The Oresteia: Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers & the Furies (29 page)

 

Now for my birth. You will know at once.
I am from Argos. My father, well you ask,
was Agamemnon, sea-lord of the men-of-war,
your partisan when you made the city Troy
a city of the dead.
What an ignoble death he died
when he came home - Ai! my blackhearted mother
cut him down, enveloped him in her handsome net -
it still attests his murder in the bath.
But I came back, my years of exile weathered -
killed the one who bore me, I won’t deny it,
killed her in revenge. I loved my father,
fiercely.
And Apollo shares the guilt -
he spurred me on, he warned of the pains I’d feel
unless I acted, brought the guilty down.
But were we just or not? Judge us now.
My fate is in your hands. Stand or fall
I shall accept your verdict.

 

ATHENA:

Too large a matter,
some may think, for mortal men to judge.
But by all rights not even I should decide
a case of murder - murder whets the passions.
Above all, the rites have tamed your wildness.
A suppliant, cleansed, you bring my house no harm.
If you are innocent, I’d adopt you for my city.

But they have their destiny too, hard to dismiss,
and if they fail to win their day in court -
how it will spread, the venom of their pride,
plague everlasting blights our land, our future . . .
So it stands. A crisis either way.

Embrace the one? expel the other? It defeats me.

 

But since the matter comes to rest on us,
I will appoint the judges of manslaughter,
swear them in, and found a tribunal here
for all time to come.

My contestants,
summon your trusted witnesses and proofs,
your defenders under oath to help your cause.
And I will pick the finest men of Athens,
return and decide the issue fairly, truly -
bound to our oaths, our spirits bent on justice.

 

FURIES:

Here, now, is the overthrow
of every binding law - once his appeal,
his outrage wins the day,
his matricide! One act links all mankind,
hand to desperate hand in bloody licence.
Over and over deathstrokes
dealt by children wait their parents,
mortal generations still unborn.

 

We are the Furies still, yes,
but now our rage that patrolled the crimes of men,
that stalked their rage dissolves -
we loose a lethal tide to sweep the world!
Man to man foresees his neighbour’s torments,
groping to cure his own -
poor wretch, there is no cure, no use,
the drugs that ease him speed the next attack.

 

Now when the sudden blows come down,
let no one sound the call that once brought help,
‘Justice, hear me - Furies throned in power!’
Oh I can hear the father now
or the mother sob with pain
at the pain’s onset . . . hopeless now,
the house of Justice falls.

 

There is a time when terror helps,
the watchman must stand guard upon the heart.
It helps, at times, to suffer into truth.
Is there a man who knows no fear
in the brightness of his heart,
or a man’s city, both are one,
that still reveres the rights?

 

Neither the life of anarchy
nor the life enslaved by tyrants, no,
worship neither.
Strike the balance all in all and god will give you power;
the laws of god may veer from north to south -
we Furies plead for Measure.
Violence is Impiety’s child, true to its roots,
but the spirit’s great good health breeds all we love
and all our prayers call down,
prosperity and peace.

 

All in all I tell you people,
bow before the altar of the rights,
revere it well.
Never trample it underfoot, your eyes set on spoils;
revenge will hunt the godless day and night -
the destined end awaits.
So honour your parents first with reverence, I say,
and the stranger guest you welcome to your house,
turn to attend his needs,
respect his sacred rights.

 

All of your own free will, all uncompelled,
be just and you will never want for joy,
you and your kin can never be uprooted from the earth.
But the reckless one - I warn the marauder
dragging plunder, chaotic, rich beyond all rights:
he’ll strike his sails,
harried at long last,
stunned when the squalls of torment break his spars to bits.

He cries to the deaf, he wrestles walls of sea
sheer whirlpools down, down, with the gods’ laughter
breaking over the man’s hot heart - they see him flailing, crushed.
The one who boasted never to shipwreck
now will never clear the cape and steer for home,
who lived for wealth,
golden his life long,
rams on the reef of law and drowns unwept, unseen.

 

ATHENA:

Call for order, herald, marshal our good people.
Lift the Etruscan battle-trumpet,
strain it to full pitch with human breath,
crash out a stabbing blast along the ranks.

And while this court of judgement fills, my city,
silence will be best. So that you can learn
my everlasting laws. And you too,

that our verdict may be well observed by all.

Lord Apollo - rule it over your own sphere!
What part have you in this? Tell us.

 

APOLLO:

I come
as a witness. This man, according to custom,
this suppliant sought out my house and hearth.
I am the one who purged his bloody hands.
His champion too, I share responsibility
for his mother’s execution.
Bring on the trial.
You know the rules, now turn them into justice.

 

ATHENA:

The trial begins! Yours is the first word -
the prosecution opens. Start to finish,
set the facts before us, make them clear.

 

LEADER:

Numerous as we are, we will be brief.
To
ORESTES.
Answer count for count, charge for charge.
First, tell us, did you kill your mother?

 

ORESTES:

I killed her. There’s no denying that.

 

LEADER:

Three falls in the match. One is ours already.

 

ORESTES:

You exult before your man is on his back.

 

LEADER:

But how did you kill her? You must tell us that.

 

ORESTES:

I will. I drew my sword - more, I cut her throat.

 

LEADER:

And who persuaded you? who led you on?

 

ORESTES:

This god and his command.

 

LEADER:

The Seer? He drove you on to matricide?

 

ORESTES:

Yes,
and to this hour I have no regrets.

 

LEADER:

If the verdict
brings you down, you’ll change your story quickly.

 

ORESTES:

I have my trust; my father will help me from the grave.

 

LEADER:

Trust to corpses now! You made your mother one.

 

ORESTES:

I do. She had two counts against her, deadly crimes.

 

LEADER:

How? Explain that to your judges.

 

ORESTES:

She killed her husband - killed my father too.

 

LEADER:

But murder set her free, and you live on for trial.

 

ORESTES:

She lived on. You never drove
her
into exile - why?

 

LEADER:

The blood of the man she killed was not her own.

 

ORESTES:

And I? Does mother’s blood run in my veins?

 

LEADER:

How could she breed you in her body, murderer?
Disclaim your mother’s blood? She gave you life.

 

ORESTES:

Bear me witness - show me the way, Apollo!
Did I strike her down with justice?
Strike I did, I don’t deny it, no.
But how does our bloody work impress you now? -
Just or not? Decide.
I must make my case to them.

 

APOLLO:

Just,
I say, to you and your high court, Athena.
Seer that I am, I never lie. Not once
from the Prophet’s thrones have I declared
a word that bears on man, woman or city
that Zeus did not command, the Olympian Father.
This is his justice - omnipotent, I warn you.
Bend to the will of Zeus. No oath can match
the power of the Father.

 

LEADER:

Zeus, you say,
gave that command to your oracle? He charged
Orestes here to avenge his father’s death
and spurn his mother’s rights?

 

APOLLO:

- Not the same
for a noble man to die, covered with praise,
his sceptre the gift of god - murdered, at that,
by a woman’s hand, no arrows whipping in
from a distance as an Amazon would fight.
But as you will hear, Athena, and your people
poised to cast their lots and judge the case.

 

Home from the long campaign he came, more won
than lost on balance, home to her loyal, waiting arms,
the welcome bath . . .
he was just emerging at the edge,
and there she pitched her tent, her circling shroud -
she shackled her man in robes,
in her gorgeous never-ending web she chopped him down!

 

Such was the outrage of his death, I tell you,
the lord of the squadrons, that magnificent man.
Her I draw to the life to lash your people,
marshalled to reach a verdict.

 

LEADER:

Zeus, you say,
sets more store by a father’s death? He shackled
his own father, Kronos proud with age.
Doesn’t that contradict you?

Mark it well. I call you all to witness.

 

APOLLO:

You grotesque, loathsome - the gods detest you!
Zeus can break chains, we’ve cures for that,
countless ingenious ways to set us free.
But once the dust drinks down a man’s blood,
he is gone, once for all. No rising back,
no spell sung over the grave can sing him back -
not even Father can. Though all things else
he can overturn and never strain for breath.

 

LEADER:

So
you’d force this man’s acquittal? Behold, Justice!

Can a son spill his mother’s blood on the ground,
then settle into his father’s halls in Argos?
Where are the public altars he can use?
Can the kinsmen’s holy water touch his hands?

 

APOLLO:

Here is the truth, I tell you - see how right I am.
The woman you call the mother of the child
is not the parent, just a nurse to the seed,
the new-sown seed that grows and swells inside her.
The
man
is the source of life - the one who mounts.
She, like a stranger for a stranger, keeps
the shoot alive unless god hurts the roots.

 

I give you proof that all I say is true.
The father can father forth without a mother.
Here she stands, our living witness. Look -

Child sprung full-blown from Olympian Zeus,
never bred in the darkness of the womb
but such a stock no goddess could conceive!

 

And I, Pallas, with all my strong techniques
will rear your host and battlements to glory.
So I dispatched this suppliant to your hearth
that he might be your trusted friend for ever,
that you might win a new ally, dear goddess.
He and his generations arm-in-arm with yours,
your bonds stand firm for all posterity -

 

ATHENA:

Now
have we heard enough? May I have them cast
their honest lots as conscience may decide?

 

LEADER:

For us, we have shot our arrows, every one.
I wait to hear how this ordeal will end.

 

ATHENA:

Of course.
And what can I do to merit your respect?

 

APOLLO:

You have heard what you have heard.
To the judges.
Cast your lots, my friends,
strict to the oath that you have sworn.

 

ATHENA:

And now
if you would hear my law, you men of Greece,
you who will judge the first trial of bloodshed.

 

Now and forever more, for Aegeus’ people
this will be the court where judges reign.
This is the Crag of Ares, where the Amazons
pitched their tents when they came marching down
on Theseus, full tilt in their fury, erecting
a new city to overarch his city, towers thrust
against his towers - they sacrificed to Ares,
named this rock from that day onward Ares’ Crag.