Aeschylus, Libation Bearers 306–422: Kommos (1): the lament at the tomb

You mighty Fates, through the power of Zeus grant fulfilment in the way to which Justice now turns. For a word of hate let a word of hate be said, Justice cries out as she exacts the debt, and for a murderous stroke let a murderous stroke be paid. Let it be done to him as he does, says the age-old wisdom.

O father, unhappy father, by what word or deed of mine can I succeed in sailing from far away to you, where your resting-place holds you, a light to oppose your darkness? Yet a lament in honor of the Atreidae who once possessed our house is none the less a joyous service.

My child, the fire’s ravening jaw does not overwhelm the wits of the dead man, but afterwards he reveals what stirs him. The murdered man has his dirge; the guilty man is revealed. Justified lament for fathers and for parents, when raised loud and strong, makes its search everywhere.

Hear then, O father, as in turn we mourn with plentiful tears. Look, your two children mourn you in a dirge over your tomb. As suppliants and exiles as well they have sought a haven at your sepulchre. What of these things is good, what free of evil? Is it not hopeless to wrestle against doom?

Yet heaven, if it pleases, may still turn our utterance to more joyfully sounding strains. In place of dirges over a tomb, a song of triumph within the royal halls will welcome back a reunited friend.

Ah, my father, if only beneath Ilium’s walls you had been slain, slashed by some Lycian spearman! Then you would have left a good name for your children in their halls, and in their maturity you would have made their lives admired by men. And in a land beyond the sea you would have found a tomb heaped high with earth, no heavy burden for your house to bear—

—Welcomed there below by your comrades who nobly fell, a ruler of august majesty, distinguished even beneath the earth, and minister of the mightiest, the deities who rule in the nether world. For in your life you were a king of those who have the power to assign the portion of death, and who wield the staff all mortals obey.

No, not even beneath the walls of Troy, father, would I wish you to have fallen and to be entombed beside Scamander’s waters among the rest of the host slain by the spear. I wish rather that his murderers had been killed by their own loved ones, just as they killed you, so that someone in a distant land who knew nothing of these present troubles should learn of their fatal doom.

In this, my child, your wish is better than gold. It surpasses great good fortune, even that of the supremely blessed; for it is easy to wish. But now the lash of this double scourge comes home: our cause already has its champions beneath the earth, while the hands of our loathsome opponents, though they have the mastery, are unholy. The children have won the day.

This has pierced the earth and reached your ear as if it were an arrow. O Zeus, O Zeus, who send long-deferred retribution up from below onto the reckless and wicked deeds done by the hands of mortals. . . . And yet it will be accomplished for our father’s sake.

May it be mine to raise a hearty shout in triumph over the man when he is stabbed and over the woman as she perishes! Why should I try to keep hidden what nevertheless hovers before my soul? Full against the prow of my heart wrath blows sharply in rancorous hate.

And when will mighty Zeus bring down his hand on them and split their heads open? Let it be a pledge to the land! After injustice I demand justice as my right. Hear, O Earth, and you honored powers below!

And it is the eternal rule that drops of blood spilled on the ground demand yet more blood. Murder cries out on the Fury, which from those killed before brings one ruin in the wake of another.

Alas, you sovereign powers of the world below, behold, you potent Curses of the slain, behold the remnants of the line of Atreus in their helpless plight, cast out from house and home in dishonor. Which way can we turn, O Zeus?

But again my heart throbs as I hear this pitiful lament. At once I am devoid of hope and my viscera are darkened at the words I hear. But when hope once again lifts and strengthens me, it puts away my distress and dawns brightly on me.

To what could we more fittingly appeal than to those very miseries we have endured from the woman herself who bore us? She may fawn upon us, but they are past all soothing. For like a fierce-hearted wolf the temper we have acquired from our mother is implacable.