Agamemnon (1214-1300)

Ah, ah! Oh, oh, the agony!

Once more the dreadful throes of true prophecy whirl and distract me with their ill-boding onset. Do you see them there—sitting before the house—young creatures like phantoms of dreams? Children, they seem, slaughtered by their own kindred,

their hands full of the meat of their own flesh; they are clear to my sight, holding their vitals and their inward parts (piteous burden!), which their father tasted. For this cause I tell you that a strengthless lion, wallowing in his bed, plots vengeance,

a watchman waiting (ah me!) for my master’s coming home—yes, my master, for I must bear the yoke of slavery. The commander of the fleet and the overthrower of Ilium little knows what deeds shall be brought to evil accomplishment by the hateful hound, whose tongue licked his hand, who stretched forth her ears in gladness,

like treacherous Ate. Such boldness has she, a woman to slay a man. What odious monster shall I fitly call her? An Amphisbaena[*]? Or a Scylla, tenanting the rocks, a pest to mariners,

a raging, devil’s mother, breathing relentless war against her husband? And how the all-daring woman raised a shout of triumph, as when the battle turns, the while she feigned to joy at his safe return! And yet, it is all one, whether or not I am believed. What does it matter?

What is to come, will come. And soon you, yourself present here, shall with great pity pronounce me all too true a prophetess.

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.

I say you shall look upon Agamemnon dead.

To words propitious, miserable girl, lull your speech.

Over what I tell no healing god presides.

No, if it is to be; but may it not be so!

You do but pray; their business is to slay.

What man is he that contrived this wickedness?

Surely you must have missed the meaning of my prophecies.

I do not understand the scheme of him who is to do the deed.

And yet all too well I understand the Greek language.

So too do the Pythian oracles; yet they are hard to understand.

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,

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

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.

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;

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

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,

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.

O woman, pitiful exceedingly and exceeding wise, long has been your speech. But if, in truth, you have knowledge of your own death, how can you step with calm courage to the altar like an ox, driven by the god?

There is no escape; no, my friends, there is none any more.[*]

Yet he that is last has the advantage in respect of time.