Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1448–1576: Kommos: the lament for Agamemnon and the Fiend of the house

Alas! Ah that some fate, free from excess of suffering, nor yet with lingering bed of pain, might come full soon and bring to us everlasting and endless sleep, now that our most gracious guardian has been laid low, who in a woman’s cause had much endured and by a woman’s hand has lost his life.

O mad Helen, who did yourself alone destroy these many lives, these lives exceeding many, beneath the walls of Troy. Now you have bedecked yourself with your final crown, that shall long last in memory, because of blood not to be washed away. Truly in those days strife, an affliction that has subdued its lord, dwelt in the house.

Do not burden yourself with thoughts such as these, nor invoke upon yourself the fate of death. Nor yet turn your wrath upon Helen, and deem her a slayer of men, as if she alone had destroyed many a Danaan life and had wrought anguish past all cure.

O Fiend who falls upon this house and Tantalus’ two descendants, you who by the hands of women exert a rule matching their temper, a rule bitter to my soul! Perched over his body like a hateful raven, in hoarse notes she chants her song of triumph.

Now you have corrected the judgment of your lips in that you name the thrice-gorged Fiend of this race. For by him the lust for lapping blood is fostered in the mouth; so before the ancient wound is healed, fresh blood is spilled.

Truly you speak of a mighty Fiend, haunting the house, and heavy in his wrath (alas, alas!)—an evil tale of catastrophic fate insatiate; woe, woe, done by will of Zeus, author of all, worker of all! For what is brought to pass for mortal men save by will of Zeus? What herein is not wrought of god?

Alas, alas, my King, my King, how shall I bewail you? How voice my heartfelt love for you? To lie in this spider’s web, breathing forth your life in an impious death! Ah me, to lie on this ignoble bed, struck down in treacherous death wrought by a weapon of double edge wielded by the hand of your own wife!

Do you affirm this deed is mine? Do not imagine that I am Agamemnon’s spouse. A phantom resembling that corpse’s wife, the ancient bitter evil spirit of Atreus, that grim banqueter, has offered him in payment, sacrificing a full-grown victim in vengeance for those slain babes.

That you are innocent of this murder—who will bear you witness? How could anyone do so? And yet the evil genius of his father might well be your accomplice. By force amid streams of kindred blood black Havoc presses on to where he shall grant vengeance for the gore of children served for meat.

Alas, alas, my King, my King, how shall I bewail you? How voice my heartfelt love for you? To lie in this spider’s web, breathing forth your life in impious death! Alas, to lie on this ignoble bed, struck down in treacherous death wrought by a weapon of double edge wielded by your own wife’s hand!

And did he not himself by treachery bring ruin on his house? Yet, as he has suffered—worthy prize of worthy deed—for what he did to my sweet flower, shoot sprung from him, the sore-wept Iphigenia, let him make no great boasts in the halls of Hades, since with death dealt him by the sword he has paid for what he first began.

Bereft of any ready expedient of thought, I am bewildered where to turn now that the house is tottering. I fear the beating storm of bloody rain that shakes the house; no longer does it descend in drops. Yet on other whetstones Destiny is sharpening justice for another evil deed.

O Earth, Earth, if only you had taken me to yourself before ever I had lived to see my lord occupying a lowly bed of a silver-sided bath! Who shall bury him? Who shall lament him? Will you harden your heart to do this—you who have slain your own husband—to lament for him and crown your unholy work with an uncharitable gift to his spirit, atoning for your monstrous deeds? And who, as with tears he utters praise over the hero’s grave, shall sorrow in sincerity of heart?

To care for that duty is no concern of yours. By our hands down he fell, down to death, and down below shall we bury him—but not with wailings from his household. No! Iphigenia, his daughter, as is due, shall meet her father lovingly at the swift-flowing ford of sorrows, and shall fling her arms around him and kiss him.

Reproach thus meets reproach in turn—hard is the struggle to decide. The spoiler is despoiled, the slayer pays penalty. Yet, while Zeus remains on his throne, it remains true that to him who does it shall be done; for it is law. Who can cast from out the house the seed of the curse? The race is bound fast in calamity.

Upon this divine deliverance have you rightly touched. As for me, however, I am willing to make a sworn compact with the Fiend of the house of Pleisthenes that I will be content with what is done, hard to endure though it is. Henceforth he shall leave this house and bring tribulation upon some other race by murder of kin. A small part of the wealth is fully enough for me, if I may but rid these halls of the frenzy of mutual murder.