THE TRAGEDIES OF SENECA

THE TRAGEDIES OF SENECAdouble Hermes of Seneca and SocratesDOUBLE HERMES OF SENECA AND SOCRATES.Now in the Old Museum at BerlinThe Tragedies of SenecaTRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE, TO WHICH HAVE BEEN APPENDEDCOMPARATIVE ANALYSES OF THE CORRESPONDING GREEKAND ROMAN PLAYS, AND A MYTHOLOGICAL INDEXBYFRANK JUSTUS MILLERINTRODUCED BY AN ESSAY ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE TRAGEDIES OF SENECAUPON EARLY ENGLISH DRAMABYJOHN MATTHEWS MANLYCHICAGOTHE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESSLONDONT. FISHER UNWIN, 1 ADELPHI TERRACE1907Copyright 1907 ByThe University of ChicagoPublished December 1907Composed and Printed ByThe University of Chicago PressChicago, Illinois, U.S.A.TOFRANK FROST ABBOTTANDEDWARD CAPPSMY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUESTHROUGH A SCORE OF YEARSPREFACEThe place of the tragedies of Seneca in literature is unique. They stand as the sole surviving representatives, barring a few fragments, of an extensive Roman product in the tragic drama. They therefore serve as the only connecting link between ancient and modern tragedy. They are, moreover, modeled more or less closely after the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and the Greek and Roman product in literature along parallel lines cannot be better studied than by a comparison of these Senecan plays with their Greek prototypes—a comparison which is not possible in comedy, since, unfortunately, the Greek originals of Plautus and Terence have not come down to us.These plays are of great value and interest in themselves, first, as independent dramatic literature of no small merit; and second, as an illustration of the literary characteristics of the age of Nero: the florid, rhetorical style, the long, didactic speeches, the tendency to philosophize, the frequent epigram, the pride of mythologic lore.Popular interest in the tragedies of Seneca has been growing to a considerable extent during the last generation. This has been stimulated in part by Leo's excellent text edition, and by the researches of German and English scholars into Senecan questions, more especially into the influence of Seneca upon the pre-Elizabethan drama; in part also by the fact that courses in the tragedies have been regaining their place, long lost, in college curricula.The present edition seeks still further to bring Seneca back to the notice of classical scholars, and at the same time to present to the English reader all of the values accruing from a study of these plays, with the single exception of the benefit to be derived from a reading of the original. The influence which the tragedies have had in English literature is brought out in the introduction, which Professor Manly has kindly contributed; the relation of Seneca to the Greek dramatists is shown by comparative analyses of the corresponding plays, so arranged that the reader may easily observe their resemblances and differences; the wealth of mythological material is at once displayed and made available by an index of mythological characters; finally, it is hoped that the translation itself will prove tobe as faithful a reproduction of the original as is possible in a translation, and at the same time to have sufficient literary merit of its own to claim the interest of the general reader.The text used is that of Leo (Weidmann, Berlin, 1878), except in the instances noted. The line numbers as printed in the translation are identical with those of the original text. The meter employed in the spoken parts is the English blank verse, with the exception of theMedea, in which the experiment was tried, not altogether successfully, of reproducing the iambic trimeter of the original. In the lyric parts, the original meters are sometimes used; and, where these did not seem suitable in English, appropriate substitutes have been attempted.Frank Justus MillerChicago, Ill.October 25, 1907TABLE OF CONTENTSPAGEI.The Influence of the Tragedies of Seneca upon Early English Drama1II.The Tragedies of Seneca TranslatedOedipus11Phoenissae51Medea79Hercules Furens115Phaedra or Hippolytus165Hercules Oetaeus213Thyestes287Troades333Agamemnon379Octavia, with a Review of the Roman Historical Drama415III.Comparative Analyses of Seneca's Tragedies and the Corresponding Greek Dramas453IV.Mythological Index497INTRODUCTORY ESSAYTHE INFLUENCE OF THE TRAGEDIES OF SENECA UPON EARLY ENGLISH DRAMATo appreciate fully the nature and the extent of the influence of Seneca upon English tragedy in the days of Shakespeare and his immediate predecessors, we must bear in mind that the public theaters were not the only places at which plays were then produced. At the universities, at the inns of court (which may be roughly described as combinations of a law school and a very exclusive social club), and at the Court itself plays were an important feature of almost every festival. Even those of us who know these facts are very likely to fail to realize the full meaning of them. We are likely to regard the non-professional performances as having no more significance for the history of the drama than amateur performances at the present day by dramatic clubs and college societies. We are apt to forget that, in the spacious days of great Elizabeth, learning, especially classical learning, had a value, an importance, a dignity, which not even the most academic of us now feels it to have. Our generation, busied above all things with making a living or with accumulating wealth, regards the scholar as, with the poet and the artist, the most unpractical and useless of men at best, tolerated as an ornamental creature whom society can afford to keep if it does not have to pay him more than it pays a butler or a chauffeur. To the men of the Renaissance, scholarship and the scholar had a unique and inestimable value. Ordinary business, in their view, enabled man to provide a living; religion taught him how to save his soul; scholarship, the knowledge of the literature and life of the Greeks and the Romans, enabled him to distinguish his life as a man from that of a beast, to approach as nearly as possible to that ideal type toward which they strove, theuomo universale, the perfect gentleman, complete master of his body, of his mind, of his passions. To men of these views and this temper, literature—first, classical literature and then the vernacular literature produced under the stimulus of it—was of supreme importance, and the drama was perhaps the most important form of literature. The value of literature for those who were then trying to transform the world, to rebuild it and themselves nearer to the heart's desire, was of course best recognized by the finest spirits of the age, men like Erasmus, Thomas More, Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney. But it seems tohave been felt, though in cruder ways, even by the vulgar. An amusing illustration of this is the little record kept by old Simon Forman, a noted mountebank and quack doctor, in 1610 and 1611. It has preserved for us our earliest notices of performances ofMacbeth,Cymbeline, andA Winter's Tale; but this is accidental. The doctor's intention was merely to note for his own guidance such lessons as he learned from the plays presented on the stage. Such benefits were, according to the views of wiser men, to be gained chiefly from comedies; tragedy, and classical tragedy in particular, had a finer, a more permanent value. Tragedy was the voice of the wisest men of the world, the ancients, upon the most serious themes of human life; it not only, as Aristotle had said, purified the mind through pity and terror, it fortified the inner life, and both by example and by sententious maxim prepared man to meet the most subtle attacks of fate, the temptations of success, or the discouragements of failure. Tragedy therefore had a unique value for the Elizabethans, and the performances of classical plays, or those written in imitation of the classics, by the universities or the inns of court, did not fall into the abyss which now receives amateur theatricals.Failure to take account of the value attached to the lessons and the examples of tragedy may perhaps account for the misunderstanding which exists so widely, even among scholars, in regard to the first tragedy in English,Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex. Everyone knows that this was written in direct imitation of Seneca, and everyone discusses glibly its Senecan features, the bloody theme, the division into five acts, the use of the chorus, the removal of the action from the view of the spectators, the long speeches; but critics are, without exception, offended to the heart by the fifth act, and especially by the two long disquisitions of Arostus and Eubulus. It is, however, no exaggeration to say that the play exists solely for the sake of these speeches. This was not a mere academic exercise. It was a serious attempt by some of the most thoughtful men of England to move the queen, Elizabeth, to a course of action which they regarded as absolutely essential to the welfare of the realm. Other attempts to secure the same end were made by her best statesmen throughout the reign. The failure of this effort was not due to the weakness of the tragedy, but, like the failure of all the rest, to some feature of Elizabeth's character or some circumstance in her life which has not yet been fully and convincingly explained. The purpose of the writers is clear. They wished to persuade Elizabeth to marry and settle once for all the succession to the throne of England. They, in common with all thoughtful and patriotic Englishmen,feared the horrors of an unsettled succession or a divided rule. These they tried to impress upon her mind and heart by examples drawn from the history of Gorboduc and his sons, and by maxims and exhortations presented in the most authoritative form known to them, the form of Senecan tragedy. The occasion chosen was a great festival given by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, one of the most important and influential of the inns of court referred to above.Classical tragedy had, then, as we can readily see, a prestige to which hardly anything in literature corresponds at the present day. The statesman who should today wish to influence his sovereign to an important course of action would doubtless be puzzled to find any form of literature—academic or unacademic—appropriate to the task in dignity and authority.It is not strange, therefore, that classical tragedy, the tragedy of the schools and the learned societies, must be taken seriously into account in estimating the forces which shaped the drama of the popular stage. It is true that the English tragedies in classical or Senecan form were none of them written for the public stage. It is even probable that they would not have been successful upon it. It is a mistake to treat them historically and critically, as if they belonged to the direct line of development which resulted inFaustusandThe Spanish TragedyandMacbethandLearandOthello. But none the less the influence of these academic plays was very real and very important.The ways in which this influence was exercised may be noted, as having some bearing upon the nature and extent of the influence. In the first place, there was in the early days no very rigid line between the academic and the popular performers. The Children of the Chapel Royal were at one time the leading theatrical company in London. When the queen visited Oxford in 1566, there were among the several plays presented by the university, not only the Latin tragedy,Progne, of Dr. James Calfhill, but also the EnglishPalamon and Arciteof Richard Edwards, Master of Her Majesty's Children and the most popular dramatist of his day. Edwards himself trained the students who produced his play, and it was a great success; according to a contemporary report, "certain courtiers said that it far surpassedDamon and Pythias, than which they thought nothing could be better; likewise some said that if the author did any more before his death, he would run mad." Any impressions made upon Edwards by Dr. Calfhill'sPrognewere doubtless lost to art, as Edwards died before the end of the year; but this was probably not the first occasion on which the Master of the Chapel Children had visited the university in behalf of thedrama, and Edwards himself had been both a scholar and a probationary fellow there. Certainly his famousDamon and Pythiasshows some evidences of the influence of Seneca.It is well known also that the most successful writers for the public stage in the years just preceding Shakespeare's advent, the years that determined the forms and the methods of the popular drama, were educated at the universities, and, however clearly they may have recognized the necessity of supplying to the populace story, action, the raw material of life and philosophy, cherished as an ideal the Senecan interest in situation, the Senecan love for broad description, for introspection and reflection, for elaborate monologue, and catchy sententiousness. Such were Greene and Peele and Marlowe; and Thomas Kyd, author of that most popular of plays,The Spanish Tragedy, and probable author of the version ofHamletwhich held the stage for fourteen years before Shakespeare revised it and gave it a new and a different life, though not bred in either university, was more zealous about his Latin and apparently more influenced by Seneca than the university men themselves.But, says some modern classical scholar, granting that these early dramatists were university men or men, like Kyd and Shakespeare, not trained in the universities but all the more zealous to match their productions with those which bore the official mark of classical scholarship, why should Seneca, a second-rate Roman tragedian, be continually cited in connection with classical influence instead of Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides, the supreme masters of ancient tragedy, and Aristotle, the unique expositor of the theory of the drama? The men of the Renaissance would have had a ready answer. In the first place, they knew very little about the Greek tragedians, or, for that matter, about Greek literature in general; for although the rediscovery of Greek literature was undoubtedly one of the events of that remarkable spurt of the human intellect and spirit which we call the Renaissance, Greek literature and life were, after all, in every country of Europe, far less important than Latin, as models for imitation, as sources of inspiration, as objects which engaged the attention of the moderns and set the pace which they tried to follow. As for tragedy, a few scholars in Italy and France and Germany and England knew Sophocles and Euripides—Aeschylus was almost unknown—but the theory and the practice of tragedy among the classicists were based almost exclusively upon the example of Seneca and the precepts of Horace. Aristotle is, indeed, often cited as the ultimate authority, but, although the voice may be the voice of Aristotle, the opinions are usually those of Scaliger orMinturno or Robortelli or Castelvetro, opinions which reduced to inviolable laws what Aristotle had merely stated as observed practices, and which supplemented these rules by others drawn from the plays of Seneca, who was, according to these critics, the most majestic, the most tragic, the most perfect of the ancient tragedians. That Seneca's majesty seems to critics of today bombast, that his triumph in tragic quality consists in an accumulation of horrors and a consistently unfortunate ending, that his perfection of form is no more than a formal schematism, clear because it is simple and lifeless—all this may be true but is beside the mark. To the best spirits of the Renaissance, whether critical or creative, the ten tragedies which bore the name of Seneca presented the ideal of tragic art toward which modern writers should strive if they would be perfect.What, then, was the influence of Seneca in England? Two excellent studies of different phases of it have been published, both, unfortunately, less known than they should be.The purely formal influence, the influence upon dramatic technique and upon composition in the large sense of the term, is the subject of Rudolf Fischer'sDie Kunstentwicklung der englischen Tragödie, perhaps the most ingenious and adequate scheme ever devised for the analysis of the technical and compositional features of any form of art. Fischer sees in the history of English tragedy before Shakespeare a steady approximation to the Senecan type. His argument is open to several objections. In the first place, he treats as if they belonged to the same simple line of development plays written for the public stage and the popular taste and those written for special audiences dominated by scholastic ideals. In the second place, as Professor Luick has pointed out, he has disregarded the influence exercised by the original form of the story dramatized upon the dramatic presentation of it. And, furthermore, he, in common with other students of the subject, has proceeded upon the assumption that only tragedy could have had any influence upon tragedy. He has neglected that remark of Ben Jonson's, which phrases the view not of his own time only but of all ages, "The parts of a comedy are the same with a tragedy," and has failed to see that for the structure of English tragedy, Roman comedy and the serious imitations of it by the men of the Renaissance—such as Gnapheus'Acolastus, Macropedius'AsotusandRebelles, and their anonymous English offspring,The Nice Wanton—are no less important than the example of Seneca himself. But his book is interesting and enlightening as few books on any subject are.Entirely different problems are dealt with in J.W. Cunliffe's littlevolume onThe Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, a book which, to the regret of many scholars, has long been out of print, and which the author ought to reprint with such additions as his continued study of the subject may suggest. Mr. Cunliffe is mainly concerned with showing why Seneca appealed to the Elizabethans and with pointing out certain details of theme, of situation, of theatrical effects, and of expression, which the popular playwrights owed to Seneca.To Seneca and the false Aristotle created by the humanists from thePoetics, the precepts of Horace, the definitions and maxims which sifted down through the encyclopaedists of the Middle Ages, and the example of Seneca, not only the men of the Renaissance but even we of today owe some of our most cherished ideas concerning tragedy. First of all, perhaps, is the belief that tragedy must end unhappily. The Greeks—whether creators or critics—had no such theory. It was enough for Sophocles and Aristotle that tragedy should be serious in theme and dignified in characters and in language. In the second place, we ordinarily believe that a tragedy should have five acts, and many of us can draw a diagram to prove it. Shakespeare and his fellows seem to have been dominated by the same theory, difficult as they sometimes found it to observe. The sacred unities, dominant so long in Italian and French tragedy, though never observed in any English play more notable than Addison'sCato, we have learned to disregard and even to decry, though such an attitude in the Elizabethan age awakened the censure of Philip Sidney and doubtless required some hardihood or even recklessness. The chorus also we have long since abandoned, but Greene and Peele and Kyd and Marlowe and Shakespeare and others of their time used it more than once and with good effect. They even, in some instances, combined with it the ghosts and infernal spirits, which beyond a doubt they owed to Seneca, and made this unearthly chorus, not only the commentator, but in some sense the subtle director of the action. Perhaps the most refined form of this is to be seen in the Ghost inHamlet, who, though he does not appear technically as Chorus, yet recalls by his original incitement of the action and his later intervention to renew and direct it, as well as by his language and his attitude, the ghosts of Tantalus, Thyestes, Laius, and Agrippina in Seneca, and the spirits of Andrea and Revenge inThe Spanish Tragedy. It is perhaps not going too far to find in the dream-setting of Hauptmann'sElgasome reminiscence of Shakespeare'sTaming of the Shrewand Greene'sJames IV, and consequently, in a remote sense, of Seneca's introductory figures, Tantalus, Thyestes, and the rest.But these matters and the striking resemblances in situation and in utterance cited so abundantly by Cunliffe and by Munroe (Journal of Philology, Vol. VI, pp. 70-79), though they could be increased by many passages inMacbethandKing Learas well as in the plays of other dramatists than Shakespeare, are after all not fundamental. Some other features that seem fundamental may be noted.In the first place, although it is doubtless true that the scanty scenery of the Elizabethan stage is largely the excuse and the reason for the long descriptive passages with which the dramatists of that time delighted themselves and delight us, their modern readers, this is perhaps not the whole of the story. There are passages of exposition, of reflection, of pure declamation, equally long as well as equally beautiful. The Renaissance love of talk, of fine language, ofeloquentia, may explain this in part; but it is doubtless due in part also to the example of Seneca, who never loses an opportunity for a long passage of description or introspection or reflection or mere declamation—making them indeed for the Chorus when the situation does not allow them to the ordinarydramatis personae.Then we may note that the thoroughly melodramatic character of Elizabethan tragedy is a natural inheritance from Seneca. Greek tragedy had, to be sure, many melodramatic situations, along with others of a milder type. But the religious element in the tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles radically modifies the character and tone of the most poignant and repulsive themes and situations. When Seneca took the most difficult of Greek themes and, following the lead of Euripides, cast away the over-ruling, compulsive dominance of the Greek theocracy, he produced melodrama. Most moderns have been either content to follow him or compelled to do so for lack of the ability to create striking situations without the aid of villains of melodramatic criminality. A few of the French tragedians have had recourse to the method of the Greeks either by reviving the Greek mythology and theocracy or by resorting to Hebrew history for characters whose deeds, however criminal, were necessary parts of a divine plan. Shakespeare, almost alone, has at his best succeeded in substituting for the gods and fate the inevitable results of human character and the moral law, in presenting the worst deeds of his leading figures as less the results of free intention than of futile efforts to deliver themselves from the web of circumstance which their first crimes or follies have woven about them—the whole career of Macbeth, for example, being the necessary outcome of his attempt to get free of the difficulties and dangers brought upon him by the murder of Duncan.Speculation as to what the English drama might have been if Sophocles instead of Seneca had been its inspiration and its model is idle. The men of the Renaissance did not understand Sophocles; his stage, the mode of production of his plays, his aim, the whole nature of his art, were beyond the scholarship of their day. And it is doubtful whether they could in any event have made so successful a combination of the Greek and the national or mediaeval drama as they made of Senecan tragedy and the dramatic forms they already possessed.In one thing, at any rate, the English drama was especially fortunate, that is, in the fact that its form and its content were so largely determined by two such remarkable men as Marlowe and Shakespeare. The conditions in France in the sixteenth century were strikingly similar to those in England, except for the number of public theaters. M. Petit de Julleville points out that France as well as England possessed every item of the motley list of dramatic types enumerated by Polonius; and he continues: "Rien n'empêchait alors qu'un Shakespeare naquit en France; les circonstances n'étaient-elles pas merveilleusement favorables? Mais, en dépit de certaines théories, les grands hommes ne paraissent pas tout juste au moment où ils sont nécessaires. Il nous fallait un Shakespeare; il naquit un Alexandre Hardy!"OEDIPUSOEDIPUSDRAMATIS PERSONAEOedipusKing of Thebes; the son, as he supposed, of Polybus, king of Corinth, and Merope, his wife, but found to be the son of Laius and Jocasta.JocastaWife and, as the play develops, found to be also the mother of Oedipus.CreonTheban prince, brother of Jocasta.TiresiasA celebrated prophet of Thebes, now old and blind.MantoHis daughter.Old ManSent from Corinth to announce to Oedipus the death of Polybus.PhorbasHead-shepherd of the royal flocks of Thebes.MessengerWho announces the self-inflicted blindness of Oedipus and the suicide of Jocasta.ChorusOf Theban elders.The sceneis laid before the royal palace of Thebes; the play opens in the early morning of the day within which the tragedy is consummated.An oracle once came to Laius, king of Thebes, that he should perish by his own son's hands. When, therefore, a son was born to him, he gave the infant to his chief of shepherds to expose on Mount Cithaeron. But the tenderhearted rustic gave the babe instead to a wandering herdsman of Polybus, the king of Corinth.Years later, a reputed son of Polybus, Oedipus by name, fearing an oracle which doomed him to slay his father and wed his mother, fled from Corinth, that so he might escape this dreadful fate. As he fared northward, he met and slew an old man who imperiously disputed the narrow way with him. Upon arriving at the Theban land, he read the riddle of the Sphinx, and so destroyed that monster which Juno had sent to harass the land which she hated; and for this service, Oedipus was made the husband of Jocasta, the widowed queen of Laius (who had recently been slain upon the road), and set upon the vacant throne.Now other years have passed, and sons and daughters have been born to the royal pair. But now a dreadful pestilence afflicts the state. Oedipus has sent Creon to consult the oracle, to learn the cause and seek the means of deliverance from the scourge. And while he waits his messenger's return,the murky dawn still finds him grieving for his kingdom's wretched plight.ACT IOedipus: Now night has fled; and with a wavering gleamReturns the sun; all wrapped in murky cloudsHis beams arise, and with their baleful lightShall soon look forth upon our stricken homes,And day reveal the havoc of the night.5Oh, who in all this realm is glad? O fate,That seemest good, how many ills lie hidBehind thy smiling face! As lofty peaksMost feel the winds' abuse; and as the cliff,That with its rocky front divides the deep,The waves of e'en a quiet sea assail;10So is the loftiest power the most exposedTo hostile fate's assaults.'Twas well conceivedThat I should flee the kingdom of my sire,Old Polybus, and from my fears be freed,A homeless exile, dauntless, wandering.Be heaven and all the gods my witnesses,I chanced upon this realm. Yet even nowThe dreadful fear remains that by my hand15My sire shall die. Thus spoke the Delphic god.And still another, greater sin he showed.And can there be a blacker crime than this,A father slain? Oh, cursed impiety!'Twere shame to tell the hideous oracle:For Phoebus warned me of my father's couch,20And impious wedlock. 'Twas the fear of thisThat drove me headlong from my father's realm,And for no sin I left my native land.All self-distrustful did I well secureThy sacred laws, O mother Nature; still,25When in the heart a mighty dread abides,Though well assured it cannot be fulfilled,The fear remains. I fear exceedingly,Nor can I trust myself unto myself.And even now the fates are aimed at me.For what am I to think, when this fell pest,Although it lays its blighting hand on all,30Spares me alone? For what new horror nowAm I reserved? Amidst my city's woes,'Mid funeral pyres that ever must be wetWith tears of grief afresh, 'mid heaps of slain,I stand unscathed. And couldst thou hope that thou,A culprit at the bar of God, shouldst gain35For guilt a wholesome kingdom in return?Nay, rather, I myself infect the air.For now no breeze with its soft breath relievesOur spirits suffocating with the heat;No gentle zephyrs breathe upon the land;But Titan with the dog-star's scorching firesDoth parch us, pressing hard upon the back40Of Nemea's lion. From their wonted streamsThe waters all have fled, and from the herbsTheir accustomed green. Now Dirce's fount is dry;While to a trickling rill Ismenus' floodHath shrunk, and barely laves the naked sands.Athwart the sky doth Phoebus' sister glideWith paling light, and, 'mid the lowering clouds,45The darkling heavens fade. No starlight gleamsAmid the gloomy silence of the night,But heavy mists brood low upon the earth;And those bright mansions of the heavenly godsAre sicklied over with the hues of hell.The full-grown harvest doth withhold its fruit;And, though the yellow fields stand thick with corn,50Upon the stalk the shriveled grain is dead.No class is free from this destructive plague,But every age and sex falls equally;Where youth with age, and sire with son are joined,And wife and husband are together burned.55Now funerals claim no more their wonted grief;The magnitude of woe hath dried our eyes;And tears, the last resource of woeful hearts,Have perished utterly. The stricken sireHere bears his son unto the funeral flames;60And there the mother lays her dead child down,And hastes to bring another to the pyre.Nay, in the midst of grief a new woe springs;For, while they minister unto the dead,Themselves need funeral rites. Anon they burnWith others' fires the bodies of their friends.The fire is stol'n, for in their wretchedness65No shame remains. No separate tombs receiveThe hallowed bones; mere burning is enough.How small a covering their ashes need!And yet the land does not suffice for all;And now the very woods have failed the pyre.Nor prayers nor skill avail to serve the sick,For even they who own the healing artAre smitten down. The baleful pestilenceRemoves the check that would restrain its force.70So, prostrate at the altar, do I fallAnd, stretching suppliant hands, I pray the godsTo grant a speedy end; that in my deathI may anticipate my falling throne,Nor be myself the last of all to die,The sole surviving remnant of my realm.O gods of heaven, too hard! O heavy fate!75Is death to be denied to me alone,So easy for all else? Come, fly the landThy baleful touch has tainted. Leave thou hereThe grief, the death, the pestilential air,Which with thyself thou bring'st. Go speed thy flightTo any land, e'en to thy parents' realm.80Jocasta[who has entered in time to hear her husband's last words]: What boots it, husband, to augment thy woesWith lamentations? For I think, indeed,This very thing is regal, to endureAdversity, and all the more to stand,With heart more valiant and with foot more sure,When the weight of empire totters to its fall.85For 'tis not manly to present thy backTo fortunes's darts.Oedipus:Not mine the guilt of fear;My valor feels no such ignoble throes.Should swords be drawn against me, should the power,The dreadful power of Mars upon me rush,90Against the very giants would I stand.The Sphinx I fled not when she wove her wordsIn mystic measures, but I bore to lookUpon the bloody jaws of that fell bard,And on the ground, all white with scattered bones.But when, from a lofty cliff, with threatening mien,95The baleful creature poised her wings to strike,And, like a savage lion, lashed her tail,[1]In act to spring; still did I dare my fateAnd ask her riddle. Then with horrid soundOf deadly jaws together crashed, she spake;The while her claws, impatient of delay,And eager for my vitals, rent the rock.100But the close-wrought words of fate with guile entwined,And that dark riddle of the wingéd beastDid I resolve.Jocasta:What meant'st then thou by theseThy maddened prayers for death? Thou mightst have died.But no; the very scepter in thy handIs thy reward for that fell Sphinx destroyed.105Oedipus: Yea that, the artful monster's cruel shade,Doth war against me still. Now she alone,In vengeance for her death, is wasting Thebes.But now, one only way of safety still is left,If Phoebus show us not of safety all bereft.[Enter theChorus of Theban elders,deploring the violence of the plague.]Chorus:How art thou fall'n, O glorious stock110Of Cadmus, thou and Thebes in one!How dost thou see, poor ruined Thebes,Thy lands laid waste and tenantless.And thou, O Theban Bacchus, hear:That hardy soldiery of thine,Thy comrades to the farthest Ind,Who dared invade the Eastern plains,115And plant thy banners at the gates of dawn—Behold, destruction feeds on them.They saw the blessed Arabes,'Mid spicy groves; and the fleeing steedsOf the Parthian, deadliest when he flees;They trod the marge of the ruddy sea,120Where Phoebus his rising beams displays,And the day reveals; where his nearer firesDarken the naked Indians.Yea we, that race invincible,Beneath the hand of greedy fate125Are falling fast.The gloomy retinue of deathIn march unceasing hurries on;The grieving line unending hastesTo the place of death. Space fails the throng.For, though seven gates stand open wide,130Still for the crowding funerals'Tis not enough; for everywhereIs carnage seen, and death treads hardUpon the heels of death.The sluggish ewes first felt the blight,For the woolly flock the rich grass croppedTo its own doom. At the victim's neck135The priest stood still, in act to strike;But while his hand still poised the blow,Behold, the bull, with gilded horns,Fell heavily; whereat his neck,Beneath the shock of his huge weight,Was broken and asunder yawned.No blood the sacred weapon stained,140But from the wound dark gore oozed forth.The steed a sudden languor feels,And stumbles in his circling course,While from his downward-sinking sideHis rider falls.The abandoned flocks lie in the fields;145The bull amid his dying herdIs pining; and the shepherd failsHis scanty flock, for he himself'Mid his wasting kine is perishing.The stag no more fears the ravenous wolf;No longer the lion's roar is heard;150The shaggy bear has lost her rage,And the lurking serpent his deadly sting;For parched and dying now he lies,With venom dried.No more do the woods, with leafage crowned,Spread out their shade in the mountain glens;155No more are fields with verdure clad;No vines bend low with laden arms;For the very earth has felt the breathOf our dire pestilence.Through the riven bars of Erebus,160With torches lit in Tartara,The raging band of the Furies troop;Dark Phlegethon has changed his course,And forced the waters of the StyxTo mingle with our Theban streams.Grim Death opes wide his greedy jaws,165And all his baleful wings outspreads.And he who plies that swollen streamIn his roomy skiff, though his age is freshAnd hardy, scarce can raise his arms,O'erwearied with his constant toilAnd the passage of the endless throng.170'Tis even rumored that the dogHath burst the chains of Taenara,And through our fields is wandering.Now dreadful prodigies appear:The earth gives out a rumbling sound,And ghosts go stealing through the groves,Larger than mortal forms; and twice175The trees of our Cadmean woodsHave trembled sore and shed their snows;Twice Dirce flowed with streams of blood;And in the stilly night we heardThe baying of Amphion's hounds.Oh, cruel, strange new form of death,180And worse than death! The sluggish limbsAre with a weary languor seized;The sickly cheek with fever burns,And all the head with loathsome soresIs blotched. Now heated vapors riseAnd scorch with fever's flames the brainWithin the body's citadel,And the throbbing temples swell with blood.185The eyeballs start; the accurséd fireDevours the limbs; the ears resound,And from the nostrils dark blood dripsAnd strains apart the swelling veins.190Now quick convulsions rend and tearThe inmost vitals.Now to their burning hearts they strainCold stones to soothe their agony;And they, whom laxer care permits,Since they who should control are dead,The fountains seek, and feed their thirst195With copious draughts. The smitten throngAll prostrate at the altars lieAnd pray for death; and this aloneThe gods, compliant, grant to them.Men seek the sacred fanes, and pray,Not that the gods may be appeased,But glutted with their feast of death.200[Creonis seen approaching.]But who with hasty step the palace seeks?Is this our Creon, high in birth and deed,Or does my sickened soul see false for true?'Tis Creon's self, in answer to our prayer.205

double Hermes of Seneca and SocratesDOUBLE HERMES OF SENECA AND SOCRATES.Now in the Old Museum at Berlin

DOUBLE HERMES OF SENECA AND SOCRATES.

Now in the Old Museum at Berlin

The Tragedies of Seneca

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE, TO WHICH HAVE BEEN APPENDEDCOMPARATIVE ANALYSES OF THE CORRESPONDING GREEKAND ROMAN PLAYS, AND A MYTHOLOGICAL INDEX

BYFRANK JUSTUS MILLER

INTRODUCED BY AN ESSAY ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE TRAGEDIES OF SENECAUPON EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA

BYJOHN MATTHEWS MANLY

CHICAGOTHE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESSLONDONT. FISHER UNWIN, 1 ADELPHI TERRACE1907

Copyright 1907 ByThe University of Chicago

Published December 1907

Composed and Printed ByThe University of Chicago Press

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

TOFRANK FROST ABBOTTANDEDWARD CAPPSMY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUESTHROUGH A SCORE OF YEARS

The place of the tragedies of Seneca in literature is unique. They stand as the sole surviving representatives, barring a few fragments, of an extensive Roman product in the tragic drama. They therefore serve as the only connecting link between ancient and modern tragedy. They are, moreover, modeled more or less closely after the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and the Greek and Roman product in literature along parallel lines cannot be better studied than by a comparison of these Senecan plays with their Greek prototypes—a comparison which is not possible in comedy, since, unfortunately, the Greek originals of Plautus and Terence have not come down to us.

These plays are of great value and interest in themselves, first, as independent dramatic literature of no small merit; and second, as an illustration of the literary characteristics of the age of Nero: the florid, rhetorical style, the long, didactic speeches, the tendency to philosophize, the frequent epigram, the pride of mythologic lore.

Popular interest in the tragedies of Seneca has been growing to a considerable extent during the last generation. This has been stimulated in part by Leo's excellent text edition, and by the researches of German and English scholars into Senecan questions, more especially into the influence of Seneca upon the pre-Elizabethan drama; in part also by the fact that courses in the tragedies have been regaining their place, long lost, in college curricula.

The present edition seeks still further to bring Seneca back to the notice of classical scholars, and at the same time to present to the English reader all of the values accruing from a study of these plays, with the single exception of the benefit to be derived from a reading of the original. The influence which the tragedies have had in English literature is brought out in the introduction, which Professor Manly has kindly contributed; the relation of Seneca to the Greek dramatists is shown by comparative analyses of the corresponding plays, so arranged that the reader may easily observe their resemblances and differences; the wealth of mythological material is at once displayed and made available by an index of mythological characters; finally, it is hoped that the translation itself will prove tobe as faithful a reproduction of the original as is possible in a translation, and at the same time to have sufficient literary merit of its own to claim the interest of the general reader.

The text used is that of Leo (Weidmann, Berlin, 1878), except in the instances noted. The line numbers as printed in the translation are identical with those of the original text. The meter employed in the spoken parts is the English blank verse, with the exception of theMedea, in which the experiment was tried, not altogether successfully, of reproducing the iambic trimeter of the original. In the lyric parts, the original meters are sometimes used; and, where these did not seem suitable in English, appropriate substitutes have been attempted.

Frank Justus Miller

Chicago, Ill.October 25, 1907

To appreciate fully the nature and the extent of the influence of Seneca upon English tragedy in the days of Shakespeare and his immediate predecessors, we must bear in mind that the public theaters were not the only places at which plays were then produced. At the universities, at the inns of court (which may be roughly described as combinations of a law school and a very exclusive social club), and at the Court itself plays were an important feature of almost every festival. Even those of us who know these facts are very likely to fail to realize the full meaning of them. We are likely to regard the non-professional performances as having no more significance for the history of the drama than amateur performances at the present day by dramatic clubs and college societies. We are apt to forget that, in the spacious days of great Elizabeth, learning, especially classical learning, had a value, an importance, a dignity, which not even the most academic of us now feels it to have. Our generation, busied above all things with making a living or with accumulating wealth, regards the scholar as, with the poet and the artist, the most unpractical and useless of men at best, tolerated as an ornamental creature whom society can afford to keep if it does not have to pay him more than it pays a butler or a chauffeur. To the men of the Renaissance, scholarship and the scholar had a unique and inestimable value. Ordinary business, in their view, enabled man to provide a living; religion taught him how to save his soul; scholarship, the knowledge of the literature and life of the Greeks and the Romans, enabled him to distinguish his life as a man from that of a beast, to approach as nearly as possible to that ideal type toward which they strove, theuomo universale, the perfect gentleman, complete master of his body, of his mind, of his passions. To men of these views and this temper, literature—first, classical literature and then the vernacular literature produced under the stimulus of it—was of supreme importance, and the drama was perhaps the most important form of literature. The value of literature for those who were then trying to transform the world, to rebuild it and themselves nearer to the heart's desire, was of course best recognized by the finest spirits of the age, men like Erasmus, Thomas More, Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney. But it seems tohave been felt, though in cruder ways, even by the vulgar. An amusing illustration of this is the little record kept by old Simon Forman, a noted mountebank and quack doctor, in 1610 and 1611. It has preserved for us our earliest notices of performances ofMacbeth,Cymbeline, andA Winter's Tale; but this is accidental. The doctor's intention was merely to note for his own guidance such lessons as he learned from the plays presented on the stage. Such benefits were, according to the views of wiser men, to be gained chiefly from comedies; tragedy, and classical tragedy in particular, had a finer, a more permanent value. Tragedy was the voice of the wisest men of the world, the ancients, upon the most serious themes of human life; it not only, as Aristotle had said, purified the mind through pity and terror, it fortified the inner life, and both by example and by sententious maxim prepared man to meet the most subtle attacks of fate, the temptations of success, or the discouragements of failure. Tragedy therefore had a unique value for the Elizabethans, and the performances of classical plays, or those written in imitation of the classics, by the universities or the inns of court, did not fall into the abyss which now receives amateur theatricals.

Failure to take account of the value attached to the lessons and the examples of tragedy may perhaps account for the misunderstanding which exists so widely, even among scholars, in regard to the first tragedy in English,Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex. Everyone knows that this was written in direct imitation of Seneca, and everyone discusses glibly its Senecan features, the bloody theme, the division into five acts, the use of the chorus, the removal of the action from the view of the spectators, the long speeches; but critics are, without exception, offended to the heart by the fifth act, and especially by the two long disquisitions of Arostus and Eubulus. It is, however, no exaggeration to say that the play exists solely for the sake of these speeches. This was not a mere academic exercise. It was a serious attempt by some of the most thoughtful men of England to move the queen, Elizabeth, to a course of action which they regarded as absolutely essential to the welfare of the realm. Other attempts to secure the same end were made by her best statesmen throughout the reign. The failure of this effort was not due to the weakness of the tragedy, but, like the failure of all the rest, to some feature of Elizabeth's character or some circumstance in her life which has not yet been fully and convincingly explained. The purpose of the writers is clear. They wished to persuade Elizabeth to marry and settle once for all the succession to the throne of England. They, in common with all thoughtful and patriotic Englishmen,feared the horrors of an unsettled succession or a divided rule. These they tried to impress upon her mind and heart by examples drawn from the history of Gorboduc and his sons, and by maxims and exhortations presented in the most authoritative form known to them, the form of Senecan tragedy. The occasion chosen was a great festival given by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, one of the most important and influential of the inns of court referred to above.

Classical tragedy had, then, as we can readily see, a prestige to which hardly anything in literature corresponds at the present day. The statesman who should today wish to influence his sovereign to an important course of action would doubtless be puzzled to find any form of literature—academic or unacademic—appropriate to the task in dignity and authority.

It is not strange, therefore, that classical tragedy, the tragedy of the schools and the learned societies, must be taken seriously into account in estimating the forces which shaped the drama of the popular stage. It is true that the English tragedies in classical or Senecan form were none of them written for the public stage. It is even probable that they would not have been successful upon it. It is a mistake to treat them historically and critically, as if they belonged to the direct line of development which resulted inFaustusandThe Spanish TragedyandMacbethandLearandOthello. But none the less the influence of these academic plays was very real and very important.

The ways in which this influence was exercised may be noted, as having some bearing upon the nature and extent of the influence. In the first place, there was in the early days no very rigid line between the academic and the popular performers. The Children of the Chapel Royal were at one time the leading theatrical company in London. When the queen visited Oxford in 1566, there were among the several plays presented by the university, not only the Latin tragedy,Progne, of Dr. James Calfhill, but also the EnglishPalamon and Arciteof Richard Edwards, Master of Her Majesty's Children and the most popular dramatist of his day. Edwards himself trained the students who produced his play, and it was a great success; according to a contemporary report, "certain courtiers said that it far surpassedDamon and Pythias, than which they thought nothing could be better; likewise some said that if the author did any more before his death, he would run mad." Any impressions made upon Edwards by Dr. Calfhill'sPrognewere doubtless lost to art, as Edwards died before the end of the year; but this was probably not the first occasion on which the Master of the Chapel Children had visited the university in behalf of thedrama, and Edwards himself had been both a scholar and a probationary fellow there. Certainly his famousDamon and Pythiasshows some evidences of the influence of Seneca.

It is well known also that the most successful writers for the public stage in the years just preceding Shakespeare's advent, the years that determined the forms and the methods of the popular drama, were educated at the universities, and, however clearly they may have recognized the necessity of supplying to the populace story, action, the raw material of life and philosophy, cherished as an ideal the Senecan interest in situation, the Senecan love for broad description, for introspection and reflection, for elaborate monologue, and catchy sententiousness. Such were Greene and Peele and Marlowe; and Thomas Kyd, author of that most popular of plays,The Spanish Tragedy, and probable author of the version ofHamletwhich held the stage for fourteen years before Shakespeare revised it and gave it a new and a different life, though not bred in either university, was more zealous about his Latin and apparently more influenced by Seneca than the university men themselves.

But, says some modern classical scholar, granting that these early dramatists were university men or men, like Kyd and Shakespeare, not trained in the universities but all the more zealous to match their productions with those which bore the official mark of classical scholarship, why should Seneca, a second-rate Roman tragedian, be continually cited in connection with classical influence instead of Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides, the supreme masters of ancient tragedy, and Aristotle, the unique expositor of the theory of the drama? The men of the Renaissance would have had a ready answer. In the first place, they knew very little about the Greek tragedians, or, for that matter, about Greek literature in general; for although the rediscovery of Greek literature was undoubtedly one of the events of that remarkable spurt of the human intellect and spirit which we call the Renaissance, Greek literature and life were, after all, in every country of Europe, far less important than Latin, as models for imitation, as sources of inspiration, as objects which engaged the attention of the moderns and set the pace which they tried to follow. As for tragedy, a few scholars in Italy and France and Germany and England knew Sophocles and Euripides—Aeschylus was almost unknown—but the theory and the practice of tragedy among the classicists were based almost exclusively upon the example of Seneca and the precepts of Horace. Aristotle is, indeed, often cited as the ultimate authority, but, although the voice may be the voice of Aristotle, the opinions are usually those of Scaliger orMinturno or Robortelli or Castelvetro, opinions which reduced to inviolable laws what Aristotle had merely stated as observed practices, and which supplemented these rules by others drawn from the plays of Seneca, who was, according to these critics, the most majestic, the most tragic, the most perfect of the ancient tragedians. That Seneca's majesty seems to critics of today bombast, that his triumph in tragic quality consists in an accumulation of horrors and a consistently unfortunate ending, that his perfection of form is no more than a formal schematism, clear because it is simple and lifeless—all this may be true but is beside the mark. To the best spirits of the Renaissance, whether critical or creative, the ten tragedies which bore the name of Seneca presented the ideal of tragic art toward which modern writers should strive if they would be perfect.

What, then, was the influence of Seneca in England? Two excellent studies of different phases of it have been published, both, unfortunately, less known than they should be.

The purely formal influence, the influence upon dramatic technique and upon composition in the large sense of the term, is the subject of Rudolf Fischer'sDie Kunstentwicklung der englischen Tragödie, perhaps the most ingenious and adequate scheme ever devised for the analysis of the technical and compositional features of any form of art. Fischer sees in the history of English tragedy before Shakespeare a steady approximation to the Senecan type. His argument is open to several objections. In the first place, he treats as if they belonged to the same simple line of development plays written for the public stage and the popular taste and those written for special audiences dominated by scholastic ideals. In the second place, as Professor Luick has pointed out, he has disregarded the influence exercised by the original form of the story dramatized upon the dramatic presentation of it. And, furthermore, he, in common with other students of the subject, has proceeded upon the assumption that only tragedy could have had any influence upon tragedy. He has neglected that remark of Ben Jonson's, which phrases the view not of his own time only but of all ages, "The parts of a comedy are the same with a tragedy," and has failed to see that for the structure of English tragedy, Roman comedy and the serious imitations of it by the men of the Renaissance—such as Gnapheus'Acolastus, Macropedius'AsotusandRebelles, and their anonymous English offspring,The Nice Wanton—are no less important than the example of Seneca himself. But his book is interesting and enlightening as few books on any subject are.

Entirely different problems are dealt with in J.W. Cunliffe's littlevolume onThe Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, a book which, to the regret of many scholars, has long been out of print, and which the author ought to reprint with such additions as his continued study of the subject may suggest. Mr. Cunliffe is mainly concerned with showing why Seneca appealed to the Elizabethans and with pointing out certain details of theme, of situation, of theatrical effects, and of expression, which the popular playwrights owed to Seneca.

To Seneca and the false Aristotle created by the humanists from thePoetics, the precepts of Horace, the definitions and maxims which sifted down through the encyclopaedists of the Middle Ages, and the example of Seneca, not only the men of the Renaissance but even we of today owe some of our most cherished ideas concerning tragedy. First of all, perhaps, is the belief that tragedy must end unhappily. The Greeks—whether creators or critics—had no such theory. It was enough for Sophocles and Aristotle that tragedy should be serious in theme and dignified in characters and in language. In the second place, we ordinarily believe that a tragedy should have five acts, and many of us can draw a diagram to prove it. Shakespeare and his fellows seem to have been dominated by the same theory, difficult as they sometimes found it to observe. The sacred unities, dominant so long in Italian and French tragedy, though never observed in any English play more notable than Addison'sCato, we have learned to disregard and even to decry, though such an attitude in the Elizabethan age awakened the censure of Philip Sidney and doubtless required some hardihood or even recklessness. The chorus also we have long since abandoned, but Greene and Peele and Kyd and Marlowe and Shakespeare and others of their time used it more than once and with good effect. They even, in some instances, combined with it the ghosts and infernal spirits, which beyond a doubt they owed to Seneca, and made this unearthly chorus, not only the commentator, but in some sense the subtle director of the action. Perhaps the most refined form of this is to be seen in the Ghost inHamlet, who, though he does not appear technically as Chorus, yet recalls by his original incitement of the action and his later intervention to renew and direct it, as well as by his language and his attitude, the ghosts of Tantalus, Thyestes, Laius, and Agrippina in Seneca, and the spirits of Andrea and Revenge inThe Spanish Tragedy. It is perhaps not going too far to find in the dream-setting of Hauptmann'sElgasome reminiscence of Shakespeare'sTaming of the Shrewand Greene'sJames IV, and consequently, in a remote sense, of Seneca's introductory figures, Tantalus, Thyestes, and the rest.

But these matters and the striking resemblances in situation and in utterance cited so abundantly by Cunliffe and by Munroe (Journal of Philology, Vol. VI, pp. 70-79), though they could be increased by many passages inMacbethandKing Learas well as in the plays of other dramatists than Shakespeare, are after all not fundamental. Some other features that seem fundamental may be noted.

In the first place, although it is doubtless true that the scanty scenery of the Elizabethan stage is largely the excuse and the reason for the long descriptive passages with which the dramatists of that time delighted themselves and delight us, their modern readers, this is perhaps not the whole of the story. There are passages of exposition, of reflection, of pure declamation, equally long as well as equally beautiful. The Renaissance love of talk, of fine language, ofeloquentia, may explain this in part; but it is doubtless due in part also to the example of Seneca, who never loses an opportunity for a long passage of description or introspection or reflection or mere declamation—making them indeed for the Chorus when the situation does not allow them to the ordinarydramatis personae.

Then we may note that the thoroughly melodramatic character of Elizabethan tragedy is a natural inheritance from Seneca. Greek tragedy had, to be sure, many melodramatic situations, along with others of a milder type. But the religious element in the tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles radically modifies the character and tone of the most poignant and repulsive themes and situations. When Seneca took the most difficult of Greek themes and, following the lead of Euripides, cast away the over-ruling, compulsive dominance of the Greek theocracy, he produced melodrama. Most moderns have been either content to follow him or compelled to do so for lack of the ability to create striking situations without the aid of villains of melodramatic criminality. A few of the French tragedians have had recourse to the method of the Greeks either by reviving the Greek mythology and theocracy or by resorting to Hebrew history for characters whose deeds, however criminal, were necessary parts of a divine plan. Shakespeare, almost alone, has at his best succeeded in substituting for the gods and fate the inevitable results of human character and the moral law, in presenting the worst deeds of his leading figures as less the results of free intention than of futile efforts to deliver themselves from the web of circumstance which their first crimes or follies have woven about them—the whole career of Macbeth, for example, being the necessary outcome of his attempt to get free of the difficulties and dangers brought upon him by the murder of Duncan.

Speculation as to what the English drama might have been if Sophocles instead of Seneca had been its inspiration and its model is idle. The men of the Renaissance did not understand Sophocles; his stage, the mode of production of his plays, his aim, the whole nature of his art, were beyond the scholarship of their day. And it is doubtful whether they could in any event have made so successful a combination of the Greek and the national or mediaeval drama as they made of Senecan tragedy and the dramatic forms they already possessed.

In one thing, at any rate, the English drama was especially fortunate, that is, in the fact that its form and its content were so largely determined by two such remarkable men as Marlowe and Shakespeare. The conditions in France in the sixteenth century were strikingly similar to those in England, except for the number of public theaters. M. Petit de Julleville points out that France as well as England possessed every item of the motley list of dramatic types enumerated by Polonius; and he continues: "Rien n'empêchait alors qu'un Shakespeare naquit en France; les circonstances n'étaient-elles pas merveilleusement favorables? Mais, en dépit de certaines théories, les grands hommes ne paraissent pas tout juste au moment où ils sont nécessaires. Il nous fallait un Shakespeare; il naquit un Alexandre Hardy!"

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The sceneis laid before the royal palace of Thebes; the play opens in the early morning of the day within which the tragedy is consummated.

An oracle once came to Laius, king of Thebes, that he should perish by his own son's hands. When, therefore, a son was born to him, he gave the infant to his chief of shepherds to expose on Mount Cithaeron. But the tenderhearted rustic gave the babe instead to a wandering herdsman of Polybus, the king of Corinth.

Years later, a reputed son of Polybus, Oedipus by name, fearing an oracle which doomed him to slay his father and wed his mother, fled from Corinth, that so he might escape this dreadful fate. As he fared northward, he met and slew an old man who imperiously disputed the narrow way with him. Upon arriving at the Theban land, he read the riddle of the Sphinx, and so destroyed that monster which Juno had sent to harass the land which she hated; and for this service, Oedipus was made the husband of Jocasta, the widowed queen of Laius (who had recently been slain upon the road), and set upon the vacant throne.

Now other years have passed, and sons and daughters have been born to the royal pair. But now a dreadful pestilence afflicts the state. Oedipus has sent Creon to consult the oracle, to learn the cause and seek the means of deliverance from the scourge. And while he waits his messenger's return,the murky dawn still finds him grieving for his kingdom's wretched plight.

Oedipus: Now night has fled; and with a wavering gleamReturns the sun; all wrapped in murky cloudsHis beams arise, and with their baleful lightShall soon look forth upon our stricken homes,And day reveal the havoc of the night.5Oh, who in all this realm is glad? O fate,That seemest good, how many ills lie hidBehind thy smiling face! As lofty peaksMost feel the winds' abuse; and as the cliff,That with its rocky front divides the deep,The waves of e'en a quiet sea assail;10So is the loftiest power the most exposedTo hostile fate's assaults.'Twas well conceivedThat I should flee the kingdom of my sire,Old Polybus, and from my fears be freed,A homeless exile, dauntless, wandering.Be heaven and all the gods my witnesses,I chanced upon this realm. Yet even nowThe dreadful fear remains that by my hand15My sire shall die. Thus spoke the Delphic god.And still another, greater sin he showed.And can there be a blacker crime than this,A father slain? Oh, cursed impiety!'Twere shame to tell the hideous oracle:For Phoebus warned me of my father's couch,20And impious wedlock. 'Twas the fear of thisThat drove me headlong from my father's realm,And for no sin I left my native land.All self-distrustful did I well secureThy sacred laws, O mother Nature; still,25When in the heart a mighty dread abides,Though well assured it cannot be fulfilled,The fear remains. I fear exceedingly,Nor can I trust myself unto myself.And even now the fates are aimed at me.For what am I to think, when this fell pest,Although it lays its blighting hand on all,30Spares me alone? For what new horror nowAm I reserved? Amidst my city's woes,'Mid funeral pyres that ever must be wetWith tears of grief afresh, 'mid heaps of slain,I stand unscathed. And couldst thou hope that thou,A culprit at the bar of God, shouldst gain35For guilt a wholesome kingdom in return?Nay, rather, I myself infect the air.For now no breeze with its soft breath relievesOur spirits suffocating with the heat;No gentle zephyrs breathe upon the land;But Titan with the dog-star's scorching firesDoth parch us, pressing hard upon the back40Of Nemea's lion. From their wonted streamsThe waters all have fled, and from the herbsTheir accustomed green. Now Dirce's fount is dry;While to a trickling rill Ismenus' floodHath shrunk, and barely laves the naked sands.Athwart the sky doth Phoebus' sister glideWith paling light, and, 'mid the lowering clouds,45The darkling heavens fade. No starlight gleamsAmid the gloomy silence of the night,But heavy mists brood low upon the earth;And those bright mansions of the heavenly godsAre sicklied over with the hues of hell.The full-grown harvest doth withhold its fruit;And, though the yellow fields stand thick with corn,50Upon the stalk the shriveled grain is dead.No class is free from this destructive plague,But every age and sex falls equally;Where youth with age, and sire with son are joined,And wife and husband are together burned.55Now funerals claim no more their wonted grief;The magnitude of woe hath dried our eyes;And tears, the last resource of woeful hearts,Have perished utterly. The stricken sireHere bears his son unto the funeral flames;60And there the mother lays her dead child down,And hastes to bring another to the pyre.Nay, in the midst of grief a new woe springs;For, while they minister unto the dead,Themselves need funeral rites. Anon they burnWith others' fires the bodies of their friends.The fire is stol'n, for in their wretchedness65No shame remains. No separate tombs receiveThe hallowed bones; mere burning is enough.How small a covering their ashes need!And yet the land does not suffice for all;And now the very woods have failed the pyre.Nor prayers nor skill avail to serve the sick,For even they who own the healing artAre smitten down. The baleful pestilenceRemoves the check that would restrain its force.70So, prostrate at the altar, do I fallAnd, stretching suppliant hands, I pray the godsTo grant a speedy end; that in my deathI may anticipate my falling throne,Nor be myself the last of all to die,The sole surviving remnant of my realm.O gods of heaven, too hard! O heavy fate!75Is death to be denied to me alone,So easy for all else? Come, fly the landThy baleful touch has tainted. Leave thou hereThe grief, the death, the pestilential air,Which with thyself thou bring'st. Go speed thy flightTo any land, e'en to thy parents' realm.80Jocasta[who has entered in time to hear her husband's last words]: What boots it, husband, to augment thy woesWith lamentations? For I think, indeed,This very thing is regal, to endureAdversity, and all the more to stand,With heart more valiant and with foot more sure,When the weight of empire totters to its fall.85For 'tis not manly to present thy backTo fortunes's darts.Oedipus:Not mine the guilt of fear;My valor feels no such ignoble throes.Should swords be drawn against me, should the power,The dreadful power of Mars upon me rush,90Against the very giants would I stand.The Sphinx I fled not when she wove her wordsIn mystic measures, but I bore to lookUpon the bloody jaws of that fell bard,And on the ground, all white with scattered bones.But when, from a lofty cliff, with threatening mien,95The baleful creature poised her wings to strike,And, like a savage lion, lashed her tail,[1]In act to spring; still did I dare my fateAnd ask her riddle. Then with horrid soundOf deadly jaws together crashed, she spake;The while her claws, impatient of delay,And eager for my vitals, rent the rock.100But the close-wrought words of fate with guile entwined,And that dark riddle of the wingéd beastDid I resolve.Jocasta:What meant'st then thou by theseThy maddened prayers for death? Thou mightst have died.But no; the very scepter in thy handIs thy reward for that fell Sphinx destroyed.105Oedipus: Yea that, the artful monster's cruel shade,Doth war against me still. Now she alone,In vengeance for her death, is wasting Thebes.But now, one only way of safety still is left,If Phoebus show us not of safety all bereft.

Oedipus: Now night has fled; and with a wavering gleamReturns the sun; all wrapped in murky cloudsHis beams arise, and with their baleful lightShall soon look forth upon our stricken homes,And day reveal the havoc of the night.5Oh, who in all this realm is glad? O fate,That seemest good, how many ills lie hidBehind thy smiling face! As lofty peaksMost feel the winds' abuse; and as the cliff,That with its rocky front divides the deep,The waves of e'en a quiet sea assail;10So is the loftiest power the most exposedTo hostile fate's assaults.'Twas well conceivedThat I should flee the kingdom of my sire,Old Polybus, and from my fears be freed,A homeless exile, dauntless, wandering.Be heaven and all the gods my witnesses,I chanced upon this realm. Yet even nowThe dreadful fear remains that by my hand15My sire shall die. Thus spoke the Delphic god.And still another, greater sin he showed.And can there be a blacker crime than this,A father slain? Oh, cursed impiety!'Twere shame to tell the hideous oracle:For Phoebus warned me of my father's couch,20And impious wedlock. 'Twas the fear of thisThat drove me headlong from my father's realm,And for no sin I left my native land.All self-distrustful did I well secureThy sacred laws, O mother Nature; still,25When in the heart a mighty dread abides,Though well assured it cannot be fulfilled,The fear remains. I fear exceedingly,Nor can I trust myself unto myself.And even now the fates are aimed at me.For what am I to think, when this fell pest,Although it lays its blighting hand on all,30Spares me alone? For what new horror nowAm I reserved? Amidst my city's woes,'Mid funeral pyres that ever must be wetWith tears of grief afresh, 'mid heaps of slain,I stand unscathed. And couldst thou hope that thou,A culprit at the bar of God, shouldst gain35For guilt a wholesome kingdom in return?Nay, rather, I myself infect the air.For now no breeze with its soft breath relievesOur spirits suffocating with the heat;No gentle zephyrs breathe upon the land;But Titan with the dog-star's scorching firesDoth parch us, pressing hard upon the back40Of Nemea's lion. From their wonted streamsThe waters all have fled, and from the herbsTheir accustomed green. Now Dirce's fount is dry;While to a trickling rill Ismenus' floodHath shrunk, and barely laves the naked sands.Athwart the sky doth Phoebus' sister glideWith paling light, and, 'mid the lowering clouds,45The darkling heavens fade. No starlight gleamsAmid the gloomy silence of the night,But heavy mists brood low upon the earth;And those bright mansions of the heavenly godsAre sicklied over with the hues of hell.The full-grown harvest doth withhold its fruit;And, though the yellow fields stand thick with corn,50Upon the stalk the shriveled grain is dead.No class is free from this destructive plague,But every age and sex falls equally;Where youth with age, and sire with son are joined,And wife and husband are together burned.55Now funerals claim no more their wonted grief;The magnitude of woe hath dried our eyes;And tears, the last resource of woeful hearts,Have perished utterly. The stricken sireHere bears his son unto the funeral flames;60And there the mother lays her dead child down,And hastes to bring another to the pyre.Nay, in the midst of grief a new woe springs;For, while they minister unto the dead,Themselves need funeral rites. Anon they burnWith others' fires the bodies of their friends.The fire is stol'n, for in their wretchedness65No shame remains. No separate tombs receiveThe hallowed bones; mere burning is enough.How small a covering their ashes need!And yet the land does not suffice for all;And now the very woods have failed the pyre.Nor prayers nor skill avail to serve the sick,For even they who own the healing artAre smitten down. The baleful pestilenceRemoves the check that would restrain its force.70So, prostrate at the altar, do I fallAnd, stretching suppliant hands, I pray the godsTo grant a speedy end; that in my deathI may anticipate my falling throne,Nor be myself the last of all to die,The sole surviving remnant of my realm.O gods of heaven, too hard! O heavy fate!75Is death to be denied to me alone,So easy for all else? Come, fly the landThy baleful touch has tainted. Leave thou hereThe grief, the death, the pestilential air,Which with thyself thou bring'st. Go speed thy flightTo any land, e'en to thy parents' realm.80

Oedipus: Now night has fled; and with a wavering gleam

Returns the sun; all wrapped in murky clouds

His beams arise, and with their baleful light

Shall soon look forth upon our stricken homes,

And day reveal the havoc of the night.5

Oh, who in all this realm is glad? O fate,

That seemest good, how many ills lie hid

Behind thy smiling face! As lofty peaks

Most feel the winds' abuse; and as the cliff,

That with its rocky front divides the deep,

The waves of e'en a quiet sea assail;10

So is the loftiest power the most exposed

To hostile fate's assaults.

'Twas well conceived

That I should flee the kingdom of my sire,

Old Polybus, and from my fears be freed,

A homeless exile, dauntless, wandering.

Be heaven and all the gods my witnesses,

I chanced upon this realm. Yet even now

The dreadful fear remains that by my hand15

My sire shall die. Thus spoke the Delphic god.

And still another, greater sin he showed.

And can there be a blacker crime than this,

A father slain? Oh, cursed impiety!

'Twere shame to tell the hideous oracle:

For Phoebus warned me of my father's couch,20

And impious wedlock. 'Twas the fear of this

That drove me headlong from my father's realm,

And for no sin I left my native land.

All self-distrustful did I well secure

Thy sacred laws, O mother Nature; still,25

When in the heart a mighty dread abides,

Though well assured it cannot be fulfilled,

The fear remains. I fear exceedingly,

Nor can I trust myself unto myself.

And even now the fates are aimed at me.

For what am I to think, when this fell pest,

Although it lays its blighting hand on all,30

Spares me alone? For what new horror now

Am I reserved? Amidst my city's woes,

'Mid funeral pyres that ever must be wet

With tears of grief afresh, 'mid heaps of slain,

I stand unscathed. And couldst thou hope that thou,

A culprit at the bar of God, shouldst gain35

For guilt a wholesome kingdom in return?

Nay, rather, I myself infect the air.

For now no breeze with its soft breath relieves

Our spirits suffocating with the heat;

No gentle zephyrs breathe upon the land;

But Titan with the dog-star's scorching fires

Doth parch us, pressing hard upon the back40

Of Nemea's lion. From their wonted streams

The waters all have fled, and from the herbs

Their accustomed green. Now Dirce's fount is dry;

While to a trickling rill Ismenus' flood

Hath shrunk, and barely laves the naked sands.

Athwart the sky doth Phoebus' sister glide

With paling light, and, 'mid the lowering clouds,45

The darkling heavens fade. No starlight gleams

Amid the gloomy silence of the night,

But heavy mists brood low upon the earth;

And those bright mansions of the heavenly gods

Are sicklied over with the hues of hell.

The full-grown harvest doth withhold its fruit;

And, though the yellow fields stand thick with corn,50

Upon the stalk the shriveled grain is dead.

No class is free from this destructive plague,

But every age and sex falls equally;

Where youth with age, and sire with son are joined,

And wife and husband are together burned.55

Now funerals claim no more their wonted grief;

The magnitude of woe hath dried our eyes;

And tears, the last resource of woeful hearts,

Have perished utterly. The stricken sire

Here bears his son unto the funeral flames;60

And there the mother lays her dead child down,

And hastes to bring another to the pyre.

Nay, in the midst of grief a new woe springs;

For, while they minister unto the dead,

Themselves need funeral rites. Anon they burn

With others' fires the bodies of their friends.

The fire is stol'n, for in their wretchedness65

No shame remains. No separate tombs receive

The hallowed bones; mere burning is enough.

How small a covering their ashes need!

And yet the land does not suffice for all;

And now the very woods have failed the pyre.

Nor prayers nor skill avail to serve the sick,

For even they who own the healing art

Are smitten down. The baleful pestilence

Removes the check that would restrain its force.70

So, prostrate at the altar, do I fall

And, stretching suppliant hands, I pray the gods

To grant a speedy end; that in my death

I may anticipate my falling throne,

Nor be myself the last of all to die,

The sole surviving remnant of my realm.

O gods of heaven, too hard! O heavy fate!75

Is death to be denied to me alone,

So easy for all else? Come, fly the land

Thy baleful touch has tainted. Leave thou here

The grief, the death, the pestilential air,

Which with thyself thou bring'st. Go speed thy flight

To any land, e'en to thy parents' realm.80

Jocasta[who has entered in time to hear her husband's last words]: What boots it, husband, to augment thy woesWith lamentations? For I think, indeed,This very thing is regal, to endureAdversity, and all the more to stand,With heart more valiant and with foot more sure,When the weight of empire totters to its fall.85For 'tis not manly to present thy backTo fortunes's darts.

Jocasta[who has entered in time to hear her husband's last words]: What boots it, husband, to augment thy woes

With lamentations? For I think, indeed,

This very thing is regal, to endure

Adversity, and all the more to stand,

With heart more valiant and with foot more sure,

When the weight of empire totters to its fall.85

For 'tis not manly to present thy back

To fortunes's darts.

Oedipus:Not mine the guilt of fear;My valor feels no such ignoble throes.Should swords be drawn against me, should the power,The dreadful power of Mars upon me rush,90Against the very giants would I stand.The Sphinx I fled not when she wove her wordsIn mystic measures, but I bore to lookUpon the bloody jaws of that fell bard,And on the ground, all white with scattered bones.But when, from a lofty cliff, with threatening mien,95The baleful creature poised her wings to strike,And, like a savage lion, lashed her tail,[1]In act to spring; still did I dare my fateAnd ask her riddle. Then with horrid soundOf deadly jaws together crashed, she spake;The while her claws, impatient of delay,And eager for my vitals, rent the rock.100But the close-wrought words of fate with guile entwined,And that dark riddle of the wingéd beastDid I resolve.

Oedipus:Not mine the guilt of fear;

My valor feels no such ignoble throes.

Should swords be drawn against me, should the power,

The dreadful power of Mars upon me rush,90

Against the very giants would I stand.

The Sphinx I fled not when she wove her words

In mystic measures, but I bore to look

Upon the bloody jaws of that fell bard,

And on the ground, all white with scattered bones.

But when, from a lofty cliff, with threatening mien,95

The baleful creature poised her wings to strike,

And, like a savage lion, lashed her tail,[1]

In act to spring; still did I dare my fate

And ask her riddle. Then with horrid sound

Of deadly jaws together crashed, she spake;

The while her claws, impatient of delay,

And eager for my vitals, rent the rock.100

But the close-wrought words of fate with guile entwined,

And that dark riddle of the wingéd beast

Did I resolve.

Jocasta:What meant'st then thou by theseThy maddened prayers for death? Thou mightst have died.But no; the very scepter in thy handIs thy reward for that fell Sphinx destroyed.105

Jocasta:What meant'st then thou by these

Thy maddened prayers for death? Thou mightst have died.

But no; the very scepter in thy hand

Is thy reward for that fell Sphinx destroyed.105

Oedipus: Yea that, the artful monster's cruel shade,Doth war against me still. Now she alone,In vengeance for her death, is wasting Thebes.But now, one only way of safety still is left,If Phoebus show us not of safety all bereft.

Oedipus: Yea that, the artful monster's cruel shade,

Doth war against me still. Now she alone,

In vengeance for her death, is wasting Thebes.

But now, one only way of safety still is left,

If Phoebus show us not of safety all bereft.

[Enter theChorus of Theban elders,deploring the violence of the plague.]

Chorus:How art thou fall'n, O glorious stock110Of Cadmus, thou and Thebes in one!How dost thou see, poor ruined Thebes,Thy lands laid waste and tenantless.And thou, O Theban Bacchus, hear:That hardy soldiery of thine,Thy comrades to the farthest Ind,Who dared invade the Eastern plains,115And plant thy banners at the gates of dawn—Behold, destruction feeds on them.They saw the blessed Arabes,'Mid spicy groves; and the fleeing steedsOf the Parthian, deadliest when he flees;They trod the marge of the ruddy sea,120Where Phoebus his rising beams displays,And the day reveals; where his nearer firesDarken the naked Indians.Yea we, that race invincible,Beneath the hand of greedy fate125Are falling fast.The gloomy retinue of deathIn march unceasing hurries on;The grieving line unending hastesTo the place of death. Space fails the throng.For, though seven gates stand open wide,130Still for the crowding funerals'Tis not enough; for everywhereIs carnage seen, and death treads hardUpon the heels of death.The sluggish ewes first felt the blight,For the woolly flock the rich grass croppedTo its own doom. At the victim's neck135The priest stood still, in act to strike;But while his hand still poised the blow,Behold, the bull, with gilded horns,Fell heavily; whereat his neck,Beneath the shock of his huge weight,Was broken and asunder yawned.No blood the sacred weapon stained,140But from the wound dark gore oozed forth.The steed a sudden languor feels,And stumbles in his circling course,While from his downward-sinking sideHis rider falls.The abandoned flocks lie in the fields;145The bull amid his dying herdIs pining; and the shepherd failsHis scanty flock, for he himself'Mid his wasting kine is perishing.The stag no more fears the ravenous wolf;No longer the lion's roar is heard;150The shaggy bear has lost her rage,And the lurking serpent his deadly sting;For parched and dying now he lies,With venom dried.No more do the woods, with leafage crowned,Spread out their shade in the mountain glens;155No more are fields with verdure clad;No vines bend low with laden arms;For the very earth has felt the breathOf our dire pestilence.Through the riven bars of Erebus,160With torches lit in Tartara,The raging band of the Furies troop;Dark Phlegethon has changed his course,And forced the waters of the StyxTo mingle with our Theban streams.Grim Death opes wide his greedy jaws,165And all his baleful wings outspreads.And he who plies that swollen streamIn his roomy skiff, though his age is freshAnd hardy, scarce can raise his arms,O'erwearied with his constant toilAnd the passage of the endless throng.170'Tis even rumored that the dogHath burst the chains of Taenara,And through our fields is wandering.Now dreadful prodigies appear:The earth gives out a rumbling sound,And ghosts go stealing through the groves,Larger than mortal forms; and twice175The trees of our Cadmean woodsHave trembled sore and shed their snows;Twice Dirce flowed with streams of blood;And in the stilly night we heardThe baying of Amphion's hounds.Oh, cruel, strange new form of death,180And worse than death! The sluggish limbsAre with a weary languor seized;The sickly cheek with fever burns,And all the head with loathsome soresIs blotched. Now heated vapors riseAnd scorch with fever's flames the brainWithin the body's citadel,And the throbbing temples swell with blood.185The eyeballs start; the accurséd fireDevours the limbs; the ears resound,And from the nostrils dark blood dripsAnd strains apart the swelling veins.190Now quick convulsions rend and tearThe inmost vitals.Now to their burning hearts they strainCold stones to soothe their agony;And they, whom laxer care permits,Since they who should control are dead,The fountains seek, and feed their thirst195With copious draughts. The smitten throngAll prostrate at the altars lieAnd pray for death; and this aloneThe gods, compliant, grant to them.Men seek the sacred fanes, and pray,Not that the gods may be appeased,But glutted with their feast of death.200[Creonis seen approaching.]But who with hasty step the palace seeks?Is this our Creon, high in birth and deed,Or does my sickened soul see false for true?'Tis Creon's self, in answer to our prayer.205

Chorus:How art thou fall'n, O glorious stock110Of Cadmus, thou and Thebes in one!How dost thou see, poor ruined Thebes,Thy lands laid waste and tenantless.And thou, O Theban Bacchus, hear:That hardy soldiery of thine,Thy comrades to the farthest Ind,Who dared invade the Eastern plains,115And plant thy banners at the gates of dawn—Behold, destruction feeds on them.They saw the blessed Arabes,'Mid spicy groves; and the fleeing steedsOf the Parthian, deadliest when he flees;They trod the marge of the ruddy sea,120Where Phoebus his rising beams displays,And the day reveals; where his nearer firesDarken the naked Indians.Yea we, that race invincible,Beneath the hand of greedy fate125Are falling fast.The gloomy retinue of deathIn march unceasing hurries on;The grieving line unending hastesTo the place of death. Space fails the throng.For, though seven gates stand open wide,130Still for the crowding funerals'Tis not enough; for everywhereIs carnage seen, and death treads hardUpon the heels of death.The sluggish ewes first felt the blight,For the woolly flock the rich grass croppedTo its own doom. At the victim's neck135The priest stood still, in act to strike;But while his hand still poised the blow,Behold, the bull, with gilded horns,Fell heavily; whereat his neck,Beneath the shock of his huge weight,Was broken and asunder yawned.No blood the sacred weapon stained,140But from the wound dark gore oozed forth.The steed a sudden languor feels,And stumbles in his circling course,While from his downward-sinking sideHis rider falls.The abandoned flocks lie in the fields;145The bull amid his dying herdIs pining; and the shepherd failsHis scanty flock, for he himself'Mid his wasting kine is perishing.The stag no more fears the ravenous wolf;No longer the lion's roar is heard;150The shaggy bear has lost her rage,And the lurking serpent his deadly sting;For parched and dying now he lies,With venom dried.No more do the woods, with leafage crowned,Spread out their shade in the mountain glens;155No more are fields with verdure clad;No vines bend low with laden arms;For the very earth has felt the breathOf our dire pestilence.Through the riven bars of Erebus,160With torches lit in Tartara,The raging band of the Furies troop;Dark Phlegethon has changed his course,And forced the waters of the StyxTo mingle with our Theban streams.Grim Death opes wide his greedy jaws,165And all his baleful wings outspreads.And he who plies that swollen streamIn his roomy skiff, though his age is freshAnd hardy, scarce can raise his arms,O'erwearied with his constant toilAnd the passage of the endless throng.170'Tis even rumored that the dogHath burst the chains of Taenara,And through our fields is wandering.Now dreadful prodigies appear:The earth gives out a rumbling sound,And ghosts go stealing through the groves,Larger than mortal forms; and twice175The trees of our Cadmean woodsHave trembled sore and shed their snows;Twice Dirce flowed with streams of blood;And in the stilly night we heardThe baying of Amphion's hounds.Oh, cruel, strange new form of death,180And worse than death! The sluggish limbsAre with a weary languor seized;The sickly cheek with fever burns,And all the head with loathsome soresIs blotched. Now heated vapors riseAnd scorch with fever's flames the brainWithin the body's citadel,And the throbbing temples swell with blood.185The eyeballs start; the accurséd fireDevours the limbs; the ears resound,And from the nostrils dark blood dripsAnd strains apart the swelling veins.190Now quick convulsions rend and tearThe inmost vitals.Now to their burning hearts they strainCold stones to soothe their agony;And they, whom laxer care permits,Since they who should control are dead,The fountains seek, and feed their thirst195With copious draughts. The smitten throngAll prostrate at the altars lieAnd pray for death; and this aloneThe gods, compliant, grant to them.Men seek the sacred fanes, and pray,Not that the gods may be appeased,But glutted with their feast of death.200[Creonis seen approaching.]But who with hasty step the palace seeks?Is this our Creon, high in birth and deed,Or does my sickened soul see false for true?'Tis Creon's self, in answer to our prayer.205

Chorus:How art thou fall'n, O glorious stock110

Of Cadmus, thou and Thebes in one!

How dost thou see, poor ruined Thebes,

Thy lands laid waste and tenantless.

And thou, O Theban Bacchus, hear:

That hardy soldiery of thine,

Thy comrades to the farthest Ind,

Who dared invade the Eastern plains,115

And plant thy banners at the gates of dawn—

Behold, destruction feeds on them.

They saw the blessed Arabes,

'Mid spicy groves; and the fleeing steeds

Of the Parthian, deadliest when he flees;

They trod the marge of the ruddy sea,120

Where Phoebus his rising beams displays,

And the day reveals; where his nearer fires

Darken the naked Indians.

Yea we, that race invincible,

Beneath the hand of greedy fate125

Are falling fast.

The gloomy retinue of death

In march unceasing hurries on;

The grieving line unending hastes

To the place of death. Space fails the throng.

For, though seven gates stand open wide,130

Still for the crowding funerals

'Tis not enough; for everywhere

Is carnage seen, and death treads hard

Upon the heels of death.

The sluggish ewes first felt the blight,

For the woolly flock the rich grass cropped

To its own doom. At the victim's neck135

The priest stood still, in act to strike;

But while his hand still poised the blow,

Behold, the bull, with gilded horns,

Fell heavily; whereat his neck,

Beneath the shock of his huge weight,

Was broken and asunder yawned.

No blood the sacred weapon stained,140

But from the wound dark gore oozed forth.

The steed a sudden languor feels,

And stumbles in his circling course,

While from his downward-sinking side

His rider falls.

The abandoned flocks lie in the fields;145

The bull amid his dying herd

Is pining; and the shepherd fails

His scanty flock, for he himself

'Mid his wasting kine is perishing.

The stag no more fears the ravenous wolf;

No longer the lion's roar is heard;150

The shaggy bear has lost her rage,

And the lurking serpent his deadly sting;

For parched and dying now he lies,

With venom dried.

No more do the woods, with leafage crowned,

Spread out their shade in the mountain glens;155

No more are fields with verdure clad;

No vines bend low with laden arms;

For the very earth has felt the breath

Of our dire pestilence.

Through the riven bars of Erebus,160

With torches lit in Tartara,

The raging band of the Furies troop;

Dark Phlegethon has changed his course,

And forced the waters of the Styx

To mingle with our Theban streams.

Grim Death opes wide his greedy jaws,165

And all his baleful wings outspreads.

And he who plies that swollen stream

In his roomy skiff, though his age is fresh

And hardy, scarce can raise his arms,

O'erwearied with his constant toil

And the passage of the endless throng.170

'Tis even rumored that the dog

Hath burst the chains of Taenara,

And through our fields is wandering.

Now dreadful prodigies appear:

The earth gives out a rumbling sound,

And ghosts go stealing through the groves,

Larger than mortal forms; and twice175

The trees of our Cadmean woods

Have trembled sore and shed their snows;

Twice Dirce flowed with streams of blood;

And in the stilly night we heard

The baying of Amphion's hounds.

Oh, cruel, strange new form of death,180

And worse than death! The sluggish limbs

Are with a weary languor seized;

The sickly cheek with fever burns,

And all the head with loathsome sores

Is blotched. Now heated vapors rise

And scorch with fever's flames the brain

Within the body's citadel,

And the throbbing temples swell with blood.185

The eyeballs start; the accurséd fire

Devours the limbs; the ears resound,

And from the nostrils dark blood drips

And strains apart the swelling veins.190

Now quick convulsions rend and tear

The inmost vitals.

Now to their burning hearts they strain

Cold stones to soothe their agony;

And they, whom laxer care permits,

Since they who should control are dead,

The fountains seek, and feed their thirst195

With copious draughts. The smitten throng

All prostrate at the altars lie

And pray for death; and this alone

The gods, compliant, grant to them.

Men seek the sacred fanes, and pray,

Not that the gods may be appeased,

But glutted with their feast of death.200

[Creonis seen approaching.]

But who with hasty step the palace seeks?

Is this our Creon, high in birth and deed,

Or does my sickened soul see false for true?

'Tis Creon's self, in answer to our prayer.205

Back to IndexNext