Agamemnon (1301-1360)

The day has come; flight would profit me but little.

Well, be assured, you brave suffering with a courageous spirit.

None who is happy is commended thus.

Yet surely to die nobly is a blessing for mortals.

Alas for you, my father and for your noble children! She starts back in horror

What ails you? What terror turns you back?

Alas, alas!

Why do you cry alas? Unless perhaps there is some horror in your soul.

This house stinks of blood-dripping slaughter.

And what of that? It is just the savor of victims at the hearth.

It is like a breath from a charnel-house.

You are not speaking of proud Syrian incense for the house.

Nay, I will go to bewail also within the palace my own and Agamemnon’s fate. Enough of life!

Alas, my friends, not with vain terror do I shrink, as a bird that fears a bush. After I am dead, bear witness for me of this—when for me, a woman, another woman shall be slain, and for an ill-wedded man another man shall fall.

I claim this favor from you now that my hour is come.

Poor woman, I pity you for your death foretold.

Yet once more I would like to speak, but not a dirge. I pray to the sun, in presence of his latest light, that my enemies[*]may at the same time pay to my avengers a bloody penalty for

slaughtering a slave, an easy prey. Alas for human fortune! When prosperous, a mere shadow can overturn it[*]; if misfortune strikes, the dash of a wet sponge blots out the drawing.

And this last I deem far more pitiable than that. Enters the palace

It is the nature of all human kind to be unsatisfied with prosperity. From stately halls none bars it with warning voice that utters the words Enter no more.

So the Blessed Ones have granted to our prince to capture Priam’s town; and, divinely-honored, he returns to his home. Yet if he now must pay the penalty for the blood shed by others before him, and by dying for the dead

he is to bring to pass retribution of other deaths[*], what mortal man, on hearing this, can boast that he was born with scatheless destiny? A shriek is heard from within

Alas! I am struck deep with a mortal blow!

Silence! Who is this that cries out, wounded by a mortal blow?

And once again, alas! I am struck by a second blow.

The deed is done, it seems—to judge by the groans of the king. But come, let us take counsel together if there is perhaps some safe plan of action.

—I tell you my advice: summon the townsfolk to bring rescue here to the palace.

—To my thinking we must burst in and charge them with the deed while the sword is still dripping in their hands. —I, too, am for taking part in some such plan, and vote for action of some sort. It is no time to keep on delaying. —It is plain. Their opening act

marks a plan to set up a tyranny in the State. —Yes, because we are wasting time, while they, trampling underfoot that famous name, Delay, allow their hands no slumber. —I know not what plan I could hit on to propose. It is the doer’s part likewise to do the planning.

—I too am of this mind, for I know no way to bring the dead back to life by mere words. —What! To prolong our lives shall we thus submit to the rule of those defilers of the house? —No, it is not to be endured. No, death would be better,