In the bloody combat fresh,He shall risk it, one with two;Hand to hand the fight shall be.Godlike son of Agamemnon,Jove give strength to thee!Ægisthus.(from within)Ah me! I fall. Ah! Ah!Chorus.Hear’st thou that cry? How is’t? Whose was that groan?Let’s go aside, the deed being done, that weSeem not partakers of the bloody work.n59’Tis ended now.EnterServant.Servant.Woe’s me! my murdered master!Thrice woeful deed! Ægisthus lives no more.Open the women’s gates! uncase the bolts!Were needed here a Titan’s strength—though thatWould nothing boot the dead. Ho! hillo! ho!Are all here deaf? or do I babble breathIn sleepers’ ears? Where, where is Clytemnestra?What keeps my mistress? On a razor’s edgeHer fate now lies; the blow’s already poised,That falls on her too—nor unjustly falls.EnterClytemnestra.Clytemnestra.Well! what’s the matter? why this clamorous cry?Servant.He, who was dead, has slain the quick. ’Tis so.Clytemnestra.Ha! Thou speak’st riddles; but I understand thee.We die by guile, as guilefully we slew.Bring me an axe! an axe to kill a man!Quickly!—or conqueror or conquered, IWill fight it out. To this ’tis come at last.[EnterOrestes,dragging in the dead body ofÆgisthus;with himPylades.Orestes.Thee next I seek. For him, he hath enough.Clytemnestra.Ah me! my lord, my loved Ægisthus dead!Orestes.Dost love this man? then thou shalt sleep with him,In the same tomb. He was thy bedmate living,Be thou his comrade, dead.Clytemnestra.Hold thee, my son!Look on this breast, to which with slumbrous eyesThou oft hast clung, the while thy baby gumSucked the nutritious milk.Orestes.What say’st thou, Pylades?Shall I curtail the work, and spare my mother?Pylades.Bethink thee well; the Loxian oracles,Thy sure-pledged vows, where are they, if she live?Make every man thy foe, but fear the gods.Orestes.Thy voice shall rule in this; thou judgest wisely.Follow this man; here, side by side with him,I’ll butcher thee. Seemed he a fairer manThan was my father when my father lived?Sleep thou, where he sleeps; him thou lovest well,And whom thou chiefly shouldst have loved thou hatedst.Clytemnestra.I nursed thy childhood, and in peace would die.n60Orestes.Spare thee to live with me—my father’s murderer?Clytemnestra.Not I; say rather Fate ordained his death.Orestes.The self-same Fate ordains thee now to die.Clytemnestra.My curse beware, the mother’s curse that bore thee.Orestes.That cast me homeless from my father’s house.Clytemnestra.Nay; to a friendly house I lent thee, boy.Orestes.Being free-born, I like a slave was sold.Clytemnestra.I trafficked not with thee. I gat no gold.Orestes.Worse—worse than gold—a thing too foul to name!Clytemnestra.Name all my faults; but had thy father none?Orestes.Thou art a woman sitting in thy chamber.n61Judge not the man that goes abroad, and labours.Clytemnestra.Hard was my lot, my child, alone, uncherished.Orestes.Alone by the fire, while for thy gentle easeThe husband toiled.Clytemnestra.Thou wilt not kill me, son?Orestes.I kill thee not. Thyself dost kill thyself.Clytemnestra.Beware thy mother’s anger-whetted hounds.f11Orestes.My father’s hounds have hunted me to thee.Clytemnestra.The stone that sepulchres the dead art thou,And I the tear on’t.Orestes.Cease: I voyaged here,With a fair breeze; my father’s murder brought me.Clytemnestra.Ah me! I nursed a serpent on my breast.Orestes.n62Thou hadst a prophet in thy dream, last night;And since thou kill’d the man thou shouldst have spared,The man, that now should spare thee, can but kill.[He drives her into the house, and there murders her.Chorus.There’s food for sorrow here; but rather, sinceOrestes could not choose but scale the heightOf bloody enterprise, our prayer is this:That he, the eye of this great house, may live.n63CHORAL HYMN.STROPHE I.Hall of old Priam, with sorrow unbearable,Vengeance hath come on the Argive thy foe;A pair of grim lions, a double Mars terrible,n64Comes to his palace, that levelled thee low.Chanced hath the doom of the guilty precisely,Even as Phœbus foretold it, and wiselyWhere the god pointed, was levelled the blow.Lift up the hymn of rejoicing; the lecherous,Sin-laden tyrant shall lord it no more;No more shall the mistress so bloody and treacherousLavish the plundered Pelopidan store.STROPHE II.Sore chastisementn65came on the doomed and devoted,With dark-brooding purpose and fair-smiling show;And the daughter of Jove the eternal was noted,Guiding the hand that inflicted the blow—Bright Justice, of Jove, the Olympian daughter;But blasted they fell with the breath of her slaughterWhose deeds of injustice made Justice their foe.Her from his shrine sent the rock-throned Apollo,n66The will of her high-purposed sire to obey,The track of the blood-stained remorseless to follow,Winged with sure death, though she lag by the way.EPODE.Ye rulers on Earth, fear the rulers in Heaven,No aid by the gods to the froward is given;For the bonds of our thraldom asunder are riven,And the day dawns clear.Lift up your heads; from prostration untimelyYe halls of the mighty be lifted sublimely!All-perfecting Time shall bring swift restitution,And cleanse the hearth pure from the gory pollution,Now the day dawns clear.And blithely shall welcome them Fortune the fairest,n67The brother and sister, with omens the rarest;Each friend of this house show the warm love thou bearest,Now the day dawns clear!EnterOrestes,with the body ofClytemnestra.Orestes.Behold this tyrant pair, my father’s murderers,Usurpers of this land, and of this houseDestroyers. They this throne did use in pride,And now in love, as whoso looks may guess,They lie together, all their vows fulfilled.Death to my hapless father, and to lieThemselves on a common bier—this was their vow;And they have vowed it well. Behold these toils,Wherewith they worked destruction to my father,Chained his free feet, and manacled his hands.There—spread it forth—approach—peruse it nicely.This mortal vest, that so the father—notMy father, but the Sun that fathers allWith lightn68—may see what godless deed was doneHere by my mother. Let him witness duly,That not unjustly I have spilt this blood—My mother’s; for Ægisthus recks me not;As an adulterer should, he died: but she,That did devise such foul detested wrongAgainst the lord, to whom beneath her zoneShe bore a burden, once so valued, nowA weight that damns her; what was she?—a viperOr a torpedo—that with biteless touchStrikes numb who handles.n69Harsh the smoothest phraseTo name the bold unrighteous will she used.And for this fowler’s net—this snare—this trap—This cloth to wrap the deadn70—this veil to curtainA bloody bath—teach me a name for it!Such murderous toils the ruffians use, who spillTheir neighbour’s blood, that they may seize his gold,And warm their heart with plenty not their own.Lodge no such mate with me! Sooner may ILive by high Heaven accursed, and childless die.Chorus.A sorry work—alas! alas!A dismal death she found.Nor sorrow quite from man may passThat lives above the ground.Orestes.A speaking proof! Behold, Ægisthus’ swordHath left its witness on this robe; the timeHath paled the murtherous spot, but where it wasThe sumptuous stole hath lost its radiant dye.Alas! I know not, when mine eyes beholdThis father-murdering web, if I should ownJoy lord, or grief. Let grief prevail. I grieveOur crimes, our woes, our generation doomed,Our tearful trophies blazoned with a curse.Chorus.The gods so will that, soon or late,Each mortal taste of sorrow;A frown to-day from surly Fate,A biting blast to-morrow.Orestes.Others ’twixt hope and fear may sway, my fateIs fixed and scapeless.n71Like a charioteer,Dragged from his course by steeds that spurned the rein,Thoughts past control usurp me. Terror lifts,Even now, the prelude to her savage hymn,Within my heart exultant. But, while yetMy sober mind remains, witness ye allMy friends, this solemn abjuration! NotUnjustly, when I slew, I slew my mother—That mother, with my father’s blood polluted,Of every god abhorred. And I protestThe god that charmed me to the daring pointWas Loxias, with his Pythian oracles,Pledging me blameless, this harsh work once done,Not done, foredooming what I will not say;All thoughts most horrible undershoot the mark.And now behold me, as a suppliant goes,With soft-wreathed wool, and precatory branch,n72Addressed for Delphi, the firm-seated shrineOf Loxias, navel of earth, where burns the flameOf fire immortal named.n73For I must fleeThis kindred blood, and hie me where the godForespoke me refuge. Once again I callOn you, and Argive men of every time,To witness my great griefs. I go an exileFrom this dear soil. Living, or dead, I leaveThese words, the one sad memory of my name.Chorus.Thou hast done well; yoke not thy mouth this dayTo evil words. Thou art the liberatorOf universal Argos, justly greeted,Who from the dragon pair the head hath lopped.[TheFuriesappear in the background.Orestes.Ah, me! see there! like Gorgons! look! look there!All dusky-vested, and their locks entwinedWith knotted snakes. Away! I may not stay.Chorus.O son, loved of thy sire, be calm, nor letVain phantoms fret thy soul, in triumph’s hour.Orestes.These are no phantoms, but substantial horrors;Too like themselves they show, the infernal houndsSent from my mother!Chorus.’Tis the fresh-gouted bloodUpon thy hand, that breeds thy brain’s distraction.Orestes.Ha! how they swarm! Apollo! more—yet more!And from their fell eyes droppeth murderous gore.Chorus.There is atonement.n74Touch but Loxias’ altar,And he from bloody stain shall wash thee clean.Orestes.Ye see them not. I see them.n75There!—Away!The hell-hounds hunt me: here I may not stay.Chorus.Nay, but with blessing go. From fatal harmGuard thee the god whose eyes in love behold thee!n76Blown hath now the third harsh tempest,O’er the proud Atridan palace,Floods of family woe!First thy damned feast, Thyestes,On thy children’s flesh abhorrent;Then the kingly man’s prostration,And thy warlike pride, Achaia,Butchered in a bath;Now he, too, our greeted SaviourRed with this new woe!When shall Fate’s stern work be ended,When shall cease the boisterous vengeance,Hushed in slumbers low?[The End]THE EUMENIDESA LYRICO-DRAMATIC SPECTACLEἄλγεαΠολλὰ μἀλ᾽ ὃσσα τε μητρὸς Ἐριννύες ἐκτελέουσιν.Odysseyxi. 289.My solitude is solitude no more,But peopled with the Furies.Byron.PERSONSThe Pythonessof the Temple of Apollo in Delphi.Apollo.Hermes(Mute).The Shade of Clytemnestra.Chorus of Furies.Pallas Athena.Judgesof the Court of Areopagus(Mute).Convoy of the Furies.Scene—First at Delphi in the Temple of Apollo; then on the Hill of Mars, Athens.INTRODUCTORY REMARKSThoughthe ancient Greek religion, there can be no question, was too much the creation of mere imagination, and tended rather to cultivate a delicate sense of beauty than to strike the soul with a severe reverence before the awful majesty of the moral law, yet it is no less certain that to look upon it as altogether addressed to our sensuous emotions, however convenient for a certain shallow school of theology, would lead the calm inquirer after moral truth far away from the right track. As among the gods that rule over the elements of the physical world, Jove, according to the Homeric creed, asserts a high supremacy, which restrains the liberty of the celestial aristocracy from running into lawless licence and confusion; so the wild and wanton ebullitions of human passion, over which a Bacchus, a Venus, and a Mars preside, are not free from the constant control of a righteous Jove, and the sacred terror of a retributive Erinnys. The great lesson of a moral government, and a secret order of justice pervading the apparent confusion of the system of things of which we are a part, is sufficiently obvious in the whole structure of the two great Homeric poems; but if it exists in the midst of that sunny luxuriance of popular fancy as a felt atmosphere, it is planted by Æschylus, the thoughtful lyrist of a later age, on a visible elevation, whence, as from a natural pulpit, enveloped with dark clouds, or from a Heathen Sinai, involved in fearful thunders and lightnings, it trumpets forth its warnings, and hurls its bolts of flaming denunciation against Sin. The reader, who has gone through the two preceding pieces of this remarkable trilogy, without discovering this their deep moral significance, has read to little purpose; but it is here, in the concluding piece, that the grand doctrine of the moral government of the world is most formally enunciated; it is in the person of the Furies that the wrathful indignation of Jove against the violators of the moral law manifests itself, in the full panoply of terror, and stands out as the stern Avatar of an inexorable Justice. Here, therefore, if we will understand the moral seriousness, of which the gay Hellenic Polytheism was not without its background, let us fix our gaze. If the principles of “immutable morality,” of which our great English Platonist talks so comprehensively, are to be found anywhere, they are to be found here.The Furies (or the Εὐμενίδες,i.e.theGracious-minded, as they are called by a delicate euphemism) are generally looked upon as the impersonations of an evil conscience, the incarnated scourges of self-reproach. In this view there is no essential error; but it may be beneficial, in entering on the perusal of the present piece, to place before the modern reader more literally the true Homeric idea of these awful Powers. In the Iliad and Odyssey, frequent mention is made of the Erinnyes; and from the circumstances, in which their names occur, in various passages of these poems, there can be no doubt that we are to view them primarily as the impersonation of an imprecation or curse, which a person, whose natural rights have been grossly violated, pronounces on the person, by whom this violation comes.f1Thus the father of Phoenix (Il. ix. 453), being offended by the conduct of his son in relation to one of his concubines, “loads him with frequent curses, and invokes the hated Furies”—Πολλὰ κατηρατο, στυγερὰς δ᾽ ἐπίκεκλετ Εριννΰς,and “the gods,” it is added, “gave accomplishment to his curse, the subterranean Jove, and the awful Persephone.” In the same book we find, in the narration of the war, between the Curetes and the Ætolians, about Calydon, how Althaea, the mother of Meleager, being offended with her son on account of his having slain her brother, cursed him, and invoked Pluto and Proserpine that he might die, andHer the Fury that walketh in darkness,Heard from Erebus’ depths, with a heart that knoweth no mercy.Both these instances relate to offences committed against the revered character of a parent; but the elder brother also has his Erinnys.—(Il. xv. 204), and even the houseless beggar—(Od. xvii. 575), and, more than all, he to whose prejudice the sacred obligation of truth and honour have been set at nought by the perjured swearer—Mighty Jove, be thou my witness, Jove of gods supremest, best,Earth, and Sun, and Furies dread, that underneath the ground avengeWhoso speaks and sweareth falsely—says Agamemnon—(Il. xix. 257)—in restoring the intact Briseis to Achilles.Thus, according to Homer’s idea, wherever there is a cry of righteous indignation, rising up to Heaven from the breast of an injured person, there may be a Fury or Furies; for they are notlimited or defined in any way as to number. It is not, however, on every petty occasion of common offence that these dread ministers of divine vengeance appear. Only, when deeds of a deeper darkness are done, do these daughters of primeval Night (for so Æschylus symbolises their pedigree) issue forth from their subterranean caverns. There is something volcanic in their indignation, whose eruption is too terrible to be common. They chiefly frequent the paths, that are dabbled with blood. A murdered father, or a murdered mother especially, were never known to appeal to them in vain, even though Jove’s own prophet, Apollo, add his sanction to the deed. An Orestes may not hope to escape the bloody chase, which the “winged hounds,” invoked by a murdered Clytemnestra, are eager to prepare—the sacred precincts of an oracular Delphi may not repel their intrusion—the scent of blood “laughs in their nostrils,” and they will not be cheated of their game. Only one greatest goddess, in whose hands are the keys of her father’s armoury of thunder, may withstand the full rush of these vindictive powers. Only Pallas Athena, with her panoply of Olympian strength, and her divine wisdom of reconciliation can bid them be pacified.In order to understand thoroughly the situation of the matricide Orestes, in the present play, we must consider further the ancient doctrine of pollution attaching to an act of murder, and the consequent necessity of purification to the offender. The nature of this is distinctly set forth by Orestes himself in a reply to his sister Iphigenia, put into his mouth by Euripides. “Loxias,” he says, “first sent me to Athens, andThere first arrived, no host would entertain me,As being hated of the immortal gods,And some, who pitied me, before me placedCold entertainment on a separate board;Beneath the same roof though I lodged with them,No interchange of living voice I knew,But sat apart and ate my food alone.”Iphig. Taur. 954.Like an unclean leper among the Jews, the man polluted with human blood wandered from land to land, as with a Cain’s mark upon his brow, and every fellow-being shrank from his touch as from a living plague.“For wisely thus our ancestors ordained,That the blood-tainted man should know no joyFrom sight of fellow-mortal or from touch,But with an horrid sanctitude protectedRange the wide earth an exile.”Eurip. Orest. 512.Under the ban of such a social excommunication as this, the first act of readmission into the fraternity of human society was performed by the sprinkling of swine’s blood on the exile, a ceremony described particularly in the following passage of Apollonius Rhodius, where Jason and Medea are purified by Circe from the taint of the murder of Absyrtus:—“First to free them from the taint of murder not to be recalled,She above them stretched the suckling of a sow whose teats distilledThe juice that flows when birth is recent; this she cut across the throat,And with the crimson blood outflowing dashed the tainted suppliants’ hands.Then with other pure libations she allayed the harm, invokingJove that hears the supplication of the fugitive stained with blood.”Argon. IV. 704-9.The other “pure libations” here mentioned include specially water, of which particular mention is made in the legend of Alcmæon, which bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Orestes, and in which it is in the sacred stream of the Achelous alone that purification is at length found, from the deeply-engrained guilt of matricide.—(Apollodor, Lib. III., c. 7.) All this, however, availed only to remove the unhallowed taint, with which human blood had defiled the murderer. It was necessary, further, that he should be tried before a competent court, and formally acquitted, as having performed every atonement and given every satisfaction that the nature of the case required. According to the consuetudinary law of Athens, there were various courts in which different cases of murder and manslaughter were tried; but of all the courts that held solemn judgment on shed blood, none was more venerable in its origin, or more weighty in its authority, than the famous court of the Areopagus; and here it is, accordingly, that, after being wearied out by the sleepless chase of his relentless pursuers, Orestes, with the advice and under the protection of Apollo, arrives to gain peace to his soul by a final verdict of acquittal from the sage elders of Athens, acting by the authority and with the direction of their wise patron-goddess, Athena.The connection of Athena and the Areopagus with the Orestean legend gives to the present play a local interest and a patriotic hue of which the want is too often felt in the existing remains of the Attic tragedy. But Athena and the grave seniors of the hill of Ares are not the only celestial personages here, in whom an Athenian audience would find a living interest. The Furies themselves enjoyed a special reverence in the capital of Athens, under the title of Σεμνὰι θεαι, or thedread goddesses; and the principal seat of this worship, whether by a happy conjunction or a wise choice, was situated onthe north-east side (looking towards the Acropolis) of that very hill of the war god, where the venerable court that bore his name held its solemn sessions on those crimes, which it was the principal function of the Furies to avenge. Up to the present hour, the curious traveller through the wreck of Athenian grandeur sees pointed out the black rift of the rock into which the awful virgins, after accepting the pacification of Athena, are reported to have descended into their subterranean homes;f2and it is with this very descent, amid flaming torch-light and solemn hymns, that the great tragedian, mingling peace with fear, closes worthily the train of startling superhuman terrors which this drama exhibits.But Æschylus is not a patriot only, and a pious worshipper of his country’s gods in this play, he is also, to some small extent at least, manifestly a politician. The main feature of the constitutional history of Athens in the period immediately following the great Persian war, to which period our trilogy belongs, was the enlargement and the systematic completion of those democratic forms, of which the timocratic legislation of Solon, about a century and a-half before, had planted the first germs. Of these changes, Pericles, the man above all others who knew both to understand and to control his age, was the chief promoter; and in a policy whose main tendency was the substitution of a numerous popular for a narrow professional control of public business, it could not fail to be a main feature, that the authority of the judges of the old aristocratic courts was curtailed in favour of those bodies of paid jurymen, the institution of which is specially attributed to Pericles and his coadjutor Ephialtes.f3Whether these changes were politic or not, in the large sense of that word, need not be inquired here; Mr. Grote has done much to lengthen the focus of those short-sighted national spectacles, through which the English eye has been accustomed to view the classic democracies; but let it be that Pericles kept within the bounds of a wise liberty in giving a fair and a large trial to the action of democratic principles at that time and place; or let it be, on the other hand, that he overstepped the line“Which whoso passes, or who reaches not,Misses the mark of right”—in either case, where decision was so difficult, and discretion so delicate, no one can accuse the thoughtful tragic poet of a stolid conservatism, when he comes forward, in this play, as the advocate ofthe only court of high jurisdiction in Athens, now left unshaken by the great surge of those popular billows, that were yet swelling everywhere with the eager inspiration of Marathon and Salamis.f4The court of Areopagus was not now, since the legislation of Solon, and the further democratic movement of Cleisthenes, in any invidious or exclusive sense an aristocratic assembly, such as the close corporations of the old Roman aristocracy before the series of popular changes introduced by Licinius Stolo; it was a council, in fact, altogether without that family and hereditary element, in which the principal offence of aristocracy has always lain; its members were composed entirely (not recruited merely like our House of Lords) of those superior magistrates—archons annually elected by the people—who had retired from office. To magnify the authority of such a body, and maintain intact the few privileges that had now been left it, was, when an obvious opportunity offered, not only excusable in a great national tragedian, but imperative. One thing his political attitude in this matter certainly proves, that he was not a vulgar hunter after popularity, delighting to swell to the point of insane exaggeration the cry of the hour, but one of those men of high purpose, who prove a greater strength of patriotism by stemming the popular stream, than by swimming with it.Besides the championship of the Court of the Areopagus, there is another political element in this rich drama, which, though of less consequence, must not be omitted. No sooner had the Persian invaders been fairly driven back from the Hellenic shore, than that old spirit of narrow local jealousy, which was the worm at the heart of Grecian political existence, broke out with renewed vigour, and gave ominous indications in the untoward affair of Tanagra, of that terrible collision which shook the two great rival powers a few years afterwards in the famous Peloponnesian war. Sparta and Athens, opposed as they were by race, by geographical position, and by political character, after some public attempts at co-operation, in which Cimon was the principal actor, shrunk back, as in quiet preparation for the great trial of strength, into a state of isolated antagonism. But, though open hostility was deferred, wise precaution could not sleep; and, accordingly, we find the Athenians, about this time, anxious to secure a base of operations, so to speak, against Sparta in the Peloponnesus, by entering into an alliance with Argos. As a genuine Athenian, Æschylus, whatever his political feelings might be towards Cimon and the Spartan party, could not but look withpleasure on the additional strength which this Argive connection gave to Athens in the general council of Greece; and, accordingly, he dexterously takes advantage of the circumstance of Orestes being an Argive, to trace back the now historical union of the two countries to a period where Fancy is free to add what links she pleases to the brittle bonds of international association.Such is a rapid sketch of the principal religious and political relations, some notion of which is necessary to enable the general English reader to enter with sympathy on the perusal of the very powerful and singular drama of the Eumenides. The professional student, of course, will not content himself with what he finds here, but will seek for complete satisfaction in the luminous pages of Thirlwall and Grote—in the learned articles of Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities, in the notes of Schoemann, and, above all, in the rare Dissertations of Ottfried Müller, accompanying his edition of the Eumenides—a work which I have read once and again with mingled admiration and delight—from which I have necessarily drawn with no stinted hand in my endeavours to comprehend the Orestean trilogy for myself, and to make it comprehensible to others; and which I most earnestly recommend to all classical students as a pattern-specimen of erudite architecture raised by the hand of a master, from whom, even in his points of most baseless speculation (as what German is without such?), more is to be learned than from the triple-fanged certainties of vulgar commentators.THE EUMENIDESScene.—In front of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.The Pythoness.Old Earth, primeval prophetess, I firstWith these my prayers invoke; and Themisn1next,Who doth her mother’s throne and temple bothInherit, as the legend runs; and thirdIn lot’s due course, another Earth-born maidThe unforced homage of the land received,Titanian Phœbe;f5she in natal giftWith her own name her hoary right bequeathedTo Phœbus: he from rocky Delos’ laken2To Attica’s ship-cruised bays was wafted, whenceHe in Parnassus fixed his sure abode.Hither with pious escort they attend him:The Sons of Vulcan pioneer his path,n3Smoothing the rugged desert where he comes:The thronging people own him, and king Delphos,The land’s high helmsman, flings his portals wide.Jove with divinest skill his heart inspires,And now the fourth on this dread seat enthronedSits Loxias,f6prophet of his father Jove.n4These be the gods, whom chiefly I invoke:But thee, likewise, who ’fore this temple dwellest,n5Pallas, I pray, and you, ye Nymphs that loveThe hollow Corycian rock,n6the frequent hauntOf pleasant birds, the home of awful gods.Thee, Bromius, too, I worship,n7not unweetingHow, led by thee, the furious Thyads rushedTo seize the godless Pentheus,n8ev’n as a hareIs dogged to death. And you, the fountains pureOf Pleistus,f7and Poseidon’sf8mighty powern9I pray, and Jove most high, that crowns all thingsWith consummation. These the gods that lead meTo the prophetic seat, and may they grant meBest-omened entrance; may consulting Greeks,If any be, by custom’d lot approach;For as the gods my bosom stir, I pourThe fateful answer.[She goes into the Temple, but suddenly returns.O horrid tale to tell! O sight to seeMost horrible! that drives me from the hallsOf Loxias, so that I nor stand nor run,But, like a beast fourfooted stumble on,Losing the gait and station of my kind,A gray-haired woman, weaker than a child!n10Up to the garlanded recess I walked,And on the navel-stonef9behold! a manWith crime polluted to the altar clinging,And in his bloody hand he held a swordDripping with recent murder, and a branchOf breezy olive, with flocks of fleecy woolAll nicely tipt. Even thus I saw the man;And stretched before him an unearthly hostOf strangest women, on the sacred seatsSleeping—not women, but a Gorgon brood,And worse than Gorgons, or the ravenous crewThat filched the feast of Phineusn11(such I’ve seenIn painted terror); but these are wingless, black,Incarnate horrors, and with breathings direSnort unapproachable, and from their eyesPestiferous beads of poison they distil.Such uncouth sisterhood, apparel’d so,n12From all affinity of gods or menDivorced, from me and from the gods be far,And from all human homes! Nor can the land,That lends these unblest hags a home, remainUncursed by fearful scourges. But the god,Thrice-potent Loxias himself will wardHis holiest shrine from lawless outrage. HimPhysician, prophet, soothsayer, we call,Cleansing from guilt the blood-polluted hall. [Exit.[The interior of the Delphic Temple is now presented to view.Orestesis seen clinging to the navel-stone; theEumenideslie sleeping on the seats around. In the backgroundHermesbesideOrestes.EnterApollo.Apollo.(toOrestes)Trust me, I’ll not betray thee. Far or near,Thy guardian I, and to thine every foeNo gentle god. Thy madded persecutorsSleep-captured lie: the hideous host is bound.Primeval virgins, hoary maids, with whomNor god, nor man, nor beast hath known communion.For evil’s sake they are: in evil depthOf rayless Tartarus, underneath the ground,They dwell, of men and of Olympian godsAbhorred. But hence! nor faint thy heart, though theyAre mighty to pursue from land to landO’er measureless tracks, from rolling sea to sea,And sea-swept cities. A bitter pasture trulyWas thine from Fate;n13but bear all stoutly. Hie theeAway to Pallas’ city, and embraceHer ancient imagen14with close-clinging arms.Just Judges there we will appoint to judgeThy cause, and with soft-soothing pleas will pluckThe sting from thy offence, and free thee quiteFrom all thy troubles. Thou know’st that I, the god,When thou didst strike, myself the blow directed.Orestes.Liege lord Apollo, justice to the godsBelongs; in justice, O remember me.Thy power divine assurance gives that thouCan’st make thy will a deed.Apollo.Fear nought. Trust me.[ToHermes] And thou, true brother’s blood, true father’s son,Hermes, attend, and to this mission gird thee.Fulfil the happy omen of thy name,TheGuide,f10and guide this suppliant on his way.For Jove respects thy function and thy pride,The prosperous convoy, and the faithful guide.[ExitHermes,leadingOrestes.Apolloretires.Enterthe Shade of Clytemnestra.Clytemnestra.Sleeping? All sleeping! Ho! What need of sleepers?While I roam restless, of my fellow-deadDishonoured and reproached, by fault of you,That when I slew swift vengeance overtook me.But being slain myself, my avengers sleepAnd leave my cause to drift! Hear me, sleepers!Such taunts I bear, such contumelious gibes,Yet not one god is touched with wrath to avengeMy death, who died by matricidal hands.Behold these wounds!n15look through thy sleep, and see!Read with thy heart; some things the soul may scanMore clearly, when the sensuous lid hath dropt,Nor garish day confounds.n16Full oft have yeOf my libations sipped the wineless streams,The soothing? of my sober sacrifice,The silent supper from the solemn altar,At midnight hour when only ye are worshipped.But now all this beneath your feet lies trampled.The man is gone; fled like a hind! he snapsThe meshes of your toils, and makes—O shame!Your Deity a mark for scoffers’ eyesTo wink at! Hear me, ye infernal hags,Unhoused from hell! For my soul’s peace I plead,Once Clytemnestra famous, now a dream.n17[TheChorusmoans.Ye moan! the while the man hath fled, and seeksFor help from those that are no friends to me.n18[TheChorusmoans again.Sleep-bound art thou. Hast thou no bowels for me?My Furies sleep, and let my murderer flee.[TheChorusgroans.Groaning and sleeping! Up! What work hast thouTo do, but thine own work of sorrow? Rouse thee![TheChorusgroans again.Sleep and fatigue have sworn a league to bindThe fearful dragon with strong mastery.Chorus.(with redoubled groans and shrill cries)Hold! seize him! seize him! seize there! there! there! hold!Clytemnestra.Thy dream scents blood; and, like a dog that dothIn dreams pursue the chase, even so dost thouAt phantasms bark and howl. To work! to work!Let not fatigue o’ermaster thus thy strength,Nor slumber soothe the sense of sharpest wrong.Torture thy liver with reproachful thoughts;Reproaches are the pricks that goad the wise.Up! blow a blast of bloody breath behind him!Dry up his marrow with the fiery vengeance!Follow! give chase! pursue him to the death!Chorus,n19starting up in hurry and confusion.Voice 1.Awake! awake! rouse her as I rouse thee!Voice 2.Dost sleep? arise! dash drowsy sleep away!Brave dreams be prelude to brave deed! Ho, sisters!STROPHE I.Voice 1.Shame, sisters, shame!Insult and injury!Shame, O shame!Voice 2.Shame on me, too: a bootless, fruitless shame!Voice 1.Insult and injury,Sorrow and shame!Burden unbearable,Shame! O shame!Voice 2.The snare hath sprung: flown is the goodly game.Voice 3.I slept, and when sleepingHe sprang from my keeping;Shame, O shame!ANTISTROPHE I.Voice 1.O son of Jove, in sooth,If thou wilt hear the truth,Robber’s thy name!Voice 2.Thou being young dost overleap the old.n20Voice 1.A suppliant, godless,And bloodstained, I see,And bitter to parents,Harboured by thee.Voice 2.Apollo’s shrine a mother-murderer’s hold!Voice 3.Apollo rewardethWhom Justice discardeth,And robber’s his name!STROPHE II.Voice 1.A voice of reproachCame through my sleeping,Like a charioteerWith his swift lash sweeping.Voice 2.Thorough my heart,Thorough my liver,Keen as the cold iceShot through the river.Voice 3.Harsh as the headsman,Ruthless exacter,When tearless he scourgesThe doomed malefactor.ANTISTROPHE II.Voice 1.All blushless and boldThe gods that are youngerWould rule o’er the old,With the right of the stronger.Voice 2.The Earth’s navel-stoneSo holy reputed,All gouted with blood,With fresh murder polluted,Behold, O behold!Voice 3.By the fault of the younger,The holiest holyIs holy no longer.STROPHE III.Voice 1.Thyself thy hearth with this pollution stained,Thyself, a prophet, free and unconstrained.Voice 2.O’er the laws of the godsThou hast recklessly ridden,Dispensing to menGifts to mortals forbidden;Voice 3.Us thou hast reftOf our name and our glory,Us and the Fates,The primeval, the hoary.ANTISTROPHE III.Voice 1.I hate the god. Though underneath the groundHe hide my prey, there, too, he shall be found.Voice 2.I at each shrineWhere the mortal shall bend him,Will jealously watch,That no god may defend him.Voice 3.Go where he will,
In the bloody combat fresh,
He shall risk it, one with two;
Hand to hand the fight shall be.
Godlike son of Agamemnon,
Jove give strength to thee!
Ægisthus.(from within)
Ah me! I fall. Ah! Ah!
Chorus.
Hear’st thou that cry? How is’t? Whose was that groan?
Let’s go aside, the deed being done, that we
Seem not partakers of the bloody work.n59
’Tis ended now.
EnterServant.
Servant.
Woe’s me! my murdered master!
Thrice woeful deed! Ægisthus lives no more.
Open the women’s gates! uncase the bolts!
Were needed here a Titan’s strength—though that
Would nothing boot the dead. Ho! hillo! ho!
Are all here deaf? or do I babble breath
In sleepers’ ears? Where, where is Clytemnestra?
What keeps my mistress? On a razor’s edge
Her fate now lies; the blow’s already poised,
That falls on her too—nor unjustly falls.
EnterClytemnestra.
Clytemnestra.
Well! what’s the matter? why this clamorous cry?
Servant.
He, who was dead, has slain the quick. ’Tis so.
Clytemnestra.
Ha! Thou speak’st riddles; but I understand thee.
We die by guile, as guilefully we slew.
Bring me an axe! an axe to kill a man!
Quickly!—or conqueror or conquered, I
Will fight it out. To this ’tis come at last.
[EnterOrestes,dragging in the dead body ofÆgisthus;with himPylades.
Orestes.
Thee next I seek. For him, he hath enough.
Clytemnestra.
Ah me! my lord, my loved Ægisthus dead!
Orestes.
Dost love this man? then thou shalt sleep with him,
In the same tomb. He was thy bedmate living,
Be thou his comrade, dead.
Clytemnestra.
Hold thee, my son!
Look on this breast, to which with slumbrous eyes
Thou oft hast clung, the while thy baby gum
Sucked the nutritious milk.
Orestes.
What say’st thou, Pylades?
Shall I curtail the work, and spare my mother?
Pylades.
Bethink thee well; the Loxian oracles,
Thy sure-pledged vows, where are they, if she live?
Make every man thy foe, but fear the gods.
Orestes.
Thy voice shall rule in this; thou judgest wisely.
Follow this man; here, side by side with him,
I’ll butcher thee. Seemed he a fairer man
Than was my father when my father lived?
Sleep thou, where he sleeps; him thou lovest well,
And whom thou chiefly shouldst have loved thou hatedst.
Clytemnestra.
I nursed thy childhood, and in peace would die.n60
Orestes.
Spare thee to live with me—my father’s murderer?
Clytemnestra.
Not I; say rather Fate ordained his death.
Orestes.
The self-same Fate ordains thee now to die.
Clytemnestra.
My curse beware, the mother’s curse that bore thee.
Orestes.
That cast me homeless from my father’s house.
Clytemnestra.
Nay; to a friendly house I lent thee, boy.
Orestes.
Being free-born, I like a slave was sold.
Clytemnestra.
I trafficked not with thee. I gat no gold.
Orestes.
Worse—worse than gold—a thing too foul to name!
Clytemnestra.
Name all my faults; but had thy father none?
Orestes.
Thou art a woman sitting in thy chamber.n61
Judge not the man that goes abroad, and labours.
Clytemnestra.
Hard was my lot, my child, alone, uncherished.
Orestes.
Alone by the fire, while for thy gentle ease
The husband toiled.
Clytemnestra.
Thou wilt not kill me, son?
Orestes.
I kill thee not. Thyself dost kill thyself.
Clytemnestra.
Beware thy mother’s anger-whetted hounds.f11
Orestes.
My father’s hounds have hunted me to thee.
Clytemnestra.
The stone that sepulchres the dead art thou,
And I the tear on’t.
Orestes.
Cease: I voyaged here,
With a fair breeze; my father’s murder brought me.
Clytemnestra.
Ah me! I nursed a serpent on my breast.
Orestes.n62
Thou hadst a prophet in thy dream, last night;
And since thou kill’d the man thou shouldst have spared,
The man, that now should spare thee, can but kill.
[He drives her into the house, and there murders her.
Chorus.
There’s food for sorrow here; but rather, since
Orestes could not choose but scale the height
Of bloody enterprise, our prayer is this:
That he, the eye of this great house, may live.n63
CHORAL HYMN.STROPHE I.
Hall of old Priam, with sorrow unbearable,
Vengeance hath come on the Argive thy foe;
A pair of grim lions, a double Mars terrible,n64
Comes to his palace, that levelled thee low.
Chanced hath the doom of the guilty precisely,
Even as Phœbus foretold it, and wisely
Where the god pointed, was levelled the blow.
Lift up the hymn of rejoicing; the lecherous,
Sin-laden tyrant shall lord it no more;
No more shall the mistress so bloody and treacherous
Lavish the plundered Pelopidan store.
STROPHE II.
Sore chastisementn65came on the doomed and devoted,
With dark-brooding purpose and fair-smiling show;
And the daughter of Jove the eternal was noted,
Guiding the hand that inflicted the blow—
Bright Justice, of Jove, the Olympian daughter;
But blasted they fell with the breath of her slaughter
Whose deeds of injustice made Justice their foe.
Her from his shrine sent the rock-throned Apollo,n66
The will of her high-purposed sire to obey,
The track of the blood-stained remorseless to follow,
Winged with sure death, though she lag by the way.
EPODE.
Ye rulers on Earth, fear the rulers in Heaven,
No aid by the gods to the froward is given;
For the bonds of our thraldom asunder are riven,
And the day dawns clear.
Lift up your heads; from prostration untimely
Ye halls of the mighty be lifted sublimely!
All-perfecting Time shall bring swift restitution,
And cleanse the hearth pure from the gory pollution,
Now the day dawns clear.
And blithely shall welcome them Fortune the fairest,n67
The brother and sister, with omens the rarest;
Each friend of this house show the warm love thou bearest,
Now the day dawns clear!
EnterOrestes,with the body ofClytemnestra.
Orestes.
Behold this tyrant pair, my father’s murderers,
Usurpers of this land, and of this house
Destroyers. They this throne did use in pride,
And now in love, as whoso looks may guess,
They lie together, all their vows fulfilled.
Death to my hapless father, and to lie
Themselves on a common bier—this was their vow;
And they have vowed it well. Behold these toils,
Wherewith they worked destruction to my father,
Chained his free feet, and manacled his hands.
There—spread it forth—approach—peruse it nicely.
This mortal vest, that so the father—not
My father, but the Sun that fathers all
With lightn68—may see what godless deed was done
Here by my mother. Let him witness duly,
That not unjustly I have spilt this blood—
My mother’s; for Ægisthus recks me not;
As an adulterer should, he died: but she,
That did devise such foul detested wrong
Against the lord, to whom beneath her zone
She bore a burden, once so valued, now
A weight that damns her; what was she?—a viper
Or a torpedo—that with biteless touch
Strikes numb who handles.n69Harsh the smoothest phrase
To name the bold unrighteous will she used.
And for this fowler’s net—this snare—this trap—
This cloth to wrap the deadn70—this veil to curtain
A bloody bath—teach me a name for it!
Such murderous toils the ruffians use, who spill
Their neighbour’s blood, that they may seize his gold,
And warm their heart with plenty not their own.
Lodge no such mate with me! Sooner may I
Live by high Heaven accursed, and childless die.
Chorus.
A sorry work—alas! alas!
A dismal death she found.
Nor sorrow quite from man may pass
That lives above the ground.
Orestes.
A speaking proof! Behold, Ægisthus’ sword
Hath left its witness on this robe; the time
Hath paled the murtherous spot, but where it was
The sumptuous stole hath lost its radiant dye.
Alas! I know not, when mine eyes behold
This father-murdering web, if I should own
Joy lord, or grief. Let grief prevail. I grieve
Our crimes, our woes, our generation doomed,
Our tearful trophies blazoned with a curse.
Chorus.
The gods so will that, soon or late,
Each mortal taste of sorrow;
A frown to-day from surly Fate,
A biting blast to-morrow.
Orestes.
Others ’twixt hope and fear may sway, my fate
Is fixed and scapeless.n71Like a charioteer,
Dragged from his course by steeds that spurned the rein,
Thoughts past control usurp me. Terror lifts,
Even now, the prelude to her savage hymn,
Within my heart exultant. But, while yet
My sober mind remains, witness ye all
My friends, this solemn abjuration! Not
Unjustly, when I slew, I slew my mother—
That mother, with my father’s blood polluted,
Of every god abhorred. And I protest
The god that charmed me to the daring point
Was Loxias, with his Pythian oracles,
Pledging me blameless, this harsh work once done,
Not done, foredooming what I will not say;
All thoughts most horrible undershoot the mark.
And now behold me, as a suppliant goes,
With soft-wreathed wool, and precatory branch,n72
Addressed for Delphi, the firm-seated shrine
Of Loxias, navel of earth, where burns the flame
Of fire immortal named.n73For I must flee
This kindred blood, and hie me where the god
Forespoke me refuge. Once again I call
On you, and Argive men of every time,
To witness my great griefs. I go an exile
From this dear soil. Living, or dead, I leave
These words, the one sad memory of my name.
Chorus.
Thou hast done well; yoke not thy mouth this day
To evil words. Thou art the liberator
Of universal Argos, justly greeted,
Who from the dragon pair the head hath lopped.
[TheFuriesappear in the background.
Orestes.
Ah, me! see there! like Gorgons! look! look there!
All dusky-vested, and their locks entwined
With knotted snakes. Away! I may not stay.
Chorus.
O son, loved of thy sire, be calm, nor let
Vain phantoms fret thy soul, in triumph’s hour.
Orestes.
These are no phantoms, but substantial horrors;
Too like themselves they show, the infernal hounds
Sent from my mother!
Chorus.
’Tis the fresh-gouted blood
Upon thy hand, that breeds thy brain’s distraction.
Orestes.
Ha! how they swarm! Apollo! more—yet more!
And from their fell eyes droppeth murderous gore.
Chorus.
There is atonement.n74Touch but Loxias’ altar,
And he from bloody stain shall wash thee clean.
Orestes.
Ye see them not. I see them.n75There!—Away!
The hell-hounds hunt me: here I may not stay.
Chorus.
Nay, but with blessing go. From fatal harm
Guard thee the god whose eyes in love behold thee!n76
Blown hath now the third harsh tempest,
O’er the proud Atridan palace,
Floods of family woe!
First thy damned feast, Thyestes,
On thy children’s flesh abhorrent;
Then the kingly man’s prostration,
And thy warlike pride, Achaia,
Butchered in a bath;
Now he, too, our greeted Saviour
Red with this new woe!
When shall Fate’s stern work be ended,
When shall cease the boisterous vengeance,
Hushed in slumbers low?
[The End]
A LYRICO-DRAMATIC SPECTACLEἄλγεαΠολλὰ μἀλ᾽ ὃσσα τε μητρὸς Ἐριννύες ἐκτελέουσιν.Odysseyxi. 289.My solitude is solitude no more,But peopled with the Furies.Byron.
A LYRICO-DRAMATIC SPECTACLE
A LYRICO-DRAMATIC SPECTACLE
ἄλγεαΠολλὰ μἀλ᾽ ὃσσα τε μητρὸς Ἐριννύες ἐκτελέουσιν.Odysseyxi. 289.
ἄλγεα
Πολλὰ μἀλ᾽ ὃσσα τε μητρὸς Ἐριννύες ἐκτελέουσιν.
Odysseyxi. 289.
My solitude is solitude no more,But peopled with the Furies.Byron.
My solitude is solitude no more,
But peopled with the Furies.
Byron.
The Pythonessof the Temple of Apollo in Delphi.Apollo.Hermes(Mute).The Shade of Clytemnestra.Chorus of Furies.Pallas Athena.Judgesof the Court of Areopagus(Mute).Convoy of the Furies.Scene—First at Delphi in the Temple of Apollo; then on the Hill of Mars, Athens.
The Pythonessof the Temple of Apollo in Delphi.Apollo.Hermes(Mute).The Shade of Clytemnestra.Chorus of Furies.Pallas Athena.Judgesof the Court of Areopagus(Mute).Convoy of the Furies.
The Pythonessof the Temple of Apollo in Delphi.
Apollo.
Hermes(Mute).
The Shade of Clytemnestra.
Chorus of Furies.
Pallas Athena.
Judgesof the Court of Areopagus(Mute).
Convoy of the Furies.
Thoughthe ancient Greek religion, there can be no question, was too much the creation of mere imagination, and tended rather to cultivate a delicate sense of beauty than to strike the soul with a severe reverence before the awful majesty of the moral law, yet it is no less certain that to look upon it as altogether addressed to our sensuous emotions, however convenient for a certain shallow school of theology, would lead the calm inquirer after moral truth far away from the right track. As among the gods that rule over the elements of the physical world, Jove, according to the Homeric creed, asserts a high supremacy, which restrains the liberty of the celestial aristocracy from running into lawless licence and confusion; so the wild and wanton ebullitions of human passion, over which a Bacchus, a Venus, and a Mars preside, are not free from the constant control of a righteous Jove, and the sacred terror of a retributive Erinnys. The great lesson of a moral government, and a secret order of justice pervading the apparent confusion of the system of things of which we are a part, is sufficiently obvious in the whole structure of the two great Homeric poems; but if it exists in the midst of that sunny luxuriance of popular fancy as a felt atmosphere, it is planted by Æschylus, the thoughtful lyrist of a later age, on a visible elevation, whence, as from a natural pulpit, enveloped with dark clouds, or from a Heathen Sinai, involved in fearful thunders and lightnings, it trumpets forth its warnings, and hurls its bolts of flaming denunciation against Sin. The reader, who has gone through the two preceding pieces of this remarkable trilogy, without discovering this their deep moral significance, has read to little purpose; but it is here, in the concluding piece, that the grand doctrine of the moral government of the world is most formally enunciated; it is in the person of the Furies that the wrathful indignation of Jove against the violators of the moral law manifests itself, in the full panoply of terror, and stands out as the stern Avatar of an inexorable Justice. Here, therefore, if we will understand the moral seriousness, of which the gay Hellenic Polytheism was not without its background, let us fix our gaze. If the principles of “immutable morality,” of which our great English Platonist talks so comprehensively, are to be found anywhere, they are to be found here.
The Furies (or the Εὐμενίδες,i.e.theGracious-minded, as they are called by a delicate euphemism) are generally looked upon as the impersonations of an evil conscience, the incarnated scourges of self-reproach. In this view there is no essential error; but it may be beneficial, in entering on the perusal of the present piece, to place before the modern reader more literally the true Homeric idea of these awful Powers. In the Iliad and Odyssey, frequent mention is made of the Erinnyes; and from the circumstances, in which their names occur, in various passages of these poems, there can be no doubt that we are to view them primarily as the impersonation of an imprecation or curse, which a person, whose natural rights have been grossly violated, pronounces on the person, by whom this violation comes.f1Thus the father of Phoenix (Il. ix. 453), being offended by the conduct of his son in relation to one of his concubines, “loads him with frequent curses, and invokes the hated Furies”—
Πολλὰ κατηρατο, στυγερὰς δ᾽ ἐπίκεκλετ Εριννΰς,
Πολλὰ κατηρατο, στυγερὰς δ᾽ ἐπίκεκλετ Εριννΰς,
Πολλὰ κατηρατο, στυγερὰς δ᾽ ἐπίκεκλετ Εριννΰς,
and “the gods,” it is added, “gave accomplishment to his curse, the subterranean Jove, and the awful Persephone.” In the same book we find, in the narration of the war, between the Curetes and the Ætolians, about Calydon, how Althaea, the mother of Meleager, being offended with her son on account of his having slain her brother, cursed him, and invoked Pluto and Proserpine that he might die, and
Her the Fury that walketh in darkness,Heard from Erebus’ depths, with a heart that knoweth no mercy.
Her the Fury that walketh in darkness,Heard from Erebus’ depths, with a heart that knoweth no mercy.
Her the Fury that walketh in darkness,
Heard from Erebus’ depths, with a heart that knoweth no mercy.
Both these instances relate to offences committed against the revered character of a parent; but the elder brother also has his Erinnys.—(Il. xv. 204), and even the houseless beggar—(Od. xvii. 575), and, more than all, he to whose prejudice the sacred obligation of truth and honour have been set at nought by the perjured swearer—
Mighty Jove, be thou my witness, Jove of gods supremest, best,Earth, and Sun, and Furies dread, that underneath the ground avengeWhoso speaks and sweareth falsely—
Mighty Jove, be thou my witness, Jove of gods supremest, best,Earth, and Sun, and Furies dread, that underneath the ground avengeWhoso speaks and sweareth falsely—
Mighty Jove, be thou my witness, Jove of gods supremest, best,
Earth, and Sun, and Furies dread, that underneath the ground avenge
Whoso speaks and sweareth falsely—
says Agamemnon—(Il. xix. 257)—in restoring the intact Briseis to Achilles.
Thus, according to Homer’s idea, wherever there is a cry of righteous indignation, rising up to Heaven from the breast of an injured person, there may be a Fury or Furies; for they are notlimited or defined in any way as to number. It is not, however, on every petty occasion of common offence that these dread ministers of divine vengeance appear. Only, when deeds of a deeper darkness are done, do these daughters of primeval Night (for so Æschylus symbolises their pedigree) issue forth from their subterranean caverns. There is something volcanic in their indignation, whose eruption is too terrible to be common. They chiefly frequent the paths, that are dabbled with blood. A murdered father, or a murdered mother especially, were never known to appeal to them in vain, even though Jove’s own prophet, Apollo, add his sanction to the deed. An Orestes may not hope to escape the bloody chase, which the “winged hounds,” invoked by a murdered Clytemnestra, are eager to prepare—the sacred precincts of an oracular Delphi may not repel their intrusion—the scent of blood “laughs in their nostrils,” and they will not be cheated of their game. Only one greatest goddess, in whose hands are the keys of her father’s armoury of thunder, may withstand the full rush of these vindictive powers. Only Pallas Athena, with her panoply of Olympian strength, and her divine wisdom of reconciliation can bid them be pacified.
In order to understand thoroughly the situation of the matricide Orestes, in the present play, we must consider further the ancient doctrine of pollution attaching to an act of murder, and the consequent necessity of purification to the offender. The nature of this is distinctly set forth by Orestes himself in a reply to his sister Iphigenia, put into his mouth by Euripides. “Loxias,” he says, “first sent me to Athens, and
There first arrived, no host would entertain me,As being hated of the immortal gods,And some, who pitied me, before me placedCold entertainment on a separate board;Beneath the same roof though I lodged with them,No interchange of living voice I knew,But sat apart and ate my food alone.”Iphig. Taur. 954.
There first arrived, no host would entertain me,As being hated of the immortal gods,And some, who pitied me, before me placedCold entertainment on a separate board;Beneath the same roof though I lodged with them,No interchange of living voice I knew,But sat apart and ate my food alone.”Iphig. Taur. 954.
There first arrived, no host would entertain me,
As being hated of the immortal gods,
And some, who pitied me, before me placed
Cold entertainment on a separate board;
Beneath the same roof though I lodged with them,
No interchange of living voice I knew,
But sat apart and ate my food alone.”
Iphig. Taur. 954.
Like an unclean leper among the Jews, the man polluted with human blood wandered from land to land, as with a Cain’s mark upon his brow, and every fellow-being shrank from his touch as from a living plague.
“For wisely thus our ancestors ordained,That the blood-tainted man should know no joyFrom sight of fellow-mortal or from touch,But with an horrid sanctitude protectedRange the wide earth an exile.”Eurip. Orest. 512.
“For wisely thus our ancestors ordained,That the blood-tainted man should know no joyFrom sight of fellow-mortal or from touch,But with an horrid sanctitude protectedRange the wide earth an exile.”Eurip. Orest. 512.
“For wisely thus our ancestors ordained,
That the blood-tainted man should know no joy
From sight of fellow-mortal or from touch,
But with an horrid sanctitude protected
Range the wide earth an exile.”
Eurip. Orest. 512.
Under the ban of such a social excommunication as this, the first act of readmission into the fraternity of human society was performed by the sprinkling of swine’s blood on the exile, a ceremony described particularly in the following passage of Apollonius Rhodius, where Jason and Medea are purified by Circe from the taint of the murder of Absyrtus:—
“First to free them from the taint of murder not to be recalled,She above them stretched the suckling of a sow whose teats distilledThe juice that flows when birth is recent; this she cut across the throat,And with the crimson blood outflowing dashed the tainted suppliants’ hands.Then with other pure libations she allayed the harm, invokingJove that hears the supplication of the fugitive stained with blood.”Argon. IV. 704-9.
“First to free them from the taint of murder not to be recalled,She above them stretched the suckling of a sow whose teats distilledThe juice that flows when birth is recent; this she cut across the throat,And with the crimson blood outflowing dashed the tainted suppliants’ hands.Then with other pure libations she allayed the harm, invokingJove that hears the supplication of the fugitive stained with blood.”Argon. IV. 704-9.
“First to free them from the taint of murder not to be recalled,
She above them stretched the suckling of a sow whose teats distilled
The juice that flows when birth is recent; this she cut across the throat,
And with the crimson blood outflowing dashed the tainted suppliants’ hands.
Then with other pure libations she allayed the harm, invoking
Jove that hears the supplication of the fugitive stained with blood.”
Argon. IV. 704-9.
The other “pure libations” here mentioned include specially water, of which particular mention is made in the legend of Alcmæon, which bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Orestes, and in which it is in the sacred stream of the Achelous alone that purification is at length found, from the deeply-engrained guilt of matricide.—(Apollodor, Lib. III., c. 7.) All this, however, availed only to remove the unhallowed taint, with which human blood had defiled the murderer. It was necessary, further, that he should be tried before a competent court, and formally acquitted, as having performed every atonement and given every satisfaction that the nature of the case required. According to the consuetudinary law of Athens, there were various courts in which different cases of murder and manslaughter were tried; but of all the courts that held solemn judgment on shed blood, none was more venerable in its origin, or more weighty in its authority, than the famous court of the Areopagus; and here it is, accordingly, that, after being wearied out by the sleepless chase of his relentless pursuers, Orestes, with the advice and under the protection of Apollo, arrives to gain peace to his soul by a final verdict of acquittal from the sage elders of Athens, acting by the authority and with the direction of their wise patron-goddess, Athena.
The connection of Athena and the Areopagus with the Orestean legend gives to the present play a local interest and a patriotic hue of which the want is too often felt in the existing remains of the Attic tragedy. But Athena and the grave seniors of the hill of Ares are not the only celestial personages here, in whom an Athenian audience would find a living interest. The Furies themselves enjoyed a special reverence in the capital of Athens, under the title of Σεμνὰι θεαι, or thedread goddesses; and the principal seat of this worship, whether by a happy conjunction or a wise choice, was situated onthe north-east side (looking towards the Acropolis) of that very hill of the war god, where the venerable court that bore his name held its solemn sessions on those crimes, which it was the principal function of the Furies to avenge. Up to the present hour, the curious traveller through the wreck of Athenian grandeur sees pointed out the black rift of the rock into which the awful virgins, after accepting the pacification of Athena, are reported to have descended into their subterranean homes;f2and it is with this very descent, amid flaming torch-light and solemn hymns, that the great tragedian, mingling peace with fear, closes worthily the train of startling superhuman terrors which this drama exhibits.
But Æschylus is not a patriot only, and a pious worshipper of his country’s gods in this play, he is also, to some small extent at least, manifestly a politician. The main feature of the constitutional history of Athens in the period immediately following the great Persian war, to which period our trilogy belongs, was the enlargement and the systematic completion of those democratic forms, of which the timocratic legislation of Solon, about a century and a-half before, had planted the first germs. Of these changes, Pericles, the man above all others who knew both to understand and to control his age, was the chief promoter; and in a policy whose main tendency was the substitution of a numerous popular for a narrow professional control of public business, it could not fail to be a main feature, that the authority of the judges of the old aristocratic courts was curtailed in favour of those bodies of paid jurymen, the institution of which is specially attributed to Pericles and his coadjutor Ephialtes.f3Whether these changes were politic or not, in the large sense of that word, need not be inquired here; Mr. Grote has done much to lengthen the focus of those short-sighted national spectacles, through which the English eye has been accustomed to view the classic democracies; but let it be that Pericles kept within the bounds of a wise liberty in giving a fair and a large trial to the action of democratic principles at that time and place; or let it be, on the other hand, that he overstepped the line
“Which whoso passes, or who reaches not,Misses the mark of right”—
“Which whoso passes, or who reaches not,Misses the mark of right”—
“Which whoso passes, or who reaches not,
Misses the mark of right”—
in either case, where decision was so difficult, and discretion so delicate, no one can accuse the thoughtful tragic poet of a stolid conservatism, when he comes forward, in this play, as the advocate ofthe only court of high jurisdiction in Athens, now left unshaken by the great surge of those popular billows, that were yet swelling everywhere with the eager inspiration of Marathon and Salamis.f4The court of Areopagus was not now, since the legislation of Solon, and the further democratic movement of Cleisthenes, in any invidious or exclusive sense an aristocratic assembly, such as the close corporations of the old Roman aristocracy before the series of popular changes introduced by Licinius Stolo; it was a council, in fact, altogether without that family and hereditary element, in which the principal offence of aristocracy has always lain; its members were composed entirely (not recruited merely like our House of Lords) of those superior magistrates—archons annually elected by the people—who had retired from office. To magnify the authority of such a body, and maintain intact the few privileges that had now been left it, was, when an obvious opportunity offered, not only excusable in a great national tragedian, but imperative. One thing his political attitude in this matter certainly proves, that he was not a vulgar hunter after popularity, delighting to swell to the point of insane exaggeration the cry of the hour, but one of those men of high purpose, who prove a greater strength of patriotism by stemming the popular stream, than by swimming with it.
Besides the championship of the Court of the Areopagus, there is another political element in this rich drama, which, though of less consequence, must not be omitted. No sooner had the Persian invaders been fairly driven back from the Hellenic shore, than that old spirit of narrow local jealousy, which was the worm at the heart of Grecian political existence, broke out with renewed vigour, and gave ominous indications in the untoward affair of Tanagra, of that terrible collision which shook the two great rival powers a few years afterwards in the famous Peloponnesian war. Sparta and Athens, opposed as they were by race, by geographical position, and by political character, after some public attempts at co-operation, in which Cimon was the principal actor, shrunk back, as in quiet preparation for the great trial of strength, into a state of isolated antagonism. But, though open hostility was deferred, wise precaution could not sleep; and, accordingly, we find the Athenians, about this time, anxious to secure a base of operations, so to speak, against Sparta in the Peloponnesus, by entering into an alliance with Argos. As a genuine Athenian, Æschylus, whatever his political feelings might be towards Cimon and the Spartan party, could not but look withpleasure on the additional strength which this Argive connection gave to Athens in the general council of Greece; and, accordingly, he dexterously takes advantage of the circumstance of Orestes being an Argive, to trace back the now historical union of the two countries to a period where Fancy is free to add what links she pleases to the brittle bonds of international association.
Such is a rapid sketch of the principal religious and political relations, some notion of which is necessary to enable the general English reader to enter with sympathy on the perusal of the very powerful and singular drama of the Eumenides. The professional student, of course, will not content himself with what he finds here, but will seek for complete satisfaction in the luminous pages of Thirlwall and Grote—in the learned articles of Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities, in the notes of Schoemann, and, above all, in the rare Dissertations of Ottfried Müller, accompanying his edition of the Eumenides—a work which I have read once and again with mingled admiration and delight—from which I have necessarily drawn with no stinted hand in my endeavours to comprehend the Orestean trilogy for myself, and to make it comprehensible to others; and which I most earnestly recommend to all classical students as a pattern-specimen of erudite architecture raised by the hand of a master, from whom, even in his points of most baseless speculation (as what German is without such?), more is to be learned than from the triple-fanged certainties of vulgar commentators.
Scene.—In front of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
The Pythoness.
Old Earth, primeval prophetess, I first
With these my prayers invoke; and Themisn1next,
Who doth her mother’s throne and temple both
Inherit, as the legend runs; and third
In lot’s due course, another Earth-born maid
The unforced homage of the land received,
Titanian Phœbe;f5she in natal gift
With her own name her hoary right bequeathed
To Phœbus: he from rocky Delos’ laken2
To Attica’s ship-cruised bays was wafted, whence
He in Parnassus fixed his sure abode.
Hither with pious escort they attend him:
The Sons of Vulcan pioneer his path,n3
Smoothing the rugged desert where he comes:
The thronging people own him, and king Delphos,
The land’s high helmsman, flings his portals wide.
Jove with divinest skill his heart inspires,
And now the fourth on this dread seat enthroned
Sits Loxias,f6prophet of his father Jove.n4
These be the gods, whom chiefly I invoke:
But thee, likewise, who ’fore this temple dwellest,n5
Pallas, I pray, and you, ye Nymphs that love
The hollow Corycian rock,n6the frequent haunt
Of pleasant birds, the home of awful gods.
Thee, Bromius, too, I worship,n7not unweeting
How, led by thee, the furious Thyads rushed
To seize the godless Pentheus,n8ev’n as a hare
Is dogged to death. And you, the fountains pure
Of Pleistus,f7and Poseidon’sf8mighty powern9
I pray, and Jove most high, that crowns all things
With consummation. These the gods that lead me
To the prophetic seat, and may they grant me
Best-omened entrance; may consulting Greeks,
If any be, by custom’d lot approach;
For as the gods my bosom stir, I pour
The fateful answer.
[She goes into the Temple, but suddenly returns.
O horrid tale to tell! O sight to see
Most horrible! that drives me from the halls
Of Loxias, so that I nor stand nor run,
But, like a beast fourfooted stumble on,
Losing the gait and station of my kind,
A gray-haired woman, weaker than a child!n10
Up to the garlanded recess I walked,
And on the navel-stonef9behold! a man
With crime polluted to the altar clinging,
And in his bloody hand he held a sword
Dripping with recent murder, and a branch
Of breezy olive, with flocks of fleecy wool
All nicely tipt. Even thus I saw the man;
And stretched before him an unearthly host
Of strangest women, on the sacred seats
Sleeping—not women, but a Gorgon brood,
And worse than Gorgons, or the ravenous crew
That filched the feast of Phineusn11(such I’ve seen
In painted terror); but these are wingless, black,
Incarnate horrors, and with breathings dire
Snort unapproachable, and from their eyes
Pestiferous beads of poison they distil.
Such uncouth sisterhood, apparel’d so,n12
From all affinity of gods or men
Divorced, from me and from the gods be far,
And from all human homes! Nor can the land,
That lends these unblest hags a home, remain
Uncursed by fearful scourges. But the god,
Thrice-potent Loxias himself will ward
His holiest shrine from lawless outrage. Him
Physician, prophet, soothsayer, we call,
Cleansing from guilt the blood-polluted hall. [Exit.
[The interior of the Delphic Temple is now presented to view.Orestesis seen clinging to the navel-stone; theEumenideslie sleeping on the seats around. In the backgroundHermesbesideOrestes.EnterApollo.
Apollo.(toOrestes)
Trust me, I’ll not betray thee. Far or near,
Thy guardian I, and to thine every foe
No gentle god. Thy madded persecutors
Sleep-captured lie: the hideous host is bound.
Primeval virgins, hoary maids, with whom
Nor god, nor man, nor beast hath known communion.
For evil’s sake they are: in evil depth
Of rayless Tartarus, underneath the ground,
They dwell, of men and of Olympian gods
Abhorred. But hence! nor faint thy heart, though they
Are mighty to pursue from land to land
O’er measureless tracks, from rolling sea to sea,
And sea-swept cities. A bitter pasture truly
Was thine from Fate;n13but bear all stoutly. Hie thee
Away to Pallas’ city, and embrace
Her ancient imagen14with close-clinging arms.
Just Judges there we will appoint to judge
Thy cause, and with soft-soothing pleas will pluck
The sting from thy offence, and free thee quite
From all thy troubles. Thou know’st that I, the god,
When thou didst strike, myself the blow directed.
Orestes.
Liege lord Apollo, justice to the gods
Belongs; in justice, O remember me.
Thy power divine assurance gives that thou
Can’st make thy will a deed.
Apollo.
Fear nought. Trust me.
[ToHermes] And thou, true brother’s blood, true father’s son,
Hermes, attend, and to this mission gird thee.
Fulfil the happy omen of thy name,
TheGuide,f10and guide this suppliant on his way.
For Jove respects thy function and thy pride,
The prosperous convoy, and the faithful guide.
[ExitHermes,leadingOrestes.Apolloretires.
Enterthe Shade of Clytemnestra.
Clytemnestra.
Sleeping? All sleeping! Ho! What need of sleepers?
While I roam restless, of my fellow-dead
Dishonoured and reproached, by fault of you,
That when I slew swift vengeance overtook me.
But being slain myself, my avengers sleep
And leave my cause to drift! Hear me, sleepers!
Such taunts I bear, such contumelious gibes,
Yet not one god is touched with wrath to avenge
My death, who died by matricidal hands.
Behold these wounds!n15look through thy sleep, and see!
Read with thy heart; some things the soul may scan
More clearly, when the sensuous lid hath dropt,
Nor garish day confounds.n16Full oft have ye
Of my libations sipped the wineless streams,
The soothing? of my sober sacrifice,
The silent supper from the solemn altar,
At midnight hour when only ye are worshipped.
But now all this beneath your feet lies trampled.
The man is gone; fled like a hind! he snaps
The meshes of your toils, and makes—O shame!
Your Deity a mark for scoffers’ eyes
To wink at! Hear me, ye infernal hags,
Unhoused from hell! For my soul’s peace I plead,
Once Clytemnestra famous, now a dream.n17
[TheChorusmoans.
Ye moan! the while the man hath fled, and seeks
For help from those that are no friends to me.n18
[TheChorusmoans again.
Sleep-bound art thou. Hast thou no bowels for me?
My Furies sleep, and let my murderer flee.
[TheChorusgroans.
Groaning and sleeping! Up! What work hast thou
To do, but thine own work of sorrow? Rouse thee!
[TheChorusgroans again.
Sleep and fatigue have sworn a league to bind
The fearful dragon with strong mastery.
Chorus.(with redoubled groans and shrill cries)
Hold! seize him! seize him! seize there! there! there! hold!
Clytemnestra.
Thy dream scents blood; and, like a dog that doth
In dreams pursue the chase, even so dost thou
At phantasms bark and howl. To work! to work!
Let not fatigue o’ermaster thus thy strength,
Nor slumber soothe the sense of sharpest wrong.
Torture thy liver with reproachful thoughts;
Reproaches are the pricks that goad the wise.
Up! blow a blast of bloody breath behind him!
Dry up his marrow with the fiery vengeance!
Follow! give chase! pursue him to the death!
Chorus,n19starting up in hurry and confusion.
Voice 1.
Awake! awake! rouse her as I rouse thee!
Voice 2.
Dost sleep? arise! dash drowsy sleep away!
Brave dreams be prelude to brave deed! Ho, sisters!
STROPHE I.Voice 1.
Shame, sisters, shame!
Insult and injury!
Shame, O shame!
Voice 2.
Shame on me, too: a bootless, fruitless shame!
Voice 1.
Insult and injury,
Sorrow and shame!
Burden unbearable,
Shame! O shame!
Voice 2.
The snare hath sprung: flown is the goodly game.
Voice 3.
I slept, and when sleeping
He sprang from my keeping;
Shame, O shame!
ANTISTROPHE I.Voice 1.
O son of Jove, in sooth,
If thou wilt hear the truth,
Robber’s thy name!
Voice 2.
Thou being young dost overleap the old.n20
Voice 1.
A suppliant, godless,
And bloodstained, I see,
And bitter to parents,
Harboured by thee.
Voice 2.
Apollo’s shrine a mother-murderer’s hold!
Voice 3.
Apollo rewardeth
Whom Justice discardeth,
And robber’s his name!
STROPHE II.Voice 1.
A voice of reproach
Came through my sleeping,
Like a charioteer
With his swift lash sweeping.
Voice 2.
Thorough my heart,
Thorough my liver,
Keen as the cold ice
Shot through the river.
Voice 3.
Harsh as the headsman,
Ruthless exacter,
When tearless he scourges
The doomed malefactor.
ANTISTROPHE II.Voice 1.
All blushless and bold
The gods that are younger
Would rule o’er the old,
With the right of the stronger.
Voice 2.
The Earth’s navel-stone
So holy reputed,
All gouted with blood,
With fresh murder polluted,
Behold, O behold!
Voice 3.
By the fault of the younger,
The holiest holy
Is holy no longer.
STROPHE III.Voice 1.
Thyself thy hearth with this pollution stained,
Thyself, a prophet, free and unconstrained.
Voice 2.
O’er the laws of the gods
Thou hast recklessly ridden,
Dispensing to men
Gifts to mortals forbidden;
Voice 3.
Us thou hast reft
Of our name and our glory,
Us and the Fates,
The primeval, the hoary.
ANTISTROPHE III.Voice 1.
I hate the god. Though underneath the ground
He hide my prey, there, too, he shall be found.
Voice 2.
I at each shrine
Where the mortal shall bend him,
Will jealously watch,
That no god may defend him.
Voice 3.
Go where he will,