Aeschylus, Agamemnon 810–913: Third episode: Agamemnon arrives and Clytaemestra's welcome

Argos first, as is right and proper, I greet, and her local gods who have helped me to my safe return and to the justice I exacted from Priam’s town. For listening to no pleadings by word of mouth, without dissenting voice, they cast into the bloody urn their ballots for the murderous destroying of Ilium; but to the urn of acquittal that no hand filled, Hope alone drew near. The smoke even now still declares the city’s fall. Destruction’s blasts still live, and the embers, as they die, breathe forth rich fumes of wealth. For this success we should render to the gods a return in ever-mindful gratitude, seeing that we have thrown round the city the toils of vengeance, and in a woman’s cause it has been laid low by the fierce Argive beast, brood of the horse, a shield-armed folk, that launched its leap when the Pleiades waned. Vaulting over its towered walls, the ravening lion lapped up his fill of princely blood. For the gods then I have stretched out this prelude. But, touching your sentiments—which I heard and still bear in memory—I both agree and you have in me an advocate. For few there are among men in whom it is inborn to admire without envy a friend’s good fortune. For the venom of malevolence settles upon the heart and doubles the burden of him who suffers from that plague: he is himself weighed down by his own calamity, and groans to see another’s prosperity. From knowledge—for well I know the mirror of companionship—I may call a shadow of a shade those who feigned exceeding loyalty to me. Only Odysseus, the very man who sailed against his will, once harnessed, proved my zealous yoke-fellow. This I affirm of him whether he is alive or dead. But, for the rest, in what concerns the State and public worship, we shall appoint open debates and consider. Where all goes well, we must take counsel so that it may long endure; but whenever there is need of healing remedy, we will by kind appliance of cautery or the knife endeavor to avert the mischief of the disease. And now I will pass to my palace halls and to my household hearth, and first of all pay greeting to the gods. They who sent me forth have brought me home again. May victory, now that it has attended me, remain ever with me constant to the end!

Citizens of Argos, you Elders present here, I shall not be ashamed to confess in your presence my fondness for my husband—with time diffidence dies away in humans. Untaught by others, I can tell of my own weary life all the long while my husband was beneath Ilium’s walls. First and foremost, it is a terrible evil for a wife to sit forlorn at home, severed from her husband, always hearing many malignant rumors, and for one messenger after another to come bearing tidings of disaster, each worse than the last, and cry them to the household. And as for wounds, had my husband received so many as rumor kept pouring into the house, no net would have been pierced so full of holes as he. Or if he had died as often as reports claimed, then truly he might have had three bodies, a second Geryon, and have boasted of having taken on him a triple cloak of earth, one death for each different shape. Because of such malignant tales as these, many times others have had to loose the high-hung halter from my neck, held in its strong grip. It is for this reason, in fact, that our boy, Orestes, does not stand here beside me, as he should—he in whom rest the pledges of my love and yours. Nor should you think this strange. For he is in the protecting care of our well-intentioned ally, Strophius of Phocis, who warned me of trouble on two scores—your own peril beneath Ilium’s walls, and then the chance that the people in clamorous revolt might overturn the Council, as it is natural for men to trample all the more upon the fallen. Truly such an excuse supports no guile.

As for myself, the welling fountains of my tears are utterly dried up—not a drop remains. In night-long vigils my eyes are sore with weeping for the beacon-lights set for you but always neglected. The faint whir of the buzzing gnat often waked me from dreams in which I beheld more disasters to you than the time of sleep could have compassed. But now, having born all this, my heart freed from its anxiety, I would hail my husband here as the watchdog of the fold, the savior forestay of the ship, firm-based pillar of the lofty roof, only-begotten son of a father, or land glimpsed by men at sea beyond their hope, dawn most fair to look upon after storm, the gushing stream to thirsty wayfarer—sweet is it to escape all stress of need. Such truly are the greetings of which I deem him worthy. But let envy be far removed, since many were the ills we endured before. And now, I pray you, my dear lord, dismount from your car, but do not set on common earth the foot, my King, that has trampled upon Ilium. Why this loitering, women, to whom I have assigned the task to strew with tapestries the place where he shall go? Quick! With purple let his path be strewn, that Justice may usher him into a home he never hoped to see. The rest my unslumbering vigilance shall order duly, if it please god, even as is ordained.