Orestes (1370-1474)

in my Asian slippers, by clambering over the cedar-beams that roof the porch and the Doric triglyphs, away, away! O Earth, Earth! in barbaric flight!

Alas! You foreign women, where can I escape, flying through the clear sky or over the sea, which bull-headed Ocean rolls about as he circles the world in his embrace?

What is it, Helen’s slave, creature from Ida?

Ilium, Ilium, oh me! city of Phrygia, and Ida’s holy hill with fruitful soil, how I mourn for your destruction a shrill song

with barbarian cry; destroyed through her beauty, born from a bird, swan-feathered, Leda’s cub, hellish Helen! to be a curse to Apollo’s tower of polished stone. Ah! Alas!

woe to Dardania, its wailing, wailing, for the horsemanship of Ganymede, bedfellow of Zeus.

Tell us clearly each event within the house. for till now I have been guessing at what I do not clearly understand.

Ah, for Linus! Ah, for Linus! That is what barbarians say, alas, in their eastern tongue as a prelude to death, whenever royal blood is spilled upon the ground by deadly iron blades.

To tell you everything in turn, they came into the house, two twin lions of Hellas; one was called the general’s son; the other was the son of Strophius, a crafty plotter, like Odysseus, treacherous in silence,

but true to his friends, bold for the fight, clever in war and a deadly serpent. Curse him for his quiet plotting, the villain!

In they came to the throne of the wife of Paris the archer,

faces wet with tears, and took their seats in all humility, one on this side, one on that, each with weapons. They threw, they threw their suppliant arms round the knees

of Helen. Her Phrygian servants sprang up frantic, frantic; they called to each other in terror that there was treachery.

To some there seemed no cause, but others thought that the viper who killed his mother was entangling the daughter of Tyndareus in the snare of his plot.

And where were you? fled long before in terror?

It happened that I, in Phrygian style, Phrygian, was wafting the breeze, the breeze by the curls of Helen, Helen, with a round feathered fan, before her face,

in barbarian style; and she was twisting flax on her distaff with her fingers, and letting her yarn fall on the floor, for she wanted to sew with her flax purple cloth

as adornment for the tomb from the Trojan spoils, a gift to Clytemnestra.

Orestes said to the Spartan girl: Daughter of Zeus, get up from your chair

and come here to the old hearth of Pelops, our ancestor, to hear something I have to say. He led her, led her, and she followed,

no prophet of the future. But his accomplice, the Phocian villain, was off on other business: Out of my way! Well, Phrygians always were cowards. So he shut them up in different parts of the house, some in the stables, others in the halls,

one here, one there, disposing of them severally at a distance from their mistress.

What happened next?

Mother of Ida, great, great mother!

Oh! the murderous scenes and lawless wickedness that I saw, I saw, in the palace! They drew forth swords from hiding under their purple-bordered cloaks, each darting his eye a different way, lest anyone should be near. Like boar of the hills,

they stood opposite the woman and said: You will die, you will die; your cowardly husband is killing you, because he betrayed his brother’s son to death in Argos.

She screamed, oh, oh! she screamed, and brought down her white arm upon her breast and beat her poor head; then turned her golden-sandalled steps in flight, in flight; but Orestes got before her in his Mycenean boots and clutched his fingers in her hair,

and, bending back her neck on to her left shoulder, was on the point of driving the black sword into her throat.

Where were you Phrygians in the house to help her?

With a loud cry from the house we battered down with bars the doors and doorposts where we had been,