Pyrrhus, Achilles’ son, in self-will the image of his sire, holds me in durance against every law of earth and heaven. All that lay in my power I have done—I have refused consent to be held; farther than that my woman’s hands could not avail. “What art thou doing, son of Aeacus? I lack not one to take my part!” I cried. “This is a woman, I tell thee, Pyrrhus, who has a master of her own!” Deafer to me than the sea as I shrieked out the name of Orestes, he dragged me with hair all disarrayed into his palace. What worse my lot had Lacedaemon been taken and I been made a slave, carried away by the barbarian rout with the daughters of Greece? Less misused by the victorious Achaeans was Andromache herself, what time the Danaan fire consumed the wealth of Phrygia.
But do you, if your heart is touched with any natural care for me, Orestes, lay claim to your right with. no timid hand. What! should anyone break open your pens and steal away your herds, would you resort to arms? and when your wife is stolen away will you be slow to move? Let your father-in-law Menelaus be your example, he who demanded back the wife taken from him. and had in a woman righteous cause for war. Had he been spiritless, and drowsed in his deserted halls, my mother would still be wed to Paris, as she was before.
Yet make not ready a thousand ships with bellying sails, and hosts of Danaan soldiery—yourself come! Yet even thus I might well have been sought back, nor is it unseemly for a husband to have endured fierce combat for love of his marriage-bed. Remember, too, the same grandsire is ours, Atreus, Pelops’ son, and, were you not husband to me, you would still be cousin. Husband. I entreat, succour your wife; brother, your sister! Both bonds press you on to your duty.
I was given to you by Tyndareus, weighty of counsel both for his life and for his years; the grandsire was arbiter of the grandchild’s fate. But my father, it might be said, had promised me to Aeacus’ son, not knowing this; yet my grandsire, who is first in order, should also be first in power, When I was wed to you. my union brought harm to none; if I wed with Pyrrhus, I shall deal a wound to you. My father Menelaus, too. will pardon our love—he himself succumbed to the darts of the winged god. The love he allowed himself’. he will concede to his daughter’s chosen; my mother, loved by him. will aid with her precedent You are to me what my sire is to my mother, and the part which once the Dardanian stranger played. Pyrrhus now plays. Let him be endlessly proud because of his father’s deeds; you, too, have a sire’s achievements of which to boast. The son of Tantalus was ruler over all, over Achilles himself. The one was but a part of the soldier band; the other was chief of chiefs. You, too, have ancestors—Pelops, and the father of Pelops: should you care to count more closely, you could call yourself fifth from Jove.
Nor are you without your prowess. The arms you wielded were hateful—but what were you to do?—your father placed them in your hand. I could wish that fortune had given you more excellent matter for courage; but the cause that called forth your deed was not chosen—it was fixed. The call you none the less obeyed: and the pierced throat of Aegisthus stained with blood the dwelling your father’s blood had reddened before. The son of Aeacus assails your name. and turns your praise to blame—and yet shrinks not before my gaze. I burst with anger, and my face swells with passion no less than my heart, and my breast burns with the pains of pent-up wrath. Has anyone in hearing of Hermione said aught against Orestes, and have I no strength, and no keen sword at hand? I can weep, at least. In weeping I let pour forth my ire, and over my bosom course the tears like a flowing stream. These only I still have, and still do I let them gush; my cheeks are wet and unsightly from their never ending fount.
Can it be some fate has come upon our house and pursued it through the years even to my time, that we Tantalid women are ever victims ready to the ravisher’s hand? I shall not rehearse the lying words of the swan upon the stream, nor complain of Jove disguised in plumage. Where the sea is sundered in two by the far-stretched Isthmus, Hippodamia was borne away in the car of the stranger; she of Taenarus, stolen away across the seas by the stranger-guest from Ida, roused to arms in her behalf all the men of Argos. I scarcely remember, to be sure, yet remember I do. All was grief, everywhere anxiety and fear; my grandsire wept, and my mother’s sister Phoebe, and the twin brothers, and Leda fell to praying the gods above, and her own Jove. As for myself, tearing my locks, not yet long, I began to cry aloud: “Mother, will you go away, and will you leave me behind?” For her lord was gone. Lest I be thought none of Pelops’ line, lo, I too have been left a ready prey for Neoptolemus!
Would that Peleus’ son had escaped the bow of Apollo! The father would condemn the son for his wanton deed; ’twas not of yore the pleasure “I Achilles, nor would it be now his pleasure, to see a widowed husband weeping for his stolen wife. What wrong have I done that heaven’s hosts are against me? or what constellation shall I complain is hostile to my wretched self? In my childhood I had no mother; my father was ever in the wars—though the two were not dead, I was reft of both. You were not near in my first years, O my mother, to receive the caressing prattle from the tripping tongue of the little girl: I never clasped about your neck the little arms that would not reach, and never sat, a burden sweet, upon your lap. I was not reared and cared for by your hand; and when I was promised in wedlock I had no mother to make ready the new chamber for my coming. I went out to meet you when you came back home—what I shall say is truth—and the face of my mother was unknown to me! That you were Helen I none the less knew. because you were most beautiful: but you—you had to ask who your daughter was!
This one favour of fortune has been mine—to have Orestes for my wedded mate; but he. too will be taken from me if he does not fight for his own. Pyrrhus holds me captive, though my father is returned and a victor—this is the boon brought me by the downfall of Troy! Yet my unhappy soul has the comfort, when Titan is urging aloft his radiant steeds, of being more free in its wretchedness; but when the dark of night has fallen and sent me to my chamber with wails and lamentation for my bitter lot. and I have stretched myself prostrate on my sorrowful bed, then springing tears, not slumber, is the service of mine eyes, and in every way I can I shrink from my mate as from a foe. Oft I am distraught with woe; I lose sense of where I am and what my fate, and with witless hand have touched the body of him of Scyrus; but when I have waked to the awful act, I draw my hand from the base contact, and look upon it as defiled. Oft. instead of Neoptolemus the name of Orestes comes forth, and the mistaken word is a treasured omen.
By our unhappy line I swear, and by the parent of our line, he who shakes the seas, the land, and his own realms on high; by the bones of your father, uncle to me, which owe it to you that bravely avenged they lie beneath their burial mound either I shall die before my time and in my youthful years be blotted out, or I, a Tantalid. shall hi- the wife of him sprung from Tantalus!
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