Classic Greek Drama_ 10 Plays by Euripides in a Single File [NOOK Book] - Euripides [188]
CHOR. A respondent strain and an Asiatic hymn of barbarian wailing will I peal forth to thee, my mistress, the song of mourning which, delighting the dead, Hades hymns in measure apart from Paeans.[31] Alas! the light of the sceptre in the Atrides' house is faded away. Alas! alas for my ancestral home! And what government of prosperous kings will there be in Argos?[32] * * * * And labor upon labor comes on * * * * [33] with his winged mares driven around. But the sun, changing from its proper place, [laid aside] its eye of light.[34] And upon other houses woe has come, because of the golden lamb, murder upon murder, and pang upon pang, whence the avenging Fury[35] of those sons slain of old comes upon the houses of the sons of Tantalus, and some deity hastens unkindly things against thee.
IPH. From the beginning the demon of my mother's zone[36] was hostile to me, and from that night in which the Fates hastened the pangs of childbirth[37] * * * * whom, the first-born germ the wretched daughter of Leda, (Clytaemnestra,) wooed from among the Greeks brought forth, and trained up as a victim to a father's sin, a joyless sacrifice, a votive offering. But in a horse-chariot they brought[38] me to the sands of Aulis, a bride, alas! unhappy bride to the son of Nereus' daughter, alas! And now a stranger I dwell in an unpleasant home on the inhospitable sea, unwedded, childless, without city, without a friend, not chanting Juno in Argos, nor in the sweetly humming loom adorning with the shuttle the image of Athenian Pallas[39] and of the Titans, but imbruing altars with the shed blood of strangers, a pest unsuited to the harp, [of strangers] sighing forth[40] a piteous cry, and shedding a piteous tear. And now indeed forgetfulness of these matters [comes upon] me, but now I mourn my brother dead in Argos, whom I left yet an infant at the breast, yet young, yet a germ in his mother's arms and on her bosom, Orestes [the future] holder of the sceptre in Argos.
CHOR. But hither comes a herdsman, leaving the sea-coast, about to tell thee some new thing.
HERDSMAN. Daughter of Agamemnon and child of Clytaemnestra, hear thou from me a new announcement.
IPH. And what is there astonishing in the present report?
HERDS. Two youths are come into this land, to the dark-blue Symplegades, fleeing into a ship, a grateful sacrifice and offering to Diana. But you can not use too much haste[41] in making ready the lustral waters and the consecrations.
IPH. Of what country? of what land do the strangers bear the name?
HERDS. Greeks, this one thing I know, and nothing further.
IPH. Hast thou not heard the name of the strangers, so as to tell it?
HERDS. One of them was styled Pylades by the other.
IPH. But what was the name of the yoke-fellow of this stranger?
HERDS. No one knows this. For we heard it not.
IPH. But how saw ye them, and chanced to take them?
HERDS. Upon the furthest breakers of the inhospitable sea.
IPH. And what had herdsmen to do with the sea?
HERDS. We came to lave our steers in the dew of the sea.
IPH. Go back again to this point--how did ye catch them, and by what means, for I would fain know this? For they are come after a long season, nor has the altar of the Goddess yet been crimsoned with Grecian blood.[42]
HERDS. After we woodland herdsmen had brought our cattle down to the sea that flows between the Symplegades, there is a certain hollow cave,[43] broken by the frequent lashing of the waves, a retreat for those who hunt for the purple fish. Here some herdsman among us beheld two youths, and he retired back, piloting his step on tiptoe, and said: See ye not? these who sit here are some