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Chorus
Thyestes’ banquet on his children’s flesh I understood, and I tremble. Terror possesses me as I hear the truth, nothing fashioned out of falsehood to resemble truth.
But as for the rest I heard I am thrown off the track.
1245
Thyestes’ banquet on his children’s flesh I understood, and I tremble. Terror possesses me as I hear the truth, nothing fashioned out of falsehood to resemble truth.
But as for the rest I heard I am thrown off the track.
1245
Cassandra
I say you shall look upon Agamemnon dead.
I say you shall look upon Agamemnon dead.
Chorus
To words propitious, miserable girl, lull your speech.
To words propitious, miserable girl, lull your speech.
Cassandra
Over what I tell no healing god presides.
Over what I tell no healing god presides.
Chorus
No, if it is to be; but may it not be so!
No, if it is to be; but may it not be so!
Cassandra
You do but pray; their business is to slay.
1250
You do but pray; their business is to slay.
1250
Chorus
What man is he that contrived this wickedness?
What man is he that contrived this wickedness?
Cassandra
Surely you must have missed the meaning of my prophecies.
Surely you must have missed the meaning of my prophecies.
Chorus
I do not understand the scheme of him who is to do the deed.
I do not understand the scheme of him who is to do the deed.
Cassandra
And yet all too well I understand the Greek language.
And yet all too well I understand the Greek language.
Chorus
So too do the Pythian oracles; yet they are hard to understand.
1255
So too do the Pythian oracles; yet they are hard to understand.
1255
Cassandra
Oh, oh! What fire! It comes upon me! Woe, woe! Lycean Apollo! Ah me, ah me! This two-footed lioness, who mates with a wolf in the absence of the noble lion,
will slay me, miserable as I am. Brewing as it were a drug, she vows that with her wrath she will mix requital for me too, while she whets her sword against her husband, to take murderous vengeance for bringing me here. Why then do I bear these mockeries of myself,
1260
this wand, these prophetic chaplets on my neck?
Breaking her wand, she throws it and the other insignia of her prophetic office upon the ground, and tramples them underfoot You at least I will destroy before I die myself. To destruction with you! And fallen there, thus do I repay you. Enrich with doom some other in my place. Look, Apollo himself is stripping me
1265
of my prophetic garb—he that saw me mocked to bitter scorn, even in this bravery, by friends turned foes, with one accord, in vain—but, like some vagrant mountebank, called
beggar,
wretch,
starveling, I bore it all.
1270
And now the prophet, having undone me, his prophetess, has brought me to this lethal pass. Instead of my father’s altar a block awaits me, where I am to be butchered in a hot and bloody sacrifice. Yet, we shall not die unavenged by the gods;
1275
for there shall come in turn another, our avenger, a scion of the race, to slay his mother and exact requital for his sire; an exile, a wanderer, a stranger from this land, he shall return to put the coping-stone upon these unspeakable iniquities of his house. For the gods have sworn a mighty oath
1280
that his slain father’s outstretched corpse shall bring him home. Why then thus raise my voice in pitiful lament? Since first I saw the city of
Ilium
fare what it has fared, while her captors, by the gods’ sentence, are coming to such an end,
1285
I will go in and meet my fate. I will dare to die. This door I greet as the gates of Death. And I pray that, dealt a mortal stroke, without a struggle, my life-blood ebbing away in easy death, I may close these eyes.
1290
Oh, oh! What fire! It comes upon me! Woe, woe! Lycean Apollo! Ah me, ah me! This two-footed lioness, who mates with a wolf in the absence of the noble lion,
will slay me, miserable as I am. Brewing as it were a drug, she vows that with her wrath she will mix requital for me too, while she whets her sword against her husband, to take murderous vengeance for bringing me here. Why then do I bear these mockeries of myself,
1260
this wand, these prophetic chaplets on my neck?
Breaking her wand, she throws it and the other insignia of her prophetic office upon the ground, and tramples them underfoot You at least I will destroy before I die myself. To destruction with you! And fallen there, thus do I repay you. Enrich with doom some other in my place. Look, Apollo himself is stripping me
1265
of my prophetic garb—he that saw me mocked to bitter scorn, even in this bravery, by friends turned foes, with one accord, in vain—but, like some vagrant mountebank, called
beggar,
wretch,
starveling, I bore it all.
1270
And now the prophet, having undone me, his prophetess, has brought me to this lethal pass. Instead of my father’s altar a block awaits me, where I am to be butchered in a hot and bloody sacrifice. Yet, we shall not die unavenged by the gods;
1275
for there shall come in turn another, our avenger, a scion of the race, to slay his mother and exact requital for his sire; an exile, a wanderer, a stranger from this land, he shall return to put the coping-stone upon these unspeakable iniquities of his house. For the gods have sworn a mighty oath
1280
that his slain father’s outstretched corpse shall bring him home. Why then thus raise my voice in pitiful lament? Since first I saw the city of
Ilium
fare what it has fared, while her captors, by the gods’ sentence, are coming to such an end,
1285
I will go in and meet my fate. I will dare to die. This door I greet as the gates of Death. And I pray that, dealt a mortal stroke, without a struggle, my life-blood ebbing away in easy death, I may close these eyes.
1290
Agamemnon. Aeschylus. Herbert Weir Smyth (Translator). New York. 1926.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.