating spar ; While we and our miraculous vessel rode
In some divine security, our helm
36
In hand of saviour Fortune, to avoid
The fangs of coast and sea. Which death escaped, Aghast in that pale light, our shrunken sail
And loss beholding, we with scanty fare
Pastured our starving hope to see again
Our comrades; who, if they survive, in turn
Will think of us as dead. And so we too
May hope ;—that somewhere still the light of day Kindles on Menelaus, as on us,
Under the hand of Zeus, not mindful yet
Utterly to destroy and from its place
Uproot our nation.
Cuorus
Helen, the Conqueress !
—One pastured to the lips in prophecies, Some sibyl named thee well,
And at thy cradle sponsor stood to tell Thine afterfame,
— O dreadful history in a name! —Helen of Troy to be,
Of annal’d war by land and sea,
Of arms, of men,
Helen of nations. When
At last, from silken pale
Of thy sea-gazing, thou didst give a sail To the giant-seeded winds of the west, Instant upon the quest
37
Of thy light-running keel appeared Myriads, whose clashing bucklers cheered The hounds of blood, and hurled
On Simois green the hunters of the world.
So at the doors of Ilium Vengeance stands
Accountant, in her hands
The marriage-marring evidence of fate,
And the law violate
Of Zeus, guest-guardian. She
Waits, with dun adversity,
On those who in the bridal courts prolong
Their spendthrift song,
Until that hymenzan falters. Hear
In Priam’s city at last the accent drear
Of dolorous change.
Hear Paris called the ill-wived. Voice of how strange
Groomsmen! But they have drawn their singing- breath
In an age of death.
There was a man brought home with thought to tame The lion-cub reft of his milky dam.
In his boon whelphood what
A playmate for the younger !—not
Unapt to rouse
Mirth of the elder house,
This little weanling oft
With cringing stomach. and entreatment soft
38
Will at their doors look in,
And table-mercies win.
Then trust with trust and kind with kind Repaid, the prosperous mite will find Caress more freely given,
And lap-room even.
But Time, which to maturity
Leads on born savagery,
And adult Nature shows the beast of blood
In cruel mood
Returning shepherd-kindness. He has broken Into the sacred pasture, and for token
The ruddy lintel smeared
And startled homestead cleared
Of frightened men, while he the unbidden feast Pursues ;—intemperate priest
Of doom, which Ignorance in his mansion bred, At cost uncovenanted.
Came thus to Troas one, and came with her
A prosperous weather, as it were
Summer of idle calm
That sowed sweet harm
Of Eros’ flower, and sought beneath those eyes The dangers of love’s paradise.
—A marriage-change ;
And then, what consort strange
39
Is this, who next to Priam’s throne Of Priam’s people friend hath nonev But for herself and for the land Hath furnished to the hand
Of what offended god,
In what demented haste, this rod, This justice-wanting
Erynnus, women-haunting ?
Life’s ancient learning, bent
With failing eyes on truth, describes the event Of human happiness.
—Not issueless
Falls the fair branch of fortune, not Unfruitful dies, but hath an heir begot, Ill-graft upon the parent name of bliss, Sorrow, ’tis said, his generation is. —Cold creed, not mine! Despair
If good should evil bear.
Rather, ’tis evil that begets his kind ; And to my mind
Truth with itself is reconciled
If fair have fair to child.
The Pride of Life, the pampered, still Insatiate, hardening human will
At every turn of fate, to oppose
The holy gods ;—her progeny are those Shadows of mortal path
And that earnest of death which hath
40
In the old semblance, to the long-spared home, At the master-moment, come.
And if mid the hearth-stains of poverty
The lamp of Justice kindles, she
Finding a pure faith there,
Stays, though in many a palace fair
Rest comes not to an eye that sees
The soul’s uncleannesses,
The guilty palm of power, whose boastful days Herself hath numbered, looking divers ways.
[Enter AcAMEMNON, with his following. CASSANDRA is seated in the mule-car.
—He comes ! —The King!
—O lord of Atreus House, Troy-conquering, If doubts arrest
The voices of thy triumph, ’tis but lest
The excess of praise mere adulation prove ; ’Tis but that truth we love
More than that seeming which is everywhere ; —The face men wear
Of gratulation, oft a veil too thin
To hide the unsmiling soul within ;
Or if grief calls
For a fraternal tear, the semblance falls From a dry casket. Undeceived is he
Who in the market of humanity
41
His cattle knows ;
And thou, remembering the part we chose In times gone by,
Not then the flatterer’s, when thou didst try Our counsel ; when the war
Of Helen came, and not as things now are, We did thy wisdom call
In question, and thy aim depict in all
Its threatening hues, as when
It came to force upon reluctant men
The courage of fierce sacrifice,
And pay that altar-price.
—Know, then, the measure of good will Which doth our welcome fill,
And taketh in, as well it should,
The mighty issue thou hast brought to good. And know, as soon thou wilt,
How justly, or otherwise, each man hath dealt His share of commonweal,
Which one proved false, and which did strictly deal.
AGAMEMNON
Argos, by thee and by thy people-gods
Be heard the first of this new voice of mine, To mine own house, by their solicitude Returned, who at their bidding went away. It was no mortal voice that gave Troy doom, By lot announced, when none profanely cast Into the opposing cup a rebel vote
42
Averse to blood; none failed us; so Troy fell. —Witness her burning! What sweet airs prolong The Até-life in ashes and send forth
Burnt odours with the carnal flames of wealth’s Blown sacrifice! To the gods, to the gods return Measures of praise heaped in the scale with these Vindictive spoils. Not to the spoiler in
The chase of love this bursting net of gain.
The male beast turned.—Thou Argive troop, compact Of shield, taking thy leap at last amid
The storms of sunset, thou the battlement
Hast cleared ; a lion now, with jaws that drip Majestic blood. To the gods, to the gods again These firstfruits— Now to you whose weight of care Has held me listener, till I could have ta’en
The burden up and spoken in your stead.
—It is not in the heart of every man
To gladden at the welfare of his friend.
The envious canker there, an eye distressed
Looks out on neighbour fortune, so to find Home-burdens doubled. Often have I proved And torn the mask from many a flattering word Of many a seeming friend —Yet there was one, Ulysses. He did with rough words dispute
My sailing-counsel ; but, embarked, stood true, And held the course with me. I speak of him ;
I know not if ’tis of the dead I speak.
—There’s much to do; let us take counsel on
The state and the divine action of men.
43
If good be proved, how to renew that good
To everlasting ; or, if evil be,
Whether fire purge it or remedial knife
Cut out the part diseased.—But now, ’tis home
I enter; and—the gods first even there—
Greet gods of home; the same who sent me forth, Bring me again.—Ye powers attending me
In battle, stay my feet in paths of peace.
[Enter CuyremnestRA. While AGAMEMNON Stands in salutation of the gods, she addresses the Chorus
first. CLYTEMNESTRA
‘You citizens, elders of Argos, to you
I may refer, with less misgiving, my theme
Of wifely duty. Humility, and fear,
Wear out in time. - The hard lot I have borne While he—while this man— conquered Troy—’tis my Affair and knowledge. What is known to all
Is the state of that woman whom her husband Deserts for war. The empty house, the cold Alarms, dinning on the wrought mind, they come, One on another rumour, heaping dread.
Wounds ;—if the word of wounds were always true, This man of hers was riddled like a sieve.
Deaths ;—what was Geryon in his digged grave, Casting the triple cloak of earth he wore ?
A man of fewer lives, I ween, than this.
44
Why, in that gloss of maddening rumour, what Marvel if it were said—if it were true,
They cut me from the noose, and left me life
I could not away with ?—Then—he is not here, The child, the master-witness of my faith,
And thine—Orestes. Nay, but marvel not ;
A neighbour cares for him, a friend at arms, Strophios the Phocian ; one who, warning, gave Shape to the fears that clung about me ;—death In Troas field ; kingdom without a king ; Dispersed council, and this house of thine
At rabble-mercy. Was not this enough?
Is human-kind to trust? Hard do I seem ? The springs are dry, there is not a drop remains. This harm was done to the once-ready fount
Of tears. *Twas that night-watching, that Unkindled fire, for thee. That broken sleep, Those pestered dreams, when the light-buzzing sense Wove in the minutes of too straitened sleep Patterns of fear which would have overflowed The waking hour. Now all is past I look
On thee, strayed guardian of the fold returned, Strong helmsman, grounded column of the roof, Sole prop of parentage infirm, land past
The hope of sailors, when with land appears Fair dawn upon the winter of the seas ;
When, too, the endless traveller nears the green Of desert-wells. Surely there is no sweet
Like that which never can be. Such the words
45
I deem to fit thy. coming. Stand aside,
Envy! Though past, were there not ills we bore ?
—Dear lord, descend! But not to earth, O king,
Troy-conqueror, come thy feet. Down, slaves, and spread
The footway ; laggards in the task assigned,
Why this delay? Set straight, of broidered wealth,
A regal carpet. Justice to his house
Unhoped for, guide him.—For the rest, not sleep
Shall mask disclosure of our mind, and still
Justly, and with the gods, and after fate.
AGAMEMNON
Daughter of Leda, guardian of my house ;
Thou hast given me greeting, so extending speech To suit an absence long. More measured praise Had come from other lips, in awe of heaven. —For that, Iam no woman, whom soft things Like words, content ; no satrap, pleased with court Agape, and earth-obeisance. Never spread
For me the invidious ground of honour gods Alone may safely tread. I fear that path; Mortal I am, give me a man’s due, not
A god’s. My fame subsists without the mark
Of this dyed blazon ; were it not that heaven’s Best gift is other, even a guiltless mind,
And none will know, until the end, if life
Have prospered ; till the end and all well done,
If he have courage left for happiness.
46
CLYTEMNESTRA
Tell me—and let thine answer not admit Misunderstanding.
AGAMEMNON
That it never shall.
CLYTEMNESTRA
Thou hast made a boast of piety.
AGAMEMNON
If not I, Who then should so ?
CLYTEMNESTRA
Not Priam, if victor he.
AGAMEMNON
No, by my faith, he’d tread the purple path
Here strown.
CLYTEMNESTRA
Tis human blame you fear in this.
AGAMEMNON
Strong censors of our acts are human tongues.
47
CLYTEMNESTRA
They are envious tongues. But without envy none Shall emulate.
AGAMEMNON
Is it a woman’s part So to persist in strife of reason ?
CLYTEMNESTRA
Yet
It is a part of power to yield sometimes.
AGAMEMNON
Thou hast set some pressing store on this.
CLYTEMNESTRA
And still Am urging, in the hope still to prevail.
AGAMEMNON
So be it. Forward then, some slave, to strip These sandals, lest the insulting feet should mar That cloth of price, fabric of Tyrian seas ;
And such ill-thrift, contemptuous use of wealth, Bring down the jealous armoury of heaven.
Let be then. But—this stranger-woman. Ah! Bid welcome here kindly, for kindness is
The temper of power, and the gods look for it
48
Where’er the abashed human spirit sustains Violence of slavery ; and this woman, this Princess ;—where the luxuriant bloom of life Excels in kings’ houses,— she is that flower,
The prize of kings; and to whose arms but ours Should victory, dealing in spoils of fight, Deliver her ?—But since I am constrained,
All by thy ruling here, my subject feet,
On threshold purple-dight, let enter home.
CLYTEMNESTRA
There is a field wherein is harvested
The flower of the eternal sea, whose dyes Beseem the fadeless garment of our pride. And while our lack in this wise is no more Than ocean’s penury, or heaven’s eclipse, Which never yet hath ceased to shine on us,
I had put leagues of purple down, to hear Rumour of thy recall, or oracle
Prolong thy day of life ’neath foreign suns. For even thus, if the tree’s root survive,
Fair shade its distant leaf extendeth o’er
A barren and deserted homestead, still Slakening the rule of Sirius’ droughty star. And now thou hast entered, like a winter sun, The very hearth-place; like the breath that cools Days after harvest, and the winepress full,
As is thy life filled with deeds harvested.
D 49
—O Father Zeus !—and my remaining prayer Fulfil !—and that which shall be, be thy will.
[Exeunt, into the palace, AGAMEMNON and CLYTEMNESTRA. CASSANDRA remains seated in the mule-car.
Cuorus
O gathering shade !
Is it phantom-bodied fear hath cast
The prophet forth, and the unbidden singer made A solitary ? Is it the tangled past
Of dreams, which the fair forms of day release, And waking courage solves ?—The day has come, And still it is not these.
The day of Ilium
Hath aged to this hour.
The ships of sailing memory,
The empty strand.
Is it their return I see,
When, stricken from my hand
The lyre, and by the voice within
Confused, breath comes not but with threnody And dron’d Erynnus? Though in that fierce din Heart burst, yet Righteousness
Will on the panting torrent press
Her labour to the end ;
And in that whirlpool I
50
With feeble clamour lend To fathomless woe
A voice of prayer, and know Tis without hope I cry.
There is no well-to-fare
In life, when best to win
Is to find wanting there.
It is not Health at all,
So neighboured by Disease,
Who, ever at the wall,
A crouching shadow is,
Intent to enter in.
—That fair ship, seeming to maintain Her even course, beset
By the unknown, the sunken rock, the bane Of sailors ;—yet
The master-wisdom, reckoning
His freightage, may the over-burthen note, And from the bulwarks fling
Unvalued jettison, a toll to fate; Leavening, until she float
Again, his ship, his substance, his estate Upon the waters. Thus
Comes hope to the seafarer; yea,
And to the needy slaves of dearth, When the all-gatherer, Zeus,
Of harvest, spills his plenty in the way Of annual earth.
51
But hope to you, O men of blood, Comes not at all. The drops of sacred blood once spilled Have no recall. Was one of old time skilled To raise the dead ? His fate but showed Whereto the empery of nature led. —Ah no! Could some divine Amend the human lot once drawn, And night of destiny Merge in alternate dawn, Swifter than any tongue, O heart of mine, With tidings such as these should be, Thou hadst shown it now. But hark! Upon what fearful summons do I grope With trembling shades and scarce for dread suspire ? No thread of hope Drawn from the stranded dark And patterned fire. [Enter CLYTEMNESTRA. |
CLYTEMNESTRA
Enter. Cassandra is thy name? Thou too
Wilt find provision made. Need it be said,
The peace which Zeus hath given extends to thee, A portion in our feast, however small ;
A place beside our altar, though a slave’s.
52
Come down. Look not above thee. So did not Alcmena’s son, reputed to have borne
The yoke of slavery in a foreign mart.
Besides, if need to serve, ’tis well to have
Of possible masters, not the newly rich.
For those whom fortune hath surprised are raw To none so much as to their servants. We
Are of the temper that belongs to power.
This you will prove.
CHoRUS
She waits your answer. She has said but fair. And you, who are the spoil of destiny, Will choose to obey; or, if you do not choose,
Will still obey.
CLYTEMNESTRA
There is a barbarous kind Of speech, like the bird-clamour of the roof, About our ears. Therewith a barbarous way Of understanding. If she be not one Of these, persuasion wins.
Cuorus
How else, for all The choice there is? No better to sit there, Than follow, as she bids thee.
53
CLYTEMNESTRA
This is as much Of outdoor leisure as I have to spend. Fire burns upon the household altar, there The sheep of sacrifice are tied and wait For us, who have waited long enough for this. —Dost still delay ? Thy lot is not thine own; But this occasion is the gods’, and this We share with thee——She hears me not! Uncouth. —Attempt not then thy barbarous speech, but make Some sign, with what civility thou canst.
CuHorus
Ah, ’tis interpreter she needs. How like Some wild thing newly taken in the net.
CLYTEMNESTRA
Yes, from the newly taken city come, She rages and still starts at every sound. The bridle is not used to fit, there’s froth, There’s red aversion foamed at the mouth. But wait ; The reins are mine. [Exit CLyTEMNESTRA into the palace.
CHorRusS
Ah, piteous creature, hear; it is not I Am angered with thee. At thy journey’s end,
54
Come down, attempt the yoke, with needful grace For what must needs be borne.
CassANDRA
O hear me, hear me, gods.
Apollo, O Apollo.
Cuorus
But when did he thou callest, when Did Loxias give heed to voice of fear ?
CASSANDRA Hear; save.
Apollo, Apollo.
Cuorus
She calls again on whom ’tis weariness For grief to call. He is not Sorrow’s god,
CasSANDRA
The streets are full of his name. But he is mine. Apollo.
Ah, now thou leavest me; ah, now thou art gone.
Cuorus
Her own despair is now the prophetess, Divinity left in a mind enslaved.
55
CASSANDRA
The many voices thou hearest ;
But me,
Apollo, Apollo,
Me whither hast thou led ? Unto what roof ?
Cuorus
The House of Atreus, since thou askest this, But do we tell thee aught thou dost not know?
CassANDRA Woe, woe, hereby. Hate, hate—the gods know it for hate. Murder—she goeth not abroad ; She need but listen here For step of friend. Hangs ever here The rope that hanged. This choking—so breath must fail. This damp—they have not drained The death-places of blood, men’s blood—
Cuyorus
Hound-like, on scent of blood—
CASSANDRA
And children’s. O, these are my witnesses. Ye know the truth I tell, for they cry out 56
In death, their bodies burned, their flesh, their flesh A father’s banquet.
Cuorus
We are thy witnesses. Soothsayer, yes. We ask not this to say.
CASSANDRA
But what is now—but what is now Of horror heaped within those doors ? What fiend’s work plotting? None Can save, none can remove.
Help so far off is none, none, none.
CHorus
Things of the past which thou hast told are known To all the race, but not these present fears.
CASSANDRA Wilt do it, wretched one? Couched is he? Bathest thou his journey’s dust ? -- Ἴ not tell the end, it is too near. Those hands—one is stretched forth already. No, ’tis the other reaches forth to kill.
Cuorus
Away with thoughts not to be guessed at, things Unseen. The eye is blurred that sees these things.
id
CassANDRA Nay, but ’tis plain ; The victim’s quite enmeshed. Death has him fast. Ruin for consort, who escape the snare Of such a bedfellow? She has him fast. —Voices that haunt the house, Begin again, let wail. They are not satisfied, So there’s another due for vengeance.
CHorus
The voice thou hearest and still callest on, Is it Erynnus? Not that thy word is clear. Only before my heart’s dull vision blood Rains purple down, like drops
Of mortal issue, from the wounded frame Of life, when sunset yields to dark.
CassANDRA
Look, look !—For pity unlock
Those monstrous nuptials.
A horn’d dagger she hides. Black, black it is. A bathrobe hides it.
He on the crystal edge
Hath fallen, and from the cleansing laver’s lip Hath taken stain of death.
CHorusS
I cannot claim to have followed to the end That wisdom’s theme wherewith the gods have filled
58
.)
RIN OT TR OTT I TO, σοὶ a σεν τ
μ».
The lips of prophets, but this truth is mine ; The things they have to tell an evil likeness wear To naught of good to men.
Come art, the many, the sweet-syllabled,
Come melody the most divine,
The burden is the same, that teaches only fear.
CassANDRA
O heavy fate, now is my turn of death,
To enter on the stream of destiny.
Me hither, wretched, wherefore didst thou lead, Thyself O foully slain, to die with thee ?
CHorusS
Who art thou, what is thy lament ?
Is for thyself the passion’d strain,
Wherein the mortal means are spent
On more than mortal? Art thou she
Who “‘ Itys ” cries
And “ Itys,” and again ;
—The singer of brown dusk, the nightingale Of earth far-blossoming with pain.
CASSANDRA
The nightingale! Who hears That voice? as if it were
59
“Oearth! O 8ογτον ! ”—But they gave A winged shape to her,
And a sweet life away from tears.
—In my cold death is none to save.
CHorus
This voice that is despair,
So sweetly sounds,
Tis some divine possession. Yet
A note of terror breaks the bounds Of a pure music, shadows that beset The path, and horror lurking there.
CasSANDRA
Paris, thou and thy bride!
Thou hast ruined us, my brother. Ah! Scamander, river of home!
My way was deep in green
By thy old waterside,
Where I remember always to have been.
Alas, no more.
But I that never left thee, unto this have come, O wailing river, O dark shore.
Cyorus
Who is so new to life as not to hear In these the tones of death ?
60
— As though myself did overtake
Some treacherous blow, so clear
The word she saith,
That grips my heart, as it would break.
CASSANDRA
My country! O the burdens borne,
The battles, and the end!
My father’s house! the stones uptorn
For altars, and the fields
Emptied of grazing herds, to spend
On fruitless heaven and doom they could not stay. |
—Enough, even my spirit yields.
I must put all away.
CHorus
It follows, all,
As the spirit, dropt from what height Informs thee, in the language used of pain, —O voice most musical !
— And death, ranging beyond my sight, And where to question is in vain.
' CASSANDRA
No longer, as it were the bride of fear, The Oracle peers from a veil obscure.
61
Comes now, as oft at restless dawn, a wind, And with that change to visible, the waves Gather a greater head of waters, to
The plunge of last calamity.—Enough
Ye know to join your witness unto mine, Following the tracks of ancient trouble here. Ye singers of this house did ne’er march forth To happy music; ne’er had good to tell
Of this your dwelling. So much, then, ye know Of spirits that haunt, of revellers within,
That sit at table there, and will not move,
— Tis Murder fills the cup—till from the roof The midnight chanty shrieks, voice unto voice Calling out of the past, they mouth the tale Like garbage. Once a brother’s bed defiled, What crime obscene answered the trampler’s guilt ? —TI have said it, all have I divined. Must I Seem some loose teller of wild fortunes at
Your doors? Must I approve myself again ? —-Believe—swear ye believe that what I know Is of my own divining.
Cyorus
I could swear, But though my faith were uttered on an oath What help were that to thee? I am amazed That one, as thou, a stranger born, from far And newly come to us, should know these things.
62
CassANDRA
It was Apollo’s gift tome. Time was When I had shame in saying it.
Cuorus Was he Thy lover, then? And did the favour sought By him, a god, of thee a mortal—
CassANDRA Nay But in fair seeming and yet godlike he My suitor was.
CHorus
To wedlock couldst thou come, And children born to him ?
CASSANDRA Loxias !—I made Consent, I promised, I deceived
Cuorus When he had filled thee with this gift divine ?
CASSANDRA
Yes—after he had given. The city then Was marvelling at my power.
63
Cuorus
What then? Did he, Did Loxias let thee go unscathed ?
CASSANDRA Alas
For my unfaith! What prophetess was I ἢ Henceforth no man believed me.
Cuorus
Nay, but I Believe thee !
CassANDRA
O, rid me of this thing, ’tis evil, evil.
On such a brink I sway, of such a burden Possessed, at any word of it I am lost.
—Those children !—Look, those little ones again,
Do yeseethem? So like shades transfixed in dream ; }
So motionless they sit, as fitting those
Surprised with death by those who fondled them.
Their hands, those small dead hands, they seem to hold
Some offering of themselves. A father ?—not
A father takes their gory contents; no,
’Tis horror-past, pity cannot reach there.
And vengeance? Is it for this that I see such
64
Ta OF EE Pc
Home-keeping, nerveless thing of lion-kind Turn himself in the absent monarch’s lair ? This is a king Slavery herself must own,
And we of wasted Troy attest his power.
And yet he knows not how he stands in terms Of hell’s conspiracy with the tongue that gave Him welcome and is waiting chance to bite.
— Tis of the bitch I speak, she only dares
The female part of murder. Is there name
Of her among unnameable, beasts that creep Before and after? Such was Scylla, hid
In gulfs that swallow shipwreck. Such was she, Mother of death, that warred on her own kind. Didst hear the gladness feigned for his return ἢ The peal of triumph, as in battle swells
The turn of victory? It matters not
What ye did hear, nor what ye take from me. There is what shall be, and shall be too soon To cost the prophetess more pains than these, Your faith stands with your pity, not far off.
Cuorus
Tale of his children’s flesh Thyestes had To banguet on, I understood too well, Horror best left in its unfigured shade. The rest I follow not to understand.
\
CASSANDRA
Not when I speak of Agamemnon’s end ?
E 65
Cuorus
Take care of words like these, though for thyself Thouw’rt desperate.
CASSANDRA
There’s no help in words of yours.
Cuorus
No, not if these things were. But they are not, And may not be.
CasSANDRA
Be the protesting word Your care. Theirs is to kill.
Cuyorus
Whose? What, I say ? What man’s?
CASSANDRA
Thou hast not listened well.
CHorus
No, not To gather this. 66
Rime
ΟΑΘΘΑΝΌΕΑ
As though I did not speak Your tongue.
Cuorus
In oracles as dark to see, The Pythian speaks the tongue of Hellas too.
CassANDRA Ah, not again !—Lycian Apollo, ah, Put out the fire! it draws too near. —One of a race of kings, this lion’s mate, In her lord’s absence couches with a wolf. If such a one hath spite, how should it spare A wretch like me? She'll not forget to mix My portion in the draught of death. For him A dagger sharpened ; for my presence here With him, the thrust deep, deep as vengeance Can take it. O, this mockery on my breast, This mantic wreath I have worn, this prophet’s staff ; Should these survive mine injury of death? —Lie there and do no harm; the vanity Will not be found again in woman weak As I, to wear prophetic likeness. None Will touch. Take back thy gift, Apollo! See, He has divested me, looks on me now As I was, but for the shame that’s past. I had friends Whose mockery drove me wild, and to think all
67
Mine enemies. They called me—what ?
I might have been a vagrant in their path,
Witless, and hunger-driven to frenzy, asking
This charity of them—to be believed.
Here is an end. My lord of wisdom, he
Has brought me to the wisdom of the dead.
For altar—O my father’s house,
And the lov’d temple-service there !
—This block, this blood-splash, this before mine eyes.
Vengeance? Yes, there will be to pay this debt
Of dying, someone to make pay the price.
Another branch of murder-bearing tree,
Son of his father, and his mother too,
Avenging one upon the other. He
Shall wander out of exile, to renew
The home-acquaintances, builders of wrath,
And cope the muniment of death. For him
No other way but to seek out the place
That saw his sire struck down. For him no choice,
Bound by no oath but what the heavens have sworn.
—I weep not for the sorrows of this house,
Seeing my own, my Ilium come to what
These eyes have seen, my people come to this,
And in heaven’s judgment come. I have come too,
To endure as they; I can endure as well
To die. I will address me to these doors,
Ask death to open to me. I think there is
No more to ask; only that when it fall,
68
The blow may end me, and no need to shrink Or struggle; but a closing of the eyes On a swift-running stream.
Cuorus
O, whither now Hath sorrow led thee? Wisdom to what bourne Arrived, that looking, as thou seem’st to do, On thine own death, thou canst go to it thus, All-knowing, to endure; not as the ox That paces slow the route of sacrifice, And yet as far from fear ?
CASSANDRA
Help there is none, O strangers. So what need prolong the hour ?
CuHorus
Yet, to put off the hour, this is the thought Even of age, when we have come to it.
CASSANDRA
The day has come, I am not its fugitive.
Cuorus
What courage! so to bear.
69
CassANDRA
*Tis all they need, Who miss the path of happiness. }
CuHorus ὶ Grace left To those unfortunate—nobly to face The end. } CASSANDRA
My father! 80 didst thou, and so We of thy house. And yet—
Cuorus
What comes to thee? What labour of the heart For breath ?
CASSANDRA These walls—a smell of blood—of blood—
Cuorus
A burning on the hearth, an incense strange
To thee.
CassANDRA
No, no, a breath of open graves.
7O
Cuorus
No words of mine can balm instil in what Thou tastest now.
CASSANDRA
As well within as here, To handle that last cup. Is it finished with him ? Hath Agamemnon tasted ?—I have yet Life—to be rid of. Strangers, farewell. I was to dwell with you. Alas, you say. But no. Behold me now, Not like that shrieking bird in quickset fear, No, not like that. I want your witness still To that dead woman which is myself ;—when for my cause Yet other woman perish, aye, and man too, For other man ill-mated.—I was to be Your guest, but life is done.
Cuorus
O, for compassion’s sake—beseech the gods That otherwise—
CASSANDRA
Not a word, not for myself I pray, yet one word more. It is to thee, To thee, Sun of my life, light of last day. —Thou seest none my avenger; mea slave
71
They kill, and fear no reckoning. Yet not so; Mine are the avengers of the mightier dead That die with me. This, this is human, this
Is life. Joy was a shadow, and no more
The marks of pain. Behold, how easy ’tis
To rub them off. The writing’s vanished. This Is only more to pity.
[Exit CassanpRA, into the palace.
Cuorus
O house of fame,
Example to the world of power; _ Hath no one of thy name,
Even at this hour,
Prudence to shut the door in fortune’s face, Or deprecate, at least,
The gifts unloaded there ?
For [llium’s captive grace
Stands at the conqueror’s feast, Gods of homecoming fair
Attend ; whence then this cry
Of blood once shed ?
If he, the glorious living, die
For so long dead,
An end would be
To all that earthly-dwellers have, Or hope to save,
From the ill-genius of mortality.
72
AcAMEMNON (Within)
SmittenamI...
Cuorus (LEADER)
Silence !—Whose voice is that, whose voice of death ?
AGAMEMNON Again !
Cuorus (LEADER)
’Tis ended !—’tis the King !—what counsel, say ἢ
Various VoIcEs OF THE CHORUS Mine is—to the city—rouse we all we can.
—Nay—in with us—the evidence of guilt Is there to take red-handed.
—I am for doing—and that quickly— what ἢ
—One thing is clear—a tyranny prepares To fasten on us.
—Yet we do naught—their ready hands will bring To scorn our purpose thus deferred.
—We should have been prepared. Counsel is hard To suit to action.
73
—Counsel will not bring
The dead to life.
—wNo, nor our own lives given. But ’tis a dastard purchase, at the cost.
—Aye, death were better than such tyranny. —But—to make sure—art certain it was death?
~—How sounded it? Let us not say too much; Tis but conjecture, there is yet to know.
—To know—aye, there’s the point—how fares it with The King ?
[Enter CuyTEMNESTRA from the palace, dis- closing the bodies of AGAMEMNON and CassANDRA
CLYTEMNESTRA
Now I can speak, where opportunity
Was never truth to tell, but always false, Always to fear. How else? When enemies Go in another likeness, we must wear
That likeness too, and with a friendly gesture Invite. It was a snare set long ago,
No risk could be admitted to the issue. Sudden it seems, but much went to it, this
74
Is but the final cast. Yet more than that.
Twas here I struck, and here I stand assured
Of all I struck for, even to own the deed,
And say, was it not well done, that gave no chance To escape, nor made uncertainty of death ? Fairly I cast, and drew the net ashore.
Seamless I wove, that the rich dress might suit. I struck him in it twice.
As many times he groaned, and therewith took The pose of death. I had done; but to make up The tale of tribute due to gods who wait
Beneath the earth for souls of passing men,
And so they should not wait for him in vain,
I struck once more, the third time. To be sure, His parting breath did linger not at all,
And life ran fountain-free and slaughter-red ;
I was myself bedewed, a darksome kind
Of rain; but, O, gods never opened heaven
On such a thirsty earth as I, nor brought
A more delightful season to the womb
Of life’s expectant pain. But ye know not
How these things be ;—old men of Argos, get What joy you can from things that make for joy. I tend triumphant altars ; I would make Libation here; this, this should be the flesh
Of sacrifice, were it seemly, as ’tis just ;
—O justice never to be questioned! Cup
Thou hast drained; yea, thou, who didst it fill for us With imprecation ; thou hast tasted, thou !
75
Cuorus
And this thy husband! O amazing tongue, That darest all unspeakable to speak !
CLYTEMNESTRA
Yes, in a woman, ’tis no doubt beyond
Belief. And then, that I should tell of it,
And in the telling show no natural fear,
Nor nice regard for aught I might receive
Of praise or blame from you who know so much,
Such as, I was his wife, and this was he,
My husband—now the corpse of my right hand;
And justice done, and I again, the doer.
So stands the case that naught could make more plain.
Cuorus
What taste of earth, defamed, Or poison-seas hath passed Thy lips, that frenzy led, And world aghast, Thou hast strange altars fed With sacrifice unnamed ? And thou, unnameable—the race Of men, earth’s remnant left inhabited, Will look not on thy face. 76
CLYTEMNESTRA
So ready are ye with justice, to pronounce
Hate, execration, banishment, in name
Of public conscience. This for me, but what
For him, who brought our human flesh to trade Of butchery ; who, that time, when pastures teemed With eligible sacrifice, sought out
His child—and of my children one—that one
I was mother to, that sweetest breath he cast
To Thracian dragon-mouths, unravelling
The winds’ foul magic. Could ye not have joined The human hunt, and tracked the pestilence
To him who breathed it first ? Instead of which Ye put the scent of crime upon my deeds,
And, justice-mongering, dilate on them.
Proceed, and get the better if ye can
Of truth, and use the power ye have not now.
Pll suffer you, though even yet the gods
Put off the issue. You, even you, will learn.
Cuorus A burden to breaking ’tis, And reason over-reaching ; loud To speak.—What madness this, That shakes a dripping shroud, To dash thine eyes With blood, and drive to spend The last thou hast on that which all denies, But blow for blow and friendlessness for friend !
77
CLYTEMNESTRA
Ha, there’s the sanction of divine in this
The oath I swear. Hear it, by Até and
Erynnus, names of dread whose service due
To Justice put it in my hands to slay
The murderer of my child. I do not think,
While I have one to mend my fire at home,
That Fear will have for me his quaking guest.
Egisthus, he it is who stands with me,
The shield behind my point of courage. What
Of him? Nay, rather, what of this? Here lies |
The woman, too, and not the only one.
A little more of honey-sweet and less
Of poison-barb he left behind with those
Of Chryseis’ coast-girls, altar-flames, I trow ;
—This one he hath had allayed for him too soon.
For bedmate, something of the siby]-kind.
Ah, the wise,spending of the curtained time!
Shipboard as well, so favourably planned
For converse. They have paid for what they had.
We'll count the cost, as so much he, and she,
Swan-song to boot, the dying flavour fled,
So much, cold sweetheart. Does it balance? She
Has not subtracted, by her lying there,
More than a very little from the pleasure
With which, awhile, I did for my own board
Contract.
78
Cuorus
Shut down, shut down
The light of day in us,
Lead darkness on
To endless sleep, that thus
The vision of him here
Become not now, through hours untold, Bedridden thought’s attendant fear ; Our king, our strength,
Our counsellor,
By woman dead at length,
Who, living, bore
A burden woman-heaped of old.
—Helen, for thee
What Ilian numbers fled
On spirit-wings the Ilian shore ? Misguided Helen, see
Whom thou hast added to thy dead, And now canst add no more.
For thou, of tendril’d strife
The stem that grew,
All-clasping, shadowy,
The walls that were the house of life, Blood-watering, hast brought to flower anew Dead-branched memory.
79
CLYTEMNESTRA
Ask not for Death—he’s here ;
Spend not your breath beside
To catch at Helen’s name.
She need not bear the blame
For all the deaths that Greeks have died,
For every man’s heart that hath turned to fear.
Cuyorus
A spirit accurst, a power malign,
Descends, O Tantalus,
On thee and house of thine.
One, woman-habited,
Appears and speaks to us
In tones that still the feast of death prolong. The raven o’er its dead
Speaks that tongue.
CLYTEMNESTRA
A spirit accurst !—ye have it, nay, Could not avoid it, where
It comes forever in your way, Untimely foetus, cast again,
Again to rear, }
A monster suckling—’tis to allay That blood-accustomed thirst, lie here The newly slain.
80
CHorus
Ye have named it—of
Our demon-mastered race
Soul-clutching terror, lurking in hearth-place. Have we not cried, Enough ?
To Zeus we have cried, O cause divine,
Are these works thine ?
Without thee, nothing ; none
Beside thee, god. Thou and thy works are one.
But O, our King, our King!
The tears thy friendless people shed !
For us the net they fling
That gathers thee with the unkinglike dead.
—’Twas not thy fighting-breath, Alas, that fled A secret-handed death.
CLYTEMNESTRA
The hand that slew the Argive King, —Remember this— It was not Argive Queen; I am not I, No, no :—phantom-inhabiting This body, spirit-centred here, The old plagues fly. And he whom rumoured fate hath chosen to die, Was not my husband ; not his wife was I, F 81
Howbeit my bed his bier.
And though my table seems to have Feast spread of unclean thing,
It is that Atreus-memory, which gave Young limbs for banqueting.
Cuorus
Who, that is witness here,
Of murder, shall another witness bear
To what thou sayest ? how runs the tale? How lifts in thee the ancestral veil ?
How springs to light, beneath
Thy hand, the unforgetting skill of death, Lurking, long generations down,
And rained on by the drops self-sown, And adult-harvested,
To freshen stains of infant-dead ?
—But O, our King, our King! .
The tears thy friendless people shed! —
For us the net they fling
That gathers thee with the unkinglike dead.
—’Twas not thy fighting-breath Alas, that fled | A secret-handed death.
82
CLYTEMNESTRA
That secret hand again! —Who first sowed strife, A vast night-growing bane, Shedding unspoken thoughts of death ? Who dragged beneath The shadow of its pain My branch of weeping life, Iphigeneia, thy child ? [Addressing the corpse of AGAMEMNON. —Take with thee underground Those lips defiled With blasphemies of love, Front hell with them, let sound That boast—and still find breath enough To awake the anguished wound.
CHorus
Stunned out of thought
I stagger, all my counsel is
To fling hands of despair
Against this bringing all to naught, This ruining kingdom, this Dark-raining air,
That lashes to the fall
Their blood-sprent towers.
—What, stand they yet? Is all Over? The empty hours
83
Of silence hold
A sound of grinding; Fate her hand hath freed, And lethal weapon tries
On other stones for other deed
That secret lies
In story untold.
Earth should have covered me,
Or ever silver-sided stream
Became his blood-bath and his seat of death. Who is there gathereth
To sepulture ? Who starteth theme
Of royal grief, and maketh last amends ? —If thou, of all the race,
Think to do aught of mourning-kind, His spirit yet defends
Itself from this disgrace,
And there are wanting not
Tears, and there is a grief to find
That looks not from thy face.
CLYTEMNESTRA
Ye trouble yourselves, where naught Follows from all the counsel ye may give. It falls on us to act. Burial, some prepare. Mourners, we leave.
A houseful, doubtless — What
Of further escort ; those
84
Ee οὐ ϑἴίΆι αν «Ὁ ΄ --ὰ »
He should find midway the darkness, where The pale dividing river flows ?
Feet that have trod the wild,
Eager to meet,
Arms to embrace, and lips to greet. —lIphigeneia, his child ;
She will be there.
Cuorus
She bears all down, answer I need. Reason with reason wars, reason is none.
᾿ Spoiled is the spoiler now, the seed
Of death is in the reaping. One Who can to everlasting wait, Ponders the deed.
And if he speak, it is a word of fate That solemn sounds,
But nothing frees
From the unbroken bounds
Of these wall’d secrecies.
CLYTEMNESTRA
How near ye come to truth, how near The oracular, the dark,
The uninterpreted.
I wish—I wish that here
Such spirit would bring
His demon-understanding into pact
85
With mine ;—bury the dead, Let be what has been, Hard though it was to bear. Away—away. Be seen No longer at our door. Waste with self-inflicted death Another race, untried, And able still to bear. My spirit saith, Surrender all ;— kingdom and wealth beside, But kill no more. [Enter AEcistuus.
ZEGISTHUS
O day of kindness! In thy face I see
The looks of heaven compassionate the pain Of earth. Justice is visible, and Fate
Hath woven to the light, that all may mark The pattern of Erynnus on the robe
Whose workmanship I love, wherein he lies. In this ye may behold a father’s hand. Atreus, this dead man’s sire, was ruler here. Thyestes, my father, was this Atreus’ brother. Our fathers, then, dwelt here, and enmity Arose between them. So my father fled. Then followed him in exile, as it were,
Some word of reconcilement ; and in hope Of peace, and eager, came Thyestes back,
86
My father, to his home. He found not death;
But in that house, where home and children were,
As was most fit, more than a friend should find,
A feast already spread; Atreus must. show
A brother’s token of forgiveness. Food
Was set before them. Atreus sat not near
His brother. Atreus kept the dish his side,
Wherefrom he served his brother. *Iwas a mess
Whose indistinguishable part he served.
Remained the tokens ;—sodden fingers, feet—
To show at last, whereby Thyestes knew
His children. Ah, taste unprocurable
Of death! A father’s vomit—hear the curse
That overturned the board! No more shall house |
Of Pelops stand, no more shall Atreus stand.
Ye feel the shock this day; ye see the fallen.
—Of this unbuilding, ’tis my boast to have been
The just artificer. Thyestes’ child
I was, the new-born left of those he had,
And in his bosom he seized me when he fied.
Justice has reared me, brought me back to be
In my own house a stranger, yet at home,
The while I had this man to wait for, fasten
This thing upon him, find his death within
My compass. So to plant the stakes of doom
For him, spending myself upon his death,
Were beautifully to contrive my own.
87
Cuorus
Here is ill done, Agisthus, and no room,
For thoughts bemused with sounding words of thine, All we have heard is that thou hadst the will
To do this deed ; nay, more, the craft to work
This piteous ending; and thou knowest well, Justice can make no answer, but in terms
Of thy own kind, by force outweighing force,
—The people’s arm is long, the curse of it
Lies not in tongues ; so many are the hands
That take to stoning.
ZAEGISTHUS
So speaks the lower deck
That pulls the galley. There are higher ranks Direct the course. ’Tis hard for age like thine To learn, and to be bidden what to learn ;
And yet thou’rt like to learn. Prison and pain Of famine, are not these subtle physicians
To malady of age? Is it blindness? No.
Ye see whither ye are driven. Is it heels ye fling Against the whip? False step to chastisement !
Cuorus
What shall I tell of thee? A woman’s part Prolonged at home, when men were fighting ? What Was wanting of adulterous and false
In one who worked to such an end as this ?
88
AEGISTHUS
There is the sounding of a world of troubles Through all our ears, for thee. What other kind Of Orpheus art thou, charming with thy song Out of their lairs the barking mouths, the pack Insensible, which Orpheus never led ?
An altered government will mean a cage
For these wild ways.
Cuorus
As though an Argive State Could fashion thee its tyrant !— who thyself Darest not to do the deed which thou hadst planned, Deputing murder—
AEGISTHUS
How should I, suspect To all the house through my old enmity, Make veiled approach? The woman’s chance it
was,
Unquestioned. Now it is my part to rule; And I, with this man’s substance to my hand, Shall have the wherewithal to lay on him Who lighter rein esteems not, what shall test His champing mettle, and the bit will hold, Or for a stable-fellow he shall have The kindless sort, and dark to fast upon, Until his eye lack fire.
89
CuHorus
This man, I say, Thow’rt not, who could despoil this dead man of His life, unless a woman did it, matching Thy cowardice with her poison-spirit, marring The place of home and its divinity Enshrined. Orestes !— Father, looks thy son On light of day that shall endure until He make a night of death to hide these twain ?
ZEGISTHUS
What meanest thou? Whether word or action touch Thy meaning nearest, thou shalt know, and soon. —Out, out, my waiting swords! Your time has come.
[Enter ARMED FoLLoweErRs oF ASGISTHUS.
CHorus Out, out !—That means, prepare! Out, every man, his sword.
ZEGISTHUS
I, too, shall have a hand at last, come death to me!
Cuorus
Now bring thy word to pass, put it to fortune’s proof.
CLYTEMNESTRA
No more—O, as thou lov’st me, do no more. My friend, what we have gathered should suffice,
gO
Where all we gather is but pain and death.
Old men, go to your homes. And thou, too, go! Before ’tis done, and then no more to do,
But all to suffer. Besides, there is to make Secure what’s done. ’Tis not in us to show Unwounded courage fit for further bout
With fate. And if this last counsel of mine Seem but a woman’s, it is better so.
AEGISTHUS
Not prune the rampant growth of tongues like these ? —Their words, if left to fall, a dangerous seed
May prove. It is not wisdom in a king
To leave them there.
Cuorus
*Tis not in Argive born To own thee king.
ZEGISTHUS
Put off to other days The issue we shall join.
CuHorus Divinity Direct Orestes to this aim !
OI
ZEGISTHUS
Ah, he! The fugitive picks up a scanty meal Of hope. Cuorus
And thou—thou battenest here, the while Sick Justice spurns the board.
AEGISTHUS
Has he a fool’s Impunity to speak again ?
Cuorus
Canst crow, Thou, on thy roost, thou and thy mate beside.
CLYTEMNESTRA
Have patience such as words like these do not deserve. For thou and I need much to order all things well.
Printed by Hazell, Waison & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
= Ss ιτ 2 > 4 . . νυ
160502
Agamemnon
Agamemnon; tr. by Ellis.
Aeschylus.
University of Toronto Library
_
DO NOT REMOVE THE CARD FROM THIS POCKET
Acme Library Card Pocket Under Pat. “Ref. Index File” Made by LIBRARY BUREAU
«ταις. ἥὰς ll aren Kk πὰ φορά, ὦ.
Se nent OY Σου Ὁ ΝΥ να SAS ee Se Dy. A ne
᾿ς = Sele ea mF ς ee οἴ ρλος — eres oo ." l=.
ae
ow Segment ee σῶν 0 + heen
eg «OD Ae. i rene ro Pa coats
oh see 5 es ee ee A LN Hee Woe ee. φ : Ὅρα ρον ο- κι : ᾿
. Oe ry Se Β “ον ὦ «: Oe ee ee ie IS el a gen Bil Rp ne hog acag oe Se cig ne Seer Ze Re παν ἀπ εὶς
SAT ee A? Ge Surges ὦ». “ Sam A a. ter » “κα... oe SO ek AT we a τὴν». <p densi as Mme Sr ρων ae OM it we Se eee ς Μεν a Oe ee epee Δ Se " δι eet ie gee ν. Tes κι Ὁ air aS ν : ε 08 ον τανε, μα τα taster acchon nets alae ayia ρα φανόν, meee SN a nee oes a ικες wn AP αὶ Olay ‘aaa by Fk hay * Shee RN ey here LAK ayes ων, oe a π΄ τῦρν" ἀπὸ P+: ay "ad ὦ “ὦ ed sme 2 a Tene Merete nes oe ον me. rae one pee pas δια Me Se eR A So SI er ard are eters —
μ ~ Ct NO ee rg νον i αι, Ha” ee ta te νὰ. Se Oe « ras en Soe wy netdeag, Ler Seinen, otttclaae 6 ee Set ὁ ae oe he 4 Bee tee ὦ πὰ ..δ. Hr gi eee tO, Ee ee Ee δὴν ee
wan AOS pal Ὁ Ἂ ΕΣ ΡΩΝ
, reer ere as ana etbetties, 9 tend 5 Tyan, whe
“πο Aya Beet oes 7 ee a c
=~ ten Oe Fete amet Jin oe q n = - mt x eae - ω - me we mies a ᾿ - a pas δ μον. MARY I pay , ~ ootiet ~ - Σ “οὐ. κ ὦ > 6S ON A Aen ee per ook. : 3 ara Ρ 2 e~ - os -- ae μα 8 * fede Me-daeeks patty 7 rt Ἵ " A200. dey ᾿ - we = ω eee Ρ ui . 3 - 5 aire — Me γυναι Patani ee Pe EE EL Mey AG SO oy ERE Ye <a δ - cs ---- eae keg ,.. τῶ “πὸ eh he ee On gee SS Re τὰ »- me OU ae
ον eer μονα
SO PD FE ER NA μι. ἀρ καν Mm te age eee Ee