CHORAL INTERLUDE III

Strophe I: to the Right.

Why is it that forebodings haunt the gate of our hearts, and we lack steadfast trust to fling them away as visions? It is not long since that fatal starting for Troy, {959}

Antistrophe I: back to Altar

and now we have seen with our own eyes the safe return: and yet our mind, self-taught, keeps chanting within itself a dirge of fate. These inner pulses cannot be in vain: heaven send they prove false oracles! {971}

Strophe II: to the Left.

When Wealth o'erflows, Restlessness, as a near neighbor with only a wall between, presses it on with perpetual desire for more, till Prosperity strikes suddenly on an unseen rock – yet even then, by sacrificing a portion of the cargo, the rest may be saved; so by plenteous harvests sent from Zeus, hunger and pestilence may be allayed: {986}

Antistrophe II: back to Altar.

but when blood has once been poured upon the ground, what charm can bring it back? Zeus struck dead the Healer who found how to restore life. I would give my misgiving relief in pouring out words of warning: but I know that fate is certain and can never be escaped; so I am plunged in gloom, with little hope ever to unravel my soul that burns with its hot thoughts. {1001}

EXODUS, OR FINALE

Re-enter Clytaemnestra to fetch Cassandra. Clyt. addresses Cassandra in moderate tone, bidding her adapt herself to her new life and yield to those who wish to soften her captivity. [Cassandra pays no attention and seems gazing into vacancy.] The Chorus endorses Clytaemnestra's advice. At length it occurs to Clytaemnestra that Cassandra cannot speak Greek, and she bids her give some sign. [No sign, but a shudder convulses her frame.] Thinking she is obstinate Clytaemnestra will wait no longer [exit Clyt. into Palace to the sacrifice]. The Chorus renew their advice to Cassandra: She at length leaves the chariot and suddenly bursts into a cry of horror. {1038}

Then follows, marking the crisis of the drama, a burst of lyrical excitement. The dialogue between Chorus and Cassandra falls into lyrical strophes and antistrophes: Cassandra, by her prophetic gift, can see all that is going on and about to be consummated within the Palace. Her wailings reproach her patron and lover Apollo, who has conducted her to a house of blood; she sees the past murders that have stained the house, she sees the preparations for the present deed, the bath, the net, the axe; then her wailings wax yet wilder as she sees that she herself is to be included in the sacrifice. Meantime her excitement gradually passes over to the Chorus: at first they have mistaken her cries for the ordinary lamentations of captives (and borne their part in the dialogue in the ordinary 'blank verse'); then their emotions are roused (and their speech falls into lyrics) as they recognize the old woes of the family history and remember Cassandra's prophetic fame; as she passes to the deed going on at the moment they feel a thrill of horror, but only half understand and take her words for prophecy of distant events, which they connect with their own forebodings; thus in her struggles to get her words believed Cassandra becomes more and more graphic in her notices of the scene her mental eye is seeing, and the excitement crescendoes until: {1148}

As if the crisis were now determined the dialogue settles down into 'blank verse' again. Cassandra ascends from Orchestra to Stage. She will no longer speak veiled prophecy: it shall flow clear as wave against the sunlight. She begins with the Furies that never quit the house since that primal woe that defiled it – as she describes this the Chorus wonder an alien can know the house's history so well —Cassandra lets them know of her amour with Apollo, and how she gained the gift of prophecy and then deceived the God and was doomed to have her prophecies scorned. – Continuing her vision she points to the phantom children, 'their palms filled full with meat of their own flesh,' sitting on the house: in revenge for that deed another crime is this moment about to stain further the polluted dwelling, a brave hero falling at the hands of a coward, and by a plot his monster of a wife has contrived. – The Chorus still perplexed, Cassandra NAMES Agamemnon, the Chorus essaying vainly to stop the ill-fated utterance. – Then Cassandra goes on to describe how she herself must be sacrificed with her new lord, a victim to the jealous murderess; bitterly reproaching Apollo, she strips from her the symbols and garb of her prophetic art, which the god has made so bitter to her, and moves to the 'butcher's block,' foretelling how the Son shall come as his father's avenger and hers. – The Chorus ask, why go to meet your fate instead of escaping? Cassandra knows Fate is inevitable. – Again and again she shrinks back from the door, 'tainted with the scent of death;' then gazing for the last time on the loved rays of the Sun, and invoking him as witness and avenger, she abandons herself to her doom.

 
          Ah, life of man! when most it prospereth, {1298}
          It is but limned in outline; and when brought
          To low estate, then doth the sponge, full soaked,
          Wipe out the picture with its frequent touch.
 

[Passes through the Central Door into Palace.]

The Chorus (in lyrical rhythm). It is true good fortune can never be fended from the visitation of evil, which no strong palace can bar out. What will it avail Agamemnon to have taken Troy and come in honor home, if it be really his destiny to pay the penalty of that old deed of bloodguiltiness? {1313}

(Here a loud cry is heard from within the Palace.)

The Chorus recognize the voice of the King, and fear the deed is accomplished. In extreme excitement the Chorus break up, and each member, one after another, suggests what is to be done; at last they compose their ranks to learn what has actually occurred. {1342}

Suddenly, by the machinery of the Roller-stage [Eccyclema], the interior of the Palace is moved to the front of the Stage, and discovers Clytaemnestra in blood-stained robes, standing with attendants by the corpses of Agamemnon and Cassandra, the former lying in a silvered bath covered with a net.

Clytaemnestra, in an elaborate speech, glories in her deed. Deceit was necessary in dealing with foes: now standing where she did the deed, she glories in it: glories in the net in which she entangled and rendered him powerless, in the blows, one, two, three, like a libation, which she struck, glories in the gush of death-blood which has bespattered her. A late triumph: he had come home to drain the goblet of curses his old deed had been long heaping up. After an interruption of astonishment from the Foreman, she repeats: it is the handiwork of my artist hand. After the Chorus have recovered from their astonishment they (in a lyrical burst) denounce her: her confession is the incense on the Victim's head, she shall feel the people's strong hate, and have an exile's doom. —Clyt. (calmly in Blank Verse): they denounced no such exile against Agamemnon when he sacrificed her daughter, the first of her travail pangs. Besides, are they sure they are the stronger? Perchance, though old, they may yet have to learn. —Chorus (in a similar lyrical burst): she is now maddened with the spirit of vengeance, but she will one day find a nemesis, blow for blow. Clyt. solemnly (in Blank Verse) swears by the deed she has done, and the curse for which she did it, she has no fear of Nemesis, as lone as Aegisthus is her shield. Meanwhile, there they lie: the wife-wronger and his mistress. {1377}

Then follows an elaborate lyrical scene: the Chorus giving vent to their excitement in Strophes and Antistrophes irregularly succeeding one another, Clytaemnestra occasionally joining in. O for death, sudden and without lingering, now that our beloved Protector is gone! Ah! Helen! one more deed of woe to your account! —Clyt. No need to wish for death or upbraid Helen. —Cho. (interrupting) O dread Power that dost attack this household, working even through women deeds of dread! —Clyt. Now thou art right: it is the Evil Genius of the House that feeds in their hearts the lust of blood; bringing fresh blood-guilt ere the old is healed. —Cho. Yes, there is a Power wrathful to the House; but it must be through Zeus he works; what amongst mortal men is wrought apart from Zeus?

 
              Ah me! Ah me! {1467}
          My king, my king, how shall I weep for thee?
          What shall I speak from heart that truly loves?
          And now thou liest there, breathing out thy life,
              In impious deed of death,
              In this fell spider's web!
              Yes woe is me! woe, woe!
          Woe for this couch of thine unhonorable!
              Slain by a subtle death
          With sword two-edged, which her right hand did wield.
 

Clyt. You speak of me as the doer: it was the Avenger of the seed of Atreus who did the deed in the semblance of this dead man's wife. —Cho. None will hold thee guiltless of the deed; yet, perchance, thou mayest have had as helper the avenging Fiend of that ancestral time; he presses on this rush of murders of near kin.

 
              Ah me! Ah me!
          My king, my king, how shall I weep for thee?
          What shall I speak from heart that truly loves?
          And now thou liest there, breathing out thy life,
              In impious deed of death,
              In this fell spider's web!
              Yes woe is me! woe, woe!
          Woe for this couch of thine unhonorable!
              Slain by a subtle death
          With sword two-edged, which her right hand did wield.
 

Clyt. This deed brings no dishonor to me: he slew my daughter and his own, wept over with many a tear; now slain in recompense he is gone to Hell with nothing to boast over. —Cho. Whither escape from this House? No longer drops, but fierce pelting storm of blood shakes it to its basement. —Cho. Oh that earth had received me ere I saw this sad sight! Who will perform funeral rites and chant the dirge? Wilt thou who hast slain dare to mourn him? —Clyt. It is no care of thine: we will give him burial; and for mourning – perhaps Iphigenia will greet him kindly by the dark streams below. —Cho. Hard it is to judge; the hand of Zeus is in all this; ever throughout this household we see the fixed law, the spoiler still is spoiled. Who will drive out from this royal house this brood of curses dark? —Clyt. Thou art right; but here let the demon rest content; suffice it for me that my hand has freed the house from the madness that sets each man's hand against each. [Observe: in this last infatuated confidence and throughout Clytaemnestra's exultation in the deed the dramatist is laying the foundation for the second play of the Trilogy.] {1534}

Enter Aegisthus by one of the two Inferior doors in front of the scene [representing the inferior parts of the Palace in which he has been concealed since the return of Agamemnon].

Aegisthus salutes the happy day of vengeance which shows him Agamemnon paying penalty for the deeds of his father: he relates the quarrel between this father Atreus and his own father Thyestes, how when the one brother came as suppliant to the other Atreus spread before him the horrid banquet of his own child's flesh, at the knowledge of which he died. Aegisthus himself had suffered banishment at the hands of Atreus while yet a child, and now has returned full grown to work vengeance on the son of his wronger, to see the long contrived nemesis brought to full conclusion. —Chorus note that he confesses the deed, and he shall not escape the righteous curse a people hurls with stones. —Aeg. Know your place: you are oarsmen, we command the ship; prison and fasting are admirable devices for helping old people to keep their tempers within bounds. Defiances are interchanged: the Chorus taunting him that he had to get a woman to do the deed he dared not do himself, —Aeg. contemptuously says the working out of the fraud was the proper province of a woman, especially as he was a known foe. – The Chorus threaten vengeance and suggest the name ORESTES as avenger: At this Clytaemnestra starts, Aegisthus enraged gives the signal at which {1626}

Bodyguard of Aegisthus pour in through both the Inferior doors on either side of the Central door of the Palace, and fill the stage [thus producing one of the Scenic Tableaux of which Aeschylus was fond]. The Chorus, though of course outnumbered, are nothing daunted, as representing the legitimate authority of the State now Agamemnon is dead, and therefore sure to be backed by the City; they make as if to ascend the stage.

Contest in blows between Chorus and Bodyguard of Aegisthus appears inevitable, but Clytaemnestra throws herself between them, urges that enough ill has already been done, and after further defiances, forces Aegisthus away and play abruptly terminates: the Chorus returning to the Right into the City, and the Bodyguard into the Palace.