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I. To you my counsel is to raise the cry,
And to the palace call the citizens.
II. To me seems best, at quickest, breaking in,
To prove the deed by newly-dripping blade.
III. I, this opinion sharing, give my vote
For action ;-not to dally is the point.
IV. 'Tis manifest; for they, thus preluding,
Give to the city signs of tyranny.
V. Ay, we delay ;-they, treading under foot
All thoughts of dalliance, sleep not with the hand.
VI. No plan I know to fashion or propose ;
Against the guilty doer we must plot.
VII. That view I share, for no device I know,
By words, the dead man to restore to life.
VIII. What! dragging on our lives, shall we obey
These home-polluters? Them our leaders make?
IX. That were past hearing, better far to die;
For milder doom were death than tyranny.
X. How ! may we not on evidence of groans
Augur full surely that the man is dead ?
XI. Ere we can argue, we must know the facts;
Assurance differs widely from surmise.
XII. This I commend, taking the general vote,
Plainly to know how fareth Atreus' son.
I. To you my counsel is to raise the cry,
And to the palace call the citizens.
II. To me seems best, at quickest, breaking in,
To prove the deed by newly-dripping blade.
III. I, this opinion sharing, give my vote
For action ;-not to dally is the point.
IV. 'Tis manifest; for they, thus preluding,
Give to the city signs of tyranny.
V. Ay, we delay ;-they, treading under foot
All thoughts of dalliance, sleep not with the hand.
VI. No plan I know to fashion or propose ;
Against the guilty doer we must plot.
VII. That view I share, for no device I know,
By words, the dead man to restore to life.
VIII. What! dragging on our lives, shall we obey
These home-polluters? Them our leaders make?
IX. That were past hearing, better far to die;
For milder doom were death than tyranny.
X. How ! may we not on evidence of groans
Augur full surely that the man is dead ?
XI. Ere we can argue, we must know the facts;
Assurance differs widely from surmise.
XII. This I commend, taking the general vote,
Plainly to know how fareth Atreus' son.
Agamemnon. Aeschylus. Anna Swanwick (Translator). London. 1886.
Sponsored by University of Leipzig.
Funding provided by European Social Fund Saxony.