The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I.. Euripides

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СКАЧАТЬ where are said to be the recesses in the midst of the globe! O Jupiter, what pity is there? what is this contention of slaughter that comes persecuting thee wretched, to whom some evil genius casts tear upon tear, transporting to thy house the blood of thy mother which drives thee frenzied! Thus I bewail, I bewail. Great prosperity is not lasting among mortals; but, as the sail of the swift bark, some deity having shaken him, hath sunk him in the voracious and destructive waves of tremendous evils, as in the waves of the ocean. For what other41 family ought I to reverence yet before that sprung from divine nuptials, sprung from Tantalus? – But lo! the king! the prince Menelaus, is coming! but he is very easily discernible from the elegance of his person, as king of the house of the Tantalidæ.

      O thou that didst direct the army of a thousand vessels to Asia's land, hail! but thou comest hither with good fortune, having obtained the object of thy wishes from the Gods.

      MENELAUS, ORESTES, CHORUS

      MEN. O palace, in some respect indeed I behold thee with pleasure, coming from Troy, but in other respect I groan when I see thee. For never yet saw I any other house more completely encircled round with lamentable woes. For I was made acquainted with the misfortune that befell Agamemnon, [and his death, by what death he perished at the hands of his wife,]42 when I was landing my ships at Malea; but from the waves the prophet of the mariners declared unto me, the foreboding Glaucus the son of Nereus, an unerring God, who told me thus in evident form standing by me. "Menelaus, thy brother lieth dead, having fallen in his last bath, which his wife prepared." But he filled both me and my sailors with many tears; but when I come to the Nauplian shore, my wife having already landed there, expecting to clasp in my friendly embraces Orestes the son of Agamemnon, and his mother, as being in prosperity, I heard from some fisherman43 the unhallowed murder of the daughter of Tyndarus. And now tell me, maidens, where is the son of Agamemnon, who dared these terrible deeds of evil? for he was an infant in Clytæmnestra's arms at that time when I left the palace on my way to Troy, so that I should not know him, were I to see him.

      ORES. I, Menelaus, am Orestes, whom thou seekest, I of my own accord will declare my evils. But first I touch thy knees in supplication, putting up prayers from my mouth, not using the sacred branch:44 save me. But thou art come in the very season of my sufferings.

      MEN. O ye Gods, what do I behold! whom of the dead do I see!

      ORES. Ay! well thou sayest the dead; for in my state of suffering I live not; but see the light.

      MEN. Thou wretched man, how disordered thou art in thy squalid hair!

      ORES. Not the appearance, but the deeds torment me.

      MEN. But thou glarest dreadfully with thy shriveled eyeballs.

      ORES. My body is vanished, but my name has not left me.

      MEN. Alas, thy uncomeliness of form which has appeared to me beyond conception!

      ORES. I am he, the murderer of my wretched mother.

      MEN. I have heard; but spare a little the recital of thy woes.

      ORES. I spare it; but in woes the deity is rich to me.

      MEN. What dost thou suffer? What malady destroys thee?

      ORES. The conviction that I am conscious of having perpetrated dreadful deeds.

      MEN. How sayest thou? Plainness, and not obscurity, is wisdom.

      ORES. Sorrow is chiefly what destroys me, —

      MEN. She is a dreadful goddess, but sorrow admits of cure.

      ORES. And fits of madness in revenge for my mother's blood.

      MEN. But when didst first have the raging? what day was it then?

      ORES. That day in which I heaped the tomb on my mother.

      MEN. What? in the house, or sitting at the pyre?

      ORES. As I was guarding by night lest any one should bear off her bones.45

      MEN. Was any one else present, who supported thy body?

      ORES. Pylades, who perpetrated with me the vengeance and death of my mother.

      MEN. But by what visions art thou thus afflicted?

      ORES. I appear to behold three virgins like the night.

      MEN. I know whom thou meanest, but am unwilling to name them.

      ORES. Yes: for they are awful; but forbear from speaking such high polished words.46

      MEN. Do these drive thee to distraction on account of this kindred murder?

      ORES. Alas me for the persecutions, with which wretched I am driven!

      MEN. It is not strange that those who do strange deeds should suffer them.

      ORES. But we have whereto we may transfer the criminality47 of the mischance.

      MEN. Say not the death of thy father; for this is not wise.

      ORES. Phœbus who commanded us to perpetrate the slaying of our mother.

      MEN. Being more ignorant than to know equity, and justice.

      ORES. We are servants of the Gods, whatever those Gods be.

      MEN. And then does not Apollo assist thee in thy miseries?

      ORES. He is always about to do it, but such are the Gods by nature.

      MEN. But how long a time has thy mother's breath gone from her?

      ORES. This is the sixth day since; the funeral pyre is yet warm.

      MEN. How quickly have the Goddesses come to demand of thee thy mother's blood!

      ORES. I am not wise, but a true friend to my friends.

      MEN. But what then doth the revenge of thy father profit thee?

      ORES. Nothing yet; but I consider what is in prospect in the same light as a thing not done.

      MEN. But regarding the city how standest thou, having done these things?

      ORES. We are hated to that degree, that no one speaks to us.

      MEN. Nor hast thou washed thy blood from thy hands according to the laws?

      ORES. How can I? for I am shut out from the houses, whithersoever I go.

      MEN. Who of the citizens thus contend to drive thee from the land?

      ORES. Œax,48 imputing to my father the hatred which arose on account of Troy.

      MEN. I understand. The death of Palamede takes its vengeance on thee.

      ORES. In which at least I had no share – but I perish by the three.

      MEN. СКАЧАТЬ