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Clytaemestra
Citizens of
Argos
, you Elders present here, I shall not be ashamed to confess in your presence my fondness for my husband—with time diffidence dies away in humans.
Untaught by others, I can tell of my own weary life
855
all the long while my husband was beneath
Ilium
’s walls. First and foremost, it is a terrible evil for a wife to sit forlorn at home, severed from her husband, always hearing many malignant rumors, and for one messenger after another
860
to come bearing tidings of disaster, each worse than the last, and cry them to the household. And as for wounds, had my husband received so many as rumor kept pouring into the house, no net would have been pierced so full of holes as he. Or if he had died as often as reports claimed,
865
then truly he might have had three bodies, a second Geryon,
1
and have boasted of having taken on him a triple cloak of earth
ample that above, of that below I speak not, one death for each different shape. Because of such malignant tales as these,
870
many times others have had to loose the high-hung halter from my neck, held in its strong grip. It is for this reason, in fact, that our boy, Orestes, does not stand here beside me, as he should—he in whom rest the pledges of my love and yours. Nor should you think this strange.
875
For he is in the protecting care of our well-intentioned ally, Strophius of Phocis, who warned me of trouble on two scores—your own peril beneath
Ilium
’s walls, and then the chance that the people in clamorous revolt might overturn the Council, as it is natural
880
for men to trample all the more upon the fallen. Truly such an excuse supports no guile.
885
Citizens of
Argos
, you Elders present here, I shall not be ashamed to confess in your presence my fondness for my husband—with time diffidence dies away in humans.
Untaught by others, I can tell of my own weary life
855
Untaught by others, I can tell of my own weary life
all the long while my husband was beneath
Ilium
’s walls. First and foremost, it is a terrible evil for a wife to sit forlorn at home, severed from her husband, always hearing many malignant rumors, and for one messenger after another
860
to come bearing tidings of disaster, each worse than the last, and cry them to the household. And as for wounds, had my husband received so many as rumor kept pouring into the house, no net would have been pierced so full of holes as he. Or if he had died as often as reports claimed,
865
then truly he might have had three bodies, a second Geryon,
1
and have boasted of having taken on him a triple cloak of earth
ample that above, of that below I speak not, one death for each different shape. Because of such malignant tales as these,
870
many times others have had to loose the high-hung halter from my neck, held in its strong grip. It is for this reason, in fact, that our boy, Orestes, does not stand here beside me, as he should—he in whom rest the pledges of my love and yours. Nor should you think this strange.
875
For he is in the protecting care of our well-intentioned ally, Strophius of Phocis, who warned me of trouble on two scores—your own peril beneath
Ilium
’s walls, and then the chance that the people in clamorous revolt might overturn the Council, as it is natural
880
for men to trample all the more upon the fallen. Truly such an excuse supports no guile.
885
Agamemnon. Aeschylus. Herbert Weir Smyth (Translator). New York. 1926.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.